Tag: censorship

Facebook Fails to Silence Smith & Wesson

One can always count on social media to carry out the regime’s anti-American agenda.

Social media giant Facebook has long been a thorn in the side of gun owners ever since Donald Trump was first elected in 2016. Since that period, Big Tech has taken it upon itself to become the private enforcement arm of the managerial state. In effect, Big Tech companies have functioned as Pinkerton-style law enforcement agencies who do the regime’s dirty work of censoring any individuals or organizations who voice explicitly right-wing views on issues ranging from immigration to gun rights.

Facebook’s privatized tyranny was on full display when the social media giant indefinitely suspended the account of legendary firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson on Nov. 22, 2024. Smith & Wesson was founded by gunmakers Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson by 1852 and has remained one of the U.S.’ flagship gun manufacturers. Smith & Wesson has a large social media following with over 1.6 million users. Facebook’s act of censorship against Smith & Wesson was not by accident and was certainly done to send a message.

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Meta’s Nick Clegg Admits Excessive Censorship and High Error Rates in Content Moderation

Meta’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg has admitted that the tech giant “still has too high” content moderation error rates.

This is another way of conceding that censorship is alive and well on Meta’s massive platforms, Facebook and Instagram, but also, Threads.

That’s despite there being something of a shift in the way this issue is treated by Meta, including by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Now Clegg, in a blog post dedicated to 2024 “global elections,” touches on free expression allowed on these social platforms, to state that Meta’s choice is to find a “balance” between free speech and “keeping people safe.”

It’s unclear how Meta “keeps people safe,” but free speech is a straightforward concept, and here Clegg offers a “mea culpa” by not only publicly accepting that there are high rates of error, something that he says “gets in the way” of free expression.

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Steve Jobs’ Widow to Attack ‘Far-Right Disinformation’ in Plot to Censor Opposition to Mass Migration

Laurene Powell Jobs is shifting the focus of her pro-immigration advocacy group to include combatting what she calls “far-right disinformation campaigns”, which criticize her group, Immigration Hub, per Breitbart.

Jobs, 61, is Apple founder Steve Jobs’ widow, and is a billionaire. She is described as a philanthropist, pouring her billions into various advocacy groups, including Immigration Hub. Immigration Hub describes itself as “a national organization dedicated to advancing fair and just immigration policies through strategic leadership, innovative communications strategies, legislative advocacy and collaborative partnerships,” and boasts of former congressional staff and executive officials in its ranks.

Jobs’ new group, Catalyze/Citizens, released a statement this month indicating that Immigration Hub would “expand its scope” to “counter” criticism of their organization and aims. It also stated a goal of pushing changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, in order to “build safer online spaces”.

Section 320 of the Communications Decency Act, as it currently exists, provides for free speech on the internet by making users solely accountable for their own posts. Under Section 320, internet users or services cannot be sued for what a different user says; services are not considered publishers, and therefore anyone who provides an internet service, such as running a forum, is not considered responsible for what people post there.

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UNESCO’s New Mission: Train Influencers About Combatting Online “Misinformation”

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is now incorporating teaching influencers how to “fact check” into its activities.

UNESCO claims that influencers have become “primary sources of news and cultural information” around the world – which prompted it to carry out a survey into how these online personalities verify the “news” they present.

Citizens in UN member-countries may or may not be happy that this is how their taxpayer money funding the world organization is being spent these days. But UNESCO is not only conducting surveys; it is also developing a training course for said influencers (which are also interchangeably referred to as content creators in press releases).

It’s meant to teach them not only to “report misinformation, disinformation and hate speech” but also to collaborate with legacy media and these outlets’ journalists, in order to “amplify fact-based information.”

The survey, “Behind the screens,” was done together with researchers from the US Bowling Green State University. 500 influencers from 45 countries took part, and the key findings, UNESCO said, are that 63 percent of them “lack rigorous and systematic fact-checking protocols” – but also, that 73% said they “want to be trained.”

This UN agency also frames the results as showing that respondents are “struggling” with disinformation and hate speech and are “calling for more training.”

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World Leaders Sign New Censorship Declaration at UN Event While Secretary-General António Guterres Pushed for Increased Online Censorship

A new UN-driven censorship declaration has been signed by a number of world leaders during an event in Portugal – the Cascais Declaration at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) Global Forum.

We obtained a copy of the final declaration for you here.

The gathering was addressed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who once again reiterated his commitment to censoring online speech, bringing up the usual set of “arguments” in favor of moving in this direction.

During the address, Guterres spoke about “unchecked digital platforms and AI” and accused them of allowing “hate speech to proliferate like never before” – and did not miss the opportunity to mention “misinformation and deepfakes” in the same context.

Guterres wants Big Tech, advertisers, and media – that is, along with some governments and organizations like the UN, among the most egregious offenders when it comes to online censorship – to double down.

“Taking responsibility for their role” in spreading hate speech, deepfakes, etc., was how he phrased it.

Guterres also again pushed a UN initiative that critics say introduces algorithmic censorship and demonetization under the stated “anti-misinformation and hate speech” scope – the UN’s Global Principles for Information Integrity.

According to Guterres, these recommendations allow for “a more humane information ecosystem.”

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Rumble Sues California; Says State’s “War Against Political Speech Is Censorship”

Video streaming site Rumble has filed a lawsuit against the state of California in response to legislation forcing social media platforms to censor political speech.

Rumble is being represented by The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which filed suit against AB 2655, aka the “Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024,” in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Sacramento Division.

The legislation is Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s response to a deepfake satire video of Kamala Harris that was shared on X by Elon Musk among others.

ADF stated in a press release that the law “deputizes” Rumble to restrict its user’s free speech, while another law, AB 2839, “Protecting Democracy Against Election Disinformation and Deepfakes,” uses vague standards to punish individuals posting political content about elections.

“California’s war against political speech is censorship, plain and simple. We can’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates,” said ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler.

“Rumble is one of the few online voices stepping up against this trend of censorship while other platforms and sites cave to totalitarian regimes censoring Americans,” Sechler further urged.

He added that “Rumble is standing for free speech even when it is hard. Other online platforms and media companies must see these laws for what they are — a threat to their existence.”

Chris Pavlovski, Chairman and CEO of Rumble, further urged that “The very thought of the government judging the content of political speech, and then deciding whether it should be permitted, censored, or eliminated altogether is about the most chilling thing you could imagine.”

“Rumble
will always celebrate freedom and support creative independence, so we’re delighted to work with ADF to help protect lawful online expression,” Pavlovski asserted.

The Democratic Party is pushing hard to enact laws that force censorship.

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ICAN’s Lawsuit Results in CDC Deleting its Policy of Censoring Claimed “Misinformation”

As a result of the lawsuit ICAN filed against CDC for blocking an individual on its official X (Twitter) account, not only did CDC unblock users, but the agency has now deleted its policy of blocking users for purported “misinformation.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a journalist who was blocked by CDC on X after she posted comments critical of CDC policy. We previously reported that, shortly after we filed the suit, CDC promptly unblocked her and others.

Now, CDC has notified ICAN’s attorneys that it has made significant changes to its former public comment policy. Previously, its policy allowed CDC to hide or delete comments that it felt contained “misleading or false information,” defamation, name calling, personal attacks, or spam. It also stated that “repeated violations” may “cause the author to be blocked.”

The new policy—which applies to all CDC sites, social media profiles, blogs, and applications that allow public comments—contains none of these restrictions!

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U.N. Chief Demands Governments ‘Rein in Hate Speech and Disinformation Online’

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres encouraged world governments on Tuesday to “rein in hate speech and disinformation spreading online” through a global censorship framework.

Guterres suggested that “unchecked digital platforms” were amplifying the “worst impulses of humanity” and threatening global stability and peace, requiring world governments to buy into U.N. programs such as the “Global Digital Compact” to silence speech the world body considers threatening. He made his remarks on the same day that the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared global intervention to “educate” online social influencers in how to avoid “misinformation” was an “urgent” priority. UNESCO launched an expansive campaign in early 2023 to promote global censorship regulations to silence “hate speech,” equating online discussions that run afoul of U.N. speech norms to “insects thriving in the dark.”

More recently, U.N. leaders used their platforms at the G20 summit this month to pressure the world’s most powerful economies to silence “disinformation” through a program promoting “information integrity on climate change.” The U.N. paired on that initiative with radical leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose government is leading a sprawling, violent effort to use the court system and police raids to intimidate conservative voices into silence online.

Guterres made his comments on Tuesday at the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations global forum, hosted this year in his native Portugal. The Alliance describes itself as “a unique and inclusive platform for Member States, the private sector, youth, civil society and the media to exchange views and commit to dialogue and new partnerships.” The U.N. chief listed silencing “disinformation” as his second priority for the event.

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The $267 Million Price Tag on Censorship Efforts Under Biden

A lot has been said about how the outgoing US administration’s focus on censorship (“combating misinformation“); it negatively affected online speech and now a number of federal spending documents examined by a non-profit show the price of that effort – or at least a part of it.

A new report prepared by OpenTheBooks details the grants the Biden-Harris administration started giving out as it took over in early 2021, and this doesn’t include the taxpayer money spent internally, by various departments and agencies.

The grants figure comes to $267 million – a massive increase (44 times more) compared to the $6.7 million that Trump’s first administration set aside for the same purpose.

The grants went toward researching what the outgoing White House chose to consider misinformation, which in many cases resulted in third parties – organization, academia, etc., – promoting and/or censoring speech, opponents of the practice say, effectively (and unconstitutionally) – as government proxies.

Covid was one of the major topics covered by this type of “research” and here, the report notes, the approach was both to offer monetary incentives, and to pressure companies operating social networks in order to promote government narratives, but also shut down not only criticism, but even skepticism.

To make matters worse – many of these issues whose official explanation was treated as gospel, resulting in people getting deplatformed and demonetized if they questioned these interpretations, shortly after turned out to be anything but “misinformation” – such as the origin of the virus, the efficacy of mask-wearing, social distancing, the safety of vaccines, etc.

But, $127 million of US taxpayers’ money in total was used to enforce those narratives, through pro-vaccine advocacy, studies meant to stop “misinformation” on the internet, and the like.

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Germany Tightens Grip on Online Speech as Vice Chancellor Defends Arrest of Online Critic

Germany’s authorities continue to double down on their crusade against all manner of free speech on the internet: from the right of citizens to criticize them, to satirical content like memes.

Instead of considering apologizing to a pensioner whose home was recently raided by law enforcement for an online post unflattering of his person, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck is now urging even stricter regulation of social media.

And it’s clear what kind of regulation Habeck – who was referred to as “an idiot” in the post that got 64-year-old Stefan Niehoff in hot water with the prosecution – wants to see more of.

The Green Party politician cited the EU’s controversial, sweeping censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), as a tool that could be used to “regulate” algorithms used by social media.

According to the German press, Habeck told the ARD broadcaster not only that he wouldn’t apologize but went on to try to explain – or, justify – why he filed a criminal complaint against the pensioner in the first place.

Habeck suggested that being called an “idiot” was just the straw that broke the camel’s back; his grievance supposedly originates from a previous “racist” post by Niehoff.

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