We talked about the problems at Medium yesterday, here. Today, I'm seeing an article at The Verge — "The Mess at Medium" — and it begins with some material that doesn't really have much to do with the rest of the article — which is about the problems paying writers enough within the business model of the publishing platform that is Medium. But it's really funny — one of these "mysteries" that has an answer that's so obvious that you only need Occam's Razor to solve:
Last week, a partnerships manager at Medium working with the White House found that there was a strange problem with the platform: President Joe Biden was being served porn.
The manager was in a video conference with a White House staffer to discuss how Biden, who had used Medium as a campaign blog in 2020, could begin posting to the official Medium @POTUS account. While sharing his screen with the White House, the staffer logged in to @POTUS and saw the first article recommended to him by Medium: “A is for After,” which a sub-headline described as “a cuckold love story.”
It’s unclear if the White House saw the story. But after the meeting, the Medium staffer tried to improve Biden’s recommendations. He followed political topics; he “read” posts by President Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris while logged in as the president. When he refreshed his recommendations, Medium recommended another piece of erotica: “Getting a Piece (and Some Pizza Too),” a story that carries the sub-headline “step sister taboo erotica.”
The employee previously found that Medium had somehow added Biden as a writer on 10 “garbage publications,” as well as at least one software development blog. “President Joe Biden is Being Served Erotica on Medium.com,” the staffer complained in an internal post. The episode captured Medium in all its complexity: a publishing platform used by the most powerful people in the world; an experiment in mixing highbrow and lowbrow in hopes a sustainable business would emerge; and a devotion to algorithmic recommendations over editorial curation that routinely caused the company confusion and embarrassment.
It's only a "strange problem" if you think Presidents don't look at porn.
As Bob Dylan sang long ago, "Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked." ("Bob Dylan: making people picture the president naked since 1965. Thanks, Bob.")
But somebody ought to have helped him set up something other than the official Medium @POTUS account for reading his cuckold and step-sister stories. Come on, people! You know he needs help with his computers. He's 78, for God's sake!
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Imagine what shows up in Bill Clinton’s Medium feed.
Intern Blowjob Festival.
Better Put Some Ice on That.
Flying the Lolita Express.
Presumably Biden wasn't previously logging into his Medium account himself. Some staffer would have been.
I suppose Biden stands naked before diving into the pool.
Nutty Hunter didn't fall far from the tree.
The story links to another story about the Bezos blackmail. I suspect the porn Medium's algorithms serve up includes the dick pics.
The algorithms know you better than you know you.
Yeah a mystery. Is there no limit to their willingness to protect Biden? Is there any topic involving prominent Democrats where they'll just play it straight?
Delusional Joe wouldn't know how to set that up, so somebody did. Doctor Jill perhaps??
For some reason the algorithms send White House staffers lots of Weekend at Bernies references.
For some reason.
wow!
this isn't exactly the First time we heard about Jo Biden digitally manipulating young women
President Joe Biden was being served porn.
See a need and fill it.
I would imagine the responsibilities of the presidency would put anyone into a heightened state. And then Joe doesn't have that much else to do. He's all dressed up with nowhere to go. Ergo.
Imagine this situation happened to Trump. The obvious answer would have been stated as fact followed by thousands of hysterical articles on what a misogynist vile porn loving embarrassment the President was.
That's the only thing Joe Biden uses the computer for!
David B,
After the "interview," guarantee that Bill Clinton's searches include "nude Kamala," "Kamala and Willie," etc.
For a guy who publicly confuses his wife and sister and refers to Hunter’s underage “girlfriend” by name (something he can’t even do with his SECDEF) this Medium article raises...uh questions.
get it through their heads
there’s no helping BrokeDickJoe
sad situation
Does he watch porn in front of the female SS agents?
"Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked."
LBJ was president when he said that. Johnson had a history of pulling out his penis and showing it to people. I think Dylan is assuming nakedness involves vulnerability and insecurity. That doesn't really work on the flashers out there.
Thanks for that, Mike.
AI of the "based on your history here is something we think you will like" variety. Me? I've been getting ads for golf shoes.
The porn is necessary to keep him from rolling out of bed.
It's hard to be human, and it's human to be hard. Our POTUS swims naked in cyberspace, as well as the presidential pool.
If they were doing journalism, they were also doing a good job of making it hard to find. Substack isn’t easy to navigate either, but they have a few quality people I recognize.
Medium is littered with Salon-like garbage essays about relationship problems. And crappy woke porn by these grim hydraulic they/them MFAs? Why would I pay five dollars a month for that? I would pay five dollars a month to not read it. I pay four dollars a month for the NYTimes just to hate-read it.
The porn is necessary to keep him from rolling out of bed
Now this is the quality of droll we've come to expect around here. Found art...
Churchill (stepping naked from his bath): “The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to hide from the President of the United States.” **
[Also quoted as: “You see, Mr. President, I have nothing to hide.”]
Churchill allegedly said this during his visit to the White House in December-January 1941. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and America was in the war. The encounter was confirmed by Churchill’s bodyguard, Walter Thompson, and one of his secretaries, Patrick Kinna. On the strength of their comments I included it as “likely” in Churchill By Himself.
C'mon man!
Biden was just doing research on sister-in-law attraction and naturally became confused and typed in step-sister attraction.
The poor man is was just trying to find out what makes Hunter tick.
President Joe Biden was being served porn.
Gotta love that passive phrasing - yet another indication that They are lying about Biden's pornological excremeditation.
A total fucking mystery.
Medium is doomed.
Its writers have to follow draconian TOS, of the kind that the woke mob uses to defenestrate un-woke authors.
https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4
Surprised that there weren't books about sleeping with your baby sitter, and conspiring with her to have your wife killed; so that you could marry the babysitter?
'course, Jo Biden don't need to Learn how to do That
While I would be surprised if Biden can login on his own in his current mental state, it's ageist to suggest someone 78 years old is most likely to be computer illiterate. The computer stations at our local senior center always have a waiting line, and there's no one on the staff that does more than make sure they're all shut down at closing. One of the most popular things for the seniors to do is to use the center's scanner is to scan in old photos and move them to removable media so they can access them on their own computers or to email the photos to their smartphones. Granny and Grandpa invented the internet.
"Step sister" isn't about borderline incest. It's a fantasy about a sexy amazon who carries Biden up the stairs then does him on AF1.
A sexy amazon nun.
If 'Saturday Night Live' still had their stones, this would at least have made for a hilariously cringe-worthy skit.
.
If it had happened during the Trump Administration, Alec Baldwin would have been hanging out around the writers' room whining, 'Please! Pleeeeeeeeease!!'
“...a cuckold love story.”
The Biden-Harris administration.
policy.medium.com/medium-rules ...
[They don't allow] the use of scientific or pseudoscientific claims
No wonder I've never read anything there.
digitally manipulating young women
I now have a tab which says "Tara Reade's Sexual Ass"
Come on, people! You know he needs help with his computers. He's 78, for God's sake!
He needs help because he's Joe Biden, not because he's old. My father was a self-taught Unix programmer and he continued doing that until his death when he was in his 80s.
"A cuckold love story" coming on screen would be a gift to late night comedians, if they hadn't made joking about Democrats taboo.
To be fair to old Joe, the algorithms think we're all interested in porn...or they're calculated to drive us all there. My wife's youtube channel us case in point. She watches video of Korean LPGA players to analyze their swings. Apparently they have more relaxed attire rules in Korea- long socks and short skirts are the norm. The algorithms apparently translate that to a taste for cosplay.
We also watched some videos of hot springs and ghost towns around Lake Tahoe. Recommended for you: Dr Hannah in her camper truck, hopping from one hot spring to the next, each in a different bikini.
...or maybe it's where all roads on the internet lead and I just haven't noticed...
You know, if you're garnering a fair share of income off your Youtube channel you get to expense all those bikinis...
Why is he using a now Govt site? What kind of security does it have? If Biden is getting porn, must not be very secure. Wonder what kind of Porn Harris is getting?
This is what can happen when you upload your family photos to the cloud.
Joe. Joe...
You are such an Everyman.
Clinton. Bush 43. Obama. Trump. Biden.
Something isn’t right.
He’ll, I’m 81 and I don’t need help with my IPad. I get here every day, don’t I?
This would never happen under Trump. Who needs porn when you have pornstar hookers on speed dial.
Gilbar: “digitally manipulating young women”
DING DING DING
Thread winner
The idea of Biden looking at porn isn't outlandish but reading erotica? I'm stereotyping a bit here, but isn't that more of a woman's method of pornography consumption? I have to think Biden isn't so out of touch he's unaware that he can look at pictures of actual naked women on the internet.
What algorithmic penalty will I pay for checking out the Althouse link to that pillow-fighting Playboy playmate from the 1950s? Does Biden read Althouse? Was Joe just revisiting his happy adolescence? Was she his dreamgirl? How many hours did he spend—in private—sighing over that luscious babe? Remember, he compared his first wife to a Playboy model.
Joe, Joe, you are such an Everyman.
Joe Biden is a Rapist.
I am sure he enjoys porn.
I don't understand why this is a mystery.
The algorithm isn't a magic-pixie-fairy unicorn. It is part of a program. Programs do exactly what they are designed to do by the programmers. So, we have two options:
1.) The program design is faulty or has been deliberately designed to suggest porn regardless of search history.
2.) The user is searching for content that correctly prompts the algorithm to suggest porn.
::shrugs:: Should be easy to figure out.
I keep getting adds for those exact Tiffany earrings designed by Elsa I complimented on this blog last week.
I could be amused...if I cared...but I don't.
Cuckold porn. So, it's not Dr. Jill who's the power behind the throne, it's the guy behind her.
Howard wrote:
"I keep getting adds for those exact Tiffany earrings designed by Elsa I complimented on this blog last week."
Don't worry, Howard, the ads for big black dildos will return within a week or two.
I would guess whoever used the computer did so to look for pornagraphic pictures and videos, not stories. The algorithm just doesn't discriminate against text based porn, and it is probably the case that the vendor uses text-based porn as a front for the visual stuff in the ad system.
Althouse is correct- the simplest explanation is that Biden used the computer for porn at one or more points in the past.
"Cuckold porn. So, it's not Dr. Jill who's the power behind the throne, it's the guy behind her."
Hunter?
Re: rehajm:
To be fair to old Joe, the algorithms think we're all interested in porn
Speak for yourself -- Youtube apparently thinks I'm a preteen who has a bed-wetting problem. And that I have ulcerative colitis. And that I'm a Korean looking to buy a car.
Robert Conquest wrote that the simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. I believe this a rule applicable without regard to the particular party in power.
putter don’t flutter
it’s a no go with slow joe
no lead in pencil
Okay, I'm calling out some caution on this story. I've worked in the White House complex & at multiple other Federal agencies as a contractor. I can tell you ALL of them have content filtering turned on at the firewall to the broader Internet. They do this so that Federal employees do not surf porn on your tax dollars, which many have a wont to do.
Now, can content filters be turned off for some users? Yes, and probably the Prez would be one of them. Buuuuut, what I think is more likely, is that the staffer was working on a computer outside of the White House complex. In other words, the staffer was using his laptop to access Medium, which is after all, a cloud application accessible from anywhere. I would bet that this may have happened at the Starbucks on Pennsylvania Ave, popular with WH staffers as a place to escape the network strictures of the WH, e.g. ALL digital correspondence is archived and later sent to National Archives.
I would also bet that any computer on the unsecured network in the Oval Office flushes cookies on every browser exit. That would just be security standard, and it's very easy to do.
Not really a problem. Joe can explain the mix-up at his presser today. Obviously, some reporter will ask the question.
Re: YoungHegelian:
I can tell you ALL of them have content filtering turned on at the firewall to the broader Internet. They do this so that Federal employees do not surf porn on your tax dollars, which many have a wont to do.
Yes, it's no longer the good old days when federal bureaucrats could while away their days doing nothing but watching porn in their offices:
A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.
An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as "Sex" or "Pornography." Yet he still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC's internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense, and received a 14-day suspension.
Our tax dollars at work, haha
YoungHegelian said...
Buuuuut, what I think is more likely, is that the staffer was working on a computer outside of the White House complex.
Yeah, it was probably the staffer who sent Joe's account up, or handles posting articles. I doubt Slow Joe could handle that without the mental decline.
Go ahead, Balfegor, keep denying your Korean heritage.
Speak for yourself -- Youtube apparently thinks I'm a preteen who has a bed-wetting problem. And that I have ulcerative colitis. And that I'm a Korean looking to buy a car.
So the algorithms got one wrong. Of course, it's the Japanese that are into all that kinky stuff..
Come on people. If you must use your work computer to look at porn, use a different browser and use a private window so that your cookies are deleted.
One thing I find interesting is that someone chose to make this a story. Why this story? What is it about this incident, that makes it worth drawing the public's attention to it? Who even reported it to the press in the first place?
Anyway, for me the real issue is that a media outlet is in the White House working on a partnership deal with the President. That should not be a thing, ever. If the president wants to publish a blog, he should do it on government servers, to a government website. whitehouse.gov seems like the obvious choice.
I doubt that a porn filter would screen out erotic stories on Medium — just text.
Let he who is without sin
@Iman, appreciate your haikus. 6:55 subtle.
This story could be false. It could be wholly made up or it could be that somebody tampered with Biden's feed or with the story. But Biden's son was involved with his other son's widow. And then there are the unsubstantiated stories about Biden showering with his children. And all the touching and hair sniffing. So while I suspect it's not true, it could be that somebody somewhere knows the Bidens pretty well.
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