Tag: twitter

Crazed Authoritarians Demand X Be Shut Down in UK

Mimicking a policy that the west once condemned Communist China for pursuing, authoritarians are now calling for X to be shut down completely in the UK to stop civil unrest.

After the country was rocked by a series of riots over the past week in response to a 17-year-old son of Rwandan immigrants killing three little girls in Southport, the media and the political class blamed the anger on “misinformation” shared on X.

In reality, the UK has been a boiling pot of resentment and rage over mass migration for years, with huge numbers continuing to arrive, putting massive strain on the country and making some parts of major towns and cities unrecognizable, despite nobody having ever voted for it.

However, the disorder is being exploited to grease the skids for mass censorship.

Cambridge professor Sander van der Linden said the government could “geo-restrict access to a platform if the situation got so bad” and Twitter could also be “banned from the app store for violating policies.”

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Elon Musk’s ‘Election Interference’

A “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call reportedly raised $4 million in donations for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. After the call, the @dudes4Harris account on X was briefly suspended.

Is this election interference?

If we remain in reality, the answer is of course not.

Even if X CEO Elon Musk ordered the account suspended because of its politics, there would be no (legal) wrongdoing here. X is a private platform, and it doesn’t have any obligation to be politically neutral. Explicitly suppressing pro-Harris content would be a bad business model, surely, but it would not be illegal. Musk and the platform formerly known as Twitter have no obligation to equally air conservative and progressive views or give equal treatment to Republican and Democratic candidates.

But there’s no evidence that X was deliberately trying to thwart Harris organizers. The dudes4Harris account—which has no direct affiliation to the Harris campaign—was suspended after it promoted and held its Zoom call and was back the next day. That’s a pretty bad plan if the goal was to stop its influence or fundraising. And there are all sorts of legitimate reasons why X may have suspended the account.

The account’s suspension is “not that surprising,” writes Techdirt Editor in Chief Mike Masnick (who, it should be noted, is intensely critical of X policies and Musk himself on many issues). “Shouldn’t an account suddenly amassing a ton of followers with no clear official connection to the campaign and pushing people to donate maybe ring some internal alarm bells on any trust and safety team? It wouldn’t be a surprise if it tripped some guardwires and was locked and/or suspended briefly while the account was reviewed. That’s how this stuff works.”

If we step out of reality into the partisan hysteria zone, however, then the account’s temporary suspension was clearly an attempt by Musk to sway the 2024 election.

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New Emails Reveal Big Tech-Biden Admin Collusion on COVID-19 Narratives, Involving CDC and Twitter Censorship

Trying to refute collusive practices involving major social media companies is probably not high on the agenda of the US government right this moment; nevertheless, the evidence of the highly controversial practice keeps rolling in.

America First Legal (AFL), a conservative non-profit, has disclosed a new batch of documents obtained through litigation, this time against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It concerns May 2021 communications meant to set the tone online and “manage” the government agenda around topics related to Covid vaccines.

The emails were exchanged between Facebook and CDC – and the documents focus on the activities of CDC spokesperson Carol Crawford, who also “happened” to be involved with Twitter’s Partner Support Portal around the same time.

This Twitter program’s “secret superpower” was that it allowed government-affiliated individuals to participate in flagging content for censorship.

Genelle Adrien (of the Politics and Government Outreach Team over at Facebook) and Crawford “star” in the email chain obtained by AFL, with the latter being asked point blank that the CDC approve Facebook’s “COVID-19 Information Center FAQ.”

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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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Former FBI and Twitter Lawyer Jim Baker Joins Election Task Force Advocating for Social Media Censorship

From presidential election to another election, to Covid – to another election. That is how members of particular, mostly flying-under-the-radar power centers in the US have been moving over the last decades.

From time to time, however, circumstances demand that they show their faces: one is James “Jim” Baker, a former FBI lawyer whose “censorship portfolio” includes the infamous case of endorsing the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression – while he was on Twitter’s payroll.

And while there – Baker also wanted to know how come President Trump was not censored for a post saying – “Don’t fear Covid.”

Well, Baker also seems to be staying true to himself – unfortunately, his “truth” appears to be to never miss the chance to support the wrong thing (the “RussiaGate” saga happens to be among them). Right now, he has joined something called “the National Task Force on Election Crises.”

It’s a crisis, alright. A crisis of online censorship that can, and does, produce multiple “election” crises and a rapid erosion of trust in legacy media and political institutions.

The group’s parent operation is the Protect Democracy Project.

There’s nothing particularly innovative about the group’s lobbying talking points: remove or downgrade “election misinformation” and make sure removing and labeling content (as false) is done ASAP by social and news media (time is clearly of the essence, at this point…)

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Advertiser Alliance Members Are Called To Testify After Allegations of Efforts To “Demonetize, and Censor Disfavored Viewpoints”

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) is back in the headlines big time – what with the recent decision of X to rejoin the group, and now, as anticipated, the US Congress is stepping up its attempts to shed more light on what GARM actually does, censorship-wise.

Once again it is House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan who is trying to hold Big Tech – and in this case, “the advertising industrial complex” as it were – accountable.

GARM is a World Economic Forum (WEF)-affiliated initiative, launched by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA); the latter by its own admission represents more than 150 biggest brands and over 60 advertiser associations around the world.

“Brand safety” is what the group says it is offering to these clients. But Jordan, and many conservatives and media outlets and businesses – allied or perceived to be allied with them – have strong suspicions that GARM can and is being used as yet another avenue of censorship and suppression – this time via actions that result in demonetization or boycott of those who hold “disfavored views.”

Concerning GARM, Jordan started fighting what supporters must see as “the good fight” last year (first by requesting information and then by issuing a subpoena once that was ignored).

Then, this March, the Committee sent letters to five members of the GARM Steering Team including Unilever and GroupM (a media investment group) asking for access to documents and communications that might prove the overall anti-conservative bias executed by the imitative.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

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X Re-Joins Pro-Censorship Advertisers’ Alliance

Given how X has gone out of its way to reveal the depth and breadth of online censorship via the Twitter Files, this makes for an awkward reunion: the company has decided to rejoin the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).

It’s a pro-censorship, World Economic Forum-affiliated advertisers’ group, that achieves its objectives through the “brand safety” route (i.e., the censorship “brand” here would be demonetization). And last summer, it was scrutinized by the US Congress.

GARM is one of those outfits whose roots are very entangled (comes in handy when somebody tries to probe your activities, though) – and the chronology is not insignificant either: formed in 2019 as a World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) initiative, partnered with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

Then came another “partnership” – that with WEF (World Economic Forum), specifically, its Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment, and Sport project – a “flagship” one.

In May 2023, the US House Judiciary Committee wanted to know what exactly was happening here, and whether “brand safety” as a concept, as exercised by these entities, could be linked to censorship of online speech.

So the Committee subpoenaed the World Federation of Advertisers (and GARM), asking for records that might show whether these groups “coordinated efforts to demonetize and censor disfavored speech online.”

Committee Chairman Jim Jordan was at the time concerned that this conduct might have run afoul of US antitrust laws.

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Millionaire televangelist Joel Osteen is roasted over tweet to his followers about the ‘simple things’ in life

The internet is reacting to an especially out-of-touch tweet from millionaire televangelist Joel Osteen – one that insisted people should enjoy the ‘simple things’ in life even if they don’t ‘have a lot of resources.’

The 61-year-old televangelist boasts a net worth of at least $50million, and own two homes in Texas valued at $10.5 million and $2.9 million. The $10.5million manse, found in Houston, comes complete with a pool, pool house, and three elevators.

Onlookers were quick to point out the apparent hypocrisy, along with his profile- status at his Lakewood megachurch where he works as senior pastor. 

The church  receives millions in donations from churchgoers who heed Osteen’s demands for donations during sermons, and operates on an annual budget of around $70million.

On Wednesday, Osteen declared ‘It’s the simple things in life that bring us the most joy,’ and that those who ‘may not have a lot of resources’ are ‘blessed’ as long as they have their health. If you’re able to ‘look at the stars at night’, you’re blessed, he said.

The internet proceeded to roast him relentlessly.

‘If you can look up at those stars from the balcony of your mansion, you’re Joel Osteen,’ one person sarcastically sniped.

‘How anyone could send a dime to this morally bankrupt conman is beyond comprehension,’ someone else said.

‘“You may not have a lot of resources..” multiple mansions, a yacht and sports cars were all purchased off the backs of the suckers he’s referring to,’ the commenter went on.

‘Religion is the greatest con on the planet.’

Another person honed in on how Osteen’s church made headlines a few years ago refusing to open its doors to victims during Hurricane Harvey. 

Only after intense backlash did the preacher finally give way, opening the facility that has a capacity of 16,000 people.

‘Saw Joel Osteen trending and thought he had locked his church doors during a hurricane again,’ that person said.

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Despite Backlash, X Continues Digital ID Verification with New Partner Stripe

X, a prominent social media platform, has seemingly phased out its association with the Israeli identity verification firm AU10TIX, shifting instead to American company Stripe to manage its identity verification services.

The move followed reports that AU10TIX had suffered a data leak.

This transition comes amidst concerns raised by some of X’s users regarding the safety of their personal data, particularly their photo IDs.

The call for X to disengage from AU10TIX also gained momentum after specific users highlighted the risk of intelligence sharing.

But rather than dropping the controversial digital ID system entirely, X has simply switched companies.

Starting to introduce digital IDs for social media use can severely inhibit free speech by stripping away the protective layer of anonymity and pseudonymity.

This change could deter users from expressing controversial or minority viewpoints for fear of personal or professional repercussions, particularly under oppressive regimes or in sensitive situations.

Such a policy would also heighten surveillance risks, as linking social media profiles to real-world identities makes it easier for both governmental and non-governmental actors to monitor individuals. The ability of controversial or targeted vulnerable groups to safely organize and communicate could be significantly compromised, leading to a decrease in diverse voices and activism online.

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“DMCA Does Not Apply”: Musk Says X Will Not Remove CNN Debate Streams, Footage

X owner Elon Musk has clarified that the platform will not block or remove live streams and footage of the Presidential debate on Thursday, despite apparent demands by CNN that social media companies do not allow creators to use their feed.

Podcaster Tim Pool claimed that he’d been told by CNN that he would not be legally allowed to simulcast the debate and provide his own commentary and fact checks on it.

The Post Millenial then highlighted an email they received from CNN, in which the network stated that “CNN’s debates are exclusive to CNN and may not be streamed or streamed with verbal or digital commentary on any platform or social media site by another party, other than the embeddable YouTube player via the CNN YouTube channel.”

The email also stated “Podcast Use: Similar to broadcast rules, news organizations may use audio clips (up to 3:00 minutes at a time) on their shows after the debate conclude and must credit the ‘CNN Presidential Debate’ verbally in introducing the clip.”

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