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Inauthentic Behavior: SouthFront is the Latest Victim of the Facebook Banhammer
Inauthentic Behavior: SouthFront is the Latest Victim of the Facebook Banhammer
The censorship of alternative media is becoming more widespread. The latest victim to fall to Facebook and YouTube’s overzealous banhammer is well-known conflict watchdog website, SouthFront.
Where can you find daily news, videos, analysis and maps about the conflict in Syria? Detailed reports about the conflicts in Libya, Yemen, and Venezuela? News about the rise of ISIS in Mozambique? The original analysis of events in the United States and Russia? SouthFront is the place, or at least it was before recently being targeted by tech giants Facebook and Youtube.
Unique and influential and reaching a global audience of hundreds of thousands, SouthFront offers both editorials and factual news reports, both in text format and informational videos. As their website says:
SouthFront focuses on issues of international relations, armed conflicts and crises… We try to dig out the truth on issues which are barely covered by the states concerned and the mainstream media.”
Censorship by Facebook and YouTube
A major disinformation and censorship drive against SouthFront was recently launched. On April 30, SouthFront’s Facebook account, which had nearly 100,000 subscribers, was deleted without warning or notice.
On May 1, SouthFront’s main YouTube account, boasting over 150,000 subscribers, was also terminated. The English language channel had 1,900 videos which racked up 60 million views over the past five years.
While the SouthFront website is still operational, the removal of its Facebook and YouTube accounts deprives it of important distribution channels that it so painstakingly built.
The censorship has been accompanied by a disinformation campaign pushed by government-linked think tanks. The move is part of a broader push by the US State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which has a direct liaison with Silicon Valley companies and teams focused on countering what it claims is propaganda from Russia, China, and Iran. The GEC operates with a current budget of $60 million per year.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Facebook Singles Out State Media of US Adversaries for a Warning
Facebook Singles Out State Media of US Adversaries for a Warning
Ignoring state-owned media in nations allied with the U.S., Facebook is attaching a warning label to state media from countries the U.S. doesn’t like.
Facebook has begun adding labels to news articles it publishes from “state media” to warn readers about where their news is coming from.
The warning reads: “This publisher is wholly or partially under the editorial control of a state. This is determined by a range of factors, including but not limited to funding, structure and journalistic standards.”
“The concern for us is state media combines the agenda setting power of a media entity with the strategic backing of a state,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, told CNN Business. “If you’re reading coverage of a protest, it’s really important you know who is writing that coverage and what motivation they have. The goal of this is to ensure the public will see and understand who is behind it.”
Facebook is so far labeling news from only two state media outlets. It’s hardly surprising who they are: Russian government-owned Sputnik and RT, and Xinhua, China’s national news agency.
A government can choose its adversaries. But nowhere is it written that the news media, or Facebook, has to automatically go along. Doing so makes one look like state-run media.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies to Congress, April 2018. (YouTube)
Facebook will also ban advertising on its platform from state media it doesn’t like. So far that’s only from Russia and China.
These are purely political decisions made by Facebook under direct pressure from the U.S. government in open Congressional hearings. It has nothing to do with maintaining accuracy in media.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Internet Censorship, Ego Death, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Internet Censorship, Ego Death, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
There is no legitimate basis upon which to support monopolistic plutocratic megacorporations with extensive government ties silencing dissident voices in order to control the thoughts that people think about Covid-19. This is true regardless of your stance on the virus itself.
It is a known fact that Silicon Valley tech giants have extensive ties to the US government. Like, it’s not a secret. At all. Yet whenever you object to internet censorship you always get people babbling about how it’s a “private company” so it’s okay. If a company is intertwined with government power in myriad ways, how is its deplatforming behavior meaningfully distinct from state censorship? Especially when its willingness to collaborate with the government protects it from antitrust cases, thereby killing any potential competition?
“Free market” types say “If you don’t like it you can go on another platform!” No you can’t. There’s no competition. If you don’t like Twitter you can leave a platform of hundreds of millions for a platform like Gab, which is like ten people and nine of them are Nazis.
They’ll say “No biggie, go be on that tiny platform over there, there’s plenty of free speech there!” I am sure there is. There’s free speech in the desert, too. Free speech doesn’t matter if you’ve isolated yourself on a platform where your voice is only heard by a few fringey people.
They’ve herded everyone onto a few monopolistic government-tied platforms, and now they’re censoring those platforms with an increasingly authoritarian fist. There’s no “free market” solution to this problem, because it’s not happening in a free market.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
China Daily Censors Opinion Article Written By EU Officials; Removes Any Mention Of China As Virus Origin
China Daily Censors Opinion Article Written By EU Officials; Removes Any Mention Of China As Virus Origin
BuzzFeed’s Alberto Nardelli points out that the European Union failed to discuss edits, including the removal of references to the spread of COVID-19, in an op-ed jointly published by all 27 member states in a Chinese-owned newspaper.
Some European officials did not find out about the secret edits Brussels made with the Chinese until after the opinion piece was published. One diplomat told BuzzFeed there was no discussion about the edits with Brussels, saying there was “irony of the incident happening just a few days after World Press Freedom Day on Sunday.”
Another diplomat said Brussels’ decision to make the edit as per China’s request is “weak,” with another diplomat saying member states being shunned from knowing about the edits is “really bad.”
The piece was published in the China Daily Newspaper and after reviewing the same report but uploaded onto the EU embassy website, it becomes clear this could be the section China had removed: “But the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months.”
China limiting freedom of speech, or better yet, attempting to control the global narrative about the virus, marks a dangerous period for the world. One where China continues to coverup the origins of the pandemic.
An EU spokesperson told BuzzFeed that the opinion piece was edited on the demands “of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
“The EU Delegation decided nevertheless to proceed with the publication of the Op-Ed with considerable reluctance, as it considered it important to communicate very important messages on EU policy priorities, notably on climate change and sustainability, human rights, multilateralism and the global response to the coronavirus.”
Why You Should Oppose The Censorship Of David Icke (Hint: It’s Got Nothing To Do With Icke)
Why You Should Oppose The Censorship Of David Icke (Hint: It’s Got Nothing To Do With Icke)
Within 48 hours both Facebook and then Youtube have deleted the accounts of David Icke for posting “content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS.” Other platforms may soon fall in suit, as they did with Alex Jones in 2018.
This article is not about David Icke. I will say it again in italics for the especially dense: this article is not about David Icke. This article is about why we shouldn’t be okay with monopolistic billionaire-owned Silicon Valley tech giants with extensive ties to US government agencies controlling human communication.
I know next to nothing about David Icke, and I have done exactly zero research into his views for this article; for all I know he’s every bit the raving lunatic the narrative managers say he is. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re seeing a consistent and accelerating pattern of powerful plutocratic institutions collaborating with the US-centralized empire to control what ideas people around the world are permitted to share with each other, and it’s a very unsafe trajectory. Making this conversation about Icke and his views distracts from the very important topic we need to actually focus on discussing.
“The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant.”
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/temporary-coronavirus-censorship …The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is HereAs the Covid-19 crisis progresses, censorship programs advance, amid calls for China-style control of the Internettaibbi.substack.com
Journalist Matt Taibbi recently wrote an excellent essay about the dangers inherent in the increased demand we’ve been seeing for more censorship and deplatforming during the coronavirus pandemic, correctly arguing that more authoritarian control over the ideas people are allowed to discuss is vastly more dangerous than the ideas themselves.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
YouTube Censors Viral Video of Doctors Criticizing ‘Stay-at-Home’ Order
YouTube Censors Viral Video of Doctors Criticizing ‘Stay-at-Home’ Order
Deleted after racking up over 5 million views.
YouTube has censored a viral video in which two doctors criticized the logic of whether California’s stay-at-home coronavirus order is necessary.
The video, which had racked up over 5 million views, featured Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, co-owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, Calif.
In the clip, Erickson asserts that there is only a “0.03 chance of dying from COVID in the state of California,” prompting him to ask, “Does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work?”
Erickson also asked why fatalities were being counted as COVID-19 deaths when other ailments were actually more to blame.
“When someone dies in this country right now, they’re not talking about the high blood pressure, the diabetes, the stroke. They’re saying ‘Did they die from COVID?’” Erickson said. “We’ve been to hundreds of autopsies. You don’t talk about one thing, you talk about comorbidities. ER doctors now [say] ‘It’s interesting when I’m writing about my death report, I’m being pressured to add COVID. Why is that?”
The video was deleted late last night for “violating YouTube’s terms of service.”
Daniel Horowitz✔@RMConservative
Is it just me or did @YouTube take down Dr. Erickson’s viral video with 5 million views? https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=xfLVxx_lBLU&feature=emb_title … YouTube at 🏠 @YouTube
Earlier this month, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN that the company would ban any video content that contradicted World Health Organization recommendations.
However, Wojcicki suggested that this would mainly be focused on banning information about fake cures, not questioning of government policy.
The video platform has also set about banning any content that claims 5G cell towers are linked to the coronavirus outbreak.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
More Coronavirus Censorship: Social Media Companies Parnter With WHO To Censor Info
MORE CORONAVIRUS CENSORSHIP: SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES PARTNER WITH WHO TO CENSOR INFO
Social media companies have made the decision to partner with “health authorities” (government officials like those who work for the CDC) to combat “misinformation” about the coronavirus. We all know what this means. Under the mainstream media’s seemingly innocent words lies a rash of new censorship coming down the pipes.
Only the official narrative from those in the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon be allowed on social media. Last week, the social media app TikTok, popular with youths and young adults, announced it would be partnering with the WHO in an effort to spread veritable information on the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, in addition to best public health practices.
According to a report by ABC News, WHO posted its first TikTok on Friday.
we’ve teamed up with @WHO to get you the trusted health info you need
“COVID-19 outbreak has seen a massive ‘infodemic’—an over-abundance of information—some accurate and some not—that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it,” the WHO told ABC News.
“Therefore, WHO is working with various social media platforms, including TikTok, to help us reach the right audience (the right community, the right age group, etc.), as well as to detect the spread of misinformation on the new coronavirus. We understand that different platforms might have their specific audience, hence important to make trustworthy information available where people are looking for it.”
HOW TO PREPARE YOUR HOME (QUARANTINE) FOR A PANDEMIC
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Were Coronavirus Samples Destroyed By China To Coverup The Outbreak?
Were Coronavirus Samples Destroyed By China To Coverup The Outbreak?
Since the outbreak of Coronavirus in Wuhan, the Chinese Communist Party has concealed the epidemic from the local government to the central government and shirked from its responsibility. Recently, Caixin, a Beijing-based media group published a shocking report that the Hubei Provincial Health and Medical Commission ordered the destruction of Coronavirus samples. Soon after the story was gagged with the article subsequently taken down.
Gene sequence detected and reported at the end of December
On February 26, Caixin published a shocking article titled “Tracking the Source of New Coronavirus Gene Sequencing“. Caixin sources told GreatGameIndia on condition of anonymity that the article was taken down due to mounting pressure from the Chinese authorities. The article was archived on the web but even the archived version redirects to an error page. So, we decided to publish the Caixin report in full translated into English from Chinese (found at the above link).
The Caixin report said:
As of February 24, more than 2660 people have died and more than 77,000 people have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, a novel coronavirus similar to SARS. When was it found? Caixin reporters conducted interviews from various sources and sorted out relevant papers and database materials. By piecing together all sorts of information, the full picture is gradually emerging.
The Caixin article stated that there were no less than 9 unknown pneumonias before the end of December last year. Samples of the cases were collected from various hospitals in Wuhan. Gene sequencing showed that the pathogen was a SARS-like Coronavirus (similarity is about 80% and infectious). These test results were returned to the hospital and reported to the Health and Medical Commission and the Center for Disease Control.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Don’t Be Fooled by the Deplatforming of Facebook
Don’t Be Fooled by the Deplatforming of Facebook
The push for speech control escalates. There is now a concentration of stories concerning social media companies and their role in shaping political thought.
We are nine months from a pivotal presidential election in the U.S. and the push is on to ensure that the outcome goes the way those in power want it to.
Three times in as many weeks billionaire busybody George Soros has attacked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, demanding he be removed because he is working to re-elect Donald Trump.
This seems like an absurdity. But it isn’t. It’s all part of the game plan.
Create a controversy that isn’t real to seed a narrative that there’s a problem in need of a solution. Facebook has been the center of this controversy to inflame passions on both sides of the political aisle to ensure the desired outcome.
They want regulation of all social media companies to create unscalable barriers to entry for new ones while curtailing free speech on the existing ones.
Warren Buffet would call that a moat. I call it tyranny.
Enter Attorney General William Barr.
He weighed in recently that we need to have a conversation about Facebook et.al. in relation to their Section 230 immunity under the Communications Decency Act.
Section 230 grants immunity to companies like Facebook and Google from prosecution for content hosted on their services as they argue they are not publishers but rather just pass-through entities or platforms of user-generated content.
Now, it’s pretty clear for the past few years the social media companies have been acting with open editorial bias to deplatform undesirables. They rewrite broadly defined terms of services and EULAs (End-User Licence Agreements) which they use to justify controlling what content they are willing to host.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Twitter Tool Could See ‘Verified’ Users Given Power To Label “Lies” & “Harmful” Tweets
Twitter Tool Could See ‘Verified’ Users Given Power To Label “Lies” & “Harmful” Tweets
Twitter is preparing to roll out more ways it intends to censor and “label” speech. The company is also experimenting with giving only blue checkmark “verified” fact-checkers and journalists the power to identify “lies” and label and edit accordingly. What could possibly go wrong?
“Twitter is experimenting with adding brightly colored labels directly beneath lies and misinformation posted by politicians and other public figures, according to a leaked demo of new features” obtained by NBC, which first broke the story Thursday.
We’re exploring a number of ways to address misinformation and provide more context for tweets on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesperson said. “Misinformation is a critical issue and we will be testing many different ways to address it.”
Get ready for a potential new Twitter where essentially all utterances and perspectives on controversial events and data will have to pass through blue checkmark gatekeepers.
This is an astounding and Orwellian section from the NBC report:
In this version, disinformation or misleading information posted by public figures would be corrected directly beneath a tweet by fact-checkers and journalists who are verified on the platform and possibly by other users who would participate in a new “community reports” feature, which the demo claims is “like Wikipedia.”
Here’s what it might look like when a politician tweets “harmfully misleading” content after March 5th. Big red/orange flag underneath the offending tweet.
These are screenshots from that were left on a public testing site. Twitter confirmed they’re possible iterations.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Chinese Regime Deploys 1,600 Online Trolls To Suppress Information On Coronavirus
Chinese Regime Deploys 1,600 Online Trolls To Suppress Information On Coronavirus
The propaganda department in virus-stricken Hubei Province has engaged over 1,600 censors to scrub the internet of “sensitive” information relating to the coronavirus outbreak, according to an internal document obtained by The Epoch Times.
The internal report, dated Feb. 15, detailed the agency’s efforts to ramp up censorship measures. It was drafted after a speech given by Chinese leader Xi Jinping via video link on Feb. 10 to “frontline responders” of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, where the virus first broke out.
The revelations come as the Chinese regime tightens information controls over the worsening outbreak, as netizens have increasingly turned to the internet to vent their frustrations about the authorities’ response, or document what is happening on the ground.
The illness has seen a steadily growing official list of infections and deaths on a daily basis. Experts and commentators, however, believe the actual number of infections to be far greater, due to underreporting and shortages in testing kits and hospital beds—meaning many people are left undiagnosed.
1,600 Trolls Deployed
According to the document, the department has hired more than 1,600 trolls, known as the 50-cent army in China, to regulate internet speech continuously, 24/7.
The trolls, through technological and manual screening, had identified as many as 606,800 posts online with “sensitive or harmful information,” it said.
Their approach, it said, was to “timely dispel the online rumors” and “strike powerful blows offline.”
As of Feb. 14, the online censors had deleted as many as 54,000 such “rumors,” and had social media influencers write nearly 400 commentary articles to shape the narrative.
The regime’s propaganda efforts, the report said, should be directed toward promoting the effects of officials’ outbreak control measures and the “moving deeds” of volunteers, community workers, and the police.
Some professional “internet commentators” had also made 400,000 comments to “counter the negative public opinions,” according to the document.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Death Of Free Speech: Zuckerberg Asks Governments For Instructions On “What Discourse Should Be Allowed”
The Death Of Free Speech: Zuckerberg Asks Governments For Instructions On “What Discourse Should Be Allowed”
I have written for years on the effort of European countries to expand their crackdown on free speech globally through restrictions on social media and Internet speech. It appears that Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has relented in what may prove the death knell for free speech in the West. Zuckerberg seems to relent in asking governments for regulations stipulating what speech will be permitted on Facebook and other platforms. It is the ultimate victory of France, Germany, and England in their continuing attack on free expression though hate speech laws and speech regulation.
Zuckerberg told an assembly of Western leaders Saturday at the Munich Security Conference that “There should be more guidance and regulation from the states on basically — take political advertising as an example — what discourse should be allowed?” He did add: “Or, on the balance of free expression and some things that people call harmful expression, where do you draw the line?” The problem is that his comments were received as accepting that government will now dictate the range of free speech. What is missing is the bright line rule long maintained by the free speech community.
As tragically demonstrated in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, speech regulations inevitably expand with time. The desire to silence one’s critics becomes insatiable for both governments and individuals.
Zuckerberg is facing great pressure, including from Democratic leaders in the United States, to regulate political speech and he seems to be moving away from the bright-line position against such regulation as a principle. Instead, he is accepting the fluid concept of “balanced” regulations that has always preceded expanding speech codes and criminalization:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Blacklist Valley: How Big Tech reshapes politics by censoring conservative ideas
Blacklist Valley: How Big Tech reshapes politics by censoring conservative ideas
For better or worse, social media is the new public square. Of adults, 68% use Facebook, 73% use YouTube, and a quarter use Twitter. The numbers are much higher for adults under 50. Two-thirds of adults and roughly 4 in 5 under 50 use social media to consume news. Three-quarters of Facebook users are on the site every day, and Twitter users have a disproportionate influence on the media because so many journalists are on the service.
The size and scale of social media companies exploded primarily because they presented themselves as open platforms — blank slates. Google, Facebook, and Twitter all characterized their products as engines for social improvement. “We think of Twitter as the global town hall,” said former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. “We are the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
Costolo was Twitter’s chief executive from 2010 until 2015 and the immediate predecessor of current CEO Jack Dorsey. Twitter’s general manager in the United Kingdom, Andy Yang, likewise described Twitter as the “free speech wing of the free speech party” in March 2012. Google became a multibillion-dollar company by offering a portal for free, unrestricted information to anyone with access to the internet; famously, its original motto was “Don’t be evil.” An internal Facebook memo circulated in June 2016 stated that at Facebook, “we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good.”
The public has given these three tech companies (and others) enormous power to select the information we read, share, and discuss with our neighbors and friends. We’ve gotten so accustomed to the role they play in our lives that we fail to notice that Big Tech is sifting through the available information and narrowing, and prioritizing, our choices.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Zerohedge’s Twitter Account is Permanently Banished
Zerohedge’s Twitter Account is Permanently Banished
Most of you reading this will be aware that Zerohedge’s prolific and highly popular twitter account with over 670,000 followers was on the receiving end of a lifetime ban by the Twitter politburo. This post won’t focus on the details of this specific ban, but if you want to read more about it, see the following: Zerohedge Suspended On Twitter.
It’s imperative not to overly focus on the individual victims of tech giant bans, and instead zero in on the bigger picture. Rather than debating whether or not you like Zerohedge, or whether you think it crossed a line, I want to highlight the dangerous implications of dominant social media companies wielding permanent bans as a weapon against freedom of speech in practice.
This post will cover three main issues. First, the fact that Twitter and other social media companies have essentially created a caste system when it comes to engagement on their platforms. Second, the question of whether or not a lifetime ban from social media platforms is an ethical concept. Third, the dangers of Twitter essentially throwing the entire timeline of a banished account into the memory hole.
For all intents and purposes, @Twitter has created a caste system on its platform. This goes against the entire spirit of why almost all of us joined social media. It’s a massive, dangerous problem and it must be addressed.
I’ll be touching on this and much more in a post later.
As the internet and social media started gaining traction, the idea of the “citizen journalist” grew increasingly popular and the public discovered how all sorts of previously unknown people can bring a great deal of hidden information and interesting perspectives to the table. This led to competing narratives on all sorts of topics, and we all basically agreed it’s best to treat people like adults and let them sort things out for themselves. That is, until Hillary Clinton lost an election.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
China Censors Top Local Media Outlet Over Claims Beijing Is Underreporting Cases, Deaths
China Censors Top Local Media Outlet Over Claims Beijing Is Underreporting Cases, Deaths
Let’s be honest, do you think China is reporting the actual coronavirus cases and deaths? After all, Beijing has been the master of falsifying its economic growth figures for years, what makes you think they’ll change in the reporting of the deadly virus outbreak?
Balaji S. Srinivasan, angel investor and entrepreneur, also former CTO of Coinbase, tweeted Saturday that a top news organization in China, Caijing, had one of their articles banned by Beijing after it noted Chinese officials were significantly underreporting coronavirus confirmed cases and deaths, especially among the elderly.
Caijing is one of the most reputable outlets in China. Their article on the #coronavirus was censored today. It claims significant underreporting of both cases & deaths, especially among the elderly.
Here it is:http://archive.is/ObawP
Translation:https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.is%2FObawP …
Srinivasan said, “If half the claims in this article are true, #nCoV2019 seems to have completely overloaded Wuhan’s healthcare system. It appears particularly deadly for the elderly. But this 45-year-old had to be anesthetized and intubated in order to breathe.”
“In the past two days, he had seen a 45-year-old patient, a family of five, his parents had died of the new coronavirus pneumonia, and his son was infected. The patient’s condition was very serious. She used high-flow oxygen inhalation and non-invasive mask ventilation, but her blood oxygen saturation was only 50%. Finally, she had to be anesthetized and intubated with ECMO.
“Before intubation and anesthesia, she watched us prepare, tears kept flowing down, and that fear made people feel very distressed,” said Shen Jun. There are still many cases like this, “Our doctors have made a decision Determined to do everything possible to treat all patients,” Caijing wrote.
Srinivasan points out that the Chinese newspaper found hospitals in Wuhan and elsewhere were intentionally recording coronavirus deaths as “general pneumonia” to keep the death count low.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
