censorship – Page 52 – Hellbound and Down

Court Blocks Parts of California’s Social Media Law in Free Speech Clash

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has granted a partial preliminary injunction in the X Corp. v. Bonta case, which concerns some provisions from California’s online censorship (“moderation”) law, AB 587.

In explaining the ruling, the court said that X Corp. is “likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment.”

The law, introduced by 10 Democrats and one Republican in the state legislature and later adopted, mandates that large social media companies must report to California’s attorney-general regarding the details of their “moderation” apparatus. These companies are required to submit “Content Category Reports” twice a year.

The reports should include statements regarding whether the companies’ terms of service define hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference; if that is the case, the authorities want to know what those definitions are.

The irony of many laws dealing with the same subjects failing to properly define these categories aside, but the court of appeals judges found that this was one of the provisions that likely violated the First Amendment, therefore granting an injunction against it, and several other portions of AB 587 (under section 22677).

Another part of the law that saw the same fate relates to large social media platforms submitting a detailed description of their “moderation policies, and information about flagged content” when it comes to the same categories of speech (hate speech, racism, etc.)

The Ninth Circuit in this way reversed a previous decision by a district court not to grant a preliminary injunction – which is a temporary block until the courts decide on the merits of the case.

We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.

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Time To Rebel: We Are Now Entering The Total Censorship Stage Of Global Tyranny

The authoritarian regimes of the past century have all followed a pattern of events that is generally predictable. Almost every totalitarian government has been inspired by the ideologies of the political left. Meaning, increasingly bigger government, socialist control of resources, the melding of bureaucracy and corporate entities, demands for “social justice”, collectivist propaganda, the abandonment of individual merit for the sake of the state and the “greater good,” Marxism not just from an economic standpoint but also a cultural standpoint, and finally, the adoption of Futurism.

Futurism is, in my view, the key to all modern authoritarianism. It’s a philosophy that has been present at the birth of nearly every major despotic government in recent memory and it’s the root of leftist ideology today. Futurists argue that history is, for the most part, dead weight. They believe that every notion of heritage, the lessons of the past, the ideals and principles of our forefathers are all irrelevant.

Futurists think nothing is sacred and all new ideas are superior to all old ideas. Therefore, they claim, any society that clings to (or conserves) the old ways needs to be dismantled because it is holding humanity back from progress. In other words, anyone promoting or defending traditional norms must be silenced in the name of “progress.”

I suspect most people reading this at least intuitively understand the monstrous nature of this belief system. The very structure of futurism is based on a lie – The idea that all change is good and that any oppression committed in the name of change is justified.

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Mark Zuckerberg Apologizes for Biden Administration Censorship, Sending Liberal Elites Into Denial

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter last week to the House Judiciary Committee saying he regrets not being more outspoken about “government pressure” from the Biden administration to “censor” COVID-19 content, causing liberal pundits and media outlets who have denied this censorship to panic and deny what Zuckerberg wrote. The Meta CEO also admitted that his company demoted a story critical of Biden’s son—the Hunter Biden laptop scandal—right before the 2020 election.

In 2021, senior officials in the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree …. I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it …. and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.

Journalist Kara Swisher began lying about the matter in a CNN interview, alleging that the Supreme Court had found there had been no censorship and that the Biden administration had not pressured Meta. Both claims are false.

In the recent Supreme Court ruling, judges skipped over claims of whether the Biden administration had actually censored Americans, arguing that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue the White House. Swisher could have learned this by reading an article on the decision in the New York Times, the very publication where she was a contributor.

As for the Biden administration pressure to censor—something that Swisher denies—the evidence of this was made clear from Meta internal communications released by the House Judiciary Committee last May.

Zuckerberg texted three Meta officials—Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg, and Joel Kaplan—on July 16, 2021, “Can we include that the [White House] put pressure on us to censor the lab leak theory?”

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Lockheed Martin Develops System to Identify and Counter Online “Disinformation,” Prototyped by DARPA

Various military units around the world (notably in the UK during the pandemic) have been getting involved in what are ultimately, due to the goal (censorship) and participants (military) destined to become controversial, if not unlawful efforts.

But there doesn’t seem to be a lot of desire to learn from others’ mistakes. The temptation to bring the defense system into the political “war on disinformation” arena seems to be too strong to resist.

Right now in the US, Lockheed Martin is close to completing a prototype that will analyze media to “detect and defeat disinformation.”

And by media, those commissioning the tool – called the Semantic Forensics (SemaFor) program – mean everything: news, the internet, and even entertainment media. Text, audio, images, and video that are part of what’s considered “large-scale automated disinformation attacks” are supposed to be detected and labeled as false by the tool.

The development process is almost over, and the prototype is used by the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

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Former Pro-Censorship White House Official, Now Harris Deputy Manager, Aggressively Targets Online “Misinformation”

Rob Flaherty – Kamala Harris campaign’s deputy manager (originally a member of the team put together for the now failed Biden reelection bid) – has spoken about what that campaign is doing about “misinformation.”

That’s one of the favorite subjects – and often tools of political pressure – of the current Biden-Harris administration, and Flaherty is no stranger to any of it.

In the past, he served in the Biden administration as director of digital strategy and played a prominent role in exerting persistent pressure on Big Tech, to get these companies to censor even more content.

Now, Flaherty tells Politico that the Harris campaign’s handling of what it perceives as misinformation is “extremely aggressive” and that it is “constantly” on the lookout for it, “monitoring” the internet – again, “aggressively.”

The reason is to counter “the attacks that are coming in against the Vice President.”

That includes what Flaherty calls “deep detection of what is happening on the internet” on election day. The apparent intent is to come across as aggressive, perhaps as an intimidation tactic.

Flaherty’s other statements, such as hunting down “pockets of misinformation” (like posts that mention the wrong election date) along with threats of lawsuit speak to that.

According to him, the campaign has “a really robust legal team” that is considering its options regarding “voting misinformation” – and Flaherty says these options are many.

Regarding the channels the Harris campaign goes to, to implement “misinformation monitoring and pushing back” one is as expected – the presidential candidate’s own campaign accounts, but the other is quite controversial, yet clearly spelled out by Flaherty – traditional media.

“That’s all part of one big strategy,” the Harris aide shared.

Read more about Flaherty’s history here.

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Brazil’s $9,000 Fine For Accessing X Puts “Wall Of Censorship” Between Citizens And Unregulated Information

Brazil has not just banned X (formerly Twitter) from the entire country, but citizens will now be fined $9,000 a day (more than the average salary in the country) for using VPNs to access the platform. X is the main source of news for Brazilians, who will now be left with government-approved sources or face financial ruin in seeking unfettered information.

The Guardian is reporting that the confiscatory fines are part of a comprehensive crackdown on efforts to get news through X, including ordering all Apple stores to remove X from new phones.

The move puts Brazil with China in the effort to create a wall of censorship between citizens and unregulated information.

For the anti-free speech movement, Brazil is a key testing ground for where the movement is heading next. European censors are arresting CEOs like Pavel Durov while threatening Elon Musk.

However, it is Brazil that foreshadows the brave new world of censorship where entire nations will block access to sites committed to free speech values or unfettered news. If successful, the Brazilian model is likely to be replicated by other countries.

The reason is that censorship is not working. As discussed in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” we have never seen the current alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media interest against free speech. Yet, citizens are not buying it.

Despite unrelenting attacks and demonizing media coverage, citizens are still using X and resisting censorship. That was certainly the case in Brazil where citizens preferred X to regulated news sources. The solution is now to threaten citizens with utter ruin if they seek unfettered news.

The question is whether Brazil’s leftist government can get away with this. The conflict began with demands to censor supporters of the conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro. When X refused the sweeping demands for censorship, including the demand to name of a legal representative who could be arrested for refusing to censor users, the courts moved toward this national ban.

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