onfocus

"This week, Congress nixed $15 billion in coronavirus funding from a $1.5 trillion spending bill, which President Joe Biden then signed on Tuesday. The decision is catastrophic, and as the White House has noted, its consequences will unfurl quickly."

Republicans are trying to maximize deaths as they always have.

"They discussed how various platforms, from Twitter to TikTok and Telegram, are moderating the content coming out of Russia and Ukraine right now; the costs and benefits of Western companies pulling operations out of Russia during a period of increasing crackdown; and how the events of the last few weeks might shape our thinking about the nature and power of information operations."

Good discussion of the state of global social media moderation during an information war.

"The inflow of cash hasn’t exactly been small, either. A separate tally by the watchdog group Accountable.US shows that these companies and many of the trade groups to which they belong have donated more than $8 million to Congress’s 147 objectors since January 6."

hIsToRy wIlL ReMeMbEr

"Beginning Saturday morning, NetBlocks saw failed or heavily throttled connections across every major Russian telecom provider, including Rostelecom, MTS, Beeline, and MegaFon. Russians are still able to access Twitter through VPN services, but direct connections are restricted."

Twitter should stop carrying Russian media outlets.

"So far, even as the U.S. and U.K. have ramped up sanctions on more than 100 Russian individuals and entities, these assets of the country’s elite -- which can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars each -- have avoided any direct hit. So too have their high-end real estate holdings, which in London range from Chelsea penthouses to Highgate mansions."

Elite impunity is the problem.

"There are many reasons why the tide has turned like it has, of course. But it is hard to think of another recent instance in which one human being has defied the collective expectations for his behavior and provided such an inspiring moment of servitude to the people, clarifying the terms of the conflict through his example."

Truly inspiring how Ukraine has met Russian aggression.

"A Substack spokesperson referred the Guardian to an essay published on Wednesday by the platform’s co-founders, Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi, in which they said silencing vaccine sceptics would not work. “As we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable, our answer remains the same: we make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation,” they said."

Translation: we at Substack make too much money to be responsible citizens. Let's see how this 'hands off' approach works out for them.

“With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence,” the letter reads. “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”

Yes, cranky Neil Young, haha yes! This would remove most of what I listen to on Spotify. If Pink Floyd could get in on this they could wipe out everything. I should get our family to quit Spotify anyway.

Update: Spotify stands by their man. Everybody knows this is nowhere.

Nevertheless, I am left today primarily thinking of all who have died, as well as those suffering from long covid, and those who may suffer in the years ahead in ways we cannot predict. This could have been a moment when we decided to step outside of our divided camps and come together. That the blame for this not happening is so asymmetric along the political divide does make me very angry, but it doesn’t make me any less sad.

Dan Rather on the lack of grieving for the people the pandemic has hurt or killed.

"'This year, what's happening is off the scale,' he said. 'There's been a new billionaire created almost every day during this pandemic, meanwhile 99% of the world's population are worse off because of lockdowns, lower international trade, less international tourism, and as a result of that, 160 million more people have been pushed into poverty.'"

Awful dynamic alert: the pandemic has been very positive for a select group of individuals who have enormous influence over how our society works.

"The obvious people to blame for this gross behavior are Republicans themselves. But what's the fun in that? So, instead, far too many in the media are letting Republicans off the hook and instead fixing the blame on Democrats for somehow not doing more to make Republicans less evil."

It’s not fun for journalists to hold Republicans responsible because their bosses are Republicans.

Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties.

By the way if you want more context and detail about the January 6 Insurrection investigation, tune into Marcy Wheeler on the emptywheel weblog. There's more happening than you hear in the news. Also @emptywheel on Twitter.