George Carlin on political correctness…
Tag: censorship
Censor The Internet Act: EU Agrees to Expand Online Censorship With ‘Digital Services Act’
The European Union is working to massively expand online censorship, strictly regulate speech during times of “crisis” and restrict online anonymity through digital passports.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both lobbied for the EU to back the censorship bill known as the Digital Services Act on Thursday.
From France 24, “EU agrees on new legislation to tame internet ‘Wild West’ “:
The Digital Services Act (DSA) — the second part of a massive project to regulate tech companies — aims to ensure tougher consequences for platforms and websites that host a long list of banned content ranging from hate speech to disinformation and child sexual abuse images.
[…] Tech giants have been repeatedly called out for failing to police their platforms — a New Zealand terrorist attack that was live-streamed on Facebook in 2019 caused global outrage, and the chaotic insurrection in the US last year was promoted online.
The dark side of the internet also includes e-commerce platforms filled with counterfeit or defective products.
[…] The regulation will require platforms to swiftly remove illegal content as soon as they are aware of its existence. Social networks would have to suspend users who frequently breach the law.
The DSA will force e-commerce sites to verify the identity of suppliers before proposing their products.
[…] The European Commission will oversee yearly audits [of Big Tech firms] and be able to impose fines of up to six percent of their annual sales for repeated infringements.
Looking over the outline of the new agreement it’s striking how they seamlessly conflate child sexual abuse material with “illegal hate speech.”
Both are jumbled together as “illegal content.”
Wikipedia Removes Entry for Hunter Biden’s Firm “Rosemont Seneca” Because It Risked Becoming a “Magnet for Conspiracy Theories About Hunter Biden”
Wikipedia erased the entry of Rosemont Seneca from its site recently. The online encyclopedia known for its far-left bias, goes soft on Democrats and their allies while it does the opposite with conservative, America-loving sites like TGP.
Newsmax reports:
Wikipedia editors earlier this week removed an entry on Hunter Biden’s investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners because it was “not notable,” archived comments from the Talk Page revealed.
The censoring of information happened Wednesday. The company co-founded by Hunter Biden has been at the heart of controversy lately.
Reddit user banned for quoting Metallica album
A Reddit user was permanently banned for mentioning the title of an album by the metal band Metallica called Kill ‘Em All.
Reddit cited its rules against threatening violence.
The ban was highlighted in a post in the Metallica subreddit. The user posted a video highlighting the censorship, with screenshots showing that the account was banned for threatening violence.
“You’ve been permanently banned for violating Reddit’s rule against threatening violence in the following content,” the first screenshot in the clip reads. “Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not threatening or encouraging violence against people or animals. We don’t tolerate any behavior that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual, groups of people, places or animals.”
The account was banned because of a comment in a post in the Megadeth subreddit. The post asked for opinions on the “Best Debut Album of the Big 4.” The banned account commented: “Kill ‘Em All was definitely what originally brought many people into the metal community. I’d say, from an objective standpoint, it would have to be Kill ‘Em All.”
Twitch is accused of sexism for banning phrase “I hate women” but not “I hate men”
Twitch is accused of double standards for allowing hateful language against men. Users discovered that the platform allows “i hate men” but blocks “i hate women.”
Earlier this week, Twitch streamer “shirahiko” posted two screenshots on Twitter to expose Twitch’s sexism against men. Per the screenshots, attempting to publish a stream with the title “I hate women,” Twitch blocks it for violating its “moderation policy.”
The same does not happen when users attempt to type the title “I hate men.”
Shirahiko said they wanted to type the title “I hate women” to “mock the fact that people are blowing things out of proportion again by saying ‘all men are bad’ in the Vtuber community.”
Data Shows Big Tech Censored Biden Criticism 600+ Times Over 2-Year Cycle
The Media Research Center, a media watchdog group, has identified more than 600 occasions in which Big Tech companies censored criticism of President Joe Biden, dating back to March 2020.
The collected data ran through the MRC’s CensorTrack database, which monitors censorship of prominent political voices by leading Silicon Valley platforms, and covered the 24-month period of March 2020 to March 2022.
The findings revealed that prominent social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter concealed Biden critiques 646 times over the two-year cycle.
Police are Still Weaponizing Copyright to Prevent Transparency
YouTube and other social media websites have strict rules on playing copyrighted content. Police have been using that to prevent embarrassing videos from being posted on the platforms.
Residents in Santa Ana, California were woken up by blasting music around 11pm on April 4, a Monday. But the music was not a bass bumping rap song or a heavy metal piece with screaming vocals, it was “We Don’t Talk about Bruno” from the animated Disney film “Encanto.” And it was not being played by a teenage house party or an inconsiderate driver with a loud sound system, but a police vehicle.
Police responded to a stolen vehicle call in the neighborhood when an observer who runs the YouTube channel Santa Ana Audits started recording the activity. That’s when officers started blasting the Disney owned track, in an apparent attempt to prevent the video from being posted on YouTube and Instagram. Thanks to those platform’s algorithmic copyright enforcement, any video that includes a copyrighted song is susceptible to being removed. Its channel owners are also subject to warnings and even getting banned from the platform.
Unfortunately for Santa Ana Police, they happened to be in the neighborhood of city councilman David Penaloza who, like many of his neighbors, was awakened by the ruckus caused by the city’s police department.
Penaloza came outside and confronted the officer, who admitted that what he was doing was intended to prevent the video captured by Santa Ana Audits making its way onto YouTube.
Obama is expected to call for more internet censorship in Stanford speech
President Barack Obama is today attending Stanford University to give a speech about censoring “misinformation” online. He has delivered such speeches multiple times over the past year.
According to The Chicago Tribune, Obama “is expected to add his voice to demands for rules to rein in the flood of lies polluting public discourse.”
“In private meetings and public appearances over the last year, the former president has waded deeply into the public fray over misinformation and disinformation, warning that the scourge of falsehoods online has eroded the foundations of democracy at home and abroad,” the New York Times said.
Recently, Obama talked about censorship at an event organized by the Atlantic and the University of Chicago. He said social media companies should censor what is not good for society.
“I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms to make money,” Obama said. “But say to them that there’s certain practices you engage in that we don’t think are good for society.”
In a tweet Tuesday, Obama promoted censorship, arguing misinformation is a threat to democracy.
Spotify reserves the right to limit reach of “misinformation”
Spotify is highlighting its rules around censorship, taking a leaf out of the book of other tech giants who like to find a way to limit speech that their rules don’t actually “outlaw.”
According to Spotify, the content the reach of which it can now decide to restrict is that which “touches” on what are described as sensitive topics – even though this content “does not cross the threshold which would require removal under our Platform Rules.”
Reports supportive of this new policy say that it came in response to the reaction, outside and inside Spotify, to Joe Rogan’s podcast, specifically an episode that looked into the safety and usefulness of Covid vaccines.
The episode produced outrage, amplified by the “friendly” media, branding Rogan as a peddler of misinformation, and agitating musician Neil Young so much that he presented Spotify with an ultimatum: either have him or Rogan on the platform. (Spotify chose Rogan).
Former Intelligence Officials, Citing Russia, Say Big Tech Monopoly Power is Vital to National Security
A group of former intelligence and national security officials on Monday issued a jointly signed letter warning that pending legislative attempts to restrict or break up the power of Big Tech monopolies — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — would jeopardize national security because, they argue, their centralized censorship power is crucial to advancing U.S. foreign policy. The majority of this letter is devoted to repeatedly invoking the grave threat allegedly posed to the U.S. by Russia as illustrated by the invasion of Ukraine, and it repeatedly points to the dangers of Putin and the Kremlin to justify the need to preserve Big Tech’s power in its maximalist form. Any attempts to restrict Big Tech’s monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow.
While one of their central claims is that Big Tech monopoly power is necessary to combat (i.e., censor) “foreign disinformation,” several of these officials are themselves leading disinformation agents: many were the same former intelligence officials who signed the now-infamous-and-debunked pre-election letter fraudulently claiming that the authentic Hunter Biden emails had the “hallmarks” of Russia disinformation (former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Obama CIA Director Michael Morrell, former Obama CIA/Pentagon chief Leon Panetta). Others who signed this new letter have strong financial ties to the Big Tech corporations whose power they are defending in the name of national security (Morrell, Panetta, former Bush National Security Adviser Fran Townsend).
Hellbound and Down 
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