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Steve Bannon Is Out At Breitbart

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Steve Bannon left the White House in August of last year to a hero's return at Breitbart News, the far-right news site he helped turn into the leading voice of conservative politics in America.

Now, less than five months later, the former chief strategist for the president is gone from the job that made him.

Breitbart announced Tuesday that Bannon would step down from his post as executive chair of the site, a position he first held between 2012 and August 2016. The move follows a brutal week for Bannon, after President Trump — and Bannon's patrons, the Mercer family — disowned him. The split followed the release of a behind-the scenes book, Fire and Fury, in which Bannon strongly criticized members of the Trump family.

In a statement, Bannon wrote that he was “proud of what the Breitbart team has accomplished in so short a period of time in building out a world-class news platform.”

The announcement completes what has been a shockingly fast fall from power for Bannon, who had hoped to use Breitbart, in concert with a new political action committee, to fund insurgent conservative challengers to mainstream Republicans in 2018 congressional races.

Now, the man who took considerable credit for President Trump's shocking win in 2016 finds himself cast out — crucially, from the good graces of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire GOP donors who fund Breitbart and a variety of other Bannon-linked ventures. Without the Mercers' support, and that of the rest of the Breitbart board, including CEO Larry Solov and Susie Breitbart — wife of the site's deceased founder, Andrew Breitbart — Bannon was forced to step down.

Bannon's departure leaves Breitbart — already in the midst of a traffic plunge —without its strongest editorial figure. In the months since leaving the White House, Bannon had become the site's public face, with Breitbart selling Bannon-themed merchandise and slavishly covering his public remarks. Without Bannon and former tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who left Breitbart after appearing to condone pedophilia in a video released in February 2017, the site will lack name recognition.

At the roaring height of its effectiveness, the news site Bannon referred to fondly as his “killing machine” was able to capture the resentment of a wide range of readers opposed to the liberal trajectory of American culture and turn it into ferociously partisan and highly shareable content. The targets of this resentment ranged from Black Lives Matter activists to liberal journalists to Silicon Valley executives. (And Bannon at least plotted to subvert multiple tech companies.) At times, as BuzzFeed News reported in October, that machine drew directly on the extremist fringe of the right wing — white supremacists and white nationalists — for ideas, guidance, and writing.

Still, it was this very connection to a base of cultural resentment against immigrants, coastal liberals, social justice activists, and others that President Trump seemed not to want to lose even after pushing Bannon from the White House last August. And for months, Trump seemed to waffle between supporting the far-right, identity politics–detesting candidates Bannon proposed for Congress and the more mainstream Republicans favored by the GOP establishment. The loss of an Alabama Senate seat — which Republicans had held for 25 years — by Bannon-backed Roy Moore seemed to settle the debate in favor of the latter.

Then came the stunning remarks attributed to Bannon in Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury. Though Bannon later apologized for the statements, Trump and his allies had already publicly turned on him. And when the Mercers followed shortly thereafter, Bannon's time at Breitbart was all but over.

Quelle: <a href="Steve Bannon Is Out At Breitbart“>BuzzFeed

Is Nicki Minaj Doing An Ad For Mattresses Here?

Was this Instagram #sponsored?

The Case

Nicki Minaj posted an Instagram of herself in front of the distinctive blue and white Casper mattress box on December 30 with the caption, “Love it @casper haven’t slept in daze.”

Casper is the mattress startup that makes flexible, reasonably priced mattresses that ship in a box (their standard model is $950 for a queen size). It’s a big business, and it's doing well!

This instagram was sort of confusing – was it a paid ad? Did she receive a free gift and liked it so much that she posted about it? BuzzFeed has reported on Casper gifting free mattresses to celebrities in the past, so that seems highly possible. Or does she truly just love this mattress?

And if it was a free gift, does using the gift box and kiss emojis meet the standards for the FTC’s guidelines for how social media influencers and celebrities should disclose ads on social media? (I’ll go ahead and answer that: almost certainly not).

The FTC’s guidelines are straightforward: Ads should be unambiguous – the ideal version says #ad at the beginning of a caption, rather than at the end of a long caption that gets cut off when viewed in the feed. The FTC also tells celebrities and influencers to avoid terms like #sp that aren’t totally clear to everyone.

The Evidence

The question of how to disclose a free gift turns out not to even be relevant here.

Casper confirmed to BuzzFeed News in an email on Monday that it compensated Nicki Minaj to post about the mattress. It wasn’t just a gift – she was paid $$$.

So shouldn’t have she disclosed it was an ad in the caption? Casper said, “we asked that she include the proper disclosure (#ad) in her caption. After she posted, we reached out – early last week – to ask that she update the copy to clarify.”

As of yesterday afternoon, Minaj had still not updated her post to say that it was an ad. Her record label did not reply to BuzzFeed News’ request for comment.

But wait, there’s a twist!

As of today, the caption is gone.

10 days later, Minaj deleted the caption on the photo entirely.

Still, deleting the caption that implied the mattress was a free gift doesn’t solve Minaj’s failure to disclose that her post is a paid ad. It wasn’t just the caption that mattered – what’s left is still a photo of her face in front of the distinctive Casper packaging. Even though she no longer tags the brand's name, someone seeing her post is still likely to think that Nicki Minaj loves Casper mattresses.

It seems that the case of Nicki Minaj and Casper is an interesting example at what happens when the negotiations between a celebrity and brand sponsor go awry. While a Casper mattress might give you a great night’s sleep, that’s probably not the case for whoever was in charge of dealing with their celebrity partners.

Quelle: <a href="Is Nicki Minaj Doing An Ad For Mattresses Here?“>BuzzFeed

SpaceX May Have Lost A Super-Expensive And Classified US Spy Satellite

Zuma mission launch on Jan. 7 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

SpaceX

An expensive and highly classified US spy satellite launched by Elon Musk's SpaceX has not been spotted in orbit and is presumed to be lost, reports said Monday.

SpaceX launched the mission, codenamed Zuma, on Sunday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with its Falcon 9 rocket, aiming to deliver the satellite into orbit on behalf of a US defense contractor.

A day later, there was no confirmation the mission had been a success and the satellite had not been recorded in orbit by US Strategic Command, which tracks tens of thousands of man-made objects in space. The satellite, built by Northrop Grumman, appears to have plunged into the atmosphere after failing to separate from the rocket as planned and was presumed to be lost, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported.

Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX, said Falcon 9 “did everything correctly” in a statement on Tuesday, but added that no further details could be provided because the mission was classified.

“For clarity: after review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday night. If we or others find otherwise based on further review, we will report it immediately,” Shotwell said in the statement. “Information published that is contrary to this statement is categorically false. Due to the classified nature of the payload, no further comment is possible.”

She said the incident will not impact two other planned SpaceX launches in the coming weeks.

“We do not comment on missions of this nature; but as of right now reviews of the data indicate Falcon 9 performed nominally,” SpaceX spokesman James Gleeson said in a statement to BuzzFeed News on Monday.

SpaceX

Northrop Grumman, the aerospace and defense contractor reportedly behind the satellite, told BuzzFeed News the mission was classified and it could not comment. Questions remained about which national security agency the satellite would have served, as well as its fate.

The satellite launch was originally scheduled for Nov. 15, but SpaceX pushed it back to review how the Falcon 9 delivers its payload.

“Standing down on Zuma mission to take a closer look at data from recent fairing testing for another customer,” SpaceX tweeted on Nov. 16.

The company aims to revolutionize space missions with reusable rockets that would dramatically lower costs. Its concepts, including the capture of rockets on drone ship landing pads following a launch, continue to undergo testing.

The satellite launch was SpaceX's third national security mission, and another step toward potentially high-paying contracts through the Department of Defense, Ars Technica reported.

LINK: SpaceX Just Made History By Relaunching A Rocket Into Space For The First Time

Quelle: <a href="SpaceX May Have Lost A Super-Expensive And Classified US Spy Satellite“>BuzzFeed

Trump Misses Key Points In Address To America's Farmers

American Farm Bureau Federation / Via livestream.com

President Donald Trump barely addressed critical issues for America's farmers — trade and immigration — in a roughly half-hour speech to the American Farm Bureau Federation on Monday afternoon.

Though he spoke at length about low unemployment, a soaring stock market, tax cuts, and reduced regulation, Trump only touched on trade late in his address, and then only briefly. Many farmers who struggle to make a profit and rely on exports are anxious about what will happen to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a deal that has been hugely beneficial to agriculture and has helped to sustain a trade surplus. Yet on NAFTA negotiations, the president merely said:

We're reviewing all our trade agreements to make sure they are fair and reciprocal. Reciprocal, so important. On NAFTA, I am working very hard to get a better deal for our country, and for our farmers, and for our manufacturers. It's under negotiation as we speak. But think of it, when Mexico is making all of that money, when Canada is making all of that money, it's not the easiest negotiation. We're going to make it fair for you people again.

People commenting on the address online seemed disappointed Trump didn't provide more detail on trade.

American Farm Bureau Federation

America's farm industry also relies heavily on immigrant labor, which is under threat under the current administration. The Farm Bureau said on its website, “Where American workers are unwilling or unavailable, workers from other countries have stepped in. Congress needs to pass responsible immigration reform that addresses agriculture’s current experienced workforce and creates a new flexible guest worker program. Instability in the agricultural workforce places our food supply at risk.”

Yet all the president said on the issue of immigration in Monday's address was:

“We are going to end chain migration. We are going to end the lottery system. And we are going to build the wall.”

Some viewers said Trump's address seemed more like a campaign speech.

American Farm Bureau Federation

As for the 2018 Farm Bill, Trump said briefly:

“I am looking forward to working with Congress to pass the Farm Bill on time so that it delivers for all of you, and I support a bill that includes crop insurance, unless you don't want me to. I guess you like it, right?”

The Farm Bureau did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the president's address to the agricultural community.

Farmers Voted For Trump. Now They're Worried.

Quelle: <a href="Trump Misses Key Points In Address To America's Farmers“>BuzzFeed

Edward Snowden Tweeted That The People Behind India's Controversial Biometric System Should Be Arrested

Andrew Kelly / Reuters

Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower, has come out in support of the Indian journalist who exposed a huge breach in India's controversial biometric ID program, Aadhaar, and said that the people responsible should be arrested.

Twitter: @Snowden / Via Twitter: @Snowden

Rachna Khaira, of Chandigarh-based Indian newspaper The Tribune, revealed she was able to buy access to the personal information of nearly 1.2 billion people in the Aadhaar database for just $8. She was then named in a criminal complaint by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government body responsible for the data.

The database contains personal information collected by the Indian government since 2010, including names, ages, addresses, cellphone numbers and iris scans. Yet critics have long argued that it compromises privacy and could lead to mass surveillance.

“I am happy that the concerns relating to the Aadhaar program are being highlighted internationally,” Khaira told BuzzFeed News. “Mr. Snowden's tweet validates my report, and I thank him for highlighting these concerns.”

Last week Snowden quoted a BuzzFeed News story about the database breach in a tweet.

Twitter: @Snowden / Via Twitter: @Snowden

A UIDAI spokesperson did not respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.

The legal complaint against Khaira sparked outrage in India, with critics saying that the government was attempting to muzzle the press. Local journalists in Jalandhar, Khaira's home city, held a protest march on Monday.

Last year the country slipped three points from the previous year on the World Press Freedom Index and ranks 136.

The UIDAI reacted to the backlash by saying that the agency respected freedom of press.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s Information and Technology minister, doubled down on the government’s commitment to freedom of the press.

Quelle: <a href="Edward Snowden Tweeted That The People Behind India's Controversial Biometric System Should Be Arrested“>BuzzFeed

Far Right Activist Charles Johnson Has Sued Twitter Over His Suspension

Mark Pernice for BuzzFeed News

For years, the controversial right-wing activist Charles C. Johnson has threatened to sue Twitter, which banned him in 2015.

Now, following a BuzzFeed News report that revealed the internal debate behind Twitter’s 2015 decision to bar him from its service, Johnson is putting his money where his mouth has long been.

In a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco on Monday, Johnson’s attorney Robert E. Barnes claims that the microblogging service banned his client for his political views, violating his right to free speech and breaking its contract with him in the process. In addition, the suit seeks millions of dollars of relief for alleged damage to Johnson’s media businesses. It was the second lawsuit filed today by a conservative activist against a tech superpower, following ex-Googler James Damore's suit against his former employer.

“This is going to be a very serious case over the freedom of the internet,” Johnson told BuzzFeed News, “And whether people have the right to say what they mean and mean what they say.”

Informed of the suit before it was filed, Twitter declined to comment on pending litigation.

The Johnson suit comes at a time when Americans across the political spectrum have become skeptical of the amount of power held by Silicon Valley giants and suspicious of their motives. It joins several other lawsuits by conservative parties against big tech platforms that claim tech companies like Twitter and Facebook discriminate against right-wing users. And while Johnson has a history of unsuccessful legal action, this suit hopes to test whether the various laws that have historically protected internet publishers are strong enough to withstand this new public scrutiny.

Twitter permanently suspended Johnson — a former Breitbart reporter who owns the crowd-sourced investigations site WeSearchr — in May of 2015 after he asked for donations to help “take out” civil rights activist Deray McKessson. While he claimed the tweet was taken out of context, prior to his suspension Johnson had drawn the company’s ire for his incendiary tweets —among them false rumors that President Obama was gay. In 2014 he was temporarily suspended from Twitter for posting photos and the address of an individual he claimed had been exposed to the Ebola virus. (After his suspension — as BuzzFeed News reported in December — Johnson began shorting Twitter's stock and attempting to enlist a range of conservative figures to help him sue the company.)

While the complaint takes issue with Twitter’s vague rules and inability to “convey a sufficiently definite warning” to Johnson for his behavior, the suit alleges that emails published by BuzzFeed News prove that the ban was “a political hit job on a politically disfavored individual.” In one January 2016 email to executives including current CEO Jack Dorsey, Tina Bhatnagar, Twitter’s VP of user services, suggested that Johnson’s suspension was a judgement call, rather than a strict interpretation of company rules. “We perma suspended Chuck Johnson even though it wasn't direct violent threats. It was just a call that the policy team made,” she wrote.

“That account is permanently suspended and nobody for no reason may reactivate it. Period.”

In a subsequent email, Twitter’s general counsel, Vijaya Gadde referenced a May 25, 2015, email from Costolo, which suggested the decision to make Johnson’s suspension permanent was Costolo’s. “As for Chuck Johnson – [former Twitter CEO] Dick [Costolo] made that decision,” Gadde wrote. Johnson’s complaint quotes the 2015 email from Costolo, in which the former CEO warns senior staff, “I don't want to find out we unsuspended this Chuck Johnson troll later on. That account is permanently suspended and nobody for no reason may reactivate it. Period. The press is reporting it as temporarily suspended. It is not temporarily suspended it is permanently suspended. I'm not sure why they're mistakenly reporting it as temporarily suspended but that's not the case here…don't let anybody unsuspend it.”

Costolo’s email, according to the complaint, “confirms that Twitter’s decision to permanently ban Johnson was not based on a perceived rule violation, but bias against Johnson.”

But even if Johnson’s attorneys are able to show that Twitter broke its contract with Johnson by banning him arbitrarily, the suit faces long odds. According to Eric Goldman, director of the Santa Clara University School of Law’s High Tech Law Institute, Twitter possesses a range of legal protections when it decides to ban a user.

“Twitter can choose to terminate anyone’s account at any time without repercussion,” Goldman told BuzzFeed News. “It has a categorical right to block whoever they choose.”

As a publisher, Twitter is protected by the first amendment. And as an internet service provider, Twitter is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — often referred to as the most influential law in the development of the modern internet — which has historically immunized provider’s decisions to terminate accounts.

The protections of Section 230 depend on the “good faith” of the provider, and Johnson’s suit argues that the emails reported by BuzzFeed demonstrate the lack thereof. And yet Johnson’s own reputation for bad faith may undercut that argument.

“It’s clear Twitter blocked him because they consider him a troll,” Goldman said.

In addition, Johnson’s suit argues that Twitter “performs an exclusively and traditionally public function,” and so it shouldn’t have the right to ban him for speech it doesn’t like. According to Goldman, such arguments have historically been unsuccessful in the courts, in part because judges are loath to set a potentially sweeping new precedent. Still, it’s an area where growing public resentment of big tech’s monopolistic power could have influence over a judge or a jury.

“We can’t ignore that there is such skepticism towards internet companies’ consolidation of power,” Goldman said. “The prevailing environment makes it dangerous for them.”

And for Johnson, who seems to want to embarrass Twitter as much as he wants to make a broader statement about the nature of internet platforms and the way they discriminate against conservatives, simply getting the suit past an initial motion to dismiss — and into discovery — might represent a victory.

“You can lose a lawsuit and still win the argument,” Johnson said.

Quelle: <a href="Far Right Activist Charles Johnson Has Sued Twitter Over His Suspension“>BuzzFeed

Google Memo Author James Damore Sues Company For Discrimination Against White Males

James Damore / Via Twitter

The author of a controversial memo that sparked debates about gender and diversity at Google sued his former employer on Monday alleging that the company discriminates against politically conservative white males.

James Damore, who was fired in August for internally circulating a manifesto that argued Google’s gender pay gap was the result of genetic inferiority, said in a lawsuit filed in Santa Clara Superior Court that the search giant “singled out, mistreated, and systemically punished and terminated” employees that deviated from the company’s view on diversity. Damore and a second plaintiff David Gudeman, another former Google engineer, are seeking class action status for conservative Caucasian men.

The men are being represented by Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Republican National Committee’s Comitteewoman for California.

“Google’s management goes to extreme — and illegal — lengths to encourage hiring managers to take protected categories such as race and/or gender into consideration as determinative hiring factors, to the detriment of Caucasian and male employees and potential employees at Google,” the suit reads.

Damore’s lawsuit is the latest legal challenge for Google, which also faces a suit for unequal pay. Earlier this month, four women plaintiffs as part of a revised lawsuit, alleged that the company had asked for their prior salaries and had underpaid them compared to their male counterparts.

Damore’s suit, which comes from the opposite end of the spectrum, was expected, given his very public hiring of Dhillon, in August. That month, the Dhillon Law Group published a blog post asking for anyone who had experienced illegal or retaliatory employment practices to get in touch.

IIn the 161-page complaint, Damore frames himself as a model Google employee who received 8 performance bonuses and $150,000 per year stock bonuses since he started working at the company in the summer of 2013. Despite this, he was terminated from his job after voicing his complaints about diversity practices and publishing his now infamous 10-page memo titled “Google's Ideological Echo Chamber.”

“Damore was surprised by Google’s position on blatantly taking gender into consideration during the hiring and promotion processes, and in publicly shaming Google business units for failing to achieve numerical gender parity,” reads the suit, following an event in March 2017 in which Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat and Human Resources Director Eileen Naughton “shamed” that had less than a 50% female workforce.

Damore also says that he felt forced to attend and participate in diversity training events, and that he was threatened and insulted by his coworkers following the publishing of his memo. He included an email from another Google employee who promised to “hound” Damore until one of them was fired.

During the call when they terminated Damore, management did not identify “any Google policy or procedure that Damore had violated,” the suit reads.

Gudeman, according to his LinkedIn, worked at Google as an engineer from Nov. 2013 to Dec. 2016. He is currently a self-employed software contractor and writer.

A Google spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Damore and Dhillon are expected to have a press conference at 12 p.m. in San Francisco.

Quelle: <a href="Google Memo Author James Damore Sues Company For Discrimination Against White Males“>BuzzFeed