Tag: social media

An army of Big Biotech companies is using psych tactics to ‘create vaccine demand’

“[P]ublic health experts know that the last inch – getting the vaccine from vial to arm – can be the hardest,” according to the Vaccination Demand Observatory

Launched last week, the Observatory runs a “beta dashboard” of data and resources “intended for select global public health professionals.”

The Observatory was established by a group called the Public Good Projects (PGP) which “designs and implements large-scale behavior change programs for the public good,” UNICEF – which has received $86.6 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation since 2020 – and the Gates-subsidized Yale Institute for Global Health. .

PGP was founded by Joe Smyser, a public health academic who trained at the CDC and has partnered with Google and Facebook. Its board members include executives from Merck pharmaceuticals, Pepsi, Levi-Strauss, the Advertising Council, Sesame Street, Campbell’s, and TikTok.

PGP’s website says that through “media monitoring and bots, grassroots social media organizing, or thought leadership, we deploy our considerable resources and connections to communication for change.”

Bots – or internet robots, also known as crawlers – can scan content on webpages all over the internet and create automated conversations and comments.

“PGP is monitoring coronavirus-related media conversations 24/7 to provide organizations with real-time public health expertise and messaging guidance.”

The group has promoted vaccines before. It developed the #StopFlu campaign, recruiting 120 “‘micro’ social media influencers” in the “African American and Latinx communities across eight states” and giving them prompts to sell their audiences the ideas that flu is a serious problem and that healthy people need flu shots.

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Twitter Will Now Call Out ‘Mean Tweets’ – Before They Are Even Sent

To combat toxicity on the platform, social media website Twitter is reportedly developing a feature to makes users reconsider sending messages that its system detects as “mean” or offensive. Initial tests show that 34 percent of users who received the warning chose to revise their message or not send it at all.

NPR reports that Twitter is attempting to make its users more conscientious about the language they use on the platform and is encouraging positivity by implementing a new feature that will detect “mean” replies on its service before a user presses send.

When Twitter detects that a user is about to post something that could be seen as offensive, an automatic prompt will be displayed that states: “Want to review this before tweeting?” The user is then offered three choices: tweet, edit, or delete.

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Donald Trump’s New Blog Is Riddled With Facebook and Google Trackers, Share Buttons For Big Tech

As Donald Trump’s new blog launched this week, Facebook’s ADL-supported “Oversight Board” upheld the corporate monopoly’s decision to permanently ban Trump from the platform. Despite this, the President’s new blog is loaded with trackers from Facebook and Google, and features prominent share buttons for Facebook and Twitter while ignoring the free speech platforms used by the majority of Trump supporters, such as Gab, Telegram, and Parler.

Gab CEO Andrew Torba was among the first to uncover the tracking pixels embedded in the new blog that Trump launched on Tuesday called “From The Desk Of Donald J. Trump.”

Despite the fact that the new blog has zero user-oriented features aside from allowing Trump to post his email messages from the Save America 45 PAC directly to the site, the blog features many prominent donation buttons that encourage supporters to donate up to $5,000, including a $250 button that is prominently animated and jumps around the screen.

No indication is given as to where the donations will go, other than a vague message that states “President Trump is calling on you to step up and become a founding member of his Save America team.” Donators are apparently supposed to become ecstatic at the thought of President Trump potentially seeing their name on a “Founding Member Donor List.”

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Psaki Says Biden Administration Wants MORE Social Media Censorship – While Also Claiming They Value First Amendment

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday that the Biden administration wants more social media censorship — while also claiming to value the First Amendment.

Psaki’s comments came after Facebook announced their decision not to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s accounts.

The Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden believes that “major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations and elections.”

Psaki went on to indicate that Biden believes Big Tech must do more to silence “life threatening” speech on social media.

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Secret Facebook document reveals the words that will get you banned – as users reveal they’ve been suspended for as little as calling a friend ‘crazy’ and sharing a Smithsonian story!

Facebook users have shared stories of receiving bans after jokingly calling their friend ‘crazy’, sharing a Smithsonian magazine story on tribal New Guinea and labelling someone ‘sad’. 

The social media platform is understood to have internal guidelines which are not made public on moderation. In documents seen by The Wall Street Journal moderators are told the sentences that are and aren’t allowed.  

An example given for a sentence not allowed is: ‘It’s disgusting and repulsive how fat and ugly John Smith is.’ 

But the document adds: ‘We do not remove content like “frizzy hair,” “lanky arms,” “broad shoulders,” etc. since “frizzy,” “lanky,” and “broad,” are not deficient or inferior, and therefore not degrading.”’    

Recent graduate Colton Oakley says he was banned from posting for three days after calling those who are angry about loan cancellation ‘sad and selfish.’ 

Writer Alex Gendler claims he was stopped from posting after sharing a Smithsonian magazine story on tribal New Guinea. 

And history teacher Nick Barksdale told The Wall Street Journal he received a 30 day ban after writing to a friend ‘man, you’re spewing crazy now!’ 

Facebook said this removal was a mistake but Barksdale asked: ‘If you use the term ‘crazy,’ does that automatically get you banned?’

Artist Sunny Chapman, who has received bans, said: ‘What I’m learning about Facebook is not to talk on Facebook.’   

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Twitter Censors, Locks Out Media Right News for Quoting Antifa in Headline

Twitter has locked out the Media Right News account after the America First news outlet tweeted out a headline which included a quote from Antifa activists.

The Media Right News account was locked on Tuesday, it was revealed to National File. The account was accused by Twitter of engaging in “targeted harassment,” for tweeting out a headline of a story they had covered last week. The account was hit with the lock only days after tweeting out the story, entitled “Antifa Hit List, Recordings Exposed by ABC Affiliate: ‘Let’s Kill Some Cops’,” with Twitter likely targeting the tweet due to the quote from Antifa activists.

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“Content Modification” – Facebook’s New Campaign Should Have Free Speech Advocates Freaking Out

In 1964, Stanley Kubrick released a dark comedy classic titled “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” The title captured the absurdity of getting people to embrace the concept of weapons of mass destruction. The movie came to mind recently with the public campaign of Facebook calling for people to change her attitudes about the Internet and rethink issues like “content modification” – the new Orwellian term for censorship.

The commercials show people like “Joshan” who says that he was born in 1996 and grew up with the internet.” Joshan mocks how much computers have changed and then asks why our regulations on privacy and censorship cannot evolve as much as our technology. The ads are clearly directed at younger users who may be more willing to accept censorship than their parents who hopelessly cling to old-fashioned notions of free speech.  Facebook knows that it cannot exercise more control over content unless it can get people to stop worrying and love the censor.

There was a time when this would have been viewed as chilling: a corporate giant running commercials to get people to support new regulations impacting basic values like free speech and privacy. After all, Joshan shows of his first computer was a “giant behemoth of a machine” but that was before he understood “the blending of the real world and the internet world.”

The Facebook campaign is chilling in its reference to “privacy” and “content modification” given the current controversies surrounding Big Tech. On one level, the commercial simply calls for rethinking regulatory controls after 25 years. However, the source of the campaign is a company which has been widely accused of rolling back on core values like free speech. Big Tech corporations are exercising increasing levels of control over what people write or read on the Internet. While these companies enjoy immunity from many lawsuits based on the notion of being neutral communication platforms (akin to telephone companies), they now censor ideas deemed misleading or dangerous on subjects ranging from climate denial to transgender criticism to election fraud.

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Black Lives Matter Releases Absurd Updated Set of Demands

Insincere slogans such as “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” “Silence Is Violence” and “Is My Child Next?” have all helped the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter movement gain a startling foothold in American politics and culture.

Black Lives Matter recently accused Joe Biden of “terrorizing” their neighborhoods “more than Trump.”

Now, the group is capitalizing on the unlimited attention from the media and has released an “updated” list of demands.

One of their most absurd demands calls for Donald Trump convicted for his actions on January 6 at the U.S. Capitol.

BLM also demands that lawmakers resist using the January 6th mayhem as an excuse for cracking down on BLM’s “mostly peaceful” demonstrations.

“We are joining Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, and others who are demanding Trump be immediately convicted in the United States Senate. Trump must also be banned from holding elected office in the future,” the group says in its updated demands.

They also want Trump to be “permanently” banned from social media.

“Trump has always used his digital media platforms recklessly and irresponsibly to spread lies and disinformation. Now it is clearer than ever that his digital media is also used to incite violence and promote its continuation. He must be stopped from encouraging his mob and further endangering our communities, even after the inauguration,” the group says.

BLM is also calling for retaliation against any Republican who not only supported Trump but also those who expressed concern about the final Electoral College vote count.

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Biden administration considers chat app surveillance

The Biden administration is reportedly considering partnering with private companies to track “extremist chatter by Americans online” as part of a plan that would allow federal agencies to circumvent the current legal limits on data collection.

According to CNN’s sources inside the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the plans would target private and encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram and involve “using outside entities who can legally access these private groups to gather large amounts of information that could help DHS identify key narratives as they emerge.”

Under existing law, the DHS is barred from assuming false identities to gain access to private groups and apps.

But according to CNN, some of the outside entities that are being considered by the DHS include researchers and non-profits that use covert identities to access private groups on platforms such as Telegram.

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