Tag: censorship

Oliver Stone Says Fact Checkers Blocked Release of JFK Assassination Doc

According to three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone, America’s fascist “fact checkers” are blocking the release of his new documentary about the assassination of John Kennedy.

The far-left Variety does this thing where they have celebrities interview one another. The latest involved two Oscar-winning directors, Spike Lee and Stone. During their chat, Stone said he has a four-hour documentary about the 1963 assassination all ready to go, but fascist fact checkers are blocking its release:

Spike Lee: What’s the status of JFK documentary?

Oliver Stone: Well, the four hours that we did is very powerful. It’s based on the facts that came out of the of the [sic] movie. The movie kicked off the assassination records review board for five years. They were not empowered to investigate, but they were empowered to clarify. And they did the best they could with these limitations. The facts that they presented, we go into. It makes the case harder, tighter. It’s about real facts that are shocking to people.

Lee: So you can’t you can’t find a home for this doc?

Stone: Not yet. It’s not for the American side of it. Cannes invited us for July, or June, of this year.

…

Lee: Netflix said no?

Stone: Yeah. Today I just got the word that National Geographic said no.

Lee: What was the reason they said no?

Stone: They said they did their fact check. Yeah. Where are you going to find this information except in this film? If they do a fact check, according to conventional sources, of course it’ll come out like this is not true. How can you go and prove that it’s true? It’s very, it’s very tough. You have to have some imagination here.

Is an Oliver Stone documentary really going to be blacklisted in the United States of America?

Looks like it.

How un-American is that?

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Facebook says new algorithm will ‘reduce political content’ on news feeds

Facebook announced on Wednesday the social media platform will in the coming weeks start limiting the amount of political content viewers see on their news feeds.

The company is aware that “people don’t want political content to take over their News Feed,” Product Management Director Aastha Gupta wrote in a blog post on the site.

The change will begin with Facebook temporarily reduce the distribution of political content in News Feed for a small percentage of people in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia this week.

Gupta said the process will begin in the U.S. in the coming weeks.

The initial rollout will allow the company to explore different methods of ranking political content prior to its deciding on a permanent solution.

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Google Quietly Escalates Manual Search Censorship

Google has quietly escalated censorship of its market-dominating search engine, adding a range of new topics where human moderators are allowed to manually penalize websites, suppressing them in search results.

If a website is affected by one of these manual acts of censorship, “some or all of that site will not be shown in Google search results,” according to the tech giant.

The list, published in full on Google’s support website, includes the following:

  • Discover policy violation: Adult-themed content
  • News and Discover policy violation: Dangerous content
  • News and Discover policy violation: Harassing content
  • News and Discover policy violation: Hateful content
  • News and Discover policy violation: Manipulated media
  • News and Discover policy violation: Medical content
  • Discover policy violation: Misleading content
  • News and Discover policy violation: Sexually explicit content
  • News and Discover policy violation: Terrorist content
  • News policy violation: Transparency
  • News and Discover policy violation: Violence and gore content
  • News and Discover policy violation: Vulgar language and profanity

Publishers who have been hit with a manual action by Google will be able to appeal the decision by “fixing” whatever issue violated the policy and then submitting their website to Google for a review. Google states that it could take “several days or a week” for the tech giant to reach a final decision, leaving

Once upon a time, Google attempted to conceal its censorship of search. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai insisted, under oath before congress, that the company does not “manually intervene on any particular search result,” a statement that one of Google’s own former employees said was a lie.

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Tulsi Gabbard tells Steven Crowder: Big tech does not get to decide who has a voice and who doesn’t

Gabbard — who recently warned that “domestic enemies” in big tech and the national security community, such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former CIA Director John Brennan, are plotting to create a “police state” in America — argued Monday that big tech’s threat to free speech is one of the most dangerous issues facing the country.

For years, giant tech companies such Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been scrutinized for arbitrarily censoring speech without consequence. But in recent months, the debate over their power has intensified amid the decision by several companies to ban former President Donald Trump from the platforms.

“Fundamentally as Americans, we agree on our constitutional right to free speech, [but now we] have these big tech monopolies essentially deciding who has a voice and who doesn’t in these virtual public town squares that they’ve created,” Gabbard lamented, adding, “You also have people in great positions of power in our government, for partisan or political reasons, trying to decide who gets to be heard and who doesn’t, just further inflaming the divisiveness and really, truly undermining our constitutional rights.”

“When we look at big tech and their ability to essentially act with impunity to do whatever they want — and making billions of dollars in the process — it speaks to the very dangerous place we are as a country,” she continued.

Gabbard called Trump’s removal from social media platforms a major indicator of how “dangerously powerful these big tech monopolies have become.”

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Facebook to BAN claims about ‘man-made’ Covid-19 & ‘unsafe’ vaccines as it launches election-like campaign to promote vaccination

Facebook is expanding the list of ‘false’ and ‘debunked’ claims about the coronavirus and vaccines that will be grounds for banning from the platform, while launching the largest ‘authoritative’ vaccination campaign worldwide.

Under the Community Standards policy, posts with “debunked claims” that Covid-19 is “man-made or manufactured,” or that vaccines are ineffective, unsafe, dangerous or cause autism will be removed starting Monday, VP of Integrity Guy Rosen announced on the Facebook blog.

The new policy was implemented following consultations with the World Health Organization (WHO) and others, and will help Facebook “continue to take aggressive action against misinformation” about Covid-19 and vaccines, Rosen added.

Even if they don’t violate any of the listed policies, posts about Covid-19 or vaccines will still be subject to review by “third-party fact-checkers” and labeled and “demoted” if rated false.

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The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Several Well-Deserved Blows

A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism.

I’ve written before about one particularly toxic strain of this authoritarian “reporting.” Teams of journalists at three of the most influential corporate media outlets — CNN’s “media reporters” (Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy), NBC’s “disinformation space unit” (Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny), and the tech reporters of The New York Times (Mike Isaac, Kevin Roose, Sheera Frenkel) — devote the bulk of their “journalism” to searching for online spaces where they believe speech and conduct rules are being violated, flagging them, and then pleading that punitive action be taken (banning, censorship, content regulation, after-school detention). These hall-monitor reporters are a major factor explaining why tech monopolies, which (for reasons of self-interest and ideology) never wanted the responsibility to censor, now do so with abandon and seemingly arbitrary blunt force: they are shamed by the world’s loudest media companies when they do not.

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Leftist Journalist Regrets Calling For Silicon Valley Censorship After It Happens to Him

A leftist journalist expressed regret about calling for Silicon Valley to censor content after it happened to him.

Progressive reporter Jordan Chariton had the change of heart after YouTube took down one of his videos.

Chariton’s original advocacy for censorship occurred when he called for Big Tech giants to target anyone who questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

“EVERY media outlet that pushed this INSANE election fraud conspiracy for clicks should be taken off the air. They’ve incited a Civil War,” Chariton tweeted on January 6, the date of the Capitol breach.

However, after YouTube pulled video from his own channel featuring footage of the January 6 riot for violating the platform’s policies against “spam and deceptive practices,” the Chariton reversed his position.

“With time to reflect, & seeing Silicon Valley’s censorship onslaught, I regret this tweet made in [the] heat of moment,” the progressive journalist wrote. “Whether certain cable/YouTube outlets mislead audiences w/ dishonest claims lacking real evidence, they shouldn’t be targeted.”

Chariton noted that with the precedent having been set for blanket censorship, progressive content was also now being unfairly targeted, while pointing out that big left-wing networks with friendly YouTube ties like the Young Turks were not calling it out.

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