Tag: censorship

Why Renee DiResta Leads The Censorship Industry

Since the 2016 elections, politicians, journalists, and many others have raised the alarm about “foreign election influence” and “disinformation,” demanding greater “content moderation” by social media platforms. It is too easy, they argued, for foreign and malign actors to quickly “go viral” at low cost, leaving the good guys unable to correct bad information. We must become more “resilient” to disinformation.

It’s now clear that all of that rhetoric was cover for a sweeping censorship effort by the federal government and government contractors.

Since December, a small but growing group of journalists, analysts, and researchers have documented the rise of a “Censorship Industrial Complex”, a network of U.S. government agencies, and government-funded think tanks. Over the last six years, these entities have coordinated their efforts to both spread disinformation and to censor journalists, politicians, and ordinary Americans. They have done so directly and indirectly, including by playing good cop/bad cop with Twitter and Facebook. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of people have been involved in these censorship and disinformation campaigns in the U.S., Canada, and the UK.

We now know, thanks to the Twitter Files, emails released by the Attorney Generals of Missouri and Louisiana, and research by others, that the Censorship Industrial Complex is violating the First Amendment by coordinating with government agencies and receiving government funding to pressure and help social media companies to both censor information, including accurate information, while spreading disinformation, including conspiracy theories.

And such efforts are continuing if not accelerating. At Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” last week, US allies in Europe demanded that Facebook censor “false narratives” and news that would “weaken our support to Ukraine.” Facebook agreed.

One of the most intelligent, influential, and fascinating public-facing leaders of the Censorship Industrial Complex is Renee DiResta, Research Manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Diresta has, more than anyone else, made the public case for greater government-led and government-funded censorship, writing for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, and other major publications, and through public speaking, including on podcasts with Joe Rogan and Sam Harris.

To many journalists and policymakers, DiResta is one of the good guys, advocating as a citizen and hobbyist for greater U.S. government action to fight disinformation. DiResta has argued that the U.S. has been unprepared to fight the “information war” with Russia and other nations in her bylined articles for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wired, and many others. And in her 2018 Senate testimony DiResta advocated “legislation that defines and criminalizes foreign propaganda” and for allowing law enforcement to “prosecute foreign propaganda.”

DiResta, as much as any other public person in the Western world, has sounded the alarm, repeatedly and loudly, for stronger governmental and non-governmental coordination to get social media platforms to censor more information. “The Russian disinformation operations that affected the 2016 United States presidential election are by no means over,” wrote DiResta in the New York Times in December 2018. “Russian interference through social media is a chronic, widespread, and identifiable condition that we must now aggressively manage.”

In 2021, DiResta advocated for creating a government censorship center, which she euphemistically referred to as a “Center of Excellence,” within the federal government. “Creation of a ‘Center of Excellence’ within the federal government,” she said, “could tie in a federal lead with platforms, academics, and nonprofits to stay ahead of these emerging narratives and trends.” DiResta argued that her censorship center could also help spread propaganda. “As narratives emerge,” she explained, “the Center of Excellence could deploy experts to relevant federal agencies to help prepare pre-bunking and messaging, to identify trusted voices in communities, and to build coalitions to respond.”

Did the Department of Homeland Security act on DiResta’s proposal to create a censorship center? It did. But DHS didn’t call it a “Center of Excellence.” Instead, it called it a “Disinformation Governance Board,” which the agency announced publicly in April 2022.

Keep reading

Anti-Hillary Election ‘Meme’ Case Could Open The Floodgates To More Gov’t Censorship, Legal Experts Warn

Douglass Mackey’s Friday conviction for an election “meme” he posted on his account with over 58,000 followers has legal experts raising alarm bells about its impact on free speech.

A jury convicted Mackey for conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote through a meme he posted during the 2016 election, which advertised a way to vote for Hilary Clinton via text message. First Amendment experts say Mackey’s conviction is based on an expansive interpretation of a Conspiracy Against Rights law that could impact other forms of speech, from satire to lies in election campaigns.

While the First Amendment allows for punishing fraud, “it’s not clear Mackey’s actions qualify as fraud in a legal sense,” Aaron Terr, director of Public Advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Fraud generally requires a speaker to make a false statement to obtain money or something of material value from the injured party, who relies on the false statement to their detriment,” he said. Even if Mackey’s actions did qualify, Terr also noted that the Justice Department indicted him using a statute that goes beyond fraudulent speech.

“It criminalizes conspiring to ‘injure’ or ‘oppress’ someone in the exercise of any constitutional right,” he said. “If that vague language covers speech that deceives people into voting improperly, it raises the troubling possibility of the government also applying it to allegedly false statements about political issues or candidates that discourage people from voting, not just misrepresentations about the logistics of exercising the franchise. Anyone who cares about free speech should be concerned about how the government might abuse this vague and broadly worded law to chill the spirited public discourse on which our democracy depends.”

After being charged with Conspiracy Against Rights, Mackey faces up to ten years in prison. Eugene Volokh, Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA, told the DCNF there are two primary routes he could take for an appeal.

Keep reading

Twitter Algorithm Reveals Tool For Government Intervention

A researcher claims to have found a tool allowing for government intervention in Twitter’s algorithm, upon Elon Musk’s decision to allow the algorithm to become open sourced to the public.

Breitbart reports that Musk honored his promise on Friday by releasing a portion of Twitter’s recommendation algorithm on the website GitHub, where computer programmers often go to share and collaborate on work dealing with open-source code.

Web developer Steven Tey then claimed to have discovered a particular mechanism within the code that allows the U.S. government to make changes to the website’s algorithm.

“When needed, the government can intervene with the Twitter algorithm. In fact, @TwitterEng (Twitter Engineering) even has a class for it – ‘GovernmentRequested,” Tey tweeted, including a link to the code on GitHub.

Upon purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk vowed to increase transparency and loosen restrictions on certain speech and accounts that had been imposed by previous leadership. One of his goals was to make the algorithm open source for public viewing; he later said that “our ‘algorithm’ is overly complex & not fully understood internally,” and that “people will discover many silly things, but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found!”

In addition, Tey discovered that the algorithm takes such factors into account as following-to-follower ratio when determining which users to promote; users with a low number of followers but a high amount of followed accounts would be negatively affected.

Keep reading

Connecticut Democrats Seek to Create a Censorship Board to Limit Free Speech

The  Democrat-dominated Connecticut legislature is seeking to create a censorship board through Senate Bill 6410 to regulate online speech.

The bill would establish a board to study so-called online “harassment” of individuals, including government officials, and recommend legislation to censor free speech by the creation of reporting guidelines. The censorship board would consist of nine members, four of whom would represent the minority Republican party.

The bill states:

Such assessment shall include, but need not be limited to,

(1) short term and long term effects of harassing behaviors online on elected officials, public officials and residents of this state,

(2) what state or municipal action is needed to address negative online behaviors that consider a citizen’s right to freedom of speech versus an individual’s right to be free from harassment including, but not limited to, potential changes in state law concerning  additional penalties or enforcement of online harassment, and

(3) establishing guidelines for the reporting of online harassment of elected state and municipal officials that find a balance between making elected officials accessible to the people whom they serve and protecting them from abusive, offensive or threatening online harassment.

Chris Zeller, executive director of the Connecticut Republican party (CTGOP), told Breitbart News the Democrats are trying to pass a censorship measure to cover up their agenda.

“They are trying to hide years of incompetent governance and a far-left agenda that is too radical for the average Connecticut voter,” he said.

According to a policy brief from Yankee Institute, about 150 people commented on the legislation via (presumably written) testimony. The vast majority of these opposed the bill. Some of those who opposed the bill said it would be used to “inhibit freedom of speech.”

Kate Prokop, president of Connecticut Residents Against Medical Mandates (CTRAMM), stated in her testimony that she is worried her organization will be censored because certain Democrat state politicians labeled CTRAMM as “extremist” during the pandemic.

“I’m not advocating for hate speech or condemning people. [I’m] against online censorship because it establishes an unnecessary paternal relationship with the government,” Prokop said. “Proposed Bill 6410 aims to limit constitutionally protected free speech online by demanding self-censorship from residents that have been gaslighted by elected officials for years.”

The bill was approved by committee March 17 and will now get a vote in the House.

Keep reading

Doublespeak: State Department warns about online censorship then threatens to “hold platforms accountable”

In a startling display of doublespeak at the Summit for Democracy 2023, United States (US) Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned about more countries “using the internet to try to control speech” and claimed that the Biden administration is trying to promote an open internet before threatening to “hold platforms accountable” for so-called “harms.”

Blinken raised the alarm about the internet “growing more closed, more insecure, more siloed by the day.”

He continued by stating: “More countries are putting up firewalls and shutting down access, using the internet to try to control speech, quash dissent, spread misinformation and disinformation.”

The Secretary of State followed up by claiming that the Declaration for the Future of the Internet (a 60-country commitment to bolstering “resilience to disinformation and misinformation”) reaffirms the US’s commitment to an “open network of networks that respects democratic principles and human rights.”

After lambasting other countries for closing off the internet and positioning the Biden admin as a paragon of openness, Blinken pivoted and said, “We have to do better at addressing some of the risks that come with the open internet.”

He then proposed a “delicate balance” between “openness and security,” “protecting speech and preventing incitement,” and “fostering innovation and limiting the power of Big Tech.”

Not content with suggesting a balance between protecting speech and censoring speech that the Biden administration deems to be “incitement,” Blinken then threatened consequences for platforms that don’t fall in line.

“The President’s…made clear that we need to be able to hold platforms accountable when they fail to address the harms caused by their technology, from the content they spread to the algorithms that they use.”

Keep reading

Germany uses AI to target online content for removal, send data to police

Germany has a “porn police” – regulators, that is, who are using an “AI” tool called KIVI to find adult content across the internet – on sites and apps like Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, and TikTok.

And when they do, those creating and/or posting this content could wind up in prison or pay fines, and they are notified of their transgression by the actual police.

Porn is not KIVI’s only target – the tool also scans for “political extremism, Holocaust denial, and violence.”

Reports mention a couple, dabbling in amateur porn, who received one such letter from the police in Berlin, that said they had posted pornography online unlawfully. However, the letter was not big on detail, neither when it comes to where the content in question was shared, nor why the action was illegal.

In this case, it eventually turned out that the system found the content while scanning Twitter, providing the police with screenshots.

The policy of suppressing porn seems to be picking up speed recently in Germany, as over a hundred people were sent the same type of letter and could now stand accused in criminal cases.

Even though pornography itself is not illegal to access in Germany for those over 18, there has been a push to introduce age verification using this particular industry as the obvious choice to promote the implementation of the technology.

As ever, age verification is touted as a way to protect those under 18 from inappropriate content, but in reality, to try to achieve that, every internet user is exposed to the age verification process (typically involving presenting government-issued IDs to sites or third parties).

And the authorities seem determined to have their way, since they are now ordering Twitter to block contentious accounts and have even tried imposing a blanket ban on a major porn site that would affect every user in Germany, Wired writes.

Keep reading

A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century

If the underlying philosophy of the war against disinformation can be expressed in a single claim, it is this: You cannot be trusted with your own mind. What follows is an attempt to see how this philosophy has manifested in reality. It approaches the subject of disinformation from 13 angles—like the “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Wallace Stevens’ 1917 poem—with the aim that the composite of these partial views will provide a useful impression of disinformation’s true shape and ultimate design.

Keep reading

The Patriot Act on steroids: D.C. Uniparty wants to use anti-TikTok legislation as Trojan horse for censorship and surveillance

TikTok is indeed a pestilence upon our society.

But there are right ways to go about minimizing this “digital opium” and its impact on our lives, and other means that will allow the American government to leverage the situation to further curtail our individual rights.

And unsurprisingly, the latter idea is making lawmakers in the beltway beyond giddy this week.

The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act (S.686), which was introduced in the Senate earlier this month, would do much more than just ban TikTok.

This bill is no mere “TikTok ban,” it is a mechanism for a massive, sweeping surveillance and censorship overhaul.  

The RESTRICT Act goes far, far beyond potentially banning TikTok. It gives the government virtual unchecked authority over the U.S. communications infrastructure. The incredibly broad language includes the ability to “enforce any mitigation measure to address any risk” to “national security” today and in any “potential future transaction.”

The Senate legislation currently has 19 cosponsors, all of whom are Uniparty members in good standing. It is fully “bipartisan,” consisting of 9 democrats and 10 republicans. 

Keep reading

Agatha Christie Books Get Woke Makeover, Join Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming

The sensitivity readers have found another target: Agatha Christie.

Books by the acclaimed mystery author—who was born in the 19th century and passed away in 1976—have been edited, ostensibly to comport with modern sensibilities. “The new editions of Christie’s works are set to be released or have been released since 2020 by HarperCollins, which is said by insiders to use the services of sensitivity readers,” noted The Telegraph. “It has created new editions of the entire run of Miss Marple mysteries and selected Poirot novels.”

As was the case with recent edits to the works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming, the changes hardly seem necessary; there are few readers clamoring for them. The sensitivity readers, who are hired to rewrite texts and prevent offense, are making the books less colorful and descriptive. In the original Death on the Nile, some characters were described as Nubian—as in the ethnic group from the region of Nubia in northern Africa—but no longer. A character in The Mysterious Affair at Styles who was referred to as a Jew—because, well, he is a Jew—is now just a person. And a servant identified as black no longer has a race at all.

It’s one thing to change outdated ethnic references or references that specifically malign a specific race. Christie is no stranger to that: Her 1939 book, And Then There Were None, was originally published under the name Ten Little Niggers in the United Kingdom, where the racial slur was not as broadly offensive. (The book was named after a children’s rhyme.)

It’s quite another matter to delete all references to ethnicity because… why do it? Who is offended by knowing the race of a specific character? Should books cease acknowledging Africans, Jews, and Indians?

Keep reading

The RESTRICT act aims to tackle TikTok. But it’s overly-broad and has major privacy and free speech implications.

Senator Mark Warner’s Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (“RESTRICT”) Act is currently in Senate procedure, as is widely thought to be targeting China‘s TikTok in particular.

However, those who bothered to read the text of the proposed act – which will next be considered by the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, are warning that it is not merely about TikTok, but aims to grant wide powers over all forms of domestic and foreign communications to the government – such as enforcing “any” mitigating measure to deal with risks to national security.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

And, observers critical of these legislative activities note, there would be no due process in taking these measures, and not much in terms of safeguards.

Keep reading