Tag: censorship

Democrat State Attorneys General File Brief In Support of Biden Censorship Power

In a move that underscores the unceasing tension between free speech and the control of information online, 20 Democratic state attorneys general have made appeals through federal court to restore their power in urging social media entities to censor user content.

Headlined by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the collective is adamant that federal court decisions are hindering their capability to prevent the circulation of misleading information.

July 4 saw US District Judge Terry Doughty issue a directive that greatly restrains government officials’ influence over social media moderation, after there was enough evidence already presented to show possible First Amendment violations.

Stemming from a lawsuit filed in May 2022 by Republican attorneys in Louisiana and Missouri, the verdict argued that both the presiding Biden administration had unjustly pressured social media platforms into suppressing posts perceived as potential triggers for vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 crisis or destabilizers for electoral processes.

This pursuit for moderation by government officials, the suit asserted, unjustly infringed upon the First Amendment right to free speech. In particular, these assertions were aimed at tech conglomerates like Meta’s Facebook and Google’s YouTube, accused of commencing the limitation of information dissemination allegedly deemed misleading circa 2019.

Currently held in suspension due to an appeal by the Biden administration, the order, should it be reactivated by the 5th Circuit, will prevent government departments, including the likes of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from communication with social media companies for the removal or suppression of content considered as protected free speech under the First Amendment.

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Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Regulate Online Speech

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have introduced a bill to create a new federal government commission overseeing online communication. The legislation is presented as consumer protection but grants new government authorities to police speech on the internet. 

“For too long, giant tech companies have exploited consumers’ data, invaded Americans’ privacy, threatened our national security, and stomped out competition in our economy,” said Warren. “This bipartisan bill would create a new tech regulator and makes clear that reining in Big Tech platforms is a top priority on both sides of the aisle.”

“For years, I have been trying to find ways to empower consumers against Big Tech,” Graham claimed. “I have heard too many stories from families who feel helpless in the face of Big Tech. … The creation of a regulatory commission to oversee Big Tech is the first step in a long journey to protect American consumers from the massive power these companies currently wield.”

The bill will establish a Digital Consumer Protection Commission that will designate some websites as “dominant platforms.” It appears those sites will be in the crosshairs of the new commission as the legislation instructs the new agency “to intentionally avoid having the platform meet the qualifications for designation as a dominant platform.”

The “dominant platforms will be required to inform the government of their content moderation policies. The bill will require designated companies to “make publicly available, through clear and conspicuous disclosure, the dominant platform’s terms of service, which shall include the criteria the operator employs in content moderation practices.”

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Texas A&M suspended professor accused of criticizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in lecture

Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic.

The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch in March when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during the talk.

In the few hours it took to drive from Galveston, the complaint had made its way to her supervisors, and Alonzo’s job was suddenly at risk.

“I am in a ton of trouble. Please call me!” she wrote to Chandler Self, the UTMB professor who invited her to speak.

Alonzo was right to be afraid. Not only were her supervisors involved, but so was Chancellor John Sharp, a former state comptroller who now holds the highest-ranking position in the Texas A&M University System, which includes 11 public universities and 153,000 students. And Sharp was communicating directly with the lieutenant governor’s office about the incident, promising swift action.

Less than two hours after the lecture ended, Patrick’s chief of staff had sent Sharp a link to Alonzo’s professional bio.

Shortly after, Sharp sent a text directly to the lieutenant governor: “Joy Alonzo has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud [sic] be finished by end of week.”

The text message was signed “jsharp.”

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New Files Show Biden Admin Forced Facebook To Censor “True Information” On Vaccine Side Effects

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan released a second batch of files Friday showing that the Biden administration was forcing Facebook to censor content relating to COVID vaccines, including what employees there described as “true information”.

Jordan noted that Facebook knew it was removing “humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine isn’t safe,” as well as “true information about the side effects.” 

Jordan also noted that Facebook employees were annoyed at being made to take down content they knew was accurate, describing the administration’s definition of misinformation as “completely unclear” and noting that the White House was using “untested assumptions” to demand censorship.

“It also just seems like when the vaccination campaign isn’t going as hoped, it’s convenient for them to blame us,” one employee noted.

Another agreed, responding “This seems like a political battle that’s not fully grounded in facts, and it’s frustrating.”

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The Citizen’s Starter Kit to the top 50 Organisations in the Global Censorship Cartel

“The Top 50 List” is intended as a resource for reporters and researchers beginning their journey toward learning the scale and ambition of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex (“CIC”).” Written like a magazine feature, it tries to answer a few basic questions about funding, organisation type, history, and especially, methodology. Many anti-disinformation groups adhere to the same formulaic approach to research, often using the same “hate-mapping,” guilt-by-association-type analysis to identify wrong-thinkers and suppressive persons.

A democratic society requires the nourishment of free debate, disagreement, and intellectual tension, but the groups below seek instead a “shared vocabulary” to deploy on the hybrid battlefield. They propose to serve as the guardians of that “vocabulary.”

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Facebook Felt “Pressure” From “Outraged” Biden White House To Remove Posts

Calling somebody a member of the “Disinformation Dozen” – there’s a nasty piece of propaganda work, trying to discredit political opponents in a time of crisis.

Worse still, it wasn’t happening out in the open, on actual social networks, but behind the curtains of government/Big Tech collusion.

And now – with the new US election looming large already – it’s probably prudent, if your party/political affiliation was on “the wrong” end of the stick the last time, to try to fight against this repeating “early, and often.”

The term “Disinformation Dozen” refers to a (conspiracy, to all effects) theory that there were only 12 people in the world (… right?) who were behind Covid vaccine criticism back in 2021.

And what a difference, strictly scientifically speaking, two years make…

But now, it’s time to face the “political piper,” as it were. Documents have emerged to show that Facebook at the time played along with the “Disinformation Dozen” game related not only to original posts – but also memes – and went to the significant no doubt trouble of changing its entire policy to suit the narrative rendered under pressure from Biden’s Surgeon General.

But as always, eventually, what does a Big Tech giant do? Appease the “permanent power center” supported or not by some current White House.

And so, we are now learning that Meta wasn’t thrilled about it – but “felt” it had to play along and acquiesce to government pressure.

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House Democrat Argues The Government Should Define ‘Truth,’ Americans Need to Be Censored

Democratic Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett, a non-voting delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands, said the quiet part out loud while appearing on MSNBC’s ‘The Inside Interview’ with former White House mouthpiece Jen Psaki on Sunday.

The U.S. government should define for America what the “truth” is and censor those Americans who don’t agree.

“Well, you know, first of all, they wanna talk about censorship,” Plaskett said. “That anytime you point out untruths, you’re censoring, you’re stopping people from speaking. It’s not that we’re not stopping people from speaking [sic], people can speak, but we’re also going to give the American people the truth so that they can have science and facts and history against wild, outlandish claims that the Republicans are trying to get. That’s not only going to keep them from going to the polls or suppressing vote or telling untruths, but is also really very detrimental to the American people.”

In other words, the U.S. government is going to stop people from speaking what Stacey Plaskett and her Democrat colleagues call “the truth.” Numerous times in the past ten years, the Democratic Party and the media have misled the American people on the truth. Whether it was false claims about Covid vaccines to the Russia hoax or racially incendiary police shootings, the American people have been pushed to believe in a damaging political agenda.

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Investigating The Pro-Censorship UK Group Expanding Across The US

America First Legal (AFL) have announced its investigation into a UK-based group known as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

AFL, a non-profit often described as “an alternative to ACLU,” is starting the probe into CCDH – which it refers to as a pro-censorship group that is a party to anti-free speech collusion with the government – by filing several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

We obtained an example of one of the FOIAs for you here.

They are addressed to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of State, and the goal is to obtain any communications they may have had with CCDH, headed by Imran Ahmed.

The basis for looking into the group’s activities in the US is that although based in the UK, it has expanded its “censorship encouraging,” as AFL put it, work to the US as a 501(c) non-profit.

As far as CCDH is concerned, the group is a non-profit and an NGO (non-governmental organization) with nothing but noble intentions – fighting online hate and disinformation.

Ahmed’s professional profile gives a good idea of what exactly CCDH means by that. As per the organization itself, Ahmed is an “authority on social and psychological malignancies on social media, such as identity-based hate, extremism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.”

As is often the case with those that like to add a layer of opaqueness to their work, “the organization of the organization” here is rather complicated: there are ties with top Labour Party officials, the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a “merger” with another online disinformation crusader called Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN).

Naturally, Covid lockdown opponents were a prominent target, but when it comes specifically to the US, CCDH put not only those critics based in that country, but also Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in its crosshairs, as deplatforming targets.

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“Once You Start Censoring, You’re On Your Way To Dystopia And Totalitarianism”, RFK Jr. Wrecks House Committee

In a hearing marred by contentious interruptions and attempts by House Democrats to remove him as a witness, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD chairman on leave from Children’s Health Defense (CHD) testified before a U.S. House hearing organized by Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

The subcommittee, operating within the House Judiciary Committee, said today’s hearing was intended to “examine the federal government’s role in censoring Americans,” “Big Tech’s collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech” and the ongoing Missouri v. Biden lawsuit alleging government censorship.

Other witnesses who testified today included D. John Sauer, special assistant attorney general for Louisiana, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the Missouri v. Biden case, Breitbart journalist Emma-Jo Morris, who in 2020 first revealed the now-infamous “Hunter Biden laptop story,” and Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Government censorship and alleged First Amendment violations on the part of the federal government featured prominently in today’s hearing. “We need to be able to talk,” Kennedy told the committee. “And, the First Amendment was not written for easy speech. It was written for the speech that nobody likes you for.”

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Dems Try And Fail To Censor RFK Jr. At Censorship Hearing

House Democrats tried and failed to censor Robert Kennedy Jr., a Democratic Party candidate for president, at a hearing on censorship.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) moved to shift the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on Thursday to executive session “because Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly made despicable anti-Semitic and anti-Asian comments as recently as last week.”

The congresswoman cited a House rule against testimony that may tend to “defame, degrade, or incriminate” any person, which would allow the committee an aside to determine whether to allow the testimony at issue during the open hearing. In making her case, Wasserman Schultz cited, “among many other things,” comments Kennedy recently made about COVID-19, which the candidate says has been misconstrued.

“COVID-19, there is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy claimed, according to The New York Post. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

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