Tag: censorship

The US Government Threatens Tech Companies To Push Censorship Agendas

The elephant in the room with the ongoing controversy about the Biden administration’s push for more internet censorship is the fact that both the US government and the Silicon Valley tech companies who are being pushed to censor are acutely aware that those companies can be brought to their knees by antitrust cases and other regulation if they don’t censor people’s voices in accordance with the government’s wishes.

After Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted on Thursday that the administration has given Facebook a list of accounts to ban for spreading “misinformation” about the Covid vaccine, she has now doubled down saying that people who circulate such materials online should be banned from not just one but all social media platforms.

“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation out there,” Psaki told the press on Friday.

When asked by the press for his thoughts on companies like Facebook, President Biden said the failure of those platforms to adequately censor posts about the vaccine makes them guilty of “killing people”.

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Facebook’s Top Censorship Board Is Filled With Elite, Power-Loving Bureaucrats

Facebook Oversight Board co-chair and Helle Thorning-Schmidt made it very clear that she does not believe free speech is a human right.

“How do you moderate content and how do you find that balance between human rights and free speech, which is a human right, but also other human rights because free speech is not an absolute human right,” the censorship head asked during a live stream this week.

“It has to be balanced with all the human rights and that is what the oversight is there to do,” she added.

Thorning-Schmidt is one of the 20 people who sit on Facebook’s newest attempt to create a mass censorship campaign, which the White House just recently publicly endorsed. The board masquerades as a means of providing support to “people’s right to free expression and ensure those rights are being adequately respected.”

The board’s actions, however, contradict that mission. Their decisions about former President Donald Trump’s ban from the platform and their continued efforts to subdue alternative opinions about COVID-19 have shown, they give anything but an accurate and fair look at content moderation.

“Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right,” the website clearly states, despite employing the efforts of people such as Thorning-Schmidt who spew anti-free speech rhetoric.

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Psaki Says Americans Who Post “Misinformation” Should be Banned From All Platforms

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Friday doubled down on the government’s censorship of Americans.

Psaki on Thursday casually admitted the federal government is censoring American citizens and flagging “problematic” social media posts.

“We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office,” Psaki said Thursday. “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”

On Friday Psaki took it to another level and said Americans who post “misinformation” should be completely unpersoned and should have no access to online platforms.

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The American Book Association says it supports free expression. Its actions suggest otherwise.

If you asked the American Booksellers Association (ABA) what it is, the answer is that it’s a non profit trade group whose task is to help independently owned bookstores, whose advocacy efforts support free expression causes.

Yet this claim is put to the test now that the organization has joined an ongoing outrage campaign to “cancel” Abigail Shrier’s book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.”

In a tweet posted on July 14, ABA denounces the book as “anti-trans” and apologizes to its trans members and the trans and wider “LGBTQIA+” and bookselling communities for including “Irreversible Damage” in the July “white box” mailing that was sent to some 750 bookstores.

The language used in the tweet comes across as nothing short of over-the-top dramatic: the inclusion of the book in the list is described as a “serious, violent, inexcusable (…) terrible incident.” ABA also anticipates that the title showing up in the mailing will have caused trans people “pain” and apologizes for that as well – only to conclude that “apologies are not enough.”

ABA declare themselves as an entity that “caused harm” but that is committed to engaging in dialogue to address that and taking concrete steps that should be announced as soon as in three weeks’ time.

That the apology was indeed not enough was clear from another statement issued by ABA CEO Allison Hill. “We traumatized and endangered members of the trans community,” Hill writes to booksellers, adding, “We erased Black authors, conflated Black authors, and put the authors in danger through a forced association.”

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Surgeon general calls on Big Tech to censor voices that challenge Biden’s vaccine narrative

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, Vice Admiral, U.S. Public Health Service Surgeon General of the United States, has produced new guidance to combat “misinformation” about health guidance as provided by the U.S. Government.  [pdf Here]  Comrades, the ‘Ministry of Truth’ is becoming very real.

The government push to promote vaccinations for COVID-19 has gone well beyond reasonable advancement for the public health.  Now, we are entering a phase where the ongoing demand is becoming problematic, propaganda.  More government advocates are pushing toward mandatory vaccinations for a virus that has 99.9% survival rate.

If you stand back – the scale of the demand far exceeds the known risk from the virus itself…. things just don’t add up.

Additionally, the alliance between government and Big Tech is becoming increasingly worrisome.  Now the surgeon general is asking Big Tech to get even more involved and start pushing even more consequences for those who ask reasonable questions and are righteously skeptical of the government position.

In a 22-page publication intended to allow only one standard for acceptable discussion as sanctioned by the U.S. government, the Surgeon General tells Big Tech what to do:

“Prioritize early detection of misinformation “super-spreaders” and repeat offenders. Impose clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly violate platform policies.” (page 12)

In other words, silence the opposition.  The Government will be the “single source of truth“.

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Facebook Censorship Board Member: Free Speech Is Not A Human Right

Free speech is not a human right, according to prominent Facebook censorship board member Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

“What we’re trying to find, of course, I think many of us engaging in this conversation, is that middle road. How do you moderate content and how do you find that balance between human rights and free speech, which is a human right, but also other human rights because free speech is not an absolute human right,” the Facebook Oversight Board co-chair said during a live stream of Politico’s Tech 28 spotlight.

“It has to be balanced with all the human rights and that is what the oversight is there to do,” she added.

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Biden’s Press Secretary admits Federal Government is flagging content for Facebook to censor

The White House press secretary Jen Psaki has made a startling admission at a press briefing on Thursday that the US government is actively coordinating with Facebook to flag the posts of United States citizens for being “problematic” and containing COVID-19 “misinformation.”

The admission has raised First Amendment free speech rights implications, particularly as previous lawsuits that have accused Facebook and the government of working together to censor online content have been dismissed due to a judge finding “lack of evidence.”

Psaki’s admission could open the doors to finding that evidence.

“Can you talk a little bit more about this request for tech companies to be more aggressive in policing misinformation? Has the administration been in touch with any of these companies? And are there any actions that the Federal Government can take to ensure their cooperation? Because we’ve seen from the start, there’s not a lot of action on some of these platforms,” Psaki was asked.

“Well, first, we are in regular touch with the social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 Team,” Psaki announced. “Given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation specifically on the pandemic. In terms of actions that we have taken or we’re working to take, I should say, from the Federal Government, we’ve increased disinformation research and tracking. Within the Surgeon General’s Office, we are flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.

Paski continued: “It’s important to take faster action against harmful posts. As you all know, information travels quite quickly on social media platforms. Sometimes it’s not accurate, and Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful violative posts. Posts that would be within their policies for removal often remain up for days. That’s too long. The information spreads too quickly.”

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TWITTER SEES JUMP IN GOVT DEMANDS TO REMOVE CONTENT OF REPORTERS, NEWS OUTLETS

Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) saw a surge in government demands worldwide in 2020 to take down content posted by journalists and news outlets, according to data released by the social media platform.

In its transparency report published on Wednesday, Twitter said verified accounts of 199 journalists and news outlets on its platform faced 361 legal demands from governments to remove content in the second half of 2020, up 26% from the first half of the year.

The biannual report on Twitter’s enforcement of policy rules and the information and removal requests it receives comes as social media companies including Facebook Inc(FB.O) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube face government scrutiny worldwide over the content allowed on their platforms.

Twitter ultimately removed five tweets from journalists and news publishers, the report said. India submitted most of the removal requests, followed by Turkey, Pakistan and Russia.

The social media platform did not previously track such data on requests pertaining to journalists or publishers.

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“Sensitivity readers” to proofread books so they don’t offend cancel mobs

New, widespread phenomena inevitably create new economies, and new job titles; the strong push to align content, including books, with what can be summed up as “woke values” is no different.

The Spectator writes about a new brand of copy editors – “sensitivity readers.” The term is appropriately Orwellian in itself, given what these people get hired by publishers to do: make sure that stories that don’t represent a writer’s “lived experience” are “corrected” to better reflect that.

And the “sensitivity authority” who decides what is authentic is the freelancer given the job. It sounds fairly arbitrary, like many other things happening in society these days that flirt with some form of censorship or suppression of content.

And it continues to sound arbitrary even when it is explained that in order to “qualify” for a “sensitivity reader” you have to advertise your status as a member of an ethnic or cultural group, somebody who has experienced trauma or abuse, or just be a self-declared expert in a hobby.

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