For a long time I found it extremely puzzling why so many right wing men seemed to believe that there were all these gay predators out there, just waiting to “groom” otherwise impeccably straight men and boys into “the homosexual lifestyle” if they could just get a couple of drinks into their victims first:
Below is my column in the Hill on the need for a new “Church Committee” to investigate and reform the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after years of scandals involving alleged political bias. In response to criticism over its role in Twitter’s censorship system, the FBI lashed out against critics as “conspiracy theorists” spreading disinformation. However, it still refuses to supply new information on other companies, beyond Twitter, that it has paid to engage in censorship.
Twitter’s “Guidelines for law enforcement” does state under a section titled “Cost reimbursement” that “Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).” But the fact that this garnered millions from the FBI was not, as far as I can tell, known until now.
So when the Intercept’s Lee Fang kicked off the 8th installment of the Twitter files, I was not expecting much at all. After all, Fang was one of the authors of the very recent garbage Intercept story that totally misunderstood the role of CISA in the government and (falsely) argued that the government demanded Twitter censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. The fact that the evidence from the Twitter files totally disproved his earlier story should at least result in Fang questioning his understanding of these things.
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LibsOfTikTok was ‘whitelisted’.
Thus, it’s not at all surprising that Twitter clearly has a similar whitelist feature. This was actually somewhat revealed in an earlier Twitter File when Bari Weiss, thinking she was revealing unfair treatment of the @LibsOfTikTok account, actually revealed it was on a similar Xcheck style whitelist that clearly showed a flag on the account saying DO NOT TAKE ACTION ON USER WITHOUT CONSULTING an executive team.
Twitter’s most recent transparency report, published in July, shows that it took action on 4.3 million accounts in the second half of 2021 and removed 5.1 million pieces of content. You could cherry-pick a few of those decisions to fit almost any ideological narrative. Right-wing commentators aren’t the only people complaining about platforms’ actions. Some Black and LGBTQ social-media users have also objected that they’re being unfairly moderated, as automated tools take down posts containing words and phrases deemed offensive. Distrust of Big Tech’s power is universal.
Everyone is going to hate this column. Musk worshipers are going to hate it because I’m going to blaspheme against Elon Musk. Musk demonizers are going to hate it because I am not going to blaspheme against him enough. Everyone else is going to hate it because they’re sick to the gills of hearing about Musk, and Musk’s destruction of Twitter, or his salvation of Twitter, and censorship, and “hate speech,” and all that stuff.
The same State Department office that partnered with a Department of Homeland Security-backed private consortium that reported purported election misinformation to tech platforms for removal in the 2020 and 2022 cycles is also using internet games to affect elections abroad.
Some news outlets engage in journalism. Others just engage in hype. The latter tend to repeat press releases verbatim, only ask for statements from law enforcement when law enforcement screws up, and otherwise cater to the “if it bleeds, it leads” maxim that has allowed mass media to portray America as a criminal dystopia despite crime levels in most of the nation still bottom-feeding on historical lows.
Few know the name of Walter Heller, one of the first Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers, and an adviser to President Kennedy. In 1968, however, he was a giant in economics who published in all the top journals. Fresh from his years in the Kennedy White House, he was invited to debate the relative importance of fiscal and monetary policy with another giant in economics, Milton Friedman, in a small book published by W.W. Norton & Company. Rarely do such debates interest more than a few thousand individuals. This is an exception, as a decade later PBS invited Heller and Friedman to debate their views on inflation.
The New York Times dropped a political bombshell on Monday. The public interest website, ProPublica, built further on the story that afternoon. And, as luck would have it, Wall Street On Parade finds itself in the unique position of filling in missing pieces of the story thanks to an investigative report we published in 2010.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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