Tag: social media

MEET THE EX-CIA AGENTS DECIDING FACEBOOK’S CONTENT POLICY

It is an uncomfortable job for anyone trying to draw the line between “harmful content and protecting freedom of speech. It’s a balance”, Aaron says. In this official Facebook video, Aaron identifies himself as the manager of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook”, determining “what is acceptable and what is not.” Thus, he and his team effectively decide what content the platform’s 2.9 billion active users see and what they don’t see.

Aaron is being interviewed in a bright warehouse-turned-studio. He is wearing a purple sweater and blue jeans. He comes across as a very likable, smiley person. It is not an easy job, of course, but someone has to make those calls. “Transparency is incredibly important in the work that I do,” he says.

Aaron is CIA. Or at least he was until July 2019, when he left his job as a senior analytic manager at the agency to become senior product policy manager for misinformation at Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In his 15-year career, Aaron Berman rose to become a highly influential part of the CIA. For years, he prepared and edited the president of the United States’ daily brief, “wr[iting] and overs[eeing] intelligence analysis to enable the President and senior U.S. officials to make decisions on the most critical national security issues,” especially on “the impact of influence operations on social movements, security, and democracy,” his LinkedIn profile reads. None of this is mentioned in the Facebook video.

Keep reading

This Mother-Daughter Duo Has Become the Center of Creepy TikTok Conspiracy Theories

At first glance, Bebop and Bebe, a TikTok page with more than two million followers, looks like a typical, albeit somewhat idiosyncratic, family account. The page features videos of Bebop, a girl with stick-straight hair who looks to be about eight or nine years old, mugging for the camera with her mom, a peroxide blond with a fondness for ethereal makeup filters. Together they dance to songs like “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins and Louis Theroux’s “Jiggle Jiggle” remix, lip-synching poorly to audios, usually against the backdrop of what appears to be a splashily decorated preteen girl’s room, with Bebop flaunting a wide range of impressive makeup looks and hairstyles.

It’s only when you go to the comments that you start to get the impression that something more sinister may be afoot. “Wear green if you’re kidnapped <3,” reads one comment with 1,559 likes; another says, “put a heart next to your next video if you’re in danger.” (In the next video the two post, neither Bebop nor Bebe are wearing green, but the title of the video is sandwiched by heart emojis; this is not unusual, however, as there are emojis in most of the titles of their videos.) In one of the videos, to the Ting-Tings’ “That’s Not My Name,” one commenter writes: “She’s not saying hey hey. She’s saying help help.”

Over the past few months, Bebop and Bebe have become the center of a sprawling, multi-armed conspiracy theory that has largely taken root on TikTok, driving millions of views and thousands of ostensibly concerned commenters to their page. Many of these commenters believe Bebop is being forced to produce content, and that a mysterious man who is sometimes seen in the videos — Bebe’s brother, who is occasionally referred to as “the Brother” — is responsible. They also believe Bebop has an older brother, who has been locked out of his social media accounts after refusing to film with the family (a teenage boy can be seen in some older videos, but his absence can easily be explained by the fact that a teenager may not want to appear in TikTok videos with his mom and little sister anymore.)

But the speculation runs even deeper than that. Many believe that Bebop and/or Bebop and Bebe are being trafficked, due to a lock seen in the bedroom they often film in. Some have suggested that the bedroom is in fact a set (something Bebe herself confirmed in a Live, though recording from a set is not uncommon among content creators). Some have proposed, due to BeBop’s sometimes mature appearance, that she is not, in fact, a real child, but an adult or teenager being forced to masquerade as a child, a la Gypsy Rose Blanchard. This particular thread has been fueled by the fact that some (but by no means all) of Bebop and Bebe’s content is genuinely disquieting; in one video, Bebop appears wearing a low-cut police costume more typically seen on an older woman, while in another, she wears a collar commonly associated with the kink community.

Perhaps the most nefarious vein of this narrative, however, is the suggestion that Bebop is not actually Bebop, but a missing child named Aranza Maria Ochoa-Lopez, a four-year-old girl from Vancouver, Washington who was in foster care before allegedly being abducted by her biological mother, Esmerelda Lopez-Lopez. Lopez-Lopez was arrested in 2019 and pled guilty to second-degree kidnapping and robbery and first-degree custodial interference, receiving a 20-month sentence as a result, but Aranza is still missing and believed to be living with relatives in Mexico.

Keep reading

Biden Administration is sued over DHS social media surveillance allegations

The Oversight Project, run by conservative think tank Heritage, has sued the Biden administration over surveillance of people through social media.

The lawsuit demands the release of documents related to the DHS’ contract with Babel Street, a Virginia-based company that provides surveillance and data mining technologies.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

The DHS has a contract with Babel Street to provide Babel X, a tool that scrapes data from smartphone apps and online sources. According to a report on Heritage’s website, government agencies “can aggregate and search that data by any number of keywords and in many languages.”

Speaking to The Washington Post in 2017, the company’s founder Jeff Chapman said: “There are billions of smartphones on the planet. All you have to do is listen to them.”

Keep reading

How Much Did the US Government Pressure Twitter to Ban Alex Berenson?

Nearly a year ago, former New York Times Journalist Alex Berenson was permanently banned from Twitter for writing the following lines about the Covid shot: “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it—at best—as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”

From the beginning of the Covid hysteria, we followed and cited Berenson many times on the Ron Paul Liberty Report. Berenson took government and mainstream media rhetoric about the pandemic the way journalists used to take it: with a heavy dose of skepticism. And not long after he was banned for saying so, even the CDC Director admitted what he wrote is true.

But at the time, he was a danger to the government narrative on Covid, and the “private” social media company Twitter silenced him. They did not only silence one reporter who was a thorn in their side, however. They preemptively silenced anyone else who might might question the narrative. The message was clear to all the would-be Alex Berensons out there: do you want to follow him to the digital gulag?

So not only was Berenson’s free speech under attack—free speech itself was under attack.

Keep reading

UK lawmaker John Penrose proposes dystopian idea to give citizens a truth score on social media

British Conservative Party lawmaker John Penrose, has proposed an addition to the UK’s controversial internet censorship bill, dubbed “The Online Safety Bill,” which continues to get even more Orwellian with each new proposed amendment.

Like something out of dystopian fiction, Penrose, the MP for Weston-super-Mare, has proposed that the government forces online platforms to maintain a score of how truthful a person is, determined by their past statements.

“The purpose of this section is to reduce the risk of harm to users of regulated services caused my (sic) disinformation or misinformation,” the proposal states, with a typo that shows just how much care goes into the wording of legislation that wipes away citizens’ freedoms.

The proposal says that every user that produces online content, including “comments and reviews” and who receives a certain number of online views, which is to be determined by the UK communications regulator, should have their content indexed and assigned a truth score.

The person’s speech is then to be “displayed in a way which allows any user easily to reach an informed view of the likely factual accuracy of the content at the same time as they encounter it.”

Keep reading

New Japanese Law Makes ‘Online Insults’ a Jailable Offense

This week, a Japanese law went into effect making it a jailable offense to be a jerk on the Internet.

As reported by The Japan Times, the legislation, passed in June, strengthens the country’s punishment for “online insults.” According to CNN, “Under Japan’s penal code, insults are defined as publicly demeaning someone’s social standing without referring to specific facts about them or a specific action…The crime is different to defamation, defined as publicly demeaning someone while pointing to specific facts.”

Previously, the penalty for online offensiveness was either a fine of less than ¥10,000 (about $73 USD) or fewer than 30 days in prison. Under the new law, which went into effect Thursday, the penalties increased to as much as a year in prison and a fine of up to ¥300,000 (about $2,200 USD). It also extended the statute of limitations from one year to three.

A push for the law came in 2020, when Japanese wrestler and reality TV star Hana Kimura committed suicide after allegedly receiving abusive messages on social media. The bill briefly stalled over concerns that it would stifle legitimate criticism of politicians. Finally, the legislature reached a compromise, inserting a provision requiring that “a review will be conducted within three years…to determine if it unfairly restricts free speech,” per The Japan Times.

Keep reading

UK communications regulator tells tech platforms to prepare for online censorship bill before it’s even passed

The Office of Communications (Ofcom), UK’s broadcasting and telecommunications authority, has issued a roadmap for tech companies to start preparing to implement the Online Safety Bill.

That’s despite the fact that the bill is still in parliamentary procedure and is yet to pass.

In fact, Ofcom refers to this democratic procedure, the outcome of which should be unknown until MPs vote on the proposal, as a mere technicality: “A countdown to a safer life online.”

Ofcom announced the roadmap document on Twitter, saying that it has presented its plans for the first 100 days of acting as online safety regulator – for when it starts overseeing the implementation of a law that does not yet exist.

And many civil and digital rights advocates are adamant that it should not exist, referring sometimes to the bill as “a censor’s charter.”

Keep reading

Facebook shared deleted user data with cops, fired worker who raised alarms: lawsuit

Facebook employees were able to access deleted user data and share details with law enforcement agencies, according to allegations included in an explosive lawsuit filed by an ex-employee who said he was ousted for raising concerns about the practice.

Brennan Lawson, a former member of Facebook’s global escalations team, said he became concerned after learning in 2018 about a new tool that allowed content screeners to view data from the social media firm’s Messenger app — even if the user had deleted it.

The lawsuit alleges that the protocol allowed workers “to circumvent Facebook’s normal privacy protocols” in a way that the platform’s users were not aware was possible. The tool was reportedly employed to assist law enforcement officials during investigations into social media activity.

“Law enforcement would ask questions about the suspect’s use of the platform, such as who the suspect was messaging, when messages were sent, and even what those messages contained,” Lawson claims in the suit, according to Bloomberg.

“To keep Facebook in the good graces of the government, the Escalations Team would utilize the back-end protocol to provide answers for the law enforcement agency and then determine how much to share,” Lawson adds.

Keep reading

Twitter censors story of British mother who died after reaction to Covid vaccine

Three children in the UK were left without a mother after she died from a massive stroke determined to be caused by blood clots that formed after she received the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, but Twitter is labeling conversations about this information taking place on the platform as “misinformation.”

Previously healthy Lucy Taberer, whose youngest is a five-year-old boy, succumbed to the consequences of the Covid shot 22 days after she was vaccinated. At first, the 47-year-old experienced mild side-effects, described in reports as common, to then develop a bruise, skin rash, and pain that the doctors at first dismissed as being caused by kidney stones.

In the end, it turned out that the victim’s reaction to the vaccine had been to develop blood clots that proved to be fatal.

Her death certificate reads that Taberer died of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and vaccine-associated thrombosis with thrombocytopenia.

Local media, including Leicester Mercury, reported about it, and Taberer’s step daughter tweeted a link to the story, but was quickly shut down by Twitter, which labeled the post as “misleading.”

To add insult to injury, she was advised to click another link, provided by Twitter’s “fact-checkers,” that would “explain” why health officials think Covid vaccines are safe “for most people.”

Keep reading

Twitter is locking accounts that share Highland Park shooter’s videos

Twitter is suspending users for sharing and reporting on videos posted by the Highland Park shooter Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo III who went on a shooting spree during a July 4th parade on Monday.

Crimo was arrested and accused of killing six people and wounding 38 others.

Twitter users who were reporting on early warning signs from the shooter’s old video content by posting and commenting on old clips began to find their posts deleted and find themselves being locked out of their Twitter account.

Several Twitter users contacted Reclaim The Net, sharing screenshots of their locked accounts. In some cases, no reason was given for the deletion and the space on the email about why the account was locked was blank.

When attempting to look at many of the tweets, Twitter simply states: “This tweet violated the Twitter rules.”

Keep reading