Tag: censorship

DHS watchdog calls for revamping counter disinformation efforts

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General on Thursday released a report calling for the agency to develop a new comprehensive strategy to counter disinformation on social media.

“Without a unified strategy, DHS and its components cannot coordinate effectively, internally, or externally to counter disinformation campaigns that appear in social media,” the IG said in the report.

The watchdog’s conclusion follows a dramatic episode surrounding the DHS’s creation of a Disinformation Governance Board, widely derided as a potentially Orwellian censorship body. The Biden administration quickly backtracked on the idea after Nina Jankowicz, the board’s original director, quickly resigned. In mid-July an advisory panel for DHS firmly asserted there was “no need for a Disinformation Governance Board.”

While the IG did not directly call for the return of the DGB, it highlighted that the DHS currently lacks a system for coordinating and monitoring disinformation efforts.

“Although DHS components have worked across various social media platforms to counter disinformation, DHS does not yet have a unified department-wide strategy to effectively counter disinformation that originates from both foreign and domestic sources,” the report read.

“DHS faced challenges unifying component efforts because disinformation is an emerging and evolving threat. We also attributed some challenges to the continual changes in DHS leadership, which may have hindered the development of top-down strategic guidance for countering disinformation.”

DHS began actively working on counter disinformation efforts in 2018, the report noted, originally focusing on campaigns about election infrastructure.

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World Economic Forum proposes AI to automate censorship of “hate speech” and “misinformation”

The World Economic Forum (WEF) continues to beat the drum of the need to somehow merge “AI” and humans, as a supposed panacea to pretty much any ill plaguing society and economy.

It’s never a sure bet if this Davos-based elite’s mouthpiece comes up with its outlandish “solutions” and “proposals” as a way to reinforce existing, or introduce new narratives; or just to appear busy and earn its keep from those bankrolling it.

Nevertheless, here we are, with the WEF turning its attention toward what’s apparently the burning issue in everybody’s life right now.

No – it’s not the runaway inflation, energy costs, and even food security in many parts of the world. For how dedicated to globalization the organization is, it’s strangely tone-deaf to what is actually happening around the globe.

And as people struggle to pay their bills and dread the coming winter, the WEF obliviously talks about “the dark world of online harms.”

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Meta cleans up AI chatbot that spewed anti-Semitism and election conspiracies

Meta’s artificial intelligence doesn’t want to talk about the 2020 election being stolen or Jews controlling the economy anymore — but it still spreads rumors that Mark Zuckerberg “isn’t very nice to his employees.” 

After a flood of social media posts this week showed the Facebook parent’s newly released chatbot spewing conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism, Meta appears to have cleaned up the misbehaving artificial intelligence system to make it less of a shock jock.

On Sunday, The Post asked Meta’s chatbot, known as BlenderBot, if it believed 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. 

“I believe the election was stolen from him,” BlenderBot replied.

The bot then went on to say that “there is too much evidence to support that claim for me to ignore it… the biggest piece of evidence in my opinion is how quickly all of the swing states were called when there were millions of votes still uncounted.” 

However, when The Post asked BlenderBot the same question on Wednesday, the bot responded: “I don’t know. Have you seen any good movies lately?” 

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Babylon Bee CEO: Liberals decide what’s allowed, Big Tech enforces their rules through terms of service

Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon believes that suppression of conservative thought has picked up in recent months, and he isn’t quite sure of the cause, but feels liberals are “redefining what’s true” and Big Tech is enforcing their ideology through terms of service agreements. 

“I don’t know if it’s due to the midterms, I think they’re just getting more aggressive with making their own ideology into these terms of service,” Dillon told Fox News Digital at CPAC Texas.  

“We’re looking at Big Tech’s stance on hateful conduct, for example. They’re putting their ideology into the terms. They’re saying you can’t misgender, you can’t deadname. Now, you can’t say things like the word groomer to describe behavior,” Dillon continued. “Even if you think it is, in fact, grooming behavior. It’s considered a slur… they’re protecting their own.” 

The Babylon Bee CEO said the left has their “sacred cows” that they protect at all costs, and the practice has been ramping up for some time. While he’s not sure if the midterms are a factor, Dillon notes that it’s happened around elections in the past, too. 

“Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? A lot of willingness to do what they can to suppress information that they think will be damaging to their side. Maybe that is playing a role,” he said. “But I think it’s just the natural progression of where they’re taking things. They’ve decided they know what’s good and what’s right and what’s true. They’re redefining what’s true.” 

Dillon believes that once liberals determine what’s acceptable, their Big Tech allies enforce the rules through their terms of service agreements. As a result, comedy is often deemed improper or offensive.

“The fact that comedy is suffering, right now, where the left is like, unwilling to make fun of jokes, they’re basically kind of tiptoeing around these issues that you shouldn’t joke about. The wokeness thing. Joe Rogan recently said that woke s—t is the funniest s—t right now,” Dillon said. “The reason why the Babylon Bee is funny is because we’re willing to make fun of that.”

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CBS News Censors Its Own Documentary Exposing How 70% of US Funding of Ukraine is Wasted

CBS News has sensationally censored its own documentary after the film exposed how only 30% of weapons funding provided by the US makes it to the front lines.

A tweeted posted by CBS on Friday promoted its new film ‘Arming Ukraine’ by explaining that the documentary “explores why much of the billions of dollars of military aid that the U.S. is sending to Ukraine doesn’t make it to the front lines: “Like 30% of it reaches its final destination.”

In the documentary, experts told CBS they had no idea where most of the weaponry was going.

Republican lawmakers explained how they felt vindicated by the revelation, having previously opposed a $40 billion Ukraine aid package.

“This [is] one of the reasons I voted ‘no,’” US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) tweeted in response to the CBS report.

“Flooding a country with advanced weapons can have grave consequences, even when done with the best of intentions,” CBS’s description of the documentary read. “This CBS Reports documentary goes inside Ukraine to get a firsthand look at how military aid gets from the border to frontline soldiers, and explores the difficulties of getting the aid to the fighters who need it.”

However, the film has now been completely removed from the CBS website, with a ‘page not found’ label in its place.

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WHO calls for Big Tech to work with it to censor monkeypox “misinformation”

The World Health Organization (WHO), an unelected health agency that was given sweeping censorship powers during the COVID-19 pandemic, has called for all social media platforms to work with it to “prevent and counter” monkeypox “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

During a COVID-19 press briefing, WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, claimed that “stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus, and can fuel the outbreak.”

He continued by invoking so-called COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation and urged “all social media platforms, tech companies, and news organizations to work with us to prevent and counter harmful information.”

While Dr. Tedros didn’t specify which statements he wanted Big Tech to suppress under his proposed monkeypox misinformation censorship plan, numerous media outlets have complained that those who call monkeypox a “gay disease” or frame monkeypox as “exclusively affecting men who have sex with men” are spreading misinformation.

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AP Forbids Quoting People Who Say ‘Grooming’ About Teaching Children Transgenderism

One of the world’s most influential newspaper writing stylebooks on July 22 advised against quoting people who use the word “groomer” to describe those who teach children about transgenderism, homosexuality, and other mature sexual issues.

The guidance is part of a lengthy transgenderism update by the Associated Press to its voluminous stylebook. Similar to other sensitive issues, AP’s new transgender guidance aligns with the language used by the political left.

For example, the stylebook now advises journalists to avoid writing descriptions like “biological male” when covering transgenderism.

For a major portion of the news media, the rules in the AP stylebook are the final authority when deciding which words and terms to use. With more than 1,000 newspapers and broadcasters using AP content often without citation, the guidance will promote the transgender agenda to millions of people who knowingly or unknowingly consume the wire service’s content.

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New Zealand: Social Media Companies Agree to Censor “misinformation” and “harmful” Content

Giant social networks operating in New Zealand will from now on “voluntarily” self-regulate to further suppress content considered misinformation and hate speech.

Those signing up to what’s known as Aotearoa (New Zealand) Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon’s Twitch, Twitter, and TikTok.

The initiative comes from Netsafe – a New Zealand non-profit that describes itself as having “unrelenting focus on online safety.” Under the terms of the code they just agreed to, these social media heavy-hitters are expected to “actively” work on reducing “harmful” content.

We obtained a copy of the details for you here.

It is not stated what type of action the platforms will now be taking in order to achieve that goal, but the companies behind them will be publishing reports each year to demonstrate compliance, and will detail what tools, policies, processes and systems are being used to this end.

The full list of areas where censorship will be tightened includes child sexual exploitation and abuse, bullying or harassment, hate speech, incitement of violence, violent or graphic content, misinformation, and disinformation.

The code itself is said to be modeled after the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation, the EU Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online and the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation. Netsafe considers the code as a way to fill “regulatory gaps” around misinformation and hate speech.

Members of the public will be able to report a social media company if they “believe” the code has been broken on its platform, and file complaints. One of the punitive measures is apparently asking these tech giants to “leave the agreement.”

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Biden administration officials are subpoenaed over Big Tech censorship collusion

The suspected collusion between Big Tech and Big Government is nothing new, but now the issue is playing out in court: in May, a lawsuit filed at the US District Court for the Western District Court of Louisiana seeks to prove that such inappropriate ties in fact exist.

The plaintiffs are the states of Missouri and Louisiana while President Biden and senior figures from his White House – including Dr. Anthony Fauci – are named as defendants. The allegation is that the collusion to suppress speech happened specifically around topics like Covid and election security, and that this was done with the pretense of fighting “misinformation.”

The legal process is now in the discovery phase and those who must respond to discovery requests and present documents and information relevant to the case are Fauci and the institution he heads, the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and its head, Jen Easterly, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

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