Woke MAGAs and Social Media

I'm going to touch on a few different topics today, including some related to the murder of Charlie Kirk as well as my thoughts about social media. To start with, I want to address what can be called "Woke MAGA." At one time, MAGA adherents were known for the expression "F your feelings," except the "F" was fully spelled out. T-shirts with this saying printed on them were frequently seen at rallies for then-candidate, now cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. Another popular MAGA expression was "Facts don't care about your feelings," something that was actually tweeted at one point by Ben Shapiro. Now, MAGAs have turned into the largest collection of snowflakes to be found south of the Arctic. As I wrote yesterday, fans of Charlie Kirk are engaged nationwide in trying to get anyone who is not sufficiently mournful of Kirk fired from their jobs. Many are being punished simply for posting accurate quotes of things Kirk said. This effort was endorsed yesterday by Vice President JD Vance, who said, "When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and, hell, call their employer."

Far be it from me to be snarky, but Vance once wrote that he "felt more like a female than I think I ever have or ever will" because he got emotional watching Garden State. Apparently, he associates being emotional with being female. Therefore, given the amount of emotion Vance is showing these days, we may want to check to see if he has secretly undergone a gender transition. Vance probably needs a check-up for a number of other reasons. The man has lost all inhibition to lying. On the same podcast on which he called for contacting people's employers, he lied about a Charlie Kirk quote. This was the same quote that I discussed yesterday when writing about Karen Attiah being fired by the Washington Post. She quoted Kirk as saying, "Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously." Vance claimed that Kirk didn't say "anything like that."

Vance was complaining about the quote being published in "The Nation," which originally was the same version of the quote used by Attiah. That version differed slightly from what Kirk actually said but reasonably represented his overall statement. Attiah and The Nation suggested that Kirk referred to Black women generally. In the actual quote, Kirk referenced four prominent Black women but then used the pronoun "you" that could be interpreted as referring to all Black women. But giving Kirk the benefit of the doubt, one could argue he was referring only to Black women who he believed benefited from affirmative action rather than all Black women. Nevertheless, Vance lied by claiming that Kirk only referred to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. That is clearly not the case. You can watch the video of Kirk here and make your own judgement. The Nation updated its article to remove any discrepancy. Vance also alleged that the quote was used to justify Kirk's murder. That is not true. Neither Attiah nor The Nation attempted to justify the killing. Also not true was Vance's claim about who has funded "The Nation" magazine. He wrongly said that George Soros and the Ford Foundation funded it. Vance is clearly and willfully attempting to stir up rage towards those on the left. At a time when responsible leaders would be attempting to urge calm and lower the temperature, Vance is doing exactly the opposite. Even if he must be dishonest to do it.

Another administration figure who has joined the Woke Brigade is Attorney General Pam Bondi She urged businesses to fire those who "said horrible things" and, referring to an allegation that a printing center had refused to print flyers advertising a vigil for Kirk, said that "If you want to go and print posters with Charlie's picture for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that. We have right now our civil rights unit looking at that." If I were the print center, my defense would be that I had confused the flyer with a gay wedding cake. I assume that Bondi and the rest of MAGA would fully support me in that case. The Supreme Court certainly would. Bondi also said that "There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society...We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech." What Bondi calls "hate speech" is legally called “speech," and it is protected from government interference by the First Amendment.

Bondi was so obtuse that she managed to unite both the left and the right. Right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh responded by saying that "there obviously shouldn't be any legal repercussions for ‘hate speech,’ which is not even a valid or coherent concept. There is no law against saying hateful things..." From the left, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna tagged JD Vance saying, "So now @JDVance your administration is prosecuting hate speech even though you ran on standing for the First Amendment & lectured Europe about not censoring hate speech?" In February, Vance visited Europe and complained about those "who simply don't like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion". For that matter, Kirk himself would have disagreed with Bondi. Last year he wrote that "Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment."

The attacks on speech must be seen as part of a broader effort to attack and delegitimize the political left. Not atypically, MAGAs are acting exactly as they once accused the left of behaving. Where the left was once accused of enforcing speech codes through political correctness, it is now Woke MAGAs demanding strict adherence to acceptable speech. The difference is that MAGAs are bringing the full force of the government to bear. It is not a sophomore at Oberlin College demanding political correctness, but the U.S. Attorney General.

Finally, I am going to devote a few words to the topic of social media. These are my 2 cents and, frankly, not even worth that much. Consider these a depreciated 2 cents. On Sunday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox called social media a "cancer" and said that "I believe that social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last five, six years." I suspect that few would disagree with Cox about the dangers of social media. However, there is absolutely no consensus about what to do about it.

Let's start by acknowledging a few realities. X is owned by Elon Musk, who has turned it into a home of White nationalists and conspiracy theorists. He laughed when his AI project, Grok, started calling itself "MechaHitler." Musk explicitly tweaks both the X algorithm and Grok to prioritize right-wing views. Meta, which owns Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, is owned by another Trump-friendly billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg was recently caught on a hot mic telling Trump that he was answering a question in a way that Trump wanted, rather than truthfully. The billionaire has overseen a notable turn of Facebook to the right. Truth Social is owned by Trump himself. TikTok is currently owned by a Chinese corporation, but a law that is currently being ignored requires that it either be shut down or sold to an American company. Trump has claimed that he has a framework in place for such a sale. Rumors are that the buyer will be Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, who is another Trump-friendly billionaire. The upshot is that the major social media networks are largely, if not entirely, in right-wing hands. The suggestion that the Trump administration will do anything to rein in these corporations is ludicrous. At best, they will make things even more difficult for the left. We simply cannot expect any productive action by the federal government.

Some states have stepped into the breach. However, these efforts are haphazard, uncoordinated, and often unconstitutional. Texas, for instance, has passed a law making it illegal to moderate posts based on political viewpoints. The law has been enjoined by courts and is currently not in effect. Mississippi has passed an age-verification law that requires that websites and social media networks that host certain content verify the age of users and prohibit minors from access. The Supreme Court recently allowed this law to go into effect while a lawsuit opposing it is being adjudicated. Cox's Utah has passed a number of online safety measures, including age verification for downloading apps from app stores. Most such laws are aimed at protecting children, and none would do anything about the polarization being encouraged by social media networks. My conclusion is that we cannot expect a solution from states either.

In my opinion, the solution lies with the individual. We have the choice to avoid X, Facebook, and the others. The more of us who avoid those networks, the fewer of us will be exposed to their manipulation. And, don't be fooled. Manipulation is exactly what it is. The algorithms are tuned to provoke engagement, and nothing spurs engagement more than conflict. If you must use X, avoid the "For You" feed. Create a list of users to follow and adhere strictly to the "Following" feed. In this way, you can view the posts and retweets of those you trust while avoiding the force-fed Nazi propaganda. My main argument is that you have choice and agency. Use it.

I strongly recommend both Bluesky and Mastodon. Neither has an algorithm which helps you avoid manipulation, but makes getting started more difficult. Despite recent complaints about Bluesky in the aftermath of Kirk's assassination, it is not the home of crazy leftists. Since I don't follow any of the accounts that posted crazy things, I didn't see any crazy things. Those who published allegations that Bluesky was full of radical posts had to go searching for those posts and then compile them themselves. None were forced upon users. Bluesky makes getting started a bit easier by offering "starter packs" of lists of users to follow depending on your interests. But I suggest simply looking at who someone you share interests with follows and then starting with them.

As for content moderation, I can offer firsthand experience since I am the primary moderator of DCUM. It is too much to expect companies to moderate content perfectly or even relatively well. The best you can expect is "okay". There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that moderation at scale simply does not work. I firmly believe that the answer is to empower users. On DCUM, that is done by providing the "report" link. Users can participate in the site's moderation by reporting posts that negatively contribute to the user experience. Most social media networks offer similar functionality. Moreover, most also offer the ability to block users. This is a key feature that I think is not used enough when it is available. Blocking should not be reserved for only the worst users, but should be a routine tool for curating your social media feeds.

The obvious response to my suggestions is that I am encouraging everyone to live in their own social media bubble. Not really. That's up to you. If you want to follow only those who think exactly like you do, that's on you. I generally try to include a few right-wingers in my feed in order to be exposed to their views. For instance, I follow JD Vance on Bluesky. But, frankly, I get enough exposure to MAGAs here on DCUM.

None of what I am suggesting will solve the problem of young, alienated young men finding their own dark corner of the Internet and radicalizing themselves. That is a discussion for another day and one that will require a lot more thought.