Facebook Reinstates Trump Because There Is No Justice
It turns out advertising revenue based on the shrieking of a whiny fascist dilettante is the sole priority at Meta and Twitter.
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – Just in case you needed another reason to despise the social media platforms, Donald Trump’s accounts on both Facebook and Instagram will be reinstated, according to an exclusive report by Axios.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said that Trump’s accounts will return once coders have a chance to implement some guardrails to prevent the one term loser of the 2020 election from sparking another invasion of the Capitol. These guardrails include something called “crisis policy protocol.” Clegg said, "If he now posts further violating content, that content will be removed, of course, and he could be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation."
The thing is, 1) unless it’s taken down seconds after posting, it’ll be out there long enough to make at least one lap around the globe, and 2) everything Trump says is damaging to the stability of democracy. Everything.
He doesn’t need to outright scream, “Invade the Capitol now!” It’s his very presence as a public figure that inflicts significant damage to the republic – his routinely screwy, ungainly, destructive meltdowns aimed at institutions and elections alike – while simultaneously inciting his extremist followers to activate. He’ll continue to indoctrinate feeble-minded Americans into his fascist cult of impressionable, idiocratic, disruption-addicted weirdos, and Meta will be a proud sponsor of every misspelled word.
My hunch is that unless he gives specific instructions to engage in domestic terrorism or another insurrection, his rants will be permitted by Meta’s Oversight Board. In fact, Facebook and Instagram will absolutely allow Trump to boost his reach and income through platform-wide advertising.
But perhaps the bigger injustice here is the fact that he’s been reinstated at all. How do we interpret this? If you incite an insurrection – a deadly invasion and occupation of Congress with the express intent of overthrowing a democratic election – you can always return to the warm embrace of Facebook, Instagram, and thanks to Elon Musk, Twitter.
Trump and his inner circle know that America isn’t equipped to properly deal with a berzerker mad man. We don’t have the values or proper infrastructure to hold an ex-president accountable, and we surely aren’t endowed with the mechanisms to deal with a political leader who ordered his citizen militia to invade Congress. We’re too timid. We’re too concerned about rocking the boat even though, breaking news, Trump is actively bashing holes in the boat. And so he continues to receive delicate slaps on his soft, pink, hairless wrist – most recently by Meta – when, instead, he needs to be removed from public circulation before the rebellion he’s inciting damages the republic beyond repair.
Making matters worse, we all know regular people who permanently lost their Meta accounts for alleged terms of service violations that aren’t anywhere in the same universe as inciting an insurrection. Kimberley Johnson, my girlfriend and host of the Start Me Up podcast, permanently lost all of her Facebook accounts because, shock horror, she shared the same articles across all of her pages. Facebook called it spamming and with the flip of a switch, nearly a decade of curating friendships, photos, articles, and memes vanished – years and years of daily work that only improved Facebook and augmented both its visibility and ad revenue. Gone forever.
Countless other liberal pages were summarily nuked after the 2016 election, thanks to Facebook’s massive overcorrection for its own corruption and incompetence – taking Rubles in exchange for pro-Trump Russian disinformation. In other words, pro-Trump disinformation led to the permanent suspension of hundreds of popular liberal pages.
And yet Trump, whose violations are, by any reasonable assessment, galactically worse than alleged “spamming” or merely discussing liberal politics, is reinstated after a minor two year hiatus. Turns out advertising revenue based on the shrieking of a whiny fascist dilettante is the sole priority at Meta and Twitter. But at least we know where their loyalties are, and democracy isn’t one of them.
Maybe there’s an upside, though. Maybe if more swing voters see Trump’s meltdowns up close again after two years of banishment from social media, it’ll actually encourage more of them to rise up against his flailing authoritarianism. After all, Trump always makes things worse for Trump, therefore while the risk of free range Trumpism is big, the best argument against Trump could end up being more Trump. But that’s a huge risk given the autocratic downsides.
Read the latest for Banter Members:
Matt Taibbi, Clown Journalist
By feeding far Right fantasies, Taibbi is handing power to a MAGA infected Republican Party hell bent on revenge.
by Ben Cohen
If you believe Matt Taibbi, the latest #TwitterFiles dump proves definitively that the Russia collusion story was a Democratic conspiracy theory. Furthermore, Democrats and mainstream media outlets need a “truth and reconciliation” moment to come to terms with the damage they did to the country in the wake of Trump’s election in 2016.
Here was Taibbi last week demanding Hillary Clinton “answer questions” about her role in “manufacturing a public panic”:
You might note that in the clip Clinton doesn’t actually say she supports the White House’s position, or anything about “blocking the oversight powers of congress”, but more on that later.
The alternate reality Taibbi has constructed for his readers is metastasizing rapidly in the wake of Elon Musk’s latest Twitter leak. He isn’t just reaching his army of Substack followers, but millions of Twitter users now convinced centrist liberals are knee deep in a shadowy conspiracy to keep them confused and ignorant. To convince the public of this Democrat/Deep State/Mainstream Media collusion, Taibbi has been telling his readers that the evidence they have seen is not the evidence they have seen. In fact, the evidence Matt Taibbi has published on his Twitter account isn’t what you think it is either — it is what Matt Taibbi says it is: a conspiracy of epic proportions, so serious he has staked his entire career on proving it.
If you look carefully at his reporting on the latest Twitter Files leak, you will see evidence of a journalist who hasn’t just lost his way, but one who has forgotten everything about his profession…
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Your Handy Guide To Surviving The 2023 Republican Economic Apocalypse
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“After all, Trump always makes things worse for Trump”
You keep saying that, but I can’t help but continue to point out that he hasn’t yet really paid any significant penalty. As the majority of your article points out, after calling for an insurrection he’s back on Facebook.
Bob, the way you lay things out never ceases to hit the spot. Social media can be history in the making for authors and also the bane of our lives.