From a statement by Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD) and his wife on the death of their son, Tommy:

Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind. He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless ‘disease called depression,’ as Tabitha put it on Facebook over the weekend, a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him, and despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world.

On the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people all over the world died alone in bed in the darkness from an invisible killer disease ravaging their bodies and minds, we also lost our dear, dear, beloved son, Hannah and Tabitha’s beloved irreplaceable brother, a radiant light in this broken world.

He left us this farewell note on New Year’s Eve day: “Please forgive me. My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.”

This is absolutely gut wrenching.

The fact that Raskin had to experience the Capitol siege the day after his son’s funeral is just unconscionable. And for him to still be working at this point, doing interviews and holding his colleagues accountable, is nothing shy of heroic.

I hope his family is able to find as much solace as they can amidst these impossibly difficult events, and may Tommy truly rest in peace.

Tony Romm and Rachel Lerman, reporting for The Washington Post:

Amazon suspended the pro-Trump social network Parler from its Web-hosting service this weekend, a move that threatens to darken the site indefinitely after its users glorified the recent riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Describing Parler merely as a “pro-Trump social network” is a bit rosy, let’s not get it twisted. From racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, and white supremacy, to outright calls for and plans to commit physical violence and anti-democratic terrorism/insurrection like what we saw at the U.S. Capitol, hate speech and vitriol are omnipresent and essential elements of the Parler experience. It is/was a home and a breeding ground for Nazis and Proud Boys.

The e-commerce and Web-hosting giant said Parler had violated its terms of service given its inadequate content-moderation practices, adding in a letter that it would implement its punishment just before midnight Pacific time Monday.

The move by Amazon Web Services, or AWS, marks the latest and most crippling blow for the pro-Trump social network, which has emerged as a haven for conservative users who have fled more mainstream Silicon Valley sites that crack down on harmful, viral falsehoods online. Earlier this week, Apple and Google removed Parler’s app from their stores for smartphone downloads, similarly citing concerns that posts on Parler could contribute to violence.

Parler’s whole schtick was that they were going to be an unmoderated online space for free speech, but they have never been the beacon of free speech they claimed to be. The free speech cover was a thin veneer for an operation intended to provide a Wild West environment for Trump’s base to drive one another closer and closer to the edge of complete delusion and radicalization.

Private companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google have absolutely no constitutional obligation to provide their services to companies who violate their rules or whose values they disagree with. Facebook and Twitter have no obligation to allow users who incite violence and inspire coups to enjoy their platforms. Publishers have no obligation to publish books by seditious senators. It is not censorship and it is not a violation of Parler’s or anyone else’s first amendment rights, it’s the free market at work. Parler, immediately upon its launch, became an infinite cesspool of hatred. Since hate speech is not protected by the first amendment, it’s important to understand that not only can private companies refuse to do business with them, but even if it were Congress that had banned Parler, it still wouldn’t be an infringement of anyone’s first amendment rights. However, that’s exactly what Republicans have tried to assert.

Over the past few days, the far right has gotten a small taste of the social justice they deserve for the first time as the big tech companies have finally stood up to them, one by one. Faced with this incomprehensible reality where their actions have actual consequences, far right mouthpieces from Capitol Hill to trailer parks have been left spluttering, the only semi-coherent talking point they’ve been able to stitch together is that the radical left and big tech have teamed up to cancel and deplatform conservatives. Your dime-a-dozen Trumpers are embarrassing themselves by advertising their primitive understandings of “freedom of speech,” while their Republican elected officials CONTNUE to mislead those very same idiots by perpetuating misinformation about what type of speech the first amendment actually protects and from whom. Cynical assholes Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have learned no lessons. They deserve to be expelled from the Senate and they deserve to be shamed publicly, never to be taken seriously again.

Bringing things full circle, Parler was funded by the Mercer family, who were directly involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal that unethically collected mountains of personal data from American voters’ Facebook pages and used it to build profiles of them, which were then used to send them highly targeted ads designed to influence how they voted. Most people familiar with the Cambridge Analytica scandal know that the Trump campaign paid them to help target and turn out persuadable voters in key precincts of swing states, but most people don’t know that before Cambridge Analytica was hired by the Trump campaign (which was only after Trump won the nomination) they had previously been helping none other than Ted Cruz who, with their help and despite his perpetual “I just shit the bed” face, went from the bottom of the list of serious contenders to the last man standing before Trump ultimately clenched the nomination.

Hopefully Parler won’t find another company willing to host their site for any amount of money, but if Republicans are good at anything, it’s finding others whose morality is trumped by their greed.

I was going to title this article “Rest-in-Peace, Parler,” but after 0.5 seconds of consideration, it occurred to me that that would be far too kind a sentiment for the greedy, ill-intentioned assholes at Parler.

Should’ve happened a long time ago, but silencing this manipulative, selfish, petty monster is an important step in holding our democracy together for the next two weeks. I wonder if Elon Musk had anything to do with it, his tweet was clever and spot on.

For what it’s worth, Shopify also disabled Trump’s online store. Now Amazon needs to step up and remove all Trump merchandise from their marketplace.

The last time the Capitol Building was overrun was over two centuries ago, when it was taken by the British in 1814. As was the case in 1814, the individuals laying siege to the U.S. Capitol Building are insurrectionists, terrorists. Their actions are seditious and treasonous, but the difference is that these people hail from the United States, not Britain.

Nonetheless, they are still terrorist insurgents. They are ignorant, hateful, cowardly racists, homophobes, and xenophobes who are terrified at the thought of a United States that doesn’t go out of its way to favor and cater specifically to the whims of straight white Christians. They are not patriots.

The implications of this coup on the long term (or short term) health of our nation are unknowable. Personally, I am in awe, and I am furious.

Here’s what I think should’ve happened to them. They should have been gunned down by the United States Capitol Police. They should have been treated as enemy combatants, a threat to be neutralized as swiftly and efficiently as possible, and as enemy combatants, they should be afforded no constitutional rights. The fact that the Capitol Police were so laughably unprepared for this, juxtaposed with their ludicrous over-preparedness during the Black Lives Matter protests, is another blinding example of institutional racism.

What do I think should happen to the insurrectionists now? I think they should all be immediately arrested and held without bail to face trial for treason. The odds of that happening are slim, so here’s to hoping they spread plenty of vicious COVID cases amongst themselves and their families.

What did Donald Trump say to them? He affirmed “this election was stolen from us, it was a landslide”, and followed it up with “we love you, you’re very special.”

The question now, is what should happen to Donald Trump.

Twitter and Facebook should immediately ban him from their platforms lest he continue to pour gasoline on the flames, but that’s just the start. He is clearly unfit for office. He needs to be ousted from the presidency immediately. He deserves to be impeached and removed from office immediately. At this point, I wouldn’t put it past Mitch McConnell. If impeachment is not the solution lawmakers choose to take, then the 25th amendment should be invoked. Let Mike Pence take over for the next two weeks and facilitate the transition to Biden’s administration. I wouldn’t necessarily put it past Pence and the Cabinet at this point, either. Once he’s out of office, he needs to be put in jail to rot. I wouldn’t even take the death penalty off the table at this point: his actions have cost countless lives and had an immeasurable destructive impact on the foundations of our democracy.

As for his pathetic minions and mouthpieces who incited this rebellion, namely Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Rudy Giuliani, they should face jail time. All the representatives and senators who challenged the results of the election should be expelled from Congress. This parasitic weed has deeply intertwined itself in our national politics, and we must rip it out, root and stem, before it chokes the life out of the Great American Experiment.

---

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

— Ulysses S. Grant

Michael Grothaus, reporting for Fast Company:

The last time any Google iOS app was updated was on December 7. This includes updates to major Google apps like Google Drive, YouTube, Google Docs, Google Sheets, YouTube Music, Google Duo, Google Authenticator, and Gboard.

Why is December 7 a significant date? Because starting on December 8, Apple mandated that any new apps or app updates submitted to the App Store would require the developer to fill out the privacy label information for the app it was submitting. This privacy label reveals exactly what data the app is collecting about the user and how that user data is being used. 

I’m sure this is just a coincidence. 🙄

The Band Camino is one of my favorite bands, and they’ve got a ton of great, catchy songs that look at life from different perspectives.

Their latest single, “Roses”, is a great song, and it’s the perfect anthem to kick off 2021.

Check out the song, but also the music video.

How much do you want to bet it’s a white guy?

How much do you want to bet that if it is a white guy, the president, right wing congressional leaders, nor the mainstream news outlets will call him a “terrorist”?

From The Guardian:

A key measure in the NDAA to which Trump objects is the move to rename US military bases currently named for leaders of the Confederacy, which seceded from the union over slavery, leading to the civil war of 1861 to 1865.

Pressure to rename the bases grew this year amid nationwide protests over the killing by Minneapolis police of George Floyd […]

Trump also threatened a veto if the bill did not repeal part of a 1996 telecoms law which prevents online companies from being sued in relation to third-party content.

If Section 230 is not “completely terminated”, Trump tweeted earlier this month, “I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill when sent to the very beautiful Resolute desk.”

[…]

The Senate backed the bill 84-13, with the no votes coming from some of the most conservative Republicans and most liberal Democrats. The Democratic-led House backed the NDAA by 335-78, with some “no” votes also coming from liberal Democrats less likely to back a Trump veto.

The NDAA determines everything from how many ships are bought to soldiers’ pay to how to address geopolitical threats. The measure vetoed by Trump was a compromise, combining separate measures already passed in the House and Senate.

Lawmakers take pride in the bill having become law every year since 1961, saying it reflects their support for the military. Trump’s veto, if upheld, would delay a 3% pay raise for active-duty troops.

Donald Trump, bone spur survivor and champion of veterans everywhere.

I bet if you polled active duty service members, you’d find that they’d overwhelmingly want this bill (which gives them a raise) signed into law. Donald Trump is a selfish prick: this is all about catering to his base of racists, both the part about not wanting to rename military bases and the part about wanting social media companies to be held legally responsible when their users say mean things about them. Talk about snowflakes.

I guess we’re taking “Buzzfeed News” seriously now? Whatever. Craig Silverman and Ryan Mac, reporting for Buzzfeed News:

[…]Facebook employees complained about what they called a self-serving campaign that bordered on hypocrisy, according to internal comments and audio of a presentation to workers that were obtained by BuzzFeed News. A change in Apple’s iOS 14 mobile operating system — which requires iPhone owners to opt in to allow companies to track them across other apps and websites — hurts Facebook, some employees argued on the company’s private message boards, and their employer was just using small businesses as a shield. […]

“It feels like we are trying to justify doing a bad thing by hiding behind people with a sympathetic message,” one engineer wrote […]

Several employees seemed unconvinced by the presentation. Some did not understand how Apple’s changes would negatively affect small businesses, while one said Facebook’s attempt to undermine Apple’s privacy policy made it “a traditional trojan virus.” […]

“The only thing I’m hearing, again and again, is ‘this is bad for the businesses,’ and I’d really like someone at the top to explicitly say, ‘People are better off if they don’t know what we’re doing, if we don’t have to explain ourselves to them, if they don’t get a choice to opt in or opt out of our practices, if we obscure it as much as possible behind interesting features and then get them to accept surreptitious tracking on the back end as long as we downplay it,’” they wrote

I’m glad these individuals are speaking up about how shitty Facebook’s tracking practices are, but where have their voices been for the past decade? They’re way late to the party; they aren’t heroes, they’re squeamish accomplices.

Isabel Kershner, reporting for The New York Times:

Israel’s government collapsed Tuesday, pushing the country into yet another early election — the fourth in two years.

The Israeli Parliament dissolved itself at midnight on Tuesday. The move forced a new election after weeks of infighting and paralysis in the so-called unity government, an uneasy coalition sworn in just seven months ago

What a shit show. Israel was a fun little post-WW2 experiment that seems to have run its course. They spent a few decades feeling victimized and pretending to be a country, but the whole time, they were just stirring the Middle Eastern pot. One starts to think maybe the #freepalestine people have a point. Granted, everyone in that region has been fighting for thousands of years over who gets to play in what sandbox according to which invisible sky wizard, so frankly, fuck all of them. I’m sick of America sending our troops over there to die trying to break up their pointless, unending wars (or just join them for profit, where the military industrial complex is involved).

Conservative Christians get so caught up in their allegiance to Israel, I really don’t get it. The Jews were “God’s Chosen People” is usually the best answer they can come up with, but I thought God loved everyone? If the Jews really are the favorites, why the hell would you subscribe to a religion where your god says you’re second best? What a joke.

The possibility of touchscreen Macs coming to market in the next handful of years is a hot topic with a lot of intense debate, and I want to add my thoughts to the discourse about what I think Apple will do and what I would like Apple to do.

I think Apple is going to introduce Macs with touchscreens the next time they update the physical design, likely in late 2021 or 2022. I was curious if they would introduce touch screens when they announced the M1 Macs, but in hindsight, it wouldn’t have made a ton of sense.

For argument’s sake, let’s presume that Apple always knew that within the next two years or so that they were going to 1. transition to Apple Silicon chips, 2. update the physical design of the MacBook Pro (which has been the same since 2016) and possibly the MacBook Air (which has been the same since 2018), and 3. add touchscreens. That’s a lot of advancements. And as difficult as it is to get sustained attention in today’s media environment, I think it makes sense from a marketing perspective that they would try to time these advancements to give them the most positive coverage as possible. Given how powerful and efficient the M1 is, it seems obvious that Apple knew beforehand that they would get a lot of great press when they released machines that used it, regardless of whether the machines looked the same on the outside or not. That’s exactly what happened. The other two changes, however, had the potential to feel cosmetic (in the case of the physical design update) and overdue and gimmicky (in the case of touchscreens), if they were to incorporate those features asynchronously. To me, it seems like the best way to roll out those three updates would be to first put out the new chips, let people “oooh” and “aaah” over them, and use the next year or so to iron out any kinks. Then, a year or two later, release machines with a new form factor and touchscreen support, completely ushering in a new era of Mac hardware, and reap the media coverage benefits of a new design and a new input method at the same time.

There are a few breadcrumbs I point to as indicators that this is probably Apple’s plan, namely the updated UI elements in macOS Big Sur. I know, I know, Craig Federighi has said that they didn’t even consider touchscreen support when redesigning some interface elements, but of course he said that. The truth is that elements like the Control Center, the straight-from-iOS widgets, and the new, rounded-off-square app icons are all begging to be poked by a crude, imprecise finger, as opposed to clicked by a nimble little cursor. Frankly, if they weren't designed for touch, then they’re just unattractive and inefficient, wasting display real estate (particularly Control Center, they could’ve fit so many more toggles and checkboxes in there if they were appropriately sized for manipulation with a cursor).

As far as what I would like for Apple to do: I want them to add touchscreens.

Now, I understand the concern that touchscreen Macs would have to go through some rather extensive UI redesigns to make the whole operating system navigable via touch. For a while, I was solidly on the team who never wanted touchscreen Macs. After all, pretty much all touchscreen laptops suck, and it’s uncomfortable to spend any amount of time with your arm hovering in the air to touch a vertical pane. But just because other companies couldn’t do something well doesn’t mean Apple can’t come right in and eat their lunch, “best not first” is Apple’s whole schtick. But the fact that touchscreen laptops are uncomfortable and finicky to use is not at all the point. Many PC manufacturers really put their eggs in the touchscreen basket, and they positioned their touchscreen machines in a very gimmicky way and created so much (undeserved) hype that made it seem like you were supposed to use your finger to control them all the time.

Apple knows the Mac is at it’s most powerful as a cursor-first device, and they won’t try to change that any time soon for a brief spell of good advertising fortune. I think they love the Mac as it is, but I think they recognize that they can make it better by allowing people to use their fingers to interact with the Mac when it feels natural. Not everything needs to be done with a finger, and redesigning the entire UI to that end would waste tons of screen real estate and slow down most users. But they could redesign a few things without harming the experience, and the convenience of being able to touch the screen would provide more value than it would cost.

When I first tried the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard, I was skeptical about cursor support on a device that was always designed for Touch. The truth is, it’s not a perfect experience. There are instances where the cursor seems too small and slow, and where my finger could whip around the operating system with a lot more ease. But it does have its advantages: for example, selecting text is far more convenient with a cursor. The situation would be similar on the Mac. Using your finger all the time wouldn’t be a perfect experience, but for simple gestures like scrolling or tapping an app icon, it can be a lot faster and more convenient. In fact, since I bought the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard, my use of my iPad has increased by a factor of ten, seriously. I’m so used to it that on a weekly basis now, I embarrass myself by reaching up to touch the screen of my Mac. It’s not that I don’t like my Mac and have therefore made a conscious choice to use the iPad instead, it’s just that it offers me more input methods that give me greater flexibility to manipulate small on-screen objects with precision and still enjoy the convenience and expediency of swiping and tapping the screen with a finger. More input methods has directly led to fewer annoyances when interacting with the device, and I think the Mac could enjoy the same (inverse) benefits.

I’ve listened to a few episodes of the “Noble Blood” podcast, and this episode about the King Edward II of England, and his lover Piers Gaveston is really fascinating. It reminds me a bit of Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell from Game of Thrones.

Also worth noting: the host does a great job of contextualizing same sex relationships during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, before that predisposition was given a label and took on an entire identity. Men today often seem compelled to perform a particular lifestyle upon acknowledging their same sex attractions, but that’s actually a very recent phenomenon, and prior to a few decades ago, that wasn’t the case at all. I’m glad the host took the time to make sure listeners understand that while we have labels for men in positions similar to Edward II and Piers Gaveston, they did not define themselves in this way.

It’s a fascinating story, and well worth a listen.

Drew Harwell and Ellen Nakashima, reporting for The Washington Post:

A security executive with the video-tech giant Zoom worked with the Chinese government to terminate Americans’ accounts and disrupt video calls about the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square, Justice Department prosecutors said Friday.

[…]

Prosecutors said the China-based executive, Xinjiang Jin, worked as Zoom’s primary liaison with Chinese law enforcement and intelligence services, sharing user information and terminating video calls at the Chinese government’s request.

Jin monitored Zoom’s video system for discussions of political and religious topics deemed unacceptable by China’s ruling Communist Party, the complaint states, and he gave government officials the names, email addresses and other sensitive information of users, even those outside China.

We’ve known Zoom has plenty of issues for a while now, but this is outrageous. Where is our strongman president when foreign adversaries are directly impeding American citizens’ freedom of speech? He’s made a huge issue about social media companies and their alleged censorship of conservative voices (which is bullshit), but now that there’s real censorship of Americans by China, he’s silent, either too stupid to understand what’s going on, too selfish to care, or so pathetic that he’s still nursing his post-election wounds.

The first amendment was designed to protect Americans against government overreach, but I never imagined we would have our first amendment rights challenged or stripped away by another government than our own. There has to be consequences for this.

Rob Price, writing for Business Insider earlier this year:

In an email to Facebook's chief financial officer at the time, Zuckerberg said Facebook wanted to buy Instagram to give itself more time to fend off competitors.

"One way of looking at this is that what we're really buying is time. Even if some new competitors springs up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again," he wrote. "Within that time, if we incorporate the social mechanics they were using, those new products won't get much traction since we'll already have their mechanics deployed at scale."

Mark Zuckerberg.

Isobel Asher Hamilton, Katie Canales, and Paige Leskin, reporting for Business Insider last week:

The lawsuits allege that Facebook used a strategy of neutralizing competitors before they could threaten the company's dominance of the social-media market. The suits call out Facebook's decisions to buy rather than compete with Instagram and WhatsApp, and they allege it imposed "anticompetitive conditions" on software developers.

Both complaints seek a "divestiture of assets" for Facebook — that is, breaking off Instagram and WhatsApp from the social-media giant. Additionally, Facebook could be required to get approval from the government before any mergers or acquisitions in the future.

[…]

The coalition of attorneys general, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, began an investigation into Facebook in September 2019, and the FTC subsequently joined. Attorneys general from 46 states as well as Washington, DC, and Guam have signed on to the lawsuit. The only states whose attorneys general have not signed on are Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

Forty six states. That’s more than enough to pass a constitutional amendment. Facebook is about to get fucked up.

This investigation (and any resulting regulation) is clearly focusing on antitrust issues, but I sincerely hope that congressional leaders take a long hard look at Facebook’s privacy practices while they’ve got them under the microscope.

I hope Facebook gets what they deserve for capitalizing on the destruction of privacy and the polarization of the American people.

#deletefacebook

Hartley Carlton, reporting for MacRumors:

Facebook has today attacked Apple in a series of full-page newspaper ads, asserting that iOS 14's privacy changes regarding data gathering and targeted advertising are bad for small businesses (via Bloomberg).

The ads are running in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, feature the headline "We're standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere."

Earlier this year, Apple introduced a number of privacy changes that curb the ability of companies like Facebook to gather data on users and target adverts. In ‌‌iOS 14‌‌, Apple has made the "Identifier for Advertisers," used by Facebook and its advertising partners for ad targeting, an opt-in feature, providing more transparency for users who would prefer not to be tracked in apps and on websites. The update simply asks users if they want to agree to ad tracking or prevent cross-app and cross-site tracking to provide targeted ads.

I was going to post the text of the ad and pick it apart line by line, but it would be a waste of time. Facebook has committed a logical fallacy, completely misrepresenting what Apple has chosen to do (which is give people more control over what data they share with big companies) as some sort of offensive play against small businesses. It’s a strawman argument designed to make small businesses look like the victims of Apple’s “forced software update”.

John Gruber recently wrote about this on Daring Fireball, again making the salient point that the privacy issue boils down to entitlement:

The entitlement of these fuckers is just off the charts. They have zero right, none, to the tracking they’ve been getting away with. We, as a society, have implicitly accepted it because we never really noticed it. You, the user, have no way of seeing it happen. Our brains are naturally attuned to detect and viscerally reject, with outrage and alarm, real-world intrusions into our privacy. Real-world marketers could never get away with tracking us like online marketers do.

This so clearly isn’t about small businesses not being able to advertise as effectively, it’s about facebook no longer being able to run behind you with a shop-vac, sucking up every crumb of data you leave behind. Don’t think they aren’t still trying though, Apple’s privacy tools are just limiting their ability to do so a little, taking them down from an industrial grade shop-vac to a consumer grade Dyson.

But still, let’s humor Facebook for a second and respond to their strawman argument. Here’s my take: if you built a small business that relies on Facebook (for advertising or any other aspect of your business), then you built a shitty small business. You put all your eggs in one basket, so captivated by the reach they could offer you that you didn’t consider the risks of relying on a company whose business model was inherently unethical and who could pull the rug out from under you at any moment. The problem here is not Apple giving people control over their own data, it’s that your small business was built on a foundation of stolen information that facebook gobbled up and turned into something you could use to target potential customers with. Looks like it’s time for you to find a more honest way to reach potential new customers.

This is a mature topic, but we’re going to be straightforward. Practically everyone in America who’s older than like 13 and has an internet connection watches porn, lets not kid ourselves or feel ashamed about it; it’s normal.

Nicholas Kristof, from The New York Times:

[Pornhub] is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. […]

It is monetizing video compilations with titles like “Screaming Teen,” “Degraded Teen” and “Extreme Choking.” Look at a choking video and it may suggest also searching for “She Can’t Breathe.”

What Kristof has done here is hardly journalism, it’s conjecture. Just because he was able to dream up a list of shocking search terms does not necessarily mean that many (if any) of the results yielded by such searches actually contain depictions of the terms included in the query, an unfortunate fact that is so obvious, even he was forced to acknowledge it.

Pornhub is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos. A great majority of the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year probably involve consenting adults, but many depict child abuse and nonconsensual violence. Because it’s impossible to be sure whether a youth in a video is 14 or 18, neither Pornhub nor anyone else has a clear idea of how much content is illegal.

I won’t say that there are no videos on Pornhub that break the rules, nor will I say that it can’t be used by those who seek to spread such content, but “many” is doing a lot of work here.

Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a three-month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accountsin six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children. By contrast, Pornhub notes that the Internet Watch Foundation, an England-based nonprofit that combats child sexual abuse imagery, reported only 118 instances of child sexual abuse imagery on its site over almost three years

A lot of work. I’ve spent my fair share of time on Pornhub, and I’ve never stumbled across any kiddy porn, but it’s really no wonder I haven’t, given that needle-in-a-haystack ratio.

Columnists are supposed to offer answers, but I struggle with solutions.

Your struggles are evident, Mr. Kristof.

If Pornhub curated videos more rigorously, the most offensive material might just move to the dark web or to websites in less regulated countries. Yet at least they would then not be normalized on a mainstream site.

More pressure and less impunity would help. We’re already seeing that limiting Section 230 immunity leads to better self-policing.

And call me a prude, but I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa.

I don’t see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation.

These measures wouldn’t kill porn or much bother consumers of it

Given that Pornhub’s best content is user generated, and they just got rid of practically all of it in one fell swoop, I wouldn’t be so certain that this isn’t going to kill porn or bother consumers of it (it occurs to me that Kristof must not watch porn: perhaps he has a very strict wife, or maybe he has a fire-and-brimstone pastor whose sermons are a sufficient deterrent).

Again, I’m sure there is some number of videos on Pornhub that are illegal or unethical, but taking action without knowing how big a problem is (no matter the case) seems likely to inhibit one’s ability to respond effectively to address the issue without creating other problems. And that’s exactly what happened.

Jordan Valinsky, reporting for CNN Business:

The changes took the number of videos on the website from 13.5 million videos down to a little under 3 million. […]

"Due to the nature of our industry, people's preconceived notions of Pornhub's values and processes often differ from reality — but it is counterproductive to ignore the facts regarding a subject as serious as CSAM, " Pornhub said in a previous statement to CNN Business.

"We have zero tolerance for CSAM. Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating CSAM, and has instituted an industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community."

Pornhub sounds like they were scared for their life, and their reaction supports that assessment: they chose to go with the nuclear option. Rather than just hiring more moderators or looking into solutions like artificial intelligence to flag videos that could be against the rules, they removed nearly 80% of their content after being stiff armed by Kristof and the credit card networks.

Freedom of the press is important, so there’s not much we can do about reporting like this, other than dismiss it as flawed and take that into account when judging the credibility of future work from the journalists or publications involved. However, it’s clear that of the entities involved here, some of them are well overdue for some regulation, but Pornhub isn’t one of them. I hadn’t considered it much until this point, but it doesn’t take much attention to realize that credit card network companies weird enormous power, and they’ve just demonstrated that they’re willing to wield it to drive companies they don’t like out of business. The United States only has four major credit card networks (the aforementioned three, plus American Express), and while they’re independent companies, in a world where physical currency is becoming less and less relevant, it’s outrageous that four companies have gatekeeping roles over virtually ALL of the United States’ digital/electronic commerce.

Perhaps a lesser considered aspect of this move: it will cost lives. I don’t know how many, but I’m sure there are a number of people (mostly men ((see: the Coolidge effect)) but likely some women, as well) who have been refraining from hooking up with people, satiating their needs, consciously or unconsciously, by watching more porn. Getting rid of most of the biggest porn site’s best videos is going to leave those people a lot less satisfied, and more of them will go back to hooking up, likely spreading COVID in some cases. Granted, one on one encounters aren’t as risky massive church services or large thanksgiving gatherings, but this still a horribly timed move. At best, it demonstrates a lack of forethought; at worst, a lack of concern with the pandemic and a lack of respect for the lives of others, not only on the part of Pornhub for removing all the videos, but also on the part of the credit card networks and the New York Times journalist who started this snowball rolling down its hill, prudish Mr. Nicholas Kristof.

Mr. Kristof, if you don’t want to be seen as a prude, then don’t act like one. You are singlehandedly bringing about Pornhub’s downfall, for less than 200 confirmed instances of videos that break the rules. Seriously, go fuck yourself (in silence, without any porn).

Of course they did, the lawsuit was absolutely ridiculous. Shame on Texas. The people who brought this suit should face immediate disbarment, if not prosecution. It’s glaringly obvious that the Constitution doesn’t have the guardrails necessary to protect itself from bad faith attempts to subvert it. There needs to be a standard for how to punish people who bring suits like this, because they have they long term potential to erode our democracy. I want to see every one of the 130+ legislators that signed onto this outrageous, anti-democratic bullshit punished.

I say, the next time Texas flirts with the idea of concession, let them.

Dan Merica, reporting for CNN:

President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Pete Buttigieg to be his transportation secretary, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN, elevating the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to a top post in the federal government.

Buttigieg would be the first Senate-confirmed [LGB] Cabinet secretary should his nomination make it through the chamber.

The choice vaults a candidate Biden spoke glowingly of after the Democratic primary into a top job in the incoming administration and could earn Buttigieg what many Democrats believe is needed experience should he run for president again.

The role of transportation secretary is expected to play a central role in Biden's push for a bipartisan infrastructure package.

This choice makes sense for a lot of reasons. Pete is fairly moderate and will be able to reach across the aisle and get things done, and he could have a good impact as far as climate change is concerned.

And I’ll say this right now: if Pete gets that elusive high speed rail system built, he will be president one day.

CopyrightBro is releasing a series of damning screenshots in which a staffer on the campaign of Senator-elect Bill Hagerty (R-TN) admits that their loud endorsements of President Donald Trump’s policies is largely based on political convenience, and that he and the campaign actually see the Tennessee voters who elected them as ignorant sheep, falling prey to Trump’s divisive demagoguery, whom they simply intended to use to get into office.

During my time at the University of Tennessee, I was marginally involved in the Student Government Association, and that was how I met now-Hagerty campaign staffer Aaron Northcutt. To make a long story short, he was a good guy who was involved in a corrupt SGA campaign whose leaders were exposed, by me, for election corruption. I pretty much single handledly drove that campaign out of the race, and Aaron was the only person on said campaign for whom I felt bad after the dust settled. He and I originally got in touch in the months before all of that happened, just for the sake of discussing the vitriolic nature of the online discourse surrounding the student government campaigns. Through these conversations I learned that he was genuine and kind, and while he and I disagreed on a fair number of political issues (he saw himself as a moderate conservative while I considered myself a slightly left leaning moderate), we agreed that Donald Trump was an idiot and a terrible president. The discussions he and I had were always respectful, and his points were made in good faith despite our varying beliefs. He gave me hope for a future where Republican politicians would be honest and serve with integrity, and that maybe the two party system could survive in a fairly healthy way, if people like him were running the GOP. However, my confidence in Aaron began to fade when, after college, he got involved with Bill Hagerty’s senate campaign.

Over the course of several months, he and I had a few conversations about his role with the campaign, as well as the state of American politics in general. As the election go closer, Aaron started tweeting things that were wildly out of character for him. I called him out a few times, and he blamed those tweets on his involvement with the campaign, saying he was obligated to share them, and that nondisclosure agreements prevented him from sharing how he truly felt. This surrendering of his legal ability to share his thoughts openly was the first point at which I was afraid Aaron might be slipping out of the realm of levelheaded political hopefuls, and into the realm of corrupt, dishonest, self serving career politicians.

As time progressed, the posts on Northcutt’s twitter got worse and worse. Over the course of a few weeks, he graduated from Fox News-level bad faith arguments to OANN-level nonsense. All the hope I had that Northcutt would be a positive force in conservative politics is now completely gone, so I’ve decided that it’s time to hold another member of that old student government campaign to task, except this time, the campaign Northcutt is working for is a lot more organized and has a lot more potential to do real harm. So here I am, screenshots in hand.

These excerpts from my conversations with Northcutt put on display the worst, most corrupt instincts of the Republican Party. Despite the fact that Hagerty ran as a Trump Republican, it’s clear that that’s not truly the line of thinking he subscribes to, and nor do his staffers. If I were a Trump supporting Tennessean who voted for Hagerty, I would feel insulted and betrayed by these statements.

This concept of Republican congressional candidates riding Trump’s coattails while actually disagreeing with his policies and being disgusted by the way he treats people is not new, and it isn’t unique to Tennessee; in fact, it seems to span across Republican politicians from a variety of backgrounds, from veterans to businessmen, and from reliably red states to swing states. In October, CopyrightBro reported that Chris Taylor, former U.S. congressional candidate from Arizona, was pressured to get on board with Trump’s divisive messaging, despite personally feeling that Trump was a cancerous force to American democracy. However, the differences between Taylor and Hagerty couldn’t be more stark: Taylor publicly endorsed Joe Biden, while Hagerty is hoping his voters aren’t observant enough to recognize that he’s double crossed them.

During my senior year at the University of Tennessee, my tendency to be a bit bold kicked up a lot of dust with the student government crowd, and when I had the opportunity to sink the ship of one of the worst campaigns, I took it.

The “Tennessee Way” campaign was easily the most annoying of the four campaigns vying for control of the (largely useless) student government, relying on a series of Trumpian candidates who were clearly unqualified for any sort of leadership positions and frankly just unintelligent. Their decidedly conservative posture had them poised to coast into the three highest offices (President, Vice President, and Student Services Director) and sweep a lot of the senate seats, while the three more liberal campaigns were cannibalizing one another’s support.

I was leaving UT soon and I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder when it came to SGA (after getting involved myself, I found it to be a way for overly ambitious college kids to pad their resumes without actually having to accomplish anything, though campaigns will occasionally stumble into a situation where they can affect change), and I was in a unique position to neuter the Tennessee Way campaign and make way for a more honest campaign to come in.

I had been involved in a months-long casual relationship with one of the young men at the very top of the Tennessee Way’s ticket. Personally, he was an arrogant dick, and I told him as much on a few occasions, but our arrangement scratched an itch for both of us (what can I say, I was a 22 year old guy in college). Occasionally, he and I would have more mundane conversations before or after our meetups, and he would often talk about how the campaign was going. I couldn’t have been less interested in his faux political wins and woes, but his arrogance was his fatal flaw and I was able to play him like a fiddle: I pretended to find his dramatic campaign stories fascinating, and he would absolutely gush, often indiscriminately. On multiple occasions in person and in writing, he told me about how he had offered multiple campaigns blank checks to allow him to run for one of the big three spots at the top of their ticket. The first campaign to which he made this offer refused. The second campaign to which he made this offer accepted, and that was the Tennessee Way.

I sat on that information for a while, but after a bit of time and a lot of inflammatory, Trumpian rhetoric from the Tennessee Way campaign, and approximately a week before the election, I met with the SGA Election Commission to show them screenshots of my conversations with the young man who made the offer. They approached the Tennessee Way campaign for an explanation, and when faced with the irrefutable evidence that the names at the top of their ticket had bribed each other to the tune of $2000, the entire campaign dropped out of the race within hours.

And in the words of Marty Huggins, “and that’s my story!”

As a result of the events of this story, I met another young man named Aaron who was running to be a senator with the Tennessee Way campaign. He seemed genuine at the time, but later went on to work for the Bill Hagerty campaign for U.S. Senate, fully immersing himself in Trumpism and bad faith politics. Read more about him and how he exposed the Hagerty campaign for viewing Trump voters “ignorant sheep” here.