Ich seh mir gerade live im TV die Debatte zwischen #KamalaHarris und #DonaldTrump an. Mir war klar, wie unterschiedlich die beiden Menschen, die Parteien, die gesamte USA sein können.
Aber das live ungefiltert zu sehen, ist schon erschreckend. #Trump erzählt von der ersten Minute an nur Lügen, Blödsinn, Phantastereien, Schuldzuweisungen an Andere und Scheisse. Es ist mir echt schleierhaft, wie ein solches Großmaul überhaupt schon mal Präsident der USA werden konnte.

Kamala #Harris ist sachlich, redet über mögliche Problemlösungen und Ziele. Für die Politik, das soziale Leben, die Wirtschaft. Während Trump ausschließlich herum-ätzt und Schuld an Andere zuweist, rückt sie ihre eigene Vision der Zukunft in den Fokus und korrigiert Trumps Lügen.
Die Mimik der beiden, während jeweils der/die andere spricht ist sehenswert!

... und wenn ich mir gerade jetzt so das Schlusswort der Debatte ansehe, muss ich echt als Laie feststellen: Trump ist wirklich psychisch gestört.

The Day Instagram Blocked Democracy

Listen to an audio version of this long-ass post.
On the day of Trump’s second presidential inauguration, Instagram censored search results for the most popular hashtags associated with American Democrats, like “#Democrat”, “#PresidentBiden”, “#VoteBlue”, “#MichelleObama”, “#Kamala”, and dozens more. This ban lasted for 9 total hours and affected users worldwide, regardless of their content settings. During that same time, Instagram was displaying full search results for “#Republican”, “#Trump”, “#VoteRed”, “#PresidentTrump”, and every other popular Republican hashtag I tried. I found about 50 censored political tags related to Democrats, but every Republican tag was still working fine.

The removal of these pro-Democrat hashtags started on the evening of January 20th, 2025, coincidentally a few hours after Trump signed the “Restoring Freedom Of Speech” executive act. These censored results lasted for about 9 hours, then went back to normal at around 5 am PST. I want to state again that these words were censored for all Instagram users on the website and app regardless of that user’s content settings or their location.

Meta claimed this was a technical “error” affecting hashtags “across the political spectrum,” but this is demonstrably false. I searched through the most popular hashtags used by Democrats and Republicans last night and found that the majority of Democrat terms were being censored, while none of the popular Republican tags were affected. This selective censorship is a scary look into Meta’s updated content moderation practices and its potential alignment with the new administration.

The following hashtags were actively blocked by Instagram on the first day of Trump’s second presidency. While they are now searchable again, I personally confirmed all of these hashtags were inaccessible last night:

• Barack
• BarackObama
• Bernie
• BernieSanders
• Biden
• Constitution
• Democrat
• Democrats
• DNC
• Fascism
• FuckTrump
• Insurrection
• Jan6th
• JohnOliver

• JoeBiden
• Kamala
• Leftist
• Liberal
• Liberals
• MichelleObama
• Obama
• OccupyDemocrats
• PresidentBiden
• PresidentObama
• Queer
• ReproductiveRights
• VoteBlue

And those were just the ones I could find yesterday. I’m sure there are many more. Instagram is still blocking other hashtags like ProChoice, GeorgeConway (a writer critical of Trump), JackSmith (the special counsel against Trump), 14thAmendment, and Drumpf. It’s possible those words were already being censored before Trump’s inauguration, so I didn’t include them on the list above.

During that same 9-hour window, I confirmed the following words were not being censored on IG:

• AltRight
• DonaldJTrump
• DonaldTrump
• FuckObama
• FuckBiden
• FuckKamala
• LetsGoBrandon

• MelaniaTrump
• PresidentTrump
• Republican
• RNC
• Trump
• VoteRed

Those words all worked. You couldn’t search for FuckTrump, but you could search for FuckObama or FuckBiden. Trump was searchable, but Biden, Kamala, Bernie, and Obama were not. You could search for MelaniaTrump, but not MichelleObama. PresidentTrump still showed millions of results, while discussions of PresidentBiden were marked as “sensitive content”.

We don’t know what caused Meta to censor these words, but we do know this was not affecting “both sides.”. This was an extremely targeted list of censored words.

As a contrast, I saw several claims on Threads and IG that TikTok was also heavily censoring content. I tested it out for myself and was still fully able to search for words like “Fascist,” “Fascism,” “Democrat,” and “Trump”. I was also able to post pro-Palestinian content like “Free Palestine” without having the post removed. If TikTok is censoring content, they are being more clever about it than Instagram is.

Though we can prove that Instagram was censoring certain hashtags last night, we can’t say why they were doing it. It’s possible this really was a computer error with no human oversight, but I’ve never heard of a computer bug that only affects people based on their political affiliation.

To understand why this happened, take a look at the context surrounding it. Last year, Trump accused Zuckerberg of election interference and threatened to lock Mark up “for life”. After Trump won the election, Zuckerberg started a series of regular visits to Mar-a-Lago for private meetings with the President-Elect. Last week, Zuckerberg announced big changes to Meta’s content moderation team and added Dana White (a Trump loyalist) to Meta’s board. Yesterday, Zuckerberg attended Trump’s inauguration along with Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Shou Zi Chew, and several other of the richest tech oligarchs.

With all of that in mind, I find it unlikely that an Instagram error selectively silencing Trump’s political opponents would coincidentally occur on the first day of his second presidency. Given the state of *gestures broadly at everything around me*, I believe that Meta has many systems in place to quickly silence Trump’s political opponents, and last night we saw one of those systems being used. If Meta really did have an “error” yesterday, it was probably that they activated that system too early.
#Biden#Obama#Kamala#Trump#BarackObama#DonaldTrump#MichelleObama#MelanieTrump#Democrat#Republican#leftist#AltRight#Liberal#conservative#OccupyDemocrats#Maga#VoteBlue#GOP#PresidentBiden

#AltRight #BarackObama #Biden #conservative #Democrat #DonaldTrump #facebook #gop #instagram #Kamala #leftist #Liberal #Maga #MelanieTrump #MichelleObama #obama_ #OccupyDemocrats #PresidentBiden #republican #trump #VoteBlue

Sure "democracy"....a way for the "majority" to decide ha?!

Yet we live in a world where the ones with a lot of financial power always decide. They own the messengers, social platforms, streaming platforms, newspapers, TV stations, they give money to politicians, bribe, abuse, and so forth....

It may be hard to accept, but there is no democracy. And never was. No one voted to go to war in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Afghanistan. No one voted for the use of fossil fuels instead of renewable energies. No one votes for the prices of medicine, if we should do space missions, build a park, or basically anything else.

People vote to elect a handful of tribe leaders, after a fierce battle of influence over these voters, to then have these leaders do as they please once they are elected. And some of these leaders can't even do shit since the rich control the world anyway.

And now that we talk about democracy, in principle it is a bad idea for most decisions that need to be taken by the experts in the field. Of course we should not have a vote about how to deal with cancer screenings, surgeries, building bridges, or most of these things.

Instead of floating these fantasy ideas around we should keep it simple and reasonable: all people need access to a basic life without any strings attached. Then they can have some autonomy and get involved into all sorts of things. Become engineers, doctors, write for Wikipedia, do open source software, volunteer and so forth. Free people from this primitive trade society, and let them grow. Like creating a fertile soil to be able to grow flowers.

That's what we need. Therefore basic and good services, regardless of the party or leaders. Good healthcare, housing for all, access to education and food, access to free transport, and our basic needs. The rest will emerge out of this good environment.

#democracy #usa #elections #trump #society #communism #capitalism #socialism #voting

If you think #Trump really did #Jan6, but you refuse to take the very real, very believable issues around the #Biden presidency seriously, you're just an empty gong.

#GOPDebate

I didn't vote Trump either time, but anyone can see he's being railroaded.

Come on infosec people, you *know* the signs of social engineering/phishing. High stakes, time constraints, call to action. You're not being smart, you're being a mark.

If you cannot articulate your opponent's position as they would articulate it, you are not qualified to have an opinion on that person or able to have a rational debate. Reductive malicious catch phrases like "Don't Say Gay BIll" or "Republicans want to ban books" are great slogans for ginning up emotional reactions, but don't describe the intent or heart behind the actions. Exactly -zero- Republicans I've ever met want to actually ban books. I've run into more on the Left who want to control speech than vice versa.

I'm horrified by the idea of either the swamp things on the Republican side or the Comrades in the Democrat party taking complete control. The result is the same - "A boot standing on a human face - forever."

End #rant