Tag: social media

Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner calls for government intervention for online speech

Joe Rogan had Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast last Wednesday and, among other topics, the pair touched on the government regulating the internet and the media landscape today.

Wenner – a magazine magnate who, according to reports, was in the past a prominent donor to Democratic candidates and liberal groups – spoke in favor of regulating the internet like any other industry in the US – although for some reason prefacing his “yes, but” argument by saying that the internet is great and that he “loves” social media.

But – he continued, it has to be regulated, and when Rogan asked by whom, Wenner replied, “the government.”

The question then became whether the government can be trusted with a job of such nature and magnitude – particularly given its credibility issues.

But Wenner appeared unwavering in his support of the internet – that is today heavily influenced by the authorities- tomorrow also becoming more formally regulated by them. “Absolutely,” he replied, when asked whether he trusted the White House to do a good job.

Rogan, otherwise not known for mincing his words, recalled that the US was plunged into the Iraq War under false pretenses (of WDMs) made by the government (and, to be fair, heavily promoted by their media mouthpieces like the New York Times).

Trusting the class of people who did that did not seem to sit well with the host.

“Do you think that makes any sense,” he asked Wenner, who made a curious attempt at arguing that it was politicians specifically, rather than the government, who led the US into a war.

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Journalist Calls Child Protective Services On Senate Candidate And Single Mom Over Columbus Day Tweet

Self-described “Award-winning multi-media journalist” David Leavitt called Child Protective Services on Virginia State Senate candidate Tina Ramirez, reporting her for “child abuse” because her opinion of Columbus Day differed from his.

The spat began with an apparent non-sequitur, when Leavitt replied to a tweet from Ramirez over reports that PayPal planned to fine people for spreading “misinformation” — a story broken by Daily Wire reporter Ben Zeisloft.

“Only women can be pregnant. Do I owe PayPal $2500 now?” Ramirez asked, to which Leavitt replied, “Why are you celebrating torture, rape, murder, and enslavement?”

Leavitt appeared to be referencing another tweet in which Ramirez wished her followers a happy Columbus Day, and Ramirez responded with a simple explanation: “I teach my daughter real American history. I refuse to join the radical left’s campaign to erase history.”

Leavitt responded by attempting to get some of his 330,000+ followers to harass Ramirez by reporting her to Child Protective Services.

“Can someone please call child care services on Tina Ramirez who’s teaching her child to be a racist?” he asked.

He then apparently decided to make the call himself — and complained about the long wait time to speak to someone at the hotline.

“The Virginia State hotline for child abuse has a 10+ minute hold and is experiencing ‘high call volumes’ with 14 callers ahead of me. This is absolutely unacceptable. How many people try to report child abuse and hang up? How many children will continue to be abused?” he asked.

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TikTok blocks searches for “White Lives Matter” phrase

China-owned social network TikTok is blocking users from searching for the phrase “white lives matter,” following rapper Kanye West’s recent appearance wearing a “White Lives Matter” sweater to his nine-year-old daughter North’s basketball game last week, as well as the Yeezy show in Paris earlier in the week.

Users that search for the phrase, get a “no results found” message, with further details saying that the phrase “may be associated with hateful behavior.”

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A Good And Righteous Proxy War Wouldn’t Need Such Cartoonish PR

Star Wars megastar Mark Hamill was recently named an ambassador for United24, the fundraising platform of the Ukrainian government, where according to The Times his attention will center on “the procurement, repair and replacement of drones as well as pilot training.”

From The Times:

“In this long and unequal fight, Ukraine needs continuous additional support. That’s why I was honoured President Zelensky asked me to become an ambassador for the Army of Drones,” Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, said in a statement. “I know for certain that Ukrainians need drones to protect their land, their freedom and the values of the entire democratic world. Right now is the best time for everyone to come together and help Ukraine stand up in this war with the evil empire.”

In a statement thanking Hamill for his support, Zelensky said: “The light will win over darkness. I believe in this, our people believe in this. Thank you for taking on this difficult mission of being the first ambassador to help Ukraine raise funds for the Army of Drones to support our defenders. It is really important!”

Hamill, 71, is among an expanding list of celebrities who have lent their support to United24, which Zelensky launched in May. The website is reported to have raised nearly $188 million in donations, including a recent $5 million contribution from the Pfizer Foundation to support Ukraine’s medical needs.

Last week Barbra Streisand announced that she would also serve as an ambassador, hailing the “capability and courage” of the Ukrainian people as an “inspiration for all those worldwide who promote democracy and fight authoritarianism”.

So for the record if you were under the impression that this proxy war could not possibly get any more Disneyfied, you were wrong.

Hamill celebrated his new position by tweeting a graphic showing a Star Wars spaceship wearing the Ukrainian flag colors, which the actor captioned in Polish because Hollywood is brain poison.

Other recent Twitter PR shenanigans for this proxy war includes the Ukrainian government account talking to its “Crimea” account in the cringiest imitation of viral brand tweets you could possibly imagine.

“hey @Crimea what’s new?” tweeted the Ukraine account in lowercase letters just like the cool kids do.

“@Ukraine getting unchained, on my way home,” the Ukrainian government’s “Crimea” account replied.

Both of these accounts would of course be run by the same person, who would have been hired specifically for their understanding of social media, internet memes, and marketing. Because this is the most phony, PR-intensive proxy war of all time.

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Be careful what you post: How Facebook and the US government have united against Americans with the ‘wrong’ views

It’s been revealed by sources within the US Department of Justice that direct messages sent through Facebook by American users, along with public postings, have been rigorously monitored, and reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) if they express anti-government, anti-authority views, or if they question the legitimacy of the November 2020 presidential election’s outcome.

Witch hunt on the web

Under the terms of a secret collaboration agreement with the FBI, a Facebook staffer has, over the past 19 months, been red-flagging content they consider to be “subversive” and immediately transmitting it to the Bureau’s domestic terrorism operational unit, without the FBI having filed a single subpoena – outside the established US legal process, without probable cause, and in breach of the First Amendment, in other words.

Just as shockingly, these intercepted communications were then provided as leads and tips to FBI field offices across the US, which in turn secured subpoenas in order to officially obtain the private conversations that they already possessed, and thus cover up the fact the material had been obtained extra-legally. Facebook invariably complied with these subpoenas, and would send back “gigabytes of data and photos” within an hour, suggesting the content sought was already packaged and awaiting legal confirmation before distribution.

It is uncertain quite how many users were flagged, but it’s abundantly clear a specific type of person was of interest to the FBI – “red-blooded” conservative right-wingers, many of whom supported the right to bear arms. No one connected to Antifa, BLM or any other left-wing group was ever informed on. 

It seems not a single Facebook user snitched upon for daring to be possessed of troublesome political opinions was ever arrested, or prosecuted, for their wrongthink, even though some were reportedly subject to covert surveillance and other forms of intrusion and harassment. Their views were consistently found to not translate to criminality or violence – their words were simply brutal condemnations of Biden’s election and presidency, and aggressive calls for protests.

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If Facebook, Twitter, And Google Hide Information For The World’s Rulers, Elections Are A Scam

In a September interview that went viral on social media Sunday, a United Nations operative admitted the U.S. government-funded organization “partnered with Google” to rig the results returned on the world’s dominant search engine for the phrase “climate change.”

This follows multiple casual disclosures that, yes, politics control the information on monopoly tech platforms. In fact, government officials all the way up to the White House routinely use Big Tech to control what citizens are allowed to say to each other online, as an ongoing lawsuit from several U.S. attorneys general recently divulged.

The Biden White House is fighting further disclosures about high-level federal officials’ involvement in this government-pressured censorship regime, including Anthony Fauci and the White House press secretary. The companies involved include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, the court documents say.

Earlier this year, a clip of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg — who threw hundreds of millions of dollars obtained from his communications monopoly company into helping Democrat activists embed inside government election offices in 2020 — also went viral. It showed him telling podcaster Joe Rogan that the FBI also controls the information Facebook allows people to share. The FBI’s meddling affected the 2020 presidential election outcome.

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Outsourced censorship: Feds used private entity to target millions of social posts in 2020

Aconsortium of four private groups worked with the departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and State to censor massive numbers of social media posts they considered misinformation during the 2020 election, and its members then got rewarded with millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration afterwards, according to interviews and documents obtained by Just the News.

The Election Integrity Partnership is back in action again for the 2022 midterm elections, raising concerns among civil libertarians that a chilling new form of public-private partnership to evade the First Amendment’s prohibition of government censorship may be expanding.

The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika. It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State’s Global Engagement Center to file “tickets” requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.  

Three liberal groups — the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause and the NAACP — were also empowered like the federal agencies to file tickets seeking censorship of content. A Homeland-funded collaboration, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also had access.

In its own after-action report on the 2020 election, the consortium boasted it flagged more than 4,800 URLs — shared nearly 22 million times on Twitter alone — for social media platforms. Their staff worked 12-20 hour shifts from September through mid-November 2020, with “monitoring intensif[ying] significantly” the week before and after Election Day.

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Vietnam considers limiting who can post “news” on social media

Vietnam is working on new rules to limit news content on social media accounts. The new rules will limit the accounts that can share news, according to sources familiar with the matter.

“The government wants to fix what it sees as the ‘news-lisation’ of social media,” a source told Reuters. ‘News-lisation,” also called báo hoá in Vietnam, is a term used by the government to describe misleading social media users into believing that a social media account is an authorized news outlet.

According to the sources, the government has been holding private meetings with internet companies and platforms to discuss the accounts that will be allowed to post news content. Under the new rules, the government would have the authority to order social media companies to ban accounts that violate the rules.

The rules on news content, and other social media rules, are expected to be introduced later this year or early next year.

Vietnam is among the countries with the strictest internet and social media rules. The government has made many efforts to control the flow of news from unauthorized sources.

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Brands blast Twitter for ads next to child pornography accounts

Some major advertisers including Dyson, Mazda, Forbes and PBS Kids have suspended their marketing campaigns or removed their ads from parts of Twitter because their promotions appeared alongside tweets soliciting child pornography, the companies told Reuters.

DIRECTV and Thoughtworks also told Reuters late on Wednesday they have paused their advertising on Twitter.

Brands ranging from Walt Disney Co, NBCUniversal and Coca-Cola Co to a children’s hospital were among more than 30 advertisers that appeared on the profile pages of Twitter accounts peddling links to the exploitative material, according to a Reuters review of accounts identified in new research about child sex abuse online from cybersecurity group Ghost Data.

Some of tweets include key words related to “rape” and “teens,” and appeared alongside promoted tweets from corporate advertisers, the Reuters review found. In one example, a promoted tweet for shoe and accessories brand Cole Haan appeared next to a tweet in which a user said they were “trading teen/child” content.

“We’re horrified,” David Maddocks, brand president at Cole Haan, told Reuters after being notified that the company’s ads appeared alongside such tweets. “Either Twitter is going to fix this, or we’ll fix it by any means we can, which includes not buying Twitter ads.”

In another example, a user tweeted searching for content of “Yung girls ONLY, NO Boys,” which was immediately followed by a promoted tweet for Texas-based Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital. Scottish Rite did not return multiple requests for comment.

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Germany has charged or punished over 1,000 people for “online speech-related crimes” since 2018

An in-depth report from The New York Times has revealed the scale of Germany’s prosecution of “online speech-related crimes” and provided a behind-the-scenes look at the units who are tasked with surveilling social media to build cases against German citizens for what they post online.

The Times said that after reviewing German state records, it found that there were more than 8,500 cases related to alleged online speech-related crimes and more than 1,000 people have been charged or punished since 2018. However, no national figures exist on the total number of people charged with online speech-related crimes, and experts that spoke with The New York Times said the true figure is probably much higher.

The Times’ report also provides details on the copious amounts of social media surveillance that are being conducted by a task force in the German city, Göttingen. This task force was created in 2020 and reportedly has hallways, bookshelves, and desks filled with red evidence files. These files contain printouts of German citizens’ Facebook comments, tweets, and Telegram posts. Investigators that work on the task force search through social media feeds, public records, and government data to gather evidence of purported online speech-related crimes.

This task force is in charge of cases across Lower Saxony, a state in northern Germany. Authorities in Lower Saxony reportedly raid homes multiple times per month and in some cases, a local television crew records and broadcasts the raids.

Citizens who are raided but refuse to give up their phones have them seized and sent to a lab. This lab uses software made by the digital intelligence company Cellebrite to unlock the seized phones.

This task force alone investigated 566 “internet speech-related crimes” last year and expects to investigate double that number in 2022. The unit also fines or punishes around 28% of those who are investigated.

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