Is Trump Mad?

[PDQ Mobile]

As for Twitter etc, it's WWW.
WWW was given to everybody at the time of it's inception to use for free and without outside influence.
How things have changed!

It is hard to foresee what WWW will look like in another decade, I think.

You can set up your own server, stick it on the WWW no problem.
In that respect nothing has really changed merely there are a large number of "private" companies offering platforms.

Twitter is a private company, they can do what they like.
(Snip only for brevity)
That's always been my fundamental problem particularly with the far right, they want to restrict others freedoms but not their own.

I understand what you are saying.
I fear I cannot set up anything on the net.
On the one hand because I lack the necessary "skills" and on the other because I have no interest in doing so.

And is Parler not a private company too? But one which has been effectively suppressed.

I am not condoning any content or revolutionary ideas here, just questioning the way the Net appears to he going.
That is ever more commercial. Ever more intrusive. Ever more targeted towards specific user.
And ever more watched over.

If I had a hammer, sometimes!!!

[Psamathe]

.....
I am not condoning any content or revolutionary ideas here, just questioning the way the Net appears to he going.
That is ever more commercial. Ever more intrusive. Ever more targeted towards specific user.
And ever more watched over.

If I had a hammer, sometimes!!!

I see it at the mega companies who now dominate making commercial decisions about their customers. Maybe the issue is worse because we have allowed a few suppliers to dominate (e.g. Parler on Amazon Web Services). Many customers wanting significant coverage have very limited choices about providers.

Ian

[kwackers]

I see it at the mega companies who now dominate making commercial decisions about their customers. Maybe the issue is worse because we have allowed a few suppliers to dominate (e.g. Parler on Amazon Web Services). Many customers wanting significant coverage have very limited choices about providers.

Ian

Parler is an easy thing to move across to other web service providers. It doesn't appear to need much other than a basic server.
(Assuming they wrote it properly, otherwise you'd need to reinstall the app and without app shop support...)
TBH I'd be surprised if it didn't pop back up fairly soon.

Some of the more sophisticated stuff is a lot harder to move.
I use AWS for a lot of the AI stuff I do, that would be very difficult to move over because the server code is tailored to Amazons API.

[Ben@Forest]

Parler is an easy thing to move across to other web service providers. It doesn't appear to need much other than a basic server.
(Assuming they wrote it properly, otherwise you'd need to reinstall the app and without app shop support...)
TBH I'd be surprised if it didn't pop back up fairly soon.

I know nothing about the technical side of this but their CEO, John Matze, first said they'd be back within 7 days, but now says it'll be longer than expected.

"We will likely be down longer than expected," Matze wrote in a short update to users ahead of Amazon's planned suspension, scheduled for January 10 at 11:59PM PST. He indicated the reason was other companies were unwilling to work with Parler.

Matze wrote in a post: "We have our software and everyone's data ready to go. Rather it's that Amazon's, Google's and Apple's statements to the press about dropping our access has caused most of our other vendors to drop their support for us as well. And most people with enough servers to host us have shut their doors to us."

[reohn2]

I find it astonishing that people are still talking about the twitter ban in terms of free speech.

There are two major points at play here:

- The protection of free speech does not include the right to shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre.
And much of what the orange one had been saying is similarly "non protected" speech.

- Free speech isn't the right to have a specific publisher (or anyone) publish your speech.
He is still free to say anything, in fact he has rather more platforms than most to ensure that his verbal diarrhoea reaches a wide audience.
Noone can claim that their free speech is being attacked because the BBC won't put them on the main news.

An attack on free speech is people being arrested for what they say, and more than that, the things they are saying must not be any of the variety of banned items (which are generally to do with endangering others, hence the "fire in a theatre" comparison).

Spot on.

[Oldjohnw]

It seems like corporate America, and indeed the world, are dropping Trump. Deutsche Bank, who are his main creditors and whose loans are due soon have dropped him.

I would imagine that he is heading for yet another bankruptcy.

[Bonefishblues]

The island he's standing on is getting smaller.

[simonineaston]

...and this from a young senator caught in the middle of the mess in The Capital.

Torres noted she then had to shelter in place in a room packed with people for four to five hours, with several Republican colleagues who refused to wear masks.
“As a result, many of my dear colleagues and friends have tested positive. I’m waiting my results,” Torres said. (Three House Democrats have announced they tested positive for coronavirus.)

I wonder if it will now occur to those who refused to wear masks, that there are consequences to their actions - these people behave like children...

[Bonefishblues]

Defiant speech/comments from Trump this afternoon. His comments have been analysed and have been found to be appropriate he tells us

...but he's never going to be impeached, clearly.

[pete75]

[Jdsk]

[Stevek76]

Hopefully that should put the kibosh on some of the more overdramatic concern of an effective coup happening in the US. I thought it was clear a few days back that the military were having none of it when a few of them reiterated that they are sworn to the constitution, not the president and a coup is never going to work if the military isn't backing it.

Doesn't mean there isn't a risk of general violence and disruption from the trump cult though.

Assuming they wrote it properly

Given the hacks and data leaks, answer to that would be no.

[Ben@Forest]

Hopefully that should put the kibosh on some of the more overdramatic concern of an effective coup happening in the US. I thought it was clear a few days back that the military were having none of it when a few of them reiterated that they are sworn to the constitution, not the president and a coup is never going to work if the military isn't backing it.

I'm not sure there was ever much danger of that.

According to an October 2020 article by the Council for Foreign Relations (a US independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher) there were:

...some three hundred different militia groups, with perhaps as many as fifteen thousand to twenty-thousand well-armed and often military-trained members...

and

Between February and April this year, there was 60 percent growth of Facebook pages and groups advocating sedition. The number of groups peaked at 125, with over seventy-three thousand followers, before Facebook banned these pages...

Though that's a very serious situation those figures (20,000 and 73,000) are respectively 0.00952% and 0.0347% of the US adult population. It's a long, long way from a coup supported by the people.

[Vorpal]

I don't think that there is a high likelihood of an effective coup, but that's not to say there will not be more violence. I think it is entirely possible that there could be a partly successful coup, or successful coups in some state governments.

The extremists have been allowed to get out of hand in the USA. There are quite a lot of very angry armed people who honestly believe their government is being illegally taken over by commies and freaks.

The military may not support a coup, but many law enforcement agencies and the National Guard were absent for hours on the 6th January. They lacked authorisation to respond. While I hope that problem has been/will be fixed, Trump has fired most of the agency and department heads with the best capability for handling emergencies like this, and replaced them with 'acting' heads who kowtow to him.

Parts of the military acting, without authorisation, against further violence, or an attempted coup, would be almost as problematic as Trump's sedition. Removing him from office will likely incite further violence. If Pence goes with him, the current Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, would become acting President. While she certainly would authorise the use of federal law enforcement and the National Guard in suppressing violence, it's difficult to see how the US can get out of the cycle of violence that has begun. Suppression will likely beget more terrorism.

edited to add: it's not just militia groups, either. while they are possibility the most capable, there are lots of average Americans who believe their President has been wronged. Remember that 70 million people *voted* for Trump a couple of months ago, and many of them believe Trump that there were illegal voting practices.

[Oldjohnw]

Whilst we are glad that the US joint chiefs of staff have confirmed their proper loyalty, that such a statement should be needed is a sad reflection on just where the US is right now.