Tag: big tech

Facebook, the ADL and the Brewing Battle to Label Zionism as Hate Speech

Zionism is one word, in particular, that evokes intense and passionate debate as all ideologies do. But, now the term is coming under scrutiny after an “innocuous” email shed light on Facebook’s response to concerted action by a powerful Jewish rights group that led to new community guidelines curbing so-called “hate speech.”

The leaked email brought attention to a discussion ostensibly taking place inside the multi-billion-dollar company to design its censorship algorithms and moderator criteria according to the wishes of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); posing the question of whether moderators should interpret the word as a slur against Jewish people, in general, or just Israelis.

Keep reading

Tulsi Gabbard tells Steven Crowder: Big tech does not get to decide who has a voice and who doesn’t

Gabbard — who recently warned that “domestic enemies” in big tech and the national security community, such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former CIA Director John Brennan, are plotting to create a “police state” in America — argued Monday that big tech’s threat to free speech is one of the most dangerous issues facing the country.

For years, giant tech companies such Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been scrutinized for arbitrarily censoring speech without consequence. But in recent months, the debate over their power has intensified amid the decision by several companies to ban former President Donald Trump from the platforms.

“Fundamentally as Americans, we agree on our constitutional right to free speech, [but now we] have these big tech monopolies essentially deciding who has a voice and who doesn’t in these virtual public town squares that they’ve created,” Gabbard lamented, adding, “You also have people in great positions of power in our government, for partisan or political reasons, trying to decide who gets to be heard and who doesn’t, just further inflaming the divisiveness and really, truly undermining our constitutional rights.”

“When we look at big tech and their ability to essentially act with impunity to do whatever they want — and making billions of dollars in the process — it speaks to the very dangerous place we are as a country,” she continued.

Gabbard called Trump’s removal from social media platforms a major indicator of how “dangerously powerful these big tech monopolies have become.”

Keep reading

Facebook’s new expert on ‘online disinformation’, Ben Nimmo, was a fantasy fiction writer. Has he really given that up?

The tech giant’s self-styled ‘troll-finder-general’ is touted as an authority on alleged Russian ‘information warfare’ – but any objective look at his background and track record raises troubling questions over his capabilities.

On February 5, Ben Nimmo announced he will with immediate effect be joining Facebook, to help the social media monopoly “lead global threat intelligence strategy against influence operations.”

It’s a shocking development, yet somehow an entirely unsurprising one. After all, despite having less than no discernible professional or educational background in social media, data analysis, information technology, or digital research, in recent years he’s enjoyed a stratospheric rise to mainstream prominence as an expert on online “disinformation,” and a series of well-remunerated posts at a number of state-backed and quasi-state organizations. 

Keep reading

Facebook to BAN claims about ‘man-made’ Covid-19 & ‘unsafe’ vaccines as it launches election-like campaign to promote vaccination

Facebook is expanding the list of ‘false’ and ‘debunked’ claims about the coronavirus and vaccines that will be grounds for banning from the platform, while launching the largest ‘authoritative’ vaccination campaign worldwide.

Under the Community Standards policy, posts with “debunked claims” that Covid-19 is “man-made or manufactured,” or that vaccines are ineffective, unsafe, dangerous or cause autism will be removed starting Monday, VP of Integrity Guy Rosen announced on the Facebook blog.

The new policy was implemented following consultations with the World Health Organization (WHO) and others, and will help Facebook “continue to take aggressive action against misinformation” about Covid-19 and vaccines, Rosen added.

Even if they don’t violate any of the listed policies, posts about Covid-19 or vaccines will still be subject to review by “third-party fact-checkers” and labeled and “demoted” if rated false.

Keep reading

NEVADA GOVERNOR WANTS TO ALLOW TECH COMPANIES TO CREATE THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS

Imagine a place where private companies get to effectively separate from the surrounding area and create their own towns, raise their own taxes, and create their own laws – all while still using American dollars.

Such a place would bring a whole new meaning to the phrase “company town.”

Just imagine an Apple-ville, Google-town, or PornHubtopia, but instead of rising out of Silicon Valley, the companies may need to trek out to the Nevada desert.

Because Nevada is trying to make all this – and more – a reality with its latest economic development plan, which involves a decidedly innovative approach that differs starkly with the traditional tax abatements and incentives offered by states like New York (to megacorps like Amazon), and by other states, to other (also often already very large) companies. But Nevada isn’t just trying to lure in the big fish. It’s trying to convince people to come there and build.

According to a draft of the plan obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal (but not yet shared with the legislature), the law would effectively make Nevada an ideal place of business for the next generation of crypto-libertarian innovators. These corporation-run governments “would carry the same authority as a county, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and justice courts and provide government services, to name a few duties,” the Review-Journal added.

Keep reading

Leftist Journalist Regrets Calling For Silicon Valley Censorship After It Happens to Him

A leftist journalist expressed regret about calling for Silicon Valley to censor content after it happened to him.

Progressive reporter Jordan Chariton had the change of heart after YouTube took down one of his videos.

Chariton’s original advocacy for censorship occurred when he called for Big Tech giants to target anyone who questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

“EVERY media outlet that pushed this INSANE election fraud conspiracy for clicks should be taken off the air. They’ve incited a Civil War,” Chariton tweeted on January 6, the date of the Capitol breach.

However, after YouTube pulled video from his own channel featuring footage of the January 6 riot for violating the platform’s policies against “spam and deceptive practices,” the Chariton reversed his position.

“With time to reflect, & seeing Silicon Valley’s censorship onslaught, I regret this tweet made in [the] heat of moment,” the progressive journalist wrote. “Whether certain cable/YouTube outlets mislead audiences w/ dishonest claims lacking real evidence, they shouldn’t be targeted.”

Chariton noted that with the precedent having been set for blanket censorship, progressive content was also now being unfairly targeted, while pointing out that big left-wing networks with friendly YouTube ties like the Young Turks were not calling it out.

Keep reading

YouTube Financially Deplatforms Swath Of Indie Media Accounts

The Google-owned video sharing platform YouTube has demonetized numerous independent media accounts, a jarring escalation in the steadily intensifying campaign against alternative news outlets online.

Progressive commentators Graham Elwood, The Progressive Soapbox, The Convo Couch, Franc Analysis, Hannah Reloaded and Cyberdemon531 have all received notifications from YouTube that their videos are no longer permitted to earn money through the platform’s various monetization features, as has Ford Fischer, a respected freelancer who films US political demonstrations. No explanation has been offered for this decision beyond the vague claim that “your channel is not in line with our YouTube Partner Program policies” due to “harmful content”.

Like all large online platforms, YouTube’s appeals process is notoriously opaque and unaccountable. These accounts could remain demonetized for months, or forever, without any clear explanation at all. Ford Fischer, who has been in this situation before, said on Twitter that his account was left demonetized for seven months before YouTube reversed its decision.

Keep reading

In Order To Have A “Tolerant Society”, The Elite Believe They Must Be Intolerant Of All Dissenting Views

When information becomes a “threat”, even thinking the wrong thing can be dangerous.  Over the past several weeks, I have heard the word “misinformation” uttered in the same sentence as “terror” or “terrorists” countless times.  In the old days, the “extremists” and the “terrorists” were on the other side of the globe, but now we are being told that they live among us.  So how can we identify them?  Well, we are being told that “the bad guys” can be identified by what they believe.

Those who do not embrace the propaganda that big tech and the corporate media are relentlessly pushing are being systematically “deplatformed”, “canceled” and pushed to the fringes of society.  But apparently that is not nearly enough, because The New York Times is now asking for the Biden administration to appoint a “reality czar” that will be given authority to deal with “misinformation” and “extremism”.

So exactly what will be done to those who are guilty of committing “thought crimes” against the government?

Sadly, I think that we are eventually going to find out.

Keep reading

Cellebrite: Israel’s Good Cyber Cop is Big Tech’s Backdoor to Breaching Your Privacy

Privacy and security have long-been one of the top selling points for iOS devices in the interminable marketing fracas between Apple and its competitors, with fancy additions to their suite of protection features like fingerprint scanning and facial recognition. Android devices, by contrast, always seemed to lag behind in the personal encryption space, but have caught up fairly recently in the consumer’s mind, at least.

The cat, as they say, is out of the bag thanks to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, who decided to test the mobile security systems of two of the biggest mobile device makers, Apple and Google. Their findings reveal that the layers of security protecting our data are only skin deep and that much of the encryption structures built into these devices remain unused. “I’ve come out of the project thinking almost nothing is protected,” Matthew Green, the professor who oversaw the study told Wired.

Using the companies’ own data and records spanning over a decade, the team of cryptographers found a plethora of security loopholes that can and are being exploited “by hackers and law enforcement alike.” The latter’s access to our mobile devices is of particular concern, given “the privacy risks involved in unchecked seizure and search.” Significantly, it is not your local police precinct that necessarily has the right tools to extract any readable data from your cell phone or laptop (though that is changing), but rather, these unique abilities are reserved for private cybersecurity companies who offer their services to police and other government entities.

One such firm, Israeli cyber forensics firm Cellebrite, boasts about their ability to “unlock and extract data from all iOS and high-end Android devices,” a service they have been selling to governments around the world and which they have more recently integrated into a product called Universal Forensic Extraction Device or UFED, which has been purchased by multiple law enforcement agencies across the globe, including the Hong Kong Police, which used Cellebrite’s hacking technology to “crack protestors’ smartphones” during the anti-extradition riots of 2019 and the NYPD, which enrolled in Cellebrite’s “UFED Premium program” that same year and gives ‘New York’s finest’ the capability to extract ostensibly private citizens’ data from the department’s own computers and laptops.

Keep reading