Tag: social media

Facebook and Twitter Silent on Whether Kyle Rittenhouse Support Is Still Banned

Facebook and Twitter banned support for Kyle Rittenhouse across their platforms shortly after the Kenosha riots. After a jury in Wisconsin found Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges brought against him, those same platforms refuse to say if support for the teenager is still banned.

Rittenhouse was found not guilty on five charges including first-degree reckless homicide, two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment. The presiding judge, Bruce Schroeder, also dismissed two additional weapons charges.

As Breitbart News recently reported, Big Tech companies continued to censor statements of support for Rittenhouse, even as the prosecution’s case fell apart:

Over a year old, the ban is still in place on both Facebook and Instagram and is even catching GOP Senate candidates like Josh Mandel in its net.

Facebook says supporting Rittenhouse violates its guidelines on “violence or dangerous organizations.”

Users on Twitter also report that the platform is still suspending them for supporting Rittenhouse.

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Social Media Companies Suppressed Claims of Kyle Rittenhouse’s Innocence

Social media platforms rendered a verdict on Kyle Rittenhouse long before he went to trial, suppressing claims that he was innocent and blocking users from searching for details of the case.

Immediately after the anti-police riots that thrust Rittenhouse into the national spotlight, social media companies began to block users who expressed support for the Illinois teen. Twitter suspended the accounts of users who called Rittenhouse innocent, including the defendant’s own lawyer. Facebook said it “designated this shooting as a mass murder and … removed the shooter’s accounts from Facebook and Instagram.” The platform also blocked searches for “Kyle Rittenhouse.”

Social media platforms often intervene to suppress posts expressing a particular stance on controversial issues. Both platforms censored news stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the month before the 2020 election. Facebook blocked a Gold Star mother’s criticism of President Joe Biden and suppressed a song that criticized the president. Twitter and Facebook also suspended users who oppose vaccine mandates.

The fundraising platform GoFundMe also removed a page set up to support Rittenhouse, which the company said violated its ban on fundraisers involving “the legal defense of alleged crimes associated with hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance.” GoFundMe supported fundraising for the family of one of Rittenhouse’s assailants, Anthony Huber. The site regularly hosts fundraisers for individuals associated with Black Lives Matter. ​

When smaller platforms began raising funds for Rittenhouse, hackers breached the donation lists. News outlets doxxed paramedics and police officers who gave small donations to Rittenhouse’s defense.

Twitter is still banning or suspending users for supporting Rittenhouse, even as the trial proceeds. Facebook searches for Rittenhouse’s name turn up no results. Neither platform responded to requests for comment.

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Murder Charges Filed, Human Remains Found in Missouri Case That Fueled Gruesome TikTok Rumors

Two men charged in September with felony kidnapping have now been charged with murder in the missing persons case of Cassidy Rainwater, a Missouri woman who appeared caged and partially nude in photos sent to the FBI. 

On Wednesday, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department announced the murder charges against Timothy Norton, 56, and James Phelps, 58, in a statement on Facebook, and court documents reveal new disturbing details of the case. An amended criminal complaint shows the two men each still face a kidnapping charge as well as a felony count of abandonment of a corpse, saying they “knowingly disposed of the corpse of Cassidy Rainwater” at or near Phelps’ property without notifying authorities. Court documents reveal that beyond showing Rainwater in a cage, additional photos the FBI had shared with county detectives in September showed Rainwater’s body “bound to a gantry crane device (commonly used for processing wild game),” and depicted her “evisceration and dismemberment.” Authorities had also found what were confirmed by lab testing to be Rainwater’s remains packaged in a freezer and dated “7-24,” court documents said, and had discovered skeletal remains on the property that they believe to be Rainwater’s, as well. They allegedly recovered messages between Phelps and Norton planning Rainwater’s murder on Jul. 24.

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Police caught using online spy tool to plot “pre-crimes”

Tech startup Voyager Labs helps law enforcement agencies use what you post on social media and who you interact with to predict whether you have or “plan to” commit a crime. It is one of a growing number of companies that claim they can use social media analysis to help predict and solve crimes and has opened many questions about privacy.

Non-profit organization Brennan Center obtained documents through freedom of information requests that revealed the strategies Voyager uses violate the first amendment protections. For instance, the software uses posts about Islam and social media usernames indicating Arab pride as signs of potential inclination towards extremism. But they can also be used to target any group.

Additionally, according to the documents, obtained by The Guardian, the company uses questionable processes to access data on social media, and even enables law enforcement officers to infiltrate groups and private accounts using fake personas.

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Instagram censors highly regarded Cochrane Collaboration for medical “misinformation”

Instagram has censored the Cochrane Collaboration, a non-profit organization focused on medical research, for spreading “misinformation” about COVID-19.

In an effort to stop the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus, social media platforms have been censoring content that contradicts the stance of public health bodies, including the CDC and WHO. However, by playing the role of arbiters of truth, online platforms have ended up censoring trustworthy sources.

The latest example of overzealous and rash censorship affected the Cochrane Collaboration on Instagram. The platform prohibited users from mentioning the organization because it “repeatedly posted content that goes against our community guidelines on false content about COVID-19 or vaccines.”

The Cochrane Collaboration is an international team of over 30,000 experts who publish high-quality reviews on medical topics. The organization had published over 7,000 systematic reviews.

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Instagram Bans All Mention of James O’Keefe & Project Veritas

Project Veritas and founder James O’Keefe can no longer even be mentioned on Instagram following the FBI’s raid on his home and organization headquarters earlier this month.

When one tries to tag the whistleblower organization or O’Keefe on the platform, a notification pops up stating they can’t be mentioned because they have “repeatedly posted content that goes against our Community Guidelines on false content about COVID-19 or vaccines.”

Veritas has recently released a series of damning videos of government officials and pharmaceutical executives admitting in their own words that they covered up data about vaccine side effects and that the vaccines were not as effective as natural immunity.

This comes just days after the FBI raided O’Keefe’s private residence and his organization’s headquarters over charges they had stolen the diary of Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden.

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According to Facebook (Meta), the metaverse will be censored

The Facebook executive spearheading the company’s virtual reality efforts hopes to create virtual worlds with “almost Disney levels of safety” but has also acknowledged that moderation “at any meaningful scale is almost impossible.”

Facebook’s parent company Meta is working on creating virtual reality worlds where people will socialize, work, game, and even do shopping using 3D avatars of themselves.

In an internal memo, obtained by the Financial Times, Andrew Bosworth, who will be spearheading Meta’s $10 billion “metaverse” project, alleged that virtual reality can potentially be a “toxic environment,” especially for minorities and women.

The memo notes that content and behavior censorship and moderation could be a big challenge, especially given the company’s poor record in fighting “harmful” content.

“The psychological impact on humans is much greater,” said Kavya Pearlman, chief executive of the XR Safety Initiative, a non-profit focused on developing safety standards for VR, augmented and mixed reality. She further explained that users would retain what happened in the metaverse like it happened in reality.

Bosworth outlined a plan that the company could use to tackle the issue, but experts have noted that policing behavior in a virtual reality setting requires a lot of resources and might not even be possible.

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The CIA Is Trying to Recruit Gen Z—and Doesn’t Care If They’re All Over Social Media

When you pull up to the CIA headquarters in Langley, you have to shout your Social Security number out the window into a speaker, like when you’re ordering fries at a drive-through. Much like the Union that the Agency was formed to protect, the system, it seems, could be more perfect. But I am willing to do what it takes to get the inside story of how the CIA is recruiting and working with the next generation of spies.

One would think it’s basically impossible to get millennials and zoomers into covert jobs. The youngest of this bunch of young people have spent their entire lives online, some since their parents blasted out their first ultrasound picture as a pregnancy announcement, before they’d even gained sentience. If the whole point of being a spy is that nobody knows who you really are and no one can ever find out, how exactly are you supposed to achieve this level of anonymity when you’ve flung untold reams of identifiable content across the digital world? I intended to find out.

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After Cheerleading Censorship for Years, WaPo Now On Receiving End of It, And They’re Pissed

In 2017, the Washington Post made an announcement that they are making their newspaper’s slogan to “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” This slogan, while true, was incredibly ironic and hypocritical as the newspaper has long championed the censorship of their political rivals. If only one side of an argument is allowed to be heard, this is hardly democracy, yet it is the policy of those at the WaPo.

Not to long after proclaiming that democracy dies in the darkness, the WaPo waged a massive campaign of censorship symbolically blowing out candles to ensure their political rivals “die in darkness.” It started with Alex Jones and a hit piece calling for his removal from social media titled “Facebook Wants To Cut Down On Misinformation. So Why Isn’t It Doing Anything About InfoWars”

But even before they changed their motto, WaPo had long championed censorship and they had no problem using lies to achieve these means. In 2016, the Free Thought Project was brought up in the WaPo, who claimed — with zero evidence — that we were part of a Russian propaganda effort to “spread fake news” during the election.

Citing the now-heavily discredited “think tank” known as Prop or Not, the post claimed TFTP and dozens of other news media websites “got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy.”

Clearly no one cared to look at our articles at the time which criticized both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. What’s more, despite being completely disproven and despite the entire ‘Russian meddling’ narrative crashing into ashes earlier this month, the article remains up on their website. 

WaPo’s calls for censoring their political rivals are as numerous as they are scandalous and continue this very day. Just this week, WaPo published a piece demanding that Big Tech immediately censor anyone who challenges the establishment’s narrative on climate change.

The WaPo has even gone so far as to push for modifying the actual First Amendment’s provision for free speech. Yes, they advocated for changing the very constitution of the United States to remove speech they didn’t like. Of course this was done in the vein of “preventing hate speech” but they completely ignored the inevitable effects of such lunacy.

“Yes, the First Amendment protects the “thought that we hate,” but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another,” the article read.

But there are already laws on the books against inciting violence toward others. Not to mention, the WaPo has long pushed “hateful speech” that incites violence against groups with which they disagree. In fact, just last year, the paper took a page straight out of the Nazi propaganda playbook which was used to demonize Jews and used it to dehumanize Trump supporters — as rats who should be exterminated.

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Facebook partners with New Zealand media for funding, will help outlets censor “false comments”

Facebook’s parent company Meta has launched a program to “support” journalism in New Zealand and has made a new commitment to managing “defamation.”

The aim of the program is presented as a way to help media organizations in New Zealand create sustainable business models.

The program includes a Grant Fund, Audience Development Accelerator, the creation of a News Innovation Advisory Group, and the provision of digital training focused on engagement for news organizations.

According to Facebook’s head of public policy for Australia and New Zealand Mia Garlick, the program will involve 12 media organizations with regionally, culturally, and digitally diverse publications. The idea is that these organizations will “come together and try to innovate and learn from experts and really collaborate on new strategies to drive business growth both on and off Facebook.”

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