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Tag: big tech
YouTube bans “denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events” about Russia-Ukraine war
YouTube has started removing content about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that violates its rules around “denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events.”
As part of this expanded enforcement of these rules, which were first introduced in February 2019, YouTube said it’s also “blocking access to YouTube channels associated with Russian state-funded media globally.”
Additionally, YouTube reported that it has censored over 1,000 channels and over 15,000 videos since March 1 for violating policies such as its “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “graphic content” policies.
Not only has YouTube censored more than 15,000 videos in less than two weeks but it has also boosted “trusted sources” and its “breaking news and top news shelves” on its homepage have received more than 17 million views in Ukraine.
“Our teams continue to closely monitor the situation, and are ready to take further action,” YouTube tweeted. “We will continue to share updates as they become available.”
The ban follows YouTube blocking two Russian state-controlled media outlets, RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik, in Europe earlier this month after an order from the European Union (EU).
French digital minister tells Big Tech platforms to scale up “fact-checking capabilities”
Telecom ministers from European countries have asked the major online platforms to ensure they have the adequate capacity to handle “misinformation” in Central and Eastern Europe, which they say are the major targets of Russian propaganda.
On March 8, officials from EU governments and representatives from the major online platforms met in France to discuss how to fight disinformation being spread by the Russian government. Initially, the agenda of the informal meeting was the Metaverse, how to bring more women to the technology sector, and environment. The agenda was changed in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In a joint statement, the ministers said: “The battles initiated by Russia in the current conflict are raging not only on the ground but also on the internet.”
France’s digital minister Cédric O said that online platforms had made some efforts to fight Russian propaganda, adding that the accounts of Russian state-controlled media outlets Sputnik and RT have been removed on the major platforms. However, O said it was important to put “pressure on the platforms to do even more.”
During the meeting, the ministers made two requests, according to a report by EURACTIV. They asked the platforms to respond to take down requests from governments more quickly. And, they asked them to increase their content moderation teams in the languages spoken in Central and Eastern Europe.
Julian Assange on Big Tech…
Nightmare Voyeurism: Google Tech Can Read Your Body Language – Without Cameras
Wired reports that Google’s latest privacy-invading technology can read your body language without using cameras. One Google designer ominously commented, “We’re really just pushing the bounds of what we perceive to be possible for human-computer interaction.”
Wired reports that Google’s newest tech uses radar to detect users’ body language and then performs actions based on its analysis. Google’s Advanced Technology and Product division (ATAP) has reportedly spent over a year exploring how radar could be implemented in computers to understand humans based on their movements and to react to them.
Google has experimented with radar in its technology in the past. In 2015 the company released Soli, a sensor that can use radar’s electromagnetic waves to analyze gestures and movements. This was first utilized in the Google Pixel 4 smartphone which could detect user hand gestures to turn off alarms or pause music without actually touching the device.
Now, this Soli sensor is being used in further research. Google’s ATAP is reportedly investigating if radar sensor input can be used to directly control a computer. Leonardo Giusti, head of design at ATAP, commented: “We believe as technology becomes more present in our life, it’s fair to start asking technology itself to take a few more cues from us.”
A large part of the technology is based on proxemics, which is the study of how people utilize the space around them to mediate social interactions. For instance, getting closer to another person shows an increase in engagement and intimacy.
Big Tech eagerly blocks virtually all content from Russia while completely refusing to address Chinese propaganda
Many of the major tech giants, including Google, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and even Netflix, are cutting off Russian content entirely in response to the Ukraine invasion.
China, meanwhile, is still allowed to spread as much propaganda as it wants via social media, despite the fact that it contributed to the creation of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).
Big Tech is basically colluding to censor all things Russia from their various platforms, and only allow a pro-Ukraine narrative.
The Russian news networks RT and Sputnik, for instance, can no longer share any content on the aforementioned platforms after European Union officials pressured the Silicon Valley giants into obeying and supporting the narrative.
US Surgeon General Requests COVID-19 ‘Misinformation’ Data From Big Tech Companies
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a request Thursday for information surrounding alleged COVID-19 misinformation from Big Tech companies, community organizations, and healthcare providers.
“Misinformation has had a profound impact on COVID-19 and our response,” Murthy told CNN on Thursday, confirming that he sent a letter to those groups. “Studies have demonstrated that the vast majority of the American public either believes common myths about COVID-19 or thinks those myths might be true. And many of those include myths around the COVID-19 vaccine, so we’ve seen firsthand how misinformation is harming people’s health when it comes to COVID.”
The notice asks the companies to provide “exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of COVID-19 misinformation,” according to The New York Times. Murthy confirmed the contents of the letter to the news outlet.
The Surgeon General in July 2021 issued an advisory calling COVID-19-related “misinformation” an “urgent threat” in a bid to put public pressure on social media platforms to monitor it.
Not Letting a ‘Good Tragedy Go to Waste,’ Big Tech Using Ukraine to Censor Independent Media
Apparently, in this new day and age, “defending freedom and democracy,” means you must eliminate freedom and democracy in regard to the sharing of information. In order to create and foster a freer and more peaceful world, we must silence anyone who questions our tactics and motives for obtaining that ostensible goal. Peace, we are now told, will come from McCarthyism in 2022.
In 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy began a massive campaign to silence anyone who would dare question the establishment’s move involving the Soviet Union. These attacks on information would eventually become known as McCarthyism.
Using anti-communism as a means of stoking fear, the McCarthyist cult went after countless individuals who were silenced, lost their jobs, were put on blacklists, and even imprisoned. Years after the campaign began, people finally realized that they had been persecuting entirely innocent people — using extra-judicial procedures — whose only crime was questioning the status quo.
During the years of 1950 to 1954, McCarthy and his cohort within the House Un-American Activities Committee waged a destructive war on information and laid waste to the lives of innocent people, all the while enjoying the support of most Americans. The oblivious populace was so blinded by the “red scare,” they were willing to watch innocent people be silenced and hauled off to jail for a false promise of security.
Despite carrying out egregious acts of evil, most everyone involved in silencing and persecuting these “thought crimes” believed their actions were entirely noble. Though McCarthy faded into the background in 1955, later dying in 1958, every time a new threat presented itself to the American people, McCarthyism was revived — though it would never be referred to by that name again.
In just the last two decades, McCarthyism has reared its ugly head several times. After 9/11, thousands of innocent people were detained through administrative measures largely because of their ethnic identity. “Anti-terrorist” organizations began popping up on college campuses seeking to silence antiwar voices.
Lynne Cheney’s American Association of Trustees and Alumni, in its November 2001 report, Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America and
What Can be Done About It, listed 117 instances of “unpatriotic speech” by identified university professors and called American faculty “the weak link in America’s response” to September 11.
The examples of rampant McCarthyism after 9/11 are numerous too numerous to list but were not enough to stop people from engaging in it again.
McCarthyism would again rear its head in more recent years with the intellectually intolerant mob of woke cancelists. Anyone who dared stand up to the cancel culture in the mainstream was then forced out of their jobs and blacklisted — just ask New York Times editor Bari Weiss and New York Magazine journalist Andrew Sullivan.
While the woke McCarthyists are certainly troublesome, it is nothing compared to the wave of censors who began their rise to power during the early Trump years on the backs of the woke. Donald Trump ignited a fire under the new McCarthysists who would stop at nothing to silence any speech they deemed unfit for consumption — because Orange man bad. Couple this hatred for Trump with his alleged ties to Putin and we had a recipe for disaster.
No longer did the woke cults have to travel to campuses to shut down their political rivals — Big Tech took that over for them and effectively silenced anyone who’d dare commit one of the many new “thought crimes.”
In early 2018, Facebook and Google, tested the waters with this new era of McCarthyism. But instead of an entire group of people, they went after one man, Alex Jones. Jones was the perfect candidate as he’s long espoused conspiracy theories and in his latter years he went from standing up for the rights of Muslims, to pushing anti-Muslim rhetoric, giving his censors plenty of fodder.
Facebook, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube all permanently deleted the Infowars and Alex Jones Channels, Podcasts, and pages. Outside of their own domain, Infowars was entirely purged from the internet, with their last hold out being Alex Jones’ twitter profile.
“Yes, Infowars has frequent nonsense, but also a state power critique. Which publisher in the world with millions of subscribers is next to be wiped out for cultural transgression?” WikiLeaks tweeted at the time.
That tweet was met with hundreds of comments from folks praising the censorship and people subsequently attacking Julian Assange for standing against it. Infowars’ ban was not only supported by every mainstream outlet, but they demanded it go even further by removing Jones’ personal Twitter page, which happened shortly after. The masses were once again engaged in McCarthyism and once again, they didn’t even realize it.
Before and after Alex Jones was “unpersoned” by Big Tech, the Free Thought Project tried alerting everyone to the dangers of such a move. If they could take out Jones for his political rhetoric, they could take us all out — and several months later, they did.
October 11, 2018 is remembered in history as the day the tech giants attempted to wipe out independent, liberty-minded, antiwar media from the airwaves. In a coordinated effort, hundreds of pages devoted to peace and liberty were memory holed by social media giants.
The purge happened around 12:30 p.m. CST with mainstream news reports launching at the same time — implying that they were working in concert and given the heads up about the move.
In a statement co-authored by Facebook Head of Cybersecurity Nathaniel Gleicher — who also happens to be the former White House National Security Council Director of Cybersecurity Policy — the massive social media platform explained that it has removed “559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
Twitter followed shortly after by wiping out hundreds of accounts, including the Free Thought Project, on their platform as well.
Just like they did with Alex Jones, the unaware McCarthyists praised the move — until it came for them.
Once again, we find ourselves on the cusp of a massive wave of censorship and it has gone full circle — back to the “red scare” of 1950. The Russians are once again the enemy and anyone who doesn’t want to engage in nuclear war against them, a “Kremlin agent.”
After Russia invaded the Ukraine, the neo-McCarthyists came out of the woodwork and demanded anyone who spreads “misinformation” be unceremoniously silenced. but misinformation is entirely subjective.
Nevertheless, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Netflix and Tiktok have all blocked Russian News broadcasts and content, seemingly at the behest of the EU which announced it will ban the networks from broadcasting on television.
Members of Congress threaten to hold Big Tech “accountable” if they don’t censor “misinformation”
During a Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce of the Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing titled “Holding Big Tech Accountable: Legislation to Protect Online Users,” several members of Congress pushed Big Tech companies to do more to purge content that they deem to be “disinformation.”
The purpose of the hearing was to consider five bills: the “Banning Surveillance Advertising Act of 2022,” the “Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022,” the “Cooperation Among Police, Tech, and Users to Resist Exploitation Act,” the “Increasing Consumers’ Education on Law Enforcement Resources Act,” and the “Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act of 2022.”
None of the bills contain the phrase “misinformation” or disinformation but these phrases were used multiple times during the hearing to complain about online misinformation and warn tech companies that they would be held accountable if they didn’t remove more disinformation.
Facebook Announces ‘Narrow Exception’ for Previously Censored Neo-Nazi ‘Azov Battalion’.
Facebook is reversing a ban on users praising Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, previously included in the platform’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Internal memos from the social media platform, which has routinely censored mainstream conservative content, reveal it will “allow praise of the Azov Battalion when explicitly and exclusively praising their role in defending Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s National Guard.”
“Internally published examples of speech that Facebook now deems acceptable include “Azov movement volunteers are real heroes, they are a much needed support to our national guard”; “We are under attack. Azov has been courageously defending our town for the last 6 hours”; and “I think Azov is playing a patriotic role during this crisis,” added The Intercept, which first obtained the company memos.
“For the time being, we are making a narrow exception for praise of the Azov Regiment strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard,” clarified a spokesperson from Facebook’s parent company Meta.
“But we are continuing to ban all hate speech, hate symbolism, praise of violence, generic praise, support, or representation of the Azov Regiment, and any other content that violates our community standards,” they added in a statement to Business Insider.
Hellbound and Down 
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