Tag: social media

The US Government Threatens Tech Companies To Push Censorship Agendas

The elephant in the room with the ongoing controversy about the Biden administration’s push for more internet censorship is the fact that both the US government and the Silicon Valley tech companies who are being pushed to censor are acutely aware that those companies can be brought to their knees by antitrust cases and other regulation if they don’t censor people’s voices in accordance with the government’s wishes.

After Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted on Thursday that the administration has given Facebook a list of accounts to ban for spreading “misinformation” about the Covid vaccine, she has now doubled down saying that people who circulate such materials online should be banned from not just one but all social media platforms.

“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation out there,” Psaki told the press on Friday.

When asked by the press for his thoughts on companies like Facebook, President Biden said the failure of those platforms to adequately censor posts about the vaccine makes them guilty of “killing people”.

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Facebook’s Top Censorship Board Is Filled With Elite, Power-Loving Bureaucrats

Facebook Oversight Board co-chair and Helle Thorning-Schmidt made it very clear that she does not believe free speech is a human right.

“How do you moderate content and how do you find that balance between human rights and free speech, which is a human right, but also other human rights because free speech is not an absolute human right,” the censorship head asked during a live stream this week.

“It has to be balanced with all the human rights and that is what the oversight is there to do,” she added.

Thorning-Schmidt is one of the 20 people who sit on Facebook’s newest attempt to create a mass censorship campaign, which the White House just recently publicly endorsed. The board masquerades as a means of providing support to “people’s right to free expression and ensure those rights are being adequately respected.”

The board’s actions, however, contradict that mission. Their decisions about former President Donald Trump’s ban from the platform and their continued efforts to subdue alternative opinions about COVID-19 have shown, they give anything but an accurate and fair look at content moderation.

“Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right,” the website clearly states, despite employing the efforts of people such as Thorning-Schmidt who spew anti-free speech rhetoric.

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Psaki Says Americans Who Post “Misinformation” Should be Banned From All Platforms

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Friday doubled down on the government’s censorship of Americans.

Psaki on Thursday casually admitted the federal government is censoring American citizens and flagging “problematic” social media posts.

“We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office,” Psaki said Thursday. “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”

On Friday Psaki took it to another level and said Americans who post “misinformation” should be completely unpersoned and should have no access to online platforms.

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Facebook Censorship Board Member: Free Speech Is Not A Human Right

Free speech is not a human right, according to prominent Facebook censorship board member Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

“What we’re trying to find, of course, I think many of us engaging in this conversation, is that middle road. How do you moderate content and how do you find that balance between human rights and free speech, which is a human right, but also other human rights because free speech is not an absolute human right,” the Facebook Oversight Board co-chair said during a live stream of Politico’s Tech 28 spotlight.

“It has to be balanced with all the human rights and that is what the oversight is there to do,” she added.

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Biden’s Press Secretary admits Federal Government is flagging content for Facebook to censor

The White House press secretary Jen Psaki has made a startling admission at a press briefing on Thursday that the US government is actively coordinating with Facebook to flag the posts of United States citizens for being “problematic” and containing COVID-19 “misinformation.”

The admission has raised First Amendment free speech rights implications, particularly as previous lawsuits that have accused Facebook and the government of working together to censor online content have been dismissed due to a judge finding “lack of evidence.”

Psaki’s admission could open the doors to finding that evidence.

“Can you talk a little bit more about this request for tech companies to be more aggressive in policing misinformation? Has the administration been in touch with any of these companies? And are there any actions that the Federal Government can take to ensure their cooperation? Because we’ve seen from the start, there’s not a lot of action on some of these platforms,” Psaki was asked.

“Well, first, we are in regular touch with the social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 Team,” Psaki announced. “Given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation specifically on the pandemic. In terms of actions that we have taken or we’re working to take, I should say, from the Federal Government, we’ve increased disinformation research and tracking. Within the Surgeon General’s Office, we are flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.

Paski continued: “It’s important to take faster action against harmful posts. As you all know, information travels quite quickly on social media platforms. Sometimes it’s not accurate, and Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful violative posts. Posts that would be within their policies for removal often remain up for days. That’s too long. The information spreads too quickly.”

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TWITTER SEES JUMP IN GOVT DEMANDS TO REMOVE CONTENT OF REPORTERS, NEWS OUTLETS

Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) saw a surge in government demands worldwide in 2020 to take down content posted by journalists and news outlets, according to data released by the social media platform.

In its transparency report published on Wednesday, Twitter said verified accounts of 199 journalists and news outlets on its platform faced 361 legal demands from governments to remove content in the second half of 2020, up 26% from the first half of the year.

The biannual report on Twitter’s enforcement of policy rules and the information and removal requests it receives comes as social media companies including Facebook Inc(FB.O) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube face government scrutiny worldwide over the content allowed on their platforms.

Twitter ultimately removed five tweets from journalists and news publishers, the report said. India submitted most of the removal requests, followed by Turkey, Pakistan and Russia.

The social media platform did not previously track such data on requests pertaining to journalists or publishers.

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YouTube censors New Jersey Senate hearing about kids’ mask mandates

As YouTube continues to censor a wide array of topics, not least those around the Covid pandemic, so it’s independent competitors like Rumble continue to attract more creators.

The trend was unbroken last week when Google’s video giant censored a video showing a New Jersey Senate hearing on the topic of forcing school children to wear masks, which concluded the policy may be harmful.

New Jersey-based talk show host and former chair of the College Republican National Committee Bill Spadea announced this, accusing the Democratic majority in the state’s capital, Trenton, of shunning the official event, and YouTube of eventually “not liking” the content of the discussion, and for that reason removing the video.

However, as Spadea explained, the video can still be found on his new channel on Rumble.

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Judicial Watch files open records request asking USPS to disclose social media monitoring documents

Judicial Watch Announced Monday that it filed an open records request against the United States Postal Service, asking the organization to produce documents on its alleged tracking of social media posts regarding protests.

The conservative judicial watchdog group originally filed the suit on April 28 through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The group asked for all documents related to the tracking and collecting of Americans’ social media posts through its Internet Covert Operations Program, according to The Epoch Times.

The FOIA is specifically looking for communication records between the USPS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Department of Homeland Security from Jan.1, 2020. 

“Did the Biden administration weaponize the United States Postal Service to improperly spy on Americans?” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton asked in a statement Monday.

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YouTube reverses censorship of journalist Alison Morrow who highlighted YouTube pro-corporate media bias

YouTube censored and suspended the channel of independent journalist Alison Morrow after she posted a video highlighting several examples of the mainstream media violating the “medical misinformation” rules that are regularly used by the tech giant to punish independent creators on the platform.

After facing mounting backlash over the decision, YouTube reinstated the video.

In the now reinstated video, which is titled “Corporate news can break YouTube’s rules” and features Matt Orfalea (an independent video producer who was recently censored by YouTube for highlighting YouTube censorship), Morrow highlighted two examples of corporate news channels violating YouTube’s medical misinformation policy.

The first example showed a February 2020 clip from the NBC News YouTube channel where one of the presenters states: “Experts caution, masks are not always the answer.” Another presenter states: “If you’re sick or somebody in the family’s sick, then doctors say the mask is an effective way to prevent that virus from spreading, but in a public place, not so much.”

The second example showed a March 2020 clip from the CNN YouTube channel where its Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta discusses the coronavirus and says “there’s some solace in this idea that the vast majority of people aren’t going to get sick from this” and “this is reminding people, I think a little bit, of, of, just flu in general.”

Morrow noted that both of these corporate news clips violate YouTube’s current medical “misinformation” policy but have not been removed with the first clip violating the rule that prohibits claims “claims that masks do not play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19” and the second clip violating the rule that prohibits “claims that the symptoms, death rates, or contagiousness of COVID-19 are less severe or equally as severe as the common cold or seasonal flu.”

She also emphasized that YouTube’s medical misinformation policy is antithetical to the purpose of both science and journalism:

“How is science not always going to be medical misinformation, if science is the very practice of discovering new things? It’s just impossible to do science on YouTube or journalism for that matter. You can’t really do journalism on YouTube unless you’re a corporate entity because obviously journalism is also about questioning narratives and proposing new ideas and you can’t do that if the community guidelines are all about protecting the status quo.”

Morrow then suggested that the purpose of YouTube’s medical misinformation policy is to create “a cast of safe characters that are basically part of the same corporate class as YouTube” and notes that “you could even be saying the exact same thing the corporate news is saying” and still “face the consequences that they are not going to face.”

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