Tag: censorship

Anti-Zionist Twitter Users See Their Reach Plummet Ahead of Elon Musk’s Planned Visit to Auschwitz

Anti-Zionist Twitter users are finding that their reach has plummeted ahead of X owner Elon Musk’s planned visit to Auschwitz next week to speak on a panel with Ben Shapiro on “combating antisemitism.”

Censored Men, a large anti-Zionist X account, reported that many X users are finding their engagement is up but their impressions are down.

We have also seen heightened levels of censorship lately.

Lucas Gage was banned for 3 months, Autumn Groyper [Nick Fuentes’ alt account] was permanently banned and Sulaiman Ahmed has been locked out of his account.

This comes after major Telegram channels, and X accounts in some cases, have set up a targeted campaign to get these people removed from the app.

Now, I can’t say for certain that it was these accounts and Telegram channels that lead to the ban of these people, but it’s definitely something X should be looking into.

I hope all the issues many creators are experiencing on this app, can be addressed as soon as possible.

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New Documents Provide More Insights on Moderna’s Online Speech Monitoring Efforts

Controversies originating from those who gained the most from the pandemic – most visibly, Big Pharma – refuses to go away.

One of the leading (and among the earliest) producers of Covid vaccines was US-based Moderna. We know for sure that the vaccine worked for Moderna – turning it from the verge of collapse into a $100 billion company, Defender reports.

But in large part due to the unusual speed with which vaccines were put through trials and then to market, many people – from regular citizens to public figures to medical professionals and scientists – felt skepticism about their efficacy and safety.

Expressing that openly, though, tended to get those people canceled or at least monitored and/or censored, and now new documents reveal Moderna’s role. Among them were journalists Alex Berenson, Stanford Health Policy professor Jay Bhattacharya, and actor Russell Brand.

In one instance, they “flagged a Russell Brand video in which he raised concerns about former British health official Jonathan Van-Tam, who was instrumental in COVID-19 policymaking and then took a high-level job at Moderna,” writes Defender.

Despite the billions in revenues raked in by Big Pharma, this obviously wasn’t enough, especially once the Covid panic started to subside and vaccine sales stalled.

And so Moderna sought out online media surveillance partners, and found one in the Public Goods Projects non-profit (otherwise receiving funds from Big Pharma), which was then useful in getting Covid vaccine skeptics silenced or censored on Twitter – Moderna and its partner, of course, called this combating “medical information.”

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EU President Calls For Globalist Control Over All Information

President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen addressed elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos Tuesday, calling for overarching globalist control over the flow of all information in the digital age.

“The top concern for the next two years is not conflict, or climate, it is disinformation and misinformation,” von der Leyen proclaimed, adding “The boundary between online and offline is getting thinner and thinner, and this is even more important in the era of generative AI.”

Addressing the elite as “Excellencies,” and personally naming “dear” Klaus Schwabb in her introduction, von der Leyen further called for the development of “a new global framework for AI risks,” and a vow to “drive global collaboration” to prevent the spread of ‘misinformation’ (information they don’t want you to know about).

She continued, “Many of the solutions lie not only in countries working together but, crucially, on businesses and governments, businesses and democracies working together,” adding that “While governments hold many of the levers to deal with the great challenges of our time, business have [sic] the innovation, the technology, the talents to deliver the solutions we need to fight threats like climate change or industrial-scale disinformation.”

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Bill Gates Hopes AI Can Reduce “Polarization,” Save “Democracy,” Ignores Censorship Implications

The notion that whoever controls and shapes AI could potentially wield significant influence over large swathes of society could be one of the most alarming and prominent over the next few years.

In a recent episode of “Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and tech billionaire Bill Gates controversially delved into the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for maintaining democracy and promoting world peace.

The discussion was aired on January 11, 2024.

Read the transcript for the episode here.

The conversation explored the idea of using artificial intelligence as an instrument to foster unity in society, enhance global amity, and help overcome geopolitical polarization.

Microsoft, founded by Gates, and OpenAI, whose CEO Altman is currently working closely with Microsoft, are promoters of using AI to solve global issues.

Gates spoke excitedly on the topic: “I do think AI, in the best case, can help us with some hard problems…Including ‘polarization’ because potentially that breaks democracy and that would be a super bad thing.”

In addition to resolving polarization, the two heavyweights also discussed the notion of AI potentially acting as a peacemaking tool.

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ISRAELI GROUP CLAIMS IT’S WORKING WITH BIG TECH INSIDERS TO CENSOR “INFLAMMATORY” WARTIME CONTENT

A SMALL GROUP of volunteers from Israel’s tech sector is working tirelessly to remove content it says doesn’t belong on platforms like Facebook and TikTok, tapping personal connections at those and other Big Tech companies to have posts deleted outside official channels, the project’s founder told The Intercept.

The project’s moniker, “Iron Truth,” echoes the Israeli military’s vaunted Iron Dome rocket interception system. The brainchild of Dani Kaganovitch, a Tel Aviv-based software engineer at Google, Iron Truth claims its tech industry back channels have led to the removal of roughly 1,000 posts tagged by its members as false, antisemitic, or “pro-terrorist” across platforms such as X, YouTube, and TikTok.

In an interview, Kaganovitch said he launched the project after the October 7 Hamas attack, when he saw a Facebook video that cast doubt on alleged Hamas atrocities. “It had some elements of disinformation,” he told The Intercept. “The person who made the video said there were no beheaded babies, no women were raped, 200 bodies is a fake. As I saw this video, I was very pissed off. I copied the URL of the video and sent it to a team in [Facebook parent company] Meta, some Israelis that work for Meta, and I told them that this video needs to be removed and actually they removed it after a few days.”

Billed as both a fight against falsehood and a “fight for public opinion,” according to a post announcing the project on Kaganovitch’s LinkedIn profileOpens in a new tab, Iron Truth vividly illustrates the perils and pitfalls of terms like “misinformation” and “disinformation” in wartime, as well as the mission creep they enable. The project’s public face is a Telegram botOpens in a new tab that crowdsources reports of “inflammatory” posts, which Iron Truth’s organizers then forward to sympathetic insiders. “We have direct channels with Israelis who work in the big companies,” Kaganovitch said in an October 13 message to the Iron Truth Telegram group. “There are compassionate ones who take care of a quick removal.” The Intercept used Telegram’s built-in translation feature to review the Hebrew-language chat transcripts.

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The Covid vaccine gave me side effects that ruined my life, but Facebook keeps censoring me from telling my friends about what happened

A woman who says she suffered chronic health complications after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine claims to have been censored from sharing her story on Facebook.

Caroline Pover, 52, received the jab in March 2021 and within nine hours, experienced convulsions, shivering, breathing difficulties and low blood pressure.

Ms Pover, of Cirencester, Gloucestershire, says she was hospitalised when her condition escalated to ‘stroke-like’ symptoms, in addition to exhaustion, breathing difficulties, a racing heart and migraines.

Her story was shared in a national newspaper in March last year as she and 800 other victims struggled to claim the Government’s Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS).

But after sharing the link on her Facebook feed at the start of this year, Ms Pover says the website put a warning notice on her account.

Ms Pover, herself a freelance journalist and entrepreneur, said: ‘My posts about what was happening to me started having FB “notes” appearing underneath them about vaccination.

‘A group page I was an admin on was shut down completely by Facebook in the summer of 2021.

‘When I posted the Daily Express article, which did an excellent job of not discussing anything pro or anti… I received a warning and the post was hidden.

‘It’s a ridiculous situation for vaccine-injured people, who have a right to information.

‘If this was an online support group relating to cancer or another type of serious condition, we’d be outraged at the thought of it being censored and we’d be very sensitive to people having to navigate a very complicated health situation.’

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The American Psychological Association Wants (More) Federal Funding To Curb Online “Misinformation”

The American Psychological Association (APA) is among those organizations enlisted to join the “war on misinformation” back in 2021, when APA took a $2 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to help push the Covid narratives of the time.

APA’s particular task there was to come up with “a scientific consensus statement on the science of misinformation.”

Now, APA is clamoring for even more federal money as it declares psychology to be “leading the way on fighting misinformation” and advertises psychologists as the right people to research the problem (as it has been presented over the last years), and also be “part of the solution.”

An article on APA’s site doesn’t shy away from using terminology that spreads a sense of alarm, such as “the scourge of misinformation” and asserting that clinicians now have to treat patients “subsumed” by conspiracy theories, while institutions and communities are all allegedly suffering unspecified “harm.”

And APA also doesn’t shy away from mentioning the US presidential election, or from positioning that event as something that makes combating misinformation “messier and more important than ever.”

Messy it is, alright. To position itself properly among all those vying for funding/influence by exaggerating the threat posed by misinformation as a new phenomenon, APA actually states that, with the election in mind, fighting misinformation is “one of the top trends facing the field (physiology) in 2024.”

Really, APA? Maybe the author meant – a top trend faced by the organization itself, since it has had to show something in return for the $2 million 2021 CDC grant given to it to research “the science of stopping misinformation.”

(Spoiler: that “science” is already well-developed and applied; it’s called censorship.)

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Several Large Accounts That Criticized Israel and Musk Banned from X

A group of journalists and political commentators with large followings were banned on X without notice. The owners of the banned profiles pointed to criticisms of Israel and Elon Musk. 

On Tuesday morning, the accounts of Alan MacLeod, Ken Klippenstein, Rob Rousseau, the True Anon Podcast, Steven Monacelli, and an anonymous account @Zei_Squrill, were all banned on the platform owned by Musk. 

MacLeod, who had over 200,000 followers on X, posted on Telegram that the suspension came without warning. “Today, without warning or explanation, Twitter suspended my account, @AlanRMacLeod. They told me to check my email for a reason, but no email has been forthcoming,” the journalist wrote. “I have never even remotely been involved in any controversy/been reported/been stuck in Twitter jail before, so I assume the real reason is political, especially as high-profile leftist accounts like Rob Rousseau and Zei_Squirrel were also targeted today.”

In a statement provided to The Libertarian Institute, MacLeod said, “I’m deeply concerned about Twitter banning a host of influential anti-war accounts today, including my own. It is a sign that Elon Musk’s supposed passion for free speech might not be all that it seems.”

Musk acquired Twitter in October of 2022 and later renamed the platform X. At the time, he said he aimed to make Twitter a “platform for free speech around the globe.” 

In one of his first acts as owner of Twitter, he allowed Matt Taibbi and other journalists to access the business communications of the company’s leadership. In the Twitter Files, Taibbi exposed a coordinated effort between the government and Twitter to censor speech that countered the establishment narrative on the election, covid, and the war in Ukraine. 

However, as America has entered an election year, Musk-owned X is stepping up its censorship efforts. 

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AI Watermarking Is Advocated by Biden’s Advisory Committee Member, Raising Concerns for Parody and Memes

The Biden administration doesn’t seem quite certain how to do it – but it would clearly like to see AI watermarking implemented as soon as possible, despite the idea being marred by many misgivings.

And, even despite what some reports admit is a lack of consensus on “what digital watermark is.” Standards and enforcement regulation are also missing. As has become customary, where the government is constrained or insufficiently competent, it effectively enlists private companies.

With the standards problem, these seem to none other than tech dinosaur Adobe, and China’s TikTok.

It’s hardly a conspiracy theory to think the push mostly has to do with the US presidential election later this year, as watermarking of this kind can be “converted” from its original stated purpose – into a speech-suppression tool.

The publicly presented argument in favor is obviously not quite that, although one can read between the lines. Namely – AI watermarking is promoted as a “key component” in combating misinformation, deepfakes included.

And this is where perfectly legal and legitimate genres like parody and memes could suffer from AI watermarking-facilitated censorship.

Spearheading the drive, such as it is, is Biden’s National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee and now one of its members, Carnegie Mellon University’s Ramayya Krishnan, admits there are “enforcement issues” – but is still enthusiastic about the possibility of using technology that “labels how content was made.”

From the Committee’s point of view, a companion AI tool would be a cherry on top.

However, there’s still no actual cake. Different companies are developing watermarking which can be put in three categories: visible, invisible (i.e., visible only to algorithms), and based on cryptographic metadata.

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CNN RUNS GAZA COVERAGE PAST JERUSALEM TEAM OPERATING UNDER SHADOW OF IDF CENSOR

WHETHER REPORTING FROM the Middle East, the United States, or anywhere else across the globe, every CNN journalist covering Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the news organization’s bureau in Jerusalem prior to publication, under a long-standing CNN policy. While CNN says the policy is meant to ensure accuracy in reporting on a polarizing subject, it means that much of the network’s recent coverage of the war in Gaza — and its reverberations around the world — has been shaped by journalists who operate under the shadow of the country’s military censor. 

Like all foreign news organizations operating in Israel, CNN’s Jerusalem bureau is subject to the rules of the Israel Defense Forces’s censor, which dictates subjects that are off-limits for news organizations to cover, and censors articles it deems unfit or unsafe to print. As The Intercept reported last month, the military censor recently restricted eight subjects, including security cabinet meetings, information about hostages, and reporting on weapons captured by fighters in Gaza. In order to obtain a press pass in Israel, foreign reporters must sign a document agreeing to abide by the dictates of the censor.

CNN’s practice of routing coverage through the Jerusalem bureau does not mean that the military censor directly reviews every story. Still, the policy stands in contrast to other major news outlets, which in the past have run sensitive stories through desks outside of Israel to avoid the pressure of the censor. On top of the official and unspoken rules for reporting from Israel, CNN recently issued directives to its staff on specific language to use and avoid when reporting on violence in the Gaza Strip. The network also hired a former soldier from the IDF’s Military Spokesperson Unit to serve as a reporter at the onset of the war. 

“The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years,” a CNN spokesperson told The Intercept in an email. “It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible.”

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