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Angie's avatar

We either evolve as a species and recognize social media for the garbage it is, or we don’t. I like Substack because it’s generally long-form, but true, rapid-fire social media is trash for the dumb. Until it’s regulated, people need to get a fucking grip and put their phones down. Don’t people have jobs? Kids to pay attention to? A fucking coloring book? Anything other than stupid-on-stupid yammering would be great.

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Kim CANADA's avatar

Amazing article. So many great points.

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Ballard Graham's avatar

So agreed!

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Edie Sadowski's avatar

Agree completely!💯💯💯💯💯

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Rocket's avatar

It gives new significance to “divide and conquer”. Trump capitalized on division, blame, disinformation and hate-it spreads more than the Covid pandemic and is far more dangerous and destructive. People who feed on negativity are addicted to it.

Time to put it to a productive counter…Epstein Files. Take a look at the 12 foot Trump Epstein statues in National mall https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMLoTAs1/

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Patrice Mobley's avatar

It's who and the evil magats are, bending down to St Saul.

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Protect the Vote's avatar

Dangerous Demented Cheeto Who Is Just Plain Evil

This Daily Beast interview with Dr John Gartner is a great watch to discuss Cheeto’s advancing dementia(https://bit.ly/47TyuxN) which is more and more noticeable as the symptoms are clear As Gartner notes we have digital tracking over the years to compare where he was 20 years ago and now how his functioning has deteriorated that is not explained by advancement of age And the stress of the presidency is obviously accelerating his dementia and psychopathy

The interview exposes the reasons why we are making many of the observations of Cheeto who is clinically described as a malignant narcissist who is a sadist, unable to love, and having no remorse of past criminal behavior Interestingly Epstein shared the same psychopathy

One need not look at his evolving dementia any further than the embarrassment of the UN performance today This guy is looney tunes

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Patrice Mobley's avatar

He's a constant source of embarrassment, old cheeto needs to release the Epstein files.

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Edie Sadowski's avatar

Release the Files!!!!!!!

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Edie Sadowski's avatar

💯💯💯🤯🤯🤯🤪🤪🤪😜😧💩

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WJB Motown's avatar

Sex no longer sells?? For who does this refer too? Apparently right wing men never got the message. Online male men contact web site Grindr crashed during the GOP convention. During the Charlie Kirk "funeral" there was an astronomical spike in calls for male escorts on Grindr.

Is this what male GOP Christian nationalistic family values all about?? The Maga cult is sick.

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Mel's avatar

They hate the things they fear inside themselves more than anything else.

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WJB Motown's avatar

Jennifer on IHIPNEWS has been on this story and deserves credit.

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Patrice Mobley's avatar

Lil lapdogs blindly following a convicted felon. Shame on them, no moral compass.

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Patrice Mobley's avatar

It's a pro pedo reThuglican party with ZERO morals.

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Patty J's avatar

It does seem like this behind the scenes action is a feature, not a bug. A lot of sexual harassment and assault allegations sure seem to get pushed into $ settlements (Kimberly Guilfoyle and Matt Schlapp come to mind) while the accused continue as high profile players with no apparent loss of regard. Meantime, the right still invokes Bill Clinton's misbehavior all these years later as proof of Dem degeneracy or some such thing.

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WJB Motown's avatar

Very good points. The right wing found its gene friendly leader in Cankles. All use the Narcissit's playbook. Projection.....gaslighting....flying monkeys.....Trama Bonding....Twisting details....deflection....word salad...ghosting......smear campaigns. When you understand Narcs......you understand Maga.

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JOHN SMITH's avatar

Republicans since 2020 have allowed a platform of hate and fear tactics. They shout f... you as they drive by if you have signage that they do not agree with. Now they taunt and scream things that I will not repeat.

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Dik de Bruijn's avatar

"Fuck you" isn't about sex -- it's about power.

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Kathy H's avatar

Apt observation. Rape is little to do with sex, it's about getting off on control.

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IM Citizen's avatar

Same with separatists and premier Smith lovers in Alberta Canada.

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JOHN SMITH's avatar

Tell me more about premier Smith in Alberta Canada.

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IM Citizen's avatar

Groan. Trump in a skirt. All ya need to know. Trying to bust up Canada to give our oil rich province to the US as the 51 state in hopes he might f her or something but she's at least 37 years too old for him, past her sell by date, the leadership skills of a lying gnat. Sound familiar?

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Bmandiego's avatar

Given all the blond female anchors at 'news' outlets, like Fox, I think it is a BDSM mix of sex and hate, that sells

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Dik de Bruijn's avatar

And have you noticed how they all have the same look as the "Trump women?"

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Bmandiego's avatar

Yeah. It's a weird thing. If the MAGA media gals, or female acolytes, have not received the injections and fillers, they soon will. It's like required admission to the club. All that the guys need is fealty, low IQ, and a red hat. Another weird thing...To me, enhanced MAGA gals and drag queens look awfully similar...

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J. K. Lee. (aka Jonathan Lee)'s avatar

Trump and the Social Media Oligarchs, for example Musk with 'X' and Zuckerberg with FB & Instagram (Meta should never have been allowed to purchase Instagram, if we had honest & effective enforcement of Anti-Trust Law) are always "banging on" about attacks on Freedom of Speech.

Musk has gone so far as describe himself when he bought then "Twitter" as "a Free Speech absolutist".

These three Billionaires all share the same diagnosis in terms of how they interact other people.

Apart from being obnoxious nerds all their lives, they would apparently meet the diagnostic criteria for the mental disorders of being diagnosed as Sociopaths and Narcissists.

They are not capable of feeling empathy or compassion for others, they think the only point to human existence is to accumulate as much financial wealth as possible (with the accompanying obscene consumption of global resources to achieve it).

To return to Musk for a second, for a guy who claims to be a "Free Speech Absolutist", just within his own businesses at Tesla and Space X, how did that work out for any executives who sought to legitimately and freely speak out to Musk to address concerns or problems they had identified in each business? Musk has sacked hundreds in his own businesses. Let's forget for a moment, the havoc he and DOGE wrought in their attempts to steal private data and dismantle the Federal Government's Institutional Agencies.

Clearly, having a Ketamine using individual with several severe clinical personality disorders, is going to produce huge levels of cognitive dissonance in his narratives. Often bereft of any demonstrated critical thinking skills. His personal social insecurity is very obvious whenever he is in a relatively private interview that people can watch. That is, where he is the sole focus.

The raft of Social Media products in terms of 'X' , 'Facebook', 'YouTube' and 'Instagram' (soon to be joined by 'Tic Toc'), boastfully owned by these Oligarchs, who all imply they own every aspect of their success.

Yet they seem to forget, that one huge piece of global infrastructure, paid for by tax payers, the Internet - is the absolute foundation which they had absolutely nothing to do with it being conceived or created.

As for the claims that Social Media Platforms are critical defenders of 'Freedom of Speech'...... well given they have so far been able to resist any effective Government regulation, they are empty words.

One thing we do know, is that they are able to weaponise, "Freedom of Speech" through their use of their highly secretive Algorithms, so at the whim of their owners and senior management, they can either choose to "dial down individual commentary that is important with high public interest value, to the point it where is it scarcely seen by any significant audience."

Or they can choose to "amplify by dialling up the audience for any comments that are promoting an issue which is in their interests, or promotes a political policy which they have a non-discosed self-interest, or even their preferred political candidate".

The Social Media Industry, needs to be regulated as a Publisher. Maybe, Facebook wouldn't have been so quick to dismantle its 'Fact Checking Teams' after the election, with Zuckerberg disingenuously trying to claim that they were "interfering" with Free Speech.

More importantly, as the power of Social Media has been growing exponentially, it has demonstrated its ability, especially through targeted advertising, to influencing Elections and Referendums around the world.

It represents a continuing existential risk in terms of the impact of the trafficking of false information, conspiracy theories, lies, recorded history and scientifically proven knowledge.

As such, the trafficking of such misinformation is a threat to the global community's fact based reality, upon which much of our domestic and international social cohesion exists.

In my opinion, International Social Media Platforms should be subject to very similar rules applying to Financial Institutions around the world, which aim to hinder and restrict Money Laundering.

First and foremost, for Social Media Advertising, they should create serious internal institutional processes to comply with "The know your Client" Rules, face regular mandatory reporting and public disclosure of such reports and very, very serious financial (& other penalties) for non-compliance with the regulations, non-disclosure, or wilful obfuscation of the information. Furthermore, a huge problem with Corporate Regulation in the U.S. is that that penalties often are only directed at the offending Corporation. Compliance drastically improves when the offences are also personally directed against the Corporation's Directors, Senior Executives or Management, who have the oversight responsibility for Compliance with the legal regulations as required.

The classes of advertising and the disclosure of the client paying for it, can be determined, not by the industry itself, but by the FEC, FCC, and with input from Agencies with specialised knowledge of State Actor infiltration into our Social Media Platforms, such as FBI, NSA & CIA.

The warning alarms have been screaming for a long time now. It needs to be addressed urgently.

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Bmandiego's avatar

I agree! Even though I clocked out at line 17. There absolutely needs to be better enforcement and disaggregation of American media. Allowing so few oligarchs to own so many media outlets is crazy. Unfortunately Clinton dissolved the last barriers on that. I believe E. Warren has ideas on this. She's is such good congressperson.

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Dik de Bruijn's avatar

I hadn't noticed the similarity between the MAGA women and drag queens, but you're absolutely right!

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Patrice Mobley's avatar

young blond and dumb!

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Thelma's avatar

Hopefully you young people can turn it around 💙

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Trumphatesus:('s avatar

In 2016 Charlie Kirk made 16K a year in his salary. His past year he made 415K. And he went from being a renter to a homeowner of 5.5 million dollar home in Arizona. He peddled hate sprinkled with what he would say was debate and religious statements. But hate is the currency of Fox News and Turning Point.

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Patrice Mobley's avatar

FAUX PROPAGANDA NETWORK

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IM Citizen's avatar

Hate can make you rich in Amerika or anywhere. But usually it just keeps you poor and vengeful like the flotsam that rises to the top likes it.

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Edie Sadowski's avatar

🤢🤮😬

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Kay G's avatar

Yes - you understand. Marketing and marketing research can be done soooo much faster now with the algorithms. It’s why there has been this race to gather as much information on individual Americans as possible. With the technology at hand, marketing campaigns will soon be (TikTok will be part of this) individually “tailored” (old term - but I’m old) to the user. The citizen and their “vote”, their purchasing power, is the product, being marketed. The human on the other end will never know how they are being manipulated, because they will only see one “truth”.

It’s happening now, but will become much more sophisticated without government oversight. And there will be no government oversight, as we the people are what our current administration is selling.

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Mel's avatar

And unfortunately we will probably never get the same data protection laws that they have in EU.

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Thomas Thompson's avatar

Hate out performs sex because of access. Sex, unless you are a gorgeous person with a sparkling personality, is harder to come by, which explains why there are so many hate-filled incels in this country who vote red and swear by MAGA. Hate, on the other hand, is easy. All you need to have is a disappointment, a lost love, a promotion you were sure you deserved but was robbed of, and the hate mongers have you! "Democrats running a pedophile ring in the basement of this pizza joint" enrages the incels, even if, deep in their psyches, they think little boys are really cute. It's the need to express your feelings that count, and hypocrisy never occurs to them because they are so certain they have the moral high ground.

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Patrice Mobley's avatar

Right on point, most of the magats who hate others really hate themselves for who and what they have become. I would be so ashamed to call those lapdogs who supports a convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter my parent. It boggles the mind how grown up men bending the knee to a known criminal and grifter. NO MORAL COMPASS or human decency.

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Mary Merrill's avatar

Absolutely makes sense. There's a huge group of us in the middle that do not like the extreme emotions of hate and division. We like voices of reason and don't give any time to the rapid-fire hate posts. But the silent majority is now awakening to what is being done to our democracy...

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Laura's avatar

Sex still sells with the current administration. Unfortunately the sex involves raping children and widespread pedophelia.

The hate strategy is secondary but it works.

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IM Citizen's avatar

These are acts of power and violence. It’s about power over. And hate.

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Angie's avatar

Well, "they" can't openly salivate over children, so... It's also interesting how trans porn is so popular in conservative areas.

They really can't have people knowing the true targets of their lust, so sex only sells in the back rooms and online now. Hate is what they lead with by necessity and it sells fine too, as you've pointed out.

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IM Citizen's avatar

Hate is a commodity bought and sold by altright and Trump et al and Hitler.

I don't hate these people. I abhor what they are, what they are doing to the common good, to democracy to all of us, to human decency.

Mostly white trash driving beaters who think trump (PP and Alberta's Smith in Canada) has the time of day for them. He doesn't people. Wake the fuck up.

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Amy's avatar

MAGA and Fox News lit the fire and trump and his admin are fueling the flames!!

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Edie Sadowski's avatar

Trash and Co. Fiddled while the nation 🔥 🔥 🔥 burned

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Patrice Mobley's avatar

FAUX PROPAGANDA NETWORK

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Frank Dobner's avatar

You are right Meghan. Some of my family chose not to vote because their only vote would have been against the other guy. And they weren't going to do that....and didn't.

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Dik de Bruijn's avatar

And helped Trump win.

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Edie Sadowski's avatar

People who stayed home gave us the Orange Blob!🤬😈🤡

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