Tag: censorship

Google bans ads on coronavirus conspiracy theory content

Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Friday it would prohibit websites and apps that use its advertising technology from running ads on “dangerous content” that goes against scientific consensus during the coronavirus pandemic.

The world’s largest search engine updated its policy as the health crisis has continued to rage throughout the United States, and digital advertising giants like Google and Facebook Inc have faced calls to do more to clamp down on misinformation.

Content not allowed to make money from ads include debunked conspiracy theories, such as the notion that the novel coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab as a bioweapon, that it was created by Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates, or that the virus is a hoax, Google said in a statement.

Google already bars ads with harmful content like “miracle” health cures or which promote the anti-vaccination movement. It also prevents ads from running on publisher content that encourages those topics.

Google’s new policy will also bar advertisers from creating their own ads that promote coronavirus conspiracy theories.

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Google Will Ban Ads On Sites Publishing “Debunked” Coronavirus Theories

Google is about to take one giant step into directly shaping the prevailing media narrative.

One month after Google made news by banning ads on websites – such as this one – for violating its terms of service when it comes to “derogatory” material (a purposefully amorphous concept), the world’s leading search engine and internet advertising monopoly which controls 70% of online ad spending, will take an even more aggressive step. According to CNBC, starting on August 18, Google will “ban publishers from using its ad platform next to content that promotes conspiracy theories about Covid-19.” Additionally, “in cases where a particular site publishes a certain threshold of material that violates these policies, it will ban the entire site from using its ad platforms.”

In short, anyone who deviates from the conventionally accepted narrative, or as CNBC puts it  challenges the “authoritative scientific consensus” on the coronavirus pandemic will be promptly demonetized.

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Twitter Blocks Tweets On China Human Rights Abuses Story As AG Barr Decries Silicon Valley ‘Collaboration’ With CCP

As the Trump Administration weighs a travel ban on CCP officials, AG Bill Barr delivered a speech warning about the complicity of Silicon Valley and Hollywood in helping to perpetuate the CCP’s growing influence over American culture.

Criticizing China for resisting political liberalization that Americans once believed would eventually follow along with the economic liberalization agenda, Beijing is now embarking on a mission to elevate itself as a locus of geopolitical power to rival the US.

Barr complained that Hollywood has become too willing to kowtow to Beijing, censoring not just versions of movies that are shown in China, but also those that are released in the US.

Many Hollywood films have been “altered one way or another to please the CCP” and many other scripts never see the light of day due to self-censorship. Barr added that it’s tantamount to a “massive propaganda coup”.

He also invoked the memory of Walt Disney, saying the found would be “ashamed” of what happened to his company.

I suspect Walt Disney would be disheartened to see how the company he founded deals with the foreign dictatorships of our day,” Barr said in a speech at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum.

As an example, Barr cited “World War Z”, which reportedly contained a scene where the protagonists speculated that the virus originated in China. Examples of this type of censorship have grown increasingly common Barr said.

He also accused the American tech behemoths from Google to Facebook and Twitter of doing the CCP’s bidding.

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Kamala Harris’ Wikipedia page scrubbed of information amid veepstakes, igniting online fight

An online battle has erupted over the Wikipedia page for Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., with a significant uptick in edits that reflects a pattern that’s been seen ahead of past vice-presidential announcements and led Wikipedia to put the page under “discretionary sanctions.”

The trend was first reported last week by The Intercept. According to the revision history of the Harris article on Wikipedia, there have been 500 revisions to the page since May 9, most of which have been made by one highly prolific editor.

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Yes, There Is Such a Thing as Cancel Culture

On July 7th, 153 mostly left-leaning intellectuals wrote a letter to Harper’s Magazine, expressing their opposition to “a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate.” The Harper’s letter prompted a discussion about the scale, and indeed the existence, of what has become known as “cancel culture” (though the signatories did not explicitly use that term).

While almost everyone on the Right is concerned about cancel culture, many left-wing commentators took issue with the letter, despite the palpable efforts the signatories made to show that they are really, really not right-wing. For example, they were at pains to remind readers that Donald Trump “represents a real threat to Democracy,” and—as both Tyler Cowen and Douglas Murray pointed out—their number were apparently hand-picked to ensure sufficient demographic diversity without including anyone too ideologically unpalatable.

On July 10th, a counter-letter, signed by 164 journalists, writers, and academics, was published in the Objective. (Although it should be noted that 25 of the “signatories” did not actually disclose their names, apparently due to fear of professional retaliation.) According to the counter-petitioners, the Harper’s letter was deficient on a number of counts.

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