Tag: censorship

Couple flaunt swastika face masks at southwestern Minnesota Walmart

Just before noon Saturday, police officers in Marshall, Minn., were called to the town’s Walmart on a report that two shoppers were wearing masks emblazoned with swastikas.

Another shopper, Raphaela Mueller, the vicar of a southwest Minnesota parish, filmed the swastika-wearing man and woman as they were confronted by others in the store. Then she posted the video on Facebook, where it went viral.

“If you vote for Biden, you’re going to be living in Nazi Germany,” the woman with the swastika mask told Mueller, as her companion bagged up toilet paper and an enormous canister of cheeseballs. The two were apparently using the masks to protest Minnesota’s mask mandate, which took effect Saturday.

PHOTO PROVIDED BY RAPHAELA MUELLERA couple wearing swastika masks (behind the front customer) made defiant gestures at other shoppers who reacted negatively to their masks on Saturday at the Wal-Mart in Marshall, Minn.TEXT SIZEEMAILPRINTMORE

Just before noon Saturday, police officers in Marshall, Minn., were called to the town’s Walmart on a report that two shoppers were wearing masks emblazoned with swastikas.

Another shopper, Raphaela Mueller, the vicar of a southwest Minnesota parish, filmed the swastika-wearing man and woman as they were confronted by others in the store. Then she posted the video on Facebook, where it went viral.

“If you vote for Biden, you’re going to be living in Nazi Germany,” the woman with the swastika mask told Mueller, as her companion bagged up toilet paper and an enormous canister of cheeseballs. The two were apparently using the masks to protest Minnesota’s mask mandate, which took effect Saturday.https://cdn.iframe.ly/H8N5yOO?v=1&app=1

Per the store’s request, law enforcement served trespass notices to the 59-year-old man and 64-year-old woman, warning them that if they will face arrest should they return. The two departed without incident and charges were not pursued.

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Sinclair pulls TV segment with conspiracy theory suggesting Dr. Anthony Fauci created the coronavirus

The Sinclair Broadcast Group said Saturday it is pulling from the air an edition of its “America This Week” program that discusses a conspiracy theory involving Dr. Anthony Fauci and the coronavirus.

Sinclair spokesman Michael Padovano said Sinclair hopes to add context and other viewpoints and still air the controversial segment on the next week’s edition of “America This Week.”

Meanwhile, Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, talked in detail in a new podcast about the “serious threats” and hate mail directed his way.

“America This Week” is hosted by Eric Bolling, a former Fox News Channel personality, and sent to stations Sinclair owns in 81 markets. The show it initially distributed for this weekend’s show featured an interview with Judy Mikovits, maker of the widely discredited “Plandemic” video, and her lawyer, Larry Klayman.

Mikovits, an anti-vaccine activist, said she believed that Fauci manufactured the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and shipped it to China. There has been no evidence that the virus was produced in a lab, much less any of Fauci’s involvement.

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Google will ban ads from coronavirus conspiracy pages

Google will ban ads promoting coronavirus conspiracy theories, remove ads from pages that promote these theories, and demonetize entire sites that frequently violate the policy starting on August 18th. CNBC reported the news earlier today, noting that it supplements an existing ban on monetizing harmful medical misinformation.

A Google spokesperson confirmed that the new policy will cover pages contradicting an “authoritative scientific consensus” on the coronavirus pandemic. While Google already demonetizes false health claims, it will soon do the same for false claims about the virus’s origins, for example. The policy won’t apply to pages debunking or reporting on the existence of these theories, and it doesn’t apply to non-coronavirus-related conspiracy theories.

“We are putting additional safeguards in place by expanding our harmful health claims policies for both publishers and advertisers to include dangerous content about a health crisis that contradicts scientific consensus,” a spokesperson told The Verge.

Google and other large web platforms have struggled with a constantly shifting information (and misinformation) landscape around the pandemic. The company briefly banned all non-governmental coronavirus-related as in March, but it lifted the ban after complaints from Democratic campaign organizations. It has also demonetized YouTube videos about the pandemic, a tack it’s taken with many sensitive topics. And amid product shortages early in the pandemic, it temporarily banned ads for the sale of face masks — a policy Facebook also adopted.

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Poll: 62% of Americans Say They Have Political Views They’re Afraid to Share

Anew Cato national survey finds that self‐​censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds—62%—of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. The share of Americans who self‐​censor has risen several points since 2017 when 58% of Americans agreed with this statement.

These fears cross partisan lines. Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share.

Liberals Are Divided on Political Expression

Strong liberals stand out, however, as the only political group who feel they can express themselves. Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of staunch liberals feel they can say what they believe. However, centrist liberals feel differently. A slim majority (52%) of liberals feel they have to self‐​censor, as do 64% of moderates, and 77% of conservatives. This demonstrates that political expression is an issue that divides the Democratic coalition between centrist Democrats and their left flank.

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China, QAnon Censorship, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

QAnon is one of the most annoying things on Twitter and its followers are morons. And, also, it is dangerous and unacceptable that monopolistic Silicon Valley tech plutocrats are exerting more and more control over human communication.

I criticize QAnon constantly and find its acolytes intensely irritating. And, also, I don’t want monopolistic tech billionaires paternalistically protecting my fragile little mind from them.

Twitter shouldn’t be censoring this.

In a corporatist system of government, where few meaningful distinctions exist between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. Permitting such a thing, to any extent, is extremely hazardous for the future of human development.

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Twitter bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown

Twitter announced on Tuesday it has begun taking sweeping actions to limit the reach of QAnon content and banned many of the conspiracy theory’s followers due to ongoing problems with harassment and the dissemination of misinformation.

Twitter will stop recommending accounts and content related to QAnon, including in email and follow recommendations and will take steps to limit content circulation in places like trends and search. This action will affect approximately 150,000 accounts, according to a spokesperson, who asked to remain unnamed due to concerns about the targeted harassment of social media employees.

The Twitter spokesperson also said the company had taken down more than 7,000 QAnon accounts in the last few weeks for breaking its rules on targeted harassment as part of its new policy.

The sweeping enforcement action will ban QAnon-related terms from appearing in trending topics and the platform’s search feature, ban known QAnon-related URLs, and ban “swarming” of victims who are baselessly targeted by coordinated harassment campaigns pushed by its followers.

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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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