Tag: social media

Digital Deception: How Social Media Helps Corrupt Politicians Stay in Power

In today’s world, social media is everywhere. It’s how we connect, share, and get our news. But what if I told you it’s also one of the most powerful tools corrupt politicians use to stay in power? That’s right. Behind the memes, the viral videos, and the endless streams of posts, there’s a darker game being played. It’s a game of misinformation, fake support, and online manipulation. And it’s working better than ever.

Let’s break it down. How do they do it? And why should you care?

The Misinformation Machine

Misinformation is the fuel that keeps the engine running. Politicians, especially those in power, know that controlling the narrative is everything. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are perfect for spreading half-truths and outright lies. Why? Because these platforms are designed to keep you scrolling. They reward sensationalism, not accuracy.

Here’s how it works: A politician or their team plants a story. Maybe it’s about a rival. Maybe it’s about a policy that sounds great but is actually terrible. The story gets picked up by bots—fake accounts programmed to share content. These bots make the story look popular, so real people start sharing it too. Before you know it, the story is everywhere. And once it’s out there, it’s hard to stop.

The goal? To confuse you. To make you doubt what’s real and what’s not. And when you’re confused, you’re easier to control.

Astroturfing: Fake Grassroots Support

Ever heard of astroturfing? It’s when politicians create the illusion of widespread public support for something. They make it look like regular people are rallying behind an idea, when in reality, it’s all staged.

Here’s an example: Let’s say a politician wants to pass a law that benefits big corporations. They know regular people won’t like it. So, they hire a PR firm to create fake social media accounts. These accounts post messages like, “This law will create jobs!” or “This is good for the economy!” They might even organize fake protests or rallies, complete with paid actors holding signs.

The result? It looks like there’s a groundswell of support. News outlets pick up the story, and suddenly, the law seems popular. But it’s all a lie. And social media makes it easy to pull off.

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FCC Chair Brendan Carr Wants More Control Over Social Media

In his short time as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr has been no stranger to using his power against disfavored entities. The chairman’s targets have primarily included broadcast networks and social media companies.

Recently, Carr revealed a fundamental misunderstanding about one of the most important laws governing the internet and social media.

On February 27, digital news outlet Semafor held a summit in Washington, D.C., titled “Innovating to Restore Trust in News,” which culminated in a conversation between Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith and Carr.

“The social media companies got more power over more speech than any institution in history” in recent years, Carr told Smith. “And I think they’re abusing that power. I think it’s appropriate for the FCC to say, let’s take another look at Section 230.”

Section 230 of the Communications Act effectively protects websites and platforms from civil liability for content posted by others. It also protects a platform’s decision to moderate content it finds “objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”

Like many conservatives, Carr looks askance at social media’s latitude to moderate content with what he perceives as impunity. “The FCC should issue an order that interprets Section 230 in a way that eliminates the expansive, non-textual immunities that courts have read into the statute” and “remind courts how the various portions of Section 230 operate,” he wrote in a chapter of The Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership, more popularly known as Project 2025.

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Did Facebook Conspire With the Government to Censor Speech in Violation of the First Amendment? Case Could Redefine Social Media Censorship

The Rutherford Institute is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to hold Facebook accountable for conspiring with the government to censor and suppress speech and address Facebook censorship issues.

Weighing in before the U.S. Supreme Court with an amicus brief in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, The Rutherford Institute argues that Meta Platforms should be held accountable as a government actor for violating the First Amendment by partnering with the government in order to restrict the Facebook posts, fundraising, and advertising of Children’s Health Defense (“CHD”). Although the Trump Administration has ordered federal officials to cease the government’s censorship efforts, The Rutherford Institute warned that political stances can change quickly and social media companies are likely to censor speech again at the government’s direction unless they are held accountable as government actors for violating the First Amendment rights of the people. Facebook censorship leads to the suppression of diverse ideas.

“We should all be alarmed when prominent social media voices are censored, silenced, and made to disappear from Facebook, X, YouTube, and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, extremist, or conspiratorial,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “At some point, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes ‘extremism,’ we might all be considered guilty of some thought-crime and subjected to technocensorship like Facebook censorship.”

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Germany’s Shocking War on Online Speech: Armed Police Raids for Online “Insults,” “Hate Speech,” and “Misinformation”

A shocking discussion on CBS News’ 60 Minutes has highlighted the stark limits of online speech in Germany, where oppressive scenes once thought to be relegated to history and dystopian fiction, show law enforcement has been conducting pre-dawn raids and confiscating electronics from individuals accused of posting content deemed as “hate speech.”

In typical Orwellian fashion, despite these speech raids, officials insist that free speech still exists.

Dr. Matthäus Fink joined host Sharyn Alfonsi to explain how these laws operate and how those targeted by authorities typically react. According to Fink, most individuals are initially shocked when police confront them over online posts.

“They say — in Germany we say, ‘Das wird man ja wohl noch sagen dürfen,’” Fink remarked, illustrating the disbelief many express when they realize their statements can result in legal action. He noted that many Germans assume they are protected by free speech laws but learn too late that specific kinds of speech are punishable.

Alfonsi delved deeper, questioning the scope of these restrictions. Beyond banning swastika imagery and Holocaust denial, Fink pointed out that publicly insulting someone is also a criminal offense.

“And it’s a crime to insult them online as well?” Alfonsi asked.

Fink affirmed that online insults carry even steeper penalties than face-to-face insults. “The fine could be even higher if you insult someone in the internet,” he elaborated. “Because in internet, it stays there. If we are talking face to face, you insult me, I insult you, OK. Finish. But if you’re in the internet, if I insult you or a politician…”

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Senator Ron Johnson Demands Meta Releases Records on COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Censorship

Senator Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has escalated his scrutiny of Meta’s alleged suppression of COVID-19 vaccine injury discussions, demanding that CEO Mark Zuckerberg release internal records detailing Facebook’s content moderation practices.

More: Facebook and YouTube Censored Victims of AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine

In a letter dated February 4, 2025, Johnson specifically questioned Facebook’s removal of vaccine injury support groups, including A Wee Sprinkle of Hope, which was described in the book Worth a Shot? as the largest such group in the world before it was shut down just five days after Johnson’s June 28, 2021, roundtable with vaccine-injured individuals.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The letter also reiterated claims that Facebook engaged in shadow banning, appended warning labels to users’ posts about vaccine injuries, and even censored private messages. One particularly tragic case cited in Worth a Shot? described a woman who took her own life after her private messages seeking help from fellow vaccine-injured individuals allegedly went unnoticed due to Facebook’s restrictions on message visibility.

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EU Launches “Democracy Shield” Initiative to Tighten Controls on Tech Giants and Enforce “Hate Speech” Compliance

EU’s new “European Union Democracy Shield (EUDS)” committee, which aims to impose more control over tech giants now perceived as aligned with US President Trump, and promote their compliance with “hate speech” laws while imposing more “fact-checking” has gained its chair – French member of European Parliament (MEP) and French President Macron-allied politician Nathalie Loiseau.

The EUDS initiative was first unveiled by EU Commission’s Executive VP Henna Virkkunen, and Loiseau appears to have been given the job in true unelected-Brussels-bureaucracy fashion: this was known before a vote on her nomination took place.

“Nathalie Loiseau will be elected this evening at 6 pm,” it was announced early on Monday by La Lettre (this effective appointment has in the meantime been confirmed).

And it gets worse – another French MEP, Virginie Joron, said that Loiseau had announced she would be elected “the weekend before” those electing her had a chance to vote.

Stalin could never.

However – given the role that “Democracy Shield” is expected to play, namely, control speech/opinions, this odd process is seen by some as basically symbolic of the body’s purpose – albeit it happens to be one that is “denying democracy.”

Loiseau is a member of the European Parliament’s Renew group, whereas Joron is from the Patriots for Europe (PfE); the manner in which the EUDS selected its chief was particularly offensive to the latter since the PfE had hoped to have its own candidate, Antonio Tanger Correa – but that was rendered pointless by the manner in which Loiseau was appointed.

Correa denounced it as a “sham democracy” while Joron slammed the European Parliament’s “theater” where one can get “elected” before the vote.

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UK Home Secretary Signals Tougher Online Censorship Beyond Current Censorship Laws

Judging by the most recent statements made by UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, the government feels it will have to implement even more stringent speech-restrictive measures than those contained in the sweeping and controversial censorship law, the Online Safety Act.

Appearing on a BBC political talk show, Cooper kept beating the now well-established drum the ruling Labour has gone for in the wake of last year’s Southport killings, and subsequent mass protests – namely, to try to portray social media companies as somehow “a part of the crime,” which is verbatim how the cabinet minister put it.

One of the recurring themes these last weeks, since the Southport trial saw its conclusion, has been that tech companies are “morally responsible” for not deleting (that request came only last week) one of the violent videos viewed by the killer, Axel Rudakubana.

This request was made even though said companies are under no legal obligation to do that, until the spring of this year and the start of the enforcement of some parts of the Online Safety Act.

The stage set that way, Cooper’s logic – or lack thereof – goes like this: “We are being clear that we are prepared to go further if the Online Safety Act measures are not working as effectively as we need them to do,” she told the host, Laura Kuenssberg.

There is no way to predict how social media firms will act once they are under obligation to remove certain types of content – and yet Cooper is already threatening to make the Online Safety Act even worse.

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EU’s “Disinformation” Code Becomes Mandatory Under Censorship Law, Platforms Preemptively Enforce Rules Ahead of German Elections

The inevitable slide of the EU’s voluntary — at least in name — disinformation code (the 2022 version) into mandatory rules integrated into the Digital Services Act (DSA) censorship law will become enforceable this July.

But just in time for Germany’s early elections, scheduled for the last week of February, large platforms – Google, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and X – participated in a “stress test” of their readiness to investigate risks to “civic discourse and electoral process” related to that vote.

This is taken by some reports to mean that although the voluntary code will become obligatory in the summer, the integration before February 23 in Germany means that platforms with more than 45 million users in the EU will implement “disinformation” rules, acting a “voluntary” basis one last time – in a bid “to avoid future legal risks.”

The election campaign in Germany has been marred by contentious attempts by those still in power to discredit and even censor the rising opposition. This is happening both through domestic institutions and by “delegating” some of such efforts to the EU.

The “stress test” done in late January and the reports around code integration timeline fit well in the overall trend. It was conducted by the European Commission and Germany’s digital services coordinator.

The code’s main purpose is to get signatories to step up content “moderation” – which critics see as code word for censorship, but which the EU, along with the DSA, explains as a way to combat illegal content and “protect users.”

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Female Pilot Rebecca Lobach’s Entire Social Media Scrubbed before Army Released Her Name – So What Are They Hiding?

On Saturday the US Army released the name of the pilot of the US Army Blackhawk helicopter that flew into a passenger jet landing at Reagan National Airport.

The crash was on Wednesday. The third pilot’s name, Rebecca Lobach, was finally released on Saturday, three days later.

All 64 passengers in the jet were killed.
The three pilots in the Blackhawk helicopter also died in the explosive crash.

Kristinn Taylor at The Gateway Pundit reported:

After withholding at the request of the family the name of the female pilot killed in the mid-air collision Wednesday night between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a PSA/American Airlines passenger plane on final approach to Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., the Army issued a statement Saturday afternoon from her family identifying the pilot as 28-year-old Capt. Rebecca Lobach from Durham, N.C.

The other two soldiers killed in the crash previously identified by the Army are Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland.

Lobach was part of a three-man crew flying a training mission for “continuity of government” down the Potomac River when the collision occurred, killing all three crew members on the Black Hawk based at nearby Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and all 60 passengers and four crew members on the flight out of Wichita, Kansas.

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Name Of Female Blackhawk Pilot Not Yet Released, Spurring Social Media Theories

Social media has erupted over theories the deceased female pilot of the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter that crashed into a commercial jet near Reagan National airport in Washington, DC was a transgender pilot.

Sources tell AFP this rumor is untrue, and the deceased Blackhawk driver was indeed a woman.

However, the name of the female pilot has not been released.

In addition, a video is making its way around the internet of an ADSB readout showing erratic moves of the helicopter towards other aircraft prior to the crash. Since the Blackhawk usually is not equipped with ADSB, we also cannot confirm this video and readers should be suspect as to its authenticity.

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