Tag: censorship

The ACLU is now siding with the censors

Asserting their First Amendment rights against compelled speech, elementary-school teachers in Loudoun County, Virginia, are challenging a school-board rule requiring them to address transgender and ‘gender expansive’ students by their preferred pronouns. The teachers claim that the pronouns convey messages about transgenderism that violate their religious beliefs as well as their understanding of biology. As a compromise, in an effort to balance their speech rights with students’ interests in being recognised, the teachers have offered to address the students only by their names, eschewing the use of any offending pronouns. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has sided against them.

Confirming its transformation from a free-speech organisation into a progressive advocacy group, it has submitted a brief in Cross v Loudoun County, advocating restrictions on fundamental First Amendment freedoms. According to the ACLU, public-school teachers should be required to affirm controversial, state-imposed orthodoxies about sex and gender in violation of their conscience, in order to protect students from discrimination.

Sad to say, the ACLU’s brief against the First Amendment is neither a shock nor a surprise – it was predictable. Its retreat from defending speech that conflicts with progressive values and ideas dates back at least 15 years. Still, there is a difference between avoiding litigation that requires defending the right to use whatever progressives consider harmful speech and engaging in litigation to suppress it or to compel speech aimed at mitigating its alleged harms. The ACLU has crossed a line, effectively advancing arguments about the direct, indisputable dangers of offensive language and ideas that have long been used to justify bans on ‘hate speech’.

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Facebook leaks reveal employees pushed for censorship of conservative news outlets

More reports based on leaked internal Facebook documents are getting published, this time to show that suppression of conservative and alternative media outlets is not happening on the giant platform by accident, but also that this type of bias is creating divisions within the company itself.

The Wall Street Journal reported, based on internal message board discussions that it has seen, that many lower-ranked employees put pressure on their managers to effectively deplatform news organizations like Breitbart, which is considered right-wing.

The message board logs appear to have from the same cache of documents provided earlier by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, that the WSJ is now reporting about in a series of articles called “Facebook Files.”

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‘Establishment Elite … Will Target You, Censor You, Demonize You And Call You A Domestic Terrorist,’ Says Tulsi Gabbard

Former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said Friday during “Fox News Primetime” that both Democratic and Republican lawmakers are in danger of being destroyed by the “establishment elite” if they stand on principles.

“This is a bigger problem than Democrats or Republicans,” Gabbard told host Will Cain. “This is about the establishment elite trying to hold on to their power and continue to increase it. And the mainstream media is a powerful arm of that establishment elite,” she continued, noting that politicians are either “with them, agreeing with them, supporting them, carrying the water for them.” 

Gabbard argued that the alternative is for the elite to turn on their detractors and then “target you, censor you, demonize you, and call you a domestic terrorist and stick the attorney general on you. Seeing you as a threat to their power and, therefore, the enemy.”

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Pope Francis calls on social media platforms to censor more “misinformation”

In a virtual meeting during the weekend, Pope Francis called on tech companies to be more responsible about the spread of “misinformation.”

The Pope made the remarks during the World Meeting of Popular Movements, which, according to Reuters, is “a grouping of grassroots organizations and social movements which bring attention to inequality in labour, land ownership, health care, and other social issues in the developing world.”

The pope noted that “the pandemic had laid bare the social inequalities that afflict our peoples.” He added that “technology can be a tool for good, and truly it is a tool for good, which permits dialogues such as this one, and many other things, but it can never replace contact between us, it can never substitute for a community in which we can be rooted and which ensures that our life may become fruitful.”

In his speech, the Pope singled out tech platforms for aiding the spread of misinformation.

He said: “In the name of God, I ask the technology giants to stop exploiting human weakness, people’s vulnerability, for the sake of profits without caring about the spread of hate speech, grooming, fake news, conspiracy theories, and political manipulation.”

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Facebook Adds To Its Orwellian Content Moderation By Protecting Activists And Journalists From “Bullying”

Just when you thought the censorship at social media companies couldn’t possibly get any worse, Facebook has come along and moved the bar. 

The company is now going to be protecting activists and journalists, who is is called “involuntary” public figures, with additional safeguards against “harassment and bullying”, Reuters reported. 

The company says people it determines to be “human rights defenders” will be protected under the new safeguards, which we’re sure will be completely discretionary and applied only to those “activists” who are advocating for liberal causes. 

Nevermind the fact that when someone becomes an “activist” they are no longer an “involuntary” public figure, but we digress.

Facebook’s handling of public figures has been an area of debate over the last month, as the company deals with allegations form a “whistleblower” who went public with details of the company’s content moderation strategies. 

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Instagram Censors Evolutionary Biologist For Post Pointing Out Men Are Physically Stronger Than Women

Facebook owned Instagram has censored Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright after he posted a chart that proves men are biologically stronger than women in a range of sports, even if they have undergone gender transitioning treatment.

Instagram removed Wright’s post which contained a chart from a scientific study titled Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage.

The peer-reviewed study was published in the journal Medicine & Sports, which has been in wide circulation since 1969. 

The study by researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK and Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm found that biological males categorically have performance advantages over biological females across sports that are contested in the Olympics.

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FACEBOOK’S SECRET BLACKLIST OF “DANGEROUS INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS”

TO WARD OFF accusations that it helps terrorists spread propaganda, Facebook has for many years barred users from speaking freely about people and groups it says promote violence.

The restrictions appear to trace back to 2012, when in the face of growing alarm in Congress and the United Nations about online terrorist recruiting, Facebook added to its Community Standards a ban on “organizations with a record of terrorist or violent criminal activity.” This modest rule has since ballooned into what’s known as the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, a sweeping set of restrictions on what Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users can say about an enormous and ever-growing roster of entities deemed beyond the pale.

In recent years, the policy has been used at a more rapid clip, including against the president of the United States, and taken on almost totemic power at the social network, trotted out to reassure the public whenever paroxysms of violence, from genocide in Myanmar to riots on Capitol Hill, are linked to Facebook. Most recently, following a damning series of Wall Street Journal articles showing the company knew it facilitated myriad offline harms, a Facebook vice president cited the policy as evidence of the company’s diligence in an internal memo obtained by the New York Times.

But as with other attempts to limit personal freedoms in the name of counterterrorism, Facebook’s DIO policy has become an unaccountable system that disproportionately punishes certain communities, critics say. It is built atop a blacklist of over 4,000 people and groups, including politicians, writers, charities, hospitals, hundreds of music acts, and long-dead historical figures.

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