And check out his website, there’s some other cool stuff there. It’s well read and well written and creepy, with nice sound effects. But I was impressed by this little audio book sample. I have never met the fellow and haven’t read his books & so have no idea of how well he’s doing sales-wise and whether the books are any good. (How do he do that?) And he has a couple of other neat things, like a youtube video for his books. For example his blog is streamed to his author page on Amazon.
Unlike me, he seems to have good portions of his act together. Like me, he’s got a blog & is experimenting with kindle and various other ways of getting the word out. Like me, he’s won the Self-Published Book Award from Writer’s Digest magazine. Turns out that like me, he’s a self-publisher. He’s a writer with a horror series called The Takers aimed at young adults. Ridley started following me on twitter after I tweeted about kindlizing The Pains. Below, I explain what the EO basically instructs federal agencies to do, what happens next, and what people can do about it. So even though (as I have written previously) I don’t think the FCC has the authority to do what Trump wants (and as I write below, i don’t think the FTC does either), it doesn’t make this Executive Order (EO) something harmless we can ignore. In both cases, Trump’s naked effort to use his authority to threaten social media companies so they will dance to his tune undermines everything good about social media while doing nothing to address any of its serious problems.
At the same time, the way others have used social media to spread misinformation and promote violence highlights that we have very real problems of content moderation we need to address. Nevertheless, given the vital importance social media have played in publicizing the murders of George Floyd, Ahmed Arbery, and too many others, how social media have broadcast police brutality against peaceful protesters to be broadcast live around the world from countless locations, and how social media has allowed organizers to to coordinate with one another, we need to remember how vitally important it is to protect these means of communication from being cowed and coopted by the President and others with power. Even by the standards of insanity known as the Trump Administration, the last week has reached heights of insanity that make a full frontal assault on the First Amendment with anything less than tear gas and tanks seem trivial.
It’s hard to believe Trump issued this stupid Executive Order a mere week ago. (A substantially similar version of this appeared first on the blog of my employer, Public Knowledge)
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