Tag: censorship

YouTube bans independent Italian media outlet Byoblu

In yet another crackdown on independent media and creators, YouTube has removed the channel of Byoblu – an independent Italian media outlet that had more than 525,000 subscribers.

The popular channel had uploaded more than 2,000 interviews to YouTube in its 14+ years on the platform and racked up over 200 million total video views. It featured interviews with magistrates, presidents of the Constitutional Court, politicians, lawyers, scientists, and more.

YouTube deleted Byoblu’s channel after targeting it numerous times over its coverage of protests and interviews with scientists.

According to Byoblu, YouTube had removed several unpublished videos of demonstrations in Cesena and Milan, removed a video discussing a leading British Medical Journal columnist’s thoughts about the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, removed a months-old video featuring an interview with a senior scientist from the University of Siena because he talked about the benefits of vitamin C, demonetized the channel, and removed 5,000 of the channel’s subscribers before it was permanently suspended.

Byoblu added that YouTube’s final action against the channel before permanently suspending it was to remove a September 2020 video of a street demonstration where the Pan-African activist Mohamed Konare spoke.

In a post about YouTube’s takedown of the channel, Byoblu suggested that it was targeted by YouTube because of its obsession with wanting ordinary people to speak and showing the news from an alternative point of view.

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Facebook says even content “in the voice of Donald Trump” is banned, deletes major interview

Facebook removed a video interview of President Trump with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a Fox News contributor. The social media company said that any content representing the “voice” of Donald Trump will not be allowed on Facebook’s main platform and Instagram.

On Tuesday, Lara uploaded a photo on Instagram of her sitting across from the former president, calling on followers to watch the interview that night.

Shortly after posting the image, a Facebook staff sent Trump officials an email warning that content “in the voice of President Trump is not currently allowed on our platforms (including new posts with President Trump speaking).”

The email further warned that such content “will be removed if posted, resulting in additional limitations on accounts that posted it.”

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Twitter Censors Official Coronavirus Adviser and Renowned Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff

Twitter censored Harvard professor of medicine Martin Kulldorff, a member of the COVID-19 vaccine safety subgroup that advises the CDC, FIH, and FDA, because he challenged the notion that children and young people require COVID-19 vaccination.

The platform applied a warning label to Kulldorff’s tweet about the matter, and prevented users from liking or retweeting it.

“Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should,” said Kuldorff in his now-censored tweet. “COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people, and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.”

Kulldorff is one of the most cited experts on infectious diseases alive today, with over 25,000 academic citations. In addition to his role as a Harvard professor, he is a biostatistician and epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

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YouTube To Remove ‘Dislike’ Feature As Biden WH Content Continues To See Likes Massively Trail Dislikes.

As President Biden’s White House YouTube channel continues to see videos’ “dislikes” massively trump “likes,” the video platform announced it is testing a new design that obscures a public dislike count.

The move was announced via Twitter on March 30th, with YouTube explaining “in response to creator feedback around well-being and targeted dislike campaigns, we’re testing a few new designs that don’t show the public dislike count.”

As a result, only the accounts publishing videos will be able to see the dislike to like ratio.

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DHS PREPARING TO USE PRIVATE CONTRACTORS TO “SCOUR PUBLIC DATA AND SOCIAL MEDIA” TO COMPILE DISSIDENT CITIZENS FOR WATCH LIST AND NO FLY LISTS

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now getting ready to hire public companies, individual contractors outside government, to scour public data and social media in order to provide information for the new “domestic terror watch lists.”  From the description it appears DHS is going to pay “big tech” (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc.), via contracts, to hire and organize internal monitoring teams to assist the government by sending information on citizens they deem “dangerous.”

Gee, what could possibly go wrong with this?…

NBC is reporting on these new developments as the U.S. intelligence apparatus is preparing to go live with the assembly of lists of Americans who “could be” potential threats to the government; and need to be watched.

However, even NBC is beginning to realize the consequences: “DHS planning to expand relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence and to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans. The department is also contemplating changes to its terrorist watch listing process.”

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Congress, in a Five-Hour Hearing, Demands Tech CEOs Censor the Internet Even More Aggressively

Over the course of five-plus hours on Thursday, a House Committee along with two subcommittees badgered three tech CEOs, repeatedly demanding that they censor more political content from their platforms and vowing legislative retaliation if they fail to comply. The hearing — convened by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Chair Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and the two Chairs of its Subcommittees, Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) — was one of the most stunning displays of the growing authoritarian effort in Congress to commandeer the control which these companies wield over political discourse for their own political interests and purposes.

As I noted when I reported last month on the scheduling of this hearing, this was “the third time in less than five months that the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms.” The bulk of Thursday’s lengthy hearing consisted of one Democratic member after the next complaining that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have failed in their duties to censor political voices and ideological content that these elected officials regard as adversarial or harmful, accompanied by threats that legislative punishment (including possible revocation of Section 230 immunity) is imminent in order to force compliance (Section 230 is the provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that shields internet companies from liability for content posted by their users).

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Colorado Democrat Introduces Law to Fully Censor and License Internet Use

A Colorado State Senator is introducing one of the most draconian anti-free speech pieces of legislation in American history, seeking to create a governmental press licensing commission to regulate online speech.

Kerry Donovan of Vail’s “Colorado Digital Communications Act” would require internet platforms to register with the government in Colorado and submit to censorship demands. The bill targets platforms such as Parler, Gab, and Big Tech monopolies such as Facebook, (unconstitutionally) threatening the websites with fines of $5,000 a day for refusing to register with the Digital Communications Division.

The “communications division” would be obligated to fight against what Donovan says are “unfair or discriminatory digital communications practices,” raising serious questions about the standard the Democrat intends to use to justify government crackdowns.

Donovan’s act goes on to define unfair or discriminatory digital communications practices as “practices that promote hate speech; undermine election integrity; [and] disseminate intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news.” Under Donovan’s tyrannical law, claiming JFK was shot by two shooters would be criminal. Her standard for criminal speech is little more than “fake news,” in an utterly lazy power grab to ban (truthful) online right-wing speech.

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Prince Harry joins activist group to fight online “misinformation”

Prince Harry has now gotten his second “job” in the last two days. He is now a celebrity commissioner appointed to “fight against misinformation” at Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder in Washington DC. It is worth noting that Harry and his wife Meghan were very recently accused of spreading misinformation in an interview with Oprah that garnered widespread attention.

Aspen Institute is an organization with a mission to build a “free, just, and equitable society.” It is being funded by several prominent businesses, including the Big Tech social media platform, Facebook. Nonetheless, Aspen Institute ended up accepting over $8 million in federal small-business funds during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in public backlash.

Shortly after, the organization ended up “reflecting” on the decision and returned the funds.

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