Tag: twitter

X To Pay Legal Fees Of Doctor Targeted For Speaking Out Against COVID Lockdowns

Elon Musk’s X has announced that it will finance the defense of a doctor in Canada who has been targeted and had her life savings drained away by having to fight legal battles after speaking out against COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

In the announcement, X said it is “proud to help defend Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill against the government-supported efforts to cancel her speech.”

X notes that Dr. Gill “spoke out publicly on Twitter (now X) in opposition to the Canadian and Ontario governments’ COVID lockdown efforts and vaccination mandates, she was harassed by the legacy media, censored by prior Twitter management, and subjected to investigations and disciplinary proceedings by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario that resulted in ‘cautions’ being placed on her permanent public record.”

“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and a critical defense against totalitarianism in all forms,” the company continued, adding “We must do whatever we can to protect it, and at X we will always fight to protect your right to speak freely.”

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Social media platform X bans account promoting a forthcoming documentary about FBI’s role in Whitmer ‘kidnapping plot’

In yet another example of how alleged “free speech” platform X (formerly Twitter) is anything but, a small team of independent documentary filmmakers have had their account “permanently” suspended this week as they prepare to release a documentary that they’ve been working on for over a year.

The topic: The 2020 “plot to kidnap and kill” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and the FBI’s extensive involvement therein.

The account was set up to promote the film, entitled Kidnap and Kill: An FBI Terror Plot, 14 months ago, in January of 2023.

“I paid for the account for over a year and even paid to promote the trailer on X buying twitter ads,” said director Christina Urso (also known as Radix Verum) in a post on Saturday.

“No email – nothing saying we violated TOS. We only used it to promote the trailer for the documentary.”

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X Says It Will Reduce the Visibility of Posts That Purposely Ignore a Person’s Preferred Pronouns

For some reason quietly, X has started enforcing revised rules, detailed in its platform guidelines for users – among other things, adding a section to the “Abuse and Harassment” that concerns the use of pronouns, and speech referring to persons “transitioning” (in terms of transgenderism).

The “amended” rules came into force at some point between January 24 and 27 this year, and should an X user be found to “purposefully” address another using a pronoun different than what that user has chosen for themselves, they can expect to be (and they ostensibly already are) punished by having their posts’ visibility on the platform “reduced.”

It’s not entirely clear if this constitutes straight-forward shadowbanning, i.e., if the supposed guidelines violator is immediately notified of this; but given the nebulous nature of any attempt to determine if someone is doing this “purposefully” – the revised rules spell out that those addressed using “the wrong pronouns” will be consulted.

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Elon Musk’s X Blocks Searches for ‘Taylor Swift’ Amid Spread of Explicit AI-Generated Images

X was blocking searches for “Taylor Swift”over the weekend following the spread of AI-generated images depicting the pop star in sexually explicit poses.

Searches for “Taylor Swift” and “Taylor Swift AI” on X returned error messages on Saturday and Sunday, though Elon Musk’s platform allowed variations on the search terms, including “Taylor Swift photos AI.”

X confirmed it is deliberately blocking the search phrases for the time being.

“This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue,” X’s head of business operations Joe Benarroch said in a statement sent to multiple media outlets.

The Joe Biden administration and the mainstream news media shifted into high gear after the fake Taylor Swift images went viral, seeking to protect the left-wing pop star.

“We are alarmed by the reports of the circulation of the false images,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday, saying social media companies need to do a better job enforcing their own rules.

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X CEO Linda Yaccarino Says “Free Speech” Ends at “Hate Speech”

X continues to sit on two chairs and send mixed signals regarding the company’s stance on free speech.

A new blog post penned this week by X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino goes into this, at once claiming that society must “empower people to express its thoughts” – but also, that the line must be drawn at “hate” and “hate speech.”

Considering the platform’s long and difficult history with suppressing free speech, well documented in the Twitter Files, and the fact terms like “hate speech” not to mention “misinformation” are so often used simply to cover up straight-up censorship, Yaccarino’s intent here can be seen as confusing.

All the more so since the blog post is entitled, “Safeguarding Information Independence and Combating Hate Speech” only to be followed by the subtitle, “Building an Indispensable Global Town Square.”

This is particularly interesting since it’s an admission of sorts that X is indeed a (digital) town square. The argument that this is the case with all major social sites has been used for a long time to prove that speech there should be protected under the US Constitution’s First Amendment, regardless of the companies being privately-owned.

The term “modern public square” as it pertains to social networks is found in the 2017 US Supreme Court opinion in Packingham v. North Carolina.

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Anti-Zionist Twitter Users See Their Reach Plummet Ahead of Elon Musk’s Planned Visit to Auschwitz

Anti-Zionist Twitter users are finding that their reach has plummeted ahead of X owner Elon Musk’s planned visit to Auschwitz next week to speak on a panel with Ben Shapiro on “combating antisemitism.”

Censored Men, a large anti-Zionist X account, reported that many X users are finding their engagement is up but their impressions are down.

We have also seen heightened levels of censorship lately.

Lucas Gage was banned for 3 months, Autumn Groyper [Nick Fuentes’ alt account] was permanently banned and Sulaiman Ahmed has been locked out of his account.

This comes after major Telegram channels, and X accounts in some cases, have set up a targeted campaign to get these people removed from the app.

Now, I can’t say for certain that it was these accounts and Telegram channels that lead to the ban of these people, but it’s definitely something X should be looking into.

I hope all the issues many creators are experiencing on this app, can be addressed as soon as possible.

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Supreme Court Declines To Hear X’s Challenge to FBI Surveillance Gag Orders

The social network formerly known as Twitter has been undergoing more than just “superficial” branding transformations as of late, going from a reliable ally of state-driven censorship, to a platform that became the first major one to try to shed light on the mechanisms and practices of deep censorship.

The Twitter Files disclose more than just a private company exercising the right to be wrong in suppressing users’ free speech: they also implicated the US federal government with damning proof of serious transgressions, such as (explicitly unconstitutional) state collusion in censorship.

However, the US Supreme Court has now refused to consider X’s request to be able to publish some relevant numbers.

The original filing dates all the way back to 2014, in the wake of the revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, that sent shock waves both among citizens and politicians.

But those behind the company/platform, now called X, seem well-aware that this story by no means ended with some government concessions (regarding disclosure) made after the Snowden revelations, or with the Twitter Files.

And so, possibly as a defense tactic going forward, X tried to be granted the right to reveal the number of times federal law enforcement “gets in touch” to get information, framed as pertaining to national security.

The Supreme Court decision came after X appealed when a lower instance court said that the FBI had every right to constrain X in sharing the information about the “national security investigations requests” number with the public.

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Several Large Accounts That Criticized Israel and Musk Banned from X

A group of journalists and political commentators with large followings were banned on X without notice. The owners of the banned profiles pointed to criticisms of Israel and Elon Musk. 

On Tuesday morning, the accounts of Alan MacLeod, Ken Klippenstein, Rob Rousseau, the True Anon Podcast, Steven Monacelli, and an anonymous account @Zei_Squrill, were all banned on the platform owned by Musk. 

MacLeod, who had over 200,000 followers on X, posted on Telegram that the suspension came without warning. “Today, without warning or explanation, Twitter suspended my account, @AlanRMacLeod. They told me to check my email for a reason, but no email has been forthcoming,” the journalist wrote. “I have never even remotely been involved in any controversy/been reported/been stuck in Twitter jail before, so I assume the real reason is political, especially as high-profile leftist accounts like Rob Rousseau and Zei_Squirrel were also targeted today.”

In a statement provided to The Libertarian Institute, MacLeod said, “I’m deeply concerned about Twitter banning a host of influential anti-war accounts today, including my own. It is a sign that Elon Musk’s supposed passion for free speech might not be all that it seems.”

Musk acquired Twitter in October of 2022 and later renamed the platform X. At the time, he said he aimed to make Twitter a “platform for free speech around the globe.” 

In one of his first acts as owner of Twitter, he allowed Matt Taibbi and other journalists to access the business communications of the company’s leadership. In the Twitter Files, Taibbi exposed a coordinated effort between the government and Twitter to censor speech that countered the establishment narrative on the election, covid, and the war in Ukraine. 

However, as America has entered an election year, Musk-owned X is stepping up its censorship efforts. 

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San Francisco Boasted They Would Hire Thousands Of Sacked Twitter Employees – It Didn’t Happen

One of the biggest shock events in the history of digital communications took place in April of 2022 when Elon Musk followed through on his promise to purchase Twitter (now known as X).  The buyout took place amid the chaos of covid hype and in the middle of a full spectrum mass censorship campaign organized by Big Tech companies and multiple government agencies and officials.  

In early 2022, it was nearly impossible to make statements regarding certain hot button issues; any information contrary to the establishment narrative about covid vaccines, gender ideology, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the war in Ukraine, or the events of January 6th were treated as radioactive.  Tens of thousands of people lost their social media accounts merely for reprinting the facts.

Musk reactivated many of these accounts (including Zero Hedge’s account) after taking control of the company, and then targeted the root of the censorship regime:  The far-left management as well as the incredible number of activist moderators employed by the website to monitor and silence dissent.  

Not surprisingly, this action triggered a mob of journalists as well as government bureaucrats who threatened investigations into Musk’s takeover while entertaining the possibility of shutting the company down completely.  The government’s collusion with Big Tech to violate the 1st Amendment rights of Americans was exposed and leftists lost one of their biggest online echo chambers. Their veritable monopoly was broken.  Musk also proved that Twitter was a bloated farce after firing over 80% of Twitter staff (more than 6000 people), only for the platform to function just fine without them.  

The woke regime was not done posturing yet, though.  In November of 2022 San Francisco Mayor London Breed attempted to stick it to Musk when she announced that the city would offer 4800 vacant positions to the fired “Tweeps” (Twitter employees).

It’s not surprising that the city government believed thousands of activist managers and censors would find easy homes within the local bureaucracy, but the purpose of the Mayor’s offer was more likely to send a message.  What was the message?  That leftists will be protected from the consequences of their decisions and behavior.  If they are ever made to reap the whirlwind, the hive will respond and ensure that they fail upwards; that they are granted more favors and more benefits to offset what few punishments they might endure.  

It’s the ever present reward for fealty to the leftist cause; no failure is left behind.  At least, in theory…  

Breed had recently attacked Musk in a Bloomberg interview as “the person who got a ton of tax breaks in California and decided to take that money and run,” after he moved Tesla out of California and set up shop in Texas.  Her hostility to the mogul’s business efforts was no secret.  

Riding the wave of anti-Musk sentiment in CA might have seemed valuable at the time and giving reassurance to activists that no one would really suffer consequences made the woke movement feel at ease, but following through on bold claims is not something leftists are known for.  

As it turned out, the mass job offer for fired Tweeps was nothing more than a virtue signal.

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EU Hits Musk With X Probe On Possible ‘Disinformation’

European Commissioner Thierry Breton announced an investigation into Elon Musk’s ‘free speech’ social media platform X for failure to combat ‘illicit content and disinformation.’ This is the first major probe the EU has opened up on X since last year’s passing of a new law called the “Digital Services Act.” 

“Today we open formal infringement proceedings against @X” under the Digital Services Act, European Commissioner Breton wrote in a post on Monday morning on X. 

“The Commission will now investigate X’s systems and policies related to certain suspected infringements,” spokesman Johannes Bahrke told reporters in Brussels, adding, “It does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation.”

The investigation is centered on whether X failed to stop the spread of ‘illegal content’ (in other words, non-approved government narratives) and whether the Community Notes feature is enough to combat “information manipulation.” 

An investigation into X’s business practices was signaled by the EU as early as October, following the Israel-Gaza conflict in which officials warned that “terrorist and violent content and hate speech” was spreading on the social media platform. 

“The time of big online platforms behaving like they are ‘too big to care’ has come to an end,” Breton stated. 

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