Links - 24th July 2019 (1) (Big Tech Censorship)

Ali A. Rizvi - ""Islamic terrorists call for my murder since years because I criticise Islam. But They could never stop me from speaking out what I think. But now they have a collaborator. YouTube has just deleted my channel Hamed.TV where I discuss with Muslims about democracy"
"Dear YouTube, Why silence secular voices from the Muslim world? When white freethinkers in Christian Europe rose up against religious theocracy, we called it The Enlightenment. When secular freethinkers in the Muslim world do the same—they're banned? Isn't THAT bigotry? If you have Twitter, please retweet support for the incomparable Hamed Abdel-Samad here: https://twitter.com/aliamjadrizvi/status/1141373719874609153"
We knew it wouldn't stop at "Nazis"

Triggernometry on Twitter - "Suddenly @YouTube has demonetised a dozen interviews, including:
@Miss_Snuffy - TRIGGERING discussion about the education system
@jessbutcher - OFFENSIVE interview about why women are succeeding in tech
@DrLinda_P - HATE SPEECH about the impact of social media on mental health"

Quora users protest against platform's bias against the right-wing - "It all started when a user Deepak Mehta made posts criticizing the narrative of 'Hindu terrorism' that was being built up by some users on the platform. The matter of 'Hindu terrorism' is a sensitive political issue in India majorly pushed by leftists in order to blame Hindus for terrorism in order to appease non-Hindus... Deepak's followers first ran petitions in order to get his account unbanned. When Quora moderation decided not to unban him despite the petitions, many users started deactivating their accounts.Quora's most followed person, Balaji Viswanathan deactivated his account and made a post stating that his profile will remain deactivated for a week. This led to many prominent users like Supreme Court advocate and ex-IPS officer, Ashok Dhamija, Tejasvita Apte, Aman Khanna and many others deactivating their accounts."

Exclusive: Facebook's Process to Label You a 'Hate Agent' Revealed - "If you praise the wrong individual, interview them, or appear at events alongside them, Facebook may categorize you as a “hate agent.”Facebook may also categorize you as a hate agent if you self-identify with or advocate for a “Designated Hateful Ideology,” if you associate with a “Designated Hate Entity” (one of the examples cited by Facebook as a “hate entity” includes Islam critic Tommy Robinson), or if you have “tattoos of hate symbols or hate slogans.” (The document cites no examples of these, but the media and “anti-racism” advocacy groups increasingly label innocuous items as “hate symbols,” including a cartoon frog and the “OK” hand sign.)... The document also says Facebook will categorize you as a hate agent for “statements made in private but later made public.” Of course, Facebook holds vast amounts of information on what you say in public and in private — and as we saw with the Daily Beast doxing story, the platform will publicize private information on their users to assist the media in hitjobs on regular American citizens... The [Carl] Benjamin addition reveals that Facebook may categorize you as a hate agent merely for speaking neutrally about individuals and organizations that the social network considers hateful. In the document, Facebook tags Benjamin with a “hate agent” signal for “neutral representation of John Kinsman, member of Proud Boys”... Facebook also accuses Benjamin, a classical liberal and critic of identity politics, as “representing the ideology of an ethnostate” for a post in which he calls out an actual advocate of an ethnostate. In addition to the more unorthodox signals that Facebook uses to determine if its users are “hate agents,” there is also, predictably, “hate speech.” Facebook divides hate speech into three tiers depending on severity and considers attacks on a person’s “immigration status” to be hate speech."

Down the Rabbit Hole of Political Intolerance in Silicon Valley - "After the election, the majority of Facebook employees appeared to feel some combination of shocked, devastated, and/or horrified. This cocktail of emotions seemed to crystalize in the creation of a quickly popular internal Facebook group called “Refocusing Our Mission.” As per the page’s introductory message—“The results of the 2016 Election show that Facebook has failed in its mission”—the conceit of this group was that Trump’s victory was some sort of proof that Facebook needed to change its ways.Although it’s natural to empathize with the frustration that those joining this group must have felt, a handful of Facebook employees— people from both sides of the political spectrum—felt that something was very unnatural, creepy even, about seeing the election results as proof that Facebook had somehow failed. Because, frankly, it provided a pretty ugly answer to the question people continued to ask more and more: What is Facebook? Well, according to the founder of “Refocusing Our Mission” and the hundreds of employees who quickly joined and engaged, Facebook was basically some sort of social engineering tool—an invisible hand meant to guide its users toward the “correct” political beliefs.Or to put it another way: since Zuckerberg often described Face- book as “like a utility,” then this reaction was the equivalent of AT&T declaring that Mondale losing to Reagan meant it was time for them to rethink the mission of this whole phone line network thing."

What Infowars' Alex Jones and Voldemort Have in Common - "At a WIRED event in October, Jack Dorsey said people don’t view Twitter as a service. “They see what looks like a public square,” he said, “and they have the same expectation as they have of a public square, and that is what we have to get right.”"
An acknowledgement by Twitter that it is a de facto public square. Which makes big tech censorship even more deplorable

Facebook bans Saint Augustine quote as ‘hate speech’ - "A decision by Facebook to ban a peace-loving quote by St. Augustine of Hippo, a Catholic theologian and philosopher from the 5th century, has one Catholic writer scratching his head...
The quote Facebook deemed so offensive is as follows:
Let us never assume that if we live good lives we will be without sin; our lives should be praised only when we continue to beg for pardon. But men are hopeless creatures, and the less they concentrate on their own sins, the more interested they become in the sins of others. They seek to criticize, not to correct. Unable to excuse themselves, they are ready to accuse others...
Bettinelli is now concerned that Facebook users will end up in “Facebook jail”, i.e. not be able to post on Facebook, just for quoting the Bible or sharing a “word of encouragement from a saint.”... Facebook has been implicated in censoring conservative and Christian opinions. Recently, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that Facebook had intentionally blocked pro-life advertisements in the run-up to Ireland’s referendum to remove the right-to-life of the unborn child from its constitution"

Facebook labels LifeSite report on left-wing textbook fake news, gives no explanation or appeal - "Facebook recently came under fire for blocking objective informational links about abortion from the American Pregnancy Association’s website, as well as an article by The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher discussing a fake hate crime orchestrated by actor Jussie Smollett."

Trump’s chief comms regulator says censorship ‘greatest threat’ to free internet - "“Unregulated Silicon Valley tech giants” present today’s greatest threat to a free internet, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai told Congress this week, calling on lawmakers to consider new reforms to protect users."

‘Nazis using dog whistles’: Internal Google email goes after Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson & PragerUs - "An embarrassing new leak shows Google employees discussing disabling features for YouTube creators they describe as ‘Nazis,’ even as the company denied allegations of political bias based on earlier leaked documents.In an email published on Tuesday by the conservative watchdog Project Veritas, one member of the Google transparency and ethics team, identified only as Liam, tells others that Prager University, Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are “Nazis using the dog whistles you mention.”... Those named in the email reacted swiftly and with umbrage at being described as Nazis. Prager University pointed out that their founder is Jewish and has spoken against “anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Hitler, etc.” So did Shapiro, tweeting that he “militantly hate[s] white supremacy.” Talk show host Dave Rubin, who is Jewish, spoke up for Peterson, a Canadian professor with whom he went on a world speaking tour.“Almost every night he talked about the horrors of fascism, Nazism,” Rubin tweeted. “Discussed their roots and how to fight their terrible ideology…”... Somewhat lost amid the outrage over the email labeling Shapiro, Prager and Peterson ‘Nazis’ was the fact that it seemed to directly contradict Google’s denials of Monday’s revelations published by Project Veritas, accusing the company of “re-biasing” search results to achieve “fairness.”"
Given that Jews are the new Nazis (since the most incompetent Holocaust in the world that's being carried out in the Palestinian territories has led to one of the highest population growth rates in the world), this is very fitting

Bokhari: The Real 'Voter Suppression' in 2018 Came from Big Tech - "After virtually every election, Democrats go-to explanation for why they didn’t win X state or Y district is “voter suppression.” The midterms were no different — but the complaint was particularly egregious, given that it occurred on the back of outright election meddling from Silicon Valley.“Voter suppression may have made the difference for Republicans in Georgia,” argued far-left Vox. “The GOP loves voter suppression,” concurred Slate. “Midterms 2018: when voting goes wrong” was the headline at the BBC.Most of the claims revolved around faulty ballot machines, ID requirements (how dare we ask voters to prove that they’re citizens! racism! white supremacy!), longer-than-expected queues at polling stations, and bureaucratic screw-ups like failure to secure enough power cables for electronic voting booths. None of the faux-outraged writers documented actual evidence of deliberate voter suppression. The left-wing BBC even conceded that “research has previously shown that alleged vote suppression in the form of ID laws does not seriously affect election outcomes.”... Just a few weeks before the vote, big tech stopped multiple Republican politicians from reaching their digital grassroots and energizing their voters. An ad by the pro-life Susan B. Anthony list on behalf of Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee was blocked by Facebook. Blackburn’s own campaign ad, which featured far-left protests, was refused by Google, a company whose own internal research admits to a “shift towards censorship” by tech platforms.A day before the election, Facebook also blocked a pro-Republican ad from Donald Trump highlighting the illegal migrant caravan making its way through Central America to the U.S. border. Facebook chose to stand with the legacy media, including CNN, Fox, and NBC, in stopping the ad from reaching its intended audience. Beyond the blocks of Republican ads, there were mass-bannings. On the weekend before the election, Twitter brazenly banned over 10,000 accounts at the instruction of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It wasn’t the first year big tech engaged in election meddling. In 2016, Google made a special effort to turn out Latino voters, even supporting groups that bussed Latino voters to the polls. This was purportedly a “non-partisan” attempt to drive turnout. But leaked emails revealed dismay within the company that Latinos had voted for Trump in record numbers. But when it came to outright suppression of conservative voices and the conservative grassroots, 2016 had nothing on 2018. This was a year in which top conservative and alternative media influencers were purged from the platform, including Roger Stone, Tommy Robinson, R.C. Maxwell, and Gavin McInnes. In the months leading to the election, Twitter also issued conservatives James Woods and Laura Loomer with temporary suspensions (Loomer has since been banned from Twitter permanently for criticizing a Democratic congresswoman). Together, the banned and suspended influencers were able to reach and influence millions of Twitter users — and in a crucial election year, Twitter took that powerful ability to mobilize the grassroots away from them... The double standards are obvious. Influential activists like Tommy Robinson get banned from big tech platforms for posting facts, while far-left radicals get to dox their ideological opponents, encourage violence, and cheer for “Antifa” domestic terrorists with far less interference. The result is a two-tiered system, where the left can mobilize its supporters for any purpose, while the right’s ability to do so is constantly curtailed... Democrats will cry “voter suppression” when they see a few faulty voting machines. But they’ll also call Silicon Valley censorship a “conspiracy theory,” even when big tech companies openly admit to censorship"

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 on Twitter - "They've gone through Milo, Alex Jones, and Loomer, now they've arrived at Steven Crowder
Those who applauded the earlier cenorship were fools to think they'd be eaten last
Anyone with a brain always knew this would not end where it began"

Dave Rubin on Twitter - "So Twitter is banning people who tweet #LearnToCode at journalists. I just reported a tweet which has information about where I live and was immediately informed it’s not a violation. At what point are lawsuits the only option? Maybe we’re there already? @Barnes_Law"
Big Tech censorship means it's only harassment if it's directed at a liberal

Project Veritas Temporarily Suspended On Twitter For Exposing Pinterest Ideological Bent - "This comes shortly on the heels after Project Veritas published an article outing Pinterest for perma-banning Live Action, a pro-life organization, after months of suppressing their content via censorship.It kind of looks like more and more these social media sites are not only selectively censoring content but also attempting to suppress journalists from exposing their censorial bias being employed behind the scenes.Combining this with the fact that Google has its own blacklist of sorts and it becomes ever more apparent that big tech are working aggressively to stifle certain kinds of content and prevent people from seeing certain kinds of news"

PeterSweden on Twitter - "So let me get this straight. @Project_Veritas exposed Pinterest of censorship against Christians and pro-life group. This is investigative journalism.
- Twitter suspended their account and had them delete the leak.
- YouTube deleted their video on the leak
Big tech collusion?"

Vimeo Bans Project Veritas Account For Posting Video Exposing Google's Censorship, Political Bias - "Joining in on the fray is video hosting site Vimeo, who also banned Project Veritas account for being “hateful”, “defamatory” and/or “discriminatory”.The news comes courtesy of a tweet that Project Veritas’ head James O’Keefe shared on June 26th, 2019 confirming that Vimeo is part of the censorship brigade."

Project Veritas - Google Exec Decries Trump's Election: 'How Do We Prevent It from Happening Again' - "The report includes undercover footage featuring a top Google executive, Jen Gennai, discussing how Google might prevent an electoral outcome like 2016 from happening again... Gennai also declares her opposition to Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to break up Google. Why? Because, says Gennai, if Google is broken up it can’t prevent another “Trump situation.”.. Gennai also declared that no amount of soft pressure from Congress or the White House will make Google change its ways. In other words, talk won’t help — if politicians want to change Google’s behavior, they’ll have to go beyond committee hearings and actually change the law... Gennai also declared that no amount of soft pressure from Congress or the White House will make Google change its ways. In other words, talk won’t help — if politicians want to change Google’s behavior, they’ll have to go beyond committee hearings and actually change the law"... Gennai works on “responsible innovation” in the Global Affairs division of Google — the same division run by Kent Walker, the Google VP who has declared his intention to make the populist-nationalist movement represented by Donald Trump a “blip” or “hiccup” in history, which he said “bends towards progress.”"

YouTube Censors Video About Google Election Meddling; Reddit Suspends Project Veritas - "Alphabet, the parent company over Google and YouTube, is now censoring videos related to Project Veritas’ latest investigation into Google manipulating search results with the aim of tampering with the upcoming 2020 elections. In the video key staff at Google admitted that the company’s “ML Fairness” application to search engine algorithmic results are themed around suppressing content they don’t want people to see and removing results they deem problematic... As a way to keep people from seeing Project Veritas’ video, YouTube claimed that it violated their privacy policy... The video revealed that Google’s staff are intent on manipulating the upcoming 2020 elections so that Trump can’t be re-elected. They’re training their algorithm to remove or suppress certain kinds of information from getting out in order to socially engineer people to think a certain way and vote the way Google wants them to.Big tech like Reddit seem to be on board with this idea, because as James O’Keefe was attempting to promote the video on the social media network, he found out that the Project Veritas Reddit account had been suspended... So not only has Google been exposed for manipulating search results, being on record as intending to manipulate the elections, and censoring news in order to maintain a specific narrative, tech companies are also censoring the people attempting to deliver the message."

Pinterest appears to remove the term "Christian" from its internal blacklist after leaked report exposure - "It appears that Pinterest has removed the word “Christian” from their Sensitive Terms blacklist. This comes one week after leaked documents by a Project Veritas insider revealed that it blacklists “Christian” and “Bible verses” from its auto-complete search suggestions... Pinterest was caught by Project Veritas blacklisting pro-life content from the group LiveAction. They falsely labeled the website as “pornography.” This was alleged to be part of the suppression of pro-life content, making it harder to for users to view it."

Twitter mysteriously suspended several accounts linked to women who say they are refugees fleeing abuse in Saudi Arabia - "Twitter has suspended accounts claiming to belong to two Saudi Arabian sisters who fled the country to seek asylum, as well as the account of an activist who was posting on their behalf... INSIDER has asked Twitter repeatedly over the past 24 hours to explain why it removed the accounts, but has yet to receive an answer.Social media has proved a valuable tool for women fleeing Saudi Arabia, where the ultra-conservative legal system gives men formal power over the women in their lives."
Maybe they were suspended due to Islamophobia

Logic, Empathy, Honesty - Posts - "Carlos Maza, a man who has explicitly called for violence against conservatives, is currently crying on the internet because he could only shame youtube into demonetizing, not outright banning, Louder with Crowder for calling him a queer. He even has the audacity to call Stephens critique of his videos "harassment", apparently immune to the irony of his own disgusting smear campaign. This illustrates beautifully a trend we've seen for years. Far left activists have become so privileged and so powerful that they think having to deal with differing opinions is persecution, and that their own tyrannical censorship is morally justified."

O’HANDLEY: The ‘#VoxAdpocalypse’ Shows Big Tech Needs A Reason To Fear Justice - "YouTube rewrote its entire speech policy, stuffing it full of “woke” campus activist word salad that can’t be described as anything other than an arbitrary standard under which anything the left does not like can earn a ban for “promoting hate.”... Silicon Valley has long relied on conservatives’ natural aversion to the regulation of and intervention in private companies, but they’ve clearly begun to abuse that freedom.Solving the problem will be no simple task. The power of the institutional left in Washington, in the media, and in the halls of Silicon Valley’s office campuses themselves can hardly be overstated.In the meantime, luckily, there’s something else they might fear: antitrust enforcement. After all, the political bias of Google and the other tech giants is only worrisome because of their monopolistic dominance of the modern public square.As the iconic Republican President Teddy Roosevelt wrote about monopolies back in 1910, “[O]ne of the most sinister manifestations of great corporate wealth … has been its tendency to interfere and dominate in politics.” Big Tech has undoubtedly given in to that meddlesome tendency, and that’s why the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission’s decision to move forward with a long-overdue investigation is so important. Big Tech needs to fear real justice more than it fears the political left."

Facebook Says Using the Word “Honk” Violates Its Community Standards - "Clown world strikes again."

Facebook Removes Conspiracy Site Natural News - "Facebook on Sunday removed the page for Natural News, a far-right conspiracy outlet that had nearly 3 million followers... Natural News used the page to push its trademark combination of natural remedies and far-right conspiracy theories, including disinformation about vaccines."
The definition of "Far right" grows ever broader

Paul Joseph Watson on Twitter - "Yet another reminder. The mainstream media promoted the most verifiably fake, harmful and downright ludicrous hoax - "Russian collusion" for years. They faced no consequences. No deplatforming. No algorithmic suppression. They lost the right to be called "authoritative"."

Chateau Heartiste Shut Down By Wordpress - "Chateau Heartiste just recently got canned by WordPress.Why?Ideological differences. WordPress didn’t agree with the things he said, you know how it always goes. Same with Infowars. Same with social media. So the third pillar has started falling: hosting providers. First news. Second social media. Now the hosting providers. Wonder if GoDaddy and the others will begin to follow suit.Before you know it, we’ll all have to be hosting out of East Europe or Switzerland. That is, if they don’t also go for ISPs as well.Seems like the natural progression of censorship. Take them out from news, take them out from social circles, then finally take down their websites. No more interconnection available for them anywhere online, except in very hidden corners most won’t put the effort into going too...
Some general lessons from this:
As society continues downhill, nothing is safe.
Don’t host with WordPress. You can use them to blog as a platform, but if you do anything slightly controversial and host with them you run the risk of getting clicked out of existence.
Always keep a f***ing backup"
On Big Tech censorship

CrossFit | CrossFit, Inc. Suspends Use of Facebook and Associated Properties - "CrossFit, Inc. defends relentlessly the right of its affiliates, trainers, and athletes to practice CrossFit, build voluntary CrossFit associations and businesses, and speak openly and freely about the ideas and principles that animate our views of exercise, nutrition, and health. This website—and, until recently, CrossFit’s Facebook and Instagram accounts—has long catalogued CrossFit’s tireless defense of its community against overreaching governments, malicious competitors, and corrupt academic organizations.Recently, Facebook deleted without warning or explanation the Banting7DayMealPlan user group. The group has 1.65 million users who post testimonials and other information regarding the efficacy of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. While the site has subsequently been reinstated (also without warning or explanation), Facebook’s action should give any serious person reason to pause, especially those of us engaged in activities contrary to prevailing opinion.Facebook and its properties host and oversee a significant share of the marketplace of public thought. To millions of individuals and communities across the world, Facebook and its properties remain the platforms where ideas and information are exchanged. Facebook thus serves as a de facto authority over the public square... CrossFit, Inc., as a voluntary user of and contributor to this marketplace, can and must remove itself from this particular manifestation of the public square when it becomes clear that such responsibilities are betrayed or reneged upon to the detriment of our community"

YouTube is deleting videos on Nazi history as part of its hate speech crackdown - "Hate speech, and how to police it, isn’t a new issue for YouTube or other social platforms. But this shows just how fraught and complex the balance is, and highlights the risk of unintended consequences when policies and algorithms are tweaked. It’s also a reminder of just how much power big tech companies have as gatekeepers of the material we consume online."
Ironically, the Nazis were big on censorship