Linked List: May 29, 2020

Friday, 29 May 2020

A Gentle Reminder That You Should Subscribe to Dithering 

Today’s episode of Dithering — my and Ben Thompson’s new thrice-weekly 15-minutes-per-episode podcast — is probably my favorite yet. We talk about Trump-vs.-Twitter but it kicks off with the Tarantino-esque demise of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. That’s Dithering.

$5 per month — cheap! — and it’s really easy to sign up for and subscribe to in your favorite podcast player. And if you don’t like it, it’s really easy to cancel. But you’ll like it, trust me — it’s good and it’s fun.

Zuckerberg Sticks With Trump 

Mike Isaac and Cecilia Kang, reporting for The New York Times:

Twitter’s face-off escalated Friday morning, when the company attached an addendum to one of Mr. Trump’s tweets. The company said the tweet had the potential to incite violence amid protests in Minneapolis. Facebook didn’t do anything when the same post was added to its service.

Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter, took to his site not long after to say Twitter would not back down, presenting a stark contrast to Mr. Zuckerberg, who, in an interview a day earlier with Fox News, said Facebook wasn’t going to judge Mr. Trump’s posts.

“We’ve been pretty clear on our policy that we think that it wouldn’t be right for us to do fact checks for politicians,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “I think in general, private companies probably shouldn’t be — or especially these platform companies — shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”

Zuckerberg, testifying before Congress back in October, said otherwise when answering a question from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

“If anyone, including a politician, is saying things that can cause, that is calling for violence or could risk imminent physical harm — or voter or census suppression, when we roll out the census suppression policy — we will take that content down.”

When it was in the abstract, he said Facebook would do the right thing. When the rubber hit the road and Trump started posting voter suppression propaganda (re: mail-in balloting) and a clear incitement to violence, Facebook got in line behind Trump.

Even if you think Zuckerberg’s doing the right thing by not touching Trump’s posts — which I see the argument for — you’re admitting that he lied while answering Ocasio-Cortez’s question.

Trump Declared Twitter Should Be Shut Down 

“If it were legal, if it were able to be legally shut down, I would do it.”

That’s the president of the United States yesterday, describing, I think honestly, what he’d like to do to an American company that no one — no one — is alleging to have broken a single law. Their transgression is that they simply displease him. It’s worth watching him say it on video, just to absorb how casual he is about something so profound.

It has been the historical norm for all presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, to speak of the U.S. Constitution with reverence, as a set of righteous ideals that guide our nation, a codification of our collective sense of what is right and just — not as a set of constraints that shackle the president from doing what he’d really like to do.

Minnesota Police Arrest CNN Reporter Omar Jimenez Live on the Air 

CNN:

CNN’s Josh Campbell, who also was in the area but not standing with the on-air crew, said he, too, was approached by police, but was allowed to remain.

“I identified myself … they said, ‘OK, you’re permitted to be in the area,’” recounted Campbell, who is white. “I was treated much differently than (Jimenez) was.”

Jimenez is black and Latino. Kirkos is white, and Mendez is Hispanic.

I know there’s a lot going on today. I’m overwhelmed too. But the footage of Jimenez’s arrest is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen.

New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik:

The incident, which unfolded over several tense minutes, was brazen and appalling. But at least it served a clarifying purpose. After days of hot air expended insisting on a politician’s “right” to use a private platform without correction, America got to see what an actual offense against the First Amendment looks like.

It’s Hard to Believe But Maybe Trump Neither Understands the Law Nor Has Thought This Twitter Thing Through, Not Even Sort of a Little 

Peter Baker and Daisuke Wakabayashi, reporting for The New York Times:

But the logic of Mr. Trump’s order is intriguing because it attacks the very legal provision that has allowed him such latitude to publish with impunity a whole host of inflammatory, harassing and factually distorted messages that a media provider might feel compelled to take down if it were forced into the role of a publisher that faced the risk of legal liability rather than a distributor that does not.

“Intriguing” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.