Biden Versus the Bad News Bros

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [Biden Versus the Bad News Bros]( Biden Versus the Bad News Bros, Paul Krugman, The New York Times With inflation falling rapidly over the past year, we’ve seen some resurgence of inflation trutherism. But the more notable development has been the emergence of what we might call recession truthers — a significant faction that seems frustrated by the Biden economy’s refusal, at least so far, to enter the recession they have repeatedly predicted or insisted is already underway. Now, there are some sociological differences between the old inflation truthers and the new recession truthers. The former group tended to be old-school reactionaries still pining for a return to the gold standard. The new group is dominated by tech bros, billionaires who imagine themselves focused on the future rather than the golden past, more likely to be crypto cultists than gold bugs. [...] But the new truthers are, if anything, even sillier than the old truthers. You might have expected technology billionaires to be well-informed about the world — someone like Musk could, if he chose, easily maintain a large research department for his personal edification. (The annual budget for the whole Bureau of Labor Statistics is less than $700 million.) Yet they are often, in practice, easy marks for grifters and con men. I’ll talk later about why. But first, let’s ask how we know that the recession truthers are wrong. - [Macron suggests blocking social media during riots]( Macron suggests blocking social media during riots, Damien Leloup and Florian Reynaud, Le Monde Temporary blockades of social networks, whether partial or complete, are not explicitly provided for under current French law, and the principle itself raises important legal questions. The French Constitution, like European law, guarantees the right to freedom of expression, and the Constitutional Council has ruled on several occasions that measures limiting this in the name of protecting public order must be proportionate and justified. In 2020, the Council notably ruled that the "Avia law" (named for its proponent, MP Laetitia Avia) on online hate, which required social networks to remove "hateful" content within 24 hours, constituted "an infringement on the exercise of freedom of expression and communication that is not necessary, appropriate and proportionate". [...] Some countries have already blocked social networks on their territory. Turkey, for example, has repeatedly blocked sites including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, notably in 2014 and 2015, with varying degrees of success. While DNS blocks are easy to implement, they're also easily circumvented, including on mobile devices. Some messaging services and social networks, notably Telegram, which was used extensively during the riots, have also set up technical infrastructures to avoid DNS blocking, with some success. In the past, Iran and Russia have tried to block access to the service, without really succeeding. "The country of human rights and the rights of citizens cannot align itself with the great democracies of China, Russia and Iran," reacted Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure, echoed by other left-wing MPs. The president's proposal has been divisive within his own party too. "It would be a mistake," said Renaissance MP Eric Bothorel, a specialist in digital issues. "It would mean abandoning the idea that democracy is stronger than the tools used against it." - [Bad news: Daily Kos is facing tough financial times. Grassroots donors like you help us make ends meet. Can you chip in $5 to help us keep fighting?]( - [We tried Threads, Meta’s new Twitter rival. Here’s what happened]( We tried Threads, Meta’s new Twitter rival. Here’s what happened, Kari Paul, The Guardian Meta’s clone of Twitter does feel like, well, using Twitter. The features – likes, retweets, following – are nearly identical to its longstanding microblog predecessor. However, with Twitter getting clunkier and progressively less usable since Musk took it over, opening an app and actually being able to see and engage with content smoothly felt like a breath of fresh air. That is a user experience Meta is betting on, openly stating that the chaos at Twitter has made space for a new product on the market. In an interview with The Verge, Instagram head of product Adam Mosseri said the company felt that recent “unpredictability” at Twitter had created a need for a new platform. “Obviously, Twitter pioneered the space,” Mosseri said. “But just given everything that was going on, we thought there was an opportunity to build something that was open and something that was good for the community that was already using Instagram.” As a tech writer who has reportedly extensively on the privacy concerns surrounding Meta, the company’s shameless copying of competitors’ apps, and tech’s growing unchecked power, it pains me to say that I actually enjoyed using Threads. I already use WhatsApp and Instagram daily, and have a nearly-dormant yet still existent Facebook account. Do I really want to share more of my data with one of the largest tech companies in the world? - [Restricting the Government from Speaking to Tech Companies Will Spread Disinformation and Harm Democracy]( Restricting the Government from Speaking to Tech Companies Will Spread Disinformation and Harm Democracy, Leah Litman and Laurence H. Tribe, JustSecurity There is...considerable precedent that recognizes that the government can ask private parties to remove content. That precedent exists for a reason; if it didn’t, the government couldn’t communicate with private parties about their content moderation policies, or whether (hypothetically) foreign governments were trying to make certain content go viral in order to reduce voter turnout, inflame divisions, or make the country less safe. There are myriad legitimate and indeed compelling reasons the government might have to ask social media companies to remove content. And the First Amendment certainly doesn’t prevent them from merely asking. To treat the First Amendment as creating something like a wall of separation between government and powerful private actors is utterly bizarre. It would turn the Constitution’s protection of free expression in an open society into an obstacle course for some of the most valuable exchanges of information and ideas we can imagine. The district court cited all the precedent supporting this public-private dialogue before cavalierly dismissing it, in part by declaring that “what is really telling is that virtually all of the free speech suppressed was ‘conservative’ free speech.” As if the cases that supported the government all of a sudden didn’t matter because this case involves conservatives? (One side note: Several of the allegations in the complaint occurred during the Trump administration. Communications between social media companies and government officials happen no matter who’s in power, and the First Amendment is not supposed to lean right or left.) There is also the fact that the district court made no effort to identify circumstances where the government came even close to coercing social media companies into doing something they didn’t want to do. Take the allegations concerning hydroxychloroquine. On pages 52-53 of the opinion, the district court recites the very serious allegation that the Department of Health and Human Services “suppressed speech on hydroxychloroquine” by having Dr. Anthony Fauci make “statements on Good Morning America and on Andrea Mitchell Reports that hydroxychloroquine is not effective.” The next sentence then reports that, after this apparently very coercive Good Morning America appearance, “social-media platforms censored” videos and material that were pro-hydroxychloroquine. That must have been quite the Good Morning America appearance. But joking aside: A government official appearing on a television show and stating that certain speech is disinformation does not come even remotely close to the government coercing social medial companies into removing that speech. - [Stay cool this summer with a Daily Kos t-shirt. Get yours now!]( - [Disinformation Researchers Fret About Fallout From Judge’s Order]( Disinformation Researchers Fret About Fallout From Judge’s Order, Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson, The New York Times Several researchers...said the government’s work with social media companies was not an issue as long as it didn’t coerce them to remove content. Instead, they said, the government has historically notified companies about potentially dangerous messages, like lies about election fraud or misleading information about Covid-19. Most misinformation or disinformation that violates social platforms’ policies is flagged by researchers, nonprofits, or people and software at the platforms themselves. “That’s the really important distinction here: The government should be able to inform social media companies about things that they feel are harmful to the public,” said Miriam Metzger, a communication professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an affiliate of its Center for Information Technology and Society. A larger concern, researchers said, is a potential chilling effect. The judge’s decision blocked certain government agencies from communicating with some research organizations, such as the Stanford Internet Observatory and the Election Integrity Partnership, about removing social media content. Some of those groups have already been targeted in a Republican-led legal campaign against universities and think tanks. Their peers said such stipulations could dissuade younger scholars from pursuing disinformation research and intimidate donors who fund crucial grants. - [Polish Woman Killed On Greek Island: A Textbook Case Of How Racism And Sexism Are Triggered]( Polish Woman Killed On Greek Island: A Textbook Case Of How Racism And Sexism Are Triggered, Katarzyna Skiba, WorldCrunch Anastazja Rubińska, 27, went missing on June 12 on the Greek island of Kos, after she'd gone to get a drink during a day off from the local hotel where she worked. She never made it home alive. [...] When she didn't return home by the next morning, the boyfriend alerted the local Greek authorities, who launched an investigation. Police confirmed that Rubińska had last been seen at a bar with a group of five men. One of them, a 32 year-old from Bangladesh, now identified as Salahuddin S., who would later confess that he had sexually assaulted Rubińska. At his home, police say they discovered a shirt with blond hair and blood stains belonging to Rubińska, and noted that the man was covered in scratches. On June 18th, six days after the victim had gone missing, her body was found, about a kilometer from the residence of Salahuddin S. The presumed cause of her death was asphyxiation, and there were also signs pointing to sexual assault. The murder was bound to quickly turn into a cause célèbre back in Poland. ICYMI: Popular stories from the past week you won't want to miss: - [Jan. 6 suspect arrested near Obama's house after Trump posts the address]( - [Where is Mark Meadows?]( - [After voting against infrastructure, Lauren Boebert dimly wonders why we don't spend more on it]( Want even more Daily Kos? Check out our podcasts: - [The Brief: A one-hour weekly political conversation hosted by Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld]( - [The Downballot: Daily Kos' podcast devoted to downballot elections. 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