Tag: censorship

YouTube will now remove videos disputing Joe Biden’s election victory

On Wednesday, YouTube announced that it will begin removing any content alleging widespread voter fraud influenced the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.

In the immediate aftermath of the November 3rd election, YouTube came under fire for allowing channels to publish videos making false claims about election results. In one instance, One America News Network, a verified YouTube channel, published a video declaring that “Trump won” the election. At the time, YouTube defended its decision to let the video stand, saying in a statement, “Like other companies, we’re allowing these videos because discussion of election results & the process of counting votes is allowed on YouTube.”

The company went on to say that content from “authoritative news organizations” were “the most popular videos about the election.”

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Oregon Doctor’s License Revoked Over Claims Covid-19 a “Common Cold” and Refusal to Wear Face Mask

Dr. Steven LaTulippe’s license was revoked by the Oregon Medical Board over his refusal to wear a face mask during the Covid pandemic.

LaTulippe spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Salem outside of the State Capitol on November 7 and said the Coronavirus is similar to a “common cold.”

The medical board deemed the doctor “a serious danger to the public health and safety” and revoked his license.

Dr. Tulippe said politicians are using Covid as a vehicle to shut down the American people and encouraged everyone to take off the “mask of shame.”

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Facebook To End Race-Blind Hate Speech Moderation

Facebook is ending race-blind hate speech moderation and will begin policing hate speech directed at black Americans, Muslims, multi-racial Americans, Jewish people and LGBTQ people more aggressively than hate speech directed at white Americans, according to the Washington Post.

The “WoW Project” is aimed at automatically detecting hate speech that is “the worst of the worst,” internal documents about the project that were obtained by the Washington Post said. The project will re-engineer Facebook’s automated moderation system to try and get better at detecting hateful language aimed at minority groups.

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Facebook says it will begin removing coronavirus vaccine misinformation

Facebook announced Thursday that it will begin removing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines as the immunizations are poised to be rolled out globally.

Posts containing false claims about “safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects” about the vaccines can be taken down, the social media giant said in a blog post.

“For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn’t on the official vaccine ingredient list,” it said.

The policy change comes as vaccines from three companies – Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna – near approval by health authorities.

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Facebook Censorship Algos Go Haywire, Blocking Ads From Struggling Legitimate Businesses As “Hate Speech”

In what is definitely some type of Karmic payback for social media companies now appending some type of label to what seems like every other post nowadays, Facebook just found out that its super-duper censoring algorithm also banned advertisements from some struggling businesses, mistaking them as hate speech.

We love it when a plan comes together.

One woman, Ruth Harrigan, who advertises on Facebook to sell her honey and beeswax-based products, told Bloomberg she thought she missed out on an estimated $5,000 in revenue after Facebook mistakenly banned her ads right before black Friday.

She said: “I was getting a little anxious thinking, ‘Oh my God, Black Friday is around the corner, most of my sales for the year happen in November and December and that’s it,’. I said, ‘If I’m shut down any longer than this, it’ll cripple me.’”

The company’s “misfiring content-moderation software” was to blame – and it happened in the middle of a pandemic when sellers are more reliant on Facebook and social media advertising to drive business. In fact, Facebook has been censoring so much content this year, it has relied heavily on software to do the job, since they don’t have enough human moderators. 

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QAnon Legal Battle Against YouTube Could Transform Free Speech Online

The welding of American politics with social media may be the defining moment of a sea change that is taking place at the very top echelons of power in the United States and the world. In the run-up to the 2020 U.S. elections, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all revealed their inescapable ties to the establishment when they launched an information warfare campaign against their own users and content creators in a bid to shape perceptions and control national discourse on the government’s behalf.

As the most contentious election in living memory drags on days after the vote, itself, the massive purge of profiles and content deemed politically dangerous carried out by the most popular social media platforms just over two weeks before Election Day, went practically unnoticed by everyone other than those who were actually de-platformed and their followers.

In mid-October, Google-owned YouTube and other social media giants purged the accounts of the most popular QAnon channels, spurring a class-action lawsuit against the video streaming platform filed in the Northern District of California later that month.

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