class war ex email newsletter
Man oh man we had an extremely good time reading The Nation’s review of Graydon Carter’s new email-newsletter, not just because of the absolute master class in communicating disdain delivered via zingers such as:
“So deep is the newsletter’s nostalgia for an earlier golden age of print that you’d expect subscription cards to fall out of it.”
“…single-panel cartoons aimed at people who feel The New Yorker’s aren’t quite bland enough…” and
“So it’s a…blog?” (<- our new diss of choice from now on)
…but also because it raises one hell of a question: at a time when the arctic is melting and the elite seem mostly concerned with the thread count of the cashmere lining their off-shore apocalypse bunkers...what could an obnoxiously long (30 pieces of content??) “glossy” email for rich people possibly be for?
Writes Kyle Chayka: “Based on the last several issues, my guess is accelerating class war.”
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Welcome back to "Seriously?", Karen K. Ho's mini-posts on things in the media that deserve second rounds of consideration.
On Monday, Twitter published a statement disclosing a "coordinated, state-backed operation" and it had suspended 936 accounts originating from within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The social media company said "these accounts were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground."
Twitter's statement said it had identified "large clusters of accounts behaving in a coordinated manner to amplify messages related to the Hong Kong protests" and these were part of "a larger, spammy network of approximately 200,000 accounts — many created following our initial suspensions".
Twitter gets called a hell site pretty regularly for its legions of trolls, bad-faith arguments, as well as death threats and harassment against many users who are women and visible minorities. But Twitter tipped Facebook about this suspected activity. As a result, Facebook also did an investigation, which lead to the removal of five accounts, seven Pages and three Groups, many of which used the same images posted by the suspended Twitter accounts. By comparison, Facebook says it has "1.59 billion daily active users on Facebook on average for June 2019".
The company's statement about the account removals said, "We will continue monitoring and will take action if we find additional violations. [...] We’re committed to continually improving to stay ahead. That means building better technology, hiring more people and working more closely with law enforcement, security experts and other companies."
BuzzFeed News reported Twitter also now has new rules banning advertisements from state media on the platform, which includes Chinese state-run media outlets like Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, and CGTN but not taxpayer funded organizations like NPR or BBC. BuzzFeed also reported Facebook will continue to accept and run ads from Chinese state media.
Despite Facebook's massive ad campaign last year about rebuilding trust, it seems the company is still more focused on its finances over its ethics.
Other notable events in media:
Erick Erickson continues to be mad late at night about the very excellent 1619 Project published by the New York Times, which will continue to publish work about the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery.
ProPublica reporter Jessica Huseman rightfully identified a mediocre study written up by USA Today that was both paid for by an underwear company and filled with red flags, including unclear methods. The story was eventually removed, but coverage of the press release still existed on more than two dozen local news outlets, as well as the websites for The Today Show and BET.
Coverage of Trump's illogical musing about buying Greenland continued for a fifth day, even though the prime minister of Denmark has called it "an absurd discussion". Thankfully, there has also been increasing amounts of coverage of the 12.5 billion tons of ice lost near the semi-autonomous Danish territory to melting earlier this month, NASA's ongoing research, and what further ice loss could mean to coastlines around the world.