DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
A real glutton for punishment this one.
QAnon cultists get banned.
- Thread starter hanimmal
- Start date
TrippleDip
Well-Known Member
We are the dogs get beat after all.
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
What you just did is called "gaslighting".
also see bafflegab.
Otherwise known as horse shit.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
I will come back and do a point by point on your responses, but right off the bat something happened last night that falls right in line with the wrongfully thinking that this racist agenda against our minority communities is far from over.
This tweet by our current POTUS in 2020 is using the boogey man of have 'city-dwellers' moving into nice white flight neighborhoods is the epidemic that I have been trying to get you to realize is still alive and well.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
So I read up on this PISA test, testing 500 random? kids throughout our country while other countries pick which regions that they test doesn't sound like it is accurately testing our children. I wonder for example if China is having their minority communities participate in the testing?
It sounds also like you are cherry picking stuff that tries to make it out that the facts that we are graduating far more people and have far wider education opportunities throughout people's lifetime than anywhere else in the world get ignored as 'no child left behind' ruining them. I agree it is a range of skills our younger generations leave school with, but trying to paint cities as some cesspool of education is just trying to push the racist propaganda against these communities.
You have a hangup here that you need to get over on your own. You have not even tried to understand that America has different accents in every area and some are very hard to understand if you are not from there. The fact is how well you understand someone has nothing to do with their mental acuity.
And ignoring the 'our' immigrants (unless you mean Canada), in America there is not some 'racially allotted pie'. That is racist lies.
What programs have you listed?
I call bullshit on this whole paragraph. You have no clue outside of what you have been told by racists what our education system is all about.
'The lowest black person that all the mediocre blacks will be held to' btw is pretty much the exact definition of racism.
I wonder if you ever have stopped to consider all those young males that have been tossed into juvenile detention and put on a path to not being a functional member of society, that if they didn't grow up in a over-policed city would have actually had the opportunity to become a well functional member of society before having that option ripped out of their hands, and how that impacts the next generation.
If people are using welfare you mean then subtracting from what they have paid in taxes? Or are you playing some stupid as shit racist troll game pretending that we should look at what each race pays in taxes and separate out what people of their own race use in welfare?
Because as I have repeatedly demonstrated with facts is how our cities have been systemically kept out of being able to build up the generational wealth needed by the laws created by the Wealthy White Heterosexual Male Only agenda's racist laws, policing, and economic suppression of our minority communities until too recently to make much of a difference.
But if you are really interested in seeing the data:
https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/ops/Characteristics2016.pdf
Want to guess what race's businesses have collected the most corporate welfare? How about other Federal programs like student loans, medicare, medicaid, social security, on and on?
The racists logic fails because it is illogically ignorant of facts that they choose not to look at because it doesn't fit their narratives.
So your saying that something some group of people haven't had before, didn't design and build, didn't maintain it? Are you sure that they were trained to do that job? Are you even sure that they even understood that it needed to have regular maintenance?
Racist play these game and try to show this kind of stuff as some sort of 'proof' of inferiority or defect of a people, it is not.
If you would stop and try to not regurgitate the racist shit you say, it might dawn on you that it is a fact that most people still succeed in the cities. That most people are well understood when they talk. And when their children are able to climb out of the systemic poverty, that they pay back into the system far more in taxes than they used while climbing the economic ladder. And then their children are in a far better position to be as if not more successful.
Us American should problably start then with the Native Americans that are still alive after we genocided the vast majority of them.
What the fuck do you think detentions and suspensions are all about? What a stupid as shit statement to try to act like your racist bullshit education troll has any validity at all.
Maybe instead of trying to ignore that kids that are lashing out in school are doing so for a reason, maybe think about what we could do different in those situations to not actually make it worse on that particular child and help them get to a place to succeed in the classroom instead of the instinctual anger and alienating of them that people have been far too fast to do.
You should know what you are saying is basically the same 'logic' that led to women being institutionalized for stupid shit when men got all angsty about listening to them not agreeing with them.
You are ass backwards. You go right to 'cops decreasing' and not the actual problem of overpopulating these cities and forcing them to stay in poverty.
Would crime increase or decrease? Crime has been dropping as police have been getting reduced in Detroit.
The problem with following racist propganda about 'black on black' crime is that they ignore that it is because as a nation we stuffed black people into super small areas and yanked their ability to move out of them even as the businesses that were there when they moved in left with all the white people to the suburbs.
You keep falling into the trap of ignoring the impact poverty has on this. This gets back to the trailer park example you seemed to understand well enough to know that this kind of cherry picking using statistics that racist have used to over-police these communities for generations is actually valid.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Continued.
Unfortuntatnly racist mindsets like the one you have clearly demonstrated you believe in, think that all stick and no carrot works. It does not.
It also doesn't mean that they can't be wrong in what is actually best for their own neighborhoods when they are following orders.
This is what the kids in these cities are faced with on a daily basis (not including the dangers of getting to school in the first place).
When white people abandoned these cities 70 years ago, very little has been done to help keep them updated so that these children could thrive in a benefitial environment.
Also there is so much that you are missing, and how American racist agenda has hurt our minority communities.
Lead pipes?
Lead Paint removal, another 'racist' agenda?
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/n...-funding-address-lead-paint-homes/3853901002/
Any clue why that might impact these cities in a way that racists use to paint minorities as some sort of defective group?
https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Familie...-Children-Affects-Brain-And-Behavior-045.aspx
Now there is also evidence that all those fireworks white people come to the cities to watch leads to chemical fallout that also enters into the water of these cities, also cause problems in children.
Ignoring all these facts and victim blaming is the racism.
jfc. To help these communities we need to arrest criminals. And then instead of sending them to prison to get treated like animals to be beaten and raped while there, we should help rehabilitate them and help them to get the tools to become a member of society.
Unfortuntatnly racist mindsets like the one you have clearly demonstrated you believe in, think that all stick and no carrot works. It does not.
Sure I believe most people are well meaning mostly. But I think you're not being very aware of what life is like here in America if you don't understand that just because you have a lot of black cops in Chicago means they can't be racist to the people they are policing in Chicago.
It also doesn't mean that they can't be wrong in what is actually best for their own neighborhoods when they are following orders.
Ok.
I showed you that tweet Trump (as POTUS) made this morning. That is direct evidence of the racism that is still persisting in our nation.
This is what the kids in these cities are faced with on a daily basis (not including the dangers of getting to school in the first place).
When white people abandoned these cities 70 years ago, very little has been done to help keep them updated so that these children could thrive in a benefitial environment.
Also there is so much that you are missing, and how American racist agenda has hurt our minority communities.
Lead pipes?
Lead Paint removal, another 'racist' agenda?
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/n...-funding-address-lead-paint-homes/3853901002/
Any clue why that might impact these cities in a way that racists use to paint minorities as some sort of defective group?
https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Familie...-Children-Affects-Brain-And-Behavior-045.aspx
Now there is also evidence that all those fireworks white people come to the cities to watch leads to chemical fallout that also enters into the water of these cities, also cause problems in children.
Ignoring all these facts and victim blaming is the racism.
TrippleDip
Well-Known Member
I'm going to miss a bunch of stuff rn because I am at work, but just because the school system is one of the best in the world and just because 99% of student programs do what they intend to do - help the child - doesn't mean that some minority of school programs might actually hurt the majority of children.
There are x spots per year in an educational institution. If you give preferential treatment to african americans but not indonesians then there will less spots that are divied up using meritocratic methods, thus it is harder for the indonesian to go to the school and this ultimately hurts them.
You don't get it.. the programs I listed: aptitude testing, streaming, whole word pronunciation hurt the majority of the students no matter what their race. These educational arguments have NOTHING to do with race. Implemented in an all white school they will bring the majority of white students rate of literacy development down. Implemented in a black or mixed school it will have the exact same effect. This is not conjecture this is widely studied and is based in our biological roots. How do children start talking? The make individual syllables - sounds and try to sound out and copy what their elders do, this is phonics in a nutshell. Trying to go against biology sucks for the majority of people but does help a select few.
Facts. But some people do have to be punished and segregated from society unfortunately. And the question is of the greater good, maybe one more kid graduates but 5 drop out due to the teacher having to spend all their time with that one person with learning disabilities. Again, no race, learning disabilities are a human trait, sucks for some people but it is reality.
Where is the gang violence in London or Tokyo? And the question is not why it exists but how can we get out of this situation.
Racism means they did it BECAUSE of race. I doubt many of these cops are self loathers. I agree with your second point though and add police (and citizens) can be shitty people no matter their race.
Trump is a buffoon you have no argument from me.
Just going to say apart from race entirely, the people that live in these cities vote for their policies. It's good that lead is getting a look at, but they chose other things over replacing pipes via elected officials.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
'hurt the majority of children' is a flat out lie. Just because you say something does not make it true.
Still reading, but that has to be said. What you are doing here is the same bullshit that Trump does when he just makes shit up on the fly to lie to us. He has his minions do it to us too:
These are the things that kill conversations. Are you so packed full of racist lies that you actually believe that 'majority of children' are 'hurt' by their schools?
That is bullshit, those schools are still working hard to teach every one of their students. And yes they can't get to them all because of severe underfunding, longtime racist laws and practices that push them to teach in a very unproductive environment, and the current 'not-rasict but,' racism that ignores the fact that we have screwed our minority communities chances at achieving the American dream of a nice life in the middle class and pretend that somehow it the actual racism is providing these communities what they need directly to help their children to have the same opportunities that white, middle and wealthy class American citizens have always have access to.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Are you talking about at a university or college? How many thousands of schools do you think we have in the United States. Never mind:
There are plenty of schools for these kids to get into, any particular campus trying to give opportunities to broaden the exposure their students have to different parts of our society while simultaneously helping out those communities qualified children to attend their schools, is not going to hurt any other would-be students chances at gaining their degrees.
You need to start posting evidence, because I am not chasing my tail to try to find whatever it is that you are trying to push here. This makes no sense what you wrote. You start to play armchair linguistic expert without actually providing anything that actually provides context you then use to push it to attacking our school systems.
And after you pulled that bullshit about hurting most our children, I can no longer just take what you say at face value.
Yeah, but unfortunately only one demographic has been deciding who 'should be punished and segregated', and the Wealthy White Heterosexual Male Only agenda has been proven to suck hard at this in America (and the rest of the world).
You pretending like every bit of what you are assuming is the truth, is directly about race with the discussion we are having.
Do you have any understanding of the suppression of knowledge in historical context in America? Because it really seems like everything you know of it must have been fed to you by white people.
Are you fucking stupid. Or am I reading this wrong.
Because it sounds like you are saying there is no gang violence in London or Tokyo.
All my knowledge of this would actually come from what is my own unfortunate (racist) portrayal in a movie, but common sense tells me that regardless of the reality of gangs in these two cities looking like this:
I was getting at the large hispanic population in Chicago.
Not a buffoon, a racist. He is actively trying to scare lilly white women that big scary 'city-dwellers' are going to rub up on them into thinking he is a good idea. By stopping programs aimed at helping people move out of the cities in order to have more opportunities at achieving success.
That is directly showing that he is hurting minorities to use as a political ad by using racist tactics.
Are you sure about this? Have you actually looked at how the funding was set up and how it has changed in these cities over time?
When did American scientists start to ring the bell about lead? (1950's)
When did white flight start happening (1950s!).
Want to take a stab at how easy it was for black people to vote in the 1950's?
When exactly do you think they could have started to spend the millions (100's of?) to rip out all the pollution that the white people left behind in Detroit without federal help?
Racist logic... Oh wait... Anti Liberal? Anti City (post white flight)? discriminative logic leans too much on just saying shit that they think sound good, but is not actually backed up by all the facts and therefore is most of the time bullshit.
Anyways, hopefully you go back through what I wrote because I think if you really think about it and not just be reflexively trying to counter point me, you might be able to shake off all the bullshit you think you understand about these communities and how they got to where they are today.
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
@hannimal just shredded your bafflegab. Systemic and overt racism are literally killing people and you pull crap out your ass to smear on this site in order to, what? I have no idea why you are making all this shit up.
Tell you what, post something from a credentialed analyst on the subject. Your cherry picked numbers have no value.
In other words, horse shit.
For starters, rebut this. Not from your cherry picked and dodgy data but from a credentialed source written by a professional.
Institutional racism - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
As they show, systemic racism is present around the world so I suggest you just stick to the pages that apply to the US. @hannimal is holding up his end with an honest attempt to discuss with you. It would be good if you did the same but you can't because you are wrong.
TrippleDip
Well-Known Member
Is it so hard to admit that one or two programs are actually not working as intended? You are right that I have a bone to pick with the few misguided policies that are harmful, but we agree that the system is doing it's best to educate children.
Why do you keep bringing up race and politics, I am talking about what is best for the children. See
I am talking about segregating the idiots and disruptive students from the smart and productive students NO MATTER THEIR RACE. For the benefit of the hard working students no matter their race.
The first link for whole word vs phonics, from an american university
---
The Reading Wars
Phonics versus Whole Language
© Jon Reyhner, Northern Arizona University
The 2006 report, The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives on High School Dropouts, notes that the lack of student interest and engagement is the major reason for dropping out of school (given by almost half of high school dropouts). Dropouts found their classes to be boring; over two-thirds said they were not motivated to work hard in school (Bridgeland, DiIulio & Morison). On the other hand studies of effective primary teachers found them to be "massively motivating" with teachers who are "exceptionally skilled at matching their teaching to the needs of individual students" (Allington, 2002, p. 7)
[Me: Note the focus on "individual needs and not give everybody what works for some.]
Phonics is considered a "bottom up" approach where students "decode" the meaning of a text. The advantage of phonics, especially for students who come to schools with large vocabularies, is that once students get the basics down, they can go to the library and read a wide variety of children's literature.
Whole language is considered a "top down" approach where the reader constructs a personal meaning for a text based on using their prior knowledge to interpret the meaning of what they are reading.
Various approaches to reading presume that students learn differently. The phonics emphasis in reading draws heavily from behaviorist learning theory that is associated with the work of the Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner while the whole language emphasis draws from constructivist learning theory and the work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky.
Behaviorist learning theory is based on studies of animal behaviors where animals such as pigeons learned to do tasks when they received rewards and extinguished (stopped) behaviors that were not rewarded or were punished.
Constructivist learning theory is based on the idea that children learn by connecting new knowledge to previously learned knowledge. The term is a building metaphor that includes students using scaffolding to organize new information. If children cannot connect new knowledge to old knowledge in a meaningful way, they may with difficulty memorize it (rote learning), but they will not have a real understanding of what they are learning.
It is argued that standard phonics approaches can be unsuccessful for [students that come from low literacy households].
---
So read, it should be clear that instead of trying to create high literacy households within poorer communities we have decided to inhibit the ability of children from high literacy households to read (unless their parents give them phonics at home.). This (and having the teachers tutor the stupidest students and or deal with the most disruptive instead of focussing on engaging the class is directly related to feeling unchallenged and dropping out / nit pursuing higher education.
Also please see how a 10 minute disruption in each class resultd in more than an entire years worth of lost knowledge. 10 minutes x 5 courses x 5 days x 35 weeks x 4 years is fuckload of lost learning.
Edit: In case it's not clear I removed paragraphs from the exerpt above. Read the whole thing, it's worth it.
Edit 2: The linked article "why kids drop out" is also worth reading, note their five top reasons include "spent time with people not interested in school" and "too much freedom and not enough rules in my life".
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TrippleDip
Well-Known Member
Unlike the previous post, this one does address racial and political issues.
The path to juvie begins with gang grooming and lack of fathers/male role models etc. Yes I will concede that some did not break laws that hurt anyone (like smoking a j) but many also took plea deals from more serious shit.
Many cities have ten times the homice rate eg tokyo at 1 per 100k and st louis at 10 per 100k, but it's population density right? Delhi, a massive city with insane poverty and the same institutionallized racism (caste system is arguably worse and occured for 10 times as long as slavery and was anti-white - designed to prevent aryan stock from mixing with dravidian) has well under 20% of the robberies per capita vs nyc. 110 per 100k in nyc vs 20 per 100k in dehli. Oh, did I mention you can still own an indentured slave in india?
TrippleDip
Well-Known Member
So your explanation for the disproportionate number of hispanic criminals is the racist black people that run the police there? Smh. How come all these black people aren't arresting white people and patrolling their neighbourhoods more? Maybe they want the crime out of their own neighbourhoods.
Is racist. So is gentrification. Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. You will find racism everywhere if that's the colour of your glasses.
I would love to see your facts and anything that is not baseless conjecture and stating correlation is causation. Yada yada, the decrease in pirates is responsible for global warming. Look at the graphs, look at when it started. I promise you if we just put 200,000 pirate ships back in the ocean this disaster can be averted.
Promise I will. Understand one thing though. I agree with you about institutional racism being partly to blame for where we are. We just seem to disagree (slightly) on the best way forward. I am saying that more racist policies are no way to end racism and you are saying that enacting more racist policies will end racism faster somehow. What's your plan for ending all these racist programs once equity has been reached?
Edit: another small nitpick now that we are talking facts. Your own post shows 75% of the population having 50% of the welfare recipients. This is lower per capita than blacks or hispanics, by your own posting. Now lets see how much each one gets. I would bet the black welfare recipients received, on average, more than the white welfare recipients, based solely on household income distributions. Even ignoring the dollar amount and just looking at per capita recipients, how can you claim in good faith that white people get more welfare?
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hanimmal
Well-Known Member
I started going into response mode and decided it is time to take a step back with you man.
I will definantly read everything you wrote and respond, but I started looking at that guy who wrote what you referenced:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...uage_and_culture_in_American_Indian_education
The papers this dude wrote are interesting, but not actually dealing the different problems of high population minority communities.
I then backtracked and started to read up on this whole 'bottom up' stuff you were talking about and found out it is just a teaching method, and that there are also others out there.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/educ...ding-wars-debate-are-wrong-proposed-solution/
And realized:
Sorry for being flippant, but you are I think using a out of context, but who knows I am not an expert in this field.
I think if we take a step back we can take stock of the things we agree on.
One thing that I really hope you can agree on, is that we can go back and forth about different teaching theories, but at the end of the day maybe it is more important for our government to get rid of things actively poisoning our children like lead exposure (which is proven to do all the things you are certain have to do kids not getting as good of an education as they can) than worrying if instead of that we should instead focus things like 'phonics' in the cities we haven't cleaned up, which just happen to be the nations highest minority communities.
Eventually we should look back and see how this conversation started, and try to re-understand each other.
It gets hard online to know if people are genuine or just trolling, and if you are genuine I am sure you are pretty dialed into this conversation too, and there is no reason to burn out on it, that is when trolling really starts to have a impact in your real life.
There is no reason for that to happen. It is a good conversation and I am not going anywhere anytime soon.
TrippleDip
Well-Known Member
man, now I feel kinda bad for the slightly backhanded insults / condescension in the following posts. As I said before I will go back over it and think about what you said. Some things need time to process and be removed from emotion.
I think the part about it being hard to tell if someone's trolling relates in part for the need for inflammatory statements a lot of the time in order to even get the attention of someone with a differing view. People like their hugboxes damnit.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...s-more-than-93000-remain-site-research-shows/
Discussion of QAnon has proven resilient on Twitter despite its takedown of 7,000 accounts in July, with tens of thousands of accounts continuing to tout the notorious conspiracy theory and, in some cases, quote directly from its purported leader, the shadowy figure “Q.”
More than 93,000 active accounts have references to QAnon in their Twitter profiles, and their overall rate of posting has increased, according to new research from Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington. It also found that while the use of traditional QAnon hashtags has declined in the 10 weeks since Twitter’s enforcement action, there has been a surge in alternatives with spelling and other variations that leave their meaning clear to followers.
In its broad strokes, these findings do not deviate significantly from Twitter’s public portrayals of the effects of its move against QAnon, which came after more than 2 1/2 years of mounting evidenceabout the hateful, violent nature of the conspiracy theory and its penchant for sparking real-world crimes. The House of Representatives voted Friday to condemn QAnon.
Twitter has said it sought to eliminate accounts committing violations against its rules on harassment, hate speech and incitement to violence but also wanted to allow QAnon supporters to continue operating on the platform — albeit with new restrictions — so long as they followed platform policies. Overall, the company says its action caused discussion of the conspiracy theory to fall by more than half.
The researchers, however, found troubling evidence that Twitter has not yet done enough and that the conspiracy theory continues to “persist and expand” on the site, said Daniel J. Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator who lead the review of the CIA’s torture program, now president of Advance Democracy.
As QAnon grew, Facebook and Twitter missed years of warning signs about the conspiracy theory’s violent nature
Some of the surviving accounts have more than 100,000 followers each and and have worked to co-opt hashtags not previously affiliated with the movement, including #savethechildren and #inittogether, which started as a call for unity in facing the covid-19 pandemic before being adopted by
QAnon supporters, the report found. Followers of the conspiracy theory have consistently downplayed the public health crisis and spread disinformation about its origins, potential remedies and the likely safety risks of a future vaccine against it.
“The QAnon ideology undermines trust in public institutions and sows societal divisions through hate speech and the spread of unfounded conspiracy theories,” said Jones. “Addressing this threat is going to require more robust action by the social media platforms, but more importantly, it’s going to require that those elected officials sitting silently on the sidelines stand up and address this threat to our democracy.”
Twitter announced “a strong enforcement action” on July 21, citing “behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm.” Sanctions included the removal of the 7,000 accounts and efforts to restrict the amplification of 150,000 others active in spreading QAnon content, by preventing the accounts from appearing in recommendations or the “trending” module that can bring such content to wider audiences. Facebook, YouTube and Reddit also have acted against QAnon.
“We aim to be iterative and transparent in our approach, and we recognize we cannot review every Tweet containing a falsehood,” said Twitter spokeswoman Lauren Alexander. “That’s why, under this expansive framework, we noted that we will prioritize the removal of content that has the greatest potential for harm.”
Independent researchers have said the enforcement actions by the mainstream platform came late but at least curbed the spread of QAnon content to new users.
“They used a scalpel not a chain saw,” said Darren Linvill, a Clemson University associate professor of communication who studies Twitter. “If they’d used a chainsaw, they would have lost a lot of users” while also further inflaming allegations that the company was biased against conservative voices.
QAnon, which started spreading on social media in 2017, claims falsely that Democrats and Hollywood celebrities rape and eat children and that they also are working to subvert the constitution to take over the country. The supposed leader, Q, is described as an anonymous Trump administration official with a top-secret clearance, and Trump himself is portrayed as secretly battling a nefarious “deep-state cabal” trying to protect the pedophiles.
The Advance Democracy report, based on research using a social-media analytics tool from Zygnal Labs, found a steep decline in the use of several traditional hashtags for QAnon, such as #qanon, #deepstate, #qarmy and #wwg1wga, which stands for “Where We Go One, We Go All,” a common oath of allegiance to the conspiracy theory’s tenets. These hashtags collectively fell from about 80,000 uses per day before Twitter’s enforcement action to about 20,000 per day after.
Alternative hashtags, such as #Q17, #17Anon and #CueAnon, meanwhile, surged in the same time frame but still reached much lower numbers overall, topping out at less than 2,000 a day. The researchers also found, among QAnon supporters, frequent invitations to “follow me on” accounts on other platforms, such as Parler and Gab, which are popular with conservatives and feature minimal content moderation.
The report also listed numerous accounts that have QAnon content in their profiles and yet have followings larger than 100,000 users.
One such account, @QAnon76, which has 554,000 followers, made a series of changes to its profile, dropping the term WWG1WGA, while still posting content related to the conspiracy theory, according to archived versions of the account. A few weeks later, the account updated its profile again, adding a new signifier that had the same meaning but may have been harder for automatic enforcement systems to detect, “W|W|G|1|W|G|A.” Soon the account got a new name too: “Midnight Rider” followed by three stars. The account does not list contact information and did not reply to a tweet seeking comment.
Discussion of QAnon has proven resilient on Twitter despite its takedown of 7,000 accounts in July, with tens of thousands of accounts continuing to tout the notorious conspiracy theory and, in some cases, quote directly from its purported leader, the shadowy figure “Q.”
More than 93,000 active accounts have references to QAnon in their Twitter profiles, and their overall rate of posting has increased, according to new research from Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington. It also found that while the use of traditional QAnon hashtags has declined in the 10 weeks since Twitter’s enforcement action, there has been a surge in alternatives with spelling and other variations that leave their meaning clear to followers.
In its broad strokes, these findings do not deviate significantly from Twitter’s public portrayals of the effects of its move against QAnon, which came after more than 2 1/2 years of mounting evidenceabout the hateful, violent nature of the conspiracy theory and its penchant for sparking real-world crimes. The House of Representatives voted Friday to condemn QAnon.
Twitter has said it sought to eliminate accounts committing violations against its rules on harassment, hate speech and incitement to violence but also wanted to allow QAnon supporters to continue operating on the platform — albeit with new restrictions — so long as they followed platform policies. Overall, the company says its action caused discussion of the conspiracy theory to fall by more than half.
The researchers, however, found troubling evidence that Twitter has not yet done enough and that the conspiracy theory continues to “persist and expand” on the site, said Daniel J. Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator who lead the review of the CIA’s torture program, now president of Advance Democracy.
As QAnon grew, Facebook and Twitter missed years of warning signs about the conspiracy theory’s violent nature
Some of the surviving accounts have more than 100,000 followers each and and have worked to co-opt hashtags not previously affiliated with the movement, including #savethechildren and #inittogether, which started as a call for unity in facing the covid-19 pandemic before being adopted by
QAnon supporters, the report found. Followers of the conspiracy theory have consistently downplayed the public health crisis and spread disinformation about its origins, potential remedies and the likely safety risks of a future vaccine against it.
“The QAnon ideology undermines trust in public institutions and sows societal divisions through hate speech and the spread of unfounded conspiracy theories,” said Jones. “Addressing this threat is going to require more robust action by the social media platforms, but more importantly, it’s going to require that those elected officials sitting silently on the sidelines stand up and address this threat to our democracy.”
Twitter announced “a strong enforcement action” on July 21, citing “behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm.” Sanctions included the removal of the 7,000 accounts and efforts to restrict the amplification of 150,000 others active in spreading QAnon content, by preventing the accounts from appearing in recommendations or the “trending” module that can bring such content to wider audiences. Facebook, YouTube and Reddit also have acted against QAnon.
“We aim to be iterative and transparent in our approach, and we recognize we cannot review every Tweet containing a falsehood,” said Twitter spokeswoman Lauren Alexander. “That’s why, under this expansive framework, we noted that we will prioritize the removal of content that has the greatest potential for harm.”
Independent researchers have said the enforcement actions by the mainstream platform came late but at least curbed the spread of QAnon content to new users.
“They used a scalpel not a chain saw,” said Darren Linvill, a Clemson University associate professor of communication who studies Twitter. “If they’d used a chainsaw, they would have lost a lot of users” while also further inflaming allegations that the company was biased against conservative voices.
QAnon, which started spreading on social media in 2017, claims falsely that Democrats and Hollywood celebrities rape and eat children and that they also are working to subvert the constitution to take over the country. The supposed leader, Q, is described as an anonymous Trump administration official with a top-secret clearance, and Trump himself is portrayed as secretly battling a nefarious “deep-state cabal” trying to protect the pedophiles.
The Advance Democracy report, based on research using a social-media analytics tool from Zygnal Labs, found a steep decline in the use of several traditional hashtags for QAnon, such as #qanon, #deepstate, #qarmy and #wwg1wga, which stands for “Where We Go One, We Go All,” a common oath of allegiance to the conspiracy theory’s tenets. These hashtags collectively fell from about 80,000 uses per day before Twitter’s enforcement action to about 20,000 per day after.
Alternative hashtags, such as #Q17, #17Anon and #CueAnon, meanwhile, surged in the same time frame but still reached much lower numbers overall, topping out at less than 2,000 a day. The researchers also found, among QAnon supporters, frequent invitations to “follow me on” accounts on other platforms, such as Parler and Gab, which are popular with conservatives and feature minimal content moderation.
The report also listed numerous accounts that have QAnon content in their profiles and yet have followings larger than 100,000 users.
One such account, @QAnon76, which has 554,000 followers, made a series of changes to its profile, dropping the term WWG1WGA, while still posting content related to the conspiracy theory, according to archived versions of the account. A few weeks later, the account updated its profile again, adding a new signifier that had the same meaning but may have been harder for automatic enforcement systems to detect, “W|W|G|1|W|G|A.” Soon the account got a new name too: “Midnight Rider” followed by three stars. The account does not list contact information and did not reply to a tweet seeking comment.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-media-archive-3859f7e6d146a7710612ce7160efbb63
Facebook said it will ban groups that openly support QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that paints President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and “deep state” government officials.
The company said Tuesday that it will remove Facebook pages, groups and Instagram accounts for “representing QAnon” — even if they don’t promote violence. The social network said it will consider a variety of factors to decide if a group meets its criteria for a ban, including its name, the biography or “about” section of the page, and discussions within the page, group or Instagram account.
Mentions of QAnon in a group focused on a different subject won’t necessarily lead to a ban, Facebook said. Administrators of banned groups will have their personal accounts disabled as well.
Less than two months ago, Facebook said it would stop promoting the group and its adherents, although it faltered with spotty enforcement. It said it would only remove QAnon groups if they promote violence. That is no longer the case.
The company said it started to enforce the policy Tuesday but cautioned that it “will take time and will continue in the coming days and weeks.”
Critics called it a much-needed, though belated, move by Facebook.
“Now that they have announced that they will treat the QAnon ideology like the very real threat that it is, we hope that they will follow up with some modicum of evidence showing how the ban is being enforced and whether it is fully effective,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League and one of the founders of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which organized a Facebook boycott by advertisers.
But the conspiracy theory has already seeped into mainstream politics. Several Republican running for Congress this year are QAnon-friendly.
By the time Facebook and other social media companies began enforcing — however limited — policies against QAnon, critics said it was largely too late. Reddit, which began banning QAnon groups in 2018, was well ahead, and to date it has largely avoided having a notable QAnon presence on its platform.
“We’ve seen several issues that led to today’s update,” Facebook said in a blog post. “While we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups, which diverted attention of local officials from fighting the fires and protecting the public.”
Twitter did not immediately respond to a message for comment on Tuesday.
Also on Tuesday, Citigroup Inc. reportedly fired a manager in its technology department after an investigation found that he operated a prominent website dedicated to QAnon. According to Bloomberg, Jason Gelinas had been placed on paid leave after he was identified on Sept. 10 by a fact-checking site as the operator of the website QMap.pub and its associated mobile apps.
In a statement, Citi confirmed that Gelinas is no longer with the company and added that employees are required to abide by its code of conduct. This includes disclosing and obtaining permission for outside business activity.
Facebook said it will ban groups that openly support QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that paints President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and “deep state” government officials.
The company said Tuesday that it will remove Facebook pages, groups and Instagram accounts for “representing QAnon” — even if they don’t promote violence. The social network said it will consider a variety of factors to decide if a group meets its criteria for a ban, including its name, the biography or “about” section of the page, and discussions within the page, group or Instagram account.
Mentions of QAnon in a group focused on a different subject won’t necessarily lead to a ban, Facebook said. Administrators of banned groups will have their personal accounts disabled as well.
Less than two months ago, Facebook said it would stop promoting the group and its adherents, although it faltered with spotty enforcement. It said it would only remove QAnon groups if they promote violence. That is no longer the case.
The company said it started to enforce the policy Tuesday but cautioned that it “will take time and will continue in the coming days and weeks.”
Critics called it a much-needed, though belated, move by Facebook.
“Now that they have announced that they will treat the QAnon ideology like the very real threat that it is, we hope that they will follow up with some modicum of evidence showing how the ban is being enforced and whether it is fully effective,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League and one of the founders of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which organized a Facebook boycott by advertisers.
But the conspiracy theory has already seeped into mainstream politics. Several Republican running for Congress this year are QAnon-friendly.
By the time Facebook and other social media companies began enforcing — however limited — policies against QAnon, critics said it was largely too late. Reddit, which began banning QAnon groups in 2018, was well ahead, and to date it has largely avoided having a notable QAnon presence on its platform.
“We’ve seen several issues that led to today’s update,” Facebook said in a blog post. “While we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups, which diverted attention of local officials from fighting the fires and protecting the public.”
Twitter did not immediately respond to a message for comment on Tuesday.
Also on Tuesday, Citigroup Inc. reportedly fired a manager in its technology department after an investigation found that he operated a prominent website dedicated to QAnon. According to Bloomberg, Jason Gelinas had been placed on paid leave after he was identified on Sept. 10 by a fact-checking site as the operator of the website QMap.pub and its associated mobile apps.
In a statement, Citi confirmed that Gelinas is no longer with the company and added that employees are required to abide by its code of conduct. This includes disclosing and obtaining permission for outside business activity.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...al-qanon-marjorie-greene-georgia/?arc404=true
Continues:There was a time when Kevin Van Ausdal had not yet been called a “loser” and “a disgrace” and hustled out of Georgia. He had not yet punched a wall, or been labeled a “communist,” or a person “who’d probably cry like a baby if you put a gun in his face.” He did not yet know who was going to be the Republican nominee for Congress in his conservative district in northwestern Georgia: the well-known local neurosurgeon, or the woman he knew vaguely as a person who had openly promoted conspiracies including something about a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
Anything still seemed possible in the spring of 2020, including the notion that he, Kevin Van Ausdal, a 35-year-old political novice who wanted to “bring civility back to Washington” might have a shot at becoming a U.S. congressman.
So one day in March, he drove his Honda to the gold-domed state capitol in Atlanta, used his IRS refund to pay the $5,220 filing fee and became the only Democrat running for a House seat in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, which Donald Trump won by 27 points in the 2016 presidential election.
He hired a local campaign manager named Vinny Olsziewski, who had handled school board races and a couple of congressionals.
“Vote for Kevin! He’s a regular dude!!” one person posted on Kevin’s campaign Facebook page.
“We need earnest people in Washington to solve real problems — not conspiracy nuts!” someone else wrote.
“America needs you Kevin!!” another person wrote.
As more people began following the campaign, Vinny realized he was going to need help, so he hired a deputy campaign manager named Ruth Demeter. He brought in a national consultant named Michael McGraw, whose firm specialized in long-shot bids, and now the new team was on a video call laying out a revised strategy to present to Kevin.
“Okay, first, an update on the current state of the race. Last night Marjorie went on a posting spree,” Michael said. “George Soros is behind a conspiracy to destroy America. The media is the enemy. You name it. She is not toning anything down. Any questions on that?”
He noted that out of roughly 413,000 registered voters in the 14th District, Greene’s winning vote total was less than 44,000, and that “we’re not seeing her promoted by Republican Party networks we’re used to.” He mentioned a political operative to whom Greene had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, someone who has described himself as a “hard-charging and controversial conservative consultant.” He said Greene had expressed support for the 17-year-old charged with killing two people during protests in Kenosha, Wis., calling the case the “first stage” of a new “Civil War.” And he said that while Greene was now distancing herself from QAnon, she had the support of QAnon social media groups as well as an array of local gun groups including one called the Georgia III % Martyrs.
There was a pause.
“Any questions on that?” Michael said, then explained what voters needed from Kevin:
“They want Kevin to fight. What they are looking for is a forceful response saying, ‘This is wrong. This is very wrong. This is horrifying. And we are not going to sit by and just let this happen.’ ”
They decided Kevin would have to address Greene directly in a strong video statement that would signal that the campaign was no longer a homespun fife-and-drum outfit but a major operation to defeat a candidate whose views they would call out as “extremist.”
“We need to be sure Kevin is comfortable with where we’re going,” Vinny said. “Ruth?”
“We’ve got to do it,” Ruth said.
“Okay,” said Vinny, and later that afternoon, they video-called Kevin, who listened as Michael explained: “We have to dramatically step up our language. I know this is not the place you’d like to be, but it’s the place we’re in now.”
Kevin nodded.
No one on the team was thrilled with where all this was heading. Vinny was used to working on campaigns that focused on issues, not name-calling.
Michael felt that “far too many campaigns aren’t talking about governing but just telling you who to be mad at.” Ruth was a Canadian American who felt ill watching videos of Greene’s speeches, and even more ill seeing her neighbors in the audience applauding.
But they all agreed that ignoring Greene was not an option, so they began drafting the statement and emailing versions to Kevin, who kept suggesting revisions that made it softer, thinking he had made it harsher.
“He needs to be ready,” Vinny told Ruth on one of their daily video calls.
“I don’t know what it’s going to take to get him to use the kind of language we need him to use,” Ruth told Vinny. “It’s a very big shift for him.”
“How’s it going?” she said to Kevin on Day 21 of the campaign, trying to sound upbeat as they began to rehearse the draft statement.
Kevin said he had been trying to stay relaxed. He had a cold.
“Okay, I know you’re not feeling well, but the good news is, sometimes when you need to push through a barrier, the best time to do that is when you’re sick, because your defenses are down,” Ruth said. “We’re not going to take you anywhere horrible.”
“We’re good,” Kevin said.
“Okay, I want you to breathe deeply,” Ruth began. “A lot of your tonality will have to go down. There will be times when you’re speaking about what Marjorie has done and you’ll be angry. You’ll need to be angry.”
More often in his life, Kevin could not afford to be angry. His voice tended to swing up, a tone he found helpful in defusing conflicts in his job at a financial services company, which had enabled his first real stability as an adult. He’d only recently bought the tan split-level where he lived with his wife and 1-year-old daughter. Now it had a “Save the American Dream” sign in the flower bed by the mailbox, one of the stories of his rise into the middle class he’d imagined telling voters about when he first started running.
Another story was about the time he learned to install plumbing so that he and his wife could have running water in their trailer. Another was about finishing his college degree, working at an amusement park and selling his plasma for extra money to pay bills.
He was going to talk about growing up in a town outside Gary, Ind., where his mother was a municipal clerk and he’d worked as a page in the state legislature, feeling inspired by the marble and soaring rotunda and noticing how people would call a representative’s office for help solving some problem, which was how he got his idea of what politics could be, all of which was beginning to feel like long ago.
“So,” Ruth continued. “Talk to me about the things about Marjorie that are dangerous and embarrassing and appear to disregard the 14th District.”
“Okay, well, it’s really just the fearmongering?” Kevin said. There was the upswing, but Ruth let him go on. “It’s defining us. I don’t think I ever told you this, but I said to a preacher early on, you know, Jesus wants us to come together and love each other regardless of our beliefs. So when we’re fanning the flames of fear and violence — ”
“Okay,” Ruth interjected. “I love ‘fanning the flames of fear.’ But Kevin, I’m going to tell you something right now that’s really hard. This statement is about reaching people in the middle, and a lot of them are Republicans. For them, the language about love and peace is bad, or just not in their wheelhouse. … It’s got to be, ‘This has got to stop. I’m calling this out.’ ”
“Okay,” Kevin said.
“Try that ‘Enough is enough’ line,” Ruth said.
“Enough is enough — wait,” Kevin said, then tried again. “Enough is enough.”
“Oh, I love that,” Ruth said.
“I’m not going to act like this is a normal election,” he continued.
“Oh, that’s really good,” Ruth said.
“Enough is enough” Kevin repeated over and over, practicing the statement his team wanted to post as soon as possible to his 1,500 Facebook followers, and meanwhile, Greene had posted a new Facebook video for her 100,000 followers.
“We have had enough,” she began, launching a tirade against “the radical left” and “Marxist BLM” and “these thugs, these domestic terrorists, these anarchists, these insurrectionists” and the Democrats’ “globalist plans, their open-border plans, their take your guns away plans, their abortion kill babies up to birth and maybe even afterwards plans.” She urged people to enter a raffle to win the AR-15 she’d used in her campaign ad because “socialism does not belong in America” and “we need to blow it away.” And then, for the first time, she addressed Kevin.
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