Tag: censorship

W.H.O. Chief Backs Neil Young Against Joe Rogan: Demands End to ‘Infodemic’

The globalist World Health Organization (W.H.O.) announced Thursday it sided with left-wing rocker Neil Young in his stand-off with podcaster Joe Rogan and streaming giant Spotify.

The move came after Spotify said it would pull the singer’s work from its platform following his demand the company either remove his music or blacklist Joe Rogan and his popular podcast.

W.H.O. chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has now entered the fray. He announced he backed the veteran musician and thanked him for “standing up against misinformation and inaccuracies” around Covid vaccinations before stressing “we all have a role to play to end this pandemic and infodemic.”

“@NeilYoungNYA, thanks for standing up against misinformation and inaccuracies around #COVID19 vaccination,” Tedros tweeted.

“Public and private sector, in particular #socialmedia platforms, media, individuals — we all have a role to play to end this pandemic and infodemic.”

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Elizabeth Warren may face consequences for practicing censorship

Elizabeth Warren, a mediocre law professor who parlayed a fake Native American identity into a gig at Harvard and a seat in the United States Senate, thought that, once in government, she’d try her hand at censorship. When Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins wrote a book about COVID with which Warren disagreed, she used her position as a Senator to try to get Amazon to censor the book. Although Chelsea Green Publishing filed suit in November, people are finally becoming aware of the suit.

I’m always amazed when someone who ought to know the law doesn’t—or feels entitled to ignore it. As a lawyer and a law professor, one would expect Warren to be familiar with the First Amendment. That’s the one that says that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” As government has grown, that principle has been extended to the federal government as a whole, whether it’s an executive agency, Congress, or a politician acting under the color of his or her role in the government. (And of course, to state governments via the Fourteenth Amendment.)

Nevertheless, on September 7, 2021, writing in her capacity as a United States Senator, on official Senate letterhead, Warren sent a very long letter to Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, expressing her concern that Amazon itself was publishing misinformation by allowing Mercola’s and Cummins’s book, The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal, to appear on its bestseller list and daring to give it a favorable ranking. After waffling on for pages several pages, and mendaciously claiming the book was “potentially unlawful,” Warren “asked” Amazon to modify the algorithms to destroy the book’s ranking.

Chelsea Green responded in November by suing Warren for violating the First Amendment, although news of that filing only reached the media recently. The lawsuit relies upon Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1962). Bantam Books involved a newly-created Rhode Island Commission which had the task of educating the public about any written material that could harm the morality of or otherwise corrupt Rhode Island’s young people.

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Graphika: The Deep State’s Beard for Controlling the Information Age

Graphika is the toast of the town. The private social-media and tech-intelligence agency that tracks down bots and exposes foreign influence operations online is constantly quoted, referenced and profiled in the nation’s most important outlets. For example, in 2020, The New York Times published a fawning profile of the company’s head of investigations, Ben Nimmo. “He Combs the Web for Russian Bots. That Makes Him a Target,” ran its headline, the article presenting him as a crusader risking his life to keep our internet safe and free. Last year, business magazine Fast Company labeled Graphika as among the 10 most innovative companies in the world.

There is no doubt that Graphika leans into this cool and dynamic corporate image. From its beginnings in 2013, the company has expanded to employ dozens of people at its trendy Manhattan office. Describing themselves as “cartographers of the internet age,” the company puts out investigation after investigation about foreign influence operations online, especially concentrating on Russian, Chinese or Iranian attempts to manipulate social media. A layperson could certainly be blinded by its science and impressed by the complex and innovative graphs and charts. Yet when it comes to similar but far larger U.S. government programs, the intelligence and analysis agency is silent.

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‘Limit the Spread of Covid Misinformation’ – Biden’s Surgeon General Calls For Joe Rogan’s Podcast to be Censored

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski asked Dr. Vivek Murthy what are the best ways to push back on Covid misinformation.

Murthy complained that social media companies are not doing enough to ‘stop the spread’ of Covid misinformation before calling on Spotify to silence Joe Rogan.

“A critical part of how we get through this pandemic” is “limiting the spread of misinformation” from shows like Joe Rogan, Murthy said on Tuesday.

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Neil Young’s Attempt to Pressure Spotify to Censor Joe Rogan Fails Miserably

Musician Neil Young’s attempt to force Spotify to censor Joe Rogan’s podcast has failed miserably, with Young deleting the open letter he posted on his website.

The 70’s rocker tried to give Spotify an ultimatum that they had to remove Rogan or delete his music catalogue.

Young accused Spotify of “spreading fake information about vaccines” because Rogan dares to have in depth discussions with esteemed doctors who don’t blindly follow the COVID narrative.

“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” he wrote. “Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.”

“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he added. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

While Young may have got some traction on Twitter from the usual crowd of COVID bedwetters and censorship freaks, his efforts have proven completely futile.

Indeed, Spotify is yet to even offer an official response to his public relations stunt.

The singer-songwriter appears to have already backed out of the ultimatum given that he deleted the open letter he had posted to his website.

“Young likely realized that he has no grounds to make the demands. Rogan has an exclusive deal with Spotify and Young sold 50% of the rights to his music to a British investment company a year ago,” writes Christina Maas.

Neil Young’s public hissy fit merely appears to have been a play for attention given that he, like Howard Stern, who also routinely attacks Rogan, is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Specifically, Rogan enjoys an average of over 11 million listeners per episode, with some hitting as high as 40 million, while Young attracts 6 million listeners per month in comparison.

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Censorship By Algorithm Does Far More Damage Than Conventional Censorship

People make a big deal any time a controversial famous person gets removed from a major social media platform, and rightly so; we cannot allow such brazen acts of censorship to become normalized. The goal is to normalize internet censorship on every front, and the powerful will push for that normalization to be expanded at every opportunity. Whether you dislike the controversial figure being deplatformed on a given day is entirely irrelevant; it’s not about them, it’s about expanding and normalizing internet censorship protocols on monopolistic government-tied speech platforms.

But far, far more consequential than overt censorship of individuals is censorship by algorithm. No individual being silenced does as much real-world damage to free expression and free thought as the way ideas and information which aren’t authorized by the powerful are being actively hidden from public view, while material which serves the interests of the powerful is the first thing they see in their search results. It ensures that public consciousness remains chained to the establishment narrative matrix.

It doesn’t matter that you have free speech if nobody ever hears you speak. Even in the most overtly totalitarian regimes on earth you can say whatever you want alone in a soundproof room.

That’s the biggest loophole the so-called free democracies of the western world have found in their quest to regulate online speech. By allowing these monopolistic megacorporations to become the sources everyone goes to for information (and even actively helping them along that path as in for example Google’s research grants from the CIA and NSA), it’s possible to tweak algorithms in such a way that dissident information exists online, but nobody ever sees it.

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Activists complain bipartisan antitrust law proposal could make online censorship more difficult

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act that is currently making its way through Senate committees before being put up for the final vote, is attracting attention both from those who support it and Big Tech’s lobbyists, who earlier reports said had already launched a broad campaign against it.

The bill that has so far received bipartisan support, aims to significantly limit the way Apple, Amazon, and Google use their monopolistic business practices to undermine competition and antitrust laws.

Either by design or coincidence, it isn’t just openly lobbying firms who are attacking the bill from various angles; they are joined by organizations like Free Press, which claims it is nonpartisan and fighting “for your right to connect and communicate.”

However, in the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, Free Press sees a “flaw” that would, essentially, make connecting and communicating easier – and doesn’t like it. Namely, the bill, if passed, they argue, could prevent censorship, specifically of what’s labeled as “hate speech or misinformation.”

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Instagram says it will cut the reach of posts that are “likely” to contain “hate speech”

Instagram is introducing more vaguely defined restrictions on its users, this time acting “proactively” to lower Feed posts and Stories that “may” contain bullying or hate speech, or those which “may” encourage violence – as well as content that is “potentially upsetting.”

In a blog post, Facebook’s platform said that this means the already existing policy of reducing the reach of posts determined to contain misinformation by third-party “fact-checkers” – and all posts from accounts that are said to have shared misinformation “repeatedly” – is being expanded.

It is Instagram’s “systems” that will be tasked with making the distinction between what “may” or is “likely” or “potentially” contains hate speech and represents bullying. The blog post explains that (algorithms) will make these decisions by comparing captions – if a caption is similar to another that was already found to be violating the platform’s rules, then the post will be pushed down Feeds and Stories.

Instagram also said that the new policy, that smacks of shadow-banning, affects individual posts and not accounts themselves, and that posts Instagram actually thinks break its rules, rather than suspect them to, will be removed, as before.

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