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With each news cycle, the false-information system grows more efficient.
Even on an internet bursting at the seams with conspiracy theories and hyperpartisanship, Saturday marked a new chapter in our post-truth, “choose your own reality” crisis story.
It began early Saturday morning, when news broke that the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein had apparently hanged himself in a Manhattan jail. Mr. Epstein’s death, coming just one day after court documents from one of his alleged victims were unsealed, sparked immediate suspicion from journalists, politicians and the usual online fringes.
Within minutes, Trump appointees, Fox Business hosts and Twitter pundits revived a decades old conspiracy theory, linking the Clinton family to supposedly suspicious deaths. #ClintonBodyCount and #ClintonCrimeFamily trended on Twitter. Around the same time, an opposite hashtag — #TrumpBodyCount — emerged, focused on President Trump’s decades-old ties to Mr. Epstein. Each hashtag was accompanied by GIFs and memes picturing Mr. Epstein with the Clintons or with Mr. Trump to serve as a viral accusation of foul play.
The dueling hashtags and their attendant toxicity are a grim testament to our deeply poisoned information ecosystem — one that’s built for speed and designed to reward the most incendiary impulses of its worst actors. It has ushered in a parallel reality unrooted in fact and helped to push conspiratorial thinking into the cultural mainstream. And with each news cycle, the system grows more efficient, entrenching its opposing camps. The poison spreads.
It's time to end "trending" on Twitter
By now you've probably read enough about the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, his death in a Manhattan jail, and the attendant conspiracy theories that consumed social networks over the weekend. President Trump led the charge, retweeting a conspiracy theory that sought to implicate former President Bill Clinton.
While there is much blame to go around, Charlie Warzel finds that Twitter bears a special responsibility for what one researcher termed "the Disinformation World Cup." Warzel writes:
At the heart of the online fiasco is Twitter, which has come to largely program the political conversation and much of the press. Twitter is magnetic during huge breaking stories; news junkies flock to it for up-to-the-second information. But early on, there's often a vast discrepancy between the attention that is directed at the platform and the available information about the developing story. That gap is filled by speculation and, via its worst users, rumormongering and conspiracy theories.
On Saturday, Twitter's trending algorithms hoovered up the worst of this detritus, curating, ranking and then placing it in the trending module on the right side of its website. Despite being a highly arbitrary and mostly "worthless metric," trending topics on Twitter are often interpreted as a vague signal of the importance of a given subject.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 14 2019, @12:12PM (24 children)
It's a choice between children in cages, separating children from their families, or just letting whoever wants to waltz across the border. There's not a "good" answer, so which bad one would you prefer?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday August 14 2019, @12:47PM (5 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 14 2019, @01:09PM (3 children)
Which is pretty much what happened to them before progtards threw a fit about children being separated from their parents. The exact same fit they'll throw ten or fifteen years after it's changed back.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday August 14 2019, @01:36PM (1 child)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:00PM
Both sides not one side. Progress is movement in a direction of your choosing, so both sides make progress when they're getting their way.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @03:53PM
Ah Buzzy being a typical uninformed idiot again https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/obama-administration-placed-children-with-human-traffickers-report-says/2016/01/28/39465050-c542-11e5-9693-933a4d31bcc8_story.html?noredirect=on [washingtonpost.com]
At least before they tried helping, this admin doesn't give a shit and encourages mistreatment via twitter. Bonus points for the token Republican getting all morally righteous but not making a peep about Trump's even worse treatment.
Buzzy you are a twisted fuck.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday August 14 2019, @03:04PM
So you choose to separate children from their families and put them behind fences. You monster.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 14 2019, @01:38PM (7 children)
None of these. Instead,
(1) Don't separate children from their families when they cross the border. If they have to be detained, detain them together. (Exception: children at obvious risk of harm from their families)
(2) If children arrive unaccompanied, try to find their families. (Apparently under Obama, most such children were eventually united with relatives already within the USA)
(3) Play 4/4 music at the border rather than 3/4 waltz music.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 14 2019, @01:54PM (1 child)
I like 'Flight of the Valkyries'. You?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday August 14 2019, @08:44PM
Not to be too pedantic, but I'm pretty sure that's in 9/8 time.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:01PM
Detaining them together is the "children in cages" that we have now and the progtards are throwing a fit over.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:02PM
Scuse me, we're doing the separating them from their families thing now. Kids in cages with their parents is what we were doing before.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday August 14 2019, @08:01PM (2 children)
Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings. Those rules have always been the same. The change under Trump was that ALL adults are being prosecuted for illegal entry. In the past, adults with children were allowed to walk. That policy is what encouraged so many illegals to bring children with them.
When a migrant is prosecuted for illegal entry, he or she is taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals. In no circumstance anywhere in the U.S. do the marshals care for the children of people they take into custody. The child is taken into the custody of HHS, who cares for them at temporary shelters. Typically that only lasts a short time period (a few hours to a few days), after which the family is reunited and deported (the parent can ask that their children stay, and arrangements can be made for that, such as with a relative).
The Flores Consent Decree from 1997 says that unaccompanied children can be held only 20 days. When the adult migrant claims asylum, they're not A ruling by the Ninth Circuit extended this 20-day limit to children who come as part of family units. So even if we want to hold a family unit together, we are forbidden from doing so.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday August 14 2019, @09:09PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Friday August 16 2019, @12:05AM
No, sorry, that's not the way it works. You're incorrectly conflating a lot of things and saying they're all the same.
You CAN claim asylum from any point of entry. Crossing the border somewhere else is against the law (the first time is a misdemeanor, subsequent crossings are felonies). It's true that after you cross, you can claim asylum. But that's where things get tricky, especially if you have brought a minor (yours, stolen, or paid for) along with you. You still get detained for processing, but an asylum request takes a LOT longer. It means any minors with you will need to be placed with family, or some foster situation.
Speaking of which, this was a system developed under the corrupt Obama administration. The housing for unaccompanied or separated minors. You've got organizations like Southwest Key Programs - here is their funding revenue for finding homes for children [hhs.gov]. There are the "VOLAGS" (Volunteer Agencies) that are paid millions for resetting refugees. here is a chart of them and their funding [capitalresearch.org]. Catholic Charities is probably the largest organization paid with federal tax money for locating homes for children of illegal immigrants. They're one of the reasons you'll hear stories about immigrant moms looking for their children in Texas and discovering they've been sent somewhere on the East Coast.
That rabbit hole goes pretty deep. The NYT even wrote an article about it [nytimes.com], even if nobody paid attention to it. The point is illegal immigration is big business, for the cartels that control the border from the Mexico side, to all the companies and rent-seekers sucking at the teat for their own self-interest. None of them give one whit about the immigrants themselves, and as long as they're lining their own pockets, they don't care about the damage it does to the country and its vulnerable citizens either.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @03:08PM
Nice false dichotomy (trichotocomy?) there.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @03:57PM (5 children)
Well, if those are my choices (hint: they aren't) then I choose to let them "waltz across the border". Seriously, what is so godawful wrong with letting people come to America to get a good job and a decent education for their kids? You are literally in a panic because people are jumping over walls, swimming across rivers, and walking across deserts to get into America. Actually, the time to panic is when people are jumping over walls, swimming across rivers, and walking across deserts to get out of the country. Seriously, get some perspective.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday August 14 2019, @08:05PM (1 child)
No border, no country.
No country, no laws.
What you're advocating here is that people from OTHER countries should be the ones deciding our immigration policies.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @08:51PM
Bullshit!!! We have thousands of miles of unprotected border with Canada. No one in their right mind would argue that the sovereignty of either one is in jeopardy.
No, what I am advocating is that you and your Trumpista buddies stop being anal retentive assholes. Look, our immigration policies are at least a few decades out of date. We need to bring immigration policy back to some semblance of reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @08:34PM (2 children)
Alright, let's see yours. You come home from work and find a bum from skid row helping himself to your kitchen. Do you A) call the police or B) call for a pizza?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @08:57PM (1 child)
Analogy fail. The people coming across the border are not helping themselves to your kitchen; they are looking for jobs which pay better than what they can find back home. Why the hell do you not want people coming to America to contribute to our economy? This is after all, historically, what "made America great" in the first place.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 16 2019, @02:19AM
Fail there. Illegals often consume more in government subsidies than they contribute to the economy. I'm all about documenting up anyone who wants to pull their weight and letting them in but I don't want them showing disdain for our nation's laws by entering illegally or getting here and immediately sucking on the government tit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by istartedi on Wednesday August 14 2019, @03:59PM (1 child)
You're missing the option of actually prosecuting people who hire illegally, and having a jobs program that hires immigrants when there *really* are no citizens that can fill the job.
You know, sane policy that could actually have a chance of working because you're enforcing against assets in fixed locations that have a strong incentive and ability to comply vs. enforcing against poor people distributed all over the country who have little or no incentive to comply.
I know. Crazy, but I can dream, right?
We now return to our regularly scheduled program of chasing rabbits all over the field while the horse leaves the barn.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @06:02PM
I can't believe you would post this anti-business tripe!
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday August 14 2019, @04:27PM
You're presenting a false dilemma and you have to know it. BP/ICE can go after violent criminals, rapists, and the other very dangerous less than 1% of the people crossing the border and ignore the others, and we'll be fine.
We're spending 700 billion a year on military shit we don't need. Trump holds up the 1950s as America's greatest time but top marginal tax rates on the wealthiest Americans were 90% then and 40% today. And if nothing else, a fraction of the 8 million dollars per day ICE is using to jail thousands of immigrants could be used to house them more cheaply in hotels with catered meals.