Tag: social media

Rep. Adam Schiff and Other Democrats Demand Social Media Companies Censor “Misinformation” and “Disinformation” This Month

In the US, the Democrats continue with their sustained efforts to pressure major social media platforms, now about a month ahead of the presidential election.

The Twitter Files give some idea about what may be happening behind closed doors (if previous campaigns/elections are any indication), but this is about public pressure. This time, Congressman Adam Schiff’s turn is to “demand action” from companies behind social media.

Meta (Instagram separately), X, Google (and YouTube separately), TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and Microsoft are the recipients of a letter Schiff signed along with seven fellow members of the House of Representatives (four of them, like Schiff, California Democrats).

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

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The Digital Puppeteers: Big Tech’s Influence On Society

Tech companies have revolutionized the modern age, allowing for transcontinental communication, instant access to information, and unprecedented connectivity between people worldwide. But this revolution has come at a cost; these companies have undue influence over our lives, possessing the capability to shape public discourse, consumer behavior, and even political outcomes.

The scale of Big Tech’s market dominance is staggering. Google controls 81% of all general searches and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp collectively boast 3.27 billion daily active users. Amazon commands almost 50% of all U.S. e-commerce. These figures demonstrate how a handful of companies can wield unprecedented power over our digital lives.

This concentration of power allows Big Tech firms to design markets in ways that benefit themselves and stifle competition. It can result in higher prices for consumers and reduced innovation as smaller competitors are squeezed out.

The impact of this monopolistic control extends beyond economic concerns to the sanctity of our democratic discourse. As these platforms have become the de facto public squares of the digital age, their content moderation policies and algorithmic decision-making wield enormous influence over what information reaches the public.

Big Tech’s selective censorship has become increasingly apparent, with conservative voices often bearing the brunt of content moderation. In 2020, a New York Post exposé on Hunter Biden’s laptop was suppressed on both Twitter and Facebook. After the first Trump assassination attempt, Google intentionally omitted search results which referenced the attack, despite providing suggestions for historical assassination attempts on other presidents. These incidents highlight the growing concern over Big Tech’s power to shape public discourse through selective content moderation

At the core of this issue lies Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which shields interactive computer services from liability for content posted by users. While originally intended to promote free speech online, this provision has become a double-edged sword. It allows platforms to avoid responsibility for harmful or false content while simultaneously giving them broad discretion to censor or promote content as they see fit.

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Facebook Gave CDC ‘Backdoor’ Access to Help Remove Millions of Social Media Posts

Facebook provided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “backdoor” access to its platform so the CDC could submit requests to remove COVID-19 “misinformation,” according to an internal Facebook document made public for the first time as part of an ongoing legal case.

America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2021, after then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed the Biden administration was flagging purported “disinformation” on social media platforms, including content posted by members of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen.”

When the Biden administration didn’t comply with the FOIA request, America First Legal sued, leading to the release of the documents as part of the discovery process.

According to Reclaim the Net, in 2021, Facebook developed a “Content Request System” (see pages 54-72) — also called a “Government Reporting System” — accessible to CDC staff. The documents show Facebook “was operating as the de facto enforcement arm of the US government’s thought control initiative.”

The Facebook-CDC partnership helped Facebook remove millions of posts, the documents show.

Gene Hamilton, executive director of America First Legal, told The Defender, “These documents show precisely how one of the social media platforms facilitated the federal government’s engagement in unconstitutional censorship activities.”

“The federal government cannot violate the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to the private sector, yet these documents clearly show that Facebook and the Biden-Harris administration collaborated and colluded on removing speech that did not comport with the federal government’s preferences,” Hamilton said.

Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, told The Defender that following the release of the “Twitter Files,” it should not come as a surprise “that the government has been actively trying to censor citizens through back doors and loopholes.”

“This censorship effort is yet another example of a public-private collaboration that fuses corporation and state,” Hinchliffe said. “Where the government can’t legally censor, it has the private sector to do its bidding. The question here is how much coercion was needed for Facebook to provide the backdoor?”

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Big Tech-Government Collusion: Biden-Haris Admin, Meta, Google, and Others Launch AI Partnership to Combat “Disinformation” and “Hate Speech”

The current US White House seems to be exploring every possibility that might secure another avenue for what opponents (and quite a few lawmakers) refer to as “collusion” with (Big) Tech.

A new scheme has just been announced, that revolves around the “AI” and “disinformation” buzzwords, and includes the US State Department, Meta, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI.

Looks like quite an “ensemble cast” – or “usual suspects” – right there.

It’s called, Partnership for Global Inclusivity on AI, and it was announced by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken along with a decision to bankroll programs “identifying disinformation using AI” with $3 million.

We obtained a copy of the report for you here.

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Judges in TikTok Case Seem Ready to Discount First Amendment

A US circuit court panel appears ready to uphold a federal law that would effectively ban the popular social media network TikTok because it’s owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The legal attacks on the video platform—which FAIR (8/5/20, 5/25/23, 11/13/23, 3/14/24) has written about before—are entering a new phase, in which judicial interpreters of the Constitution are acting as Cold War partisans, threatening to throw out civil liberties in favor of national security alarmism.

Earlier this year, despite widespread protest (Guardian, 3/7/24), President Joe Biden signed legislation forcing TikTok’s owner “to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States” (NBC, 4/24/24). Advocates for the ban charge that data collection—which is a function of most social media networks—poses a national security threat because of the platform’s Chinese ownership (Axios, 3/15/24).

Given that TikTok is a global platform, with 2 billion users worldwide, demands that ByteDance sell it off are in effect another name for a ban; an analogy would be Beijing allowing Facebook to operate in China only if Meta sold the platform to a non-US company.

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Facebook Built a VIP Censorship Pipeline For The White House

In case you thought 2021 was just about ever-shifting “expert advice,” think again. Thanks to America First Legal, we now know that behind the chaotic public health messaging, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Facebook were playing a little game of “whack-a-mole” with your freedom of speech.

Today, new onboarding documents were unearthed, which shows just how cozy Facebook got with the CDC. The social media giant wasn’t merely policing what it thought was “misinformation” on COVID and vaccines; it was operating as the de facto enforcement arm of the US government’s thought control initiative. The Biden-Harris Administration, while trumpeting their “fight for truth,” had essentially deputized Facebook to clean up the messy world of online discourse. And who decides what’s messy? Apparently, anyone with a .gov email address.

Let’s rewind to 2021, the peak of the pandemic drama. The public was dealing with a mutating narrative on what constituted “the truth.”

In other words, what was factual one week might be misinformation the next, depending on who you asked—or more accurately, who was in power.

At the time, the administration faced heavy criticism for overseeing a clampdown on dissent. Social media platforms, like Facebook, took on the noble mantle of censoring anything that didn’t align with the latest CDC talking points.

One day it was, “Don’t wear masks,” and the next, “You must wear two.” If you were quick enough to quote the CDC’s latest declaration, congratulations, you won a reprieve from the online guillotine. But heaven forbid you posted a month-old statement—down came the banhammer.

The First Amendment? Ah yes, that pesky little thing. It felt like an afterthought in the administration’s relentless quest to manage the pandemic, or rather, manage the narrative about the pandemic.

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Ireland drops controversial “hate speech” legislation to criminalise online speech deemed as “incitement to hatred”

On Saturday, The Irish Times reported that the Irish government will drop the incitement to hatred section of the bill, focusing instead on hate crime legislation that provides for tougher sentences when hate is proven as a motivation for an offence.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee said that the “incitement to hatred” element of the bill does “not have a consensus” and will be dealt with at a later time.  She is “adamant” that hate crime legislation would be enacted.  In the meantime, she plans to include committee stage amendments to the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 in the Seanad.

The decision comes after increased opposition from within the government, opposition parties and free speech groups, including tech billionaire Elon Musk, who vowed to fund legal challenges against the proposed legislation.

The controversy surrounding the bill highlighted concerns about the potential for vague definitions and overreach, with critics arguing that it could criminalise memes, books or videos deemed politically offensive.

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Telegram Will Now Share Users’ IP Addresses and Phone Numbers With Governments in Response to Legal Requests

Telegram, the messaging app that once positioned itself as the rebel’s answer to Big Tech surveillance, has made a sharp U-turn on the “we protect your data at all costs” highway. On Monday, the company quietly updated its privacy policy to allow for the disclosure of user information—like those precious IP addresses and phone numbers—to law enforcement, but only, of course, if they present a valid legal request.

As we all know, no one has ever stretched the definition of “valid” to fit their agenda, right?

This revelation comes hot on the heels of a little incident back in August, when Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov found himself in handcuffs, detained by French authorities. What was the crime? Well, it appears Telegram was accused of playing hardball with French law enforcement, refusing to hand over data, leading to Durov’s arrest. It seems law enforcement didn’t take kindly to that level of noncompliance, especially after making 2,460 unanswered requests for information.

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Social Media Giants Collecting Massive Amounts of Data From Kids, Teens

Child welfare advocates renewed calls for U.S. lawmakers to pass a pair of controversial bills aimed at protecting youth from Big Tech’s “dangerous and unacceptable business practices” after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a report on Sept. 19 detailing how social media and streaming companies endanger children and teens who use their platforms.

The FTC staff report — entitled “A Look Behind the Screens: Examining the Data Practices of Social Media and Video Streaming Services” — “shows how the tech industry’s monetization of personal data has created a market for commercial surveillance, especially via social media and video streaming services, with inadequate guardrails to protect consumers.”

The agency staff examined the practices of Meta platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp; YouTube; X, formerly known as Twitter; Snapchat; Reddit; Discord; Amazon, which owns the gaming site Twitch; and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok.

“The report finds that these companies engaged in mass data collection of their users and — in some cases — nonusers,” Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine said in the paper.

“It reveals that many companies failed to implement adequate safeguards against privacy risks. It sheds light on how companies used our personal data, from serving hypergranular targeted advertisements to powering algorithms that shape the content we see, often with the goal of keeping us hooked on using the service.”

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LinkedIn is training its AI using your posts and articles without your permission

LinkedIn has been using user-generated content, including posts and articles, to train its generative AI models without obtaining consent from users.

The platform updated its privacy policy and FAQ section to reflect this practice, indicating that data collection for AI training had already begun before the announcement.

Users can opt out of having their data used for AI training by toggling a setting called “Data for Generative AI Improvement” under “Data Privacy” in their settings.

LinkedIn has quietly implemented a new setting that automatically opts users into contributing their personal data, including posts, towards the training of generative AI models. This means that users’ posts are being harvested for AI training without their explicit consent.

LinkedIn’s generative AI models are used for features like writing assistants, and the scraped data will be used to train these models. The company claims to employ privacy-enhancing technologies to anonymise or redact personal data from its AI training sets.  However, considering what Larry Ellison,  co-founder of Oracle and Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer, said last week about data captured by surveillance cameras we shouldn’t take LinkedIn’s word for it.

During an investor Q&A session at the ‘Oracle Financial Analyst Meeting 2024’ event, Ellison said: “The police … body cameras … our [Oracle’s] body cameras are simply two lenses attached to a vest [and] attached to the smartphone that you’re wearing … the camera is always on, you don’t turn it on and off, you can’t turn it off to go to the bathroom – ‘Oracle, I need two minutes to take a bathroom break,” then we’ll turn it off.  The truth is, we don’t really turn it off.  What we do is, we record it so no one can see it [so] that no one can get into that recording without a court order.” (see timestamp 1:08:27 HERE.)

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