TL17TWTRMP
Latest
The White House is saving all of Trump's deleted tweets
Five days after Trump's inauguration, news leaked that his staff was continuing to use email linked to a private server. While that's not illegal (though hypocritical, given Hillary's election pillorying), it requires those using non-government emails to disclose them. If that doesn't happen -- if those messages aren't forwarded to an official account and stored for posterity -- the offender violates the Presidential Records Act. It seems the same could apply to Trump's tweets: The White House has agreed to the US National Archives' request that they save every one, including those he deletes.
Elon Musk accidentally tweets that Trump's ban is 'not right'
If you've been tweeting for a while, then your drafts folder is probably full of too-hot takes that you eventually thought better of and dialed back for public consumption. Of course, you're probably not a billionaire tech CEO with a position on a presidential advisory council like Elon Musk. That's why it's news when his drafts folder apparently let loose several tweets with more pointed criticism of Donald Trump's "Muslim immigration ban" (as Musk referred to it in the now-deleted tweets) than Musk's other public statements.
Conway is 'unclear' who retweeted a racist from her account
Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President, came under fire Tuesday after someone retweeted a self-proclaimed white nationalist's support for her from her official Twitter account. The user, Lib Hypocrisy, lauded Conway's "strength and resiliency" for enduring "vile hatred, bigotry, and sexism from the unhinged Left" to which Conway's account replied, "Love you back. Happy ❤️ ❤️ Day to the Hapless Haters."
Twitter in 2016 was a pretty depressing place to be
Let's not be mealymouthed: 2016 sucked. As a stark reminder, Twitter has released its "Top 10 Global Conversations" for the year, a change from last year's #YearOnTwitter format. This time, it lumped events into categories like #RIP, #Brexit, #Trump and #Oscars, perhaps as a way to give equal time to the rare good news stories. Otherwise, the list would be pretty much death, politics and Trump.
Twitter bots were rampant during the US election
If you believe one study, it's not just fake news that polluted the internet during the US election... it's bogus accounts, too. Researchers at the international Project on Computational Propaganda report that the use of politically minded Twitter bots reached an "all-time high" during the 2016 presidential campaign. Out of 18.9 million studied tweets using political hashtags, 17.9 percent of them came from "highly automated" accounts that post 50 or more tweets per day. That ratio only grew higher during the debates, peaking at over 27 percent during the final Clinton/Trump showdown -- and it conveniently tanked after the election was over.
Trump's newly-emboldened troll army poses problems for Twitter
Yesterday, the US woke up to discover it had elected Donald Trump as leader of the free world. As we've pointed out, the decision threatens net neutrality and probably the planet, though we perversely got a Wu-Tang album from it. In addition to 48% of the country's voting electorate, those celebrating also included a loose army of trolls who rampaged across the internet harassing journalists and Clinton supporters for over a year. But far from being content with their US victory, many pro-Trump marauders have been emboldened and seem to be re-mobilizing to support far-right candidates in European elections. In short: The online abuse will almost certainly continue.
Trump's campaign staff took control of his Twitter account
Have you noticed that many more of Donald Trump's recent tweets are obviously from his staff, rather than from the presidential candidate himself? It's not because he's busy on the campaign trail. According to the New York Times, Trump's team "wrested away" control of his Twitter account. While there's no official reason given, it's said to be out of concern that Trump's off-the-cuff online remarks are doing his campaign more harm than good -- a late-night insult or inaccurate statement would come back to haunt him in the next debate or Clinton ad.
Jeff Bezos' fourth tweet promises to #sendDonaldtospace
I've sent out plenty of Twitter replies to haters, but you'll have that after 38,000~ posts. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is relatively new to the service, and as such he has used one quarter of his tweets in responding to a Donald Trump tweetstorm. Trump claimed Bezos' ownership of The Washington Post is a scam, meant as a deduction to keep taxes down at his "no-profit" retail shop. Since Bezos, not Amazon, owns the Post and Amazon is (at least for the moment) profitable, this seems to be just another Trump statement that has little to no relationship with truth or facts of any kind. This evening Bezos fired back by bringing his third company Blue Origin into the fray, promising to reserve Donald Trump a seat. There's no word on if that seat comes with a return trip.
