Name: Meet the Censored: Status Coup
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Meet the Censored: Status Coup

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SubscribeSign inShare this postMeet the Censored: Status Couptaibbi.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailJan 27, 2021Share this postMeet the Censored: Status Couptaibbi.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailStatus CoupUSA TodayGuardian, the Wall Street JournalNew York Post, Daily Mail,Status Coup Washington Post Members of the National Guard are on standby. Plywood covers the windows of the State Capitol. Tall metal barricades surround Capitol Square, with police vehicles idling on pathways just inside locked pedestrian gates. Downtown streets will be closed; signs warning against carrying guns have gone up around the city.“The violent, lawless insurrection and assault on democracy and its institutions that unfolded last week in Washington, D.C., will not be tolerated in the city of Richmond,” Mayor Levar Stoney warned on Thursday.The threats may have been credible, but when Farina began live-streaming to an audience of 6,000, the event turned out to be peaceful and unremarkable, though not without interest from a news perspective. Status Coup’s Despite the seeming unremarkableness of the event, it shut down abruptly mid-feed. Chariton assumed something happened on Farina’s end. had Status CoupNews2Share, didPlans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.&nbsp;According to Fischer, the Twitter announcement didn’t exactly make sense, because the protesters in Ohio were more of a libertarian ilk, and, as Farina and Chariton discovered in the Virginia crowd, not so clearly aligned with Trump as Twitter and other media outlets may have imagined. Fischer has frequently covered events involving the gun-toting Boogaloos, whom he describes as anti-authoritarian and less likely to be Trumpists than to profess a pox-on-both-houses attitude to Trump and Joe Biden both (“You might hear something like, ‘Unless you put Ron Paul on the ballot, I’m not voting,’” he says).The policy presents obvious head-scratching issues. For one, as Fischer points out, virtually all police carry a firearm, so “there’s obviously some subjectivity in what’s being enforced.” Furthermore, the rule doesn’t seem to apply to major corporate outlets, a double-standard problem that’s a constant in this universe.“I absolutely think there’s a campaign against independent content creators, especially live,” Fischer says. “Major outlets face no such technical issues.”The Young Turks, Typically, alternative media outlets can’t afford to travel much and often have to rely on wire services and commercial coverage for primary source material, especially for expensive beats like the presidential election. Chariton emphasizes going to hot spots like Flint and to election campaign events to generate original images and video interviews, an innovative alt-media take on national news coverage. Live stream coverage had been a major part of their formula.The second has been an effort to close loopholes in the platforms’ content moderation regimes. In the wake of the Capitol riot, this trend intensified. After the “insurrection,” a series of trial-balloon stories appeared in the press, suggesting that Internet nooks and crannies where conspiracy theory and misinformation proliferate might need more aggressive cleaning.New York Times Times YouTube Status Coup“It’s pretty horrible,” Chariton said, “if we have to consider not doing our jobs, out of fear that YouTube is going to remove our content, or&nbsp;remove our channel without warning (like they’ve begun&nbsp;doing to other,&nbsp;smaller channels)."The standard response to complaints about incidents like this is that YouTube and Google are private companies, and no one has a right to a platform on a private space. Chariton acknowledges this and concedes there are alternative platforms, like Rokfin, a video-sharing alternative to YouTube. For the foreseeable future anyway, however, it would be nearly impossible to build a successful alternative video-based channel without the assent of the small handful of major tech platforms that dominate media. “People live on YouTube and Facebook,” is how Chariton puts it.I asked him a few more questions about the future of live content, and what happened on January 18th:TK: How has the ability to produce live content affected your business? TK: What happened in Virginia to affect your decision-making about live content going forward? JC: I had to tell my cameraman not to go live… They’ve already shown they’re willing to take down some outlets entirely, without warning. The email YouTube sent me, I felt they could consider that a warning, and the next time, they could either give us a copyright strike, or remove us. I just can’t afford to take that risk. TK: Do you see this as part of a wider effort to close informational loopholes at these platforms?CNNFox NewsTK: What are the implications of an incident like this for alternative media? JC: First of all, it’s worth pointing out, the only reason my content was restored is that I threw a shit-fit on Twitter, and people like Krystal Ball and Ryan Grim complained. But people like Andrew Kimmel did not have their content restored, proving there’s basically no rhyme or reason to this. It’s arbitrary. We’ve come to a place where you’d almost have to clear your decisions with YouTube ahead of time to feel completely safe. I understand, there must be some limits. If someone like Alex Jones is saying, “Go get your guns, get out there,” that’s really dangerous.But this, this is beyond a slippery slope. It’s a cliff. If they start pulling live streams or issuing strikes like this, it’s basically a death sentence for outlets like ours. 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SubscribeSign inShare this postMeet the Censored: Status Couptaibbi.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailJan 27, 2021Share this postMeet the Censored: Status Couptaibbi.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailStatus CoupUSA TodayGuardian, the Wall Street JournalNew York Post, Daily Mail,Status Coup Washington Post Members of the National Guard are on standby. Plywood covers the windows of the State Capitol. Tall metal barricades surround Capitol Square, with police vehicles idling on pathways just inside locked pedestrian gates. Downtown streets will be closed; signs warning against...

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Matthew C. Taibbi (/taɪˈiːbi/; born March 2, 1970) is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. He is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, author of several books, co-host of Useful Idiots, and publisher of a newsletter on Substack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Taibbi

Matt Taibbi

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Meet the Censored: Status Coup

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