Tag: censorship

Censored by Facebook and Twitter? New Bill Allows Users to Sue Big Tech for Being Silenced

Everyone reading this article right now has likely experienced or knows someone who has experienced some form of social media censorship. Whether your entirely peaceful post was “removed for violating community guidelines” or you were unceremoniously silenced for life, Facebook and Twitter censorship affects millions. No matter what degree of big tech censorship you have faced, there is a common theme with all forms of it — you have no recourse. Well, one lawmaker wants to change that.

After watching censorship ramp up toward the end of 2020, republican lawmakers drafted legislation that could land big tech giants like Twitter and Facebook in legal trouble for silencing political speech.

“I drafted it in December and things have only gotten worse,” State Rep. Tom Kading, R-N.D., the lead sponsor of the bill said.

The bill states that social media sites would be liable in a civil lawsuit for damages to a North Dakota resident “whose speech is restricted, censored, or suppressed,” as long as it is not “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”

“I’m frankly shocked at what’s happening to our country and censoring does not create unity, it does not help the situation of division in our country, and it does not de-escalate the situation,” Kading said. “All it really does is make those who have been silenced dig in deeper and be more suspicious of what’s going on.”

The basis for the bill is rather cunning as it doesn’t focus on censorship because companies will claim — albeit fallaciously — that they can censor anyone they want. Instead, this bill focuses on libel.

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THE REAL INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE

Leftists have been accusing Donald Trump of “inciting violence” for his speech on Jan. 6 that preceded the Capitol Hill break-in.

Whether Trump’s words rise to incitement or not – or if the actions on the 6th were pre-planned anyway – has received ample scrutiny elsewhere.

What I instead would like to focus on is the concept of “incitement” to violence in the political realm more broadly, and just how guilty progressive leftists are.

The incitement of which I speak, however, is a bit more subtle than clear-cut cases of a politician urging a mob of people to destroy buildings or assault people.

Instead, I want to focus on how progressives use rhetoric to ‘unperson’ and demonize their political opponents, paving the way for social ostracization – using violence if necessary.

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A message to anyone who feels like ‘Winston’ in Orwell’s 1984

“The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering . . . all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting– three hundred million people all with the same face.”

That was a quote from George Orwell’s seminal work 1984— a masterpiece that describes life in a totalitarian state that demands blind obedience.

The ‘Party’ controlled everything– the economy, daily life, and even the truth. In Orwell’s 1984, “the heresy of heresies was common sense.”

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.”

“And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

If you were ever caught committing a thoughtcrime— dissenting from the Party for even an instant– then “your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten.”

Now, our world obviously hasn’t become quite as extreme as Orwell’s dystopian vision. But Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Government certainly seem to be giving it their best effort.

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Twitter Says ‘Bug’ Prevented Users From Searching Lincoln Project Amid Sexual Misconduct Allegations

A “bug” prevented Twitter users from searching the Lincoln Project, Twitter told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Saturday.

A Twitter spokesperson told the DCNF Saturday morning that “this was a bug that was fixed yesterday.” (RELATED: MSBNC Fails To Question Lincoln Project Officials About Allegations Against Co-Founder)

Twitter did not immediately address why the bug apparently only affected searches for the Lincoln Project at a time when a co-founder, John Weaver, was facing allegations of sexual misconduct.

Weaver apologized Friday for sending “inappropriate” messages to multiple men and announced that he is gay, according to Axios. He also said that he would not be returning to the Lincoln Project. He had taken a medical leave of absence from the organization over the summer of 2020, the publication reported.

“While I am taking full responsibility for the inappropriate messages and conversations, I want to state clearly that the other smears being leveled at me … are categorically false and outrageous,” Weaver said

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No, AOC, It’s Not the Government’s Job to ‘Rein in Our Media’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) told her social media followers earlier this week that Democrats in Congress might respond to the Capitol riot with some sort of “media literacy” initiative.

The phrase media literacy ordinarily implies helping individuals make sense of the media landscape, but AOC seems to have more in mind than that: She suggested “we’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.”

It’s true that both traditional media and social media sometimes spread “disinformation and misinformation.” But the federal government has no formal role to play in suppressing its spread. The First Amendment explicitly bars Congress from infringing on freedom of the press or freedom of speech, and the Supreme Court has recognized no exceptions for disinformation. If the government could ban disinformation, after all, it could use that as a cover for banning speech that is not actually false but merely critical of the government, or of specific politicians. Recall that Democrats swiftly denounced The New York Post‘s report on Hunter Biden’s foreign connections as “disinformation,” even though many underlying aspects of the story have since been confirmed.

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The Mobbing of a Portland Bookstore Reminds Us Why Fahrenheit 451 Was Written

For three days and counting, protesters in Portland, Oregon have gathered at a local bookstore to demand that it stop selling a new book critical of Antifa.

“Far-left activists surrounded Powell’s Books in Portland on Monday and demanded the store stop selling Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, a book about antifa written by Andy Ngo,” Reason’s Robby Soave reports. “The protests forced the store to close early.”

Ngo, the editor-at-large of The Post Millennial, a Canadian conservative news site, has documented the activities of Antifa, a leftist group that advocates violence in the name of fighting fascism. The journalist was beaten by Antifa activists at a rally in 2019, leaving him with a serious brain injury.

Left-wing activists say that because Ngo documents and criticizes the activities of Antifa, which claims to simply be “anti-fascist,” he is therefore a fascist. Saying his work is too dangerous to be allowed to be aired, Antifa members have called for Ngo to be banned from social media. Now they are trying to get his book banned from bookstores.

“We have to show up every day until they stop selling that f—king book,” one activist said. She claimed it was like “stopping the historical publication of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf.'”

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Ocasio-Cortez Says Congress Must ‘Rein In’ Media Environment

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday that Congress is looking into reining in “our media environment” to prevent the spread of disinformation.

Ocasio-Cortez discussed how she feared for her life during last week’s Capitol Riot in a live stream on Instagram Tuesday evening, Fox News reported. A viewer asked Ocasio-Cortez if Congress is discussing “truth and reconciliation or media literacy initiatives” to help with healing following the turbulent events of the past few weeks, the publication reported.

“I can say, there is absolutely a commission being discussed but it seems to be more investigatory in style rather than truth and reconciliation, so I think that’s an interesting concept for us to explore,” Ocasio-Cortez said. 

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If Big Tech Can Ban Certain Political Views So Easily, Why is Child Porn Rife on Their Platforms?

As TFTP reported on Monday, Parler has been a haven for those who have been banned, deleted, or otherwise algorithmed into the memory hole by establishment media platforms. Users moved to Parler because the platform claimed not to censor their content and it was safe space for MAGA folks. For over a year, Parler has remained an open network where pro-Trump users largely proceeded uncensored. Until now.

Early Monday morning, Amazon took down Parler from its web-hosting service. Amazon Web Services, or AWS said Parler had violated its terms of service given its inadequate content-moderation practices for failing to remove posts glorifying the recent riot at the U.S. Capitol. Google and Apple joined in as well, ensuring that Parler is deplatformed indefinitely.

This move came on the heels of a massive purge of tens of thousands of pro-Trump folks who allegedly espoused ridiculous Qanon theories. It was bad enough that these folks were duped into following the psyop known as Q. Now, however, instead of realizing the absurdity of these ideas as they are debunked in the public arena, that is no longer an option. Now, they will grasp onto these whacky ideas as the massive monopolistic power of tech behemoths imposing their neoliberal will on them gives them justification for doing so.

Sadly, many on the left — who used to claim to stand for free speech — are now praising the collusion by big tech to censor their political enemies, completely ignoring the fact that it will inevitably turn on them whenever convenient for the establishment.

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