>ironically the joke meme the r?tard stalinists are now hysterically pretending was "?lection interference" is basically how they interfered with this ?lection.
Trolling aside, what does this outburst mean in relation to the image?
When they pop into threads like this one (which are more likely to pull in trolls and kin), flagging will quickly result in accounts like this ending up shadowbanned.
The tweet is an example of what seems to be the right's favorite method of argument of late:
Decontextualize the subject to the point where it can be equated to something the left has done/previously supported.
Here, the left voted by mail in larger numbers than the right. That's how they interfered with the election, supposedly. Just like the sign is recommending voting from home.
See also: BLM riots are the same as an insurrection, Obama started family separation at the border.
Decontextualizing is just the norm on the internet. I don't think it's a favorite tactic of "the right" as much as it's just something everyone does when having short arguments online. A recent example I noticed is how the Parler deplatforming was boiled down to "it's a private company denying service just like what that cake shop did".
A nuanced and evenhanded discussion just isn't conducive to our neutered attention spans or the desire for upvotes and clap-back repartee.
Well, we’ve always been in the age of illegal memes in the sense relevant to the item in question, to wit, “but, I use a meme” has never been a defense to a crime.
> ironically the joke meme the r?tard stalinists are now hysterically pretending was "?lection interference" is basically how they interfered with this ?lection.
Unfortunately, I'm not fluent in Clickbaitian. Will someone who is please translate?
The squid tweeter is pretending that legal voting by mail in 2020 is equivalent to setting up a fake "vote by txt" system under fraudulent pretenses in 2016.
What exactly is the code or law that is being broken here?
Don't get me wrong - guys like this should be shutdown. By who is altogether another debate.
The govt rarely loses when they bring cases like this - so they probably think they have a pretty airtight case. Any background or clarification would be helpful - as both the press release and complaint are scant on details.
> this says "2 or more persons" to be a conspiracy.
And the complaint includes 4 co-conspirators identified by Twitter IDs. Conspiracy doesn't require the other co-conspirators to be charged simultaneously, or at all, it only requires that they exist.
I think your comment is repugnant. We all have areas of our life where we can be a little naive. We, as a society, should work to protect the weakest among us - not blame them for their weaknesses.
If your problem is that these people aren't smart enough and shouldn't be voting, then a democracy probably isn't for you.
This is one version of a broad category of highly elitist sentiments that is disturbingly common. They all take the form of underestimating a person's "intelligence" or "worth" based on that person's understanding of one aspect of one system, e.g. computer virus vectors ("only stupid people get viruses"), social engineering ("only stupid people fall for phone scams"), etc. It's poisonous, and pretty obviously immoral, but most of all, it's indicative of ignorance. Experience with people will demonstrate that this sentiment, even stripped of its hatefulness, just isn't factually true.
How do we feel about some kind of objective standardized test that you'd have to pass in order to be allowed to vote? Should cover some high-school basics as well as an understanding of the published platform for all major candidates in the election.
Places have tried this (look up the history of "literacy tests"), and it mostly functioned as a mechanism to discriminate against voters of certain classes. Long term, if you have a test to vote and, say, people somewhere don't tend to vote the way you like, but you have control of the funding for their education system, it's easy enough to make decisions that net reduce that population's ability to vote.
> it mostly functioned as a mechanism to discriminate against voters of certain classes
Well, we can set the bar wherever we like; the question was ultimately "can we have a bar at all".
Since some people seem to think that even asking for ID is too high of a bar, it's clear to me that there's a market into catering to extremely-low-information voters; not that anyone is every going to _do_ a damned thing for them, but you can certainly make hollow promises easily enough.
An alternate requirement if we want a higher bar than an academic test would be to require that one own land and have children before you're allowed to vote, or something like that.
Perhaps a combination of alternatives could be offered. The question I'm really trying to ask is whether it's at all reasonable to do something to increase the quality of the vote.
>The question I'm really trying to ask is whether it's at all reasonable to do something to increase the quality of the vote.
Absolutely. I'm 100% for programs to promote literacy and civic education. Reduce corporate political financing so that politicians _have to_ appeal to their constituencies. Increase the density of elected representatives so that each representative has a constituency small enough for them to actually reasonably represent.
Seems like a shame, honestly. The test could certainly have evolved, like IQ tests have, to be less focused on particular cultural knowledge and just be a general test of capability.
Most people of legal age to vote in the US has completed or will soon complete their high school education. If that's not good enough, maybe the problem is the education.
That has actually nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with experience in certain arenas. You haven't fallen prey to scams because you are experienced with avoiding scams.
I guarantee there are people who are a hell of a lot smarter than you, know a hell of a lot more about many areas than you, who have very little experience avoiding internet scams (for one reason or another) who might well fall prey to them. Given enough experience would they learn how to avoid them? Yes. But in the mean time, their lack of that experience does not mean they deserve to fall prey to those scams - nor that we shouldn't go after and punish the scammers.
I suffered a head trauma and subsequent infection that depleted my vocabulary to kindergarten level over 2 weeks and took 5 years to recover from - I can absolutely vouch for the struggle that I experienced with sketchy stuff like this, I felt like I was physically being dragged into a quick sand put every time I came across anything like this and was still fighting my way out the next day. I had a stupidly elite education and prior knowledge didn't count as much as ingrained reflex in saving my butt.
It's more obvious that microwaving your phone is bad than voting by phone or web is bad, more obvious that any given made-up benefit of microwaving your phone is untrue than the ability to vote by phone or web is, and not as harmful as losing your vote. The comparison has too many faults to be useful. You should address the issue directly, rather than relying on analogies.
The announcement is dated: Wednesday, January 27, 2021
(today)
> Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, 31, of West Palm Beach, was charged by criminal complaint in the Eastern District of New York. He was taken into custody this morning
So he was taken into custody this morning. (today)
> As alleged in the complaint, between September 2016 and November 2016, in the lead up to the Nov. 8, 2016, U.S. Presidential Election, Mackey conspired with others to . . .
They're only now dealing with something that happened over four years ago?
Not sure if this is sarcasm or not, but to spell it out: one good hypothesis might be that the victor in the election in question left office last week and doesn't control the justice department anymore. The same guy fired one FBI director and two attorneys general during the same term.
This case seems to be based on a handful of public tweets and some phone records that can be trivially subpoenaed. It's clearly been ready for years, and was likely suppressed internally.
Not sarcasm. Your reply was informative. I hadn't considered (although I should have) that the candidate in power would have interfered with the prosecution of this. Thanks.
The Complaint details the key connection being made between the pseudonym and the real person in a podcast appearance by a Congressional Candidate in 2018, and key FBI investigative activities occurring in October 2020, so it's not like it has gotten to 99 before Trump was in office and then Trump’s DOJ sat on it until Biden came into office.
> They're only now dealing with something that happened over four years ago?
“The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine”.
> Am I missing something?
Yes, the history of the crime and related events related in the complaint linked fromm the press release. Compressing a bit:
The various Twitter accounts used in 2016 were under false names, a Congressional Candidate for whom Mackey worked outed Mackey as connected to the “Ricky Vaughn” the accounts in late 2018, the FBI interviewed that candidate and a documentary filmmaker who has interviewed “Ricky Vaughn” in 2018 and confirmed the identity in late 2020. There's lots of stuff not directly germane to the charges against Mackey about the narrative left out, but there was presumably more investigation to attempt to identify others involved because several co-conspirators are listed only by Twitter IDs.
For example, on Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey allegedly tweeted an image that featured an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for [the Candidate]” sign. The image included the following text: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘[Candidate’s first name]’ to 59925[.] Vote for [the Candidate] and be a part of history.” The fine print at the bottom of the image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by [Candidate] for President 2016.”
that seems reasonably open-and-shut "very naughty, no, bad, don't do that!"
"The complaint alleges that in 2016, Mackey established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Election, ranking his account above outlets and individuals such as NBC News (#114), Stephen Colbert (#119) and Newt Gingrich (#141)."
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