House Committee Investigating January 6th Capitol Invasion Goes On Social Media Fishing Expedition; Companies Should Resist
from the not-cool dept
Whatever you think of what happened on January 6th, people should be concerned about the House Select Committee that is investigating those events now demanding information from various social networks. As the committee announced in a press release, it was demanding records from a long list of social media companies.
The letters to the social media companies seek a range of records, including data, reports, analyses, and communications stretching back to spring of 2020. The Select Committee is also seeking information on policy changes social media companies adopted—or failed to adopt—to address the spread of false information, violent extremism, and foreign malign influence, including decisions on banning material from platforms and contacts with law enforcement and other government entities.
The following companies received record demands from the Select Committee:
Some of the information requested may be reasonable to ask for, but the requests are fairly sweeping. I've seen some argue that since the requests are so broad, it shows that they're not biased, but it's not bias I'm concerned about. The reports are demanding over a year's worth of details from each of these websites regarding things like:
All accounts, users, groups, events, messaging forums, marketplaces, posts, or other user-generated content that was sanctioned, suspended, removed, throttled, deprioritized, labeled, suppressed, or banned from your platform(s) related to any of the items detailed in request 1(i)-(iv) above.
The (i)-(iv) discussed are the following:
i. Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation relating to the 2020 election;
ii. Efforts to overturn, challenge, or otherwise interfere with the 2020 election or the certification of electoral college results;
iii. Domestic violent extremists, including racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, militia violent extremists, sovereign citizen violent extremists, QAnon, or other extremists associated with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including the January 6, 2021, attack, attacks against other State capitols, and attempted attacks against the January 20, 2021 inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.; and
iv. Foreign malign influence in the 2020 election, including known or suspected coordination between foreign and/or domestic influences to interfere in the 2020 elections, or cause domestic unrest.
Forcing every company to turn over such information seems like a very, very slippery slope towards the government turning that information back around and threatening or intimidating companies over their very much 1st Amendment protected moderation decisions.
There are also things like this -- which it's not clear the government should have access to:
Internal communications, reports, documents, or other materials relating to internal employee concerns about content on the platform associated with any of the items detailed in request 1(i)-(iv) above.
Those kinds of internal deliberations are not particularly relevant to what happened on January 6th -- which the committee is supposedly investigating. It seems a lot more relevant to pressuring social media companies to moderate in a government approved manner. I understand that the Committee is likely investigating whether or not some of those providers eagerly supported those who invaded the Capitol, but this is not a narrowly targeted request, and the potential intimidation factor is high.
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Filed Under: capitol hill, fishing expedition, house select committee, insurrection, january 6, policies, social media
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"Malinformation"?
What the hell is "malinformation", and how does it differentiate from the other two? I'll take a stab at it: Using my linguistic skills,
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Re: "Malinformation"?
Misinformation is incorrect information, but not necessarily meant to cause harm. (ie. out of date information or misunderstood information)
Disinformation is intentionally false & meant to cause harm. (ie. "Don't vote, the government will use that information to place you under surveillance.")
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Re: Re: "Malinformation"?
Thank you.
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How are any of the three different than what a politician normally spews out of their mouth?
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Re:
I mean I know "lol politicians all suck" responses in the comments are as inevitable as the sunrise, but can we maybe not pretend that storming Congress to interfere with the results of an election is just politics as usual?
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Re: Re:
The Techdirt motto is “Any politicians aside from Ron Wyden are grandstanding liars”. With the term ‘grandstanding’ used liberally.
Even when it’s clear that the Republicans will lie no matter what and want anybody that isn’t like them to die. Even when it’s clear that the Dems generally care about policy that makes people’s lives better but are still hampered with status-quo old guards who want to prevent further pushes leftward and people like Manchin and Sinema who are Republicans in Dem clothing. “All politicians are the same, they’re all out to get you” is still nihilistically proclaimed on TechDirt like some shitty stand-up comedy act from the 90s.
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Re: Re: Re:
Yep. Everyone reading, writing, or commenting at techdirt; that's our motto.
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Re: Re: Re:
Did you just reply to the wrong thread or are you really as stupid as you sound?
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I’m all for investigating the insurrection. I want to hold accountable any member of the government who had a hand in either encouraging, planning, or carrying out the riot. And this still feels too much like an authoritarian move to intimidate social media into “cracking down” on “dissent”.
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Re:
You can remove the scare quotes from around the word dissent. People stormed the capitol to try and force legislators to change the results of the election so that their bigoted current president could stay in power and further work to turn the U.S. into a fascist theocracy. My sympathy is nonexistent, and your hand-wringing rings hollow.
Slippery Slope is a fallacy for a fucking reason.
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Re: Re:
See "Non-fallacious usage"
This isn't so much the slippery slope as give them an inch and they'll take a fucking mile - with historical precedent (CFAA, UK's RIPA)
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Re: Re: Re:
I talked about this on a prior Techdirt article comments thread, but my state, Texas is continually descending into a fascist theocracy. where voting just got made more difficult and threatening for marginalized groups. This is the fucking reality that I and countless others are living in, where the Republicans rule with an iron fist and can get damn near whatever the fuck they want done.
I don’t fucking care if some shitheel sites like 4chan, 8kun, Gab, Parler, Facebook, and Reddit, or the TheDonald site that Reddit enabled by treating the subreddit with kids gloves while its users organized and built that site from scratch because their CEO is a soulless ghoul that gets off on the idea of running things in a societal collapse, are the subject of this search from Congress. Or Twitter, which gave Trump and his lies and stochastic terrorism the biggest Goddamn megaphone (not one of, but the biggest megaphone outright) out there and only grew a fucking spine after he exhausted his profitability to them. They helped create this monster, they fucking know it, and deserve to face scrutiny and consequences over time. Here’s hoping this investigation is just the start.
We’ve already let the fascist dickheads take endless miles. I’m tired of it. Let’s take some miles back.
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How do you propose we take those miles back without resorting to counter-fascism?
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Re:
Well, for starters, we can investigate what happened on Jan. 6th to the fullest extent, not letting Republican threats to telecoms and their threats to Democrats in Congress, and slippery-slope-fallacy hand-wringing get in the way. Then, as I said farther down in this comments thread, we can kill the filibuster, expand the Supreme Court, and then pack it with progressive Dem judges via Recess Appointments to counter what Trump and McConnell did with the Supreme Court.
Then, we can stop playing by the unwritten rules of decorum and civility that let Republicans, who have no such scruples, reach this level of power in the first place. We can stop worrying about becoming monsters or “descending to the logic of beasts” or whatever poetic Enlightened Centrism you brought to the table in your comments back in the thread where Scary Devil Monastery and I were discussing the issue with you.
Telling people “We have to wait. We’re not at that point yet where drastic measures need to be taken” when my state with 30 million people in it is restricting voter’s rights, trying to ban “Racism was a thing and still exists today” from being taught in schools, and is currently outlawing abortion after six weeks (which is conveniently before a lot of people know they’re pregnant) with an add-on enabling private citizens to file suit against people that they think broke that law, like some sort of pro-life secret police? All while critical problems pile up, like our shitty greed-built electric grid that caused many to freeze to death during a climate-change-induced cold snap, and our hospital beds keep filling up thanks to the governor and Republicans pushing back against mask and vaccine mandates?
Your finger-wagging rings hollow. The intolerant people who want me & my friends dead, unable to vote, or turned into Christian baby factories don’t deserve to be tolerated.
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Your feelings are valid. I’m not here to say otherwise. That said: I don’t have any better answer for you than “I am uncomfortable with how what you’re saying comes off as one step away from proposing actual physical violence against government representatives as a solution to political issues”. I’m sorry.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
We’ve already let the fascist dickheads take endless miles. I’m tired of it. Let’s take some miles back.
I'm sure you'll be fine the next time they're in power and they use those very tools that you demanded they get for surveillance of your political enemies... and use them against you.
I am constantly amazed at how people like you don't seem to EVER consider that at some point people you like won't be in power any more.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As with any proposed law the first consideration should always be: Would I trust my absolute worst enemy with full use of this power and feel safe should they get it?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The goal is to stop fascists from coming back into power at the federal level like they were during the Trump Administration. If people like Trump ever come back into power again, then it’s game over. Because regardless of what Democrats do or don’t do, the current crop of Republicans will do whatever the fuck they want to oppress everyone else that isn’t on their side. They don’t need Democrats to pass laws like permission slips to then turn around and use them on marginalized groups once they have control of Congress and the White House, they do that shit anyway. Was Greg Abbott pointing to laws that contemporary Democrats in Texas passed to try and justify his abortion ban? As he and other Republicans in Texas work to ban Critical Race Theory, what Democrat-passed laws did he point at to try and flip it around? Did Abbott look at a Democrat law when he decided to push forward his shitty anti-voting bill? No. With those three laws, he wanted to (respectively) appease his pro-life Christian extremist voter base, throw red meat to his bigot fascist voting bloc, and stop Black and Latino communities from voting.
While the Democrats have some modicum of power for the next year or so, and if we’re lucky the next three years if they can keep their seats in Congress during the Midterms, Biden and them should do what they can through packing the courts with progressives and enacting regulations and reforms to shift the Overton Window back closer to reality so that fascist rhetoric bullshit doesn’t have any more room to argue, and isn’t constantly treated as equal under the law. Then when the people I like aren’t in power any more, we’ll hopefully have Republicans whose stance on stuff is “How can we solve this issue with as little government intrusion as possible” instead of “It’s not a real issue” or “I’m going to make this issue intentionally worse, especially for people who aren’t white, cishet, and rich like me”.
And it’s like… Harm reduction as a policy goal is something to aspire to, as well. Let’s say that we have a few years where fascist dickheads have no legal ground to stand on, but then they get elected to office later on. The harm reduction and therefore benefits of those few years where fashies get their asses kicked out the doors of public office, off of social media, and so forth, would be real. It would give us breathing room to plan ahead and organize instead of simply reacting to whatever lie of the day gets spewed forth. Some states could maybe flip purple or blue outright instead of being beet-red, to offset the harm that fascist Republicans would do at the federal level.
Instead of looking at stuff like “This could be flipped around and used by an oppressive government in the future”, is it that hard to go a couple steps farther and look at it like “How do we craft laws and legal frameworks to disarm advocates of oppressive governments so that they can’t get elected again in the first place”? Quite a few European nations that were heavily devastated by fascism during WWII did just that, and last I checked, France and Germany haven’t been taken over by nazis.
January 6 was our Beer Hall Putsch, and it should be our wake-up call that treating all of this that’s happening right now like it’s politics as usual isn’t going to work, and that we need to put the work in soon to nip the fascist problem in the bud without wide-scale state-sanctioned or vigilante violence against Americans with fascist views.
But yeah, I think I’m done here. I’m headed off to Ars Technica where the regular userbase and staff by and large have a firm grasp of the reality that we live in, what we’re up against, and the stakes at hand.
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See, that’s the kind of thinking I can agree with.
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Re:
Ha ha, you sissies think the Trump administration was "oppressive".
Wait until Americans take their country back; then you anti-American leftists will see real oppression. You are screwed then, because Americans will be all out of mercy.
Best get while the getting's good. I hear Canada is nice.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"I don’t fucking care if some shitheel sites"
If you only apply rights to people you like and are OK with them, nay demanding them to be removed from people you don't, you might not have the strong principles you claim to have.
"We’ve already let the fascist dickheads take endless miles. I’m tired of it. Let’s take some miles back."
Take miles back from fascists by... enabling fascist behaviour? Interesting strategy, let's see how it pays off.
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On a positive note...
All accounts, users, groups, events, messaging forums, marketplaces, posts, or other user-generated content that was sanctioned, suspended, removed, throttled, deprioritized, labeled, suppressed, or banned from your platform(s) related to any of the items detailed in request 1(i)-(iv) above.
We might actually get an answer to that all-elusive, never answered question 'What 'conservative' views have been censored. Be specific'
Buckle up Koby - we're about to find out how big of an asshole you and your poor perpetually victimized chums are really complaining about.
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What the hell even? Now this is this is theatre, but with other agendas unrelated to what they are actually supposedly investigating. Stupid and dangerous, probably also illegal, with far more illegal actions to come from it.
Why can't they just look at the posts and related posts (normally) of people who did the thing or encouraged it? They can ask for stuff that was later moderated if necessary.
Not only is this bad and ridiculous, it's like the moderation-extra at scale challenge. These companies are just supposed to algorithm and regex their whole platforms looking for this shit?
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Freedom is inconsistant
Freedom has its problems.
Freedom of information? Is very hard to decide. Esp. when the many groups responsible dont give much of a concern.
When the Internet popped up and the gov. decided to place a good amount of data on the net. You could look up certain data and Find it posted. It was soon taken down, for some odd reasons. I loved looking up the water quality of this area. Cant get it now.
This may seem to be strange but the Common People of the USA were taught that Your information is private. And under certain conditions IT SHOULD BE. But, whats happened in recent past, seems to tell us other wise. All the Company, internet break ins, and the lost data seem to be abit 'Over the hedge'. Where are the requirements that our systems be kept Private? With all the laws and rules you would think someone would be Suing those responsible for the lost information, that Should have been kept secret/private.
But there is another side to this, is who would want All info as private. If you gave doctors access to a public list of diagnosis, except for the names and address's to compare and see what worked and what didnt, it would be an advance in medical. But we cant do that unless Some corp is making money doing it. That list could have shown that all those taking pain meds was Outrageous, and being over prescribed years ago. It could show that the area I live in has a bad incidence of kidney and cancer problems, with around 60,000 people in an area of 100 miles by 50 miles, and the major town int he area has 4 Kidney dialysis clinics(not including hospitals) running 24/7, it seems alittle bit high.(this could be prescribed to the Nuke testing South of this area)
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Re: Freedom is inconsistant
Your information is private
Sorry but that barn had the door left open, all the horses ran away, and burnt down a long time ago.
My social security card, the actual card (it's around here somewhere) says "Not to be used for identification purposes" or words that that effect. But they never enforced it and millions of businesses did use your SSN as an ID in their system. Then the SSA said 'oh, well no big deal'. So your SSN got spread all over the place and made it easy to link all of the data about you in various data bases together. Just made snooping and identity theft much easier and harder to fight against.
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Re: Re: Freedom is inconsistant
I love the one about Checks.
Run all over paying bills with them, and your account number and the Bank registry are printed on the bottom.
Let alone your name and address PRINTED ON IT.
And a phone number maybe.
How much ID do you need for the bank to get to the account?
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Re: Re: Freedom is inconsistant
When I attended the University of Houston (TX) many years back, they used your SSN as your student number "to keep things simple". You didn't sign your homework or tests, you wrote your SSN on it.
Ah! Those were the days... how naive we were. Identity theft? What are you talking about, international spies? Chicago politicians? :D
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This request seems like an attempt to gather evidence from individuals who were banned or had posts removed from those platforms. Yeah, it looks scary, but when you're trying to piece together a plot to interfere with the electoral process by invading Congress, I'm not surprised they want to see the posts that may have led to its planning.
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Re:
And quite a lot that didn't have anything to do with it.
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Re: Re:
More like information with which to attack 'big tech'.
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Re:
This request seems like an attempt to gather evidence from individuals who were banned or had posts removed from those platforms.
Well, at least the people complaining about their posts being removed for conservative views (I'm looking at YOU Koby) will have those views read by a wider audience, just like they wanted.
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'Clean your own house up before digging through ours.'
If they're so very concerned about election misinformation and flat out lies it'd be both fitting and hilarious if one or more of the sites pointed them to a few other notable sources of that, some of which they might share a workspace with or did in the past.
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Enforcement mechanism?
This is concerning, but can't the parties just decline to provide the info? It seems like it is still technically just a request, not a demand.
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Re: Enforcement mechanism?
Which is why it is suggested they resist. Lower bar here, doesn't require lawsuits.
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You Are The Product, Not Them
Most social media companies track everything you do, primarily for marketing purposes. But I'm skeptical that they apply that same track-everything mentality when it comes to their own behavior. As an example, most people who get banned are simply given a generic message. Exact lists with corresponding reasoning may not exist. My prediction is that these companies will respond by saying that they would love to help, and also they can recall some high-profile incidents, however they don't keep that sort of information and so they can't provide it.
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Hey, Koby: What “conservative opinions” do you believe are being censored by social media companies? Be specific.
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Re: A. Stephen Stone: "Koby's" comments censored here are proof.
that you / Techdirt DAILY demonstrate the censoring of any views outside your corporatist / pervert notions.
So too with "Chozen" and me.
But you thought of this obvious rebuttal and hedged by specifying elsewhere: " "
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Re: Re: A. Stephen Stone: "Koby's" comments censored here are pr
There are no views being censored here.
Oh... wait... are you really that fucking stupid that you can't read:
And that if you click right where it says Click here you can actually see the comment?
Please tell me how that is being censored you fucking idiot. Especially, anybody who feels they are not being heard here at TD, you can always go to Parler, Gab, Franktalk, and discuss your opinions. So again, how is that being censored.
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Re: Re: Re: A. Stephen Stone: "Koby's" comments censored here ar
We've explained it to him, multiple times. He's either ignoring the explanations because they don't agree with his worldview, or he knows damn well how this works & is just trolling because he's that pathetic.
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Hey, Brainy: What “conservative opinions” do you believe are being censored by social media companies? Be specific.
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Re:
How about what's NOT being censored on the other side?
Routine verbal abuse of Trump supporters using language that gets others banned when used against Biden supporters.
Death threats against conservatives don't get censored while a mere insult to a feminist results in a ban.
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Re: Re:
Routine verbal abuse of Trump supporters using language that gets others banned when used against Biden supporters.
How interesting, and short-sighted! Who would've thought that the 'fuck your feelings, you snowflake sheeple!' people would get upset when the same vitriol was used against them.
You guys lowered the bar on civility. So tough shit and fuck off.
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Re: Re: your quote, not mine
AHEM
Fuck your feelings.
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Re: Re:
This is where we ask for concrete examples, and not the raving fantasies of snowflakes who pretend they're not being banned for very good reasons.
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Re:
You know, I’d like to know that too. I hear about it all the time but don’t really use twitface so I have no idea.
Full me in too!
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Re: Re: A. Stephen Stone: "Koby's" comments censored here are pr
Good job Blue. You only posted that one time. Next time try to remember to use all the punctuation, buddy.
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Re: You Are The Product, Not Them
My prediction is that these companies will respond by saying that they would love to help, and also they can recall some high-profile incidents, however they don't keep that sort of information and so they can't provide it.
Uh-huh. You can only HOPE that's the case. Otherwise you and assholes like you are going to finally get your wish to have your 'conservative views' read by everyone.
Good luck asshole! When this is over you'll finally understand how censorship works, as well as what the words 'third-party doctrine' mean.
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Re: You Are The Product, Not Them
Then how can you possibly prove that people are victims of anti-conservative bias if there is no evidence to support it?
Or are you not trying to prove it, because a claim that you know can never be proven will still fuel the conspiracy?
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Re: Re: You Are The Product, Not Them
Insider whiteblowers have already done so. But you're right, not tracking the evidence makes it difficult to prove in lawsuits.
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Re: Re: Re: You Are The Product, Not Them
Insider whiteblowers have already done so
Well in that case you should have no problem for once actually providing evidence for your claims, though I suspect I already know who you're talking about and if it is let's just say it doesn't hold up very well under any scrutiny.
That aside which 'conservative' positions and ideas are you claiming that tech companies have a 'bias' against, and as always be specific.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: You Are The Product, Not Them
I suspect that his "whitelblowers" are the people featured on Project Veritas, which are not only as truthful as anything that comes out from that source (i.e. not at all), but don't prove what they claim it does even if you take it at face value.
The only reliable sources that have come out have proven a pro right wing bias at Facebook, where right-wing sources have regularly been handled with kid gloves and allowed more freedom to get away with stuff. Which makes it even clearer how vile and dangerous the stuff that gets banned there must be.
"That aside which 'conservative' positions and ideas are you claiming"
Oh, you know the ones...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You Are The Product, Not Them
Oh I suspect that it's those people as well but given how much Koby loves providing backing evidence for his assertions I figured I'd give him another chance to do so and prove me wrong.
Oh, you know the ones...
Oh I expect I do but as Koby seems to have a very strange vision impairment that prevents him from ever seeing that question it's worthwhile to keep posting it in the hope that one day their eyes might stop acting up and they'll finally be able to see and answer it.
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Re: Re: Re: You Are The Product, Not Them
Insider whiteblowers have already done so. But you're right, not tracking the evidence makes it difficult to prove in lawsuits.
How interesting. Are these 'whistleblowers' stupid or something? Because I don't know about you, but if I was going to blow a whistle, and I'm just spit-balling here, I'd want to have something that validates my claim.
Otherwise, the whistleblower would look like they're full of shit. But that's just me. You're certainly free to believe all the bullshit you want.
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Re: You Are The Product, Not Them
"however they don't keep that sort of information and so they can't provide it."
Like the conservative opinions that get themselves banned but yet......can't provide it.
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Can we just make the old people get off our lawn this time?
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While "this is an overbroad fishing expedition" is a legitimate criticism, "a Republican majority will not forget" is not. McCarthy is threatening legislative retaliation if the ISPs comply, and that's pretty horrifying too.
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'Don't you DARE give them evidence against our side!'
They don't even bother to pretend to give a damn about the constitution or that they don't support insurrection at this point do they?
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You know you don't have a real argument when you resort to the slippery slope fallacy.
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Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evidence"?
Reuters reported: The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-fbi-finds-scant-evidence-us-capitol-attack-was -coordinated-sources-2021-08-20/
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Re: Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evidence&quo
This is a desperate attempt by anti-American fiends to dig up some dirt after the FBI failed to find -- or fabricate any.
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Re: more carrots less sticks
Not so good buddy. Try to remember to collect all your thoughts into one post at a time.
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Re: Re: more carrots less sticks
They'd have to have thoughts first.
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Re: Re: Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evidence
wow, you read the previous posts.
But this isn’t what you think. This has nothing to do with Jan 6.
This is about both parties looking to fight “big tech”.
See if the information is available and turned over, they’ll (the commission) say there’s not enough regulation and seek to make laws that force more content regulations.
If they don’t get the information they want, they’ll say there’s not enough regulation and create laws to force logging so they can make a law that requires more content regulations.
All while republicans run around looking for ways to force speech onto platforms.
Both parties are out of their collective minds.
You may not like the “lean” of the SCOTUS but one thing’s for sure. Left or right, the court has consistently help up every aspect of free speech and we just have to hope they continue to do so as the First gets attacked by both parties over the next few years.
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Re: Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evidence&quo
Now, you little fiends of Techdirt can and will claim -- forever -- "no evidence found doesn't mean isn't any", and so on, but that's just continuing your shameless and fiendish lying about Jan 6.
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Re: Re: Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evidence
You do know that the Reuters article isn't based on FBI releasing a report, right? It's based on what "four current and former law enforcement officials" told them. I do wonder if the word "scant" will be featured when the investigation is actually publicly available.
Personally, I use the the word scant to describe the intelligence of those participating in the Jan 6 insurrection.
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Re: Re: Re: Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evid
They mean "scant" like the piddling amount of evidence of torture during our wars in the middle-east. How many pages was that report again? Yeah, scant like that. ;)
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Re: Re: Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evidence
Not so good buddy. You used the word fiend twice. Try using devilish or satanic next time.
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Re: Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evidence"?
The fact that the 500 traitors didn't directly collude with each other to violently attack the Capitol beforehand does not diminish what they did, nor mean that they shouldn't be charged and sentenced to the limits of the law.
This is being misinterpreted by smooth brained types such as yourself to mean something about their actions after they stormed the Capitol with the intent of overthrowing democracy being pure innocent tourist activity, but nobody with sentient thought is going to fall for that.
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Re: Re: Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evidence"?
"...but nobody with sentient thought is going to fall for that."
Probably, but that does still leave the other 83% of the human population that always fall for 'authorized BS".
You know... like the Trump Chumps in America.
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Re: Did you miss that "The FBI has found scant evidence"?
Well, then they apparently have nothing to worry about. If nothing else, we'll see the 'conservative views' that we keep hearing you chuds bitch about.
You're finally getting your freedom of speech and your opinions are being uncensored. Enjoy it, dumbass!
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There was no "invasion" of the capitol.
Mike Masnick, nor any of Techdirt's other authors were at the capitol building on January 6th, along with mostly every commenter that has ever commented on Techdirt, since January 6th(or allowed to without being blocked out of embarrassment. Yet, they seem to portray that they know it all. That all of the people who showed up to the capitol were "Trumpers", compared to people who really didn't want an incompetent president with serious doubts having won the election inaugurated. That they were all "insurrectionists" was the comments repeated over and again by Mike Masnick himself.
Though, not a single person was ever charged for being at or inside the capitol building for "insurrection". Of course, Mike Masnick, and the other writers for Techdirt Knew this to be true. They portray themselves to be "experts" in "journalism", even though none of them are true journalists because they never actually interview real people before writing a one-page article.
Now Mike Masnick in all his expertise in "journalism" says Janurary 6th was an invasion. Invasion by whom? Unarmed protesters, who were at the capitol building allowed inside to walk the halls, take pictures and yell to stop the steal? Few actual Trump supporters had anything to do with any property being damaged, because video footage(that has yet to be released by capitol police) shows that the people damaging property weren't Trump supporters at all, they were Antifa/BLM. Of course, Techdirt has never made this public, because they weren't there. They just wanted to slant the story and slant the details enough to fit their article narrative to portray them as "insurrectionists".
Everything I've said is true. But Techdirt isn't interested in people like me commenting with statements that are true. Instead, they'll likely censor this comment because it embarrasses them.
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Re: There was no "invasion" of the capitol.
So you were there at the protests, and your insistence that there exists evidence means that you have this evidence, and you're going to reveal it?
No?
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That's just like... your opinion man.
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Re:
An opinion entirely divorced from reality. It's almost like he has avoided at actually looking through all the publicly available evidence.
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Re: Re:
Ah but you see all that evidence is just part of the BLM/Antifa plot and shows just how effectively they ran the government when their Dear Leader was in charge of it, clearly only the parts that they hallucinate to exist can be trusted.
I figured if they're not going to put any effort into their incoherent conspiracy spinning why should I spend more effort responding to them than just some mockery?
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Re: There was no "invasion" of the capitol.
He fellow American I too am from, the St Petersburg that is defiantly the warm with the bikinis and not the one cold tit witchs one.
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Sign back in, Chozen.
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Mmm. Yeah. Meanwhile, we have this:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kevin-mccarthy-warns-phone-tech-034426786.html
In a nutshell: while being purely ignorant of which "law" he's standing/groveling to fellow Fascists behind, Charlie McCarthy threatens the operations of any comm-pany which dares to participate in the much-needed investigation into the factions striving to remove Amerikan democracy (or what's left of it), in the name of Der Leader for Life. This comes a day or two after Fascist tool Jim Banks (masquerading as a "Representative" from former KKK-ruled Indiana) spewed that any fellow Legislator who dares to question the Jan.6 would-be putschers should be removed from any and all Congressional power positions, such as committee memberships, etc. We must strive to welcome the firm-but-loving rule of our Neue Fascist Overlords, as led by The Messiah, otherly known as The Donald (THE Donald!!). THE Donald awaits his shot at being our benevolent patriotic Dictator-for-Life, as he leads us poor deluded souls down the glory-road of Obedience and Loyalty to Der Party, Der Purpose (whatever the fuck that is), and most of all, Der Leader Hisself. So, MAGA! Better yet, SIEG HEIL MAGA!!
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Re:
Amen. Fuck the fascists. I’m firmly in the camp that the Dems should use every possible tool in the judiciary, legislature, and executive branch, and create new tools as well, to dismantle the Republican fascist structure that’s taken over large swaths of the country.
For a start, I’d love to see Biden and the Dems in Congress kill the filibuster, expand the Supreme Court’s size, and pack it full of progressive Democratic judges that Biden can put in through the Recess Appointment process.
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Re:
And yet another pile of bile from Marjorrhea Traitor Greene:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-threatened-shut-121049237.html
Better polish up them jackboots!
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Re:
That's strange, I thought that the insurrectionists were extremists who had nothing to do with the real republican party, with moves like that you'd almost think that at least some of the republican party sees nothing wrong with a little violent (attempted) coups and is making their support for such clear by running interference for those that engage in it...
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Re: Re:
It's one of those quantum-superposition analog states where noone admits the truth to the majority of observers until they are fully insulated from the rule of law and in complete control.
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" I understand that the Committee is likely investigating whether or not some of those providers eagerly supported those who invaded the Capitol, but this is not a narrowly targeted request, and the potential intimidation factor is high."
Since even politicians are (usually) smart enough to know that any provider who was 'eagerly supporting those who invaded the Capital', would; without a single exception, NOT turn over any self incriminating documents, I'd say that this move was completely intended as blanket provider intimidation. Just saying. :)
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