Twitter Disables Trump Campaign’s George Floyd Video Tribute

Jack Dorsey

Twitter has blocked a Trump campaign video tribute to George Floyd over a copyright claim, in a move that adds to tensions between the social media platform and the U.S. president, one of its most widely followed users.

The company put a label on a video posted by the @TeamTrump account that said, “This media has been disabled in response to a claim by the copyright owner.” The video was still up on President Donald Trump’s YouTube channel and includes pictures of Floyd, whose death sparked widespread protests, at the start.

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Commentary: Trump Executive Order Strikes at the Heart of Social Media’s Leftist Censorship

President Trump’s long-hoped-for Executive Order on social media censorship is a good first step in dismantling the Left’s dangerous influence over these 21st-century communications vehicles. (You can read the draft that was available online when this article was posted through this link to The National Pulse, edited by Raheem Kassam.)

We particularly agree with this part of the EO’s statement of principles, “In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey online. This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.”

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Twitter Censors White House Account for Quoting Trump’s Flagged ‘THUGS’ Tweet

Twitter censored the White House’s official Twitter account after it shared and quoted a President Donald Trump tweet Friday that the company’s moderators hit for “glorifying violence.”

The account shared a tweet Trump composed early Friday morning in which he called people rioting and looting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, “THUGS” and suggested that he will send in the military, adding that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter hid Trump’s tweet under a banner noting that the post violates company rules against glorifying violence.

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Executive Order Takes Aim at Leftist Tech Giants’ Censorship of Conservatives

After years of warning, President Donald Trump took action Thursday in the form of an Executive Order to remove a key protection companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google enjoy that shields the tech giants from lawsuits by individuals and other entities with claiming bias, censorship, and otherwise unfair treatment.

The Order, titled “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship” comes two days after Twitter added a controversial “fact-check” of two of his tweets about fraud and absentee ballots, NPR reported.

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Addresses Trump Fact-Check, Asks Media to ‘Leave Our Employees Out Of This’

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took sole responsibility Wednesday night after his company applied a fact-check on a tweet from President Donald Trump suggesting California’s mail-in ballot move is “fraudulent.”

Trump’s tweet Tuesday suggesting mail-in ballot votes are fraudulent could mislead people into believing they don’t have to register to get a ballot, Dorsey wrote on Twitter. He also asked people to lay off his employees.

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‘Wretched Orange Man’: Twitter Official Overseeing Misinformation Efforts Is Anti-Trump Partisan Who Donated to Planned Parenthood

The Twitter official overseeing the tech company’s efforts to combat misinformation is a left-wing partisan who in the past has derided President Donald Trump as a “wretched orange man” and said he donated to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site security, is the man in charge of the platform’s fight against election-related misinformation. Some of Roth’s past political comments from 2016 and 2017 began making the rounds in conservative circles Tuesday after Twitter fact-checked a Trump tweet predicting that universal mail-in voting would result in widespread fraud.

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Twitter Dings Trump’s Tweets But Refuses to Fact Check Chinese Officials’ Virus Misinformation

Twitter has declined to take action against Chinese officials who spread coronavirus misinformation even after the company fact-checked President Donald Trump for suggesting California’s mail-in ballots are fraudulent.

A tweet from Chinese politician Lijian Zhao in March suggesting that the U.S. inserted coronavirus into China has not been removed or fact-checked. Twitter has previously said that Zhao’s tweets do not violate the company’s rules, but Twitter updated its policies on May 11, effectively making tweets from world leaders subject to misinformation labels.

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President Trump Reportedly Considering Forming Panel to Review Anti-Conservative Bias in Big Tech

President Donald Trump is considering forming a commission to review anti-conservative bias on social media platforms, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the idea.

A potential White House-created commission would examine allegations of online bias and censorship, according to the report. The administration will also encourage the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission to conduct similar reviews, the sources told the WSJ.

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Gov. DeWine Encourages Ohioans to ‘Have a Little #SpiritWeekOhio Fun’ and ‘Stay in Your PJ’s All Day’

Nearly 1 million Ohioans have filed for unemployment since Gov. Mike DeWine shut the state down, and the governor has responded by calling for a “Spirit Week” to have “#SpiritWeekOhio fun” which includes wearing pajamas.

Six of the state’s most influential business organizations last week sent a letter to Gov. Mike DeWine last week urging him to reopen the economy as nearly one million Ohioans have now filed unemployment claims since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, as The Ohio Star reported Monday. The letter was signed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Ohio Business Roundtable, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, the Ohio Council on Retail Merchants, Ohio Farm Bureau, and NFIB-Ohio.

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Commentary: Big Tech, Privacy, and Power

The ground is shifting quickly beneath our feet when it comes to tech, privacy, and power. And, although tech companies, their advocates, and even some policymakers, would like us to imagine these issues are cut and dried, they are not.

In their book The Sovereign Individual, published on the eve of the year 2000, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg attempt to grapple with the forthcoming technological changes that the new millennium inevitably would bring. “As technology revolutionizes the tools we use,” they wrote, “it also antiquates our laws, reshapes our morals, and alters our perceptions.”

This is the dynamic that has been unfolding slowly over the last 20 years, as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have transformed how we engage with communications, culture, commerce, and one another.

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Mega GOP Donor Paul Singer Buys a Large Stake in Twitter, Seeks to Replace Jack Dorsey: Report

A Republican donor reportedly purchased a major stake in Twitter with the intention of pushing out CEO Jack Dorsey, who the billionaire says is too distracted with other ventures.

Activist investor Elliott Management wants to make changes at the social media company, the Bloomberg News report noted Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. Paul Singer, the billionaire behind Elliott, once opposed President Donald Trump’s campaign but has since grown more supportive.

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Details Obtained in Roger Stone Juror Tomeka Hart’s Jury Questionnaire Appear to Contradict Public Statements She Made on Twitter

Tomeka Hart

The lead juror at Roger Stone’s trial said in a written questionnaire for prospective jurors that she was “not sure” whether she posted online about the Russia investigation or Stone, and that she “may have shared an article” on social media on the topics, according to a portion of the document reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

But Tomeka Hart’s Twitter feed shows that she indeed posted multiple times about the Russia probe and at least once about Stone, who was sentenced on Thursday to 40 months in prison in a case that stemmed from the special counsel’s investigation.

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Commentary: Is There Such a Thing as ‘Too Much Trump?’

by Victor Davis Hanson   The new post-Mueller media narrative is “weariness” and “exhaustion” with President Trump’s tweets, his cul de sac Sharpie controversy, his ideas about buying Greenland, his unorthodox art-of-the-deal foreign policy that resulted in a plan to talk to Taliban leaders in the United States, and his firing of arch-conservative John Bolton. The Drudge Report, once a go-to site for Trumpism, now seems unapologetically anti-Trump, in its often trademark snarky style. Are Trump supporters then weary? The August jobs report “unexpectedly” reminds us that never have so many Americans been at work. The 3.7 percent unemployment rate continues to be the lowest peacetime unemployment figure in 50 years. Black and Hispanic unemployment remain at record lows. Workers’ wages continue to rise. Talk of recession is belied by low interest, low inflation, low unemployment, and a strong stock market. The result is that millions of Americans enjoy far better lives than they had in 2016. When we look to alternatives, all we seem to hear is multi-trillion-dollar hare-brained schemes from radical progressives and socialists masquerading as Democrats at a time of record national debt. The Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free healthcare for illegal aliens, reparations, the…

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Commentary: How Twitter Is Corrupting the History Profession

About a week ago I began scrutinizing how the New York Times’ 1619 Project relied upon the work of the controversial “New History of Capitalism” genre of historical scholarship to advance a sweeping indictment of free markets over the historical evils of slavery. The problems with this literature are many, and prominent among them is its use of shoddy statistical work by Cornell University historian Ed Baptist to grossly exaggerate the historical effect of slave-produced cotton on American economic development. Baptist’s unusual rehabilitation of the old Confederacy-linked “King Cotton” thesis is unsupported by evidence and widely rejected by economic historians. His book The Half Has Never Been Told has nonetheless acquired a vocal following among historians and journalists, including providing the basis of a feature article in the Times series on slavery.

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Rep. Steve Cohen Unblocks ‘Terrorists’ from His Twitter Page

Steve Cohen

  U.S. Congressman Steve Cohen, a Democrat representing Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District, will no longer block people from seeing his Twitter page, because to do otherwise could put him in legal jeopardy. ­ But Cohen still reportedly won’t allow his critics or people he accuses of harassing him — people he described as “Twitter terrorists” — to have full access to his Twitter. “You can mute people, so I’ve been doing a whole lot of muting,” Cohen reportedly said. This, according to The Memphis Commercial Appeal. A federal court ruled that elected officials who block people on Twitter are possibly acting against the First Amendment. The judge in that matter directed that ruling at U.S. Republican President Donald Trump. But Cohen seemed to know the same rules would likely apply to him. “In the past, I have blocked people, not from my district. I’ve tried assiduously to avoid blocking people from my district no matter how rude, crude or socially unacceptable their tweets may have been,” Cohen reportedly told The Memphis Commercial Appeal. “But, when it did get to the Court of Appeals … I decided the best thing to do is go ahead and accept that court’s ruling that it’s…

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Trump Says Twitter Should Reinstate All of the Conservatives it Banned

by Chris White   President Donald Trump wants Twitter to grant amnesty to the handful of conservative pundits who have been banned from the platform in recent months. “Twitter should let the banned Conservative Voices back onto their platform, without restriction. It’s called Freedom of Speech, remember. You are making a Giant Mistake!” Trump wrote in a tweet Sunday. His post comes amid speculation that his reelection campaign is considering opening an account on a conservative version of Twitter. Twitter should let the banned Conservative Voices back onto their platform, without restriction. It’s called Freedom of Speech, remember. You are making a Giant Mistake! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2019 A senior member of Trump’s campaign told reporters in May that the president was looking into joining Parler, a fledgling social media network created in 2018 that caters to conservatives. The structure of the Parler app is similar to that of Twitter. User posts are limited to 1,000 characters, which other users can then support by “voting” and “echoing,” as opposed to “liking” and “retweeting.” The company is still small. The site has roughly 100,000 users in total. Twitter, by comparison, claims 326 million. Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, is syncing itself deeper into social media platforms like…

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US Requires Social Media Details on Most Visa Applications

  The State Department is now requiring nearly all applicants for U.S. visas to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers. It’s a vast expansion of the Trump administration’s enhanced screening of potential immigrants and visitors. In a move that’s just taken effect after approval of the revised application forms, the department says it has updated its immigrant and non-immigrant visa forms to request the additional information, including “social media identifiers,” from almost all U.S. applicants. The change, which was proposed in March 2018, is expected to affect about 15 million foreigners who apply for visas to enter the United States each year. “National security is our top priority when adjudicating visa applications, and every prospective traveler and immigrant to the United States undergoes extensive security screening,” the department said. “We are constantly working to find mechanisms to improve our screening processes to protect U.S. citizens, while supporting legitimate travel to the United States.” Extra scrutiny expanded Social media, email and phone number histories had only been sought in the past from applicants who were identified for extra scrutiny, such as people who’d traveled to areas controlled by terrorist organizations. An estimated 65,000 applicants per year…

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FAKE NEWS: Time Columnist Ian Bremmer Admits He Made Up Viral Trump Quote ‘Kim Jong Un Is Smarter and Would Make a Better President than Sleepy Joe Biden’

by Peter Hasson   Time Magazine columnist Ian Bremmer on Sunday tweeted a quote from President Donald Trump about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that quickly went viral — but it wasn’t real. “President Trump in Tokyo: ‘Kim Jong Un is smarter and would make a better President than Sleepy Joe Biden.’” Bremmer wrote on Twitter. While Trump did praise the North Korean dictator’s insult of former Vice President Joe Biden, the president never said what Bremmer quoted him saying – because Bremmer made it up. UPDATE: @ianbremmer has now admitted that he fabricated this viral Trump quote. And yet it is being shared by journalists and congressmen as if it is real. pic.twitter.com/QgNd9DnN8g — Jerry Dunleavy 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) May 26, 2019 Bremmer left the false post up for several hours before conceding he made up the quote and deleting the tweet, which he defended as “plausible.” “This is objectively a completely ludicrous quote. And yet kinda plausible. Especially on twitter, where people automatically support whatever political position they have. That’s the point.” Bremmer wrote in a since-deleted correction. Bremmer’s tweet went viral among Trump critics before he took it down. “Don’t shrug your shoulders. Don’t get used to this insanity,” wrote CNN contributor Ana…

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Rep. Jim Jordan Believes Democrats Want to Stop Trump at Any Cost

  Ohio Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH-4) thinks Democrats will do anything to stop President Donald Trump. Jordan defended the president after Nancy Pelosi and Trump made comments about each other this week, explaining in a Friday Twitter thread how the Democrats are committed to stopping the president at any cost. “Democrats are engaged in presidential obstruction. They’re so desperate to stop the President that they won’t help the country. The President’s had enough! Can’t blame him,” Jordan tweeted. Democrats are engaged in presidential obstruction. They're so desperate to stop the President that they won't help the country. The President's had enough! Can't blame him. (1/7) — Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) May 24, 2019 The Ohio representative explained how the Democrats were trying to stop the President. “Congress has a legitimate constitutional role to conduct oversight of the executive branch. But that’s not what the Democrats are doing. They’re digging into the President’s personal life from BEFORE he was a candidate. There can only be one reason to do this: POLITICS.” Then, Jordan compared how the Republican-controlled Congress acted compared to a Democratic-controlled Congress. Compare that to what the Democrats are doing. They're going after: -The President's PERSONAL tax returns-The President's PERSONAL…

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Despite Resignation of Glen Casada, Tennessee Democrats Still Want GOP Blood

  Democrats and other leftists took to Twitter Tuesday to let the world know they feel empowered and want as many Republican scalps as they can collect. This, on the same day Glen Casada announced he would step down as Tennessee speaker of the house. Some of these people seemed to suggest this wasn’t just about politics or matters or law. This was personal. One poster, for instance, seemed to call on all Tennessee Democrats to act out violently against Casada, while another poster seemed to suggest Casada do the noble thing and commit suicide. As reported, members of the mainstream media published Casada’s tawdry and offensive — yet private — text messages. Holly McCall, who ran unsuccessfully against Mary Mancini for Tennessee Democratic Party chair, said her animus against Casada was political — and also personal. “So here’s the rub: If @GlenCasada stays in his HD 63 seat until November, the GOP can appoint someone to fill in. That person then is the incumbent in the 2020 election – also a presidential year – making it even harder for a Dem to win,” McCall wrote. McCall went on to say that “if Casada leaves the legislature before November 2019,…

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Commentary: The Tyranny John Stuart Mill Warned About Is Taking Root on Social Media

by Robert Romano   In John Stuart Mill’s magnum opus, On Liberty, which provides one of the most compelling defenses of free speech in human history, the philosopher warned how a tyranny of the majority could impose censorship that would be “more formidable” than even governmental censorship and that it could “enslav[e] the soul” with little room for escape. Mill wrote, “[W]hen society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.” Are we in danger of a social tyranny on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, where members of the community are being singled out and silenced because they hold unpopular…

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Commentary: How Silicon Valley Disrupts Local Politics

by Roxanne Beckford Hoge   Silly me. I believed Justice Louis D. Brandeis when he said more speech was the remedy for speech you don’t like. “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies,” Brandeis wrote nearly a century ago, “to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” I also believed in Abraham Lincoln’s formulation of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” What happened to shake those two rock-solid foundations of my naturalized-American sensibility? I ran for office last year in California and discovered, not only do we have a government chosen by only a majority of those who participate, but that getting an informed electorate to turn out isn’t a goal necessarily shared by all. Let me back up. I was motivated to run as a Republican against an incumbent Democrat in a very blue state assembly district in 2018 because California is worth fighting for. Merely 13.5 percent of the voters in Studio City and its surrounding areas are registered with the Party of Lincoln. Not to worry, I thought. I’m pretty good at communicating, and if…

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More Evidence The Tennessean Is Just a Mouthpiece for the Democratic Party

  On Wednesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – host Steve Gill reviewed the convoluted story created by The Tennessean claiming that the Twitter feed, #ResignCasada was representative of all Tennesseans when in fact all tweets were from liberal Democrats and former failed former Democratic party candidates in the state. You can read the full transcript of Steve Gill’s comments here: Just another example of how The Tennessean is literally a mouthpiece, literally a propaganda screed for the Tennessee Democratic party. There’s a new story up by a character named Dustin Barnes in The Tennessean that highlights #ResignCasada is trending on Twitter. Now it’s interesting if you kind of go through this story. It’s on the Tennesseean.com calls for House Speaker Glen Casada resign started trending on social media shortly after his chief of staff had solicited and text messages and used illegal drugs in the legislative office building. He resigned Monday after the Tennessean published a story that he asked one intern for oral sex and nude photos. Other 2014 and 2016 texts showed he was hitting on…

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Trump: US to Impose Higher Tariffs on Chinese Exports

Donald Trump, Xi Jinping

  President Trump, looking to pressure China to speed up talks on a new trade agreement, says that starting Friday he will impose sharply higher tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese exports to the United States. Trump said Sunday on Twitter, “For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA of 25% on 50 Billion Dollars of High Tech, and 10% on 200 Billion Dollars of other goods. These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results.” He said, “The 10% will go up to 25% on Friday. 325 Billions Dollars of additional goods sent to us by China remain untaxed, but will be shortly, at a rate of 25%. The Tariffs paid to the USA have had little impact on product cost, mostly borne by China. The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!” ….of additional goods sent to us by China remain untaxed, but will be shortly, at a rate of 25%. The Tariffs paid to the USA have had little impact on product cost, mostly borne by China. The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No! — Donald J.…

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Conservatives Wrestle Over How to Wallop Big Tech as Facebook Conducts Major Content Purge

by Chris White   Conservatives are considering a slew of bold ideas to hold various social media companies accountable for nixing conservative-leaning content. Some analysts worry conservative activists’ mission to damage big tech sets a bad precedent. One of the best ways to ding Facebook is to make the company responsible for the content users post, according to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Other conservative thinkers believe depriving access to social media platforms is a type of civil rights abuse. Still others want to use anti-trust trust laws to punish Twitter. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri suggests that social media giants have discovered a way to benefit financially by short-circuiting people’s rational thinking. “The internal tensions of our goals seem irreconcilable. How do we preserve online data privacy for users of products whose very purpose is hyper-personalized service? Or how is it possible to keep the digital platform free of criminal activity without inserting their own political biases into the editorializing that they are doing?” Hawley said Thursday during a Hoover Institute discussion on big tech. “There is something deeply wrong with the social media economy. It is a source of peril. Users attention is bought and then…

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Commentary: Deplatforming and Social Media Bias Toward the Left Could Lead to One-Party Rule

by Robert Romano   Thanks to social media and big tech companies, finding content on the Internet that you want has never been easier. Want to find your friends and family online? Log onto Facebook. Want to see what opinion leaders or celebrities are up to? Check out Twitter. Want to find your favorite podcast? There’s Youtube or Apple. Want to go shopping or sell something? Amazon. Want to research something? Google it. It’s all there at your fingertips, and new and old media platforms have largely been net beneficiaries in the information age. Ideally, this has created a true marketplace of ideas and is most certainly the main attraction of the Internet — that is, so long as it remains a venue open to alternative perspectives. That is the upside. The downside comes once these companies have achieved dominant market positions and can decide to offer competitive advantages to one side of the debate over others, even on the margins. Silo viewpoints deemed undesirable to keep them inside of echo chambers. Shadowban users without them knowing it. Or, deplatform users with millions of followers with no avenue of appeal. It’s called censorship. And more and more, conservatives are complaining…

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Better Than a Direct Message: Trump Meets Twitter CEO

  U.S. President Donald Trump met Tuesday with the top executive of Twitter, just hours after complaining the social media platform treats him unfairly. Trump, shortly after the Oval Office meeting ended with Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, tweeted a photo of the discussion and expressed a more positive tone from his tweeted Tuesday morning complaints. The president called it a “great meeting,” saying they discussed lots of subjects regarding the platform and social media in general. Great meeting this afternoon at the @WhiteHouse with @Jack from @Twitter. Lots of subjects discussed regarding their platform, and the world of social media in general. Look forward to keeping an open dialogue! pic.twitter.com/QnZi579eFb — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2019 “Look forward to keeping an open dialogue!” the @realDonaldTrump tweet concluded. Dorsey tweeted later Tuesday, “Thank you for the time. Twitter is here to serve the entire public conversation, and we intend to make it healthier and more civil. Thanks for the discussion about that.” Trump, as president-elect, met with executives of top technology companies in December 2016, but no one from Twitter was invited. Tuesday’s meeting between Trump and Dorsey was at the invitation of the president, according to…

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Perrysburg High School Student Arrested in Connection With Disparaging Twitter Account

A Perrysburg High School student was arrested this week in connection to a Twitter account that contained disparaging comments about his female peers. The student, 18-year-old Mehros Nassersharifi, was charged with telecommunications harassment for a Twitter account he started called “Perrysburg Girls Ranked.” All of the tweets have since been deleted, except for one. “We are going to start releasing the first wave. 64 hottest girls at Perrysburg will be ranked from worst to first. Personality, face, and body have all been accounted for and a description for their ranking is also provided. If you didn’t make the list, you’re just fat and fried,” the tweet states. Nassersharifi was charged Wednesday by Perrysburg Police Department, according to a press release from the school. “We are pleased to share that more than 100 students reported this Twitter account to teachers and administrators last week, which enabled us to quickly respond and begin our investigation in partnership with Perrysburg Police Department,” the school said. “Our disciplinary process has been initiated. In a serious situation like this, discipline may include expulsion,” the statement continued. “School districts are very limited with what we may share with the public in these situations.” According to The…

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US Senators Introduce Social Media Bill to Ban ‘Dark Patterns’ Tricks

Two U.S. senators introduced a bill on Tuesday to ban online social media companies like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. from tricking consumers into giving up their personal data. The bill from Mark Warner, a Democrat, and Deb Fischer, a Republican, would also ban online platforms with more than 100 million monthly active users from designing addicting games or other websites for children under age 13. The bill takes aim at practices that online platforms use to mislead people into giving personal data to companies or otherwise trick them. The so-called “dark patterns” were developed using behavioral psychology. “Misleading prompts to just click the ‘OK’ button can often transfer your contacts, messages, browsing activity, photos, or location information without you even realizing it,” Fischer said in a statement issued by both senators. Restrictions on how social media companies collect information about users could hurt their ability to sell advertisements, a key source of profit. A website aimed at tracking dark patterns identifies behavior, such as a website or app showing that a user has new notifications when they do not. Warner said in an interview on CNBC that the legislation could be included in a federal privacy bill that lawmakers…

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When Asked If They Identified as ‘American,’ Many US Corporations Stand Silent

by Tim Pearce   Ten international corporations contacted by The Daily Caller News Foundation got their start in the U.S. but stayed silent when asked if they saw themselves as “American” companies. Nine others responded to TheDCNF’s inquiry by either identifying with their American heritage, obscuring their loyalties or declining to comment altogether. TheDCNF wanted to gauge the commitment of international corporations with roots in the United States to keeping an “American” identity. TheDCNF did not define what an “American” company looks like or list out any principles or ideals that “American” companies are committed to, leaving each business to attach meaning to the name if one chose to stand by it. Representatives for Amazon, Apple, Chevron, General Electric and others did not respond to TheDCNF’s inquiry. A spokesman for the health care giant UnitedHealth Group asked for clarification of the question but never responded after clarification was given. The tech companies Google, Facebook and Twitter – all headquartered in California – are under distinct pressure to increase transparency and be upfront about their commitments, especially as it relates to censored content. Conservatives especially have taken issue with the tech giants’ policies, and U.S. politicians are wary of the companies’ operations in…

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Conservatives Call for Tech Giants to Split Ties with SPLC

by Jarrett Stepman   Silicon Valley has enormous power over the flow of information that reaches people around the globe. That’s why it’s vital for Americans to understand how tech giants can manipulate information, either intentionally or unwittingly, to advance a political agenda. Now, 34 conservative leaders are banding together to call for tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google to “cut ties” with the Southern Poverty Law Center. The letter states in part, “It is now clear that the SPLC has proven to be a hate-filled, anti-Christian, anti-conservative organization and nothing more than a weapon of the radical Left, whose goal is to bully people into compliance with their ideology.” [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] As we’ve discussed on previous episodes of “Media Misses,” the SPLC is a far-left civil rights organization that has made wild claims about conservative organizations over the years, lumping them in with hate groups like neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. It has come under scrutiny after its founder, Morris Dees, resigned over accusations of discrimination and improper behavior. The issue has garnered the attention of those in Congress as…

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Pro-Life Movie ‘Unplanned’ Posts Strong Opening Weekend, Knocks ‘Captain Marvel’ Out Of Top Three

by Grace Carr   The pro-life movie “Unplanned,” which tells the story of a former abortion worker whose pro-choice stance changed after working at a clinic, brought in nearly triple the expected box office numbers at the weekend’s close. The movie hit theaters Friday and brought in over $6.1 million at the weekend’s conclusion over an expected $2-3 million, according to The Washington Times. The film came in third for screen earnings, putting up an average of $5,770 per screening, following “Dumbo” and “Us” with averages of $10,566 and $8,978 respectively. “Unplanned” beat out “Captain Marvel” which averaged $5,144 per screening. “Unplanned” played on only 1,060 screens. It ranks fifth in total earnings at Sunday’s close, according to Box Office Mojo. “Dumbo” grossed $45,000,000 and “Us” grossed $33,605,000. “Captain Marvel” made $20,500,000 by the weekend’s close. The movie tells the story of former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson, who worked at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas, until 2009. She left the organization after assisting in an ultrasound-guided abortion of a 13-week-old unborn baby. Johnson was Planned Parenthood’s youngest director of a clinic in the nation. “I could not be more thrilled with the debut of Unplanned and reports of healing and conversion nationwide,” Johnson said,…

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Tennessean Reporter ‘Rage Tweets’ Because of Tennessee Star Article ‘Discrediting My Story About the Racist Wall Incident at Sunset Middle’

Amelia Knisely, the Tennessean reporter whose March 8 story titled “Racist incidents are occurring in Williamson schools,”  was discredited by the subsequent Tennessee Star article on March 15, “Williamson County Parent of Sunset Middle School Student Says Alleged ‘Racist Incident’ at School Claimed by Tennessean Never Happened,” went on a self described “rage tweet” on Monday morning about the two stories. “A thread of Monday rage: I don’t normally feel inclined to respond to @tnstar “reporting,” but a story has come out discrediting my story about the racist ‘wall incident’ at Sunset Middle,” Knisely, who “Prior to moving to Tennessee, Amelia was a television reporter and producer in West Virginia. She holds a master’s degree from Marshall University,” according to her Tennessean bio, tweeted. Her bio also notes that, “She previously served as editor of The Contributor in Nashville, and she has written extensively on poverty and homelessness.” At the end of her “rage tweets,” Knisely apologized for directing her tweets to @tnstar, rather then the Twitter account of The Tennessee Star, which is @TheTNStar. “Ah, yes, sorry @tnstar as you are not the @TheTNStar. Never rage tweet before coffee, y’all,” Knisely tweeted. Between those two tweets, Knisely added a…

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Minnesota Democrats Reportedly Want Rep Ilhan Omar Out – She Blames Trump

by Molly Prince   Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar blamed President Donald Trump on Sunday after reports members of the Minnesota Democratic Party are considering removing her from congressional office for her repeated anti-Semitic statements. I am sorry Mr. @realDonaldTrump 🎶 I am for real, you can’t #MuslimBan us from Congress! pic.twitter.com/EX1KNeUPiA — Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 17, 2019 Minnesota Democrats are reportedly dismayed that Omar has made a string of bigoted comments about Jews, which have received massive condemnation from both sides of the aisle. Consequently, members of the state party are looking for someone to contest her nomination in 2020 and run a different candidate in her place. Rather than blaming the Minnesota Democrats, Omar focused the backlash on Trump’s 2017 executive order, which has been referred to as a Muslim ban. The executive order suspended U.S. entry of those whose counties do not meet adjudication standards under federal immigration law for 90 days and included exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Omar, along with fellow Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, became America’s first Muslim congresswomen when sworn into office in January. Both congresswomen’s time in office has been embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitism. Omar has defended the anti-Semitic statements, such as ones invoking…

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Feminist Writer Sues Twitter Over Ban for Transgender Tweets

by Peter Hasson   Canadian feminist writer Meghan Murphy is suing Twitter after she was banned for her tweets about transgender people. Attorneys for Murphy on Monday filed suit in the Superior Court of California for the County of San Francisco, accusing Twitter of deceptive trade practices and breach of contract. Twitter banned Murphy in November over a series of transgender-related tweets that included statements like “men aren’t women” and “How are transwomen not men?” “Twitter’s repeated representations that it would uphold the free speech rights of its users and not censor user speech were material to the decision of millions of users, like Murphy, to join,” Murphy’s lawyers wrote in court documents reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Twitter would never have attracted the hundreds of millions of users it boasts today had Twitter let it be known that it would arbitrarily ban users who did not agree with the political and social views of its management or impose sweeping new policies banning the expression of widely-held viewpoints and perspectives on public issues,” the suit states. “While it is appalling that Twitter would ban a journalist for asking legitimate questions about an incoherent ideology, such as gender identity,…

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