11 ms·

Campaign Monitor has suspended President Trump

125 points by awnird 6y ago

mmastrac 6y ago
That doesn't leave many communication channels open. It was probably not a great strategy to build a brand completely on the backs of third parties you don't control. I can just imagine him raging around his office or jet unable to get the adulation he clearly needs to function. He's going to age pretty quickly this next year.
- petertodd 6y ago
  > It was probably not a great strategy to build a brand completely on the backs of third parties you don't control. How do you suggest emailing people without third parties? That includes your ISP. Your DNS domain provider. Your datacenter. Your hydro company. Your bank. etc. etc.
  - VikingCoder 6y ago
    TOR Hidden Service?
  - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    At this point I expect power and water to be cut off for him
- peteretep 6y ago
  > That doesn't leave many communication channels open Other than the literal press office inside his house staffed by correspondents of all major worldwide news outlets. How will he let us know what he’s thinking?!?!
  - petertodd 6y ago
    Indeed, how will he? Those correspondents are middle-men between him and his audience, that get to choose how to portray what he actually said. That's what's so revolutionary about tools like email and websites, compared to the status quo. Notably, during the status quo, postal mail - the main alternative that avoided middle-men - faced very little censorship. It's a felony to even open mail that isn't addressed to you in many countries, including the US: https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/is-it-illegal-to-shred-previous-tenants-mail.html https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/is-it-illegal-...
    - redisman 6y ago
      As you can see from today, websites don't exist in the ether. There are even more middlemen since the internet is a lot more layered than TV.
    - dragontamer 6y ago
      > Notably, during the status quo, postal mail - the main alternative that avoided middle-men - faced very little censorship. You might want to double-check your history there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_censorship#American_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_censorship#American_Civ... https://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/finding-aid/civilian/rg-216.html https://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/finding-aid/civi...
      - petertodd 6y ago
        Along with the occasional censorship on obscenity grounds, those examples of wartime censorship were precisely why I said "very little" rather than "none". "The closure of the Office of Censorship in November 1945 corresponded with the ending of World War II." If only other emergency measures were ended so promptly.
    - peteretep 6y ago
      > Those correspondents are middle-men between him and his audience, that get to choose how to portray what he actually said. This is true but also a bit of a reach. Firstly, whatever they report, people can just go straight to the Whitehouse Newsroom website and confirm and get the news straight from the horse’s mouth. Secondly, of the news orgs, several are legally bound to report neutrally (BBC), several just will because that’s their business model (AP, Reuters), and then there’s enough there with polar opposite agendas that you’ll be able to determine an accurate picture pretty quickly.
      - petertodd 6y ago
        > Firstly, whatever they report, people can just go straight to the Whitehouse Newsroom website and confirm and get the news straight from the horse’s mouth. ...and as you can see, I did mention websites. But the fact is, that extra step significantly decreases engagement. Especially for current events. Also it's just a fact of psychology that the order in which you are presented information matters a lot. > Secondly, of the news orgs, several are legally bound to report neutrally (BBC), several just will because that’s their business model (AP, Reuters) I've personally worked with both BBC and AP/Reuters reporters on multiple occasions as both the subject of a story, and for background research. Based on my experience, I do not believe they consistently portrayed the facts neutrally. Not to mention, it's hard to even define what "neutral" is in a lot of cases. > and then there’s enough there with polar opposite agendas that you’ll be able to determine an accurate picture pretty quickly. ...which goes back to my point re: effort: you're asking _much_ more of the audience than just letting them receive an email. Not to mention, reporters of all political persuasion consistently neglect to cover certain types of stories. For example, getting reporters to report on "feel good" stories is quite hard - especially feel good stories relevant to smaller audiences - as it just doesn't fit their narrative/business models.
- thesausageking 6y ago
  I don't understand this logic. Surely the President of the United States has someone on his team who can setup a Wordpress server. His followers and the media would read it there. Most people don't even read his tweets on Twitter.com but they see them quoted in news articles. If writers take them from DonaldJTrump.com instead, what's the difference?
- messick 6y ago
  There is literally an entire room in the building Trump lives in dedicated to getting the WH’s message out to the American people. He could wouldn’t even have to put on his outside shoes.
flowerlad 6y ago
Any word about AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile?
- kube-system 6y ago
  Utilities are under regulations that typically prevent abrupt termination and sometimes require particular reasons for doing so. Not sure if his campaign would be covered under any relevant regulations, but nonetheless, it’s not likely a telecom is going to shut them off if they’re paying and they’re not otherwise legally compelled to do so.
  - h2odragon 6y ago
    That's the only reason I can see for Twitter, specifically; to be pursuing this strategy. If they become a utility; then no one ever has to know about the facts behind things like (alleged) ad fraud, click fraud, shadow bans, etc... How many people would be shattered to learn their imaginary internet points were half? all? bot generated?
supernova87a 6y ago
I have a different kind of thought here. Doesn't this make you think about how dependent (or interwoven) our government is on private / commercial companies to communicate with us? I.e. for an entity with such a role in our lives or organization of society, it actually has very few ways to disseminate information of its own, don't you think? If the government didn't have access to TV, newspapers, internet provided by companies, how would someone in charge tell us something? Telephone chain? Emergency broadcast system? Town crier? Post office? I think actually it tells you how little day-to-day power the government has over our lives aside from when you run afoul of the law.
- MontagFTB 6y ago
  I’ve always seen this as a primary function of the postal service. The government should defend and maintain it as the essential medium of communication that it is. It’s not as fast as most forms of modern communication, but it handles a lot of essential tasks efficiently. On a somewhat related note, never underestimate the bandwidth of a sneakernet.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    Absolutely, and this is my go-to argument any time someone says that the USPS is obsolete/unprofitable/archaic/redundant/etc. The point of the USPS is that the government can always correspond with any of its citizens, with an organizational service guarantee.
  - beerandt 6y ago
    But even postal longhaul trucking is private contracted, even if it's not to one giant entity. Same for rural route carriers.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      They can’t stop the service though. At most they can delay it while the government changes contractors.
beerandt 6y ago
Interesting that their excuse is basically: "They weren't using us that much, so we don't see the problem." Edit: the confirmed suspension is only one of their many services, so maybe the HN title's a bit misleading?
- daveleebbc 6y ago
  ^^ yes, I'd argue it was. As the tweets say, I've only confirmed that one provider of many has pulled the plug. I'm looking into the others.
- frenchy 6y ago
  Yes, the title seems to be misleading. At this point, it's pure conjecture. Basically, some people (at least) are no longer getting emails from his campain. It's unclear if they've just stopped sending them or they've been suspended, or sombody accidentally broke something. It appears the one mentioned account disabling is an unrelated Trump venture.
throwawaysea 6y ago
See https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221683/trump-tried-to-evade-his-ban-with-potus-but-those-tweets-were-instantly-deleted https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221683/trump-tried-to-ev... for screenshots of various tweets Trump made from other accounts that were quickly deleted by Twitter. One of the tweets talks about building their own platform. Another talks about Section 230. And another about the "radical left" silencing half the country.
- bra-ket 6y ago
  He's absolutely right, the radical left is indeed silencing half the country.
itsananderson 6y ago
Potentially even more interesting information further down the tweet thread: https://twitter.com/DaveLeeFT/status/1347724205379309568 https://twitter.com/DaveLeeFT/status/1347724205379309568 Trump's campaign claimed $69k in email marketing expenses paid to SendGrid, but Twilio/SendGrid has no record of a Trump campaign account. Upon further investigation they found that they do have accounts for his private businesses. Not necessarily a smoking gun for campaign finance violations, but sketchy enough looking that I'm curious to see what further investigation turns up.
- throwaway9980 6y ago
  Could be creative or professional services expenses. What’s the hourly rate for a high end propaganda copywriter?
trwaway412312 6y ago
I dont have the book to hand, but what I remember from "Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook", cutting off communication lines (internal and external) is one of the first things to do in a coup. Because that severely limits the governments and attached agencies response, and confuses the members of the public in support of the incumbent. Next step is to detain all people in power opposed to you and occupy the legislative while cutting off physical halls of power to the un-initiated. Then you declare yourself as ruler (ideally using legal loop-holes available to you by controlling all, normally separated, powers). It all has to be done quickly as alternative communication lines will be established quickly and the outranged masses wont be controllable if they still have hope to restore the old regime. There was a bit of talk of the storm on the Capitol to be something of a coup. But they did not cut off communication lines and lacked a lot of the organization you need to follow the coup d'Etat protocol. Although storming the Capitol was a display of power that is not in line of how I believe a democracy should be governed, but calling it a coup was a hyperbole in my opinion. Putting the two together, if the president looses access to communication lines and then is being removed by the legislative and parts of the executive (vice-president), then that actually looks a lot closer to the definition of a coup as I see it. Although separate ownership of all the media that is closing down on Trump would imply a coordinated shutdown of communication is close to impossible, weirdly the group-think makes it happen. And although it might not be centrally planned as it would happen in a traditional coup from the 20th century, the process is remarkably similar. So I think if POTUS is removed from office now, then the US will need to get ready for a lot of disrupting semantics from the Trump supporters for a long time. Just because you cannot hear them _now_, does not mean it is solved. If there is momentum it will come back. Potentially worse. This could develop into the Dolchstoßlegende [0] of the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
- archagon 6y ago
  The enforced transfer of democratic power from someone who really, really doesn’t want to go, and whose sycophants spout lies and propaganda regarding their victimhood at every opportunity, might look like a “coup” to those on their side. But there is simply no viable alternative.

125 points by awnird 6y ago

That doesn't leave many communication channels open. It was probably not a great strategy to build a brand completely on the backs of third parties you don't control. I can just imagine him raging around his office or jet unable to get the adulation he clearly needs to function. He's going to age pretty quickly this next year.

petertodd 6y ago
> It was probably not a great strategy to build a brand completely on the backs of third parties you don't control. How do you suggest emailing people without third parties? That includes your ISP. Your DNS domain provider. Your datacenter. Your hydro company. Your bank. etc. etc.
- VikingCoder 6y ago
  TOR Hidden Service?
- tick_tock_tick 6y ago
  At this point I expect power and water to be cut off for him
peteretep 6y ago
> That doesn't leave many communication channels open Other than the literal press office inside his house staffed by correspondents of all major worldwide news outlets. How will he let us know what he’s thinking?!?!
- petertodd 6y ago
  Indeed, how will he? Those correspondents are middle-men between him and his audience, that get to choose how to portray what he actually said. That's what's so revolutionary about tools like email and websites, compared to the status quo. Notably, during the status quo, postal mail - the main alternative that avoided middle-men - faced very little censorship. It's a felony to even open mail that isn't addressed to you in many countries, including the US: https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/is-it-illegal-to-shred-previous-tenants-mail.html https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/is-it-illegal-...
  - redisman 6y ago
    As you can see from today, websites don't exist in the ether. There are even more middlemen since the internet is a lot more layered than TV.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    > Notably, during the status quo, postal mail - the main alternative that avoided middle-men - faced very little censorship. You might want to double-check your history there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_censorship#American_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_censorship#American_Civ... https://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/finding-aid/civilian/rg-216.html https://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/finding-aid/civi...
    - petertodd 6y ago
      Along with the occasional censorship on obscenity grounds, those examples of wartime censorship were precisely why I said "very little" rather than "none". "The closure of the Office of Censorship in November 1945 corresponded with the ending of World War II." If only other emergency measures were ended so promptly.
  - peteretep 6y ago
    > Those correspondents are middle-men between him and his audience, that get to choose how to portray what he actually said. This is true but also a bit of a reach. Firstly, whatever they report, people can just go straight to the Whitehouse Newsroom website and confirm and get the news straight from the horse’s mouth. Secondly, of the news orgs, several are legally bound to report neutrally (BBC), several just will because that’s their business model (AP, Reuters), and then there’s enough there with polar opposite agendas that you’ll be able to determine an accurate picture pretty quickly.
    - petertodd 6y ago
      > Firstly, whatever they report, people can just go straight to the Whitehouse Newsroom website and confirm and get the news straight from the horse’s mouth. ...and as you can see, I did mention websites. But the fact is, that extra step significantly decreases engagement. Especially for current events. Also it's just a fact of psychology that the order in which you are presented information matters a lot. > Secondly, of the news orgs, several are legally bound to report neutrally (BBC), several just will because that’s their business model (AP, Reuters) I've personally worked with both BBC and AP/Reuters reporters on multiple occasions as both the subject of a story, and for background research. Based on my experience, I do not believe they consistently portrayed the facts neutrally. Not to mention, it's hard to even define what "neutral" is in a lot of cases. > and then there’s enough there with polar opposite agendas that you’ll be able to determine an accurate picture pretty quickly. ...which goes back to my point re: effort: you're asking _much_ more of the audience than just letting them receive an email. Not to mention, reporters of all political persuasion consistently neglect to cover certain types of stories. For example, getting reporters to report on "feel good" stories is quite hard - especially feel good stories relevant to smaller audiences - as it just doesn't fit their narrative/business models.
thesausageking 6y ago
I don't understand this logic. Surely the President of the United States has someone on his team who can setup a Wordpress server. His followers and the media would read it there. Most people don't even read his tweets on Twitter.com but they see them quoted in news articles. If writers take them from DonaldJTrump.com instead, what's the difference?
messick 6y ago
There is literally an entire room in the building Trump lives in dedicated to getting the WH’s message out to the American people. He could wouldn’t even have to put on his outside shoes.

flowerlad 6y ago

Any word about AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile?

kube-system 6y ago
Utilities are under regulations that typically prevent abrupt termination and sometimes require particular reasons for doing so. Not sure if his campaign would be covered under any relevant regulations, but nonetheless, it’s not likely a telecom is going to shut them off if they’re paying and they’re not otherwise legally compelled to do so.
- h2odragon 6y ago
  That's the only reason I can see for Twitter, specifically; to be pursuing this strategy. If they become a utility; then no one ever has to know about the facts behind things like (alleged) ad fraud, click fraud, shadow bans, etc... How many people would be shattered to learn their imaginary internet points were half? all? bot generated?

supernova87a 6y ago

I have a different kind of thought here. Doesn't this make you think about how dependent (or interwoven) our government is on private / commercial companies to communicate with us? I.e. for an entity with such a role in our lives or organization of society, it actually has very few ways to disseminate information of its own, don't you think? If the government didn't have access to TV, newspapers, internet provided by companies, how would someone in charge tell us something? Telephone chain? Emergency broadcast system? Town crier? Post office? I think actually it tells you how little day-to-day power the government has over our lives aside from when you run afoul of the law.

MontagFTB 6y ago
I’ve always seen this as a primary function of the postal service. The government should defend and maintain it as the essential medium of communication that it is. It’s not as fast as most forms of modern communication, but it handles a lot of essential tasks efficiently. On a somewhat related note, never underestimate the bandwidth of a sneakernet.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Absolutely, and this is my go-to argument any time someone says that the USPS is obsolete/unprofitable/archaic/redundant/etc. The point of the USPS is that the government can always correspond with any of its citizens, with an organizational service guarantee.
- beerandt 6y ago
  But even postal longhaul trucking is private contracted, even if it's not to one giant entity. Same for rural route carriers.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    They can’t stop the service though. At most they can delay it while the government changes contractors.

beerandt 6y ago

Interesting that their excuse is basically: "They weren't using us that much, so we don't see the problem." Edit: the confirmed suspension is only one of their many services, so maybe the HN title's a bit misleading?

daveleebbc 6y ago
^^ yes, I'd argue it was. As the tweets say, I've only confirmed that one provider of many has pulled the plug. I'm looking into the others.
frenchy 6y ago
Yes, the title seems to be misleading. At this point, it's pure conjecture. Basically, some people (at least) are no longer getting emails from his campain. It's unclear if they've just stopped sending them or they've been suspended, or sombody accidentally broke something. It appears the one mentioned account disabling is an unrelated Trump venture.

throwawaysea 6y ago

See https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221683/trump-tried-to-evade-his-ban-with-potus-but-those-tweets-were-instantly-deleted https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221683/trump-tried-to-ev... for screenshots of various tweets Trump made from other accounts that were quickly deleted by Twitter. One of the tweets talks about building their own platform. Another talks about Section 230. And another about the "radical left" silencing half the country.

bra-ket 6y ago
He's absolutely right, the radical left is indeed silencing half the country.

itsananderson 6y ago

Potentially even more interesting information further down the tweet thread: https://twitter.com/DaveLeeFT/status/1347724205379309568 https://twitter.com/DaveLeeFT/status/1347724205379309568 Trump's campaign claimed $69k in email marketing expenses paid to SendGrid, but Twilio/SendGrid has no record of a Trump campaign account. Upon further investigation they found that they do have accounts for his private businesses. Not necessarily a smoking gun for campaign finance violations, but sketchy enough looking that I'm curious to see what further investigation turns up.

throwaway9980 6y ago
Could be creative or professional services expenses. What’s the hourly rate for a high end propaganda copywriter?

trwaway412312 6y ago

I dont have the book to hand, but what I remember from "Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook", cutting off communication lines (internal and external) is one of the first things to do in a coup. Because that severely limits the governments and attached agencies response, and confuses the members of the public in support of the incumbent. Next step is to detain all people in power opposed to you and occupy the legislative while cutting off physical halls of power to the un-initiated. Then you declare yourself as ruler (ideally using legal loop-holes available to you by controlling all, normally separated, powers). It all has to be done quickly as alternative communication lines will be established quickly and the outranged masses wont be controllable if they still have hope to restore the old regime. There was a bit of talk of the storm on the Capitol to be something of a coup. But they did not cut off communication lines and lacked a lot of the organization you need to follow the coup d'Etat protocol. Although storming the Capitol was a display of power that is not in line of how I believe a democracy should be governed, but calling it a coup was a hyperbole in my opinion. Putting the two together, if the president looses access to communication lines and then is being removed by the legislative and parts of the executive (vice-president), then that actually looks a lot closer to the definition of a coup as I see it. Although separate ownership of all the media that is closing down on Trump would imply a coordinated shutdown of communication is close to impossible, weirdly the group-think makes it happen. And although it might not be centrally planned as it would happen in a traditional coup from the 20th century, the process is remarkably similar. So I think if POTUS is removed from office now, then the US will need to get ready for a lot of disrupting semantics from the Trump supporters for a long time. Just because you cannot hear them _now_, does not mean it is solved. If there is momentum it will come back. Potentially worse. This could develop into the Dolchstoßlegende [0] of the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth

archagon 6y ago
The enforced transfer of democratic power from someone who really, really doesn’t want to go, and whose sycophants spout lies and propaganda regarding their victimhood at every opportunity, might look like a “coup” to those on their side. But there is simply no viable alternative.