Tag: social media

Democrats Plan to Spend Tens of Millions of Dollars to Fund Hundreds of Content Creators

Democrats are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to spin narratives on social media as part of a $110.5 million fundraising effort, according to images of slides from a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) donor event obtained by Breitbart News.

Under a heading “Urgent Off-Year Funding Needs” on one slide, it states the DCCC looks to raise $10 million for social media and content creation, $20 million for “Accountability work,” $15 million for “Voter Registration,” $5 million for “Recruitment” and “Primary Engagement,” and $2 million for “Research” and a “Rapid Response Infrastructure.”

One goal is to enlist at least 667 content creators, with the aim of reaching 83 million Americans and drawing 6.6 million engagements, per another slide that focuses on content creation. The program aims to engage at least 167 “Non-Political Creators” and 8 “Vetted Creators for ads in every target state.”

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Jasmine Crockett Sees Congress As The Side Hustle To Her Full-Time ‘Influencer’ Gig

When Democratic firebrand Jasmine Crockett agreed to be profiled by The Atlantic, she probably expected just another boot-licking puff piece that would add to her leftist street cred and fundraising numbers. What she got was a surprisingly balanced account of her background and meteoric rise in a collapsing political party, which is why she reportedly tried to spike the article.

Perhaps Crockett was incensed by the embarrassing anecdote that staff writer Elaine Godfrey related at the very beginning of the piece. During her quixotic effort to be named the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee last month, Crockett whined that she was “[feeling] a little used” by her colleagues. When Godfrey asked her about her failure to get the post, she said, “It’s like, there’s one clear person in the race that has the largest social-media following,” as if that explained why she should be handed power and responsibility on a plate.

Godfrey’s journalistic honesty has accidentally revealed an inconvenient truth about the new blood on the American left. Crockett and her ilk aren’t true public servants, but social media influencers who see representing the American people as a mere side hustle. This narcissistic approach to their duties makes them dangerous to the body politic.

A Lack of Substance

One of the more disturbing aspects of social media is how it grants unscrupulous users the ability to craft a false identity for themselves. For Crockett, this persona is the “tough black girl from the Dallas streets.” She regularly hurls viral insults at people such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, or Hispanics who voted for Donald Trump.

Though she wrongly characterizes these antics as “forthrightness,” Godfrey refuses to buy fully into Crockett’s charade. She reminds her readers that Crockett hails from St. Louis, where she attended a private high school before going to Rhodes College, a small liberal arts school in Tennessee. The closest Crockett ever got to life on city streets was a role in the musical “Little Shop of Horrors” in her college days.

Crockett credits her entry into law and then politics to an incident at Rhodes in which she and a few other black students received threatening and racist letters from an anonymous source. According to this tale, the black female attorney hired by the college to look into the matter became Crockett’s “shero” and inspiration. Oddly, Godfrey could not fully confirm any of these details; Crockett could not even remember the name of this “sheroic” attorney. All in all, this origin story sounds like a social justice warrior’s Instagram fantasy.

When it comes to Crockett’s policy goals, Godfrey is at a loss; apart from mentioning her law firm’s defense of Black Lives Matter demonstrators and a vague reference to her support for “criminal justice reform” while in the Texas state legislature, the reader gains no insight into what issues concern her or those she represents. Instead, we are treated to a description of her “unofficial leadership” of more than 50 Texas Democrats who fled their state to D.C. in 2021 in order to stymie legislation meant to tighten and clarify voting rules, a stunt that guaranteed Crockett a career on the national level while frustrating more moderate Democrats.

But Crockett clearly knows how to get clicks and likes. Godfrey explains, “On TikTok and Instagram … she monitors social-media engagement like a day trader checks her portfolio,” which is strange behavior for a legislator. The lack of substance behind Crockett’s style reveals that for her, government is not a sacred trust between her and her constituents, but a stage on which she can strut and receive applause.

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Why Parents Are Suing Snapchat Over Fentanyl Deaths

Over and over, Amy Neville forces herself to tell people what happened to her 14-year-old son.

“I relive it. … I’m out there sharing the hardest thing that’s ever happened in my life,” she said. “It’s worth it, because I know we’re saving lives.”

Neville, 52, wiped away tears as she spoke those words during an interview with The Epoch Times on June 23. That day marked five years since her son, Alexander Neville, unknowingly ingested fentanyl and died—a tragedy that could easily befall any family, she said.

Through the nonprofit Alexander Neville Foundation, the grieving mother shares her personal pain with other parents. By her estimation, Amy Neville has given a couple hundred presentations in person and online; about 300,000 people have heard her warnings about the dangers that lurk on social media, leading to deaths such as Alex’s.

Neville also serves as the lead plaintiff in a groundbreaking court case that could affect the way Big Tech operates in the United States.

She believes that changes are needed to prevent many deaths among young people who, like Alex, flock to Snapchat and other online platforms.

Neville and her husband are among 63 fentanyl victims’ families suing Snapchat. They allege that the platform is a defective product and a public nuisance and that it should be held responsible for fentanyl overdose deaths, poisonings, and injuries.

Snap Inc., parent company of Snapchat, “vehemently denies” the allegations, a judge noted.

In the suit, the Social Media Victims Law Center represents dozens of families whose children “died of fentanyl poisoning from contaminated drugs purchased on Snapchat,” Matthew Bergman, the Seattle-based center’s founding attorney, told The Epoch Times.

Snap did not respond to a request for comment.

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And There It Was — One Sentence in Declassified Docs Proves We All Were Censored to Protect Hillary

It’s hard to fathom the evil that led to creating fake intelligence to frame then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as a Russian spy and traitor to his country. We’ve seen in recently declassified documents that Hillary Clinton didn’t do this alone. She commanded dozens, if not hundreds, of willing participants, including the George Soros foundation, President Barack Obama, the FBI, the weaponized intelligence agencies, and others, to bring Donald to his knees. 

Buried deep in the latest tranche of declassified documents called the Durham annex report, however, a deep state hawk has found something that is equally or more evil than changing intelligence to manipulate one election’s outcome. They created a way to take over elections in perpetuity. 

Mike Benz, a former State Department official in the Trump 45 administration who now runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, found what is tantamount to the Rosetta stone for the Censorship Industrial Complex. 

And it’s right here: “The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue. Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel menace [sic] since both POTUS and VPOTUS have acknowledged the fact [that] IC would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable.”

In a series of posts on X, Benz laid out why this sentence from an email from a Soros Open Society Eurasian official told the story of how they planned to get Trump even after they’d lost the election. They magic’d up a system whereby elections would now become “critical infrastructure” run by the feds.

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Extremist influencers ‘weaponizing femininity,’ warns Canadian intelligence report

Women’s workout routines that devolve into anti-government rhetoric. Makeup tutorials with anti-feminist commentary. Personal finance videos that blame immigrants for stealing jobs.

According to a Canadian government intelligence report obtained by Global News, extremist movements are “weaponizing femininity” on social media to attract more women into their ranks.

Prepared by Canada’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC), the report warns that female “extremist influencers” are using popular online platforms to radicalize and recruit women.

Their strategy: embed hardline messages within “benign narratives” like motherhood and parenting, allowing them to draw in women who weren’t intentionally seeking out extremist content online.

“A body of open-source research shows that women in extremist communities are taking on an active role by creating content specifically on image-based platforms with live streaming capabilities,” it said.

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Irish High Court Rejects X’s Challenge to Online Censorship Law

The Irish High Court has thrown out a legal challenge by X, dealing a blow to the company’s pushback against Ireland’s new censorship rules for online video-sharing services.

X had taken aim at Coimisiún na Meán, the country’s media watchdog, accusing it of stepping beyond legal limits with its Online Safety Code.

The rules demand that platforms hosting user-generated videos take active steps to shield users from “harmful” material. The company had described the regulator’s actions as “regulatory overreach.”

Mr Justice Conleth Bradley, delivering judgment on Wednesday, found no merit in X’s application for judicial review. The court concluded that the regulator’s code was lawful and that its provisions fell within the scope of both the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) and Ireland’s 2009 Broadcasting Act.

According to the ruling, the code does not clash with the Digital Services Act and can function in tandem with EU law.

Responding to the outcome, Coimisiún na Meán said it welcomed the decision and intended to examine the ruling closely before offering more detailed comment.

The case comes as X begins rolling out new age verification systems to meet obligations under the Irish code, alongside compliance efforts aimed at satisfying UK and wider EU digital censorship regulations.

The ruling marks a significant moment in the ongoing struggle over who decides the boundaries of online speech and content moderation.

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UK Government Emails Reveal Push to Pressure Tech Platforms to Remove Lawful Speech on Immigration and Policing

A series of internal emails from the UK government has revealed an aggressive push to monitor and suppress online posts deemed “concerning,” sparking alarm over creeping censorship under the banner of combating misinformation and community unrest.

The documents, shared by US Rep. Jim Jordan, paint a picture of state officials flagging lawful speech, pressuring tech companies to remove content, and targeting what they described as “concerning narratives about the police and a ‘two-tier’ system.”

One of the most widely circulated videos under scrutiny featured a street celebration in Manchester where participants waved Pakistani flags. Captioned “It looks like Islamabad but it’s Manchester,” the video, posted by Radio Genoa on X, amassed over 14 million views.

Government emails described this kind of footage as misleading or dangerous, with one note labeling it an example of content that is “shared out of context in order to incite fear of the Muslim community.”

Another email, dated August 3, 2024, acknowledged “significant volumes of anti-immigrant content” online and pointed to “concerning narratives about the police and a ‘two-tier’ system that we are seeing across the online environment.”

The correspondence shows government officials not only monitoring speech but actively collaborating with platforms to address posts, even ones not violating the law or even the platform’s terms of service.

Officials were asking for direct intervention. One message requested clarity from platforms about “what content you are seeing across your platform; and b) any measures you have taken in response.” A follow-up email urged platforms to act quickly, stating, “We’d be grateful if you could come back to us on those two points as soon as you are able to.”

In one particularly troubling exchange dated August 4, government officials flagged a video showing someone scrolling through a freedom of information request that referred to asylum seekers as “undocumented fighting age males.”

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Australia Bans YouTube for Children Under 16

The government of Australia has reversed its decision to grant YouTube an exemption from its sweeping ban on social media for children under 16. YouTube’s parent company, Google, is threatening legal action, but Australian officials vowed to push ahead with the ban.

“We can’t control the ocean, but we can police the sharks, and that is why we will not be intimidated by legal threats when this is a genuine fight for the wellbeing of Australian kids,” Communications Minister Anika Wells said when Google threatened to sue.

Australia announced its “world-leading” plan to bar children from using social media in November 2024. Despite resistance from Internet freedom advocates, and difficult questions about precisely how such a ban could be implemented, the relevant legislation was quickly passed, and the ban is set to take effect in December 2025.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave a press conference on Wednesday in which he pledged to promote Australia’s social media ban to other countries at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

“I know from the discussions I have had with other leaders that they are looking at this and they are considering what impact social media is having on young people in their respective nations, it is a common experience,” Albanese said, appearing with the parents of children who were bullied to death on social media.

“We don’t do this easily. What we do, though, is respond to something that is needed here,” he said.

YouTube was granted an exemption from the ban when it was passed by Parliament in November, for several reasons. One was that YouTube was viewed as an important source of information for teens, so even though it carried potentially harmful content, the good was thought to outweigh the bad.

LGBTQ groups insisted YouTube was an important resource for gay and lesbian children, while public health groups said they used the platform to distribute important information to young people. Australian parents found YouTube less alarming that competing platforms like TikTok. YouTube also featured less direct interaction between users than most of the social media platforms that troubled Australian regulators.

A final objection to banning YouTube was that logging into the service is not required – visitors can access the vast majority of the platform’s content as “guests.” This meant there was no practical way to hold YouTube accountable for policing the age of its users.

Naturally, many of the platforms that were targeted by Australia’s social media ban resented the exemption granted to YouTube. These complaints might have had some bearing on the government’s decision to cancel YouTube’s exemption.

According to Australia’s ABC News, YouTube was added to the social media ban at the request of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who wrote a letter to Wells asking for YouTube’s exemption to be rescinded. Inman Grant said her recommendation was based on a survey of 2,600 children that found nearly 40 percent of them had been exposed to “harmful content” while using YouTube.

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DEI police chief scolds Americans for sharing videos of black mob attacking white people…

A violent mob attack in downtown Cincinnati is going viral, and it’s not hard to see why. The video shows a white man being thrown to the ground and brutally beaten by a large group of black people. When a woman rushes in to help, she’s knocked out cold, slammed to the pavement with a blow to the head.

People are sharing the footage because it looks like a hate crime. Plain and simple.

Fox News: 

Police in Cincinnati are investigating a viral video that shows what appears to be a violent brawl in the downtown section of the city.

The fight happened on Friday night, between Elm and Fourth Streets, according to FOX 19 in Cincinnati. Several videos of the fight have made the rounds on social media.

A man in a white t-shirt appears to be shoved to the ground by two other men and mercilessly beaten. The video then shows others in the crowd, women included, joining in on the beating. The man’s head appears to be stomped multiple times.

The man continued to be battered for about 50 seconds before he was helped back onto his feet.

But he immediately took a step and fell back down. Several people responded to help the man back up, and one man could be heard saying, “My man’s drunk.”

The man eventually gets back on his feet, and he appears to be bleeding from his head, nose and mouth.

A woman then appears to rush to the man’s aid, but she is then attacked by the crowd. She suffers two brutal blows to the face, which send her slamming down on the pavement. She appears to be knocked unconscious after her head hits the pavement.

It is unclear who the initial aggressors were. The man and woman seen being beaten in the video are White, and the large crowd that targets the pair is made up largely of Black assailants. The identity and condition of the man and woman in the video are unknown.

But instead of focusing on the violent, racially charged attack caught on camera, DEI Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge seems more concerned with the video going viral and how it might make black people “look bad.”

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Florida School Board Chair Under Fire for Disturbing Social Media Post Following Hulk Hogan’s Death: “Good. One less MAGA in the world.”

Alachua County School Board Chair Sarah Rockwell is under fire after a Facebook post following the news that Hulk Hogan died.

The cultural icon passed away on Thursday at the age of 71.

While people around the globe shared kindness and words of love, Rockwell, a leader in the educational future for school children,  took to Facebook to share a vile, politically motivated comment.

Responding to a post announce Hogan’s passing, she wrote “Good. One less MAGA in the world.”

After her disgusting comments went viral, Rockwell posted the following statement on Facebook, but limited who can comment on the post.

A few days ago, I made a cruel and flippant comment from my personal Facebook account on a friend’s post regarding the death of Hulk Hogan. I deeply regret making that comment and have since removed it. I want to make it very clear that I never have and never will wish harm on anyone regardless of whether we share political views. While I strongly disagree with some of the comments Hulk Hogan made, that is no excuse for my comment.

I also sincerely apologize for the way my comment has eroded confidence in my ability to represent all students, families, and staff in Alachua County. I want to assure all of you that the best interests of our children and our public schools are at the center of everything I do as a board member. I hope I have shown that by my record of advocacy for children, families, and staff members throughout Alachua county.

Again, I apologize for the hurt and distrust I have caused with my insensitive comment. I will continue to do the hard work of putting our children and schools first. I hope that I can earn back your trust.

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