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Friday, November 05, 2021

Links - 5th November 2021 (2) (Big Tech Censorship)

CEO of censor-happy YouTube was given a "Free Expression" award sponsored by, I kid you not, YouTube - "In her actual speech, Wojcicki went on to say she wants YouTube to represent "people of all different backgrounds and all different perspectives, and then a moment later, say "but we also need to make sure there are limits.""

Twitter Permanently Blacklists James O'Keefe After CNN Expose - "James O’Keefe, the founder of the investigative journalism organization Project Veritas, has been permanently blacklisted by Twitter, just as his organization releases bombshell undercover footage showing senior CNN employees admitting to using “propaganda.” @Project_Veritas, the organization’s official account, has also been suspended... This comes directly after O’Keefe and Project Veritas publicly embarrassed the far-left news network CNN...   Project Veritas posted the first of a series of undercover videos exposing CNN technical director Charlie Chester yesterday.  In the first video, Chester admits that CNN’s negative coverage of unproven allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is “propaganda” because Gaetz is a “problem for the Democrats.”  “It would be great for the Democratic party to get him out. So we’re going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him,” continues Chester. In further undercover footage posted today, Chester can be heard admitting that CNN is unlikely to give a great deal of attention to the race of a mass shooter in its coverage if they “aren’t white.”  Chester also admits that “a bunch of black men” have been responsible for recent violent attacks against Asian-Americans, and that this a problem because “the optics of that are not good” and CNN is “trying to help BLM.” In further candid comments, Chester can be heard saying that CNN practices the “art of manipulation” to “change the world.”... As outlined in our policy on platform manipulation and spam, “You can’t mislead others on Twitter by operating fake accounts,” and “you can’t artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts.”  Twitter did not clarify what does and does not count as improper use of multiple accounts. CNN, for example, operates the @CNN, @CNNBusiness, @CNNNewsroom, and @CNNPolitics accounts among others. All are verified."

Melissa Tate on Twitter - "CNN is caught on Camera admitting to lying, using Propaganda & deception. Twitter’s response is not to ban now verified fake news CNN but to ban the real journalists who exposed them, james okeefe"

Following bombshell CNN revelations, Twitter bans James O'Keefe [Updated with O'Keefe lawsuit plans] - "Here are the first three parts of the sting on one of CNN’s technical directors Charlie Chester:
PART 1: CNN Director ADMITS Network Engaged in ‘Propaganda’ to Remove Trump from Presidency
PART 2: CNN Director Reveals That Network Practices ‘Art of Manipulation’ to ‘Change The World’
PART 3: Chester Says CNN ‘Trying To Help’ Black Lives Matter By Protecting Group’s Narrative On Race"

Matt Walsh on Twitter - "Twitter’s verified ads account liked a tweet attacking me for one of my posts. But Twitter is totally objective and not at all biased against conservatives, remember."

Cernovich on Twitter - "Google this exact title - How a Convicted Terrorist used the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Website to Identify Targets No results for it on Google. They completely removed the page, which posted official court records. DuckDuckGo has it. Google just deleted it from search."

Report: Facebook Suppressed Breitbart News Traffic by Twenty Percent - "The Wall Street Journal has published internal material from anonymous sources at Facebook revealing that the company introduced tools that suppressed the traffic of Breitbart News by 20 percent, and other conservative publishers by double-digit margins.  The company introduced two tools after the 2016 election that disproportionately harmed conservative publishers. The Journal highlights internal Facebook research showing that if both tools were removed, it would increase traffic to Breitbart News by 20 percent, the Washington Times by 18 percent, Western Journal by 16 percent, and the Epoch Times by 11 percent. Facebook eventually removed one of the tools while keeping the other — but it is unclear which of them had the most impact on traffic... Facebook is directly paying Breitbart News’s competitors, establishment media conglomerates including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times — while offering no such compensation to Breitbart News.  Despite Facebook’s favoritism and financial support of its establishment competitors, Breitbart News continues to be wildly popular with Facebook’s users... The internal discussions leaked to the Journal reveal employees who skew even more left than the company’s liberal upper management. Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s arguably pivotal efforts to put Joe Biden in the White House, Facebook’s token tolerance of some conservative publishers is considered intolerable by some employees, no matter how popular those publishers are with users... In a discussion thread called “Get Breitbart out of News Tab,” the company’s employees brainstormed new policies that would see Breitbart News ejected from the feature, which distributes news stories to users from a curated list of websites while maintaining the appearance of neutrality. One employee suggested removing websites that saw their internal “trust score” (as measured by Facebook) decline, but expressed concern that the policy might also affect CNN.  As the Wall Street Journal notes, Facebook already punishes Breitbart News in relation to its competitors by relegating it to a “second tier” of the News Tab, which only delivers news tailored to user’s interests. In other words, only users who are already interested in content similar to Breitbart’s will receive its stories, limiting Breitbart’s ability to reach new readers...   While the anonymous Facebook employees quoted in the Journal insist that the company should further suppress Breitbart News or eject it from the News Tab (where it is already relegated to the “second tier”), they provide little evidence of inaccuracy in Breitbart’s reporting...   The slide also puts far-left outlets like Rolling Stone in the “trusted” quadrant, despite the magazine’s long history of publishing hoaxes, including a recent fake story about ivermectin overdose cases flooding Oklahoma hospitals, and the infamous 2014 UVA rape hoax.  Multiple outlets in the top quadrant, including CNN, NBC, The Atlantic, and the New York Times pushed the discredited Russiagate and Ukrainegate hoaxes throughout the Trump years. In 2020, The Atlantic, now owned by left-wing billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs, also published a bogus, still-unsubstantiated story based on anonymous sources claiming President Donald Trump called fallen soldiers “losers.” The Atlantic is set to lose $10 million this year after a $20 million loss last year...  In a “racial justice” chat board in the wake of the George Floyd riots last summer, pro-censorship Facebook employees complained that Breitbart News painted Black Lives Matter “in a very negative light,” but did not show any evidence that Breitbart News’s reporting was false or inaccurate.   To the contrary, the Facebook employee showed a series of screenshots of Breitbart News stories that were entirely accurate: “Minneapolis Mayhem: Riots in Masks,” “Massive Looting, Buildings in Flames, Bonfires!” and “BLM Protestors Pummel Police Cars on 101.”...   In testimony before Congress in 2018, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Silicon Valley, where his company is based, is an “extremely left leaning place.” The San Francisco bay area regularly tops lists of the most liberal cities in America, and over 75 percent of donations from Facebook employees went to Democrats in the last cycle.  The most leftist employees at Facebook, therefore, are the extreme minority of an already-extreme minority...   With Democrats in charge of the House, Senate, and White House, it appears that disgruntled leftists at Facebook believe the moment has come to start leaking. That much was made clear by the Frances Haugen debacle, a Facebook “whistleblower,” backed by leftist billionaire Pierre Omidyar, who did little but demand government censorship of the platform, with her in charge of it.  Having done all they can to push for censorship internally at Facebook, the company’s most leftist employees now want to generate external pressure as well, including the threat of new legislation and regulatory action. The ultimate goal, as it has ever been, is more censorship of conservatives."
This won't stop people claiming that there's no proof that Facebook censors conservatives with their "evidence" being that most of the biggest pages are conservative ones, since they are positing a false dichotomy of either total or no censorship, and an inability to consider counterfactuals (what their traffic would be without censorship)
The left only likes "whistleblowers" when they can advance their agenda, which is why they will ignore this while obsessing relentlessly about their favored "whistleblower"

Media points out free speech loophole Big Tech missed: Actual speech. - "So much freedom to suppress, so little time.
'Podcasts rife with misinformation remain on social platforms like Apple and Google as extremists exploit a loophole left after the tech companies cracked down on other mediums.'...
"Misinformation," redefined to mean, "information inconvenient to the prevailing state narrative."... These are private companies, but even leaving aside the manner in which they are overtly acting both in concert with each other and the objectives of the state, you would again think that the AP would recognize the danger of what they are advocating. They think they are protected. The New York Post probably thought that too when a completely legitimate and 100% accurate news story was suppressed in a concerted effort by Big Tech to protect one political candidate over another... This is trick that must be called out every time, conflating one thing, "deep state enemies," with something presumably absurd, "cannibals operating a child-sex trafficking ring."  You don't have to believe in a broad organized conspiracy to believe that the permastate of the federal bureaucracy was thwarting and undermining President Trump. They did it openly and were even praised for it by the press.  One literally said, "I am part of the resistance."... Incitement to violence is not protected speech. But hatred? Anyone at the AP spend more than seven seconds on twitter?  It's also important for you to know that podcasts that the AP does not approve of are,      "..supported by ads for products such as survivalist food, unlicensed food supplements and gold coins, which run before and during the podcasts.  This is never brought up again in the article, it makes no particular point, it's just thrown in there and is pure class signaling."

Meme - "It's a private company, sweety if you don't like the biggest tech corporations on the planet secretly influencing public access to information about specific politicised topics then just don't use it lol"

Facebook - "Stand up for what you believe in, even if it means standing alone"
"This post is censored... take a look, and then ask yourself: why?"

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on Twitter - "Type in, "kids being taught they are white supremacists" in Google and then in DuckDuckGo and see the difference. What the fuck." "Search engines now filter knowledge based on political ideologies. We are rapidly entering a period of epistemic division. Their are no neutral platforms."
Due to this tweet the results are now disrupted though

Facebook - "So, I just got banned ("zucced") for 24 hours last weekend... for insulting myself (1st screenshot) while carrying out a test*.
Even though intent of the post is easily deciphered by anyone with average intelligence, the ban was upheld by humans (employed by Facebook) when flagged for review.
There are 3 takeaways from this:
1) Past Facebook bans are ๐—ฎ๐—ฏ๐˜€๐—ผ๐—น๐˜‚๐˜๐—ฒ๐—น๐˜† ๐˜„๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐˜๐—ต๐—น๐—ฒ๐˜€๐˜€ for determining moral standing of a party.
For if a ban can be triggered on something so silly, then it can't be ruled out that a similarly frivolous reason caused a ban of another page or person. The prior ban of Critical Spectator comes to mind.
2) Facebook's moderation algorithms ๐—ฑ๐—ถ๐˜€๐—ฐ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐—บ๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฒ ๐—ฎ๐—ด๐—ฎ๐—ถ๐—ป๐˜€๐˜ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—น๐—ฒ๐˜€๐˜€ ๐—ฒ๐—ฑ๐˜‚๐—ฐ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฑ.
I know a few thousand ways to insult a person, but someone less educated will have less options. Eg. I can imply that a village is missing a certain esteemed member of its community, but someone else who tries using the I word directly in retaliation will get caught and zucced. This is an unfair situation.
3) the Facebook moderation team is ๐—ต๐—ถ๐—ด๐—ต๐—น๐˜† ๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ฐ๐—ผ๐—บ๐—ฝ๐—ฒ๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜, and the company cannot be trusted to administer policing of speech. Recklessly coded algorithms pose a risk to those who need to run businesses, perform admin roles for big communities, or even administration of pages for political figures.
I would strongly urge businesses, public figures and political office holders to carefully consider any decision that gives unfettered power to a corporation which has shown such reckless disregard in controlling access to what is essentially the modern public town square."

PolitiFact | Ron Paul says federal income tax rate was 0 percent until 1913 - Half true
PolitiFact | Jim Webb says U.S. didn't have income taxes until 1913 - "Correction (Dec. 20, 2016): This fact-check initially published on Aug. 24, 2015, and was rated Mostly True. Upon reconsideration, we are changing our ruling to Half True. The text of the fact-check is unchanged."

Dank Star Wars Memes Cantina - "Anna made a very interesting discovery. Twitter is playing an editorial on Gina Carano's account. If you are new to Twitter or if you are curious about Gina Carano, Twitter will plant on your face a warning on Gina ‘Ultra Danger’ Carano without even allowing you to see her content first. If I read such a sign the first thing on my mind would be Gina Carano tweeting gore images from the Afghanistan war."

Twitter Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene After She Tweets 'He Is Risen! Happy Easter!'

The year Big Tech became the Ministry of Truth - "Two issues in particular have been central to Silicon Valley’s escalating war on wrongthink: the Covid-19 pandemic and the US presidential elections. It’s hard now to imagine the time when Twitter’s managing director proudly declared his social-media platform to be ‘the free-speech wing of the free-speech party’. Since then, free speech has suffered death by a thousand cuts. Initially, the screws on free expression were tightened under the guise of eliminating ‘hate speech’, but this year, ‘misinformation’ has become the main pretext for censorship... who defines what counts as Covid misinformation? Certainly, the first things to be taken offline were obviously nonsense, such as David Icke’s conspiracy theories linking the virus to 5G. But it quickly became clear that misinformation would essentially be defined as anything that contradicts the authorities.  In April, Facebook began removing pages and posts which were used to organise protests against the lockdown. It had actually reached out to various US state governments to ascertain which posts to take down. Any advertised gathering which did not ‘follow the health parameters established by the government’ and was ‘therefore unlawful’ was liable for removal. In essence, this was state censorship outsourced to the private sector.   When asked what constituted misinformation, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said her platform will remove ‘anything that is medically unsubstantiated’, as well as ‘anything that goes against WHO [World Health Organisation] recommendations’.  But these are two different things entirely. Over the course of the pandemic, the WHO has changed its mind on the utility of lockdown and face masks (the latter due to political lobbying rather than medical evidence). Back in January, it relayed the view of the Chinese authorities that there was ‘no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus’, a statement which, if it came out of a YouTuber’s mouth, would surely be banned as misinformation today.   Under these misinformation rules, YouTube has removed and ‘shadow banned’ lockdown-sceptical journalists, doctors and even former WHO envoys.  When something was medically correct but went against government or WHO guidelines, then social-media platforms sided with the authorities. For instance, an article reporting on a major randomised control trial on the efficacy of masks against Covid, written by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, was declared to be ‘misinformation’ by Facebook. Randomised control trials are generally seen as the gold standard of medical evidence, but apparently not for social-media ‘fact-checkers’... As the election drew closer, the social-media firms made the terrifying decision to remove and ban stories which were true, but were politically inconvenient. Many had blamed Facebook and Twitter for Trump’s shock win in 2016 – accusing the firms of hosting fake news and failing to spot foreign bots. Neither of these things could actually explain the ballot-box revolt, of course, but the platforms were determined never to be blamed again. In mid-October, the New York Post published its exposรฉ of Hunter Biden. Emails found on the ‘laptop from hell’, according to the Post, suggested that Biden Jr was able to grant access to his father, Joe Biden, for cash. These were allegations of corruption against one of the presidential candidates. But Silicon Valley quickly mobilised to crush the story.   Facebook’s communications director, Andy Stone, announced that ‘we are reducing its distribution on our platform’ as part of ‘our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation’. The story was ‘eligible to be fact-checked’, but there has been no update from Facebook on it since, despite Hunter now facing a federal criminal investigation. Twitter went even further to stop the spread. It blocked users from linking to the story and from posting photos from the reports...   The New York Post was even locked out of its Twitter account for a number of weeks, stopping one of America’s oldest newspapers (founded by Alexander Hamilton, no less) from sharing any of its stories on Twitter... This is for sharing a story that ‘fact checkers’, try as they might, could not say was false. Many of the allegations were never denied by the Biden team, either."

Facebook Oversight Board Rules 4 Deleted Posts Must Be Restored - "Facebook's oversight board on Thursday directed the company to restore several posts that the social network had removed for breaking its rules on hate speech, harmful misinformation and other matters."

Mailchimp Suspends The Babylon Bee - "After Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon shared the news on Twitter, Mailchimp apologized. It was too late, however... “Thank you, but we’re moving to an email service provider that doesn’t make these ‘mistakes.’ We’d also prefer to be on a platform that doesn’t censor conservatives for being ‘hateful’ or ‘misinformative'”... The Babylon Bee has faced many biased attacks before.  Back in 2018, Snopes fact-checked a Babylon Bee satire article claiming that CNN had bought a washing machine to “spin the news.” Yes, seriously. After Snopes declared the article “false,” Facebook warned The Babylon Bee that “repeat offenders will see their distribution reduced.” Recently, The New York Times insinuated that The Babylon Bee is a “far-right misinformation site.” The Times apologized after the Bee threatened a lawsuit, but the “misinformation” smear seems rather persistent.   Snopes has also played satire police in attacking the Bee. In one instance, the fact-checking site declared, “We’re not sure if fanning the flames of controversy and muddying the details of a news story classify an article as ‘satire.’” It appears Snopes has been trying to deplatform the conservative satire site, in part by claiming that the Bee’s satire is somehow not satirical enough. Facebook recently announced upcoming updates to its “satire exception” to its “Hate Speech Community Standard,” warning that “true satire does not ‘punch down.'” One week later, Slate published an article claiming that — you guessed it — The Babylon Bee “has a nasty tendency to punch down.” Facebook had previously demonetized the satire site, claiming that a satirical article that quoted Monty Python and the Holy Grail constituted an incitement to violence."

Meme - "Your post goes against our Community Standards on dangerous individuals and organizations No one else can see your post. We have these standards to prevent and disrupt offline harm. Devon Tracey: Big news! I'm now with Gavin Mcinnes' Censored dot tv. All my videos will be on there from now on. If you sign up, use the coupon code 'aiu' or will get nothing. Get me and Gavin Mcinnes both. All patrons will still get my vids. See you there... See More
ATHEISM IS UNSTOPPABLE
CENSORED.TV"

James Lindsay - Posts | Facebook - "#Memo   There is a virus that is a thousand times more deadly than #COVID19: The White Virus.   Carriers tend to be hideously ugly (within and without), hideously selfish, hideously inferior and hideously white.    Never underestimate the malice and ugliness of these "people"."
Twitter: "it doesn't seem like it breaches any of Twitter's community guidelines"

Meme - Brick @TheHinduDindu: "don't like being banned, twitter? make your own uganda"
"Compte suspendu"
*Veteran*: "THIS TWEET IS UNAVAILABLE. THIS TWEET IS UNAVAILABLE. THIS TWEET IS UNAVAILABLE. THIS TWEET IS UNAVAILABLE."

Facebook is banning leftwing users like me – and it's going largely unnoticed | Akin Olla - "I, along with a number of other leftwing organizers, was deemed a threat to the inauguration of Joe Biden and placed on a restricted list that limited my ability to communicate with others. My account could no longer create Facebook groups or events, two tools that I’ve used over the last decade to coordinate protests and build entire organizations. I was also banned from commenting in Facebook groups, liking Facebook pages, and messaging Facebook pages. The restriction was to be removed the Saturday after the inauguration, but it only fully ceased apparently after public backlash. This is part of a long history of Facebook treating leftwing activists as if they were far-right extremists, and a pattern of silencing those who speak out against racism and fascism.
I like how they're basically complaining that Facebook is trying to be fair in censorship. This is why leftists like twitter so much. They're nakedly partisan.
Weird. I thought leftists are very keen to defend private companies' rights to censor whoever they want
Addendum: "Carolyn Wysinger, an activist and high school teacher, posted that “White men are so fragile and the mere presence of a Black person challenges every single thing in them.” It was a reasonable response to Neeson’s remarks and the long history of white men murdering random Black men. Facebook responded by deleting the post and threatening Wysinger with a temporary ban."
Leftists would say that if someone posting “Black men are so fragile and the mere presence of a White person challenges every single thing in them” didn't get banned, that would show Facebook was racist and biased

The Constitution Can Crack Section 230 - WSJ - "does the 1996 Communications Decency Act really justify Big Tech censorship? The key language, Section 230(c)(2), provides: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of . . . any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” The companies take this as a license to censor with impunity.  That understanding is questionable. Law is rarely as clear-cut as a binary switch. To be sure, courts emphasize the breadth of Section 230’s immunity for website operators. But there is little if any federal appellate precedent upholding censorship by the big tech companies. The question therefore comes down to the statute itself. The answers should give pause to the companies and courage to those they’ve censored.  The fundamental problems are constitutional—the first concerning the Commerce Clause. Congress’s authority to enact Section 230 may seem indisputable because the Supreme Court has, since the New Deal, adopted an almost open-ended view of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. Yet congressionally emboldened censorship poses unique questions... A second constitutional question arises from the First Amendment. The companies brush this aside because they are private and the amendment prohibits only government censorship. Yet one must worry that the government has privatized censorship. If that sounds too dramatic, read Section 230(c)(2) again. It protects tech companies from liability for restricting various material “whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.” Congress makes explicit that it is immunizing companies from liability for speech restrictions that would be unconstitutional if lawmakers themselves imposed them.  Seventeenth-century censorship, which the First Amendment clearly prohibited, was also imposed largely through private entities, such as universities and the Stationers’ Company, England’s printers trade guild. Whereas privatized censorship then was often mandatory, the contemporary version is voluntary. But the tech companies are protected for restricting Congress’s list of disfavored materials, and this means that the government still sets the censorship agenda... The First Amendment protects Americans even in privately owned public forums, such as company towns, and the law ordinarily obliges common carriers to serve all customers on terms that are fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory. Here, however, it is the reverse. Being unable to impose the full breadth of Section 230’s censorship, Congress protects the companies so they can do it.    Some Southern sheriffs, long ago, used to assure Klansmen that they would face no repercussions for suppressing the speech of civil-rights marchers. Under the Constitution, government cannot immunize powerful private parties in the hope that they will voluntarily carry out unconstitutional policy... the protection of tech companies from being “held liable” may merely mean they can’t be made to pay damages, not that they can’t be held responsible and subjected to other remedies...   The statute, moreover, requires that such action be taken “in good faith.” At common law, that can mean not acting with the effect of destroying or injuring the rights of others and, more specifically, not acting disproportionately to terminate relations. The statute thus doesn’t protect the companies when they take disproportionate action against material, let alone when they unnecessarily restrict other things, such as websites and persons. What is in good faith for a website may be different from what is in good faith for a tech company that operates like a common carrier or public forum. But at least for such tech companies, the statute’s focus on “material”—combined with the requirement of “good faith”—stands in the way of any categorical protection for suppressing websites, let alone demonetizing them or barring persons.  What does this mean in practice? Even if a company technically can’t bar some material without taking down the entire website, it at least must give the operators an opportunity to remove the objectionable material before suppressing the website altogether. As for demonetizing sites or barring persons, such actions will rarely if ever be necessary for restricting material.  Such is the statute’s text. If you nonetheless want large common-carrier-like companies to go beyond “good faith” actions against “material,” pause to consider a little history, if only as a reality check about the proportionality of your desires. Even the Inquisition gave heretics formal opportunities to recant. And even the Star Chamber required its private censors to bar offensive material, not authors.  The next question is viewpoint discrimination. Section 230(c) specifies protection for restricting “material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” The companies understand this to include nearly anything to which they object.  But Section 230(c) enumerates only categories of content, not viewpoints. The distinction between content and viewpoint is crucial in free-speech law"

Twitter Shadowban Test - "Search Suggestion Ban
Search Ban
Ghost Ban
Reply Deboosting
Twitter reserves the right to limit distribution or visibility of content
But Twitter claims that they do not shadowban

[2012.05101] Setting the Record Straighter on Shadow Banning - "Shadow banning consists for an online social network in limiting the visibility of some of its users, without them being aware of it. Twitter declares that it does not use such a practice, sometimes arguing about the occurrence of "bugs" to justify restrictions on some users. This paper is the first to address the plausibility or not of shadow banning on a major online platform, by adopting both a statistical and a graph topological approach. We first conduct an extensive data collection and analysis campaign, gathering occurrences of visibility limitations on user profiles (we crawl more than 2.5 million of them). In such a black-box observation setup, we highlight the salient user profile features that may explain a banning practice (using machine learning predictors). We then pose two hypotheses for the phenomenon: i) limitations are bugs, as claimed by Twitter, and ii) shadow banning propagates as an epidemic on user-interactions ego-graphs. We show that hypothesis i) is statistically unlikely with regards to the data we collected. We then show some interesting correlation with hypothesis ii), suggesting that the interaction topology is a good indicator of the presence of groups of shadow banned users on the service."

Glenn Greenwald on Twitter - "Watching the same people who drowned the country for 5 years in deranged conspiracy theories -- Putin had taken over the US through clandestine sexual blackmail -- now declare themselves competent to censor the internet to stop "misinformation": the audacity is almost impressive."

Critical Spectator - Posts | Facebook - "Police in Ohio saved a young Black girl's life, as she was about to get stabbed."
"Your post against our Community Standards on hate speech and inferiority"
"Oh, look everyone, hard truths clearly have no place on Facebook. If I was calling for riots, burning down cities, or came out in support of patronizing racism of the left - that would all be fine. Yes, my last post on the police intervention in Ohio, where a police officer shot a teenager trying to stab another girl was removed for "hate speech". This is no place for serious conversations"

An0maly on Twitter - "I’m not even sure what I’m allowed to post on Facebook anymore. Water is wet.
FACT CHECK: MOSTLY FALSE. Also water can evaporate & turn into vapor, which is not wet. Wet water has been associated with far right movements such as the “Surfer Boys” who enjoy walks on the beach."

Kanan Vitolo (Liberty Page) on Twitter - "Imagine growing up reading 1984, studying history, and still being a fan of a social media corporation working with the government to hinder people from questioning the agenda of the White House. ๐Ÿ˜”"
Reply: "I just read Fahrenheit 451 again, where people willing destroyed their civilization for “serenity” and “peace”. They replaced actual families relationships for a four-walled interactive TV screen they called “the family”. I think that’s the moment we’re living in."

Tim Pool on Twitter - "With the admission that the Biden admin is colluding with Facebook to censor people the “But muh private business” argument is over"

Facebook - "Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki sent chills up the spines of every freedom-loving American when she announced that the Biden Administration is pressuring Facebook to censor speech the government considers to be “misinformation.” This morning, we received another reminder of just how perilous our current moment is for free speech.  NPR - a news organization funded by YOUR tax dollars - released a hit piece targeting the Daily Wire, accusing us of spreading “misinformation.”  The article is a masterclass in how the establishment media (in this case, publicly funded!) seek to label everything they don't like as "misinformation," and then suppress it. They're coming for freedom of the press. And they're not hiding the ball. The article concedes that content published by the Daily Wire “[doesn’t] normally include falsehoods.”  But they claim that because we are an overtly conservative news organization, our articles lack the proper context to be truthful.  This quote from the article says it all: “If you’ve stripped enough context away, any piece of truth can be a piece of misinformation.” There it is, gang.  Even the truth can be “misinformation” if the left doesn’t like how you are telling it.  So, to re-cap: the White House acknowledged that they are pressuring social media companies to suppress “misinformation.” Just a few days later, a news organization funded by the federal government dropped a hit piece calling the Daily Wire’s reporting “misinformation.” This is some straight-up authoritarian stuff, folks. The Democrats and the establishment media are upset that they no longer have centralized control over the flow of information. They see the Daily Wire as a threat, which is why they are pressuring Facebook to suppress our reach. There is one thing conservatives like you can do to fight back: subscribe to the news outlets you like and trust. All of them, from Daily Wire to The Blaze to Fox Nation. Because the Left is going to try to suppress them all, and they’re not being subtle about it."

Jen Psaki does U-turn on flagging Facebook content, says no efforts to 'block any individual posts' - "  White House press secretary Jen Psaki has switched rhetorical gears on the Biden administration‘s role in flagging “misinformation” on Facebook.  Days of outrage over multiple comments regarding the removal of COVID-19 posts prompted a U-turn of sorts by Ms. Psaki...   Journalist Glenn Greenwald blasted the administration for its behavior.  “The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as ‘problematic’ so that Facebook can remove them,” he tweeted on July 15. “This is the union of corporate and state power — one of the classic hallmarks of fascism — that the people who spent 5 years babbling about fascism support.”"

I,Hypocrite - Posts | Facebook - "What Facebook's independent fact-checkers go after vs what they don't go after."
"Fact Check: Kenosha Protesters Attacking Armed Man NOT Playing 'A Stupid Game' As Shootings Occured"
The Other 98% (verified): "The man who shot a Nazi while defending himself at a protest last week has been murdered by the cops"

Facebook - "⁉️ When Facebook took my video down about the incident in Kenosha, I was furious This is something deeper and more sinister than just taking a video down. This is a purposeful attempt to hide the facts.  I didn’t praise anything, I didn’t even bring up personal history about anyone, I simply stated the facts and presented my legal opinion and tried to do it in the most objective way possible and still, Facebook took my video down... There is no way around it, social media is the way people get their information and the vast majority of people only use the four top social media platforms to get that information. Each and every one of these platforms has demonstrated a blatant bias against 2A content."

Gad Saad - Posts | Facebook - "The heroes of LinkedIn have reviewed my post wherein I criticize Joe Biden for having achieved nothing in 47 years in office. They have reaffirmed the tweet was "bullying and harassment." Stop for a moment and think about it: A major social platform thinks that it is WRONG to criticize a presidential candidate on his 47-year record because it is HURTFUL.  I'm not making this stuff up."

Facebook - "The heroes of @LinkedIn think that it is harassment and bullying of me to criticize those who seek political office.  I did not name anyone.  The mere fact of criticizing politicians is unacceptable."

Facebook - "Well @LinkedIn is at it again.  Apparently, my criticizing a psychiatrist for stating that she wants to kill white people and for giving a talk on the psychopathy of the white mind is out of bounds.  The psychiatrist is ok for saying so; my critiquing her is not." "The moral depravity of the Woke Cancel Taliban:  A then obnoxious teenager (Ollie Robinson) posts idiotic tweets => burn him at the stake.  A psychiatrist fantasizes about killing white people during a @yale talk on the psychopathy of the white mind => bruh, she is a Noble POC."

Facebook - "Let's summarize: @LinkedIn censors one of my posts because it was critical of @joebiden. Apparently, it was a form of HARASSMENT. @Facebook puts me in a partial lockdown because I made fun of a woman who said that the @GOP should be burned down. @TeamYouTube demonetize my clips for absolutely NO reason.  The clips contain NOTHING that is objectionable in any way.     But I'm sure that @joebiden will solve this because he is a staunch protector of the free exchange of ideas.  We are doomed."

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