Tag: social media

DHS: “Radicalized” Americans who believe “false narratives” online are the new terror threat

The War on Terror. You might have thought that it started in 2001, with the shocking tragedy of 9/11, and also – the shockwaves that reverberated throughout societies (in terms of how the way of life irrevocably changed from airport travel, to what can and can’t be expressed online.)

And that it’s over.

Well, US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas doesn’t seem to be on board with such “ideations” of a return to the normal.

There’s apparently ever more “enemies” to be dealt with, hinted the head of the agency – the same agency that had its figurative “ass” handed to it earlier in the year with the failed attempt to impose a censorship overlord agency in the shape of a “disinformation board.”

Post 9/11, Mayorkas said on the anniversary of the attacks, the enemy was the individual.

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“The Regime of Censorship Being Imposed on the Internet is Dangerously Intensifying in Ways I Believe Are Not Adequately Understood”

U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald has condemned the Government, media and Big Tech for coordinating to censor dissent. Writing on Twitter on Tuesday, the Intercept cofounder blasted those who have taken advantage of a series of ‘crises’ as a pretext to conspire to suppress their ideological opponents. The searing Twitter thread is reproduced in full below.

The regime of censorship being imposed on the internet – by a consortium of Washington D.C. Democrats, billionaire-funded ‘disinformation experts’, the U.S. Security State, and liberal employees of media corporations – is dangerously intensifying in ways I believe are not adequately understood.

A series of “crises” have been cynically and aggressively exploited to inexorably restrict the range of permitted views and expand pretexts for online silencing and deplatforming. Trump’s election, Russiagate, January 6th, Covid and war in Ukraine all fostered new methods of repression.

During the failed attempt in January to force Spotify to remove Joe Rogan, the country’s most popular podcaster – remember that? – I wrote that the current religion of Western liberals in politics and media is censorship: their prime weapon of activism.

But that Rogan failure only strengthened their repressive campaigns. Dems routinely abuse their majoritarian power in D.C. to explicitly coerce Big Tech silencing of their opponents and dissent. This is Government censorship disguised as corporate autonomy.

There’s now an entire new industry, aligned with Dems, to pressure Big Tech to censor. Think tanks and self-proclaimed ‘disinformation experts’ funded by Omidyar, Soros and the U.S./U.K. Security State use benign-sounding names to glorify ideological censorship as neutral expertise.

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Memphis Maniac Who Live-Streamed Killing Spree Served Just 11 Months After Attempted Murder Arrest, Mayor Reveals

The 19-year-old Memphis man accused of killing four and terrorizing the city for hours Wednesday night as he drove around shooting people was let out of prison after serving less than a year for an attempted murder charge that was plea-bargained down to aggravated assault.

The Daily Wire is not naming the suspect or publishing his photo as part of a policy to deprive mass shooters of the attention they crave. But after police captured him in a stolen car, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said he should never have been on the loose.

“If [the suspect] served his full three-year sentence, he would still be in prison today and four of our fellow citizens would still be alive,” Strickland said.

Records show the suspect was freed on March 16 after serving just 11 months of his three-year sentence. A new law Strickland backed which went into effect in July may have kept the suspect locked up.

The bloody spree began just before 1 a.m. with the apparently random killing of a 24-year-old man in his driveway, said Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis, who laid out a timeline at a post-arrest news conference late Wednesday. The rampage resumed around 4:30 p.m., when police learned a man had been shot dead in his car.

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The MrSleepyPeople Rabbit Hole

For nearly a decade, a strange channel by the name of “MrSleepyPeople” has been posting disturbing clips onto YouTube. And after diving deep into this rabbit hole, I realized that not only is this channel very real. But it’s even more twisted than it seems. If you recognize any of the women or men shown in this video, please reach out to SleepyPeopleTipLine@gmail.com . Identifying these people may be our best chance at putting a stop to this.

CDC Gave Facebook Misinformation About COVID-19 Vaccines, Emails Show

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) passed misinformation to Facebook as the partners worked to combat misinformation, according to newly released emails, in the most recent example of CDC officials making false or misleading claims.

In a June 3 message, a Facebook official said the CDC had helped the company “debunk claims about COVID vaccines and children,” and asked for assistance addressing claims about the vaccines for babies and toddlers, including the claim that the vaccines were not effective.

Several weeks later, after U.S. regulators authorized the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for young children and the CDC recommended them, a CDC official responded by offering unsupported information.

“Claims that COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective for children ages 6 months to 4 years are false and belief in such claims could lead to back vaccine hesitancy,” the CDC official wrote. The names of all of the officials mentioned in this story were redacted in the emails, which were released as part of ongoing litigation against the U.S. government.

“COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are effective at protecting people, including children ages 6 months to 4 years, from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and even dying,” the CDC official added.

There’s no evidence that the vaccines are effective against severe illness and death in young children.

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Pipergate: A YouTube Rabbit Hole

In December of 2017, a 10 year old girl named Piper would start a YouTube channel known as “Piper Rocks” which she would use to showcase her video editing skills. However, the edits within this channel were bizarre and highly disturbing, causing many to wonder who this child might be. Leading to one of the darkest rabbit holes we’ve ever explored.

Facebook Fact-Checkers Are Now Dropping by the Comments Sections of Your Posts to Re-Educate You

Facebook just keeps finding new ways to be awful. The latest stunt is to jump into the comments section of your posts to insert some approved agitprop that stays near the top of your feed.

This particular “fact” check concerns an estimate from a car dealership showing that a customer would be charged nearly $30,000 for an EV battery for his Chevy Volt. A Facebook page called Car Coach Reports, which focuses on auto news, posted a picture of the invoice on August 29. Two days later, PolitiFact waded into the comments section to add their take on the story—namely that the battery in question was for a 10-year-old vehicle with 70,000 miles that is no longer under warranty. PolitiFact wrote, “The battery had to be purchased from a third-party supplier because General Motors discontinued the Volt in 2018 and no longer makes the battery.” They quickly added that newer batteries “cost much less.”

On the “fact” checker’s website we learn that “The average cost of a replacement battery in an electric vehicle is about $6,300… though that price can be higher depending on the vehicle in question.” Prices can range anywhere from $6000 to $20,000.

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Over 50 Biden Administration Employees, 12 US Agencies Involved in Social Media Censorship Push: Documents

Over 50 officials in President Joe Biden’s administration across a dozen agencies have been involved with efforts to pressure Big Tech companies to crack down on alleged misinformation, according to documents released on Aug. 31.

Senior officials in the U.S. government, including White House lawyer Dana Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty, and onetime White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt, have been in touch with one or more major social media companies to try to get the companies to tighten rules on allegedly false and misleading information on COVID-19, and take action against users who violate the rules, the documents show.

In July 2021, for instance, after Biden said that Facebook was “killing people” by not combating misinformation effectively, an executive at Meta reached out to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee, to say that government and Meta teams met after the remarks “to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.”

The same executive later wrote to Murthy saying, “I wanted to make sure you saw the steps we took just this past week to adjust policies on what we are removing with respect to misinformation, as well as steps taken to further address the ‘disinfo dozen,’” including removing pages linked to the group.

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FACEBOOK TELLS MODERATORS TO ALLOW GRAPHIC IMAGES OF RUSSIAN AIRSTRIKES BUT CENSORS ISRAELI ATTACKS

AFTER A SERIES of Israeli airstrikes against the densely populated Gaza Strip earlier this month, Palestinian Facebook and Instagram users protested the abrupt deletion of posts documenting the resulting death and destruction. It wasn’t the first time Palestinian users of the two giant social media platforms, which are both owned by parent company Meta, had complained about their posts being unduly removed. It’s become a pattern: Palestinians post sometimes graphic videos and images of Israeli attacks, and Meta swiftly removes the content, providing only an oblique reference to a violation of the company’s “Community Standards” or in many cases no explanation at all.

Not all the billions of users on Meta’s platforms, however, run into these issues when documenting the bombing of their neighborhoods.

Previously unreported policy language obtained by The Intercept shows that this year the company repeatedly instructed moderators to deviate from standard procedure and treat various graphic imagery from the Russia-Ukraine war with a light touch. Like other American internet companies, Meta responded to the invasion by rapidly enacting a litany of new policy carveouts designed to broaden and protect the online speech of Ukrainians, specifically allowing their graphic images of civilians killed by the Russian military to remain up on Instagram and Facebook.

No such carveouts were ever made for Palestinian victims of Israeli state violence — nor do the materials show such latitude provided for any other suffering population.

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