All of this online manipulation is supporting people who are either out to get me personally or who I just don't agree with much, which I find very annoying.

The bots keep getting more sophisticated. It's nice that we don't see them often around here.

@futurebird

Trumpo just pocket veto’d billions away from usaid and state dept.

That last one could have been fine... IF IT WASN'T SECRET.

Also some of the "oversight" they wanted was odious. You might recognize some of the people who got involved.

@magicalthinking

?

@magicalthinking

the heck is a "trumpo" sounds like the worst pokemon ever

@futurebird I would take that last one with a grain of salt. The author is known for being needlessly provocative, misrepresenting her subject, and getting stuff wrong. Some creators have already come out and said that they did not receive money.

@puffer

Do you have any links about that? I was pretty disapointed to see David Packman on that list. Packman is a liberal but I always thought he was the kind of person who would understand why taking *secret* money would be upsetting to his audience.

To be clear there ought to be more support like this for creators. The right is doing this kind of thing so much and people think left wing news will just come out of the ether for free. But it needs to be out in the open.

@puffer

Also I thought Taylor was fine? At least as journalists go... what alarmed you?

@futurebird ah for sure dropping a lot of unsourced innuendo is never helpful. As for the YouTube short I saw where one creator who was named saying that was wrong and he wasn’t being paid I don’t remember which one it was. There’s this one which isn’t exactly from the mouths of the creators themselves but it’s the gist of it.

@puffer

Not thrilled with this response from Tabitha

On the other hand she's always been pretty open about being a supporter of Democrats (as opposed to a reporter or commentator.)

I'm not the biggest fan of her content but I don't have anything against her really.

@futurebird Oh yeah. Fair enough. I wasn’t meaning to endorse it just came up in my recently watched and she does say she saw people saying it got details wrong.

I don’t follow her but she comes up in my algorithm occasionally and sometimes is pretty funny. But for sure she’s in the tank for the Dems.

@puffer

I wrote a very mild comment something like "this would have been fine if it weren't secret IMO. Packman has talked about it."

She deleted it in like 20 seconds.

@futurebird Gotta tow the line.

@puffer

Like. Am I being unreasonable? I understand and even agree with just not talking to right wing people. It's a waste of time.

But I always have patience for liberals and for leftists.

But, from time to time I encounter either liberals who wall them self off from "self righteous purity testers" or leftists who ARE "self righteous purity testers" (most are not in my experience) I'm kinda of sick of both of ya'll.

@puffer

Also there is probably some truth to Taylor Lorenz just stirring up trouble to some degree. That's kind of her instinct. I kind of like it about her, but she can fail to read the room.

But I think that's part of journalism. If you don't ever make people angry (provided you are telling something true) you are bad at it.

@puffer

Something I didn't understand was all of the comments on Tabatha's video saying "of course this happens at THIS moment mm hmm"

???

This is the perfect moment to be critical of Democrats, to do the deep cleaning and get right. When it is closer to an election even I might shut up. But, this kind of disappointing sneaky stuff is killing them.

@futurebird I agree with everything your saying.

@puffer

I guess we'll have to see how the centrists who follow them react.

Weren't we all just clowning on Tim Pool for taking secret Russian money to apologize for and praise Putin a few months back?

I don't think this is as bad as that at all. But it is not good. It's dishonest. It's depressing. These things must be disclosed.