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The Charlie Kirk Thread
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No chance the FBI made this up for this slam dunk case.
It is possible that it was scripted between the two in order to protect the boyfriend from his having prior knowledge of the assassination. They wrote the texts in a highly stylized, formal manner because they knew the cops would eat it up since it was in their "language."
This will not help the 20 or so people who allegedly were in chat groups discussing the event days before the 10th.
It is possible that it was scripted between the two in order to protect the boyfriend from his having prior knowledge of the assassination. They wrote the texts in a highly stylized, formal manner because they knew the cops would eat it up since it was in their "language."
This will not help the 20 or so people who allegedly were in chat groups discussing the event days before the 10th.
ZenMode
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It seems unlikely that a highly religious kid would kill a highly religious podcaster on a topic that they should agree on.
What does seem likely is that a kid who was raised hyper-religious, but clearly had inclinations that went against his religious teachings, would rebel against his family's religion, politics and join the other side.
4thgenheel
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and yet there's no evidence of it. at this point they've got everything that this dude ever wrote or searched on any device he ever owned in their possession and not a shred of evidence of some big leftist conversion or leftist ideology.
and tons of highly religious people are not homophobic. tons of highly religious people absolutely do not agree with homophobia. the fuck?
sringwal
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Social media has us in its grip and won't let go. The Charlie Kirk killing is a case study
Social media has us in its grip and won’t let go. The Charlie Kirk killing is a case studyBy DAVID BAUDERAP Media WriterThe Associated PressCharlie Kirk’s mastery of social media was key to him becoming a force in conservative politics. The extent to which Kirk’s killing and its aftermath have […]
accesswdun.com
Social media has us in its grip and won't let go. The Charlie Kirk killing is a case study
Social media has us in its grip and won’t let go. The Charlie Kirk killing is a case studyBy DAVID BAUDERAP Media WriterThe Associated PressCharlie Kirk’s mastery of social media was key to him becoming a force in conservative politics. The extent to which Kirk’s killing and its aftermath have […]
accesswdun.com
Social media has us in its grip and won’t let go. The Charlie Kirk killing is a case study By DAVID BAUDER
Kirk's mastery of social media was key to him becoming a force in conservative politics. The extent to which Kirk's killing and its aftermath have played out on those forums shouldn't come as a surprise. Links to videos of Kirk being shot flooded social media platforms like X, TikTok and Instagram before his death was even announced. Since then, social media has become the town square for increasingly strident debate and the forum for which conservatives have sought to punish people they feel aren't offering Kirk the proper respect. Divisive posts and conspiracy theories are pushed forward through algorithms on social media sites, since they drive interest to advertisers.Charlie Kirk's mastery of social media was key to his rise as an influence in conservative politics. So the extent to which his death and its aftermath have played out on those forums shouldn't come as a surprise.
In a microcosm of life today, social media is where Americans have gone to process last week's killing in Utah and is the chief tool his supporters are using to police those they feel aren't offering proper respect. Investigators are probing the time the man accused of killing Kirk, Tyler Robinson, spent in the “dark corners of the internet” — anti-social media, if you will — leading up to when he allegedly pulled the trigger.
On the other side of the world, as the Kirk story preoccupied Americans, Nepal reeled from a spasm of violence that erupted when the government tried to ban social media platforms.
All of this is forcing a closer look at the technologies that have changed our lives, how they control what we see and understand through algorithms, and the way all the time we spend on them affects our view of the world.
Cox emerges as powerful spokesman against social media
Utah's governor, Republican Spencer Cox, believes “cancer” isn’t a strong enough word to describe social media. “The most powerful companies in the history of the world have figured out how to hack our brains, get us addicted to outrage ... and get us to hate each other,” Cox said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, urged Americans via social media to “pull yourself together, read a book, get some exercise, have a whiskey, walk the dog or make some pasta or go fishing or just do anything other than let this algo pickle your brain and ruin your soul.”
Chilling videos of Kirk's Sept. 10 assassination immediately overwhelmed sites like X, TikTok and YouTube, and companies are still working to contain their spread. Confrontational material and conspiracy theories are pushed into social media feeds because they do precisely what they're designed to do — keep people on the platforms for longer periods of time.
“I do think we’re in a moment here,” said Laura Edelson, a Northeastern University professor and expert on social media algorithms. “Our country is being digitally mediated. Where we interact with other people, how we interact with broader society, that is more and more happening over feed algorithms. This is the most recent in a long line of ways that society has been changed by media technology.”
Divisive content and the proliferation of the video of Kirk's death may not have been the goal but are the direct result of decisions made to maximize profits and cut back on content moderation, Edelson said.
“I don't think there are people twirling their mustaches saying how great it is that we've divided society, except the Russian troll farms and, more and more, the Chinese troll farms,” she said.
X owner Elon Musk posted on his site this past week that while discourse can become negative, “it's still good there is a discussion going.” President Donald Trump, who created his own social platform, was asked about Cox's comments Tuesday before leaving for a trip to the United Kingdom. He said that while social media can create “deep, dark holes that are cancerous,” it wasn't all bad.
“Well, it’s not a cancer in all respects," he told reporters. “In some respects, it is great.”
Conservative media star Ben Shapiro, who considered Kirk a friend, admired how Kirk was willing to go to different places and talk to people who disagreed with him, a practice all too rare in the social media era.
“How social media works is a disaster area, fully a disaster area,” Shapiro said in an interview with Bari Weiss on a Free Press podcast. “There's no question it's making the world a worse place — and that's not a call for censorship.”
How people act on social media is a bipartisan problem, said Shapiro. The most pervasive one is people who use the third-person plural — “they” are doing something to “us," he said. That's been the case when many people discuss Kirk's death, although the shooter's motives haven't become clear and there's no evidence his actions are anything other than his own.
The liberal MeidasTouch media company has collected inflammatory social posts by conservatives, particularly those who suggest they're at “war.” Meanwhile, several conservatives have combed social media for posts they consider negative toward Kirk, in some cases seeking to get people fired. The Libs of TikTok site urged that a Washington state school district be defunded because it refused to lower flags to half staff.
GOP Rep. Randy Fine of Florida asked people to point out negative Kirk posts from anyone who works in government, at a place that receives public funding or is licensed by government — a teacher or lawyer, for instance. “These monsters want a fight?” he wrote on X. “Congratulations, they got one.”
A Washington Post columnist, Karen Attiah, wrote Monday that she was fired for a series of Bluesky posts that expressed little sympathy for Kirk. But she wrote on Substack that “not performing over-the-top grief for white men who espouse violence was not the same as endorsing violence against them.” A Post spokeswoman declined to comment.
So much of what people use to talk about politics — algorithmically driven social media sites and cable television — is designed to pull Americans apart, said James Talarico, a Democratic state lawmaker in Texas who recently announced a bid for the U.S. Senate. “We've got to find our way back to each other because that's the only way we can continue this American experiment,” he said on MSNBC.
Among the most persistent examples of those divisions are the lies and misinformation about elections that have spread for years through online social channels. They have undermined faith in one of the country's bedrock institutions and contributed to the rage that led Trump supporters to violently storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Whether meaningful change is possible remains an open question. Nepal's unrest illustrated the dangers of government involvement: Social media sites were shut down and users protested, suggesting it had been a way to stop criticism of government. Police opened fire at one demonstration, killing 19 people.
Persuading social media sites to change their algorithms is also an uphill battle. They live off attention and people spending as much time as possible on them. Unless advertisers flee for fear of being associated with violent posts, there's little incentive for them to change, said Jasmine Enberg, a social media analyst at Emarketer.
Young people in particular are becoming aware of the dangers of spending too much time on social media, she said.
But turn their phones off? “The reality of the situation," Enberg said, “is that there's a limit to how much they can limit their behavior.”
ZenMode
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Given that he has never voted, or even registered to vote, it doesn't sound like he was very political, but not being political isn't the same as saying his beliefs don't align with Liberals/Democrats.
1moretimeagain
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Link to this?
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Note: Cox belongs to a political party whose consistent political objective has been to cater to the people who run these "most powerful companies in the history of the world" by removing and opposing regulatory protections that would protect Americans from the predations of these companies, providing tax incentives and other benefits to help them force out smaller competition, and reducing the taxes for the obscenely wealthy people who run them. If the Republican Party wasn't constantly sacrificing our lives and minds at the altar of higher profits for the richest people in history, we might not be in such a dire situation.
ChileG
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What beliefs, though?
superrific
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What are the consequences if they did? In the charging documents I've seen -- not many! -- there is an affidavit from someone, often a police officer or field agent, setting forth the facts under oath. If that person made things up, they would be subject to perjury.
But here? Nobody submitted this under oath. We know that the DOJ now routinely lies to courts. So if this were a DOJ document, I'd say better than even money it was faked. But it's the state of Utah, which in theory could be different.
superrific
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How? What would be the consequences? The information in that document isn't being introduced in court. It's not faking evidence. It isn't poisoning the jury pool, at least compared to all the other stuff. I genuinely don't know the answer.
1moretimeagain
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Let me know if you come across it again. I’ve seen Kash say they’re investigating scores of people who were in contact with Robinson, but I missed him saying they discussed the murder in advance of it happening.
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Disagreeing with the viewpoints of an extreme right-wing podcaster doesn’t automatically mean his beliefs align with Democrats and liberals.
Maybe he just found Charlie Kirk abhorrent? That doesn’t require membership to the Democratic Party. It just requires membership to the human race.
superrific
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1. No chance? That's what you said about the DOJ straight up lying to courts, and here we are.
2. It's more likely they made it up for a slam dunk case. Kash has made clear that the most important thing to him, by far, is public opinion and his ideological narrative.
3. The only thing supporting the integrity of the document is that it's not an FBI production. We know the Trump FBI is corrupt through-and-through. We don't know about the Utah prosecutors.
4. Again, how would this fabrication be discovered? What would be the consequences? Twiggs isn't going to talk to the media, and he has no standing to challenge the charging document of another person. What is Robinson going to do? Demand that the evidence of those texts be provided? It's a charging document. He can't challenge their admissibility or anything like that.
5. No cop worth his badge would eat it up because it's in their language. Maybe the two kids wouldn't realize that? But most people are smart enough to know that faking has to look somewhat realistic. Otherwise there is no point faking it.
6. Given that Kash has lied about several aspects of this case and the evidence, and the fact that they are claiming that the kid looked under his keyboard to find a photograph of a note, as opposed to the note itself (in what universe does that make sense?), saying zero chance seems extremely confident.
The defense already has an argument that the defendant was framed for political reasons. If the prosecution intentionally lies in a charging document, it could bias the jury pool (even if the document never makes it into evidence) and it could also lead to consequences from the trial judge that impact the case.
Keep in mind that St George, Utah is a very small place and every potential juror is likely following this case with great attention.
ChapelHillSooner
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I think most of us wouldn't care except that this administration and others are trying so hard to put blame on the entirety of the left for this and use this to exert power over the left. They've talked about investigating the left. They're assaulting free speech. (While a company has every right to fire an employee who makes statements that are problematic for the company, the government has no right to exert its power to coerce them to do so.) The administration is trying to place the blame on the left as a whole and actually saying things that could instigate violence against the left.
It is my opinion that they want to use this to remove civil rights from the left. You may disagree but that is my opinion.
You have to consider that context when wondering why people are pointing the fingers. There is always some of that but the stakes are far higher than normal now.
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Yeah it will probably take them weeks to pick a jury.
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They (Trump, Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, JD Vance, others) are openly saying they intend to do this. They may be full of shit, but they're not hiding it at all.
ChapelHillSooner
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I am not going to say I think it is fake because I require some extraordinary evidence to make extraordinary claims.
This kid is from Utah. If you've ever been around Mormons they're kind of a strangely polite bunch. No better example of this than the governor's statements. He seemed to be the anti-Trump when it comes to the language he chose - though there was some concerning things in his message.
Maybe the language in the texts were because of this culture.
That said, I am not going to outright dismiss the possibility, not with Patel in charge.