Apparently Brainna Wu went digging through archives and found a 2 year old blog I’d taken out of publiction where I said she’s a “former GOP fundraiser” and is wrong for Progressives.
Brianna, a former GOP staff member for Trent Lott (R -MS) and intern for Michael Steele apparently worked for 5 years for the GOP according to her own tweets.
@glennf Did you know I spent a summer interning for Michael Steele, who I thought got a very unfair rap in the press.
Okay, that’s fair to base it off that Tweet. I was trying to sum up a summer where I attended a lot of fundraisers in the evening as part of my job and saw a lot of really weird shit. It was an imprecise statement on Twitter, back in 2014 when there was only 140 characters.
But, I’m telling you directly, I never worked as a fundraiser.
Brianna’s job duties included some activities linked to fundraising.
That’s certainly reasonable and expected in Washington D.C. where networking is a critical job function.
She was not a “Fundraiser” which some may take to mean “rain maker” or “bundler” or something illicit.
I apologize for any negative implications that may have been inferred by others based upon the title of the blog.
This is my first ever JOTY with 2 winners. (Actually first ever JOTY, but hey.)
And I had to pick 2. Both cover interests near and dear to my heart.
Kristen, who is a great journalist, covers abuse on twitter, covered Milo fairly (which is basically unheard of and yes he is a provocateur and troll, no he’s not a Nazi) and the strange and wondrous world of science, ethical concerns and all.
I would like to explain my background a bit.
Although living in Fresno, I have had the great luck to be able to spend a LOT of time in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. As a tech journalist, much of what Kristen covers originates in and around the Bay Area.
The schools I attended (well funded magnet schools) took frequent field trips to the central coast and San Francisco/Bay Area.
We also frequented the Bay Area in Cub Scout and Boy Scouts trips.
My Dad is a retired Claims Manager. As a kid he would take marketing trips disguised as family vacations to the Bay Area where a great many insurance companies are headquartered. (If you want to talk about gentrification since 1970’s, that preference is a great place to start.)
My sister, loved Esprit and shopping, and I loved comic books. The comic book shops seemed to be in places in San Francisco where not many tourists went. Besides the usual touristy places you’d expect, I have seen and experienced much of San Francisco.
Other than places I’ve actually lived and grandparents homes I’ve spent more time in the Bay Area than anywhere else. The Central Coast (Cambria/Pismo is a close second to SF.)
When Ms. Brown talks about seismic vulnerabilities I know exactly what she’s talking about due to my own profession, and having been dragged out (I kinda didn’t have that much fun) on claims with my Dad since I was very young.
I worked fires (dummy end of the measuring stick), car accidents (dodging cars while diagramming accident scenes is always fun) and worked the Coalinga earthquake. Yep, I at 10 or 11 (?) worked earthquake claims.
My dad enjoyed working claims better than being in management. He didn’t keep a full case load, but he worked overflow and a few accounts he enjoyed.
He kept the juicy account, working the Curry account when The Curry Company had the concessions contract in Yosemite.
As a kid in Fresno, I attended diverse schools. I doubt they were perfectly diverse, but they were diverse. I have no idea what “perfectly diverse” is beyond a standard activists state frequently on twitter.
The High School I attended was bussed INTO to desegregate. That is, WHITE KIDS were bussed in from Hoover. Their 9th grade class was bussed into Roosevelt High School in south east Fresno . The 9th graders within my district went to Sequoia.
Faced with such wondrous choices I thought I’d better go where my parents expected and choose Roosevelt. It was a surprise in 9th grade when I thought I’d see my friends from the home district and they were nowhere to be found.
As a sophomore, Roosevelt opened the School of the Performing Arts, and the kids from Hoover were no longer bussed down. I assume that desegregation from Hoover no longer necessary because a lot of kids district wide were bussed in to Roosevelt, and many were white.
Lots of my friends are pictured here. I went to Easterby with Shaun Lopez and Matt Denny, and Shaun played little league with me and tennis. He was number 1 varsity and I, 2.
(Yes we made a fake chess club that met in the Science building where we played logic games and screwed around mostly. We had awesome bathing beauties. The scam worked)
Since you made the yearbook, we'll count it as a real club. Belated detention rescinded. pic.twitter.com/ZxKMX9LVMG
I also would like to encourage Kristen to do more video. Video is The Future™ and Kristen claims to be “From The Future” or some such on Gizmodo.
Tim Pool, @timcast did an astonishing piece on the water shortage of East Porterville and the CA drought in general.
My Great Grandfather immigrated to Tulare County in the Dust Bowl. I have tons of family in Tulare County and the Central Valley.
(My great grandfather left my teenaged grandmother in Missouri with relatives, she got married and went to Idaho.)
(Yes I have a diverse family)
My ex wifes family is in Porterville.
My ex father in law is a former enlisted Marine who was stationed in Taiwan.
Returning to the US he owned a 7 -11 in San Jose, but sold that operation and moved back to Porterville (home) to be a Psyche Tech at Porterville Developmental Center. He rose to Program Manager then acting Director of Porterville Developmental Center. My ex mother in law is deceased, however she worked as a Psyche Tech as well.
My ex wife is a Psyche Tech, her new husband is a Psyche Tech and my daughter works at Porterville Developmental Center as a student assistant as she studies to become a teacher.
Tim Poole also covered the devastation in the Midwest.
When I see Jack Dorsey accept CEO of the Year from the Thurgood Marshall Fund I can only laugh, or cry.
Jack Dorsey is the King of fake news and abuse.
He has also damaged race relations in politics immeasurably through polarization pushed on twitter’s platform with his tacit endorsement (and quite frankly open endorsement with open promotion of #blacklivesmatter.)
Bob Chipman, AKA @The_moviebob is simply the same overt hatred my Great Grandpa felt when he settled in Tulare County and walked miles each day to Tagus Ranch to work.
I reported the tweet and received the following response.
My mom’s dad, my Grandpa also was a Dust Bowl immigrant, however was nearly worked to death by a farmer in Salinas.
He went to Idaho. He worked New Deal construction for Morrison Knudsen. The same company that built the Golden Gate Bridge, I believe.
My dads parents were also in Idaho, and my parents met at Idaho State University. When my dad graduated he volunteered for the US Navy, went to OCS and was sent to the Vietnam War where he served on the USS Reeves in the Sea of Japan as a LT(jg).
My parents were lucky enough to live off base in Japan for years and tour a bit of Asia.
In all my life I have never felt such overt hatred as that leveled at me on Twitter daily by so called tolerant people.
Anyone that says something contrary to the approved opinion of Randi Lee Harper, Brianna Wu or the activists Jack Dorsey is set upon by a mob that they lead.
(1 of I don’t know how many. The whole thread isn’t presented here.)
I however am not helpless, nor intimidated by empowered abusers with the ear of Twitter .
I know Jack Dorsey did as much to elect Donald Trump as any person alive. I will leave that to historians to figure out how. I have said enough on the matter that anyone can figure it out.
Jack Dorsey endangers members of my family & has contributed to making race relations as bad as at any time in my lifetime. I can only relate it to 1968 & the Days of Rage where the most supported people in CA are rioting at a great college because they now feel violence is acceptable.
Women’s 1988-’89 Tennis Team — This team had only four players — Story Hurst, Chrissy Kulbeth, Michelle McGuire and Michelle Caskey — yet it won the Central Valley Conference championship in 1988 and then again 1989 with the addition of only two players, Vicki Esquivel and Christy Heint.
Ken Hurst — Hurst was the men and women’s varsity head coach at PC from 1982 through 1999. After 10 years of coaching at PC, his teams had won two thirds of all their matches. Even in Hurst’s last years of coaching at PC, the tennis programs thrived in every match with intense competitors to slay the big dragons.
Thank you for being you, and all that you do. I appreciate your journalism and professionalism.
Ask not what @shervin can do for you! Ask what you can do for @Shervin.
Kind of a bit different than the immortal words of President Kennedy, but I found Billionaire Boys Club @Shervin isn’t exactly an open and outgoing fellow on twitter.
The 5th Estate is now born. Social media as a new power in world affairs.
According to Vivian Schiller Vivian Schiller former head of news and journalism partnerships at Twitter and also the former CEO of NPR,
SCHILLER: Let me just say I think it would be a mistake for social media companies to try to, on their own, determine or deign what is a fake news story and what isn’t and shut it off, or what’s a good news organization or a bad news organization. That’s a very, very slippery slope.
The problem is there is very little transparency and consistency when it comes to what accounts Twitter is suspending and which they are not. As long as there is an even playing field for all and the rules are clearly understood, that would be a good thing. We are not there yet. There’s more to do.
Twitter is hamstrung by privacy laws and regulations that prevent them from showing (in most cases, absent compelling public interest on the specific topic, ie news) exactly why users are suspended.
It would go a long way towards clarifying matters if twitter would, in coordination with the suspended parties release the tweets that earned the suspensions of Milo Yiannopoulis, Mike Ma, Ricky Vaughn, Pax Dickinson, Richard Spencer, Chuck Johnson, John Rivers (and others) and lead a public discussion about what behavior is acceptable and so the public can determine if Twitter got it right.
With market competitor Gab.ai growing at a massive rate, Twitter’s confusing the issue is CEO Andrew Torba’s gain.
Andrew Torba states,
Daily Reminder: all are welcome here
Gab is for everyone.
We are the defenders of free speech.
We are The People
The alt right and others find a free speech platform that doesn’t suspend accounts and has muting tools in place.
Obviously twitter, as a publicly traded company is being buffeted by the controversy generated by Vijaya Gadde when she blatantly publicized and politicized the abuse scandal at twitter in her WAPO editorial of April 16, 2015.
A major problem for Twitter is that they do not enforce their own rules consistently.
But others, like those from the tweeters that suggested I needed to “go” and that it was “op time,” seemed like clear violations: they encouraged others to target me, repeatedly tweeted at and about me and made references to violence.
And yet threats and fake content are still omnipresent on twitter.
A founder of Twitter, and Twitter Board Member (and twitter’s largest individual shareholder) Ev Williams called out Facebook for their “fake news” problem in a Medium post (Ev is CEO/Founder) that has made news.
I found it interesting that when I went to read Zuckerberg’s post about misinformation, there were two ads on the side that are super fake.
One wonders why Evan Williams is not more outspoken about the fake news and abuse that proliferates on twitter?
Twitter does have rules preventing abuse and fake news on the books, they just don’t enforce them. And what they do enforce, seems to be one sides in the political spectrum.
It is at the point that Twitter’s core business is suffering as reflected in the stock price which is below IPO.
At the very least, Jack Dorsey and the Board of Directors owe it to shareholders to clarify what is going on, and what steps are being taken to cure the public perception of Twitter as a safe haven for abusers & fake #news.
Having blogged about abuse on Twitter I am saddened to report that a startup is seizing the opportunity to launch in the face of Twitter’s continuing abuse and censorship problem.
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter has shockingly tweeted that conversations are to hard right now and there are hidden rules.
This is bizarre as Twitter itself is a social media & online communications company.
Of what use is a social media platform that one can’t communicate on?
Virtually none.
team is working on it. Conversations are an important element and too difficult right now!
With professional journalists like Kassy Dillon suspended for using the same words Hollywood celebrities use, receiving threat and Kristen V Brown receiving death threats it remains a wonder any woman feels safe on Twitter.
The “Gamergate” controversy has roiled twitter for coming up on 2 years.
Amazingly enough the most sustainably abusive person in Gamergate is Randi Lee Harper.
She’s managed to become an “anti abuse expert” while telling people to light themselves on fire, fuck off, “get fucked” in endless supply.
I can only imagine it’s because she has inside contacts with Twitter (@safety) and openly boasts about them.
Not only does she boast about them, she brags that she knows what is best for you whether you like it or not, and they can make these suggestions.
Often when I read through various accounts that are linked to Gamergate, however tenuously I cannot believe I am in America.
It’s Orewellian.
And it’s a high school soap opera once you realize that everyone on that page is a public person (at least now) and receives threats from the weirdos that inhabit the internet in endless amounts.
I myself have also received threats.
I funny understand that women perceive threats differently, but still some caution must be taken to make sure the threats are credible threats to yourself.
Quite frankly Randi Lee Harper openly advocates violence, hatred and is the most abusive person I have ever seen on the internet.
I have no idea why @Jack turned her and her mob loose on consumers.
And the lynch mob that Randi Lee Harper command set in. As Jesse knew it would.
The “Lynchmob” (racist reference) of course operates exactly how Vijaya Gadde wrote in her Washington Post Op Ed, but if you are Randi, the Terms of Service seems to be inoperative.
Randi Lee Harper is the most abusive person I have ever encountered online that simply has been able to remain abusive and unmoderated by Twitter.
I cannot believe @Randileeharper is allowed to have a @twitter account, much less engage in the bullying, harassment and intimidation of twitter customers she flagrantly engages in.
Let me rephrase that. What does a Russian Born Immigrant, a PoC Sex Worker, some white dude, a Gay Jew Greek immigrant, and a Taiwanese immigrant have in common?
Let me rephrase that yet again.
What do people that rely on their free speech for their livelihood have in common?
They are all speaking up for the second amendment.
We are now adding our voice to this struggle.
No one in their right mind is an absolutist about Free Speech.
Having been taught that free speech in the legal sense is free speech minus threats such as don’t yell fire in a crowded movie theatre, don’t make physical threats, this would be clear to anyone of rational mind.
And then we have privileged and empowered Randi Lee Harper. She is apparently the Darth Vader to Jack and his dark empire.
Randi spends a lot of her time telling people to die in a fire, to light themselves on fire, and other variations thereof.
She also tells people there is no such thing as free speech in social media.
There's no such thing as free speech on social media. This is a concept that doesn't exist, but is aggressively parroted by many.
— chasing the dopamine (@randileeharper) July 16, 2015
I will seriously never understand why people think the 1st amendment has anything to do with ToS for a social media website.
It remains clear to me that despite all of @jack’s words, he hates consumers.
No rational company would allow Randi Lee Harris to attack their own customers in a never ending torrent of hate, vitriol and advocation of violence if they had ANY regard for their “users” as people.
@Jack think that $TWTR is for empowered dialogue, blah, blah, blah.
I think @Jack is misleading and does not care how his Terms of Service is structured to punish communication and is easily abused by his personally empowered abuser, @Randileeharper.
Twitter stands for freedom of expression, speaking truth to power, and empowering dialogue. That starts with safety. https://t.co/PbEoM1lCyb
First, along with Anita Sarkeesian @femfreq, Brianna Wu @spacekatgal and Zoe Quinn @unburntwitch, label anyone who doesn’t agree with you as part of a hate group.
It's unacceptable and cowardly for @Polygon not to call GamerGate what it is, a misogynist hate group targeting women http://t.co/HwFveVulZS
Randi likes to claim that tweeting her valid questions is inciting dog piling.
This despite no intent to dogpile. I was simply following up with the person, Cathy Young, that @randileeharper claimed was sending followers to dogpile her.
“Incitement” is against ToS. Yet @twitter will suspend you without even determining your intent, or the validity of the speech itself.
Interestingly twitter claims to prohibit false or misleading tweets, but those tweets by @randileeharper seem to not be moderated.
Also mentioned is adding large number of unrelated users to lists. Randi categorizes 44% of consumers, gamers as members of a Hate group, and propagates that block list to subscribers.
The only way they are remotely related is playing games, but Randi adds large numbers to lists and blocks them.
And then you can end up suspended for being blocked by a large number of people.
So this little ball of hate is empowered by @jack to limit free speech and consumers ability to utilize Twitter as they see fit, without actual threats to any other consumers.
It’s the craziest business decision I have seen in a long time.
Letting 44% of consumers be labeled as a Hate Group?
WanderinPoet 
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