Tag: big tech

Joe Biden says there are “lots of ways” Elon Musk could be investigated over Twitter acquisition

At a White House Press conference, President Joe Biden appeared to welcome a federal investigation into Elon Musk’s alleged “dealings” with foreign governments. He said that after he was asked if he thought the new Twitter owner posed a threat to national security.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has had a stake in Twitter since 2011 with 4% of the shares but Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter with the aim of making Twitter more of a free speech platform has caused critics to look at the company more critically.

“Do you think Elon Musk is a threat to US national security?” Bloomberg reporter Jenny Leonard asked the president during the press conference. “And should the US – and with the tools you have – investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis?”

Biden responded: “I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at. Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that it’s worth being looked at.”

He said, “There’s a lot of ways,” when asked how those dealings would be investigated.

Biden dismissed questions into his own family’s questionable overseas business dealings, saying, the “American public wants to move on,” adding that “it’s almost comedy.”

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The Quiet Merger Between Online Platforms and the National Security State Continues

The steady march of the post-2016 tech censorship campaign has been picking up pace lately, and we’ve just learned of another leap forward. According to recent major reporting from the Intercept, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been involved in efforts aimed at corralling what it refers to as “MDM”: misinformation, disinformation, and “malinformation.”

Documents obtained and made publicly available by the news outlet show that the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been formulating a strategy to combat MDM regarding US elections and other matters. While seemingly unobjectionable on the surface ― who could be against combating false information, which is rife online? ― it raises serious questions about the extent of government involvement in the already-troubling phenomenon of tech censorship.

The conversations detailed in the documents show the federal government, and the DHS specifically, taking a more active role in tech companies’ efforts to suppress MDM. We’ve had some indications this was happening for a while, as when DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC in August that the government was “working with the tech companies” on “strengthen[ing] the legitimate use of their very powerful platforms and prevent[ing] harm from occurring,” and that it was doing so “across the federal enterprise” ― comments that were only reported in right-wing media.

The documents give us details about what that work has entailed. In these discussions, the government did not directly carry out censorship. Rather, they involved government agencies: doing “debunking” and “pre-bunking”; directing the press, local and state governments, and other stakeholders to “trusted resources”; carrying out “rumor control”; boosting “trusted authoritative sources”; giving financial support to its external partners; and improving information literacy. Much of the focus is on elections, with participants talking about using these resources to prevent people being misled about how, where, and when to vote, and stressing that CISA should strictly be a “resource” that at most uses its “convening power.”

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Study Details How Media, Big Tech Censored Doctors and Scientists Who Challenged COVID Narrative

A groundbreaking new scientific paper published Tuesday exposes the suppression and censorship of doctors and medical experts who opposed and challenged the official COVID-19 narrative.

Published in the sociological journal Minerva, “Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics,” details the experiences of medical professionals who spoke out against public health directives, and how they responded to efforts to suppress them.

The paper was co-authored by a team of Israeli and Australian scholars, including Yaffa Shir-Raz of the University of Haifa in Israel, Ety Elisha of The Max Stern Yezreel Valley College in Israel, Brian Martin of the University of Wollongong in Australia, Natti Ronel of Bar Ilan University in Israel, and Josh Guetzkow of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.

As noted by Dr. Robert Malone, himself an outspoken critic of COVID-19 “orthodoxy,” the publication of this article is particularly significant as Minerva is released by “mainstream academic publisher” Springer, a “Q1 journal in its subfield” of sociology with a “decent” research impact factor in the social sciences — meaning that it enjoys a strong reputation within its academic field.

Malone said the article also is notable because one of its authors, Yaffa Shir-Raz, “broke the story with video from the internal meeting at the Israeli ministry of health” on “how they hid many of the key findings regarding the Pfizer mRNA vaccine adverse effects.”

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Judge Rejects Biden Administration’s Attempt to Block Depositions in Big Tech-Government Censorship Case

The Biden administration’s attempt to block depositions of several key officials was turned down Nov. 2 by a U.S. judge.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, rejected a request for a partial stay of his Oct. 21 order authorizing the depositions of eight officials, including President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Government lawyers asked the judge to impose the partial stay as an appeals court weighs a request to vacate the part of his order that enables the depositions of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee; Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, a Biden appointee; and Rob Flaherty, a deputy assistant to the president.

Absent a stay, “high-ranking governmental officials would be diverted from their significant duties and burdened in both preparing and sitting for a deposition, all of which may ultimately prove to be unnecessary if the Court of Appeals grants” their request, the government said.

Doughty ruled that the government failed to show how the officials would be irreparably harmed apart from referencing a diversion from “significant duties.” That didn’t meet the standard for showing irreparable harm, he said.

On the other hand, the plaintiffs, including the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, would be irreparably harmed by a partial stay because they’ve alleged a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and ‘The loss of First Amendment freedoms, even for minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury,’” Doughty said, quoting from a ruling in a separate case.

“The Court finds that both the public interest and the interest of the other parties in preserving free speech significantly outweighs the inconvenience the three deponents will have in preparing for and giving their depositions,” he added.

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How the government hid the truth behind Hunter Biden’s laptop

The more we find out about the collusion that has been going on among the Biden administration, the security agencies and Big Tech, the more alarming it is — and the more unrepentant they are.

The latest bombshell from The Intercept, based on communications unveiled in the federal lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, shows that the Department of Homeland Security has been having monthly meetings with Facebook and Twitter to pressure them to censor social-media posts about topics such as the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of COVID vaccines, racial justice and US support for the war in Ukraine — In other words, anything that could be detrimental to public support for the Biden administration.

We already know that the FBI was involved in efforts to censor and bury information that might have harmed Joe Biden’s candidacy back in 2020, including The Post’s exclusive about Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020. That amounted to election interference, which successfully prevented the American people from doing the necessary due diligence on one of the two candidates for president. So successful was the strategy that the Biden administration appears to have expanded it.

Security agencies have switched their attention from combating foreign disinformation to censoring the speech of American citizens who dissent from the government-approved narrative. No matter that free speech is protected by the First Amendment; if the Biden administration doesn’t like the speech, they label it “Misinformation, Disinformation and Malformation,” and they are deputizing the FBI and DHS to strong­arm Big Tech to censor it and de-platform serial offenders.

It doesn’t matter what brand your politics is, this is Stasi stuff.

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Elon Musk Taps Jussie Smollett Hoaxer For Twitter Censorship Advice

Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk said he wants to bring free speech absolutism to the world, but he isn’t off to a great start after tapping a Jussie Smollett hoaxer for censorship advice.

“Talked to civil society leaders @JGreenblattADL, @YaelEisenstat, @rashadrobinson, @JGo4Justice, @normanlschen, @DerrickNAACP, @TheBushCenter Ken Hersch & @SindyBenavides about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies,” the self-professed “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” announced on Tuesday.

Rashad Robinson, president of the leftist group Color of Change, repeatedly tweeted his support for Smollet after the “Empire” actor falsely claimed to be the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime in 2019. At the time, Smollett claimed two assailants beat him up while screaming, “This is MAGA country.”

Politicians, celebrities, leftists, and the corrupt corporate media rushed to ally themselves with Smollett, who was later convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct for staging the alleged crime.

Even after evidence suggested Smollett was lying about the alleged attack, Robinson continued to express disdain for anyone who dubbed Smollett’s scheming a hoax.

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YouTube: Users will have to commit to WHO-approved practices to be labeled as “reliable” in algorithm

In an attempt to limit “health misinformation,” YouTube announced it will certify medical professionals as “reliable” and “authoritative” sources of information.

In a blog post on the platform’s website, its global head of YouTube Health Dr. Garth Graham said: “YouTube Health has been working on additional ways to help doctors, nurses, mental health professionals and healthcare information providers to bring high quality health information into the spaces that people visit throughout their day – like their favorite video-sharing app.”

To apply to be labeled as reliable, users have to submit their license and adhere to the “best practices” for sharing health information set by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS), and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

YouTube gives “authoritative” sources a boost in the algorithm and non-authoritative sources are suppressed.

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CNBC Journalist Duped By Pranksters Pulling ‘Internet Hoax’ Outside Of Twitter’s HQ

A CNBC journalist was duped by two pranksters outside of Twitter’s headquarters on Friday who were posing as data engineers who had just been fired.

The story comes after Elon Musk took over the company Thursday evening following his $44 billion acquisition being finalized.

Musk reportedly directed engineers from his electric car company Tesla, where he also serves as CEO, to take control of the social media company’s code away from Twitter’s engineers to evaluate potential changes to the system.

Musk also immediately fired leftist CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety, The Washington Post reported. The report said Musk also fired the company’s general counsel, Sean Edgett, who was escorted out of the building.

CNBC journalist Deirdre Bosa showed up to the offices Friday where she took a photograph of two men who were carrying boxes, claiming that they had just been fired.

“It’s happening,” Bosa tweeted. “Entire team of data engineers let go. These are two of them.”

“They are visibly shaken. Daniel tells us he owns a Tesla and doesn’t know how he’s going to make payments,” she claimed. “(To be clear – I don’t think the Tesla was top of mind, I think @elonmusk was).”

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Schiff, Durbin ‘Demand’ That Google and YouTube Censor ‘Dangerous’ Incel Content

Congressman Adam Schiff and Senator Dick Durbin are “demanding” that the CEOs of Google’s parent company Alphabet and YouTube censor “extreme and harmful” incel content on their platforms.

Incel is a term used to describe someone who is involuntarily celibate.

The Democrat politicians cited a report from the far-left “Center for Countering Digital Hate” in their censorship demand.

The report claims that incel channels on YoutTube have accumulated more than 24 million views.

“The CCDH report makes clear that misogynist communities have created male-supremacist online spaces to promote their hateful and violent ideology, blaming women and minority groups for their problems. While incels have been described as loners or socially isolated, they in fact are embedded in highly active, densely-interconnected online communities that encourage and celebrate their horrific beliefs and acts,” the members wrote in a letter to the CEOs of Alphabet and YouTube, according to a press release.

According to the press release, Schiff and Durbin “specifically urge Alphabet and YouTube to remove content and channels that drive users toward harmful incel communities, and request additional information on what safety measures the platforms are implementing to protect users – particularly young users – and prevent violent content from proliferating.”

“We find all of this to be unacceptable and dangerous. Major social media platforms and search engines that claim to value safety should follow through with action,” the letter continued.

The letter was co-signed by Senators Bob Menendez and Mazie Hirono, and Representatives Hank Johnson, André Carson, Jackie Speier, Ed Case, Darren Soto, Lori Trahan, and Mondaire Jones — all of whom are Democrats.

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Google is Manipulating Search Results to Suppress Republican Turnout in Midterm Elections

A report from the Media Research Center (MRC) has revealed that Google is manipulating search results in an attempt to suppress the Republican vote during this year’s crucial midterm elections.

The MRC is accusing Google of perpetrating a “war on democracy” over this news. They are demanding that Google “provide algorithmic transparency” to prove that they are not manipulating elections.

The MRC found that campaign websites for 10 Republicans in the 12 tightest national races according to Real Clear Politics were far lower on the Google search results pages than their opponents. Seven Republican candidate websites were blacklisted from the first page of Google search results completely.

“Google’s bias is undeniable when shown in comparison to other search engines. Bing and DuckDuckGo both show, with on exception, all 12 Democrat and Republican senate candidate’s websites within the top five organic search results,” the MRC said.

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