Tag Archives: Social media censorship

The Battle of the Censors, by James Rickard

The US has two options: heavy censorship favored by social media, or the even heavier censorship favored by the government. We know which option will win. From James Rickards at dailyreckoning.com:

wo sides are attacking free speech, but their arguments are so irrational they end up attacking each other. On one side are Facebook, Google, and the Google-owned YouTube channel. All three have engaged in censorship and suppression of free speech and open debate about the pandemic and vaccines.

Legitimate questions are squashed, and treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, cannot be mentioned without the risk of being banned from social media.

On the other side is the Biden administration, which also wants to ban discussion of alternate treatments and completely block any information that raises concerns about so-called COVID “vaccines.”

If social media and the Biden administration both favor censorship, what could they be arguing about?

It turns out that Biden is criticizing Facebook and Google for not censoring enough. Even though social media has squashed legitimate questions and debate, the Biden administration says they should do even more to block “misinformation.”

Of course, what Biden calls “misinformation” is actually legitimate information that Americans should be able to see. Here are some facts…

“Misinformation?” — or Information?

The COVID vaccines have not been approved by the FDA; (they are administered under an Emergency Temporary Standard, ETS). COVID “vaccines” are not true vaccines in the legal or historical sense because they do not prevent the disease; they simply reduce the response to the disease.

The COVID “vaccines” are experimental gene modification treatments that permanently alter certain gene production functions. How many vaxxed people understand that?

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The Shadow State: Twitter Suspends Commentator for Criticizing Vaccine Policies, by Jonathan Turley

The government’s social media arm won’t allow any question of or deviations from the government’s propaganda on Covid. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Twitter LogoI recently discussed how the Biden Administration was actively encouraging corporations to limit speech and impose vaccine mandates as a type of shadow state. Rather than take such actions directly ( and face both legal and political challenges), the Administration is relying on its close alliance with Big Tech and other companies to carry out such tasks. That surrogate relationship is particularly clear in the expanding censorship program carried out by Twitter, Facebook and other companies. Twitter’s action against political commentator Dave Rubin is an example of how these companies are now dispensing with any pretense in actively barring criticism of government policies and viewpoints.

Rubin was locked out under the common “misinformation” claim by Twitter. However, his tweet was an opinion based on demonstrably true facts. One can certainly disagree with the conclusion but this is an example of core political speech being curtailed by a company with a long history of biased censorship, including the barring of discussions involving Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election.  With a new election looming, these companies appear to be ramping up their censorship efforts.

In his tweet, Rubin stated:

“They want a federal vaccine mandate for vaccines which are clearly not working as promised just weeks ago. People are getting and transmitting Covid despite vax. Plus now they’re prepping us for booster shots. A sane society would take a pause. We do not live in a sane society.”

Even President Biden admitted yesterday that he was wrong weeks ago when he assured people that if they took the vaccine, they would not be at risk for the variants and could dispense with their masks. There are breakthrough cases that have taken many officials by surprise. It is also true that there is now talk of likely booster shots.

Rubin takes those facts and adds his opinion that we should “take a pause.” Twitter declared that to be a violation of its policy “on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”

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The US Government Threatens Tech Companies To Push Censorship Agendas, by Caitlin Johnstone

It is not just Facebook that has become a de facto arm of the government, the other big tech companies have as well. From Caitlin Johnstone.com at caitlinjohnstone.com:

The elephant in the room with the ongoing controversy about the Biden administration’s push for more internet censorship is the fact that both the US government and the Silicon Valley tech companies who are being pushed to censor are acutely aware that those companies can be brought to their knees by antitrust cases and other regulation if they don’t censor people’s voices in accordance with the government’s wishes.

After Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted on Thursday that the administration has given Facebook a list of accounts to ban for spreading “misinformation” about the Covid vaccine, she has now doubled down saying that people who circulate such materials online should be banned from not just one but all social media platforms.

“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation out there,” Psaki told the press on Friday.

When asked by the press for his thoughts on companies like Facebook, President Biden said the failure of those platforms to adequately censor posts about the vaccine makes them guilty of “killing people”.

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The Ice-Cream Flavor Next Time, by James Howard Kunstler

No matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, the press will be asking Joe about his ice cream. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

A nation mesmerized by its own weakness wanly celebrated the long-ago and faraway memory of standing up for itself, while it passively endures the current orgy of tyrannical cancellation and suppression of anyone talking back to the present folks-in-charge. Over just a few years, this tyranny has grown like a toxic slime mold from such an unlikely place, the Internet social app ecology of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, as they took over the public arena — where the battle of ideas is supposed to live — and did the government’s dirty work, complete with adorable emojis. You’re fired!

Who will stand up to Zuck, Jack, and Sundar Pichai? Who elected these megalomaniacs boss of the USA? What will it take to end their reign of terror? Some sort of… revolution? (Shhhh! That must be a dirty word, even considering we just celebrated the high point of the American Revolution: The Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776.)

Don’t look to “Joe Biden,” the nation’s putatively elected leader — about whose election back in November, 2020, you are liable to hear more about as the summer stickily unspools. Zuck, Jack, and Sundar managed to protect “Joe Biden” from the stupendous depredations of his offspring, Hunter Biden, recorded in explosive detail on a laptop the public was not allowed to hear about. Don’t look to the Department of Justice, supposedly “investigating” that horde of memos and emails detailing the Bidens’ influence-peddling to the CCP and others — they’re busy surveilling “white supremacists” on the apps run by Zuck, Jack, and Sundar. And for sure don’t look to the news media, that coalition of sell-outs and quislings, busy decoding the foreign policy moves signified in “Joe Biden’s” ice-cream flavor choices. (Rocky Road means: Oh, let China have that….)

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If Private Platforms Use Government Guidelines to Police Content, is that State Censorship? by Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi asks a valid question, and he doesn’t even bring up the close ties between the largest private platforms and the government. From Taibbi at taibbi.substack.com:

YouTube’s decision to demonetize podcaster Bret Weinstein raises serious questions, both about the First Amendment and regulatory capture

Just under three years ago, Infowars anchor Alex Jones was tossed off Facebook, Apple, YouTube, and Spotify, marking the unofficial launch of the “content moderation” era. The censorship envelope has since widened dramatically via a series of high-profile incidents: Facebook and Twitter suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, Donald Trump’s social media suspension, Apple and Amazon’s kneecapping of Parler, the removal of real raw footage from the January 6th riots, and others.

This week’s decision by YouTube to demonetize podcaster Bret Weinstein belongs on that list, and has a case to be put at or near the top, representing a different and perhaps more unnerving speech conundrum than those other episodes.

Profiled in this space two weeks ago, Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying — both biologists — host the podcast DarkHorse, which by any measure is among the more successful independent media operations in the country. They have two YouTube channels, a main channel featuring whole episodes and livestreams, and a “clips” channel featuring excerpts from those shows.

Between the two channels, they’ve been flagged 11 times in the last month or so. Specifically, YouTube has honed in on two areas of discussion it believes promote “medical misinformation.” The first is the potential efficacy of the repurposed drug ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment. The second is the third rail of third rails, i.e. the possible shortcomings of the mRNA vaccines produced by companies like Moderna and Pfizer.

Weinstein, who was also criticized for arguing the lab-leak theory before conventional wisdom shifted on that topic, says YouTube’s decision will result in the loss of “half” of his and Heying’s income. However, he says, YouTube told him he can reapply after a month.

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Unthinkable Thoughts… by Josh Mitteldorf

We’ve reached a point where many people say: “If it weren’t true, they wouldn’t censor it.” From Josh Mitteldorf at zerohedge.com:

This essay is inspired by Dr Mercola’s announcement last week that [May] (reading between the lines) his life and his family’s have been threatened if he doesn’t remove from his web site a peer-reviewed study demonstrating the benefits of vitamin D and zinc in prevention of the worst COVID outcomes. In the present Orwellian era, where propaganda and deception are ubiquitous, one of the signposts of truth that I have learned to respect is that the most important truths are the most heavily censored.

This is not what I enjoy writing about, but as I find dark thoughts creeping into my consciousness, perhaps it is better to put them on paper with supporting logic and invite my readers to help me clarify the reasoning and, perhaps, to point a way out of the darkness.

Already in January, 2020, two ideas about COVID were emerging.

One is that there were people and institutions who seemed to have anticipated the event, and were planning for it for a long time. Gates, Fauci, the World Economic Forum, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine were among the prescient. (I credit the (now deleted) videos of Spiro Skouras.)

Second was the genetic evidence suggesting that COVID had a laboratory origin. Funders of the scientific establishment have lost their bid to ridicule this idea, and it has now leaked into the mainstream, where it is fused with the classical yellow peril propaganda: “China did it!”. I have cited evidence that America is likely equally culpable.

The confluence of these two themes suggests the dark logic that I take for my topic today: Those who knew in advance, not only that there would be a pandemic but that it would be a Coronavirus, were actually responsible for engineering this pandemic.

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Free Speech Inc.: How Democrats Have Found A New But Shaky Faith In Corporate Speech, by Jonathan Turley

Corporations have lined up with Democrats, who know champion their rights to free speech as private companies. However, there’s no free speech for say a private bakery that doesn’t want to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual couple. The contradiction is apparent. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Below is an updated version of my column in The Hill on Facebook’s decision to uphold the ban on former president Donald Trump. Notably, this weekend, Twitter took it upon itself to add a gratuitous response to an observation made by Donald Trump Jr. after he tweeted “Biden isn’t the next FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] he’s the next Jimmy Carter.” Twitter took it upon itself to say that many are “confused” by the remark since Carter was a great humanitarian and noble prize winner. It was a telling moment. These companies now act as either censors as officious intermeddlers when it comes to comments made on the platforms. They view themselves as a party to any postings and that viewpoints must be corrected or clarified to advance the corporate position.

Here is the column:

After Facebook’s oversight board this week upheld the social media giant’s continuing ban of former President Trump, the response of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) captured the visceral joy of many on the left: She posted a series of laughing emojis.

Welcome to Free Speech, Inc.: the Democratic incorporation of free speech built around the a presumption of corporate censorship (for some).

Of course, Democrats insist they are not attacking free speech, just combating “disinformation.” After all, they say, private companies have every right to control speech — unless you are, say, a bakery opposed to preparing a cake for a same-sex wedding, or a company contributing to political causes. The current mantra defending Facebook’s corporate speech rights seems strikingly out of sync with years of Democrats and political activists demanding the curtailment of such rights.

When Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado refused on religious grounds to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) denounced the bakery’s claim of free speech: “It was never about a cake — it’s about making sure no one has a license to discriminate against LGBTQ+ Americans.” When the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations have free speech rights to participate in politics, Warren was appalled. She has long rejected the notion that corporations have the constitutional rights like individuals: “Corporations are not people. People have hearts. They have kids. They get jobs. They get sick. They cry. They dance. They live. They love. And they die.”

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California Officials, Biden-Linked Firm Coordinated With Big Tech to Censor Election Posts: Judicial Watch, by Isabel van Brugen

How private is a private company when it takes marching orders from governments and politicians on what not to publish? From Isabel van Brugen at theepochtimes.com:

California officials colluded with Big Tech to censor social media posts in the United States during the 2020 presidential election, government watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Tuesday.

The findings come after Judicial Watch received 540 pages and a further four pages of documents from the office of the Secretary of State of California in response to an open records request, the group said.

It had filed the request after a December 2020 report surfaced revealing that California’s Office of Election Cybersecurity had surveilled and asked the social media giants to remove or flag as “misleading” at least two dozen messages.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that SKDKnickerbocker, a communications company linked to President Joe Biden’s election campaign, was involved in the censoring of speech during last year’s election period.

The company did this by sharing its “Misinformation Daily Briefings” with California officials, who then passed them on to social media giants Facebook, Twitter, and Google for dissemination, according to Judicial Watch.

“These new documents suggest a conspiracy against the First Amendment rights of Americans by the California Secretary of State, the Biden campaign operation, and Big Tech,” Fitton said.

Epoch Times Photo
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, in Washington on Nov. 1, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

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We Have A COVID Lifeline. The Powers Won’t Allow It. by Mary Beth Pfeiffer

Ivermectin works against Covid-19; it should either be banned or officially discouraged. From Mary Beth Pfeiffer at trialsitenews.com:

We Have A COVID Lifeline. The Powers Won’t Allow It.

In a widely reported announcement, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned, “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.”

Taking the drug “can be very dangerous,” FDA said, though 33 years of human use, billions of doses and a Nobel Prize for annihilating parasitic illness suggest otherwise.

The FDA statement, which is the lynchpin of COVID policies worldwide, purported to protect the public from taking over-the-counter ivermectin meant for animals. But its real purpose was to instill fear.

Indeed, a war on ivermectin — by public health agencies, corporations that stand to cash in on the pandemic, and social and mass media – is being waged to dismiss a drug that could be a lifeline to normalcy.

Why?

Confused By The Facts

Ivermectin is a case study in official decrees that do not align with reality.

Take a close look the World Health Organization’s contortions before declaring on March 31 that ivermectin should be limited to experimental trials. WHO first ignored its own commissioned analysis that found the drug would cut COVID deaths by 75 percent. Then, WHO handed the job to a different team, which also found far fewer deaths with ivermectin – but ruled its cherry-picked evidence unconvincing. That is the analysis WHO chose.

Or read the lone study — one among 52 ivermectin trials — that did not find significant evidence of improvement in COVID patients. Despite contradictions and flaws, including some patients given the wrong drug, the results were accepted by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Scour the list of positive studies, many from countries where this inexpensive drug is reducing illness. Few medical journals will publish them. Though available online, the media ignores them. Major outlets that have not done a single serious story on ivermectin jumped on the told-you-so JAMA story.

Finally, consider that right now, social media is in the midst of a brutal little-reported campaign of censorship to the point that YouTube policy precludes users from saying ivermectin prevents or helps COVID.

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The New Normal “Reality” Police, by CJ Hopkins

The reality police is reaching lower and lower to make sure that no non-approved narratives get promulgated. From CJ Hopkins at consentfactory.org:

So, according to Facebook and the Atlantic Council, I am now a “dangerous individual,” you know, like a “terrorist,” or a “serial murderer,” or “human trafficker,” or some other kind of “criminal.” Or I’ve been praising “dangerous individuals,” or disseminating their symbols, or otherwise attempting to “sow dissension” and cause “offline harm.”

Actually, I’m not really clear what I’m guilty of, but I’m definitely some sort of horrible person you want absolutely nothing to do with, whose columns you do not want to read, whose books you do not want to purchase, and the sharing of whose Facebook posts might get your account immediately suspended. Or, at the very least, you’ll be issued this warning:

Now, hold on, don’t click away just yet. You’re already on whatever website you’re reading this “dangerous,” “terrorist” column on (or you’re reading it in an email, probably on your phone), which means you are already on the official “Readers of Mass-Murdering Content” watch-list. So you might as well take the whole ride at this point.

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