Time to move from @Tanel to Toco.

primal.net is pretty cool.

coracle.social is my favorite right now.

test

Do you have a cargo? I'm soliciting opinions on the differences between the cargo and the mini-max. Drooling over these bikes.

useful for finding #relays as well. #markpuddleglum

https://stats.nostr.band/ is great.

"My hope is to gain a fresh hearing for #Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him. In his case, quite frankly, presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance."

-Dallas Willard from The Divine Conspiracy

nostr:nevent1qqswuvxxmx62mvjjquljjk4fhc6kt5hsk7f79td6gndqhuaym43ujtcpy4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduk8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx27sq32m

gotcha

Test.

They have a centralization problem. This sort of thing is inevitable.

WSJ News Exclusive | Facebook Bowed to White House Pressure, Removed Covid Posts

By Ryan Tracy • wsj.com

(URL: www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-bowed-to-white-house-pressure-removed-covid-posts-2df436b7 )

Full text:

Facebook has long said that its content-moderation decisions are independent and not made with regard to politics.

The emails show Facebook executives discussing how they managed users’ posts about the origins of a pandemic that the administration was seeking to control. “Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made,” asked Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs, in a July 2021 email to colleagues.

“We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more,” responded a Facebook vice president in charge of content policy, speaking of the Biden administration. “We shouldn’t have done it.”

The email, and a number of other such internal company communications, were obtained by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, which has been investigating what GOP lawmakers say is the Biden administration’s improper efforts to censor Americans’ speech on social media about Covid and other topics.

The White House says its discussions were aimed at promoting the adoption of vaccines and other public-health goals.

Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, questioned why the company was removing claims that Covid is man-made.

“We have consistently made it clear that we believe social-media companies have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects of their platforms that they have on the American people, while making independent decisions about the content of their platforms,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a Thursday press briefing. Asked to comment for this article later Thursday, a White House spokesperson pointed to those comments.

Facebook has long said that its content-moderation decisions are independent and not made with regard to politics. A spokesman declined to comment for this article.

The emails viewed by the Journal, which haven’t been previously reported, date to the spring and summer of 2021, when the White House was mounting a nationwide push for Americans to get vaccinated for Covid-19. Part of that push included a public and private campaign to get Facebook to more aggressively police vaccine-related content.

Administration officials had come to believe that many Americans were hesitant to get vaccines because of false information they saw on Facebook. “They’re killing people,” President Biden said that July.

The tongue-lashing caused Facebook to re-evaluate its policies about Covid-19 content—discussions that involved high-level company officials including Clegg and then-Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, the emails viewed by the Journal show.

Following the president’s “killing people” comment, the Facebook vice president circulated a memo assessing the difference between Facebook’s content policies and the Biden administration’s demands—some of which the company appeared ready to push back on.

“There is likely a significant gap between what the WH would like us to remove and what we are comfortable removing,” the Facebook vice president said.

As one example, the executive listed the White House’s desire that the company take action against humorous or satirical content that suggested the vaccines aren’t safe.

The White House says its discussions with social-media companies were aimed at promoting the adoption of vaccines and other public-health goals.

“The WH has previously indicated that it thinks humor should be removed if it is premised on the vaccine having side effects, so we expect it would similarly want to see humor about vaccine hesitancy removed,” the vice president wrote.

“I can’t see Mark in a million years being comfortable with removing that—and I wouldn’t recommend it,” Clegg wrote in a subsequent email, an apparent reference to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In some of the emails, Facebook executives expressed concern that removing posts in which Americans expressed hesitation about getting vaccinated could actually make them less likely to get a shot.

“There may be risk of pushing them further toward hesitancy by suppressing their speech and making them feel marginalized by large institutions,” said one draft memo to Facebook leadership, included in an April 2021 email. Removing such posts could also fuel conspiracy theories about a coverup related to the safety of vaccines, the draft memo said.

At the same time, Facebook officials appeared to feel pressure to address the White House’s concerns. As Clegg prepared to meet the U.S. surgeon general about vaccine misinformation in late July 2021, he emailed colleagues: “My sense is that our current course—in effect explaining ourselves more fully, but not shifting on where we draw the lines…is a recipe for protracted and increasing acrimony.”

“Given the bigger fish we have to fry with the Administration—data flows etc—that doesn’t seem a great place for us to be, so grateful for any further creative thinking on how we can be responsive to their concerns,” he said.

Facebook at the time was hoping to facilitate an agreement between U.S. and European officials allowing user data to flow across the Atlantic in compliance with privacy laws.

By August 2021, Facebook executives were emailing each other about new planned changes to their Covid content policies. One change increased the punishments faced by users who ran afoul of content policies and had accounts on both Facebook and Instagram, another social-media platform owned by Meta, the emails show.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said documents Facebook has turned over ‘are just the beginning of the story.’

For example, the company had previously removed the Instagram account of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic now turned presidential candidate. But his Facebook account hadn’t faced the same punishment because it hadn’t posted the same content, the emails show.

Under the new policy, Kennedy’s Facebook account wouldn’t be recommended to other users, a Facebook executive explained in an August email describing how the company was following up on the Biden administration’s requests.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), chair of the House panel, said “these documents begin to reveal the pressure that Facebook and other social-media companies were under to alter their content-moderation policies and remove protected speech to appease the federal government, particularly the Biden White House.”

Earlier Thursday, Jordan canceled a committee vote on whether to recommend that Zuckerberg be held in contempt of Congress for not turning over documents about the company’s communications with the government. The company has been turning over additional documents this week and says it has made nearly a dozen witnesses available for testimony.

“While these documents are jarring, they are just the beginning of the story,” Jordan said. “We expect Facebook to continue to produce documents, and if not, contempt remains on the table.”

Democrats have said that the Republican-led investigation itself is aimed at bullying platforms like Facebook into loosening content-moderation policies. They also say that the Trump White House engaged in similar badgering of social-media companies as the Biden administration.

“In 2021, in the darkest days of the pandemic, of course the Biden administration was working every possible angle to keep people alive,” a spokesman for Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said in a statement.

“The documents Mr. Jordan selectively released show that the company often disagreed with the White House and denied the Administration’s requests, and every witness we have interviewed has confirmed that only Meta made decisions about how to enforce its own terms of service,” the statement said.

#midjourney , not Earth:

Vase with Irises

Vincent van Gogh

Date: 1890; Saint-rémy-de-provence, France

Style: Post-Impressionism

Genre: flower painting

Media: oil, canvas

Dimensions: 92.1 x 73.7 cm

https://www.wikiart.org/en/vincent-van-gogh/vase-with-irises-1890

Looking at the #DXY tonight.

I suspect that the value of the dollar is actually on its way below the red line. This move, if it happens, may fuel a rally on risk and esp. #Bitcoin , the best way to be long on a weak dollar, imo.

But, more interestingly, it might mark a new era for the dollar, esp. if the long end of T-bills don't return to ultra low levels.

Haha, yes!

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Nostrich? #midjourney

I don't see it. Overall, looks like the entire market is non-responsive. There was no surprise. The fun starts when Powell starts talking.

Anyone on here making linoleum block prints?

Here's a progress shot of a cut of a pinecone I made a few months ago.

#printmaking #blockprints #art #artstr

This is a #midjourney image, created with reference to Wayne Thiebaud.

#art #painting #aiart

Nobody here on #nostr is too surprised when they read a paper that states that the R:R of holding a portfolio with 84% #Bitcoin is comparable to a 60/40 portfolio - of the past 10 years. (Though, it's prob. questionable if the 60/40 is still going to be considered useful into the future.)

What is not considered re. a large bitcoin allocation, is our emotional reaction to hype cycles. It's our individual response to the bubbles that kills the out-sized performance - it killed mine 2x's now. It exposed that I was Bilbo, not Frodo. Made me a complete fool. Now, I'm starting to think that the best way to remain uninfluenced by the FOMO and FUD is to give, and to think in bigger terms about what it means to be wealthy, and/or pursue wealth. That's much harder to do, but more lasting and worthwhile. #puravida. (Focus on the "stay humble" part of the "stack sats" phrase.)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4042239

Not to myself: looking at the TLT/SPX, is a good idea.

Very cool! I'm dreaming of a mini-max or cargo. Considering the smaller front wheel on your mini, does it influence how you stop?