Tag: facebook

FACEBOOK HIRES EX-CIA AGENT ‘MISINFORMATION’ CHIEF TO LEAD ‘ELECTIONS POLICIES’

Meta has promoted a former CIA agent from a senior role on Facebook’s “misinformation” team to “Head of Elections Policies” at the social media giant.

Aaron Berman, a 17-year veteran of the CIA, served as Facebook’s “misinformation” chief during the 2020 election.

In the run-up to the 2020 election Facebook and other Big Tech companies buried information, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story, that was damaging to Democrats.

Those same “misinformation” teams allowed social media to be flooded with false claims that helped Biden and the Democrats, such as the Russia Hoax or the fabricated Jan. 6 “insurrection” narrative.

Nevertheless, Berman, who played a key role in Facebook’s failed censorship efforts, will now lead the company’s “elections policies” in the run-up to the critical 2024 race.

Berman served at the CIA between March 2002 and July 2019.

During that time, he wrote for and edited the President’s Daily Brief, an influential top-secret document prepared by the U.S. intelligence community given to the president each morning, according to Breitbart.

According to Berman’s Linkedin, he enjoyed positions of considerable influence at the agency, including “supervising teams of dozens of analysts and with multi-million-dollar budgets,” and leading briefings for members of Congress and National Security Council members.

In 2019, he left the agency and joined Facebook (now known as Meta), where he became a senior product policy manager for “misinformation.”

According to Berman, he “built the misinformation policy team’s US workforce and put policies into practice during critical events.”

While Berman does not say what these “critical events” were, his time in Facebook’s “misinformation” department coincides with the run-up to the 2020 election.

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‘We were right’: PizzaGate peddlers feel vindicated about bombshell report on Instagram’s pedophile networks

The term #PedoGram became a top trend across Twitter on Wednesday after a report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that Instagram’s algorithm has been promoting child abuse material and helping connect pedophiles.

The report, a joint investigation between the Journal and academics from Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, found that Instagram’s recommendation systems aided pedophiles in finding accounts selling illegal content.

Shockingly, many accounts offering such material openly used hashtags such as #preteensex to promote their content. Even worse, many accounts that were reported for promoting the sale of illegal content were either ignored or rejected by Instagram.

While users across social media networks expressed shock at the findings, far-right accounts used the very real problem to push debunked conspiracy theories such as PizzaGate.

The PizzaGate conspiracy theory, which rose to prominence in 2016, alleged that then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was helping run a secret child sex slavery ring in the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C.

The report found that emojis were used by pedophiles to communicate. An image of a map was intended to allude to the acronym “minor-attracted person.” Cheese pizza emojis were also used given that the words’ initials are the same as “child pornography.”

While it has long been known that the term cheese pizza has been used among pedophiles, before the 2016 election, PizzaGate conspiracy theorists attempted to accuse prominent politicians of abusing children after an email from then-Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta mentioned ordering pizzas was released by WikiLeaks.

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Instagram Reinstates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Claims Ban on Campaign Account Was a Mistake

Facebook-owned Instagram announced that it has lifted its suspension against the personal account of Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after previously being suspended over supposed misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.

Master of the Universe Big Tech behemoth Meta announced on Sunday that the personal Instagram account for Robert F. Kennedy Jr has been reinstated after being blocked from the social media platform in 2021 for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” according to Meta.

The announcement of lifting the suspension comes just days after Kennedy reported that Instagram had blocked his team from setting up a presidential campaign account on the platform, which seemingly contradicts the company policy of allowing users to engage with politicians.

“As he is now an active candidate for president of the United States, we have restored access to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Instagram account,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement provided to the Washington Post.

The Meta spokesman went on to claim that blocking Kennedy’s campaign from setting up its own account had been an error, saying: “We quickly fixed the issue that prevented the campaign Instagram account from being created.”

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Banned by Major Social Media Site, Campaign Pages Blocked

Twitter owner Elon Musk invited Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a discussion on his Twitter Spaces after Kennedy said his campaign was suspended by Meta-owned Instagram.

“Interesting… when we use our TeamKennedy email address to set up @instagram accounts we get an automatic 180-day ban. Can anyone guess why that’s happening?” he wrote on Twitter. An accompanying image shows that Instagram said it “suspended” his “Team Kennedy” account and that there “are 180 days remaining to disagree” with the company’s decision.

In response to his post, Musk wrote: “Would you like to do a Spaces discussion with me next week?” Kennedy agreed, saying he would do it Monday at 2 p.m. ET.

Hours later, Kennedy wrote that Instagram “still hasn’t reinstated my account, which was banned years ago with more than 900k followers.” He argued that “to silence a major political candidate is profoundly undemocratic.”

“Social media is the modern equivalent of the town square,” the candidate, who is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, wrote. “How can democracy function if only some candidates have access to it?”

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How The FBI Helps Ukrainian Intelligence Hunt ‘Disinformation’ On Social Media

The Federal Bureau of Investigation pressures Facebook to take down alleged Russian “disinformation” at the behest of Ukrainian intelligence, according to a senior Ukrainian official who corresponds regularly with the FBI. The same official said that Ukrainian authorities define “disinformation” broadly, flagging many social media accounts and posts that he suggested may simply contradict the Ukrainian government’s narrative.

“Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the U.S., we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine.

“We asked FBI for support to help us with Meta, to help us with others, and sometimes we get good results with that,” noted Vitiuk. “We say, ‘Okay, this was the person who was probably Russia’s influence.'”

Vitiuk, in an interview, said that he is a proponent of free speech and understands concerns around social media censorship. But he also admitted that he and his colleagues take a deliberately expansive view of what counts as “Russian disinformation.”

“When people ask me, ‘How do you differentiate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very difficult in such an informational flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding, not to be fooled.”

In recent weeks, Vitiuk said, Russian forces have used various forms of disinformation to manufacture fake tension between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the four-star general who serves as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s military.

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Facebook Censors Seymour Hersh’s Article About US Involvement In Nord Stream Pipeline Attack

Facebook is censoring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s story about US involvement in the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines using a ‘fact checker’ with links to the Norwegian government in what represents a clear conflict of interest.

Earlier this year, Hersh published a report asserting that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation which was organized with the aid of the Norwegian government, Norwegian Secret Service and Navy.

Journalist Michael Shellenberger first noticed the issue when he tried to post Hersh’s article to Facebook, but saw the social media giant had slapped a warning label on the link stating, “False information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.”

Except the ‘fact-checkers’ in question aren’t independent at all.

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Facebook Protects Nazis to Protect Ukraine Proxy War

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced on January 19 that the company no longer considers Ukraine’s Azov Regiment to be a “dangerous organization.” The far-right paramilitary group grew out of the street gangs that helped topple Ukraine’s president in the US-backed 2014 coup. Originally funded by the same Ukrainian oligarch that backed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s rise to power, Azov was on the front lines of civil war in Eastern Ukraine, and was later fully integrated into the Ukrainian national guard.

The main outlet to report on this move was the Kyiv Independent (1/19/23), a Ukrainian newsroom closely linked to Western “democracy promotion” initiatives. These ties are reflected in its coverage of Facebook’s move. Take the description of the Azov Regiment:

The group has sparked controversy over its alleged association with far-right groups—a recurring theme used by Russian propaganda.

The “association” with “far-right groups” has been far more than “alleged,” and is well documented and openly acknowledged by members of the organization. Even the use of “far-right” downplays the fact that they have regularly been seen sporting Nazi symbols and even making Nazi salutes. NATO was forced to apologize after tweeting a photo of the regiment, circulated as part of public relations for the war, in which a soldier was wearing a symbol from the Third Reich (Newsweek, 3/9/22).

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Meta Global Affairs Pres: We’re Not ‘Truth Police,’ But We’ll Restrict Trump’s Account if He Casts Doubt on Elections

During a portion of an interview with NBC News Senior Washington Correspondent Hallie Jackson released on Thursday, Meta President for Global Affairs Nick Clegg stated that if former President Donald Trump uses “Facebook and Instagram to cast doubt on and delegitimize the upcoming election,” they will limit the reach of his posts and possibly could keep his posts from being reshared and restrict his ability to run political ads on the platforms, but maintained Meta is not the “truth police, never have been, and we’ll never seek to be.”

Clegg stated, “[I]f he kind of sails…close to the wind and tries to use Facebook and Instagram to cast doubt on and delegitimize the upcoming election, we’ll also take measures like letting him post, but not necessarily having that post appear in people’s feeds, possibly removing the reshare button so people can’t reshare his posts, and if he keeps doing that, possibly also restricting his ability to run political ads on Facebook and Instagram.”

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Meta gave the CDC de facto power to police Covid “misinfo”

The mask is slipping (pun fully intended), all over the place – regarding the Big Tech/Big Government collusion. Now it’s time to pay close attention to the role played by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

We’ve already been awed – just by the magnitude of the whole thing – if not exactly “shocked” by the Twitter Files.

After all, while it was happening, a whole lot of observers surmised that something of the sort had to be behind the unprecedented and, seemingly inexplicable levels of censorship on the platform.

But – what in the world was happening at Facebook, around the same time? After all, Facebook is an almost orders of magnitude bigger and more influential social network than Twitter.

For the time being, we don’t have the same “direct line” to internal documents as is the case with Twitter, which was made possible by the dedication to transparency by the new owner himself.

However, what could be dubbed as the “Facebook Files” are based on credible sources, too – Reason is coming out with a story based on confidential emails that emerged thanks to a court case – the state of Missouri suing the Biden administration.

The emails show that Facebook (and by extension Instagram) representatives and the CDC not only kept in touch at all times, but that the tech giant also “routinely asked government health officials to vet claims relating to the virus, mitigation efforts such as masks, and vaccines.”

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Facebook, Instagram Just Updated Changed Their Policy To Allow Images Of Bare Breasts On The Platforms — But Only For ‘Trans,’ ‘Non-Binary’

Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram are modifying their regulations to allow transgender and non-binary users to post photos and videos featuring their bare breasts, according to an update published on Meta’s advisory board.

The same rules will not apply to biological females. The tech oligarchs will not permit women who identify as female to flash their bare breasts on the social media platforms.

Meta’s Oversight Board ordered Facebook and Instagram to rescind a ban on images of men with breasts who identify as transgender and anyone who identifies as “non-binary,” those who view themselves as neither male nor female.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg instituted the Meta Oversight Board in 2018 to act as the company’s “Supreme Court,” providing the platform’s governing body the authority to make precedent-setting content moderation decisions and censorship regulations.

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