Tag: social media

“Day Has Finally Come”: Instagram Censors Team USA Rifle Shooter Ahead Of Paris Paralympics

Big tech’s crackdown on “gunfluencers” is nothing new, but policies at social media companies are becoming increasingly restrictive (read: here), leading to the demonetization of numerous channels. The latest victim of this aggressive censorship isn’t even the typical gun YouTuber but instead a competitive rifle shooter on Team USA for the Paralympics. 

Just The News reports that McKenna Geer, a competitive rifle shooter, had her Instagram account censored before she heads to Paris for the Paralympic Games in late August. Next week, the Olympic Games are set to begin.

Geer’s Instagram account, “kennageer10.9,” was reportedly censored by the social media company because of photos she posted with firearms at a qualifying competition. 

“I have always feared the day the media would censor my sport and speech just because I use firearms,” Geer wrote on Instagram, adding, “That day has finally come.” 

She continued, “This sport is life-changing because of its ability to unite both able-bodied and disabled athletes, young and old, foreign and domestic. Me and my fellow athletes rely on our social media accounts to spread the word about our sport, firearm safety, build our personal brand, and connect with potential sponsors. Many of us (myself included) are either not paid or paid very little for our involvement in this sport. Our social media presence can often be the avenue that pays for us to continue competing.”

Geer posted a screenshot of an image that shows her account has been censored.

“Your account and content won’t appear in places like Explore, Search, Suggested Users, Reels, and Feed Recommendations,” the Instagram notification reads.

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YouTube Tightens Stranglehold On Firearms Content — Blocks All Gun-related Sponsors

When Google and YouTube first announced that they would be demonetizing a host of channels back in 2017 (including firearms-related content) they said is was because advertisers were “complaining” about their ads being featured in videos that were contrary to their messaging.  In other words, the excuse was that ads embedded on firearms channels might give their customers the “wrong impression” about those companies and their products, and Google didn’t want to anger their advertising partners.

It’s hard to say how accurate this claim was. The exposure of ESG and Big Tech collusion with government agencies to censor conservative platforms supports the idea that there was probably an organized corporate push to suppress the political opposition on YouTube as much as there was an effort to shut them down on social media.

The majority of conservative content creators understood that this was not about advertisers, it was about narratives.  The exploding popularity of gun channels runs contrary to the media assertion that American society is moving increasingly to the left.  And, even though gun channels mostly focus on firearms and instruction, they also promoted conservative and constitutional values which represent a thorn in the side of the establishment.

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Google Plans New Content-Scanning Censorship Tech

Earlier in the year, Google filed an application to patent new methods, systems, and media for what the giant calls “identifying videos containing objectionable content” that are uploaded to a social site or video service.

For example, YouTube – though the filing doesn’t explicitly name this platform.

The patent application, which has just been published this month, is somewhat different from other automated “methods and systems” Google and other giants, notably Microsoft, already have to power their censorship apparatus; with this one, the focus is more on how AI can be added to the mix.

More and more often, various countries are introducing censorship laws where the speed at which content is removed or accounts blocked is a major requirement made of social media companies. Google could have this in mind when the patent’s purpose is said to be to improve on detecting objectionable content quickly, “for potential removal.”

No surprise here, but what should be the key question – namely, what is considered as “objectionable content” – is less of a definition and more a list that can be further expanded, variously interpreted, etc., and the list includes such items as violence, pornography, objectionable language, animal abuse, and then the cherry on top – “and/or any other type of objectionable content.”

The filing details how Google’s new system works, and we equally unsurprisingly learn that AI here means machine learning (ML) and neural networks. This technology is supposed to mimic the human brain but comes down to a series of equations, differentiated from ordinary algorithms by “learning” about what an image (or a video in this case) is, pixel by pixel.

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FTC Opens a Backdoor Route to Age Verification on Social Media

I hadn’t heard of the app NGL until recently. But that’s not surprising. The anonymous questions app seems to be largely popular among teens.

Bark, the maker of parental content-monitoring software, calls NGL “a recipe for drama” and cyberbullying. But it seems like a fairly standard social media offering, allowing users to post questions or prompts and receive anonymous responses.

Now, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ordered NGL to ban users under age 18.

The FTC and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office say NGL “unfairly” marketed the app to minors. “NGL marketed its app to kids and teens despite knowing that it was exposing them to cyberbullying and harassment,” FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said.

To settle the lawsuit, the agency is not only making NGL pay $5 million, it’s also requiring the app to ban those under age 18 from using it.

This seems to me like a worrying development.

An administrative agency ordering a social media app to ban minors is effectively a backdoor way to accomplish what Congress has been failing to mandate legislatively and what courts have been rejecting when state lawmakers do it.

Granted, the FTC does not seem to be requiring NGL to check IDs. It’s merely “required to implement a neutral age gate that prevents new and current users from accessing the app if they indicate that they are under 18,” per the FTC’s press release.

But this is still the FTC setting minimum age requirements for some social media use, circumventing both parental and legislative authority.

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Stanford insists Internet Observatory, which engaged in election-time censorship, will stay open

The status of Stanford University’s controversial Internet Observatory, a research group accused of participating in social media censorship, appears unclear after recent conflicting reports about its future.

A recent report by the tech newsletter Platformer suggested the observatory may be closing after several key staffers, including founding director Alex Stamos, left or did not have their contracts renewed.

Other news outlets reported the observatory was “collaps[ing] under pressure,” being “wound down” and “closing.” Some popular social media posts suggested it was being permanently “shut down.”

However, the university contradicted those reports in a recent statement on the observatory’s website.

“Stanford has not shut down or dismantled SIO as a result of outside pressure,” it stated. “SIO does, however, face funding challenges as its founding grants will soon be exhausted. As a result, SIO continues to actively seek support for its research and teaching programs under new leadership.”

SIO will continue its “critical work” through the “publication of the Journal of Online Trust & Safety, the Trust & Safety Research Conference, and the Trust & Safety Teaching Consortium,” it stated.

Furthermore, the observatory’s staff will be conducting research on “misinformation” during the 2024 election, according to the statement.

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Democrats Downplay Influence of Major Advertising Alliance’s Demonetization Blacklists

During a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing, several Democrats characterized scrutiny of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) (a World Economic Forum-affiliated pro-censorship advertising alliance that blacklists brands, creators, and content from advertising if they’re deemed to violate its “brand safety” rules) as “dangerous” and a “sham.”

GARM has faced growing scrutiny over the way its practices have resulted in certain viewpoints being demonetized. Before this July 10 hearing, House Republicans released a report showing that GARM and its members had “carefully” monitored a number of conservative outlets, placed conservative media outlet The Daily Wire on an advertising exclusion list, and pushed for advertising restrictions on the popular “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.

And the intention of this hearing was to respond to these allegations and examine “whether existing civil and criminal penalties and current antitrust law enforcement efforts are sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”

But, as has often been the case during hearings related to huge corporations and alliances targeting smaller businesses and entities, Democrats downplayed, dismissed, or outright denied the concerns that were raised.

“This hearing has nothing to do with antitrust laws, since the majority’s allegations wither under even the most basic antitrust analysis,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said during his opening statement. “This is instead another dangerous effort by the majority to bully companies into promoting and supporting far-right extremist views, views that brands understandably do…not want to be associated with. In this case, the majority seeks to undermine companies’ First Amendment rights and to make it harder for them to avoid monetizing online and offline harm through advertising.”

He continued by suggesting that those who have shone a light on GARM’s practices are engaging in a “made-up scheme,” accused Republicans of pushing a “conspiracy theory that conservative content is being censored,” and claimed that there’s “no evidence” to support allegations of wrongdoing.

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Biden Appoints Social Media Censorship Advocate To White House Digital Strategy Team

The Biden administration reinforces its ranks with what some reports see as yet more ardent censorship advocates.

This time it’s Andy Volosky, whose “claim to fame” thus far has been to wholeheartedly support the banning of President Donald Trump by former Twitter (while Trump was still president).

Unsurprisingly, his other efforts are advocating for even stricter online censorship (“content moderation”) than what social platforms have been doing for almost a decade now.

Volosky has now been given the right to serve this administration as deputy director of platforms for the White House’s Office of Digital Strategy. Serving the people, critically minded cynics might remark, would probably require a different mindset and a different set of skills.

But depending on how long the current administration manages to hang on to power, Volosky may not be on in the new job for long.

George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley makes a note of this appointment as he explores what might turn out to be one of the nadirs in US history where freedom of expression is concerned.

Turley goes as far as to assert that President Biden is “the most anti-free speech president since John Adams.” This is a bold statement, not least because more than two centuries of “enlightenment” in many areas of politics in the US separate the two figures.

But, not when it comes to progress in the realm of free speech, according to the legal scholar. And moves like bringing Volosky in certainly do little to discredit these claims.

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Pro-Israel Group Censoring Social Media Led by Former Israeli Intelligence Officers

CyberWell, an Israeli nonprofit with deep ties to the intelligence arm of an Israeli government propaganda effort, has been influential in shaping social media content since October 7. The group, which purports to be independent, has lobbied Meta, X (formerly known as Twitter), and TikTok to remove social media posts under the banner of fighting hate and antisemitism.

The group claimed a major victory regarding Meta’s decision on Tuesday to expand its definition of antisemitic hate speech to include many criticisms of “Zionists” – those who call for an independent state in the Middle East that privileges Jews over other ethnic groups. “CyberWell intends to leverage its technological tools and analysis efforts to ensure this policy is implemented efficiently and fully, and that Meta’s moderation tools are trained to effectively bar this content,” the organization claimed in a press release.

The success is the latest string of victories to shape permissible speech when it comes to Israel and its actions.

In January, CyberWell reported that it had pushed to censor accounts that disputed the false allegation that Hamas had slaughtered dozens of babies during the October 7th attack. Any accounts disputing claims around babies killed during the attack, CyberWell argued, are akin to “content denying or distorting the Holocaust.” President Joe Biden and leading Israeli figures have falsely claimed that Hamas beheaded or burned forty babies during the assault into Israel.

That claim has been widely debunked. Despite repeated false assertions to the contrary, only one baby was killed during the Hamas assault: a 10-month-old infant named Mila Cohen, who was killed at Kibbutz Be’eri. In more recent months, CyberWell has lobbied TikTok and Meta to censor social media posts with the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” claiming that the slogan constitutes hate speech.

CyberWell is one of many agenda-driven nonprofits now censoring social media discourse, including benign or true information, under the cover of fighting hate and misinformation. The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, funded a nonprofit that worked to censor tweets critical of pandemic-related policies. The U.S. government funds several think tanks that work to moderate social media content critical of NATO’s policies impacting Ukraine.

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Musk Announces X To Sue ‘Perpetrators And Collaborators’ Behind Advertising Censorship Cartel

Elon Musk announced on Thursday that social media platform X will sue ‘perpetrators and collaborators’ who have colluded to control online speech, as revealed on Wednesday by an interim staff report released by the House Judiciary Committee.

“Having seen the evidence unearthed today by Congress, 𝕏 has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket,” Musk wrote on his platform, adding “Hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution.”

The House report details a coordinated effort by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative to demonetize and suppress disfavored content across the internet.

As we noted on Wednesday, the WFA is a global association representing over 150 of the world’s biggest brands and over 60 national advertiser associations which created GARM in 2019.

This alliance quickly amassed significant market power, representing roughly 90% of global advertising spend, which amounts to nearly one trillion dollars annually.

GARM’s Steer Team reads like a who’s who of corporate America, including heavyweights such as Unilever, Mars, Diageo, Procter & Gamble (P&G), GroupM, AB InBev, L’Oréal, Nestlé, IBM, Mastercard, and PepsiCo. These corporations not only wield immense economic influence but are now revealed to be leveraging this power to control online discourse under the guise of “brand safety.”

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Biden Administration Files Emergency Motion to Strike Down Injunction in RFK Jr., CHD Censorship Case

Lawyers for the Biden administration today filed a motion with the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals seeking to block an injunction that would have prohibited White House officials from coercing or significantly encouraging social media platforms to suppress or censor online content.

The move came less than 24 hours after a lower court denied two crucial motions by government defendants seeking to overturn the preliminary injunction, set to take effect July 7, in the Kennedy v. Biden censorship lawsuit.

Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on Tuesday rebuffed the administration’s attempts to delay or modify the Kennedy v. Biden preliminary injunction.

The injunction was granted in February but temporarily stayed until 10 days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a similar injunction in a related censorship case, Murthy v. Missouri.

On June 26, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri did not have standing to bring the case.

In their dissenting opinion, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr. argued that the majority decision was “blatantly unconstitutional” and that the court was “shirk[ing] its duty” by failing to rein in government censorship.

Attorneys for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — plaintiffs in Kennedy v. Biden — said they believe CHD and Kennedy have standing, and overall, a stronger case.

Given the 5th Circuit’s previous ruling upholding the injunction in the related Missouri v. Biden case (later named Murthy v. Missouri), attorneys who spoke with The Defender were cautiously optimistic about the new developments.

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