Posts Tagged ‘Streisand Effect’

LinkSwarm for October 16, 2020

Friday, October 16th, 2020

I couldn’t post to Twitter yesterday, and briefly thought they’d finally banned me for spreading Disapproved Hunter Biden News. Sadly, it was down for everyone, not just me.

Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • “Twitter, Facebook Go Full Tilt Protecting Biden Just Weeks After Execs Join Transition Team.”

    Perhaps the selective enforcement of content which is politically harmful to Democrats can be explained by recent hires by the Biden transition team.

    According to Breitbart, Twitter Public Policy Director Carlos Monje left the social media giant to join Biden’s transition team in September. He will reportedly serve as co-chair of Biden’s infrastructure policy committee, and helped organize a fundraiser for the former VP this week, according to an invitation from Politico.

    Meanwhile in October, Biden’s transition team hired Facebook executive Jessica Hertz to its general counsel to deal with ‘ethics’ issues. Notably, Facebook was the first platform to ban the Post article – with former Democrat staffer and Facebook communications team member Andy Stone tweeting that the company would be ‘reducing its distribution.’

  • Kurt Schlichter says that Trump’s momentum is back:

    Trump is back and this is a real race. I think we will win it.

    Except all the polls are telling us Grandpa Badfinger is up +37, right? Weird how four years ago right now, we were hearing the exact same thing. Ignore the spinners who are solemnly informing you that your lying eyes are lying again and the 2016 polls were akshually very accurate. Baloney. A key component of effective gaslighting is plausibility, and I was there. You were there. All we heard in 2016 was how Trump was going down to a landslide defeat. Instead, everyone in the smart set got blindsided by the Trump Train.

    And it can happen again.

    Now, it doesn’t have to happen again. Nothing is written, and we have to fight for our victory. There are a lot of stupid people around – my district regularly re-e-elects Ted Lieu – and Oldfinger could build a Coalition of the Drooling to put him in the White House. But I think the Trump lightning will strike again.

    Remember, the polls are the only data point in Biden’s favor. The only one. And as we have seen they screwed up last time and their proponents have an interest in them being bad for Trump.

    But Kurt, the libs say, “You must hate science because the science of polling cannot be wrong! It’s science.” Yeah, but so is phrenology. The fact is that not only do the polls have a track record of failure with regard to populists like Trump – remember that they also missed a number of Senate seats that were supposed to spin down the drain with The Donald – but many of the pollsters are retained by media outlets with an anti-Trump agenda. If these very fine people in the media lie about everything, like the “very fine people” quote, why would you buy the notion that there’s some line they won’t cross when it comes to faking polls?

    Am I saying they will push bullSchiff poll results to try to demoralize patriots? Yes, yes I am. You don’t have to just make up numbers – though I would not put it past them. You just tweak the turnout model and fiddle with the cross-tabs and voila! – CNN has its narrative. After all, it’s not like in the editorial offices they are saying “Sure, we’ll lie about Trump/ Russia, Trump/COVID, and Trump/Nickelback, and hey, there’s no way we’ll fake a poll! We have scruples.” They would sacrifice their babies to Baal if A) they hadn’t hit Planned Parenthood, and B) they thought it would ensure Trump loses.

    Also: “Biden rallies look like the shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead, which is apt since the guy handling his media events is apparently George Romero. Only the flesh-eating zombies had more pep than the Delaware Dementite’s fans.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “Democrats Were Awful Filth Questioning ACB.” Kamala Harris looked sad, but Mazie Hirono of Hawaii was probably the biggest loon.
  • Hmmmm: “Pelosi takes a big stake in CrowdStrike.”
  • Trump has broken their minds.
  • Democrats want to pack the courts:

    Why do Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refuse to give a straightforward yes or no answer when asked whether they intend to “pack the Court” and expand it to a number larger than the nine justices that have been on the Court for the past 150 years?

    Because a considerable portion of the Democratic Party wants to expand the Court beyond nine. In a recent YouGov survey, 47 percent of registered voters opposed expanding the size of the Supreme Court, 34 percent supported it, and 19 percent responded they didn’t know how they felt. But self-identified Democrats were much more supportive: 60 percent wanted to expand the Court, 18 percent opposed the idea, and 22 percent didn’t know.

  • “Democrat Proposing To His Girlfriend Says He Won’t Reveal Position On Adultery Until After The Wedding.”
  • Kansas Democratic senate candidate Barbara Bollier comes out in favor of Australian-style gun confiscation.
  • More examples of that voting fraud that Democrats swear doesn’t exist. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Twitter discovers the Streisand Effect:

    It quickly became clear that in their attempts to strangle the Hunter Biden story, two social media giants left themselves gasping for air.

    Twitter and Facebook took major steps to squelch the New York Post piece, but wound up giving it far more attention than if they had done nothing and let their millions of users share it freely.

    For Twitter in particular, if you had to come up with a plan to reinforce conservative complaints about its liberal bias, you could hardly do better than for the tech giant to lock the Trump campaign’s account. Not to mention that of press secretary Kayleigh McEnany as well.

    Hashtag: #Fail

    In fact, Twitter chief Jack Dorsey admitted in a tweet that the company’s conduct–censoring stories and locking accounts with little public explanation–was “unacceptable.” You got that right, Jack. But then he didn’t do anything to fix it, apparently viewing the self-inflicted wound as just a PR problem. Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans plan to subpoena Dorsey next week.

    (Hat tup: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “A Poor Farrier’s Journey to Political Sanity.”

    After a few years of shoeing horses, briefly interrupted by a temporary job mining silver, I ran a brush-clearing and landscaping company as a side hustle. During this scramble for meaningful independence, the leftist tendencies I’d absorbed at college dropped off bit by bit. Life as a capitalist entrepreneur brought out the best in me, even when I was flirting with homelessness. Moreover, being in the real working world pushed me into contact with people, ideas, and situations that challenged me in all sorts of ways. After a few near-fatal incidents with horses (one of which left my skull and jaw shattered), I began pursuing my own business full time in 2016.

    Now in my early 20s, I still had a soft spot for socialist ideas, including a lingering resentment toward the wealthy. And so, from a progressive politician’s perspective, I was hardly a lost cause. But I also was becoming aware that the Left didn’t really have much interest in the challenges I was facing, being far more concerned with issues of race and gender identity. As a straight white male, I was supposedly luxuriating in a life of privilege—a stereotype that had nothing to do with my experience as a blue-collar worker who’d faced debilitating family traumas.

    Plus Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson.

  • Seattle’s far-left city council is busy taxing the golden goose to death. (Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)
  • Speaking of crazy leftwing city councils, thanks to the SUPERgenius police defunding policies of Mayor Adler and the Austin City Council, some 911 calls have waits of between 2-6 hours.
  • Austin Police is searching four four different suspects in a string of 7-11 robberies.
  • More Austin restaurant closures.
  • Some Wuhan Coronavirus perspective:

  • If you newly sign up for Twitter, they only recommend leftwing politicians to you.
  • Would-be second debate moderator Steve Scully lied about his account being hacked.
  • U.S. Cybercommand clobbers botnet.
  • “China Conducts Test Of Massive Suicide Drone Swarm Launched From A Box On A Truck.” I hope we’re working on similar or more advanced technology.
  • How malls die. Slowly, then all at once.
  • Daryl Morey steps down as Houston Rockets GM. He had everything on his resume (including the NBA trade of the century so far) but a championship.
  • “Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News.”
  • “Donald The Orange Returns Triumphantly As Donald The White.”