Tag: social media

British Medical Journal criticizes Facebook over “inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible” “fact-check” used to censor

The editor of The British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the world’s oldest and most respected medical journals, has written a letter to Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to bring to his attention an “incorrect” fact-check on one of its reports.

The report was titled: “Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.”

A former employee at Ventavia, a research company that helped with the trials of the Pfizer Covid vaccine, provided The BMJ with dozens of internal documents, photos, email, and recordings, that revealed “a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety,” according to the letter.

“We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites,” the letter, written by BMJ editor Fiona Godlee, further claims.

The BMJ hired an investigative reporter to write the story, which was published on November 2. The article had been peer reviewed, legally reviewed, and subjected to The BMJ’s high editorial standards.

However, starting November 10, Facebook users started reporting problems when trying to share the article. Some said they were unable to share, others said their posts were flagged with a warning saying, “Missing context… Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Others were warned about the consequences of repeatedly sharing “false information.”

The BMJ’s article was fact-checked by Lead Stories, a Facebook contractor. The BMJ described the fact-check performed by Lead Stories as “inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.”

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Maxwell Case: Surveilled And Silenced

The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, former partner of Jeffrey Epstein, looks like it is being set up to fail. Prosecutors rested their case after nine days in which victims seemed barely prepared for cross-examination and co-conspirators were notable by their absence.

Even this threadbare reckoning was too much information for Twitter, which banned a popular account reporting daily from Manhattan Federal Court. The new Twitter CEO has previously said the company is not bound by the First Amendment, and blocked posts that were drawing 500,000 views.

The touchy revelation seems to have been that hard drives removed from Jeffrey Epstein’s townhouse in 2019 already had FBI tags on them, suggesting they’d previously been seized and returned to the predator.

The state-corporatist media, like the federal prosecutors, have ignored the clear implication of surveillance and even blackmail. The court case is limited to six counts relating to sex trafficking and Maxwell’s alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of teen women.

Not only does it seem U.S. agencies may have been complicit in compromising individuals — Twitter tries to stop us from knowing. Kudos to The Free Press Report for its daily summary of the trial.

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Liberals 3X More Likely Than Conservatives To Report People On Social Media

Liberals are three times more likely than conservatives to report people on social media to Big Tech companies for possible terms and regulations violations, a new poll suggests.

According to the Cato 2021 Speech and Social Media National Survey, of the 2,000 people polled, liberals, even moderate ones, were far more likely to encourage Big Tech-led censorship of their peers on apps such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

“This behavior is highly tied to political ideology,” the poll notes.

While 65 percent of strong liberals, 44 percent of moderate liberals, and 32 percent of moderates testified that they reported another user for “sharing offensive content or false information,” only 21 percent of moderate conservatives and 24 percent of strong conservatives said they did the same.

In addition to reporting people to Big Tech companies, 80 percent of strong liberals and 68 percent of moderate liberals said they have blocked or unfriended someone for their posts “about politics or science.” Only 48 percent of moderates, 44 percent of moderate conservatives, and 46 percent of strong conservatives reported doing the same.

The survey also found that “altogether, conservatives are more likely than liberals to have personal or near personal experience of being penalized by social media companies for the content they’ve posted to their accounts.”

The poll reinforces an alarming trend indicating a shrinking level of tolerance and a desire for censorship among the left. In a recent poll of 850 private and public college, university, and trade school students spread across the United States, Generation Lab and Axios found “Young Dems more likely to despise the other party.”

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New Fauci-Zuckerberg Emails Reveal Offer of ‘Data Reports’ To Aid Lockdown Policies, Vaccine Development.

In private emails between Mark Zuckerberg and Anthony Fauci – obtained exclusively by The National Pulse – the Facebook founder and CEO offered to send “data reports” on users to “facilitate decisions” about COVID-19 lockdowns.

The revelation is a stark example of how Big Tech corporates and government can easily collude using user data to restrict the liberties of the general public.

In the exchange, Zuckerberg insists: “I want to make sure you have all the resources you need to expedite the development of a vaccine.”

Zuckerberg – whose personal foundation referenced in the email plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into securing a victory for then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020 – offered the assistance to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director just one month after the pair had connected over emails that were redacted by the U.S. government.

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Facebook, Google, and Snapchat Are Bypassing Apple’s APP Tracking Transparency and Still Collecting Data on Users

Downloading “free” apps onto devices more often than not allows app providers to collect personal data on users.  Of course, companies that manufacture and sell devices tend to collect personal data on users too (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).  Having access to this data allows companies and providers to analyze users’ habits and preferences so they can market additional products and services to them.  They can also sell users’ data to 3rd parties.  This practice is sometimes referred to as “Surveillance Capitalism.”  As more customers are becoming aware of this, more want to be able to “opt out” of privacy invasive data collection.  Companies aren’t necessarily making this easy though.  Recently Verizon was exposed for automatically enrolling its customers into a new program that scans users’ browser histories.  Facebook, Google, and Snapchat are now also being exposed for continuing to collect data on without users’ knowledge or consent.

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Twitter will now ban users that repeatedly claim vaccinated people can spread Covid

Twitter has quietly updated its “COVID-19 misleading information policy” to impose new sanctions on tweets about vaccines, PCR tests, and health authorities. These sanctions include removing and labeling tweets. Both types of sanctions also result in Twitter users accruing strikes on their account which can lead to a permanent suspension.

While the top of Twitter’s COVID-19 misleading information policy page currently states “Overview November 2021,” a December 2 archive of the page shows that the page was updated and the “Overview November 2021” text was added after December 2.

One of the most notable changes to this “COVID-19 misleading information policy” we noticed is related to claims about whether vaccinated people can spread the coronavirus. The policy now states that Twitter will label tweets with “corrective information” and give users a strike if they:

  • Claim that “the vaccines will cause you to be sick, spread the virus, or would be more harmful than getting COVID-19”
  • Post what Twitter describes as “false or misleading claims that people who have received the vaccine can spread or shed the virus (or symptoms, or immunity) to unvaccinated people”

This means Twitter users could now be sanctioned for sharing or discussing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) admission that “vaccinated people can still become infected and have the potential to spread the virus to others.”

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Secret Twitter program fast-tracks elite users’ takedown demands

Facebook was recently raked over the coals by a former employee for having policies that give preferential treatment and protect high profile users only, but now it seems this is not such a rare occurrence among social media giants.

Take Twitter, for example, which just got exposed for running a secret program designed to give priority to its most prominent users, and protect them from what is perceived as attacks by “trolls and bullies.”

Twitter is carrying out its decision, Bloomberg reported, to protect the political elites and celebrities via a program called Project Guardian, that pushes reports about abusive content posted against these users to the front of the moderation queue.

Apart from shielding who Twitter picks as the most important people on the platform (reports about the secretive program say that many who are protected by it are unaware of this), the company is also able to control what content gets viral and has wide reach, and quickly stem the spread of tweets it disapproves of.

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Facebook Court Filing Admits ‘Fact Checks’ Are Just A Matter Of ‘Protected’ Opinion

Surprisingly little attention is being paid to a bombshell admission made by the attorneys representing the corporation formerly known as Facebook, Inc., which has now transitioned into Meta Platforms, Inc.

In a court filing responding to a lawsuit filed by John Stossel claiming that he was defamed by a “fact check” Facebook used to label a video by him as “misleading,” Meta’s attorneys assert that the “fact check” was an “opinion,” not an actual check of facts and declaration of facts. Under libel law, opinions are protected from liability for libel.

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