Tag: censorship

Disinformation expert laments loss of power over speech on social media leading up to 2024 elections

Adisinformation expert is lamenting that social media platforms have less control over speech as the 2024 elections approach, while conservatives notch wins against the industry and the Department of Homeland Security’s calls for greater censorship.

This comes as the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released yet more evidence this week on nexus of the federal government, universities, and Big Tech that worked to censor Americans during the 2020 election. The House Judiciary Committee also held a hearing on the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to increase censorship through the Election Integrity Partnership.

The new report by the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) shows how former Big Tech employees and censorship experts are lamenting their shrinking influence as the presidential election approaches next year. Pressure from a Republican House and some journalists discourages the federal government from collaborating with the Big Tech companies as it did during the 2020 election. Some federal courts have weighed in, finding the collaboration unconstitutional.

“Yoel Roth has been on a public speaking tear, sounding alarms to fellow censorship industry insiders that they’ve lost the control over 2024 election speech they once had in 2020,” Mike Benz, executive director of FFO posted to X on Monday.

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5 WAYS TO PREPARE FOR THE ONLINE PRIVACY CRACKDOWN

The internet is about to change. In many countries, there’s currently a coordinated legislative push to effectively outlaw encryption of user uploaded content under the guise of protecting children. This means websites or internet services (messaging apps, email, etc.) could be held criminally or civilly liable if someone used it to upload abusive material. If these bills become law, people like myself who help supply private communication services could be penalized or put into prison for simply protecting the privacy of our users. In fact, anyone who runs a website with user-uploaded content could be punished the same way. In today’s article, I’ll show you why these bills not only fail at protecting children, but also put the internet as we know it in jeopardy, as well as why we should question the organizations behind the push.

Let’s quickly recap some of the legislation.

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Microsoft and Meta Detail Plans To Combat “Election Disinformation” Which Includes Meme Stamp-Style Watermarks and Reliance on “Fact Checkers”

And so it begins. In fact, it hardly ever stops – another election cycle in well on its way in the US. But what has emerged these last few years, and what continues to crop up the closer the election day gets, is the role of the most influential social platforms/tech companies.

Pressure on them is sometimes public, but mostly not, as the Twitter Files have taught us; and it is with this in mind that various announcements about combating “election disinformation” coming from Big Tech should be viewed.

Although, one can never discount the possibility that some – say, Microsoft – are doing it quite voluntarily. That company has now come out with what it calls “new steps to protect elections,” and is framing this concern for election integrity more broadly than just the goings-on in the US.

From the EU to India and many, many places in between, elections will be held over the next year or so, says Microsoft, however, these democratic processes are at peril.

“While voters exercise this right, another force is also at work to influence and possibly interfere with the outcomes of these consequential contests,” said a blog post co-authored by Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith.

By “another force,” could Smith possibly mean, Big Tech? No. It’s “multiple authoritarian nation states” he’s talking about, and Microsoft’s “Election Protection Commitments” seek to counter that threat in a 5-step plan to be deployed in the US, and elsewhere where “critical” elections are to be held.

Critical more than others why, and what is Microsoft seeking to protect – it’s all very unclear.

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A cautionary tale about Wikipedia censorship and the Twitter Files

For the illiberal left, it’s not enough that you submit to their cultural revolution. You must also underwrite it.

This happens not only at the state level, with issues such as abortion and public-school curricula, but at the private level as well. A good recent example includes efforts by certain Wikipedia editors to censor mentions of a journalism award handed out recently to the journalist behind the so-called Twitter Files.

Wikipedia: glad-handing for donations on the front end, while certain “master editors” censor factual events on the back end!

On November 1, journalist Matt Taibbi received a journalism award for his efforts to uncover the incestuous relationship between Big Tech and censorious federal apparatchiks. More specifically, for his part in casting a light on the government’s clandestine coordination with Twitter to censor inconvenient speech, the National Journalism Center, where I serve as program director, and the Dao Feng and Angela Foundation awarded Taibbi and his colleagues — former New York Times op-ed staff editor Bari Weiss and author Michael Shellenberger —a shared prize of $100,000 for excellence in investigative journalism.

In accepting the honor, Taibbi himself reiterated the purpose of the honor: to recognize journalism that challenges power rather than protect it.

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UN Agency Unveils Action Plan To Regulate Speech on Social Media Platforms

Yet another United Nations agency – this time the Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) – has joined the contentious efforts to use UN resources in the “war on misinformation.”

UNESCO is not lagging behind some of the veterans of this “war” regarding the kind of alarmist language its leadership is choosing to use to justify the policy.

Thus, Director-General Audrey Azoulay presented an action plan, saying that online disinformation is “a major threat to stability and social cohesion.”

A press release announcing the plan referred to the phenomenon of misinformation as “a scourge” and one that is intensifying. Those behind all this must hope that this is enough to explain what UNESCO – formerly known mostly for protection of world heritage sites and raising funds for underprivileged children – is even doing “fighting disinformation.”

But here’s the plan: to somehow not harm freedom of speech, and yet push for social media companies to hire more “moderators” that speak all the major languages and whose job would be “effective control of content.”

A lot of attention seems to be given to strengthening censorship capacities in languages other than English; that could explain why, according to UNESCO’s statement, the plan has received support particularly from some countries in Latin America and Africa.

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Revealed: How The DHS’ Stanford “Disinformation” Group Censored 2020 Election-Related Online Speech

Fresh revelations have been loaded into the canon of public discourse around censorship, ready for primed debates on free speech and censorship in light of disturbing findings.

As per a report from the House Judiciary Committee, it appears that speech around US election integrity was potentially compromised before the 2020 polls. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials are implicated in the birth of a “disinformation” team at Stanford University. The ominously titled “Election Integrity Partnership,” based on newly uncovered emails and inside communications, apparently colluded with the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to monitor and pressure the scrubbing of the digital landscape of certain online speeches alongside big tech cohorts.

The collaboration’s alleged censorship maneuver was revealed by a founding partner of the EIP, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. It was here in an email, dated 31 July 2020, that the EIP’s origin at the behest of DHS/CISA was acknowledged by Graham Brookie, Senior Director of the lab, who stated they were involved in a continuous discussion surrounding “disinfo.”

Notably, the inquest further concluded that the EIP’s operations were biased, leading to the censure of factual content, humorous commentary and political beliefs. Claiming a significant tilt towards the Democrats, the report accused the censors of brushing information under the rug while assuming the role of arbiters of truth. This led to Republican leaders, conservative media and even satire sites like The Babylon Bee getting unfairly flagged for “misinformation.”

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Leak shows ex-Trump ambassador to Israel threatening NYU over Palestine protests

A letter sent to NYU leadership claims the school is “no longer a safe space for Jewish students” while demanding policies that would shatter free speech on campus. The letter was signed by David Friedman, Trump’s rabidly pro-settlement ambassador to Israel, as well as dozens of Jewish American alumni apparently afflicted with a particularly severe version of main character syndrome.

The letter demands that NYU ramp up security for Jewish students and add mandatory coursework on the issue of “in line with universal values, fact-based critical thinking, and civil discourse.”

Read the leaked letter, “A Message from the NYU Jewish community,” here.

Additionally, the letter demands that NYU create a position “dedicated to combating anti-Semitism.” The school already maintains no fewer than 15 positions dedicated to promoting “Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation.”

The letter goes on to demand that NYU disband clubs that “utilize hate speech to promote violence and endorse terrorism” and pursue the criminal prosecution of students who “deface property and/or use hate speech in the name of terrorism.” It offers no definition of hate speech, however. The assumption seems to be that strong language denouncing Israel’s violent assault on Gaza, or supporting the Palestinian armed struggle, should be treated as equivalent to verbal threats, and even physical violence, against Jews.

While providing no evidence or documentation of open support for terrorism amongst the student body, the letter alludes to Student Bar Association president Ryna Workman, who authored an op-ed in the body’s weekly newsletter blaming the Israeli state policy of apartheid for inspiring the events of October 7. Workman was promptly canceled for her speech, losing not only her position as president of the Student Bar Association, but a job offer that had previously been extended to her. 

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House Drops Bombshell Report Revealing Much Deeper Fed Collusion With ‘Free Speech Police’ Than Previously Known

In the runup to the 2020 election, cybersecurity experts at the Department of Homeland Security and Stanford University decided they had discovered a major problem. 

The issue was not compromised voter rolls or corrupted election tallies but a “gap” in the government’s authority to clamp down on what it considered misinformation and disinformation – a gap identified by DHS officials and interns on loan to the agency from the Stanford Internet Observatory. Given what SIO research manager Renee DiResta described as the “unclear legal authorities” and “very real First Amendment questions” regarding this gap, the parties hatched a plan to form a public-private partnership that would provide DHS with an avenue to surreptitiously censor speech. 

The collaboration between DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency and the Stanford outfit would quickly expand into a robust operation whose full extent is only now becoming clear. RealClearInvestigations has obtained from House investigators records revealing in previously undisclosed detail the nature and mechanics of the operation – the SIO-led Election Integrity Partnership.  

They show at a granular level the thousands of tweets and Facebook posts on topics from mail-in voting to aberrant election results – arguably core protected speech – that the public-private partnership flagged to social media platforms for censorship, much of which the platforms would suppress. 

The evidence shows EIP – sometimes alongside CISA – pressuring platforms to target speech that included statements by then-President Trump; opinions about election integrity rooted in government records and even think-tank white papers; and speculative tweets from statesmen and everyday citizens alike. RCI details notable instances here. 

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YouTube Censors Reporting On Leaked Trans Shooter Manifesto

YouTube has removed reporting by Steven Crowder on the pages of the withheld manifesto of the Nashville mass shooter that he managed to obtain, claiming that they “think it violates” their policy on “violent criminal organizations”.

Whatever that means is anyone’s guess. Crowder shared the development with a screenshot from his YouTube account, commenting “Investigative journalism is now considered a ‘criminal organization’”.

YouTube further told Crowder that “Content that glorifies violent criminal organization or incites violence is not allowed on YouTube.”

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‘It Feels Like the New McCarthyism’: How the Israel-Hamas War Is Redefining the Limits of Free Speech

War between Israel and Hamas has sparked extensive (mostly) online activism about the conflict — and led to a rash of firings or other workplace discipline from employers concerned about their employees’ views of the conflict.

Artforum’s top editor David Velasco was fired by his publisher, Penske Media, after posting an open letter on the site calling for a cease-fire and suggesting Israel is responsible for the beginning of a genocide; Michael Eisen was removed as editor-in-chief of the science journal eLife after retweeting a satirical article critical of Israel; and Maha Dakhil, a top executive at the Hollywood talent firm Creative Artists Agency, stepped back from leadership roles after reposting an Instagram story that implied Israel was committing genocide. That’s in addition to multiple law students who had job offers revoked after publicly criticizing Israeli actions. The statements range from expressions of sympathy for Palestinians to strident anti-Israel criticisms that seem to minimize Israeli loss of life.

The situation is making Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago whose work is focused on the changing meaning of freedom of speech in the United States, very nervous.

“It feels like the new McCarthyism,” said Lakier, who’s one of the leading legal scholars on matters of free speech.

So far, most of the firings appear to have been for expressing pro-Palestinian views — the U.S.-based advocacy organization Palestine Legal reports that they’ve responded to over 260 cases of people’s “livelihoods or careers” being targeted. But the fact that these firings have been due in large part to social media posts and the widespread broadcasting of personal political beliefs means that the trend may not stay on one issue or one side of a dispute for long; Lakier says that we are watching the relationship between free expression and employment shift in real time.

Currently, regulations concerning speech and private employment oscillate wildly from state to state — about half of states have no protections for private employees who express political beliefs, while others have laws that vary in terms of scope. Many of the employment laws that do exist find their roots in the 19th century and are little use in navigating the 21st century workplace. Meanwhile, ideas about protected speech are constantly shifting in the culture: After 9/11, for example, the war on terror brought with it new examinations into what kind of speech promulgates terrorism. More recently, debates over “cancel culture” on campuses and in the workplace have brought up similar questions of what speech is permissible — and when consequences are justified.

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