Tag: social media

Biden’s Disinformation Chief Nina Jankowicz: Online Mockery of Kamala Harris a Threat to Democracy and National Security

President Joe Biden’s new disinformation chief Nina Jankowicz argued online mockery of Vice President Kamala Harris and other women in public life was a threat to national security.

“Platforms and governments aren’t doing enough,” she wrote on social media. “It’s time to act. Our national security and democracy are at stake.”

The Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the new Disinformation Governance Board led by Jankowicz on Wednesday.

Jankowicz argued that Congress should create new laws to block mockery of women online, citing the volume of “gender disinformation” used to criticize Harris.

“Congress should reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and include provisions against online gender-based harassment,” Jankowicz wrote in a WIRED article highlighting the “abusive content” sent on social media to women in public life.

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Twitter Lawyer Who Cried in Musk Meeting Was Instrumental in Banning Trump

The Twitter lawyer who broke down crying during a meeting about the ramifications of Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company was previously instrumental in banning President Trump as well as censoring information about the COVID lab leak theory.

Yesterday, it was revealed that Twitter’s top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, was reduced to tears during a virtual meeting with the company’s policy and legal teams following Musk’s successful purchase of the platform.

According to Politico, “Gadde cried during the meeting as she expressed concerns about how the company could change,” and “acknowledged that there are significant uncertainties about what the company will look like under Musk’s leadership.”

Gadde was presumably upset by the fact that her power to censor individuals and content may now be restricted under Musk’s leadership.

As head of Trust and Safety, Gadde was hugely influential in defining the company’s view of “hate speech” and was also instrumental in crafting the “healthy conversations” narrative that Twitter has used an excuse to censor blatantly factual information, such as the assertion that ‘trans women’ are not biological men.

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The Biden administration wants private companies to censor online speech

The White House continued pressuring the tech giants to censor content that it deems to be “misinformation” yesterday by throwing its support behind the use of Section 230 and antitrust reforms to combat misinformation.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki shared the Biden administration’s support for these reforms when a reporter asked whether the White House would be interested in working with Twitter, “like it has in the past,” to continue to combat COVID misinformation and disinformation.

The reporter didn’t point to a specific past partnership between the White House and Twitter when asking his question but Twitter has previously facilitated a White House Q&A as part of its “work on COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” and reportedly partnered with the White House to promote COVID vaccines. The White House has also admitted that it regularly contacts social media platforms about misinformation and even flags content for Facebook to censor.

Psaki responded to the question by confirming that Biden’s White House is still “engaging regularly with all social media platforms about steps that can be taken.”

She continued by suggesting that Congress should impose reforms on Big Tech platforms. Specifically, Psaki said the White House would support reforms of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) (which currently gives large tech platforms immunity from civil liability if they act in “good faith” to moderate content), antitrust reforms, and “requiring more transparency” from tech platforms.

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Left-Wing Group Demands Apple Preemptively Nuke Truth Social

A left-wing government watchdog group with a dubious history is demanding Apple engage in mass preemptive censorship with the removal of a free-speech-branded alternative to Twitter from its app store.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a four-page letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday urging the American tech executive to nuke former President Donald Trump’s new platform, Truth Social, from its digital marketplace despite no violations of company guidelines.

“The events of January 6, 2021 highlighted not only democracy’s vulnerabilities, but also the risks associated with the current ecosystem of online speech,” wrote CREW President Noah Bookbinder in the letter. “Every company that now enters into business with Trump must recognize that it is essentially endorsing this dangerous and anti-democratic conduct.”

With not a single post from the entire platform cited or a single company policy violated to justify the app’s removal, Bookbinder argued Truth Social’s association with Trump was enough reason alone to ban the product from the Apple marketplace.

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While Banning People for Facts, Twitter Openly Allows Threats of Murder Against The Establishment’s Political Rivals

Throughout the last two years, Twitter has purged countless voices in the name of preventing the spread of “misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.” World renowned doctors and scientific experts have found themselves wiped from the face of the platform for simply stating facts or predicting things that would eventually come true.

One of the people who has been censored the most is Robert W Malone MD, MS who is one of the inventors of mRNA & DNA vaccines. Dr. Malone has been outspoken about the way the establishment system handled, or rather mishandled, the covid crisis.

His Twitter account had grown to over a half million followers late last year before the platform decided that his alternative views on the pandemic were a danger to the narrative. So they banned him.

Instead of standing up for the free exchange of ideas by experts — which is how science works  — the left cheered for Malone’s censorship, calling him a kook while celebrating the tools of tyrants.

Before Malone, Alex Berenson, a prominent skeptic of the government’s response to COVID-19, was unceremoniously banned from Twitter for a week. His crime? He cited Pfizer’s own clinical trial data.

“Blocked again, for a week this time,” Berenson said on his Substack. “For this tweet, which is completely accurate and does nothing but quote PFIZER’S OWN CLINICAL TRIAL DATA.”

The list goes on.

There seems to be a common theme among those who are banned and those who are not and it has quickly become obvious. If you toe the establishment line and repeat their narrative, you can bend and even break rules that would otherwise result in bans and censorship.

Just last week, after Washington Post columnist and technology reporter Taylor Lorenz wrapped up an anti-bullying campaign for online journalists — literally coming to tears over it and stating that it is not okay under any circumstances — Lorenz began a campaign of her own. Her target, the woman behind the page Libs of TikTok.

Though the establishment left claimed that Lorenz didn’t actually dox the owner of Libs of TikTok, the first revision of her article (archived in this link) on WaPo contained her actual private home address.

The publishing of private addresses like this is not only against Twitter’s terms of service but it also borders on illegal activity — especially if it is meant to drive intimidation, harassment, or stalking. This intent was unmistakable in the piece published in WaPo.

Nevertheless, their piece flourished on the platform and received widespread and viral distribution. But it gets worse.

After the article was published, calls for murdering the owner of Libs of TikTok began to gain traction on the platform. One tweet in particular, directly called for the assassination of Chaya Raichik and included a video of a person loading an AR-15, clearly establishing their intent.

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Censor The Internet Act: EU Agrees to Expand Online Censorship With ‘Digital Services Act’

The European Union is working to massively expand online censorship, strictly regulate speech during times of “crisis” and restrict online anonymity through digital passports.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both lobbied for the EU to back the censorship bill known as the Digital Services Act on Thursday.

From France 24, “EU agrees on new legislation to tame internet ‘Wild West’ “:

The Digital Services Act (DSA) — the second part of a massive project to regulate tech companies — aims to ensure tougher consequences for platforms and websites that host a long list of banned content ranging from hate speech to disinformation and child sexual abuse images.

[…] Tech giants have been repeatedly called out for failing to police their platforms — a New Zealand terrorist attack that was live-streamed on Facebook in 2019 caused global outrage, and the chaotic insurrection in the US last year was promoted online.

The dark side of the internet also includes e-commerce platforms filled with counterfeit or defective products.

[…] The regulation will require platforms to swiftly remove illegal content as soon as they are aware of its existence. Social networks would have to suspend users who frequently breach the law.

The DSA will force e-commerce sites to verify the identity of suppliers before proposing their products.

[…] The European Commission will oversee yearly audits [of Big Tech firms] and be able to impose fines of up to six percent of their annual sales for repeated infringements.

Looking over the outline of the new agreement it’s striking how they seamlessly conflate child sexual abuse material with “illegal hate speech.”

Both are jumbled together as “illegal content.”

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Reddit user banned for quoting Metallica album

A Reddit user was permanently banned for mentioning the title of an album by the metal band Metallica called Kill ‘Em All.

Reddit cited its rules against threatening violence.

The ban was highlighted in a post in the Metallica subreddit. The user posted a video highlighting the censorship, with screenshots showing that the account was banned for threatening violence.

“You’ve been permanently banned for violating Reddit’s rule against threatening violence in the following content,” the first screenshot in the clip reads. “Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not threatening or encouraging violence against people or animals. We don’t tolerate any behavior that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual, groups of people, places or animals.”

The account was banned because of a comment in a post in the Megadeth subreddit. The post asked for opinions on the “Best Debut Album of the Big 4.” The banned account commented: “Kill ‘Em All was definitely what originally brought many people into the metal community. I’d say, from an objective standpoint, it would have to be Kill ‘Em All.”

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Twitch is accused of sexism for banning phrase “I hate women” but not “I hate men”

Twitch is accused of double standards for allowing hateful language against men. Users discovered that the platform allows “i hate men” but blocks “i hate women.”

Earlier this week, Twitch streamer “shirahiko” posted two screenshots on Twitter to expose Twitch’s sexism against men. Per the screenshots, attempting to publish a stream with the title “I hate women,” Twitch blocks it for violating its “moderation policy.”

The same does not happen when users attempt to type the title “I hate men.”

Shirahiko said they wanted to type the title “I hate women” to “mock the fact that people are blowing things out of proportion again by saying ‘all men are bad’ in the Vtuber community.”

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Data Shows Big Tech Censored Biden Criticism 600+ Times Over 2-Year Cycle

The Media Research Center, a media watchdog group, has identified more than 600 occasions in which Big Tech companies censored criticism of President Joe Biden, dating back to March 2020.

The collected data ran through the MRC’s CensorTrack database, which monitors censorship of prominent political voices by leading Silicon Valley platforms, and covered the 24-month period of March 2020 to March 2022. 

The findings revealed that prominent social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter concealed Biden critiques 646 times over the two-year cycle.

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Former Intelligence Officials, Citing Russia, Say Big Tech Monopoly Power is Vital to National Security

A group of former intelligence and national security officials on Monday issued a jointly signed letter warning that pending legislative attempts to restrict or break up the power of Big Tech monopolies — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — would jeopardize national security because, they argue, their centralized censorship power is crucial to advancing U.S. foreign policy. The majority of this letter is devoted to repeatedly invoking the grave threat allegedly posed to the U.S. by Russia as illustrated by the invasion of Ukraine, and it repeatedly points to the dangers of Putin and the Kremlin to justify the need to preserve Big Tech’s power in its maximalist form. Any attempts to restrict Big Tech’s monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow.

While one of their central claims is that Big Tech monopoly power is necessary to combat (i.e., censor) “foreign disinformation,” several of these officials are themselves leading disinformation agents: many were the same former intelligence officials who signed the now-infamous-and-debunked pre-election letter fraudulently claiming that the authentic Hunter Biden emails had the “hallmarks” of Russia disinformation (former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Obama CIA Director Michael Morrell, former Obama CIA/Pentagon chief Leon Panetta). Others who signed this new letter have strong financial ties to the Big Tech corporations whose power they are defending in the name of national security (Morrell, Panetta, former Bush National Security Adviser Fran Townsend).

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