Tag: censorship

Outsourced censorship: Feds used private entity to target millions of social posts in 2020

Aconsortium of four private groups worked with the departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and State to censor massive numbers of social media posts they considered misinformation during the 2020 election, and its members then got rewarded with millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration afterwards, according to interviews and documents obtained by Just the News.

The Election Integrity Partnership is back in action again for the 2022 midterm elections, raising concerns among civil libertarians that a chilling new form of public-private partnership to evade the First Amendment’s prohibition of government censorship may be expanding.

The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika. It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State’s Global Engagement Center to file “tickets” requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.  

Three liberal groups — the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause and the NAACP — were also empowered like the federal agencies to file tickets seeking censorship of content. A Homeland-funded collaboration, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also had access.

In its own after-action report on the 2020 election, the consortium boasted it flagged more than 4,800 URLs — shared nearly 22 million times on Twitter alone — for social media platforms. Their staff worked 12-20 hour shifts from September through mid-November 2020, with “monitoring intensif[ying] significantly” the week before and after Election Day.

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Enemies list? Fed-backed censorship machine targeted 20 news sites

The private consortium that reported election “misinformation” to tech platforms during the 2020 election season, in “consultation” with federal agencies, targeted several news organizations in its dragnet.

Websites for Just the News, New York Post, Fox News, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Epoch Times and Breitbart were identified among the 20 “most prominent domains across election integrity incidents” that were cited in tweets flagged by the Election Integrity Partnership and its collaborators.

The Washington Post, New York Times and CNN also appeared on the list, though the consortium’s after-action report emphasizes most of the mainstream media reports “were referenced as fact-checks” that played a “corrective role” against “misleading narratives.”

The report also identified the 21 “most prominent repeat spreaders [of misinformation] on Twitter,” all of them politically classified as “right.” Actor James Woods led that group, followed by The Gateway Pundit blog, Donald Trump Jr. and President Trump himself. The report emphasized 15 were verified by Twitter.

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PayPal to expand its speech restriction rules in November

On the heels of its censorship spree in the UK – that received backlash so great it got the attention of lawmakers – PayPal is rolling out a new agreement that gives itself more censorship powers and the ability to strip income from those who don’t abide to its speech rules.

Violation of the “Acceptable Use Policy constitutes a violation of the PayPal User Agreement and may subject you to damages, including liquidated damages of $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation,” PayPal writes.

PayPal’s clause about taking users’ funds for a violation of its rules has long been established. But, as published on September 26th and to be effective on November 3rd, 2022, PayPal will add restrictions to its acceptable use policy that go beyond illegal activities and fraud and into the realm of policing speech.

The updated policy prohibits users from using PayPal for activities that:

“Involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable … (e) depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) … (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation … or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication.”

Big Tech platforms are increasingly finding ways to punish people’s speech under the guise of banning  “misinformation,” and making themselves as the arbiters of truth in deciding what is and isn’t true.

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Vietnam considers limiting who can post “news” on social media

Vietnam is working on new rules to limit news content on social media accounts. The new rules will limit the accounts that can share news, according to sources familiar with the matter.

“The government wants to fix what it sees as the ‘news-lisation’ of social media,” a source told Reuters. ‘News-lisation,” also called báo hoá in Vietnam, is a term used by the government to describe misleading social media users into believing that a social media account is an authorized news outlet.

According to the sources, the government has been holding private meetings with internet companies and platforms to discuss the accounts that will be allowed to post news content. Under the new rules, the government would have the authority to order social media companies to ban accounts that violate the rules.

The rules on news content, and other social media rules, are expected to be introduced later this year or early next year.

Vietnam is among the countries with the strictest internet and social media rules. The government has made many efforts to control the flow of news from unauthorized sources.

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YouTube Removed Viral Pro-Family Speech From Incoming Conservative Italian PM Giorgia Meloni

YouTube removed a viral speech defending the family and ripping woke ideology given by incoming conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — before reversing course and reinstating the video.

Meloni’s speech from the World Congress of Families gathering in 2019 went viral this week online, in light of Meloni’s groundbreaking win as Italy’s first female PM.

“Why is the family an enemy? Why is the family so frightening? There is a single answer to all these questions,” she said in the speech, according to transcript provided by The Washington Post. “Because it defines us. Because it is our identity. Because everything that defines us is now an enemy for those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves.”

YouTube on Wednesday removed video of the speech, adding an ambiguous note that the footage “has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” National Review reported.

No other information was offered to general users about which “community guideline” had been violated in the video.

But when The Daily Wire reached out to the platform for more information, YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said the video has been reinstated.

“Upon careful review, we determined this video is not violative of our Community Guidelines and have reinstated it,” Choi said via email.

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NBC News slammed after suggesting that the Feds should begin censoring text messages

NBC News has proven yet again that ‘mainstream’ media outlets in America are nothing but propagandists for the deep state, which is exactly the opposite of the vision our founders had for a “free press.”

NBC published a story exaggerating the issue of supposed “disinformation” going out via text messages, citing one campaign that nearly ended what the outlet described as “abortion protections” in Kansas to make its point.

In addition, the ‘story’ referenced a former Obama campaign official, Scott Goodstein, who “built the bulk text messaging apparatus for” the former president’s 2008 campaign, who now claims that Americans are being inundated with text message “disinformation.”

Citing the report, Newsbusters added:

NBC noted there is no regulatory agency to monitor text messages and wondered if “political groups that spread text message disinformation” would face any “consequences.” The news outlet did not present a definite solution.

Leftists “won’t rest until our text messages, television news, personal emails, phone calls—and eventually in-person conversations—are censored to fit their preferred narrative,” Internet Accountability Project (IAP) founder and President Mike Davis noted in an email, Newsbusters reported.

American Principles Project (APP) Director of Policy Jon Schweppe opined that NBC News shielded the real reason for its ‘story.’

“We know what this is really about,” he wrote in an email to Newsbusters. “It has nothing to do with ‘disinformation.’ This is about power, about censoring political messages that run counter to the elite consensus, and about rigging elections.”

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New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern at the U.N.: ‘Disinformation’ Should Be Controlled Like Guns, Bombs, and Nukes

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called for more “collective” action in her address to the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, especially on the issues of climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, pandemic response, and opposing wars of aggression such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ardern’s authoritarian impulses were on display in her call for tighter regulations on Internet speech, although she insisted she values free speech and merely wishes to cleanse “disinformation” from international discourse.

Ardern portrayed the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, which New Zealand addressed with some of the heaviest lockdowns to be found outside of communist China, as a painful lesson that “schooled” mankind in the importance of “collective action.”

“It forced us to acknowledge how interconnected, and therefore how reliant we are on one another,” she said of the pandemic. “We move between one another’s countries with increasing ease. We trade our goods and services. And when one link in our supply chain is impacted, we all are.”

Ardern explicitly called for the collectivist “lessons” of the pandemic to be applied to climate change.

“The next pandemic will not be prevented by one country’s efforts, but by all of ours. Climate action will only ever be as successful as the least committed country, as they pull down the ambition of the collective,” she said.

Ardern called for stronger, more lavishly-funded “multilateral” institutions, expressing strong support for the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, and Paris climate change agreement. She then somewhat paradoxically presented Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine as an example of an authoritarian regime simply ignoring global institutions to fulfill selfish ambitions.

“Let us all be clear: Russia’s war is illegal. It is immoral. It is a direct attack on the U.N. Charter and the international rules-based system and everything that this community should stand for,” she said.

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Good News for You Dumb People: YouTube Thought Police Think for You, Big Tech’s Bots Look After Your Best Interests

There’s an interesting moment in a recent YouTube video posted by Dr. John Campbell, a nurse educator who shares informational videos about the latest SARS-CoV-2 and other science on his educational channel. After reviewing government data, Campbell pauses for several seconds and scratches his head. A few beats later he mumbles an apology to the audience, confessing that his head felt a little itchy.

There was no hint from the deadpan tone that Campbell was doing anything other than scratching an itch. But, as some of his over 2.45 million loyal subscribers have boldly pointed out in the comment section, in recent videos Campbell seems darker than usual, almost depressed. Indeed, the nurse educator appears to be doing a lot of hand-wringing and head scratching lately.

It seems, however, that Campbell cannot openly share his concerns with his audience without putting his channel in jeopardy. In order to continue to post videos on YouTube, as he explored in that same head-scratching video, he must censor himself or risk being de-platformed.

YouTube Censors Vaccine Safety and Efficacy Information

YouTube has written guidelines against making videos that discuss vaccine safety, efficacy, and necessity.

This “vaccine misinformation policy” reads: “YouTube doesn’t allow content that poses a serious risk of egregious harm by spreading medical misinformation about currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and by the World Health Organization (WHO). This is limited to content that contradicts local health authorities’ or the WHO’s guidance on vaccine safety, efficacy, and ingredients.”

The policy applies to vaccine safety, vaccine efficacy, and even information about vaccine ingredients (pdf).

In fact, YouTube will actively delete any content that suggests that vaccines may cause chronic side effects, “outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities.”

This includes YouTube videos posted by medical doctors, scientists, academic researchers, and even patients who have themselves suffered from side effects.

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Meet the Fart-Fetish Tranny Activist Behind the Latest Push to Shut Down the Internet

Your freedom of speech at this very moment is controlled by an alleged child groomer with a fart fetish.

We wish this were another one of our satirical articles. Sadly, it’s not. The above lede is true, and thanks to a fart-sniffing tranny, the best resource for understanding the real nature of transgenderism just got knocked offline.

The resource in question is KiwiFarms, a largely-obscure web forum founded in 2013 by former 8chan administrator Joshua Moon. For nine years, KiwiFarms has slowly grown on the margins of the Internet. But now, it may be no more, slain thanks to a coordinated assault from media, Big Tech, and the “trannissaries” — the highly-online transgender activists who are now the most aggressive shock troops of modern wokeism.

The loss of KiwiFarms is a great blow to both freedom of speech online, both because of the content the site contained and how it died.

KiwiFarms was a lightly-moderated web forum originally created to discuss Chris Chan, the autist, transgender, and all-around weirdo arrested last year for allegedly sexually violating his bedridden mother. The forum eventually expanded into discussion of other online figures and eventually became noteworthy as a reservoir of “forbidden” online content. In particular KiwiFarms has over the past several years emerged as one of the rare venues — of any size — hosting content critical of the contemporary sacred cow of transgenderism, even though many KiwiFarms users are themselves transsexuals (or perhaps because of that fact).

In a world where thought control is more omnipresent and domineering by the day, KiwiFarms was one of the only places letting people curate and share the truth about transgenderism. The forum documented how children are groomed by transsexuals, what “gender treatments” really entail, the sickening true nature of prominent transgender activists, and so forth.

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NBC News Asks Twitter, TikTok to Censor Videos of John Fetterman Speaking

NBC News falsely claimed that footage of John Fetterman struggling to speak during a recent rally was “doctored” and urged social media companies to censor. Fetterman, who suffered a stroke earlier this year, has struggled with public speaking while recovering, something the senate hopeful has himself admitted to. The outlet flagged videos of Fetterman speaking to Twitter and TikTok, baselessly claiming that they were in violation of their political misinformation policies. TikTok complied and removed the videos.

NBC News took issue with highlight reels of a recent Montgomery County rally in which Fetterman struggled through parts of his speech. The outlet accused one prominent conservative social media account of deceptively editing video of speeches to “create the perception that what he was saying was nonsensical.”

The report accused social media platforms of ignoring their own policies “against political misinformation” in allowing the videos to stay up.

NBC News Deputy Editor of technology Benjamin Goggin wrote, “Deceptively edited videos that have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter and TikTok exaggerate the speech issues that have plagued John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat, after he had a stroke in May.”

Explaining the alleged edits, Goggin claimed they consisted of “cutting out the sound of the audience to make it appear as if he had abruptly stopped speaking (some of the stops occurred when he was pausing during moments of applause and crowd reaction, according to unedited videos seen by NBC News).”

The NBC News reporter singled out popular digital strategist Greg Price, whose supercut of Fetterman’s speech had been 600,000 times when the report was published.

Goggin claimed that the videos violate Twitter and TikTok’s policies “against political misinformation,” and the outlet flagged these videos for the platforms itself. TikTok ultimately removed the videos from its platform.

“So NBC News decided to accuse me of doctoring videos of John Fetterman that I posted. (I didn’t doctor anything),” Price wrote in a tweet. “They also reached out to Twitter to try and get them censored.”

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