Trump’s social media summit

Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, July 13th, 2019 - 36 comments
Categories: Deep stuff, democracy under attack, Donald Trump, jacinda ardern, Media, uncategorized - Tags:

I must admit some trepidation in writing anti Trump posts.  I thought they would be universally acclaimed and accepted on this site.  But like Brexit there is a significant number of lefties who think differently to me.

And why do I attack Trump?  Well he is a climate change denier misogynist who does not pay his bills and cultivates relationships with white supremacists and attacks the press for holding him to account and has a terifying lack of grasp of the nuances of International relationships and he is a bully but apart from that I am sure he is a swell guy.  I would prefer that he was not nominally in charge of the world that I live in. And I don’t think Hillary would have been as bad.

But some lefties think that to attack Trumps to attack the far left.  I am still trying to work that out.

He has recently been holding a Social Media Summit.

Think Jacinda’s post Christchurch Massacre summit but with the completely opposite goal and full of crazy people.

Remember Ardern’s international gathering?  The Herald had this description:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has opened the Christchurch Call summit in Paris with an appeal to tech companies to review their business models that can pull users down dark rabbit holes to radicalisation.

And she is asking online platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter – considered to be so global in reach to not have to answer to anyone – to be more transparent by publishing progress reports regularly.

Ardern arrived at the Elysee Palace to a French guard of honour and a warm la bise greeting – a kiss on each cheek – from French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted lunch.

Later representatives from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Wikimedia and Qwant as well as the leaders of seven countries and the European Union arrived for the summit.

The Christchurch Call to Action aims to take collective action to prevent a repeat of how the terror attack on March 15 was weaponised on social media.

“I stand before you with the 51 lives lost in New Zealand heavy on my mind,” Ardern said in her opening address to the summit.

“The hearts of Aotearoa still ache … Let us all here the call from Christchurch today.”

Ardern asked tech companies to enforce the standards they already have by preventing such content from being uploaded in the first place.

She also addressed the business models of social media companies that are designed to grab users’ attention in a way that can pull them into a single and increasingly radical narrative.

“We ask that you assess how your algorithms funnel people to extremist content and make transparent that work.

Pretty hard to disagree with.  Unless you think that racial hatred should be tolerated. Funnily enough Trump did not show up to that meeting of International leaders.

Instead he thought he should have a summit to celebrate the complete and unfettered freedom of freedom of expression. The sort that appears to have energised he who shall not be named

So what did the Trump gathering want to achieve?

So one gathering involved many leaders from throughout the world talking about how the worst excesses of social media could cause evil, and another gathering involved a bunch of trolls celebrating the evil that social media could create because at least its guy would have power.

One leader wanted to prevent further atrocities. The other leader wants to get re-elected no matter what.

Trump’s meeting attracted some heavy weight intellectual fire power.

https://twitter.com/Joy_Villa/status/1149405553279623169

And unlike Ardern’s meeting Trump did not want to have the heavyweight social media companies at his meeting. Vice had this description in anticipation of the big event:

Tomorrow, President Donald Trump is meeting with a series of right wing figures at the White House to discuss social media issues. But Facebook and Twitter won’t be there. In fact, the only social media network that has publicly said it’s attending is Minds—billed as the crypto “anti-Facebook” and once home to several neo-Nazi extremist groups.

Pulp, a public relations firm that counts Minds among its client list, sent Motherboard a photo of the invitation the fringe social media site received to the White House for the summit.

“Minds.com is the only social media network invited to the White House’s social media summit!” wrote the Pulp representative in an email to Motherboard. Facebook and Twitter, social media companies with an astronomically larger number of users than Minds, were excluded from the summit.

A previous Motherboard investigation found that miliant neo-Nazi groups connected to Atomwaffen Division—a violent American hate group connected to several murders—was using Minds as a platform for recruiting and spreading propaganda. Minds eventually banned the accounts when Motherboard showed them to the platform, but the company’s lax content moderation allowed them to proliferate unchecked for months.

The White House declined to comment on the guest list of the summit, but Trump has made the perceived “bias” against conservatives by social media companies one of his core talking points in recent months. Earlier this year, Trump met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and reportedly discussed such pressing issues as why his follower count declined.

Well hand me a tinfoil hat and call me a George Soros disciple but I get the feeling that the Trump gathering may have been in response to the Ardern gathering.  CNN provides this background to who was invited:

The White House has not extended invitations to Facebook and Twitter to attend its social media summit on Thursday, people familiar with the matter said.

The people, who spoke to CNN Business on the condition of anonymity, suggested it was not surprising. They said they believe the summit would amount to a right-wing grievance session and was not aimed at seriously discussing some of the issues facing large technology companies.
A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment.

The White House announced the summit in June, describing it as an event to bring together “digital leaders for a robust conversation on the opportunities and challenges of today’s online environment.”

So compare and contrast.  Am I being too conspiracist on it or was this a Trump attempt to undermine what Ardern wants to achieve?

36 comments on “Trump’s social media summit ”

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  1. Steve Wrathall 1
    13 July 2019 at 9:14 am

    "One leader wanted to prevent further atrocities. The other leader wants to get re-elected no matter what." Why shouldn't she seek re-election?

  2. Roger Anderson 2
    13 July 2019 at 9:21 am

    More swollen than swell, methinks.

  3. marty mars 3
    13 July 2019 at 9:37 am

    anyone trumpish isn't left so just forget that mate – you know this as well as I do – they are sorta proud of it

    leave them to the middle, and their delusions

    t.rump is driven by base desires – wouldn't surprise me if he was trying to better our PM – he is so slow, so low, so so so, in all he does.

    • Dukeofurl 3.1
      13 July 2019 at 11:33 am

      I agree. The Trumpanzees that turn up here would be comical if not the underlying tones of white nationalists who love everything about him, in reality hes a disgrace

  4. Hamish Stevenson 4
    13 July 2019 at 9:44 am

    Laugh of the day so far: "Trump’s meeting attracted some heavy weight intellectual fire power." followed by that pic of Joy Villa.

  5. One Two 5
    13 July 2019 at 9:56 am

    Must be good for a few clicks…eh MS.

    Censorship is rife in the digital shere and rapidly propagating …including via direct requests from within congress.

    You know that is going on, right?

    • Incognito 5.1
      13 July 2019 at 2:14 pm

      Must be good for a few clicks…eh MS.

      Way to miss the point; did you read the Post?

      Only a few hundred clicks so far, none of which have any impact whatsoever as this site doesn’t place any ads and doesn’t have a revenue stream based on clicks or anything else for that matter.

  6. Anne 6
    13 July 2019 at 10:47 am

    Yes, Jacinda Ardern has surely made the illustrious list of 'Trump's enemies no 1′. How dare she organise a Social Media summit attended by world leaders and one which was greeted with such international acclaim. Of course he was going to have one of his own to counter the good work she and Macron achieved.

    It has been said that an invitation is waiting for our PM when she returns from her short holiday. NZ has been invited by the USA to join a "multinational military coalition force" led by the USA to safeguard the waters around Iran and Yeman.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12248984

    Now someone remind me, who has got a re-election campaign coming up and part of the strategy is to provoke a war with Iran? I remember, it's Donald Trump. So, who is sending unmanned drones into Iranian airspace thus provoking responses from Iran? That's right, Donald Trump. And who 'requested' the UK govt. seize an Iranian tanker in the Mediterranean thus provoking further hostile responses? It was US military command probably under orders from Donald Trump.

    And assuming our prime-minister will politely decline joining this military coalition we can expect the wrath of this

    climate change denying misogynist who does not pay his bills and cultivates relationships with white supremacists and attacks the press for holding him to account and has a terrifying lack of grasp of the nuances of International relationships and he is a bully

    president in the form of an incoherent tongue lashing twitter attack on NZ – at the very least.

  7. Observer Tokoroa 7
    13 July 2019 at 10:59 am

    The American Bully

    Hello there Micky Savage. I shouldn't be too disturbed by that American Despot – Donald “Hey Look at Me” Trump.

    He goes around telling himself how great he is. Then immediately he passes the great word on to the ever gullible "Donald Duck" American Citizens.

    IQ is not noticeably high – in Donald Land.

    Trump hires pathetic, dangerous, fraudulent, abysmal Staff and aides. In other words, he hires people who are head to head copies of his wretched self. A few of them seem to have cases of serious Sex crimes pending.

    One thing we do know – is that Americans don't win wars. Not the North Korean fiasco. Not Vietnam. Not Afganistan.

    His little Chinese North Korean Guy is trampling all over our Donald Duck.

  8. Peter 8
    13 July 2019 at 11:33 am

    Compare and contrast? That's a challenge – finding a reasonable analogy.

    How about saying Trump has about as much class as the toe nail clippings of someone like Jacinda Ardern?

  9. Ad 9
    13 July 2019 at 11:38 am

    also a great day to see hundreds of old white guys surrendering their military weapons to the state, through a lawArdern led through our parliament.

    • Chris T 9.1
      13 July 2019 at 2:51 pm

      ??

      I know this may be hard for you to comprehend, but it isn't just old white blokes who are handing in guns

      Unless you have some weird racist tendency to think all the other gun owners aren't honest enough?

      Mmmm

      • Incognito 9.1.1
        13 July 2019 at 3:08 pm

        Maybe it was a reference to white supremacists?

        • Chris T 9.1.1.1
          13 July 2019 at 4:12 pm

          I would imagine what ever miniscule amount of white supremacists we have in NZ would be like gangs and wouldn't be handing them in.

          • Incognito 9.1.1.1.1
            13 July 2019 at 4:20 pm

            I suggested it was a “reference” but only Ad can answer for himself.

          • Jess NZ 9.1.1.1.2
            14 July 2019 at 10:57 am

            I hear they are buying big plumbing pipes and wrapping the guns in them and burying them and laughing at how clever they are. To me, that's practically as good a result. They're not available to be stolen or used accidentally or badly, which cuts out most of the statistical harm.

            http://gunviolencearchive.org

  10. marty mars 10
    13 July 2019 at 2:32 pm

    classic t.rump – even he can't believe it!

    “People come up to me: ‘Sir, we want to follow you; they don’t let us on,’” he said.

    “I have millions of people, so many people I wouldn’t believe it, but I know that we’ve been blocked.

    “When I put out something, a good one that people like, right? A good tweet. It goes up,” Trump said. “It used to go up, it would say: 7,000; 7,008; 7,017; 7,024; 7,032; 7,044. Right? Now it goes: 7,000; 7,008; 6,998. Then they go: 7,009; 6,074. I said, what’s going on? It never did that before. It goes up, and then they take it down. Then it goes up. I never had it. Does anyone know what I’m talking about with this?”

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/12/trumps-far-right-twitter-summit-the-most-bizarre-highlights

  11. Adrian Thornton 11
    13 July 2019 at 3:30 pm

    Mickey Savage..you say you don't understand why many Lefties don't agree with the incessant focus on Trump…fair enough, then let me tell you why some feel this way.

    Firstly, the constant and almost maniacal focus on Trump, as if he is some kind of outlier in US politics and policy is a complete red herring, his methods might be different, however the overall results are very similar, he is business as usual for US corporations, wall st, foreign policy, the 1% etc, even his appalling stance on immigration in nothing new in US politics

    Secondly Tell me where and when did the Democrates own their loss in the most winnable election in post war US history?, when did the self examination happen, and then the proposed changes put forward for discussion and evaluation? It is said one of the signs of madness is to do thing same action over and over and expect a different result…if that is true then the Democratic establishment strategy for 2020 is fucking crazy.

    Thirdly, One of the few things that Trump is right about is that MSM is a disseminator of fake news, one of the worst culprits in spreading disinformation on the new progressive movement today is not FOX or right wing media it is liberal MSM The Guardian, Washington Post, NYTimes, Huffington Post, an example from FAIR today.

    For NYT, Inconvenient Facts Equal ‘Russian-Style Disinformation’ https://fair.org/home/for-nyt-inconvenient-facts-equal-russian-style-disinformation/

    The good old Guardian tearing down Corbyn in a classic…

    Yes, Jeremy Corbyn has suffered a bad press, but where's the harm? https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jul/19/yes-jeremy-corbyn-has-suffered-a-bad-press-but-wheres-the-harm

    Our report found that 75% of press coverage misrepresents Jeremy Corbyn – we can't ignore media bias anymore https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-media-bias-labour-mainstream-press-lse-study-misrepresentation-we-cant-ignore-bias-a7144381.html

    So where is the outrage at this?, nope Trump Trump Trump, the 'centre left' (for want of a better term, others come to mind) haven't seemed to realized that their project of a new wave of pretty young leaders as being the new face and saviours of Liberalism have been a unmitigated disaster..Obama…left Trump as his legacy, Trudeau polls in free fall, Macron facing almost revolution on his own doorstep, Ardern winning our own election by only a hairs breath after three terms of the austerity and ravages of National.

    Trudeau now has a lower approval rating than Trump, with Tories way ahead: Ipsos poll https://globalnews.ca/news/5103763/trudeau-approval-rating-snc-lavalin-budget/

    Until Liberalism is pronounced dead by the Left and we renounce the project as a failure, make amends with the massive base of fellow citizens so hurt and crushed by it's devilish ideology, then and only then can the Left offer a very real opposition to the rising right…by banging on and on about Trump or Russian or Assange or fake news, is handing the rising Right a very real path to further their gains, and entrench themselves…that is just some our problem with your focus on Trump.

    Turn Labour Left!

    • Andre 11.1
      13 July 2019 at 3:49 pm

      That would all be very nice, if it wasn't coming from a second-option bias fantasist that reads a line like "…corporate media are eager to enter their junior year of the Russiagate conspiracy, despite its utter obliteration by Robert Mueller in April." and apparently thinks yeah, right on.

      • Adrian Thornton 11.1.1
        13 July 2019 at 4:12 pm

        I agree the wording isn't ideal, however the fact remains that Russiagate was nothing more than a fantasy, one that you it seems you are still indulging yourself in…it's a bit sad to watch, bit I guess that's your business.

        Now if you have some problems with some of the actual facts in that article, then please point them out to us.

        Put up or shut up.

        • Andre 11.1.1.1
          13 July 2019 at 4:36 pm

          Meanwhile, let's remind ourselves of the values of liberalism that you're so contemptuous of:

          Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support limited government, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), capitalism (free markets), democracy, secularism, gender equality, racial equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

          I'd put a few caveats and regulations around the free markets bit to try to limit abuses by the powerful. But the rest of it is stuff I value. Perhaps you'd like to explain which of those values of liberalism you find offensive and want to do away with?

          You also appear totally out of touch about your place in the political continuum relative to the American voting public. There's a very good argument that one of the contributors to Clinton's loss was that she in fact did take a sharp turn to the left. So much so that someone looking for a centrist candidate that was willing to excuse the Fraud from Fifth Avenue's personal detestable characteristics, and project their hopes and dreams onto his nonsensical contradictory pronouncements that scattered across wide range ideologies, well, he was in fact the more centrist candidate.

          https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voters-think-trump-has-moved-to-the-right/

          • Adrian Thornton 11.1.1.1.1
            13 July 2019 at 4:49 pm

            Please stop obfuscating, as I said previously, please point out the factual mistakes of the article you ridiculed, then maybe lets move on to a wider discussion.

            • Andre 11.1.1.1.1.1
              13 July 2019 at 4:58 pm

              I've pointed out below how the FAIR article starts with a big steaming pile right at the start.

              Now, how about you explain a bit more about what values of liberalism you're so contemptuous of and want to get rid of.

        • Andre 11.1.1.2
          13 July 2019 at 4:52 pm

          The starting paragraph of your FAIR piece is an misleading distortion – what Mueller's report said was the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.". That is, they didn't think they had enough evidence to prove something in court. Compare that to how the FAIR piece described it: “corporate media are eager to enter their junior year of the Russiagate conspiracy, despite its utter obliteration by Robert Mueller “.

          The rest of the piece goes on and on with the same kinds of misleading distortions and emotive language, all well-calculated to reinforce second-option bias fantasists' mistrust of the media.

          That kind of bullshit is harmful. It is clearly designed to get the reader to reflexively reject what is in the mainstream media. That is a very different proposition to assessing an article critically to form an opinion on how much weight to give it or how much to hold off forming an opinion until further corroborating information comes out (or not).

  12. Adrian Thornton 12
    13 July 2019 at 5:06 pm

    So you don't like the tone, so what, that is exactly the sort of tone employed relentlessly by most liberal MSM to imply colustion, apparently that's how it is now, so as I have said twice already, what factual information is incorrect, please specify?

    • Sam 12.1
      13 July 2019 at 5:33 pm

      Y'know I find people who pride themselves on facts and figures and writes very accurate Facebook posts and so on to be ultra ironic. Only for no one to click like on it. The more desperate for likes the greater the use of click bait titles and edgy descriptions. So go back to the beginning, accurate about what? Being accurate about being liked or correct is a failed business model. But what should we do? Should we correct them? Should we write equally accurate posts about there failed business models, why? No, I think eventually failed business models just run out of puff anyway if we like them or not.

      • Adrian Thornton 12.1.1
        13 July 2019 at 6:37 pm

        I wouldn't know, I am not on face book.

        • Sam 12.1.1.1
          13 July 2019 at 7:02 pm

          I was just trying to be unironic so I could leave the door open to the fact that we are not stupid every secound of the day. Perhaps we are at our most intelligent directly before the 6 o'clock new comes on and then we watch Fox News then oops we are stupid again. Perhaps.

          Social media on the other hand I find most annoying when morbidly obese people or even just people who are a little overweight say look at me because I'm body neutral. It's sickening watching people eat themselves to death and have them try and skull fuck people into giving them likes, clout and monetization.

          Y’know people who do the least amount of work I think are good examples of people who shouldn’t be on social media. Inevitably they run out of puff anyway.

  13. Poission 13
    13 July 2019 at 5:47 pm

    firstly the US senate (republican initiative) is examining the use of algorithm its uses,transperancy and what policy may be enacted through its sub committee process.

    https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?ID=E4F108BD-47FA-4857-B8F4-4AE745C7A119

    There is a remarkable excellent response and analysis from Stephen Wolfram with a scaffold (framework) for policy outcomes,as opposed to eating Brioche at the Elysee palace.

    https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/06/testifying-at-the-senate-about-a-i-selected-content-on-the-internet/

    With regard to who Trump invited to the social media event at the WH ,I suspect it would be good politics to unfriend them (in social media speak) due to the forthcoming (this month)Netflix documentary which will be bigger then Ben Hur (the original).

  14. Anne 14
    13 July 2019 at 6:42 pm

    Talking of Donald Trump, I've just seen the fellow's latest performance on Newshub. He's changed his tune about the now former British Ambassador to the US (Darrock). He now "wishes him well” because:

    "he's learn't that what he said wasn't about him, it was about other people." 😯

  15. joe90 15
    14 July 2019 at 2:07 pm

    tRump word salad.

    On What’s Happening

    But I’ll tell you, a lot of bad things are happening. I have people come up to me: “Sir, we want to follow you. They don’t let us on.”

    And it was so different than it was even six, seven months ago. I was picking up unbelievable amounts of people. And I’m hotter now than I was then, OK? Because you know, you also cool off, right? You do. But I’m much hotter. Especially with a nice, new stock market like it is. Right?

    But no. I’m hotter now, and I go to Dan, I say, “Hey, what’s going on here?” It used to take me a short number of days to pick up 100,000 people. I’m not complaining; we’re like at 60-some-odd million. But then we have five different sites. We have another site with 25 million. We have another site with 10 or 12. Then we have Facebook. Then we have Instagram. We have a lot!

    We got a lot of people. Way, way over 100 million, but I used to pick them up… And when I say “used to,” I’m talking about a few months ago. I was picking them up, a hundred thousand people every, very short period of time. Now, it’s, I would say, ten times as long. And I notice things happening when I put out something—a good one, that people like, right? Good tweet. It goes up. It used to go up, it would say 7,000, 7,008, 7,000, 7,017, 7,024, 7,032, 7,044. Right?

    Now it goes, 7,000, 7,008, 6,998. Then they go, 7,009, 6,074. [Audience boos] I said, “What’s going on?” Now, it never did that before. It goes up, and then they take it down. Then it goes up. I’d never had that. Does anyone know what I’m talking about with this? [Audience screams “yes”] I never had that before. I used to watch it. It’d be like a rocket ship when I put out a beauty. Like when I said, remember I said somebody was spying on me? That thing was like a rocket. I get a call two minutes later: “Did you say that?”

    I said, “Yeah, I said that.”

    “Well, it’s exploding. It’s exploding.”

    I turned out to be right. I turned out to be right. We turned out to be right about a lot of things. But I never had it.

    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/trump-social-media-summit.html

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