Tag: censorship

The Biden administration wants private companies to censor online speech

The White House continued pressuring the tech giants to censor content that it deems to be “misinformation” yesterday by throwing its support behind the use of Section 230 and antitrust reforms to combat misinformation.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki shared the Biden administration’s support for these reforms when a reporter asked whether the White House would be interested in working with Twitter, “like it has in the past,” to continue to combat COVID misinformation and disinformation.

The reporter didn’t point to a specific past partnership between the White House and Twitter when asking his question but Twitter has previously facilitated a White House Q&A as part of its “work on COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” and reportedly partnered with the White House to promote COVID vaccines. The White House has also admitted that it regularly contacts social media platforms about misinformation and even flags content for Facebook to censor.

Psaki responded to the question by confirming that Biden’s White House is still “engaging regularly with all social media platforms about steps that can be taken.”

She continued by suggesting that Congress should impose reforms on Big Tech platforms. Specifically, Psaki said the White House would support reforms of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) (which currently gives large tech platforms immunity from civil liability if they act in “good faith” to moderate content), antitrust reforms, and “requiring more transparency” from tech platforms.

Keep reading

Left-Wing Group Demands Apple Preemptively Nuke Truth Social

A left-wing government watchdog group with a dubious history is demanding Apple engage in mass preemptive censorship with the removal of a free-speech-branded alternative to Twitter from its app store.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a four-page letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday urging the American tech executive to nuke former President Donald Trump’s new platform, Truth Social, from its digital marketplace despite no violations of company guidelines.

“The events of January 6, 2021 highlighted not only democracy’s vulnerabilities, but also the risks associated with the current ecosystem of online speech,” wrote CREW President Noah Bookbinder in the letter. “Every company that now enters into business with Trump must recognize that it is essentially endorsing this dangerous and anti-democratic conduct.”

With not a single post from the entire platform cited or a single company policy violated to justify the app’s removal, Bookbinder argued Truth Social’s association with Trump was enough reason alone to ban the product from the Apple marketplace.

Keep reading

While Banning People for Facts, Twitter Openly Allows Threats of Murder Against The Establishment’s Political Rivals

Throughout the last two years, Twitter has purged countless voices in the name of preventing the spread of “misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.” World renowned doctors and scientific experts have found themselves wiped from the face of the platform for simply stating facts or predicting things that would eventually come true.

One of the people who has been censored the most is Robert W Malone MD, MS who is one of the inventors of mRNA & DNA vaccines. Dr. Malone has been outspoken about the way the establishment system handled, or rather mishandled, the covid crisis.

His Twitter account had grown to over a half million followers late last year before the platform decided that his alternative views on the pandemic were a danger to the narrative. So they banned him.

Instead of standing up for the free exchange of ideas by experts — which is how science works  — the left cheered for Malone’s censorship, calling him a kook while celebrating the tools of tyrants.

Before Malone, Alex Berenson, a prominent skeptic of the government’s response to COVID-19, was unceremoniously banned from Twitter for a week. His crime? He cited Pfizer’s own clinical trial data.

“Blocked again, for a week this time,” Berenson said on his Substack. “For this tweet, which is completely accurate and does nothing but quote PFIZER’S OWN CLINICAL TRIAL DATA.”

The list goes on.

There seems to be a common theme among those who are banned and those who are not and it has quickly become obvious. If you toe the establishment line and repeat their narrative, you can bend and even break rules that would otherwise result in bans and censorship.

Just last week, after Washington Post columnist and technology reporter Taylor Lorenz wrapped up an anti-bullying campaign for online journalists — literally coming to tears over it and stating that it is not okay under any circumstances — Lorenz began a campaign of her own. Her target, the woman behind the page Libs of TikTok.

Though the establishment left claimed that Lorenz didn’t actually dox the owner of Libs of TikTok, the first revision of her article (archived in this link) on WaPo contained her actual private home address.

The publishing of private addresses like this is not only against Twitter’s terms of service but it also borders on illegal activity — especially if it is meant to drive intimidation, harassment, or stalking. This intent was unmistakable in the piece published in WaPo.

Nevertheless, their piece flourished on the platform and received widespread and viral distribution. But it gets worse.

After the article was published, calls for murdering the owner of Libs of TikTok began to gain traction on the platform. One tweet in particular, directly called for the assassination of Chaya Raichik and included a video of a person loading an AR-15, clearly establishing their intent.

Keep reading

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.”

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

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.”

Keep reading

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.”

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading