Tag: big tech

Babylon Bee CEO says satirical site ‘punching back’ against liberal media, Big Tech censorship

“Facebook recently announced they’ll be moderating satire to make sure it doesn’t ‘punch down.’ Anything that punches down—that is, anything that takes aim at protected targets Facebook doesn’t want you joking about—doesn’t qualify as ‘true satire,’” Dillon wrote. “In fact, they’ve made it clear they’ll consider jokes that ‘punch down’ to be hatred disguised as satire.” 

Dillon noted that Slate recently published a piece that accused the Bee of punching down. 

“This is not a coincidence. Having failed in their effort to lump us in with fake news, the media and Big Tech are looking for new ways to work together to deplatform us. They now hope to discredit us by saying we’re spreading hatred—rather than misinformation—under the guise of satire,” Dillon wrote. “But we’re not punching down.’ We’re punching back.”

Dillon feels “the left’s new prohibition of ‘punching down’ is speech suppression in disguise” and blasted anyone who plays along. 

“It’s people in positions of power protecting their interests by telling you what you can and cannot joke about. Comedians who self-censor in deference to that power are themselves a joke,” he wrote. 

Keep reading

Emails Show Biden Campaign Demanding Facebook Censor Posts on Election Integrity

A number of emails seen by CNN — which uses them to make the case that the platform isn’t censoring enough — show that the Biden campaign repeatedly pressured Facebook to censor posts from the Trump campaign and its supporters about election integrity.

CNN’s own reporting confirms that Facebook changed its policies following the email exchange with Biden officials, yet goes on to quote Democrat activists who complain that the platform is still not censoring enough conservative content.

One post that the Biden campaign tried to have censored during the 2020 election was a video from Donald Trump Jr. in September 2020 calling for supporters to monitor early voting and counting boards.

Biden campaign officials tried to characterize the video as a call for violence, because Don Jr used the term “army” to refer to the volunteer effort, claims that were rebuffed by Facebook.

Keep reading

Twitter censors UK hypocrite Health Secretary “Matt Hancock” from Photos and Videos search amid public scandal over affair and social distancing breach

The UK’s Health Secretary is currently embroiled in controversy after being caught on CCTV in a secret affair with an aide. The leaked CCTV footage shows Matt Hancock breaching social distancing guidelines and engaging in kissing and an embrace with his aide Gina Coladangelo. Hancock has been married to his wife Martha for 15 years and the couple have three children together.

Yet, while the video has caused national outrage at the hypocrisy of the Health Secretary, the video itself is suddenly harder to find on Twitter as the platform has censored the term Matt Hancock from its photos and videos search.

Keep reading

YouTube deletes President Trump interview

YouTube has removed another interview with former President Trump, continuing its pattern of blacklisting Trump from its platform, even when appearing as a guest on other channels.

This time, Trump’s interview with David Brody on “The Water Cooler” show on the Real America’s Voice news network has been purged after the tech giant claimed that the video contained “content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election.”

During the interview, Trump responded to headlines that claimed he’d admitted he lost the 2020 US presidential election by saying: “I never admitted defeat.”

He also said it’s up to the public and “perhaps, politicians” to decide wether the election was fraudulent and added: “I don’t think there’s ever been a case like this where hundreds of thousands of votes will be found. So we’ll have to see what happens.”

Not only was this Trump interview scrubbed but the Real America’s Voice YouTube channel was also hit with a strike which blocks it from uploading or live streaming for seven days.

Real America’s Voice program director Roger Hudson described the censorship of this Trump interview as “a little heavy-handed and probably inappropriate” and said Trump “didn’t say what they [YouTube] said he said.”

Keep reading

Mailchimp Suspends The Babylon Bee For “Harmful Information”

On Thursday, the online integrated marketing company Mailchimp suspended The Babylon Bee’s account, claiming that the system detected “harmful information” in the Bee’s emails. After Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon shared the news on Twitter, Mailchimp apologized. It was too late, however.

“I’d email everyone to let them know [Mailchimp] just suspended our account but Mailchimp just suspended our account,” Dillon announced on Twitter. Like many other companies, The Babylon Bee uses Mailchimp to send out emails to its broad email list. Without Mailchimp, the Bee could not tell its subscribers that Mailchimp had suspended the satire site.

Shortly after Dillon shared the news on Twitter, Mailchimp responded, saying that the company had reinstated the account.

“Hey Seth. We got this in front of our Compliance team and they’ve reinstated the account. Our team followed up in an email with more details. We apologize for the inconvenience,” Mailchimp tweeted.

Keep reading

Emails Show Biden Campaign Pressured Facebook to Censor Trump Before the Election

Emails obtained by CNN reveal how the Biden campaign pressured Facebook to censor President Donald Trump before the 2020 election.

The messages reveal how Biden campaign officials repeatedly insisted that Facebook remove information that it deemed to be ‘violent rhetoric’, a concern that seemed to be absent during months of leftists rioting and burning down entire city blocks throughout the summer.

After a deluge of public and private complaints by members of Biden’s team and other Democrats, a former Biden campaign staffer said Facebook “essentially did nothing” in response.

The focus was primarily on the official Team Trump account, with Biden officials infuriated that Facebook didn’t remove enough videos that warned people of upcoming election fraud.

Gee, I wonder why they were concerned about that.

“It was the most frustrating series of conversations,” a Biden aide said. “We went to Facebook with a series of letters, public complaints, private emails and all throughout, they essentially did nothing.”

Naturally, CNN spins the story as an example of how Facebook failed to clamp down on “misinformation,” despite the social network giant banning many of Trump’s most prominent supporters before the election and engaging in industrial-scale levels of censorship of pro-Trump content.

Keep reading

Facebook Doesn’t Want to Talk About Fake Users Created by the Pentagon

On a press call a few years ago, I asked Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, if the company would treat a misinformation campaign orchestrated by the US government the same as it would as one from a foreign adversary.

Facebook had organized the call to tout how it had discovered and deleted dozens of Iranian accounts, groups, and pages linked to “coordinated inauthentic behavior”—the company’s term for when people and organizations create fake accounts in an attempt to mislead and manipulate other users and the broader information landscape. The conversation came at a time when Facebook was conducting a spate of such announcements and media briefings championing its work removing phony networks tied to foreign governments.Recent reporting says US operatives “engage in campaigns to influence and manipulate social media.”

Gleicher’s response to my hypothetical question about whether they would react the same way was quite clear: “Yes. Part of the key of our operations here is that we engage based on behavior—not based on content and not based on the nature of the actor. And that’s been a very intentional choice on our part.”

Keep reading

Twitter Locks News Site’s Account for Report on Teen Boy Dying After Getting Vaccine

Twitter locked the account of the National File, a conservative-leaning news website, after it reported on a tweet from a woman who claimed her 13-year-old nephew died after receiving a second dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

A spokesperson for Twitter confirmed to news outlets it locked the National File’s account for 12 hours “in error.” The account has since been reinstated, but the outlet has now said the social media giant “has now suspended” reporter Jack Hadfield “for celebrating Twitter’s decision to reverse the suspension” of the publication.

The Epoch Times has contacted Twitter for comment.

According to the National File, the report that triggered the action from Twitter included claims from a woman, Tami Burages, who said her nephew died after getting the vaccine.

“Our family is devastated. I struggled with putting this out on twitter. I am pro-vaccine. We vaccinated my own 14-year-old son as soon as it was available. I know it is *mostly safe*. But Jacob is dead now,” she wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) website guidance for vaccines stipulates that most COVID-19 vaccines should not be given to children, although an advisory panel in May advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that Pfizer’s vaccine could be administered to children aged 12 years and older.

“Children should not be vaccinated for the moment,” the WHO’s page on COVID-19 vaccines says in bold.

Keep reading