Tag: social media

World Economic Forum makes censorship pledge to “tackle harmful content and conduct online”

The World Economic Forum, an international group that works to “shape global, regional and industry agendas,” has formed a new “Global Coalition for Digital Safety” that’s made up of Big Tech executives and government officials and intends to come up with new “innovations” to police “harmful content and conduct online.”

The scope of so-called “harmful” content that will be targeted by this Global Coalition for Digital Safety is far-reaching and encompasses both legal content (such as “health misinformation” and “anti-vaccine content”) and illegal content (such as child exploitation and abuse and violent extremism).

Big Tech companies already censor millions of posts under their far-reaching rules that prohibit harmful content and misinformation. They also publish detailed quarterly reports about this censorship.

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Babylon Bee CEO says satirical site ‘punching back’ against liberal media, Big Tech censorship

“Facebook recently announced they’ll be moderating satire to make sure it doesn’t ‘punch down.’ Anything that punches down—that is, anything that takes aim at protected targets Facebook doesn’t want you joking about—doesn’t qualify as ‘true satire,’” Dillon wrote. “In fact, they’ve made it clear they’ll consider jokes that ‘punch down’ to be hatred disguised as satire.” 

Dillon noted that Slate recently published a piece that accused the Bee of punching down. 

“This is not a coincidence. Having failed in their effort to lump us in with fake news, the media and Big Tech are looking for new ways to work together to deplatform us. They now hope to discredit us by saying we’re spreading hatred—rather than misinformation—under the guise of satire,” Dillon wrote. “But we’re not punching down.’ We’re punching back.”

Dillon feels “the left’s new prohibition of ‘punching down’ is speech suppression in disguise” and blasted anyone who plays along. 

“It’s people in positions of power protecting their interests by telling you what you can and cannot joke about. Comedians who self-censor in deference to that power are themselves a joke,” he wrote. 

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Emails Show Biden Campaign Demanding Facebook Censor Posts on Election Integrity

A number of emails seen by CNN — which uses them to make the case that the platform isn’t censoring enough — show that the Biden campaign repeatedly pressured Facebook to censor posts from the Trump campaign and its supporters about election integrity.

CNN’s own reporting confirms that Facebook changed its policies following the email exchange with Biden officials, yet goes on to quote Democrat activists who complain that the platform is still not censoring enough conservative content.

One post that the Biden campaign tried to have censored during the 2020 election was a video from Donald Trump Jr. in September 2020 calling for supporters to monitor early voting and counting boards.

Biden campaign officials tried to characterize the video as a call for violence, because Don Jr used the term “army” to refer to the volunteer effort, claims that were rebuffed by Facebook.

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Twitter censors UK hypocrite Health Secretary “Matt Hancock” from Photos and Videos search amid public scandal over affair and social distancing breach

The UK’s Health Secretary is currently embroiled in controversy after being caught on CCTV in a secret affair with an aide. The leaked CCTV footage shows Matt Hancock breaching social distancing guidelines and engaging in kissing and an embrace with his aide Gina Coladangelo. Hancock has been married to his wife Martha for 15 years and the couple have three children together.

Yet, while the video has caused national outrage at the hypocrisy of the Health Secretary, the video itself is suddenly harder to find on Twitter as the platform has censored the term Matt Hancock from its photos and videos search.

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YouTube deletes President Trump interview

YouTube has removed another interview with former President Trump, continuing its pattern of blacklisting Trump from its platform, even when appearing as a guest on other channels.

This time, Trump’s interview with David Brody on “The Water Cooler” show on the Real America’s Voice news network has been purged after the tech giant claimed that the video contained “content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election.”

During the interview, Trump responded to headlines that claimed he’d admitted he lost the 2020 US presidential election by saying: “I never admitted defeat.”

He also said it’s up to the public and “perhaps, politicians” to decide wether the election was fraudulent and added: “I don’t think there’s ever been a case like this where hundreds of thousands of votes will be found. So we’ll have to see what happens.”

Not only was this Trump interview scrubbed but the Real America’s Voice YouTube channel was also hit with a strike which blocks it from uploading or live streaming for seven days.

Real America’s Voice program director Roger Hudson described the censorship of this Trump interview as “a little heavy-handed and probably inappropriate” and said Trump “didn’t say what they [YouTube] said he said.”

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Emails Show Biden Campaign Pressured Facebook to Censor Trump Before the Election

Emails obtained by CNN reveal how the Biden campaign pressured Facebook to censor President Donald Trump before the 2020 election.

The messages reveal how Biden campaign officials repeatedly insisted that Facebook remove information that it deemed to be ‘violent rhetoric’, a concern that seemed to be absent during months of leftists rioting and burning down entire city blocks throughout the summer.

After a deluge of public and private complaints by members of Biden’s team and other Democrats, a former Biden campaign staffer said Facebook “essentially did nothing” in response.

The focus was primarily on the official Team Trump account, with Biden officials infuriated that Facebook didn’t remove enough videos that warned people of upcoming election fraud.

Gee, I wonder why they were concerned about that.

“It was the most frustrating series of conversations,” a Biden aide said. “We went to Facebook with a series of letters, public complaints, private emails and all throughout, they essentially did nothing.”

Naturally, CNN spins the story as an example of how Facebook failed to clamp down on “misinformation,” despite the social network giant banning many of Trump’s most prominent supporters before the election and engaging in industrial-scale levels of censorship of pro-Trump content.

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