Deplatformed is a weekly column that looks into the nether reaches of the internet—outside the big few that everyone already covers—to tell you the political discourse online. It runs on Thursdays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
1) Space Force Vindication
In March 2018, our celebrity president—in the midst of flirting with North Korea and being sued by Stormy Daniels—declared his intent to do cool shit with lasers in zero gravity.
The initial announcement was pure Trump.
“You know, I was saying it the other day — because we are doing a tremendous amount of work in space—I said: ‘Maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it ‘Space Force.’”
It was emblematic of President Donald Trump’s administration. Performative blustery nonsense treated by his detractors as a joke to allay their latent but very real fears that Trump could actually strap some rocket engines to Abrams tanks and threaten the denizens of Orion’s Belt with absolute destruction, posting on Twitter that it looks like their alien prime minister missed a session of space Botox.
Well, who is laughing now? Not Trump’s biggest fans. The president saw through the creation of Space Force. And last week, Washington, D.C. was rattled over fears Russia might do something in space with nukes and satellites.
It’s unclear what the threat might be, and it’s also unclear if Space Force has really done anything to make America safer from other nations’ space programs or more ready to go on the offensive against alien threats, but the president’s supporters were enthusiastic about his foresight.
“United States Space Force was the butt of jokes when it was created as the sixth branch of the military four years ago. But it’s now clear Space Force could become our most important defender,” proclaimed one Truth Social user.
“Russia allegedly want to take their nuclear capacity to space .., ask Obama why he cut NASA’s budget and neglected Space altogether. This also means Trump was right by creating Space Force,” said another.
The site was rife with praise for Trump’s foresighted-ness, even though, again, no one can really prove what Space Force is doing.
“And everyone thought TRUMP was crazy for starting SPACE FORCE.”
“Thank Trump for starting Space Force, otherwise you wouldn’t know what is going on in space.”
“Remember when they mocked President Trump for creating Space Force? This is going to be fun….”
Do you feel safer?
2) Reddit Ex-Pats
Reddit is one of the more democratic sites on the internet, with its system of up and down votes allowing, theoretically, whatever thought, idea, or meme to rise to the top, regardless of whatever woke or liberal guardrails big tech puts on it.
But one group of people has fair reason to believe it is a den of leftist iniquity: the former posters or r/The_Donald, who were booted from the site and have found home on a shadow site, Patriots.win.
So who better than to ask about the new AI deal Reddit signed, a $60 million partnership to use the site’s data to train new artificial intelligence systems?
“Leftists Become Training Data,” reads the top post about it on the forum. Users were furious our new digital overlords would learn from the blue-haired freaks they think populate the site.
“Reddit data being used to train AI. Yeah, that won’t have bias in the results at all. This was all planned.”
“If an AI is being trained by reddit, it is going to develop extremely biased lefty tendencies. It’s unfortunate they are unnamed.”
It seems that the news was an in for those to reveal just how bitter they were about getting removed from the platform.
“I hope the AI is practicing safe data harvesting otherwise it’s going to get one massive dose of every single STD and mental illness imaginable.”
“Safe to save AI is going to be retarded and gay. Judgement Day is going to be weird!”
One user, though, thought that given AI systems have an inherent tendency to drift rightward, signing up to use Reddit data was a perfect counter to that.
“Thing is most AI have become right wing in a few days, that is the problem for the left, and this is why they have had to scrap previous versions of AI until they figured out how to make a commie AI to advance leftist agendas…”
Others just took the opportunity to bash the founder of the site that kicked them off, who goes by Spez, claiming he’d blow the funds on sex toys.
“Spez gearing up to purchase that solid gold dildo he’s had his eye on, while tainting AI systems in the process.”
“Spez looks like if ‘big dildo goal; were a person.”
3) NHL highlight of the week
Quinton Byfield refusing to give up.
