Avengers: Infinity War just set the record for the biggest movie opening ever. But even Avengers have haters. And from time to time, we like to shine a white-hot light on the trolls. Here’s a new all Avengers edition of #MeanTweets featuring Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Mackie, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Winston Duke, Elizabeth Olsen, Don Cheadle, Dave Bautista, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Rudd, Karen Gillan, Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman, Chris Pratt & Chris Evans.
Sacha Baron Cohen denounced tech giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google. Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, and Mark Thompson, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. MORE TYT: https://tyt.com/trial
07:19
no no I understand that but guys what
I’m afraid of is if you take that
argument to its logical extreme all you’re gonna do is go back to the establishment media so you’re gonna put in so many guardrails that we’re gonna go back to the era of acceptable thought
07:33
The Silicon Six:
Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook
Larry Page: Alphabet
Sergey Brin: Alphabel
Sundar Pichai: Google
Susan Wojcicki: YouTube
Jack Dorsey: Twitter
08:06
Facebook Zuckerberg tried to portray
this whole issue as choices around free
expression that is ludicrous this is not
about limiting anyone’s free speech this
is about giving people including some of
the most reprehensible people on earth
the biggest platform in history to reach
a third of the planet freedom of speech
is not freedom of reach Mark Zuckerberg
seemed to equate regulation of companies
like his to the actions of the most
repressive societies incredible this
from one of the six people who decide
what information so much of the world
sees
Zuka burger t’set facebook sundar pichai
at google at its parent company alphabet
Larry Page and Sergey Brin Bryn’s
ex-sister-in-law Susan Wojcicki at
YouTube and Jack Dorsey at Twitter the
silicon six all billionaires all
Americans who care more about boosting
their share price than about protecting
democracy this this is ideological
imperialism six unelected individuals in
Silicon Valley imposing their vision on
the rest of the world unaccountable to
any government and acting like their
Abarth of the reach of law it’s like
New York congresswoman is the latest politician to face lawsuit over First Amendment issues on social media
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is set to testify in Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday in support of a cause of growing importance to politicians in the internet age: .
One of Congress’s most influential voices on the progressive left, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has amassed a huge and ardent audience of fans and detractors on Twitter, with more than 5.7 million followers. Like President Trump, the freshman Democrat representing Queens and the Bronx has banned a few followers from her personal Twitter account—@AOC—and faces a First Amendment lawsuit as a result.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s case is the latest in a burgeoning number of lawsuits challenging the right of elected leaders to curate their social-media audience and censor their toughest critics. Already Mr. Trump, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, at least two governors and other local government figures face similar First Amendment lawsuits.
The Constitution restricts government regulation of private speech, protecting against the exclusion of voices in public spaces on the basis of viewpoint. Like other politicians, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez argues in court papers that her @AOC handle is essentially a private soapbox outside the control of government and fundamentally different from her official accounts, @repAOC.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is being sued by Dov Hikind, a former Democratic state assemblyman from New York City.
Mr. Hikind had repeatedly assailed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez for likening southern border detention centers to concentration camps. On July 5, replying to one of her tweets, he said: “You’re actually a liar. It’s been proven.”
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Three days later, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez blocked Mr. Hikind, who represented Brooklyn’s Borough Park before founding a nonprofit group that advocates against anti-Semitism. He sued her the next day.
“In an effort to suppress contrary views, [Ms. Ocasio-Cortez] has excluded Twitter users who have criticized AOC and her positions as a Congresswoman via ‘blocking,’” his lawsuit stated, using Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s nickname based on her initials. “This practice is unconstitutional and must end.”
Getting blocked
limited his ability to view her account,
reply to her posts and
engage in discussions with other users about her tweets.
On the internet, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez defended her social-media policy as justified self-protection.
Without referring to Mr. Hikind, she tweeted in August that she has blocked under 20 accounts “for ongoing harassment” and never censored one of her own constituents. Those users, she wrote, “do not have the right to force others to endure their harassment and abuse.”
Mr. Hikind says none of his tweets could be considered harassment.
Before making any ruling, U.S. District Judge Frederic Block scheduled a hearing Tuesday to hear directly from Ms. Ocasio-Cortez about her reasons for blocking Mr. Hikind.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s office declined to comment.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s court appearance plunges Twitter into another content controversy, on the heels of Twitter’s announcement last week that it will ban political ads.
Twitter rules point to the frequent difficulty of distinguishing between harassment and what it calls “consensual conversation.” Its user policies forbid harassment and other behavior that is intended to artificially amplify information or that “manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter.”
Twitter declined to comment. It is a member of the Internet Association, Silicon Valley’s policy and lobbying umbrella, which in a related case urged the courts against making any far-reaching ruling that could interfere with its control over customer accounts. The association didn’t take a position on the main question: whether a government official blocking Twitter users violates the First Amendment.
Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, a nonprofit that promotes free speech, disagrees with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, arguing that her @AOC account is an extension of her office, used to explain policy proposals, solicit public comment on government issues and advocate for legislation.
The most high-profile ruling came in July, when the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that Mr. Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked Twitter users who criticized the president and his policies.
“The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise‐open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees,” wrote Circuit Judge Barrington D. Parker in the 3-0 ruling.
The Justice Department, which represented Mr. Trump, had argued that @realdonaldtrump was a private platform for his own personal speech.
The First Amendment law is the same whether the defendant is Mr. Trump or Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, said constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
“There may be an argument here that it was a private account and not used for government business,” he said. “But that is a factual question and not a First Amendment issue.”
Not all plaintiffs in these cases have prevailed. A federal judge last year refused to grant an injunction against Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin who blocked hundreds of people from his Twitter and Facebook sites.
The former Trump campaign manager’s disastrous performance shows that impeachment hearings work.
The most striking moment of Corey Lewandowski’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday came near the end of a long day, when the former Trump campaign manager was surprisingly open in revealing his disdain for the truth. For much of the testimony, Lewandowski alternated between filibustering by slow reading the Mueller report and filibustering by saying he was under White House orders to be silent. He clearly delighted in stymying House Democrats, even as he used the hearing totease his potential run for Senate in New Hampshire. (During a break, Lewandowski tweeted out a link to the website for a brand new super PAC, “Stand With Corey.”)
At the end, though, came a few key moments when Lewandowski was made to all but openly confess his own lies. This critical portion of the hearing was a disaster for Lewandowski and showed why Democrats should be champing at the bit to hold more hearings like this one, rather than fulminating and hand-wringing over whether they are even taking part in an impeachment inquiry. Lewandowski’s confession should, at minimum, preclude him from ever being booked on a television news program again and in a sane world would instantly doom his nascent Senate run.
Following the frustrated questioning by House members, Barry H. Berke, a private attorney who consults for the committee, put on a cross-examination that should be mandatory viewing for every law student in the history of time. For starters, Berke got Lewandowski to admit that conversations with the president for which Donald Trump was claiming some imaginary version of privilege to block his adviser’s testimony had been recounted in detail in Lewandowski’s own book. Crucially, Berke then further pressed Lewandowski into conceding that he had overtly lied in interviews on national television about matters cited by special counsel Robert Mueller as potential episodes of obstruction of justice by Trump. Finally, Berke opened the door to new questions about whether Lewandowski was granted immunity from criminal prosecution in exchange for his Mueller testimony—questions Lewandowski refused to respond to one way or the other, and that would speak to the potential criminality of his and the president’s behavior.
It’s important, though, to focus on the lies. First, Berke asked why Lewandowski had told NBC’s Meet the Press early last year that he had not been asked to give testimony for Mueller’s investigation at a time right before his then-secret testimony actually happened. “Oh, I’m sorry. Nobody in front of Congress has ever lied to the public before. I’m sorry,” Lewandowski said sarcastically. Pressed further, he clarified, “When under oath, I have always told the truth.”
Then Berke turned to an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber from last February, in which Lewandowski said he couldn’t recall any conversation he had with Trump about Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The central obstruction episode in the Mueller report involving Lewandowski—which came straight from his testimony to the special counsel—involved the president requesting that Lewandowski deliver a message to Sessions: that he should ignore his recusal and circumscribe the investigation into Russia’s election interference and presidential obstruction of justice. Berke played the Melber clip, showing the witness asserting “I don’t ever remember the president ever asking me to get involved with Jeff Sessions or with the Department of Justice in any way, shape or form, ever.” Lewandowski had already testified, earlier in Tuesday’s hearing, that the events described in the Mueller report were true and that Trump had him take dictation about a message he should deliver to the attorney general demanding that he limit the Mueller investigation. After playing the MSNBC interview in which Lewandowski said the opposite, Berke asked, “That wasn’t true, was it?”
Lewandowski’s response was stunning: “I have no obligation to be honest to the media. Because they’re just as dishonest as anybody else.” Berke sought to clarify: “So you’re admitting, sir, you were not being truthful?” Lewandowski replied, now in full Dada: “My interview with Ari Melber … can be interpreted any way you like.”
A back-and-forth continued until Lewandowski conceded again: “I have no obligation to have a candid conversation with the media whatsoever, just like they have no obligation to cover me honestly, and they do it inaccurately all the time.” Berke pressed once more: “You are admitting that on national television youwere lying there?”
“They have been inaccurate on many occasions,” Lewandowski finally conceded, “and perhaps I was inaccurate that time.”
The main thrust of Berke’s very effective questioning was to demonstrate that Lewandowski, contrary to his testimony, knew that what Trump had asked him to do was wrong—and possibly criminal—which is why he concealed it from the public. But we should also pause, please, to just let the other key takeaway soak in: Lewandowski, on the same day he rolls out a Senate run, says in a nationally televised hearing that he has no duty to be truthful “with the media.” Someone who has been a paid contributor for CNN, then One America News Network, and who has appeared on Fox News and the Sunday talk shows seems to make a distinction between lying “to the media” and lying to the unsuspecting American public that consumes the media.
This is next-level gaslighting. The same witness who announced to the world that he owes a duty of truth under oath, but that he may lie to the press with impunity, is launching a run for high office. The person who spat the words “fake news” at his hearing, in response to questions he didn’t like, boasted about actually creating and disseminating fake news when caught in a lie. There is a special grade of nihilism required to dismiss all unflattering media stories as fake, but the nihilism of dismissing one’s own lies to the press as justified is truly astounding.
This is next-levelgaslighting.
Going forward, any news program that books Lewandowski should be shunned, unless he comes with a chyron that read “Possible Liar.” No serious news reporter should ever quote him again without noting that he testified under oath that he is untruthful in his dealings with the press. His political campaign should be covered with the presumption that every press interview may be false. Let’s be clear: Lying to the press is the same as lying to the public. The press asks questions as proxy for the public. It’s not a defense to say you don’t like the press, or the segment of the population that consumes that press, because you are now not just a public official lying to the public, but a public official admitting to and condoning lying to the public.
On Tuesday, Lewandowski did us the classic Trump era favor of saying the quiet parts aloud: He lies to the media. Hardly a surprise from the man who banned the Washington Post from Trump campaign events and was charged with battery for grabbing a Breitbart reporter at a campaign event. He’s seeking to benefit from public doubt in the honesty of the press by seeding more. No reporter should ever speak to him again, and any New Hampshire Senate run should be marked by media refusal to believe anything he says unless it happens under oath. Whatever your feelings about Lewandowski or Trump, the press will only contribute to its own diminishment if it ever quotes a self-confessed liar again. And yes, he was invited on cable news Wednesday morning. And no, it was not about him dancing with a star.
In the meantime, Democrats should also take a lesson from Lewandowski’s self-immolation and the further implication of the president in crimes. It’s not just that there is still such a thing as truth, and that truth will still out, but that impeachment hearings can indeed be quite effective—so long as a professional is doing the questioning.