Tag: censorship

Western Dissent from US/NATO Policy on Ukraine is Small, Yet the Censorship Campaign is Extreme

If one wishes to be exposed to news, information or perspective that contravenes the prevailing US/NATO view on the war in Ukraine, a rigorous search is required. And there is no guarantee that search will succeed. That is because the state/corporate censorship regime that has been imposed in the West with regard to this war is stunningly aggressive, rapid and comprehensive.

On a virtually daily basis, any off-key news agency, independent platform or individual citizen is liable to be banished from the internet. In early March, barely a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the twenty-seven nation European Union — citing “disinformation” and “public order and security” — officially banned the Russian state-news outlets RT and Sputnik from being heard anywhere in Europe. In what Reuters called “an unprecedented move,” all television and online platforms were barred by force of law from airing content from those two outlets. Even prior to that censorship order from the state, Facebook and Google were already banning those outlets, and Twitter immediately announced they would as well, in compliance with the new EU law.

But what was “unprecedented” just six weeks ago has now become commonplace, even normalized. Any platform devoted to offering inconvenient-to-NATO news or alternative perspectives is guaranteed a very short lifespan. Less than two weeks after the EU’s decree, Google announced that it was voluntarily banning all Russian-affiliated media worldwide, meaning Americans and all other non-Europeans were now blocked from viewing those channels on YouTube if they wished to. As so often happens with Big Tech censorship, much of the pressure on Google to more aggressively censor content about the war in Ukraine came from its own workforce: “Workers across Google had been urging YouTube to take additional punitive measures against Russian channels.”

So prolific and fast-moving is this censorship regime that it is virtually impossible to count how many platforms, agencies and individuals have been banished for the crime of expressing views deemed “pro-Russian.” On Tuesday, Twitter, with no explanation as usual, suddenly banned one of the most informative, reliable and careful dissident accounts, named “Russians With Attitude.” Created in late 2020 by two English-speaking Russians, the account exploded in popularity since the start of the war, from roughly 20,000 followers before the invasion to more than 125,000 followers at the time Twitter banned it. An accompanying podcast with the same name also exploded in popularity and, at least as of now, can still be heard on Patreon.

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UK censorship bill will impact small, independent media outlets while giving large media outlets a pass

The UK government is currently pushing a sweeping online censorship bill, the Online Safety Bill, which will force tech giants to censor content based on the vague, subjective term “harm.”

One of the government’s main arguments when attempting to defend these controversial censorship requirements has been that “news content will be completely exempt from any regulation under the Bill.” However, the rules that govern these exemptions are written in a way that favors large media outlets and makes it difficult for small, independent outlets to qualify.

For starters, the state-funded media outlets the BBC and Sianel Pedwar Cymru (S4C) automatically qualify as “recognised news publishers” – the standard that determines whether a publisher is exempt from the bill’s regulations.

Other outlets need to either hold a license under the Broadcasting Act 1990 or 1996 or meet numerous conditions which include “publishing news-related material that is created by different persons,” having a registered office or business address in the UK, making the name and address of the outlet’s owner public, being subject to a standards code and editorial control, and having a complaints procedure.

Obtaining a license under the Broadcasting Act 1990 or 1996 creates additional costs for small outlets, such as the £2,500 ($3,300) license application fee and the minimum annual license fee of £1,000, ($1,320). It also gives Ofcom the power to decide which outlets can get a license.

The provision for news-related materials from non-license holders to be created by “different persons” also prevents individual journalists from qualifying as recognized news publishers. Furthermore, the requirement for non-license holders to make their name and address public shuts out anonymous or pseudonymous publishers from these recognized news publisher exemptions.

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Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar Refuses to Answer Question on Whether Saying There are Only Two Sexes Considered as “Health Misinformation”

Minnesota Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar declined to answer a question on Friday during DisInfo 2022 Conference whether the senator’s recent bill banning “health misinformation” on social media will include a ban on saying there are two sexes—male and female.

Senator Amy Klobuchar sat on a panel to talk about “Taming the Wild, Wild Web” with the former Democratic governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, and a moderator from The New York Times.

UChicago student, Evita Duffy, co-founder and managing editor of Thinker Chicago asked the democratic senator whether saying there are only two sexes can be considered “health misinformation” and should be banned on social media platforms.

“You introduced the bill that you talked about today that would punish social media companies like Facebook and Twitter for having health misinformation on their platforms. And I’m going to ask you if I were to say that there are only two sexes, male and female. Would that be considered misinformation that you think should be, banned speech on social media platforms?” Duffy questioned.

Klobuchar just laughed at the question and refused to answer saying, “Okay, I’m not going to get into what misinformation.”

“First of all, I think the bill you’re talking about is different than the one we have mostly been talking about. So I want to make that clear. We’ve been talking about the competition bill. But there is another bill that I have on vaccine misinformation. It is that specific in a public health crisis,” Klobuchar argued.

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The Online Safety Bill gives the UK government unprecedented power to determine “harmful” content

The UK’s latest attempt to clamp down on free speech online, the 225 page Online Safety Bill, will give sweeping new censorship powers to the UK’s Secretary of State and its communications regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), if passed.

It gives the UK Culture Secretary the power to decide on and designate “priority content that is harmful.”

Once the Secretary of State has designated this content, social media platforms and search engines that fall under the scope of the bill’s regulations have to “use proportionate systems and processes” to prevent children from encountering this priority content.

These platforms are also required to specify in their terms of service how they’ll tackle priority content that’s deemed to be “harmful to adults” and apply these measures consistently.

Additionally, the Culture Secretary gets the power to decide the user number and feature thresholds that determine whether a company falls under the scope of these requirements to remove and tackle priority content.

Collectively, these provisions give the Culture Secretary unprecedentedly broad powers to not only choose the types of speech that is allowed but to also set the rules around which platforms have to censor content.

Under the bill, Ofcom will be granted the power to issue harsh punishments to platforms that fail to meet the Secretary’s censorship demands.

These punishments include applying for court orders that restrict access to platforms in the UK and fining platforms up to £18 million ($23.78 million) or 10% of their revenue (whichever is higher).

In another authoritarian turn, if Ofcom decides that a platform is failing to comply with any aspect of the Online Safety Bill, it can also demand information from the platform via an “information notice” and require the platform to name a senior manager who can be fined or imprisoned for up to two years if they’re found guilty of failing to comply with the requirements.

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Barack Obama Backs Internet Controls to Grapple with the ‘Demand for Crazy’

Government regulation and control over the internet can defeat a “demand for crazy” through the spread of incorrect messages, former President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

Obama, 60, spoke with Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg at an event hosted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and the magazine.

“I do think that there is a demand for crazy on the internet that we have to grapple with,” Obama said, before adding a mix of regulation and industry standards are needed to address the issue.

Obama lamented how misinformation plays out across the U.S., accusing those who say President Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election as guilty of falling for conspiracy theories.

He called out “a systematic effort to either promote false information, to suppress true information, for the purpose of political gain, financial gain, enhancing power, suppressing others, targeting those you don’t like.”

The former president blamed smartphones for accelerating “an erosion of accountability norms and standards in political life” from 2010 onwards.

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Black Lives Matter shows how liberal groups weaponize social media censorship

The talking points have apparently gone out, and it is now OK for the mainstream press to gently criticize the Black Lives Matter movement. Accordingly, New York magazine has issued a critique of BLM’s financial management — particularly, the organization’s purchase in 2020 of a $6 million, 6,500 square foot house in Southern California.

Almost exactly a year ago, the New York Post reported on the purchase of four other multi-million dollar high-end homes by BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors. The story described the homes no differently than it would any other celebrity home purchase. All the information contained in the article was gleaned from public records, including the photos. No addresses were listed.

But within days, users on Facebook were banned from sharing the story — on the platform itself, on Facebook messenger, and on Instagram, which Facebook owns. Despite the fact that all the information discussed was a matter of public record, Facebook flagged the article for violating their community standards, specifically the “privacy and personal information policy.”

A year later, Facebook (now Meta) still classifies the story as “abusive” and prevents it from being shared on its platforms.

Now we know why.

Buried in New York magazine’s reporting is this little nugget: “Other conversations on the BLM Security Hub chat show efforts to monitor social media for negative mentions of [the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation], with members using their influence with the platforms to have such remarks removed.”

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Pinterest bans all climate change misinformation on its platform

Pinterest announced today it’s becoming the first major digital platform to introduce a comprehensive misinformation policy designed to combat false and misleading claims around climate change on its platform. According to the company’s newly updated misinformation guidelines, Pinterest will now be able to remove content that denies the existence of impacts of climate change, denies human influence on climate change and denies climate change is backed by scientific consensus, among other things.

It will also remove false and misleading content about climate change solutions that contradict scientific consensus, content that misrepresents scientific data either by omission or cherry-picking in order to erode trust in climate science and experts and harmful and misleading content about public safety emergencies including natural disasters and extreme weather events.

The company noted the new Community guidelines don’t only apply to posts on the social network, but also to ads. Pinterest advertisers will have to follow the same rules and the Pinterest Advertising guidelines were updated to also prohibit ads containing conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation related to climate change.

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YouTube is emailing users to say “members of the community” are “concerned” about their comments

YouTube’s “Community Outreach Team” has been emailing users to tell them that “members of the community were concerned about some of the comments you’ve posted on YouTube.”

The emails, forwarded to Reclaim The Net by YouTube users, don’t tell users which of their comments allegedly caused concern to members of the community and instead urges them to take a survey.

“After you take the survey, someone from our team may follow up to better understand your feedback,” YouTube’s email adds.

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NEW AMAZON WORKER CHAT APP WOULD BAN WORDS LIKE “UNION,” “RESTROOMS,” “PAY RAISE,” AND “PLANTATION”

AMAZON WILL BLOCK and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app that contain keywords pertaining to labor unions, according to internal company documents reviewed by The Intercept. An automatic word monitor would also block a variety of terms that could represent potential critiques of Amazon’s working conditions, like “slave labor,” “prison,” and “plantation,” as well as “restrooms” — presumably related to reports of Amazon employees relieving themselves in bottles to meet punishing quotas.

“Our teams are always thinking about new ways to help employees engage with each other,” said Amazon spokesperson Barbara M. Agrait. “This particular program has not been approved yet and may change significantly or even never launch at all.”

In November 2021, Amazon convened a high-level meeting in which top executives discussed plans to create an internal social media program that would let employees recognize co-workers’ performance with posts called “Shout-Outs,” according to a source with direct knowledge.

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Twitter’s “autoblock” feature blocks citizens from responding to, or even seeing, elected politicians’ tweets

Twitter is a “social” network that is paradoxically becoming ever more insular and anti-social – apparently, all in a bid to “protect” users from one another. This seems to be the idea behind testing new features such as the one called “Safety Mode,” that includes something called, “autoblock.”

At some point, the question might start arising in the minds of some, or even many, people: why even use a platform that you consider to be so potentially dangerous that it has to implement such a granular and complex system of separation and prevention of access to content and accounts?

But at this time, Twitter is still widely used and marching on its chosen path. And, right now, the “autoblock” is producing effects like a user getting blocked from viewing the profile of a public servant – in this case, that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

While the problem has affected many, it was Laura Marston, an advocate for lowering the cost of insulin for diabetes sufferers, that most recently found her account blocked from highlighting problems with a recent bill that Marston feels falls short.

Those affected by the issue not only can’t comment on the politician’s tweets but they are also not even allowed to see them.

The Twitter notice that popped up instead of the Pelosi profile said that the user is temporarily blocked from interacting with the account’s tweets because “they were in Safety Mode” – while Twitter flagged previous interactions as “potentially” abusive or spammy.

The notice goes on to state that the social media company is aware “autoblocks” don’t work as intended all the time – another way of saying that flimsy automated algorithms and/or unreliable third party fact checkers are once again used to carry out the “Safety Mode” goals, and will highly likely be getting things wrong.

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