Tag Archives: Facebook

ThinkProgress Censored By Facebook After Cheerleading Facebook Censorship, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on September 13, 2018 | Leave a comment

It is nice to see those advocating social media censorship getting a taste of their own medicine, but Caitlin Johnstone is right, nobody should be censored. From Johnstone at medium.com:

In an article last month titled “Facebook announces that fake accounts are now coming not just from Russia”, fauxgressive establishment apologia firm ThinkProgress falsely reported that I have been writing for an outlet that is alleged to be part of an Iranian propaganda campaign. I repeatedly broughtthis false claim to the attention of Casey Michel, the article’s author, telling him that ten seconds of research or any attempt to contact me would have shown him that the articles published by the outlet in question were just reblogs of earlier publications from my platform, but Michel ignored the many notifications he received from myself and my Twitter followers and went on merrily interacting with other posters. As of this writing, the article remains uncorrected. Continue reading →

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EU Enters “Final Stage” of Crafting Bill Forcing Big Tech Censorship, by Joseph Jankowski

Posted on September 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

The EU continues it’s slippery slide down the road to censorship. From Joseph Jankowski at planetfreewill.com:

The European Union is in the final stages of crafting legislation that will force big tech and internet companies to censor “extremist” content and cooperate with law enforcement, Reuters reports.

The bill is expected to be released by the end of the month and will absolutely require companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter to swiftly remove any content considered terroristic from their platforms.

EU Commissioner in charge of Justice, Consumers and gender equality, Věra Jourová , speaks at a news conference on a second monitoring of the illegal online hate speech code of conduct in Brussels, Belgium, 1 June 2017. [Olivier Hoslet/EPA]

In March, the European Commission told such companies that they had three months to show they were removing “extremist” content more rapidly or face legislation forcing them to do so.

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Hall Monitor Nation, by Ann Coulter

Posted on August 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

Ann Coulter has a run in with the hall monitors and school marms on social media. From Coulter at anncoulter.com:

Apart from building the wall, President Trump’s most important act as president so far was his attack on internet censorship this week.

The left controls all the cultural institutions — the establishment media, corporate America, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, public schools and universities. The only breach in their total dominion of the flow of information is the internet.

So now they’re fixated like a laser beam on private citizens talking to one another online.

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US: NATO Think Tank Continues Pre-Election Interference, by Rick Rozoff

Posted on August 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

The Atlantic Council is a NATO flack a prominent proponent of US unipolarity. Undoubtedly all their flags are at half-mast for John McCain. From Rick Rozoff at ronpaulinstitute.org:

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On August 24 what is in effect the social media warfare division of the Atlantic Council published an article  accusing the Russian television and print news outlet RT of running a one-sided attack against the Democratic Party and several leaders thereof ahead of this November’s politically pivotal Senate and House of Representatives elections. (Thirty-five Senate seats and all 435 House seats are being contested.)

The Atlantic Council, until recently kept comparatively in the shadows for obvious reasons, is a think tank that has more than any other organization effected the transition of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from a seeming Cold War relic with the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the world’s only and history’s first international military network with 70 members and partners on six continents currently. All thirteen new full member states are in Eastern and Central Europe; four of them border Russia.

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Russia and Iran Hate Us for Our Freedoms, by Kurt Nimmo

Posted on August 24, 2018 | Leave a comment

Can Trump’s many enemies ride the Russiagate concoction all the way to suppression of the alternative media and President Trump’s impeachment? From Kurt Nimmo at kurtnimmo.blog:

It’s easy to detect fake news. I don’t need a fact checker or a laboratory at a globalist think tank to clue me in. 

Here’s the latest fake news. 

Both Russia and Iran want to influence the midterm elections. 

It’s lunacy to believe this would make a difference, even if it were true. 

The story was posted at one of the more notorious fake news sites—The New York Times, the folks who sold you WMDs and the invasion of Iraq. 

Facebook passed this info on to the Gray Lady of Propaganda. 

Facebook said it had identified a new political influence campaign on its platform that appeared intended to disrupt the midterm elections. The social network found and took down 652 fake accounts and pages that were trying to sow discord around social issues… Some of the accounts in the new influence campaign originated in Iran and Russia, Facebook said.

This latest threat by people who hate us for our freedoms—as George W. Bush so pointedly phrased it—follows a similar claim last month. 

The campaign’s scale exceeded that of another influence operation that Facebook revealed last month, in which the company said it detected and removed 32 pages and fake accounts that had engaged in activity around divisive social issues ahead of the midterms.

Elections always arouse heated discussion on divisive issues and have done so since the founding of the (former) republic. Establishment Republicans and Democrats use the media as an influence tool and it is accepted as normal behavior. Billions are spent every election cycle to influence voters one way or the other. 

The revelations underscore how Facebook continues to be used as a weapon by others to try to influence the American electorate.

Others. It’s not simply Russia and Iran trying to take down America. It’s unspecified others. It is more than obvious who these others are despite the vagueness of the above sentence. 

To continue reading: Russia and Iran Hate Us for Our Freedoms

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Intelligence, Investigations, Media, Politics

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Facebook censored me. Criticize your government and it might censor you too. By James Bovard

Posted on August 18, 2018 | Leave a comment

The government is outsourcing some of its censorship responsibilities to social media. From James Bovard at usatoday.com:

Facebook said my post’s image of a violent FBI raid ‘incorrectly triggered our automation tools.’ But it wasn’t the first time an iconic image vanished.

Responding to Russian-funded political advertisements, Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg declared last month that “we will do our part to defend against nation states attempting to spread misinformation.” But Facebook is effectively sowing disinformation by kowtowing to foreign regimes and censoring atrocities such as ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. In the name of repressing fake news and hate speech, Facebook is probably suppressing far more information than Americans realize.

Facebook blocked a post of mine last month for the first time since I joined it nine years ago. I was seeking to repost a blog article I had written on Janet Reno, the controversial former attorney general who died last year. I initially thought that Facebook was having technical glitches (no novelty). But I checked the page and saw the official verdict: “Could not scrape URL because it has been blocked.”

“Pshaw!” I said, or some other one-syllable epithet. I copied the full text of the article into a new blog post. Instead of using “Janet Reno, Tyrant or Saint?” as the core headline, I titled it: “Janet Reno, American Saint.” Instead of a 1993 photo of the burning Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, I substituted an irreproachable official portrait  of Reno. Bingo — Facebook instantly accepted that crosspost. I then added a preface detailing the previous blockage and explaining why I sainted Reno. The ironic headline attracted far more attention and spurred a torrent of reposts by think tanks and other websites.

I contacted Facebook’s press office to learn why the initial post was blocked. Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja checked into the matter and notified me that I would be permitted to post that link. “But why was it blocked?” I replied. She responded: “There was an image in the post that incorrectly triggered our automation tools. That issue has been corrected.”

So when did showing the home of more than 70 people engulfed in flames after a FBI assault become beyond the pale? Facebook presumably blocked everyone who sought to share that image from the most vivid law enforcement debacle of the 1990s.

To continue reading: Facebook censored me. Criticize your government and it might censor you too.

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Censorship Is What Happens When Powerful People Get Scared, by Michael Krieger

Posted on August 13, 2018 | Leave a comment

Powerful people have good reason to be scared. They’ve screwed up a great country and people have figured it out. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

“Only the weak hit the fly with a hammer.”

– Bangambiki Habyarimana

Anyone who tells you the recent escalation of censorship by U.S. tech giants is merely a reflection of private companies making independent decisions is either lying or dangerously ignorant.

In the case of Facebook, the road from pseudo-platform to willing and enthusiastic tool of establishment power players is fairly straightforward. It really got going earlier this year when issues surrounding egregious privacy violations in the case of Cambridge Analytica (stuff that had been going on for years) could finally be linked to the Trump campaign.  It was at this point that powerful and nefarious forces spotted an opportunity to leverage the company’s gigantic influence in distributing news and opinion for their own ends. Rather than hold executives to account and break up the company, the choice was made to commandeer and weaponize the platform. This is where we stand today.

Let’s not whitewash history though. These tech companies have been compliant, out of control government snitches for a long time. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we’re aware of the deep and longstanding cooperation between these lackeys and U.S. intelligence agencies in the realm of mass surveillance. As such, the most recent transformation of these companies into full fledged information gatekeepers should be seen in its proper context; merely as a dangerous continuation and expansion of an already entrenched reality.

But it’s all out in the open now. Facebook isn’t even hiding the fact that it’s outsourcing much of its “fake news” analysis to the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by NATO, Gulf States and defense contractors. As reported by Reuters:

Facebook began looking for outside help amid criticism for failing to rein in Russian propaganda ahead of the 2016 presidential elections…

With scores of its own cybersecurity professionals and $40 billion in annual revenue in 2017, Facebook might not seem in need of outside help.

It doesn’t need outside help, it needs political cover, which is the real driver behind this.

To continue reading: Censorship Is What Happens When Powerful People Get Scared

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Taibbi: Beware the Slippery Slope of Facebook Censorship

Posted on August 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

One reason to take Taibbi’s warning seriously is that he’s a liberal and presumably a lot of what Facebook is censoring are views with which he doesn’t agree. From Taibbi at rollingstone.com:

You may have seen a story this week detailing how Facebook shut down a series of accounts. As noted by Politico, Facebook claimed these accounts “sought to inflame social and political tensions in the United States, and said their activity was similar — and in some cases connected — to that of Russian accounts during the 2016 election.”

Similar? What does “similar” mean?

The death-pit for civil liberties is usually found in a combination of fringe/unpopular people or ideas and a national security emergency.

This is where we are with this unsettling new confab of Facebook, Congress and the Trump administration.

Read this jarring quote from Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) about the shutting down of the “inauthentic” accounts:

“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation… I also expect Facebook, along with other platform companies, will continue to identify Russian troll activity and to work with Congress…”

This was in a story in which Facebook stated that it did not know the source of all the pages. They might be Russian, or they might just be Warner’s idea of “sowing division.” Are we comfortable with that range of possibilities?

Many of the banned pages look like parodies of some paranoid bureaucrat’s idea of dangerous speech.

A page called “Black Elevation” shows a picture of Huey Newton and offers readers a job. “Aztlan Warriors” contains a meme celebrating the likes of Geronimo and Zapata, giving thanks for their service in the “the 500 year war against colonialism.”

And a banned “Mindful Being” page shared this, which seems culled from Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts bit:

“We must unlearn what we have learned because a conditioned mind cannot comprehend the infinite.”

Facebook also wiped out a “No Unite The Right 2” page, appearing to advertise a counter-rally on the upcoming anniversary of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Facebook was “helped” in its efforts to wipe out these dangerous memes by the Atlantic Council, on whose board you’ll find confidence-inspiring names like Henry Kissinger, former CIA chief Michael Hayden, former acting CIA head Michael Morell and former Bush-era Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. (The latter is the guy who used to bring you the insane color-coded terror threat level system.)

To continue reading: Taibbi: Beware the Slippery Slope of Facebook Censorship

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U.S. Tech Giants Are Too Big, Too Powerful and Now Are Running Into Serious Trouble, by Michael Krieger

Posted on August 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

Google and Facebook are running into backlash from their growth-at-all-costs policies and their maladroit political moves. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

Within Google, knowledge about Dragonfly has been restricted to just a few hundred members of the internet giant’s 88,000-strong workforce, said a source with knowledge of the project. The source spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to contact the media. The source said that they had moral and ethical concerns about Google’s role in the censorship, which is being planned by a handful of top executives and managers at the company with no public scrutiny.

“I’m against large companies and governments collaborating in the oppression of their people, and feel like transparency around what’s being done is in the public interest,” the source said, adding that they feared “what is done in China will become a template for many other nations.”

From The Intercept article: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

Today’s post will explain why I think the U.S. tech giants are in the early stages of destroying themselves. It will focus on two of the biggest names in the space, Facebook and Google. Both face serious issues that are only now truly coming to a head and rooted in two primary factors, size and politics.

Facebook is further along in the process of being in serious trouble, so let’s start there. The social media company currently has 2.2 billion active users worldwide, which amounts to well over half of all human beings online at the moment (estimated at 3-4 billion). In other words, the company already has a tremendous share of global potential users. Since everybody already knows what Facebook is, you have to assume those who aren’t using it (like me), aren’t using it for a reason. Thus, you have to ask whether or not meaningful growth in active users is remotely realistic for Facebook. I would argue not.

There are many reasons to bet against Facebook significantly growing active users in the years ahead, but the main hurdle seems to be keeping the users it already has actively engaged. Specifically, I think there are two types of users Facebook risks losing going forward. These people might not “delete Facebook” per se, but their engagement with the platform may drop meaningfully.

To continue reading: U.S. Tech Giants Are Too Big, Too Powerful and Now Are Running Into Serious Trouble

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Geopolitics, Governments, Media, Technology

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Facebook – The Anti-Social Network, by Tom Luongo

Posted on August 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

Tom Luongo thinks that Facebook’s problems have only just begun. From Luongo at tomluongo.me:

“I thought we were gonna get television. The truth is… television is gonna get us.”
—Dick Goodwin, Quiz Show

When Mark Zuckerberg went to Capitol Hill earlier in the year I knew Facebook was in serious trouble.

Ostensibly, he was there to apologize to us about how Facebook used customer data so cavalierly.

But, really he was there to explain how everything had gone so wrong.

Facebook was designed to be the enforcer of social norms pushed by the political and corporate establishment.

It was built with Wall Street’s decade-long access to cost-free money to invest in the technologies to create a voluntary layer of social control.

The Fed is pulling back the punchbowl and Wall St. already cashed out most if its chips, leaving the retail “muppets” holding the bag.

Facebook, along with Twitter and Google, were outsourced by the real power brokers to erect a web of censorship platforms which circumvent the 1st amendment, because they are ‘private’ companies.

Like Alex Jones or hate him, he brings a lot of traffic to Facebook.  Traffic the company doesn’t want, apparently.

It doesn’t need people who like Alex Jones…

But they still want your data.  

Just like the payment processors Stripe, PayPal and VISA are all private companies which can kick you off their platform and deny you a business and a livelihood because you’re not ‘woke’ enough.

The blockchain will fix this in the future, but right now things are dicey at best.  People like me are very vulnerable to running afoul of these people.

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But, like I told my subscribers last fall, the moment of Peak Facebook would arrive soon enough.

Why?

Because it’s all fake interactions by increasingly fake personas we have to erect lest we get shouted at by someone looking for a dragons to slay to bring meaning to their otherwise pointless lives.

And sometimes those people are our very best friends.

To continue reading: Facebook – The Anti-Social Network

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