Another nearby page deals with the broader topic of Media Bias in general.

Many young people get news and opinions from social media rather than television or other mass media, but social media sites engage in bias and censorship, just as TV and newspapers have for years.

Related topics:
Bias and Censorship specifically on Facebook
Privacy issues on Facebook
News about Google
Habitual dependence on cell phones
Anything you have ever said can be used against you

Overview articles:

(Scroll down for timely news, or click here.)

The Left Did This to Itself.  The standard for "free speech" these days is basically:  if it offends someone it can and should be censored.  After all, feelings come first.  If it is witty, if it is offensive, if — god forbid — it is "hateful," it must go!  Scrub it from the internet!  That is the standard set by the left, set in stone by Big Tech, and consecrated by the Cultural Marxist state.  Leftists cannot have it both ways, but they do not understand that, partly because they keep driving out their more gifted members.  If you want free speech for the voices of sexual liberation, you must tolerate it for more traditional, sexually temperate voices.  If you want free speech for BLM and other pro-black activists, you have to permit speech for dissident rightists too, including white advocates.  That is, if you want to be morally and philosophically consistent.  The Left wants to have its cake and eat it too.  That just does not work long-term.  Those terrible, self-serving standards tend to boomerang back on the standard-bearers.

The Unapologetic Bias of the American Left.  [Scroll down]  In the old days of the early 21st century, Silicon Valley and other tech giants went through the motions that they were more interested in providing social media access, online buying, and internet services than massaging them all to indoctrinate the public.  Even during the Obama years, they protested vehemently suggestions that they had given campaign cash inordinately to leftist candidates, or were beginning to massage internet search results or asymmetrically blocking conservative users.  Not now.  Big Tech has offered no coherent defense of its censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, or even appeared to worry about the hypocrisy that they had gladly let Trump's illegally obtained and published tax returns fly through the cyberworld, in the manner that Christopher Steele's leaked and made-up hoax was freely promulgated online during the late critical days of the 2016 campaign.  Now Twitter, without much worry, just shrugs that it blocks even conservatives in government from posting.

Bring Free Speech Back to Social Media — Now.  One key weapon being deployed to punish conservatives is the so-called "fact check."  It's being used to censor thousands of conservatives communicating with millions of followers.  It's happened tens of thousands of times, and it's getting worse.  Facebook is one of the worst offenders.  Facebook, with 2.7 billion users, is dramatically skewed to the left in its fact-checking operation.  It now has an international "Oversight Committee" dominated by George Soros-funded entities that make a mockery of unbiased review.  Citizens wanting to rally in support of reopening the country have been banned because some public gatherings in some states are forbidden.  Antifa, however, thrives largely unchecked and unchallenged as it riots in the streets and harasses members of Congress in their homes.  Conservatives have made good-faith attempts to resolve these many conflicts, but to no avail.  Covid-19 has sent social media sites into censorship overdrive.  If you disagree with the social media prescription for the virus, you are silenced.

The Liberal War On You.  We are witnessing the death of the liberal political machine that the elite has operated since the end of World War II, and everything that it is doing to conservatives right now — the censorship, the threats, the intimidation, the violence — is proof that it is dying.  These are not the acts of an ideology in ascendance but rather of a scurrilous political paradigm in precipitous decline.  And it's only going to get worse as those losing their grip on political and cultural power desperately try to hold onto it in the face of our populist revolt.  Be prepared.  It's going to get uglier.

Our Evil Tech Overlords.  Project Veritas is the investigative organization started by James O'Keefe and helped along by the late Andrew Breitbart.  James has broken multiple dramatic stories recently, but his Google story is the most concerning yet — if only because the pervasive implications and sheer massive influence of Google.  Working undercover, the Veritas journalist exposes the Head of Responsible Innovation for Google, Jen Gennai.  Even her title is Orwellian.  Gennai decried the results of the 2016 election, and so Google decided to change their Artificial Intelligence algorithm, which determines what a reader might be interested in reading or, in the case of YouTube, watching. [...] The problem, here, is that anyone using Google believes he is receiving unbiased, automated search results based on the subject he is searching.

The Next Battlefront:  Social Media.  As of March 31, 2019, there are over 2.38 billion monthly active Facebook users (MAU) worldwide with Twitter reporting 326 million global MAU for the third quarter of 2018 and YouTube claiming 1.3 billion users.  Moreover, all are solidly left-leaning and quickly heading to the far left.  If social media were around during Lenin's time, there is no doubt that he would be focusing his efforts to propagandize that powerful platform as well. [...] In the beginning, social media in the United States were seen as the new oasis of free thought and speech, but after making a hard left turn, they are quickly painting conservative viewpoints into a corner.  The handful of leftist cyberspace dictators are forcing users to think and say only what has been deemed appropriate.  When Facebook states that it is protecting their users by preventing certain kinds of speech, in reality what they are doing is tilling the soil for future propaganda and control.

Despite Twitter's Protests, The Stifling of Conservative Speech On The Platform Is Real.  About a year ago, many of us on the political right saw impressions of our tweets drop precipitously — sometimes in the millions per month — while follower counts were increasing or remaining stagnant.  With our visibility on the platform reduced, our ability to grow our Twitter presence has flatlined completely.  Because of Twitter's importance to the political debate in America, this is no trivial matter.  Our ability to influence the debate in real-time has been squelched.  While it does not outright censor expressions of conservative views, Twitter has admitted to using a complex and opaque Quality Filter algorithm that has the effect of disproportionately restricting the voices of conservatives under the guise of limiting harmful or abusive users.  Many Twitter users refer to this throttling as a "shadowban."

Timely news and commentary:

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Plans for You to Not See Donald Trump on Platforms Before Election.  In a significant shift from its previous approach to elections, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is distancing itself from politics, which could have a profound impact on the 2024 U.S. presidential election.  An analysis of posts by the Trump and Biden campaigns show both have faced a 60 percent drop in engagement between 2020 and 2024 on Facebook.  The Washington Post reports that as the 2024 presidential race between incumbent President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump intensifies, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is making significant changes to its approach to politics on its platforms.  This shift comes after years of courting the political world, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg once touting Facebook's influence in the 2016 election, stating, "We helped millions of people connect with candidates so they could hear from them directly and be better informed."

COVID subcommittee chair asks top science journal editors to testify on relationship with federal government.  Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, issued letters to the editors of three major science journals on Tuesday, asking them to testify on the relationship between their publications and the federal government.  Wenstrup sent letters to the editors-in-chief of The Lancet, Science and Nature science journals requesting their testimony for a hearing on April 16.  The hearing will be titled "Academic Malpractice:  Examining the Relationship Between Scientific Journals, the Government, and Peer Review."  In his letters, Wenstrup stated that the hearing would be to examine "whether these journals granted the federal government inappropriate access into the scientific review or publishing process."  These journals were in contact with top White House health officials like Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins according to Freedom of Information Act requests, Wenstrup wrote.  He did not cite any specific reports or studies in his letters to the editors-in-chief.

A Massive Government-Censorship Industrial Complex.  SCOTUS will rule in June 2024 on a First Amendment free speech case the federal judge called "the most massive attack against free speech in United States history" and the circuit court judge described as "fairly unsubtle strong-arming" by government officials using "mafiosi style" threats to increase regulation.  Should government officials immediately cease contacting social media companies to censor content, with exceptions for illegal speech?  The U.S. government attorney, Brian Fletcher, eloquently argues for SCOTUS to discuss the following theoretical legal issues regarding free speech censorship on social media rather than specifics of the case.  Should the government have privacy in speech moderation policies?  The lawsuit discovery process exposed government pressure applied behind closed doors, with 24/7 badgering and profanity arising from the highest W.H., FBI, CDC, and CISA officials until Big Tech capitulation.  The Twitter Files released by Elon Musk and the House Weaponization of the Federal Government subcommittee investigation uncovered a massive government-funded censorship-industrial complex that links third-party "trust and safety teams" within universities and foundations to social media platforms.

Taibbi: Biden's [the] 'Only Candidate Who Can Expect Not to Be Censored' and That's a Threat to Democracy.  On Wednesday's broadcast of the Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends," journalist Matt Taibbi said that President Joe Biden and censorship under his administration is a threat to democracy and "heading into the 2024 presidential election cycle, Joe Biden is probably the only candidate who can expect not to be censored."  Before the interview with Taibbi began, co-host Brian Kilmeade played video of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying, "President Biden has done something that no other President in history has done, which is to order media, particularly the social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google, to censor his political opponents. ... If you have a President who can censor his political opponents, he has a license for any kind of atrocity.  That is a genuine threat to our democracy."

Docs Show Corporate Giants Are 'Colluding To Demonetize Conservative Platforms,' Judiciary Committee Says.  The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether major advertisers ran afoul of antitrust laws by coordinating about which news outlets to blackball.  The committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), obtained documents from the World Federation of Advertisers that show how it implemented a strategy to prevent major advertisers from doing business with disfavored news outlets.  The coordinated effort could have the effect of bankrupting news organizations that don't get the stamp of approval.  "The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative may be acting inconsistent with U.S. antitrust laws and congressional intent by coordinating GARM members' efforts to demonetize and eliminate disfavored content online," Jordan wrote in March 27 letter demanding further documents from advertisers.  "Evidence the Committee has obtained suggests that GARM members, led by Steer Team members, are colluding to demonetize conservative platforms and voices.  Further, this coordination does not always revolve around 'brand safety' and 'harmful' content as GARM publicly claims, but instead the desire to censor conservative and other views that GARM members disfavor," Jordan added.

Mailchimp Deplatforming A Local Tea Party Is A Hallmark Of Fascism.  If you're on Mailchimp, you need to download your audience email list and leave.  They're deplatforming conservatives, most recently the Northern Virgina Tea Party simply for informing members of a recount rally.  [Four tweets]  If you use any third-party application to run your business or engage with customers, etc., you should regularly export (I mean daily) your audience email list.  Otherwise, if you're deplatformed you will have to fight to get it.  I left Mailchimp earlier this year for Substack to avoid this, but every day new lines are drawn and companies are expected to pledge fealty or risk the mob.  Since many would like to avoid negative PR in this pandemic economy, they often choose to satiate the mob.

Canada's New Democratic Party introduces bill that would prescribe jail terms for speaking well of fossil fuels.  An NDP bill is seeking to criminalize the "promotion" of fossil fuels, and prescribe jail time even for Canadians who say scientifically true things such as how burning natural gas is cleaner than burning coal.  C-372, also known as the Fossil Fuel Advertising Act, was tabled Monday as a private member's bill by Charlie Angus, the MP for Timmins-James Bay and a longtime member of the NDP caucus.  "Today, I am proud to rise and introduce a bill that would make illegal false advertising by the oil and gas industry," Angus announced in the House of Commons.

Delaying the Inevitable.  Just in case you were not yet aware, there is an effort to make fact-checking and (mis)information management into an academic discipline. [...] The experts we surveyed defined misinformation as false and misleading information.  They agreed that pseudoscience and conspiracy theories are misinformation, while satirical news is not.  Experts across disciplines and methods disagreed on the importance of intentionality and whether propaganda, clickbait headlines, and hyperpartisan news are misinformation.  The experts agreed that social media platforms worsened the misinformation problem and that people are exposed to more opposing viewpoints online than offline.  Respondents were also skeptical of the claim that misinformation determined the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, whereas psychologists were not.  The most popular explanations as to why people believe and share misinformation were partisanship, identity, confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and lack of trust in institutions.

'Trusted Messengers:' Volunteer Censors Trained to Control Your Community's Speech.  During the 2020 election and in its immediate aftermath, the growth of the censorship industry could reliably be traced back to the U.S. federal government.  The DHS-born Election Integrity Partnership infamously worked to throttle and remove speech en masse in 2020.  Starting in 2020, the government began pouring taxpayer money into tech tools, university "disinformation research" labs, and the media literacy field's leading organization, NewsGuard — all of which contributed to the rapid growth of the censorship industry's capabilities.  This is how the government and private funders capacity-built the censorship industry — by injecting the financial resources needed to develop the structure and tools to target oppositional American political speech and narratives online.  [Video clip]

Has Our Government Erased the First Amendment?  The most important thing you will see this week is this interview of Mike Benz by Tucker Carlson:  Benz is with the Foundation for Freedom, which tracks government censorship.  In this interview he explains how our government rigged elections abroad and has now, through DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), censored online communications, noting that its most substantial censorship involved blocking and limiting any critiques online respecting the government's responses to COVID-19 and the security of the 2020 election. [...] Benz has made a persuasive historically accurate case demonstrating how techniques developed by government agencies to meddle with elections abroad have now metastasized online to interfere with domestic elections and policies.  He has also persuasively shown how these agencies fear popular control, justifying their actions by confusing the concept of "democracy" with the preservation of existing institutions like NATO and the IMF.

Biden White House Pressured Amazon to Censor Vaccine-Skeptical Books, Internal Emails Reveal.  In early 2021, the Biden White House sent a series of emails to Amazon pressuring the online retailer to suppress the distribution of books that cast vaccines in a negative light.  The administration was ultimately successful in its efforts:  Amazon began limiting the visibility of titles that cast doubt on vaccine efficacy soon after hearing from the White House.  The internal Amazon emails, provided to the House Judiciary Committee in response to a subpoena, reveal that White House senior adviser for Covid-19 response Andrew Slavitt concluded that the retail giant was trafficking in "misinformation" after conducting a cursory search on the topic of vaccines.  "Who can we talk to about the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?" Slavitt asked an Amazon representative in an email dated March 2, 2021.  "If you search for 'vaccines' under books, I see what comes up," Slavitt wrote in a follow-up email.  "I haven't looked beyond that but if that's what's on the surface, it's concerning."

Amazon Bowed to White House Pressure to Suppress Books Skeptical of COVID-19 Vaccines.  Amazon yielded to pressure from President Joe Biden's White House to suppress books that opposed COVID-19 vaccines, according to documents reviewed by The Daily Signal.  The House Judiciary Committee obtained the emails, which demonstrate the White House's pressure on Amazon to suppress "anti-vax books" and the company's decision to take action against the books.  Amazon employees strategized for a meeting with the White House on March 9, 2021, openly asking whether the administration wanted the retailer to remove books from its catalog.

Tucker Carlson Interviews Russell Brand, Discussing the Era of Information Warfare and Government Targeting.  Russell Brand is a former lefty who took the red pill and over time joined the great awakening.  As an outcome of his current perspectives and influence, Brand is currently labeled a dissident threat and targeted by the globalist system.  Tucker Carlson invited Brand to appear on his broadcast for a discussion of the big picture amid the current era of information warfare.  Brand is an eloquent voice who frames the arguments very clearly and quickly, thus his growing influence represented a threat to the system and a process of Lawfare attacks was launched against him.  The British government then asked all Big Tech platforms to remove Brand from visibility.  The only tech platform that refused to acquiesce to the Five-Eyes demand was Rumble.  This is a very good interview, well worth the 40 minutes of time.  [Video clip]

Meta Oversight Board Member Says 2020 Election Interference Was 'Not Enough'.  One presidential election cycle after Facebook "reduced" the distribution of The New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop and suspended the accounts of former President Donald Trump on Facebook and Instagram, a member of Meta's oversight board says the Big Tech platform "had not done enough" to control users' speech.  In an interview with Wired published Friday, board member Pamela San Martín claimed that as the tech platform enters 2024, "even though we're addressing the problems that arose in prior elections as a starting point, it is not enough."  "Between the U.S. election [in 2020] to the Brazilian election [in 2022], Meta had not done enough to address the potential misuse of its platforms through coordinated campaigns, people organizing, or using bots on the platforms to convey a message to destabilize a country, to create a lack of trust or confidence on electoral processes," she added.  Really?  With the encouragement of intel agencies, Facebook engaged in plenty of election interference in 2020.

In the name of 'fake news,' NewsGuard extorts sites to follow the government narrative.  Half a century ago, George Orwell, writing on literary censorship, wrote that "unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban."  That dynamic now broadly extends to an opaque network of government agencies and self-proclaimed anti-misinformation groups that have repressed online speech.  There's no official ban on discussing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines or criticizing American involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war, but editors and journalists have realized that writing on such topics can come at a cost.  News publishers have been demonetized and shadow-banned for reporting dissenting views and the bureaucratic means for enforcing this form of control are under increasing scrutiny.  NewsGuard, a for-profit company that scores news websites on trust and works closely with government agencies and major corporate advertisers, exemplifies the problem.

Pentagon and Air Force Along with US House Block Access to The Gateway Pundit Website:  Report.  In a recent development, The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative websites in the country today, reported that its access has been blocked on networks within both the United States House of Representatives and the Pentagon.  On Thursday, sources from Capitol Hill informed The Gateway Pundit that attempts to access the website from the House network were unsuccessful.  A staff member from Congressman Paul Gosar's office detailed ongoing access problems for the past two weeks.

Biden Admin Praised YouTube's Censorship, Used It To Pressure Facebook To Intensify Suppression Of Vaccine Stories.  As the Biden administration pressured Big Tech companies to censor Americans' speech during the COVID vaccine rollout, Google's YouTube went along with the White House's requests before Facebook was pressured to follow suit, according to documents shared with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and obtained by The Daily Wire.  In an April 18, 2021, email, Facebook President for Global Affairs Nick Clegg expressed concern after Andy Slavitt, a senior White House advisor, told him that Facebook was "lagging behind" as YouTube "made significant advances to remove content leading to vaccine hesitancy."

Testimony before Congress shows 1984 is here, and Obama started it.  Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, two honest men who worked on the Twitter Files, exposing how the government collaborated with Twitter to affect the 2020 election, testified before the House today.  What they said should terrify you.  Beginning in January 2017, under then-president Obama's direction, the government instituted a social media manipulation system intended to game the 2020 election through censorship and controlled information (which, to my mind, amounts to misinformation).  It was unconstitutional, but it worked.  And now, using the vehicle of the corrupt criminal action against Trump, the government is bypassing manipulating information and is planning to target ordinary Americans.

David Horowitz Freedom Center's Censorship Talk Gets Censored.  Last year, the Babylon Bee was censored for naming Rachel Levine its "Man of the Year." Now, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has been banned over a speech about that joke.  On Friday afternoon, Seth Dillon, the gregarious leader of the Babylon Bee, took the floor to tell attendees at the Center's Restoration Weekend about his fight against censorship.  When USA Today named Rick 'Rachel' Levine, a transgender Biden administration official, as one of its "Women of the Year," the Babylon Bee responded by naming him its "Man of the Year."  And Twitter locked the Bee's account for "hateful conduct" for telling the obvious truth.  That Orwellian act of censorship was described as one of the most "consequential" moments in the anti-woke struggle against Big Tech and helped lead to Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.  Dillon was talking about the past, but while we sat in a New Orleans ballroom, little did we know that history was about to repeat itself sooner than anyone expected.

Facebook Censors Our Accurate Story On Covid Vaccine mRNA In Breast Milk.  In June, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook and Instagram had censored true content about COVID-19.  "Unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that... asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true," he explained.  Zuckerberg made his remarks after both the US government and the World Health Organization announced an end to the COVID-19 public health emergency.  In response, Meta moved to roll back its medical "misinformation" policy.  And yet Facebook continues to censor accurate information about COVID.  Yesterday, we discovered that the company fact-checked, labeled, and limited the visibility of our article "Covid Vaccine mRNA In Breast Milk Shows CDC Lied About Safety."  Public's article was accurate.  A new study in the Lancet demonstrated that there were trace amounts of vaccine mRNA in breast milk and that vaccine mRNA does not stay in the injection site.

Online Censorship [is] Going to [the] Supreme Court.  Missouri v.  Biden, one of the most important free speech cases in American history, is almost certainly going to the Supreme Court.  The case centers around whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment of the Constitution when it pressured social media platforms to take down or de-amplify accounts that voiced speech the government disagreed with.  Two of the plaintiffs in the case are Stanford University's Dr. Jay Battacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, currently on leave from Harvard, who co-wrote a statement called the Great Barrington Declaration, which laid out an alternative public health response to lockdowns and school closures.  For that, they were personally targeted by Anthony Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins, who orchestrated a media campaign to discredit them.  On social media, they were censored and shadow-banned, which is at the heart of the case.

Meta's Threads blocks COVID-related searches to combat so-called disinformation — health officials slam decision.  Meta's new social media platform, Threads, recently confirmed that it is blocking COVID-related search terms in order to combat disinformation, according to the Washington Post.  Threads, a social media site launched by Mark Zuckerberg's company in July to compete with X, formerly known as Twitter, has already landed in hot water for censoring search terms that could populate sensitive results.

Direct Government Censorship Of The Internet Is Here.  Censorship of the Internet has been getting worse for years, but we just crossed a threshold which is going to take things to a whole new level.  On August 25th, a new law known as the "Digital Services Act" went into effect in the European Union.  Under this new law, European bureaucrats will be able to order big tech companies to censor any content that is considered to be "illegal", "disinformation" or "hate speech".  That includes content that is posted by users outside of the European Union, because someone that lives in the European Union might see it.  I wrote about this a few days ago, but I don't think that people are really understanding the implications of this new law.  In the past, there have been times when governments have requested that big tech companies take down certain material, but now this new law will give government officials the power to force big tech companies to take down any content that they do not like.  Any big tech companies that choose not to comply will be hit with extremely harsh penalties.

UN Builds 'Digital Army' to Punish Dissent, Censor Critics.  The globalist United Nations revealed that it is "building a digital army" that would police and censor the speech of the taxpayers online.  The organization doubled down on the narrative about the supposedly serious threat that this new "fight against online misinformation" phenomenon brings to humanity, Slay News reported.  In addition to that, the UN added that it is not satisfied with just censoring "misinformation." The globalist agency upped the ante by starting a war against "deadly disinformation," as the globalists themselves described it.  The international organization warned that "disinformation" is "deadly" and poses an "existential" risk to the core building blocks of modern societies such as "democratic institutions" and "fundamental human rights," the UN wrote in an announcement that was published on their website.

Thought Police:  The Center For Countering Digital Hate.  During the recent pandemic, all of those who considered or attempted to approach the crisis without the blessings of authorities were summarily belittled, repressed, and disgraced.  Many voices of reason were confounded by the enigmatic organization, the Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).  Their duplicitous activities were neither creative nor supportive, and simply aimed at destroying those who refused to agree with dogmatic mandates and protocols generated by the pharmaceutical industry.  At the peak of CCDH's influence, they released a malicious piece of propaganda, called The Disinformation Dozen.  The document was a frontal, full-scale attack on those who questioned the viability and motives of the mainstream response to the pandemic.  This manifesto was conceived as a distractive and deceptive instrument — disseminated among the willing world press corps.  Not only was the news media compromised by their funders, but they were also hungry for a scapegoat and eager to enthusiastically repeat easily drawn, though suspect conclusions.

The Biden Administration's Brutal Censorship Faceplant.  One of the more brutal legal self-owns you'll see took place in yesterday's hearing in the Missouri v. Biden Internet censorship case, in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.  For more about the hearing generally, click here, but one moment stood out.  Administration lawyer Daniel Bentele Hahs Tenny was under fire all day from judges who appeared unconvinced — or at least in a mood to debate the point — that statements from White House officials about content like, "[I'm] wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP" do not constitute coercion.  At one point Tenny was among other things saying the state couldn't be coercing social media companies if, for instance, the FBI only succeeded in getting material taken down 50% of the time.  "The idea that social media companies had to bend to the FBI's will, when half the time they didn't, just doesn't support those theories."

FBI Lied About Extensive Meetings with Zuckerberg's Platform About Hunter Biden 'Laptop from Hell'.  The FBI lied about the extent of its communications with Facebook regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, newly disclosed communications from the tech company reveal.  Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) says that the FBI's claim it only met with Facebook once about Biden's "Laptop from Hell" are "completely false."  This is the latest installment in Rep. Jim Jordan's "Facebook Files," a series of internal communications from the social networking platform obtained through a subpoena by the House Judiciary Committee, which Jordan chairs.  In a sworn deposition in the Missouri v.  Biden case, FBI special agent Elvis Chan, who is the main conduit between the bureau and big tech companies, claimed that apart from one instance, he was not aware of any meetings between Facebook and the FBI regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story.

YouTube and Facebook Censored Viktor Shokin Video Responding to Joe Biden's Lies and Details of His Dismissal.  On Friday morning [8/4/2023], The Gateway Pundit published an explosive explosive video of Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor who was removed from office under pressure from then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.  In the detailed and extensive interview, Shokin responded to allegations from the Biden regime, laying out his side of the story regarding the investigations into Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that once employed Hunter.  Shokin's video addressed a variety of points, from accusations that the investigation into Burisma was dormant to allegations of his corruption and his eventual removal as prosecutor.  In a lengthy, detailed response, Shokin refuted the notion that his investigations were "dormant" and explained how they were active, even leading to seizures of assets from Burisma's owner, Mykola Zlochevsky.

Biden Regime Pressured Facebook to Ban Jokes.  The Biden regime has an ever-lengthening record of opposition to the freedom of speech: the abortive Disinformation Governance Board, the Twitter Files revelations that regime apparatchiks pressured Twitter to remove dissenting tweets, the weaponization of the "Justice" Department against the regime's principal opponent, and on and on.  It thus comes as no surprise that the regime pressured Facebook, as well as Twitter, to remove posts that dissented from its line on COVID-19. What's striking is that the regime even hassled Zuckerberg's wonks to take down jokes making fun of the regime's line on the COVID vaccines.

Social Media: the Good, Bad and Ugly.  Despite all the media hype on how Zuckerburg's Threads was going to be the liberal wave for social media of the future, the new upstart has seen a massive decline in users.  Threads went from an estimated 100 million people signing up during the first week to less than 12 million active users today.  Ouch.  Another huge problem for the new upstart is that bots were used to inflate initial sign-up numbers.  However, they are now just spamming up the works for the legitimate users.  These are not good trend lines for the new platform, only a month+ into operations.  Of course, Zuck's proclamations that Threads was going to be the social media platform where "kindness" <taking the form of censoring and banning users> would make people want flock to the site has not helped.  Talk about being tone deaf.  By the way, Zuck already has two platforms for censorship kindness, they are called Facebook and Instagram.  Does the world really need another one?

Surgeon General demanded Facebook remove TRUE information.  "Misinformation" is an elastic term.  It can cover anything from intentional falsehoods to incorrect information to contested claims to unverified claims.  But it's hard to argue that it covers things known to be truthful.  Now I am, to say the least, not a fan of any efforts to suppress "misinformation" because it empowers some authority somewhere to impose a standard of what is true and what is not, and doing so is dangerous in itself.  While I would agree that in a perfect world everything we read, hear, and speak would be entirely true and completely in context, the reality is that we live in an imperfect world where nobody knows everything and everybody has some agenda or another.  Best to let the conversation flow freely.  Even "consensus" claims have turned out to be false or misleading, and often the people we recognize as geniuses are the people who were considered heretics at the time.

The Facebook Files Reveal Pressure From the Biden Administration to Crush Free Speech.  Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) just released what he called "smoking-gun" evidence on how the Biden White House pressured Facebook into censoring Americans' free speech.  Unfortunately, the House Judiciary — which Jordan chairs — also just "scrapped" a Thursday meeting to consider holding Meta (Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress.  "Never-before-released internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee PROVE that Facebook and Instagram censored posts and changed their content moderation policies because of unconstitutional pressure from the Biden White House," Jordan tweeted on July 27.  The first half of 2021, Jordan's tweet thread continued, brought "tremendous pressure from the Biden White House" for tech platforms to censor whatever the Biden administration considered to be "misinformation."  As an example, Jordan shared a screenshot of an email to Zuckerberg and then-Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, noting "continued pressure" from the White House.

Internal Facebook Emails Reveal White House Pressured Social-Media Platform to Censor Covid 'Misinformation'.  A series of internal Facebook emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee confirm that the Biden White House placed significant pressure on the company to crack down on "misinformation" related to the Covid pandemic in early 2021.  The emails, released publicly by committee chairman Jim Jordan on Thursday [7/27/2023], suggest that in some cases Facebook and Instagram complied with the White House's content-moderation requests in order to avoid public and private backlash.  One April 2021 email sent by a Facebook employee on behalf of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg acknowledged that, "We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the [Biden] White House."

Jim Jordan Unleashes 'The Facebook Files': Social Media Giant 'Censored Americans Because Of Biden White House Pressure'.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) released internal Meta documents on Thursday that he said were evidence of the White House improperly pressuring Facebook and Instagram into censoring posts.  The congressman said in a thread posted to X that he was unveiling "Part 1" of "The Facebook Files" — which appears to be a nod to the "Twitter Files" — obtained by his panel only after he threatened to move forward with holding Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress.  Jordan said that plan is being placed on hold unless the Big Tech giant stops cooperating with his investigation.  Jordan's thread, which he said involved "smoking-gun" documents that "prove Facebook censored Americans because of Biden White House pressure," contained some screenshots of the documents, but not the full correspondence.

Don't Get The Idea That Internet Censorship Is Diminishing.  II owe an apology to all readers for the temporarily reduced frequency of posting.  I'm currently in Italy on a family vacation.  On multiple occasions over the past several years, I have taken family vacations — including to semi-developed places like Russia and Vietnam — without significant effect on my ability to post on the blog.  However, the internet service where I currently find myself in Italy is remarkably poor, and not sufficient to support the kind of research it takes to do one of my usual posts.  So please have patience.  I'll be back to my usual routine next week.  Meanwhile, let me relay some information that people have sent me.  Greg Wrightstone, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition, sends along some truly shocking information about ongoing big tech censorship of the climate debate.  Things may have improved at Twitter over the past few months, but Twitter is only one of several of the big tech behemoths.  At the others, little has changed.  Indeed, things may be continuing to get worse.

Twitter suspends [the] account of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.  Twitter, the social media platform that has boasted free speech protections since coming under the control of Elon Musk, has suspended the account of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.  On Saturday afternoon, word began to spread of the incident with followers demanding an explanation from owner Elon Musk and calling for reinstatement of the account.  The account is labeled "suspended" and all posts hidden, an action which Viganò described to LifeSiteNews' John-Henry Westen as "shameful."

Update:
Archbishop Viganò restored to Twitter after public outcry.  Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has returned to Twitter feeds.  During the early morning of July 16, just hours after it had been suspended, Twitter restored Viganò's account.  However, the social media platform, whose owner Elon Musk has pledged to protect free speech, has yet to explain why it suspended the account of the celebrated archbishop.  Viganò quoted Tucker Carlson as he announced his reinstatement, writing:  "No one is punished for lying.  People are only punished for telling the truth."  [Tweet]

FBI Colluded With Russian-Infiltrated Agency In Ukraine To Censor Americans.  The FBI colluded with a Russian-infiltrated intelligence agency in Ukraine to censor American speech, according to a new document out Monday [7/10/2023].  In an interim report published by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, House investigators exposed the FBI's cooperation with foreign agents to orchestrate online censorship.  "The Committee's analysis of these 'disinformation' registries revealed that the FBI, at the request of the [Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)], flagged for social media companies the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified U.S. State Department account and those belonging to American journalists," the report reads.  "At times, the FBI would even follow up with the relevant platform to ensure that 'these accounts were taken down.'"  The SBU was notoriously infiltrated by the Kremlin's Federal Security Service (FSB), whose agents were instrumental in President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Report: More Biden Censorship of US Social Media in Collusion With Ukrainian Spy Agency.  A 27-page report released on Monday by the House Judiciary Committee revealed more alleged social media censorship from the Biden administration, this time in a concerning collaboration between the FBI and the Ukrainian spy agency the SBU to go after and flag U.S. social media accounts, including multiple journalists and even a U.S. State Department account.  The FBI was essentially doing the bidding of a foreign spy agency, according to the report, which should concern everyone.  The report was based on subpoenaed documents.

Facebook Shadow Banned Tucker Carlson 'Anti-Vaccine' Video At the Request of the Biden WH.  Facebook is being criticized for violating the First Amendment after allegedly suppressing a video posted by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at the request of the Biden White House.  Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana Monroe Division issued an injunction over the White House's efforts to censor Americans' right to free speech by coordinating with big tech companies to shadow-ban posts that do not violate its content policy.  On April 14, 2021, Carlson posted a video warning about the possible side effects of vaccines.  That same day, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty emailed Facebook demanding the video of Carlson and then-Fox News host Tomi Lahren be removed.  He claimed the video was "Tucker Carlson saying vaccines don't work and Tomi Lahren stating she won't take a vaccine."  Then-White House advisor Andy Slavitt reportedly emailed Facebook executive Nick Clegg about Carlson's "anti-vax message," complaining about Facebook's lack of action.

Shadow Banning Back at Twitter?  Strange Thing Happens When You Search for Popular Conservative Account.  Shortly after Elon Musk took the keys to Twitter HQ, he promised that, in short order, there would be a way to find out if your account had been "shadow banned" — that is to say that it wouldn't show up in searches or on users' feeds.  "Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you've been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal," he tweeted in December.  [Tweet]  That hasn't happened yet.  And in February, according to Gizmodo, Musk seemed to suspect his own employees were shadow banning him.

Michigan is criminalizing opinions.  To say that Michigan has lurched to the left under the leadership of Gretchen Whitmer and the state's liberal majority would be a significant understatement.  But with a new bill passed in the state House this week, they are taking things to a cartoonish level.  If (more likely "when") House Bill 4474 is signed into law, you will literally be able to be thrown into prison for hurting someone's feelings.  This is being hidden under the guise of protecting people from "hate speech," and includes standard liberal online tropes about "feeling threatened."  To be clear, you don't have to actually threaten someone with violence.  They simply need to "feel" threatened by something you say or post online.  There is no word from Governor Whitmer yet as to whether the State Police will be directed to establish a new "thought police" unit.

Michigan state legislature House passes censorship bill to make free speech a felony.  Democrats run the state government of Michigan, with majorities on the House and Senate of the state legislature and Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer with the ability to sign bills into law.  That's why a bill already passed by the State Legislature's House and assigned to committee in the State Senate is so dangerous.  Can you believe five years in prison for speech based on someone's feelings about it?  HB 4474 has a good chance of becoming law, despite its obvious unconstitutionality. [...] Yes, the bill is unconstitutional.  But if it becomes law, it will takes years and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to get it to the Supreme Court for a finding.  IF it makes it there.  Meanwhile, left wing agitation to weaken the Court and drive conservatives from its bench will only intensify.  If they succeed or if mortality intervenes and Democrats get to appoint more justices or even pack the court by expanding it, the constitutional safeguards may crumble in the foreseeable future.

Michigan can now censor you if you hurt someone's feelings.  Michigan's Democratic House passed legislation on Tuesday that enables attorneys to shut down "hate speech."  The new House Bill 4474 is a vague and unconstitutional censorship law that determines "feeling threatened" as reasonable grounds to prosecute offenders.  The punishment for making someone "feel threatened" in Michigan is five years in jail and a $10,000 fine. [...] The problematic language about "feelings" can be found in the bill's definition of "intimidation" as "willful course of conduct, involving repeated or continuing harassment of another individual that would cause a reasonable individual to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested, and that actually causes the victim to feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened."

Australian government threatens Elon Musk with $475,000-a-day fine if he doesn't stop people's feelings from being hurt on Twitter.  Oh no, Elon!  You better watch out!  The whole nation of Australia is REALLY mad at you because now Twitter has free speech! [Tweet]  Whatever is Elon going to do now that the government of Australia is mad at him and their feelings are hurt because people say mean things online?  The threat from Australia does have some teeth, at least in the mind of the Australians:  ["]Twitter could be fined as much as $475,000 a day if it doesn't comply, under an online safety law that Australia touted as world-first when it was introduced in 2021.["]

Experts slam 'deeply flawed' study claiming Facebook does NOT censor conservatives.  Media Matters for America published a study recently concluding that Facebook does not censor conservatives, but experts told the DCNF the study is not credible because it did not properly measure the suppression of right-leaning pages.  Right-leaning Facebook pages typically got more total interactions than politically nonaligned and left-leaning pages on Facebook, according to the study.  However, experts say this does not mean that there was no censorship of right-leaning Facebook pages, as the only example of suppression the Media Matters study cites is Donald Trump's Facebook ban.  Media Matters is an organization that monitors and tracks a vast array of media for "conservative misinformation," according to its website.  It defines this term as "news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda."

Judge in Missouri v Biden ain't buying what the government's shoveling.  The Missouri v Biden lawsuit sprang from underhanded censorship dealings the Biden administration began with the social media companies almost the second they ascended to the throne.  Everyone from COVID lockdown, vax and masking critics to scientists who had conflicting data in their hands, and just wanted to present it to the public — such as the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration — were driven from view, pilloried from the public square, many times hounded out of their jobs and livelihoods their long established, spotless professional reputations were in tatters.  All to promote the government's approved narrative, their chosen treatments, and favored pharmaceutical partners.  There were no allowances made for First Amendment Rights in their dogged pursuit of complete control of the information flow.  Posts, memes, papers and tweets that were contrary to that goal, even if correct were flagged as "disinformation," and smothered or completely removed, and the author blocked from whatever the site was after said "infraction" were theatrically deemed either enough or so serious action must be taken to protect the public.

Google (YouTube) Changes Position and Will Now Permit Content that Challenges 2020 Election Results.  Google via YouTube is reversing its position and allowing content that challenges the results of the 2020 election.  [Per Axios] "In a reversal of its election integrity policy, YouTube will leave up content that says fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 presidential election and other U.S. elections, the company confirmed to Axios Friday [6/2/2023]."  After removing "tens of thousands of videos" (their admission) previously containing content that challenged the 2020 election results, suddenly that conversation is permitted.  "Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today's changed landscape," YouTube said in a statement.  So, according to the script, the "threat to democracy" has suddenly diminished as the 2024 election cycle starts to become a topic of increased discussion?  Yeah, right.  I read this Google change two ways:  (1) This reads like a "mission accomplished and we don't need this anymore" kind of policy switch; and  (2) There's that probability of Donald Trump winning the 2024 election and they need to be able to question election results again.

Heads Roll at Twitter After The Daily Wire Is Censored, but Elon Musk Stirs New Controversy.  The ongoing controversy over Twitter's censorship of The Daily Wire for alleged "misgendering" escalated on Thursday evening with the social media giant's Head of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin, resigning in the wake.  That's most likely because she and her department are the ones who made the decision to label tweets by Matt Walsh as violating Twitter's "hateful conduct" policies.  The result was a warning label being placed on the posts along with sharing disabled.  Those moves came after Jeremy Boreing, CEO of The Daily Wire, revealed Thursday morning that Twitter backed out of a deal to show What Is a Woman, the outlet's popular documentary about the militant transgender movement.  [Tweet]

After Covid: Twelve Challenges for a Shattered World.  Big Tech surveilled before the pandemic response but the quasi-martial law of the period consolidated the power of the government over private data.  The Twitter Files have proven the huge role that the police state played in censorship of science and any opinion that contradicted regime priorities.  Facebook groups were blasted away.  LinkedIn and Twitter accounts were banned.  Even Google search results were gamed.  This was why those of us in the resistance had such a very difficult time finding each other in the first place.  When they demanded social distancing, they wanted more than human separation of six feet.  They wanted to stop the formation of any serious resistance.  They wanted us all isolated, disoriented, and thus easy to control.  As a result, the tools that we once believed were designed for more human connection were deployed to keep us apart.  Yes, there are many lawsuits ongoing that challenge this practice as a violation of First-Amendment rights.  Court discovery has produced many thousands of pages, and the decisions seem likely to land in the correct position.  But here's what is spooky.  If these court challenges really posed much of a threat to the practice, wouldn't mainstream social platforms be eschewing censorship right now?  They are not.  YouTube is the king of takedowns.  Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook do the same.

LinkedIn Bans Journalist For Mentioning Durham Report.  Under the pretense of being a career-builder site, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has flown largely below radar, but it may now be one of the most egregious social-media offenders in terms of practicing anti-conservative bias and censorship.  On Tuesday, the site confirmed my long-held suspicions that it sought to police conservative speech by implementing an outright ban on me — seemingly for a post that denounced the New York Times's fake news coverage of the Durham report.  Specifically, I had posted a response to Meredith Kopit Levien, the president and chief executive officer of the Times, expressing my hope that the newspaper would return its Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Russia-collusion hoax in the wake of special counsel John Durham's final confirmation that the story was entirely fabricated by the Hillary Clinton campaign with help from powerful government agencies.

Facebook is Censoring Title 42 Migrant Influx News.  Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has blocked The National Pulse from sharing a report on what even Joe Biden admits will be a "chaotic" influx of migrants this week in the United States, as Trump-era immigration controls expire.  While the border crisis may have seemed bad already, Title 42 expulsions authorized by then-President Donald Trump's invocation of the Public Health Services Act in 2020 have seen off an astonishing three million migrants.  The Biden government, which has been trying to terminate the Title 42 regime since 2022, allowed them to naturally expire on Thursday, May 11th, with the President admitting this will result in a "chaotic" influx and border governors such as Greg Abbott warning a "catastrophic disaster" is looming.  The National Pulse covered the story, seeking to share it with our 425,000 followers on Facebook.  But the social media platform blocked our reporting, alleging it violates "Community Standards on hate speech".

Some Laws that Could Save Free Speech.  Over the last several years, Americans' unalienable right to free speech has been under relentless assault by an alliance of government agencies, corporations, universities, and social media giants. [...] Americans who dare publicly question government and media-prescribed positions on COVID-19 vaccines safety, the effectiveness of masks, the war in Ukraine, the 2020 election, lockdowns, parental rights, transgenderism, CRT and other issues face deplatforming and even subsequent possible loss of job and access to banking services.  Breitbart News recently published a chilling report on a vast, well funded "post-2016 empire of 'disinformation' censorship that ... extends far beyond the federal government," working tirelessly to "suppress non-progressive viewpoints, and harm the business models that support them."  This empire's enormous power was demonstrated in early 2021, when Twitter prevented President Trump from communicating with the American public by suspending his account.

Largest Mass-Surveillance and Mass-Censorship Program in American History Uncovered.  Just the News reports that the law firm America First Legal has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that private parties conspired with the government to target millions of Americans for pervasive censorship and surveillance.  In its introductory statement, the lawsuit asserts that the so-called "Election Integrity Partnership" and "Virality Project" constitute "probably the largest mass-surveillance and mass-censorship program in American history."  The Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project collaborated "closely with state and federal government officials," per the lawsuit.  The defendants are monitoring and censoring social media platforms under their pressure, directives, and coercion.  The complaint was filed predominantly on behalf of Jill Hines, co-director of the consumer and human rights nonprofit Health Freedom Louisiana, and Jim Hoft, founder and chief editor of the news website The Gateway Pundit.  According to the lawsuit, both parties have been subjected to "extensive censorship" and continue to be subjected to it.

America's Censorship Regime Goes on Trial.  [Scroll down]  The cascade of shutdowns of support groups and accounts belonging to the vaccine injured on Facebook and other social media platforms continues to this day.  [Ernest] Ramirez, [Brianne] Dressen, and others learned that when their accounts weren't suspended or removed, they were shadow-banned — meaning that the platforms' algorithms buried their posts so that they were rarely, if ever, viewable, even to like-minded individuals facing similar health problems.  In Dressen's words: "The constant threat of having our groups shut down and our connections pulled apart left me and many other members and leaders frozen, unable to communicate and connect with those who needed our help the most.  We spent more time managing the chaos of the censorship algorithms that continued to evolve, than we did actually helping people through the trauma of their injuries."  The obstacles encountered by Ramirez, Dressen, and thousands of other individuals with similar experiences and opinions were in no way coincidental or accidental.  Nor were they the result of a series of errors in judgment made by low-level employees of social media platforms.  Rather, they were the products of concerted efforts at the highest levels of the American government to ensure that individuals with opposing viewpoints could not be heard, contrary to the guarantees made to every American citizen in the Bill of Rights.

Russell Brand Debriefs Matt Taibbi With Some Solid New Intel Surfacing About Larger Internet and Social Media Control Operations.  U.K. cultural and political pundit Russell Brand sits down for an interview with U.S. Twitter File journalist Matt Taibbi, to discuss Taibbi's experience with his recent congressional testimony, the advancement of the 'Restrict Act', and new revelations still coming from his exploration into the Twitter communication files.  After some general overview and sense about the issues in/around congress, at 06:45 of the interview Taibbi begins to highlight new information he is discovering about how the Aspen Institute group was organizing, discussing and planning a larger objective about controlling any/all information on the internet.  [Video clip]

The Most Dangerous People In America Right Now.  [Scroll down]  We've seen a turning inward of the kind of propaganda efforts the United States carried out worldwide for 100 years.  As the war on terrorism was won — as it became successful — you had people look for new avenues for their propaganda and censorship campaigns.  The second phenomenon is the seismic upheavals of 2016, the Brexit election in Britain, and then the election of Donald Trump.  They resulted in a consensus among American and Western elites that social media, in particular, but internet platforms more broadly, needed to be restrained because Donald Trump's election resulted from Facebook and Twitter allowing him to communicate and spread misinformation.  I don't believe senior intelligence officials believed the Russians had much influence over the 2016 elections.  Rather, they used it as a pretext for engaging in censorship and propaganda.

YouTube blocks LifeSite for 2 weeks for 'hate speech' .  YouTube has once more attacked LifeSite, banning us from posting additional video reports on our John-Henry Westen channel for the next two weeks.  We are now just one strike away from YouTube permanently deleting the channel, leaving LifeSite with a diminished presence on the giant Big Tech platform.  This is the second time YouTube has issued a "strike" against LifeSite in fewer than 30 days.  Why?  LifeSite spoke truthfully about the promotion of LGBT ideology embedded in the movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once after Hollywood last week bestowed seven Academy Awards on the film, including "Best Picture."  In 2021, without warning or explanation, YouTube permanently shut down LifeSite's account, removing tens of thousands of hours of pro-life, pro-family, Christian video news coverage and leaving our 300,000 YouTube followers in the lurch.

The Censored Generation.  The implicit deal with companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc., is very simple:  we will look at your ads if you give us a service for free.  The deal did not include censorship.  But what is society to expect when those doing the censoring seem to see absolutely nothing wrong with it, that it didn't even occur to them that what they were engaged in — often at the specific request of governmental agencies — was at all a problem?  For a generation that has grown up with speech codes and enforced nicety and automatic deference to the feelings of others and swaddled in bubble wrap against the vagaries of life, censoring speech is not only not an ethical leap[,] it is the right thing to do.

Eight Startling and Uncomfortable Ways the Democrat Party Emulates the Nazi Party.  [#5] The Nazis were notorious for book-burning rituals to intimidate and send the message that they would shut down anyone and anything that did not align with their ideology.  Once in control of the national levers of powers, they did so with impunity particularly in the education sector whose revised primary purpose was to brainwash the youth.  The Democrat Party is figuratively burning books as it uses social media mobs as the vehicle to send the message that they will shut down anyone or anything that does not align with their ideology.

I was banned from LinkedIn for telling the truth.  Now that we have the Twitter Files, we need the LinkedIn Files.  I was banned back in August 2020 without warning or notice.  I just went to my LinkedIn account one day and found that I had been locked out of it.  I appealed to the corporate behemoth, and received an email on August 24, 2020, saying: "Your account has been restricted due to a violation to the LinkedIn's User Agreement relating to the following false content."  The LinkedIn drone who wrote the email offered four examples of my unacceptable content.  [Examples omitted for brevity.]  All of these were simply excerpts from cited news stories with my own commentary added.  My commentary didn't add any additional information; it just commented on the information provided in the source articles, which were noted and linked.
  •   The teachers' unions story came from that well-known right-wing MAGA publication known as The Hill;
  •   the Soros story was from American Action News;
  •   the CDC COVID story came from RedState; and
  •   the Newsom story came from Jewish News Service.
No one has disputed the accuracy of any of these stories.

Ted Cruz Demands Answers From Meta, Google, And TikTok In New Senate Probe.  Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz launched a Commerce Committee investigation into Big Tech last month as House Republicans probe government influence over online speech platforms.  On Thursday, the Texas senator followed up with Silicon Valley's major players to explain their initial responses to congressional inquiries were not adequate.  Cruz, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, launched the GOP probe in the upper chamber with letters to Meta, Google, Twitter, and TikTok requesting information about content regulation.  "As you are well aware, social media companies rely on algorithms to not only moderate content, but also to surface personalized recommendations to users," Cruz wrote to the four tech giants.  "Recommendation systems play an increasingly ubiquitous role in selecting content for individual consumption, including by promoting some content, using product design elements to prominently display recommendations, and downranking or filtering disfavored content and account."

Facebook: Where Jihadist Hate Thrives.  [Scroll down]  Posts calling for violence and murder "in languages including Swahili, Somali and Arabic — were allowed to be widely shared."  Responding to these at the time shocking findings, Leah Kimathi, a Kenyan consultant in governance, peace, and security, said, "The least they [Facebook] can do is ensure that something they're selling to us is not going to kill us."  Similarly, "Why are they not acting on rampant content put up by [the Islamic terrorist group] al-Shabab?" asked Moustafa Ayad, who worked on the report.  "You'd think that after 20 years of dealing with al-Qaida, they'd have a good understanding of the language they [jihadists] use, the symbolism."

Facebook: Where Jihadist Hate Thrives.  [Scroll down] Posts calling for violence and murder "in languages including Swahili, Somali and Arabic — were allowed to be widely shared."  Responding to these at the time shocking findings, Leah Kimathi, a Kenyan consultant in governance, peace, and security, said, "The least they [Facebook] can do is ensure that something they're selling to us is not going to kill us."  Similarly, "Why are they not acting on rampant content put up by [the Islamic terrorist group] al-Shabab?" asked Moustafa Ayad, who worked on the report.  "You'd think that after 20 years of dealing with al-Qaida, they'd have a good understanding of the language they [jihadists] use, the symbolism."

Suppose The Four Twits Aren't the Only Twits.  [Scroll down] Our problem is not that the intelligence community and the Deep State are bullies and the wokey crowd are cowards.  No, I think that our problem is that, when the Big One hits, they really won't have a clue what to do.  Suppose we are heading into a nasty recession.  You think Biden & Co. will do anything except print and spend more money on climate change and systemic racism?  Last time the Democrats got us into a nasty inflationary spiral Ronald Reagan got us out with tax rate cuts and spending restraint, a policy diametrically opposed to the Keynesian consensus and sneered at by all the Great and the Good.  To this day our liberal friends burble about Reagan's "trickle-down economics."  Suppose the war in Ukraine starts to "escalate"?  You think Biden & Blinken & Milley & Co. can figure out how to avoid blowing up the planet?  Looking back at the chaotic wars since the end of the Cold War, I am not optimistic.  Everything the national security apparatus has done since then has been Stumble Town.

The Left's Righteous Tyrants.  Tyrants once rose to power the old-fashioned way:  defeating the opposition on the battlefield or at the faux ballot box.  Despite their atrocities, these despots at least had some swagger — perhaps a way with the ladies, a good sense of humor, strong persuasive abilities, commanding verbal skills, pride in their appearance.  Not so with modern-day martinets.  Our 21st-century tyrants possess nothing more than useless degrees from woke institutions and deep contempt for at least half the country, likely born out of a lifetime of social isolation.  History, after all, shows that outcasts often seek revenge against their childhood tormentors later in life.  Such appears to be the case with the former Twitter executives who testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.  Unimpressive by every measure — looks, personality, intellect, persuasiveness, grasp of the facts — the Twitter Four should serve as a reminder of what the defenders of freedom are up against.  Thankfully, our enemies, while powerful for now, have the mental, physical, and emotional appeal of overcooked spaghetti.

Microsoft-Owned Ad Group Blacklisted Conservative Sites, in [an] Attempt to Break Them Financially.  The attack on conservatives by major corporations, internet companies, and political activist groups is nothing new.  This doesn't just include conservatives, but conservative sites as well.  There have been repeated high-profile attempts at silencing conservative news and opinion sites, usually by attacking their ability to generate revenue from ads using flimsy excuses about misinformation or hate speech.  According to the Washington Examiner, new information has been discovered about a low-profile attempt to target conservative sites by blacklisting them for various "safety" reasons.  This includes sites such as Daily Wire, Newsmax, Epoch Times, and even RedState.  The Examiner revealed the existence of the "Global Disinformation Index," a British organization with two American affiliates that was bought by Microsoft in 2021 for $1 billion.  This company is responsible for giving blacklists to ad companies like Xandr to restrict ad dollars and break conservative websites financially, effectively silencing them.

Ad Network Owned by Microsoft Is Using Foreign Disinformation 'Experts' to Blacklist Conservative Media Companies.  The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a foreign think tank headquartered in the United Kingdom, released an assessment of American online media designed to blacklist conservative media outlets and choke off their advertising revenue.  The information is kept on what GDI calls its "Dynamic Exclusion List."  Ad networks — including most prominently Xandr — which is owned by Microsoft — are now using this list to refuse to allow advertising on conservative media websites.  Microsoft has yet to respond to a request for comment regarding Xandr's use of the Dynamic Exclusion List, which is censoring conservative outlets.

Senator's Twitter account suspended for publishing a hunting photo.  Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) posted a photo on Twitter of a Montana antelope killed on a hunting trip with his wife, Cindy.  The two pose with the elk in the picture, dressed in hunting clothes.  His account was suspended on Monday night and the reason given was that the image violated the Twitter Terms of Service.

YouTube Censorship Of Suppressor Content & Wholesale Deletion of Creators.  In recent weeks, YouTube has begun purging suppressor-related videos at an alarming rate.  The videos YouTube has flagged and deleted thus far contain footage of someone mounting a suppressor to a host firearm, even if the videos in question were posted months or years ago.  YouTube's closed-door censorship seems to stem from a gross misunderstanding of suppressors and a reinterpretation of their own vague policies.  As a direct result, the American Suppressor Association (ASA) is aware of multiple channels receiving "strikes" with the threat of being permanently deleted from YouTube.

Joe Rogan - The One Year Anniversary.  My friend and colleague Matt Tune, who helped set up Joe Rogan interview #1757 and came with me to Austin for the studio recording, sent out a tweet yesterday — with a few photos.  This particular year seems like it has stretched out forever!  Now filed under "stranger things", just before the interview, I was banned from both Twitter and Linked-in.  A coincidence that I think is highly unlikely.  Maybe the next "Twitter Files" drop will clarify that sequence of events.  Frankly — I had no idea how this podcast would change my life.  That is until it went live, and the number of people watching it just kept going up and up and up.  Some even say I even "broke Google".  That is, I broke their search term algorithms, and they had to resort to cheating to control the rankings for the term "mass formation psychosis" (a term that I did not invent) to fit the main-stream narrative.

'Censorship actually killed people'.  Dr. Jay Battacharya of Stanford is one of the great heroes of the Covid epidemic, a fearless truth-teller in the face of overwhelming pressure to parrot the party line emanating from the Faucists in control of the governmental, academic and pharmaceutical establishments, all of which enriched themselves and/or grabbed unprecedented power from their respionse to the viral outbreak.  Speaking with Megyn Kelly, who has become another brave truth-teller in her online show, Dr. Battacharya laid out with factual backup the horrendous consequences of the suppression of honest discussion of Covid policy that has been revealed with the release of the Twitter Files (so far, with much more to come, according to Elon Musk).  Opposition to policies that were dead wrong was suppressed, and we now have proof of that.

Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted.  Accusations of Chinese tyranny are often based on demands from Beijing that Google and Facebook comply with their censorship orders as a condition for remaining in China.  Reports over the years suggested that these firms typically comply:  Google was building a censored search engine suited to Chinese demands; The New York Times has claimed Facebook developed a censorship app as its entrance requirement to the Chinese market, and Vox accused Apple of succumbing to Chinese censorship demands by banning an app from its store that had been used by protesters in Hong Kong demanding liberation from control by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  But now the tables appeared to be turning when it comes to U.S. censorship demands and TikTok.  Threats to ban or severely limit the Chinese-owned-and-controlled platform from the U.S. have been hovering over TikTok's head through both the Trump and Biden years.  The most common justification offered for the threat is that TikTok's presence in the U.S. empowers China to propagandize Americans, a concern that escalated along with the platform's massive explosion among Americans.

Biden's Unopposed Imposition of Stalinism.  While conservatives tend to be more tolerant of different viewpoints, the progressive liberals who have taken over the Democrat Party want to completely eradicate anyone with an incompatible vision.  Censorship of opposing views has become the official modus operandi of the federal government.  "Joe Biden's partisan political enemies," said Tucker Carlson, "are now officially enemies of the state."  The government is collaborating with social media to crack down on private communication when it is critical of Biden's policies.  "The Biden administration considers censorship applicable to private speech," said Tucker Carlson.  "What you say in private, when you're alone with your phone.  You won't be able to say or read what you want because the Democrats intend to control the flow of information.  Nothing that questions official regime policy will reach you."  Soon Biden's minions will be listening to all your phone calls and emails, and monitoring your social media posts as they do in China.  No private communication of prohibited ideas will be allowed.

The latest Twitter Files focus on COVID "misinformation".  The latest installment of Twitter Files dropped today as a slightly late Christmas present from independent journalist David Zweig.  This batch may wind up being the best yet in terms of demonstrating the Biden administration's direct and deliberate intervention in the social media platform's "content moderation" activities and the censorship of speech, particularly when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic. [...] After Joe Biden was sworn in, the first White House meeting with Twitter focused on COVID-19 "misinformation."  They immediately put pressure on Twitter to deplatform Alex Berenson, a frequent critic of the administration's policies and CDC "science."  Biden specifically called Berenson out in public, saying that social media was "killing people" by allowing Berenson to speak.  He was suspended within hours and his account was deleted the following month.

How the FBI's nod and a wink got social media to censor The Post's Hunter Biden reporting.  Just as it did in 2016, the Democratic Party colluded during the 2020 presidential campaign with FBI leadership, its like-minded transnational-progressives in the loose-lipped community of current and former national-security officials and the media.  The objective in 2020, as in 2016, was to try to drag a weak, deeply compromised Democratic candidate across the finish line.  The scheme worked in 2020 where it failed in 2016.  A big part of the difference was Democrats and their collaborators put major 2020 emphasis on social-media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, which had served Donald Trump well in 2016.  The result was the systematic suppression of the Biden family corruption scandal:  the staggering millions of dollars that are now known to have been poured into the Biden coffers from agents of such authoritarian, anti-American regimes as China and Russia and such corrupt ones as Ukraine.  Joe Biden is in it up to his neck, although the media-Democrat complex continues branding the scandal as "the Hunter Biden probe," the better to obscure the president's complicity.

Google Announces 'Pre-Bunking' Censorship Tools for Behavioral 'Interventions'.  Big Tech giant Google has announced the development of its new "pre-bunking" censorship tools that seek to manage behavioral "interventions."  Google has dubbed its project "Info Interventions" and claims it is based on behavioral science.  The tools are effectively aimed at predicting so-called "misinformation" and "disinformation."  By "pre-bunking" information, Google hopes it can block it before it is viewed by anyone online.

The Media Undertakers Must be Getting Exhausted.  [Scroll down] Blocking, banning, and shadow banning social media posters does not appear the end of it.  As Julie Kelly reports in the context of the January 6 sound and light shows on the Hill and in the D.C. courtrooms, Attorney General Garland's minions in D.C. are now criminalizing speech with which they disagree, charging the Oath Keepers with "seditious conspiracy" although there were no weapons on them, they were military veterans "most suffering various degrees of service-related disabilities," and it's certainly hard to see how unarmed individuals "without a single firearm or explosive device" could possibly meet the law's test of conspiring "to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United State, and by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States."

YouTube: purveyor of disinformation.  Matt Taibbi — a former Rolling Stone reporter who was red pilled some time ago — is going on a tear about YouTube.  It is glorious to behold.  A bit of background:  Taibbi published a video produced by Matt Orfalea detailing the misinformation campaign used to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop just prior to the 2020 election.  Every Mainstream Media outlet pushed the Narrative™ that the New York Post's reporting on the laptop was simply a repetition of Russian misinformation.  [Video clip]  The FBI encouraged Facebook to censor the video — that is straight from Mark Zuckerberg — and all social media outlets followed the diktat from the Establishment™ to downplay and debunk the story as false.  And, of course, they complied.  It is was the most blatant form of censorship and narrative building in recent years.

Sen. Rand Paul Grills FBI Director Over Collusion With Facebook.  Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul sharply questioned FBI director Christopher Wray Thursday over reported collusion with Facebook that left the senator "alarmed."  "You may think it's just jolly well to get all this stuff without a warrant that people volunteer to you, but many of us are alarmed that you're getting this information that are private communications between people, because it is against the law," Paul told Wray during a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.  "It's against the law for Facebook, or social media companies to give it to you.  But it's also against the law for you to receive it."  Facebook allegedly eavesdropped on private communications of people who questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election and passed information to the FBI, according to whistleblowers who talked to the New York Post.  Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a 1,000 page report Nov. 4 detailing allegations of misconduct by the agency.

Big Tech Is Furious Andrew Tate Is Exposing The Great Reset.  In yet another example of Big Tech tyranny, YouTube nuked a viral "Full Send Podcast" episode featuring controversial "manosphere" figure Andrew Tate last week.  The video, which was posted in August, had been viewed by millions and was one of the "Full Send Podcast's" most popular videos.  [TWeet]  "Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our hate speech policy," said an email from YouTube in a screenshot posted by "Full Send Podcast" host Kyle Forgeard. "Content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people is not allowed on YouTube," continued the email.  It remains unclear exactly how Tate was "glorifying or inciting" violence.  Google did not respond to The Federalist's request for comment by publication time.

FBI and White House Slapped Down By Judge in Major Censorship Case.  Are the wheels finally coming off the White House's censorship train?  It's too soon to say for sure, but the Biden administration and the FBI got slapped down by a federal judge on Wednesday in a landmark case centering on the issue. [...] As RedState previously reported, Meta (Facebook) was at the center of censoring the Hunter Biden story prior to the 2020 election, possibly swinging the outcome.  Its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, inadvertently admitted on Joe Rogan's podcast that the FBI had come to them with more than a wink and nudge, suggesting that the story was actually Russian disinformation.  Making matters worse, the FBI obviously knew at that point that the laptop story was true given they had been in possession of the hard drive for [over] a year.

Within Minutes of Arizona Gov Election Call, Twitter, DHS and Big Tech Begin Blocking Discussion of Difference Between "Ballots and Votes".  I'm going to skip noting that Elon Musk Twitter is essentially unchanged, regarding the relationship between Twitter, the Dept of Homeland Security and the disinformation police, as many keep saying Musk Twitter has not had time to reformat.  That said, five days after our post-election review of the difference between ballots and votes, and within minutes of the controversial Arizona governor contest being announced by DHS media outlets, suddenly any discussion about "Ballots -vs- Votes" is considered a risk to democracy.  The need for control is a reaction to fear.  Twitter specifically, and Big Tech writ large, has now placed a warning on the CTH article where we draw attention to the general difference between ballots and votes.  The timing of the intervention, as related to the content discussed, is transparent.  Sunlight is a great disinfectant and must be controlled at all costs.

Amnesty for J6, not covid.  [Scroll down] I opposed shutting down the economy.  I spoke out against arresting lone surfers in California and New Hampshire.  I supported HCQ.  I knew masks wouldn't stop covid.  I got the shots because of my wife's comorbidities but I told readers you do you.  Pretty much, I got it right.  Most conservatives did.  We were right.  The government was wrong.  And that is why we cannot grant amnesty because amnesty is "a general pardon for offenses, especially political offenses, against a government, often granted before any trial or conviction."  Thus, by definition there can be no amnesty.  They were not draft dodgers avoiding the Vietnam war.  They were promoters of draconian, unconstitutional and ineffective measures to fight covid.  The government grants amnesty; it does not receive it.  Make no mistake, [Professor Emily] Oster worked for the government.  Her paycheck may have said Brown or some Goldman Sachs foundation which sponsors her chair at the college.  But she did the Overlord's work by promoting policies that were at best of no use in the battle against covid.  At worst, they were unconstitutional acts dictated by a deep state hellbent on destroying and ending Donald John Trump's presidency.  She wasn't alone.  Twitter, Google, Facebook and other online entities enforced the censorship of anyone who questioned the vaccines or championed alternatives.

Report: Twitter and Facebook Had Regular Meetings with DHS on Censoring Americans.  Executives from Facebook and Twitter, including the recently-fired head of trust & safety Vijaya Gadde, held regular meetings with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discuss censorship on a wide range of topics, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan, coronavirus, and "racial justice," according to leaked documents.  The information came to light via leaks to the Intercept, as well as documents and minutes revealed through Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt's lawsuit filed against the Biden Administration that alleges government collusion with Big Tech to suppress Americans' First Amendment rights.

Probe launched into Homeland Security's 'taxpayer-funded censorship campaign'.  House Oversight Committee Republicans are kicking off an investigation into what they they called a "taxpayer-funded censorship campaign" at the Department of Homeland Security.  Since 2020, the federal agency has been under fire for working with big tech companies to censor certain viewpoints mainly related to election integrity.  The GOP launched its investigation after Monday's report by The Intercept dove into how the Feds had begun pressuring tech companies on a range of issues, including COVID-19, the vaccine for it, and Ukraine.  The Center Square obtained a letter from the group, led by ranking member Rep. James Comer, R-Ky.  The letter, addressed to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, calls out an "extensive censorship campaign originating within DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency."

How the government hid the truth behind Hunter Biden's laptop.  The more we find out about the collusion that has been going on among the Biden administration, the security agencies and Big Tech, the more alarming it is — and the more unrepentant they are.  The latest bombshell from the Intercept, based on communications unveiled in the federal lawsuit Missouri v.  Biden, shows that the Department of Homeland Security has been having monthly meetings with Facebook and Twitter to pressure them to censor social media posts about topics such as the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of COVID vaccines, racial justice and US support for the war in Ukraine — in other words, anything that could be detrimental to public support for the Biden administration.  We already know that the FBI was involved in efforts to censor and bury information that might have harmed Joe Biden's candidacy back in 2020, including The Post's exclusive about Hunter Biden's laptop in October 2020. That amounted to election interference, which prevented the American people from doing the necessary due diligence on one of the two candidates for president.  So successful was the strategy that the Biden administration appears to have expanded it.

Tucker Carlson explains why the Democrats must rely on censorship to maintain political viability.  [Scroll down] We call them the anti-liberty left to make the point that restricting your freedom and common-sense civil rights is their go-to action to solve any problem.  What's even worse about this is that these actions never work as advertised, they just empower the left, as intended.  They must know this, but they don't care, they only care about their control over society.  Because none of those measures ever solves the problem, they only empower the left.  The term anti-liberty left also acts as a reminder that those people are only exploiting the term 'liberal' as just another form of gaslighting on their part, and a reason for everyone to stop complimenting the far-left with that term that they do not deserve.

Social Media Company Bans Phrase "White Lives Matter", Claims It Violates Community Guidelines.  In a move we surely all must have seen coming, social media giant TikTok has banned the phrase "white lives matter" by suggesting it is associated with hateful behavior and thus violating their community guidelines.  That's the latest from the rising-in-popularity Twitter profile End Wokeness, which detailed its findings by sharing a screen shot from efforts to search various phrases on the platform.  Seen below is the search the user completed for each of the following phrases: "White Lives Matters," "Black Lives Matter," "Asian Lives Matter," and "Latino Lives Matter."  Only one of them was prevented from getting results.

When Corporate America Pulls A PayPal, There's No Escaping The Digital Gulag.  Last week, PayPal published a new user agreement that would allow the company to debit up to $2,500 from a user's account for engaging in "restricted activities," including spreading "misinformation." [...] Many angry users posted screenshots of them closing their PayPal accounts in protest of the company's anti-free speech policy and caused #BankruptPayPal to trend.  It seemed that the backlash had been severe enough that on Sunday, PayPal walked back the policy, claiming the new user agreement "went out in error" and the company wouldn't punish users for spreading misinformation.  That said, people who cherish free speech should not declare victory.  After all, PayPal only partially reversed its policy.  The company will still fine users up to $2,500 for other offenses listed under its user agreement, including activities presumably promoting "hate" and "intolerance."  After all, PayPal has a long history of labeling speech disagreeing with the woke ideology as "hateful" and "intolerant."

FBI agents involved in briefing Facebook about Hunter Biden story donated to Democrats, records show.  Two FBI officials who briefed Facebook's parent company, Meta, about Hunter Biden's laptop also donated to Democrats in 2020, campaign finance records show.  The findings are connected to a lawsuit from states claiming the federal government colluded with social media firms to censor free speech.  And the agents — FBI Foreign Influence Task Force Chief Laura Dehmlow and FBI San Francisco Cyber Division Chief Elvis Chan — are each named in the suit.  A court filing in connection with the suit alleges that Chan and Dehmlow were "involved in the communications between the FBI and Meta that led to Facebook's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story."  The New York Post late in the 2020 election between then-President Trump and Democrat challenger Joe Biden published a story about a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, son of now-President Biden, that appeared to have information about the Biden family's questionable overseas business dealings.  However, Twitter restricted the redistribution of the story.

The PayPal Fiasco Was No Accident.  PayPal on Oct. 8 sent out an update to its terms of use, or acceptable use policy (AUP), that included a shocking addition.  It reserved the right to confiscate $2,500 from people's accounts if they spread "misinformation."  It was a clear announcement of what many already suspected: PayPal has enlisted in the information war.  This comes weeks after PayPal blocked several important accounts in the UK, including Toby Young's personal account, the Free Speech Union, and the DailySceptic.  These are hugely important venues for the English-speaking world in countering the COVID propaganda narrative.  It was no accident that they were targeted.  After global protests and news coverage from alternative sources, PayPal relented and restored their accounts without explanation.  In a similar vein, protests all over the world poured in about PayPal's new policy.  Twitter filled up with announcements from people who were canceling their accounts.  By the following day, PayPal reversed itself, claiming that the banning of "misinformation" was just a mistake.

Searches for 'delete PayPal' spike as shares plummet amid 'misinformation' controversy.  Searches for "delete PayPal" skyrocketed as controversy reigned this weekend over a policy saying users would be fined $2,500 for promoting "misinformation," which the payment platform quickly retracted and claimed was posted in error.  Searches for the phrase exploded by 1,392% over the past few days, according to Google Trends data.  Related searches of "how to cancel PayPal," "cancel PayPal account," "delete PayPal account," and "how do I delete a PayPal account" spiked as well, according to Market Watch.  The search interest surge was accompanied by real-world results, as PayPal's stock plummeted by over 6% on Monday.  The company's stock crashed by two-thirds of its value at the beginning of this year.

PayPal Did NOT Back Down, Still Threatens $2,500 Fines for Promoting 'Hate' and 'Intolerance'.  The story was shocking:  As PJM's Rick Moran stated Saturday, "The financial services company PayPal announced a controversial policy to deduct up to $2,500 from the accounts of users who spread 'misinformation.'"  But as the news of this astonishing plan circulated far and wide, PayPal experienced a swift backlash in the form of a blizzard of account cancellations, and quickly backed down, claiming that the announcement went out "in error" and adding:  "PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy."  That's terrific, or would be if it weren't for the fact that PayPal's current Acceptable Use Policy still threatens $2,500 fines per infraction for promoting "hate" and "intolerance" — language the Left regularly uses to characterize (and demonize) speech that is critical of its insane policies. [...] Click on that "Restricted Activities and Holds" section, and you'll find a long list of "you must nots," including the expected prohibitions of fraud, selling counterfeit goods, and the like.  But included on the list of things you must not do is "Provide false, inaccurate or misleading information."  False, inaccurate, or misleading in the eyes of whom?  Why, of PayPal's Leftist hall monitors, of course, and no one else, including the person PayPal accuses:  "If we believe that you've engaged in any of these activities, we may take a number of actions to protect PayPal, its customers and others at any time in our sole discretion."  No one else's.  You'll have no appeal, no recourse, no opportunity to present your side of the story.

TikTok Bans the Term "White Lives Matter".  TikTok has banned users from even searching for the term "white lives matter," listing the phrase as being associated with "hateful behavior."  Apparently, according to the Chinese-owned video app, which is notorious as perhaps the most censorious in existence, white lives don't matter.  When searching for videos or profiles containing the term "white lives matter," users are met with a message which states, "No results found.  This phrase may be associated with hateful behavior.  TikTok is committed to keeping our community safe and working to prevent the spread of hate.  For more information, we invite you to review our Community Guidelines."

Twitter Crosses Red-Line, Censors Florida Surgeon General's Recommendation.  On Saturday, Florida's Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, made waves by becoming the first major health official in the country to recommend against males 18-39 getting the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.  That came after an extensive, multi-year study showed an 84 percent rise in cardiac-related deaths among the age group.  That backed up prior studies which had also pointed to an increased risk of heart issues.  Ladapo's job is to make those determinations and give his recommendations to the general public.  That would be the same general public that chose to elect Ron DeSantis, who appointed the surgeon general, as governor of Florida.  Unfortunately, Twitter has long shown it is a ward of the politicized CDC and quickly moved to censor Ladapo's announcement.  As far as I can tell, it was an unprecedented move to silence a duly-appointed health official of a major state. [...] Twitter may end up a bastion of free speech under Musk, but other companies like Facebook and Instagram are all-in on doing the left's bidding.  That's especially true when it comes to nonsensical, cultish COVID-19 edicts.

FBI Team Involved in Censorship of Hunter Biden Laptop Story Identified.  The FBI team that was in communication with Facebook before the social media company censored the original Hunter Biden laptop story has been identified, according to a new court filing.  Meta, Facebook's parent company, identified the team as the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), according to an updated complaint entered late on Oct. 6.  Meta named the team after receiving a subpoena in a case alleging the federal government pressured Big Tech firms to censor users.  "Pursuant to the third-party subpoena, Meta has identified the FBI's FITF, as supervised by Laura Dehmlow, and Elvis Chan as involved in the communications between the FBI and Meta that led to Facebook's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story," the updated complaint states.  Mark Zuckberg, Meta's CEO, said in August that Facebook reduced the reach of posts about Hunter Biden's laptop in response to advice from the FBI.

Google Targets 2-Time Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Cartoonist.  Political cartoonist Michael Ramirez has won two Pulitzer Prizes — an achievement only a handful of others in his category have achieved — as well as countless other awards for his unmatched mastery of his craft.  His cartoons, syndicated by Creators, run in publications around the world.  Yet, to Google's content police, Ramirez's cartoons are "shocking content" and it is restricting ads on a page where a catalog of them appears.  How do we know this?  Because it's against our site that Google has taken this action.  Google's AdSense network — which is used by some 3.5 million websites to generate revenue — defines "shocking content" as content that:
  •   contains gruesome, graphic, or disgusting accounts or imagery.
  •   depicts acts of violence.
  •   contains a significant amount of or prominently features obscene or profane language.

PayPal Updates User Policy to Include Possible $2,500 Fine For Speech It Doesn't Like.  It's no big secret that Big Tech's tentacles have a vast reach, with platforms like Facebook and Twitter admitting in so many words after the fact to deliberately suppressing news content prior to the 2020 presidential election that portrayed then-Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden and his international wheelin' and dealin' son Hunter in a less than flattering light being one of the more notable examples.  But as has already been made clear by online payment systems like PayPal and Venmo, even more silencing of alternative points of view is needed in the form of financial strangulation if necessary, which can occur via shutting down accounts entirely or, in PayPal's case, will soon also potentially include $2,500 fines for WrongThink, according to a recently updated acceptable use policy set to take effect in November.

PayPal to expand its speech restriction rules in November.  PayPal's clause about taking users' funds for a violation of its rules has long been established.  But, as published on September 26th and to be effective on November 3rd, 2022, PayPal will add restrictions to its acceptable use policy that go beyond illegal activities and fraud and into the realm of policing speech.  The updated policy prohibits users from using PayPal for activities that:  "Involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal's sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable ... (e) depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) ... (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation ... or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication."  Big Tech platforms are increasingly finding ways to punish people's speech under the guise of banning [Emoji] "misinformation," and making themselves as the arbiters of truth in deciding what is and isn't true.

Update:
PayPal Pulls Back, Says It Won't Fine Customers $2,500 for 'Misinformation' after Backlash.  PayPal has backtracked on a published policy that would have fined users $2,500 for spreading "misinformation," claiming the update had gone out "in error."  "An AUP notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information.  PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy.  Our teams are working to correct our policy pages.  We're sorry for the confusion this has caused," a spokesperson told National Review in a written statement.

Additional update:
PayPal claims policy of $2,500 'misinformation' fines was posted in error.  PayPal faced criticism online for a policy that would have fined users $2,500 for spreading "misinformation" — a policy that the payment platform later said was released in error.  An "Acceptable Use Policy," which the post said was to go into effect Nov. 3, included "prohibited activities" such as the "ending, posting, or publication of messages, content, or materials that meet certain criteria."  Anything that was found to "promote misinformation" would be punished with "liquidated damages" of $2,500.00.  But now, references to misinformation do not appear in the current policy, and a representative for PayPal said the post about the fine was made by mistake, as backlash mounted on Saturday.

The Editor says...
Others before me have pointed out that any changes to PayPal's terms and conditions are carefully reviewed by a team of lawyers before they are posted.  They are never accidentally published.

Reaction:
PayPal Is No Pal.  PayPal caused quite a stir over the weekend after reports surfaced that it would soon be docking users by up to $2,500 for participating in the spread of "misinformation."  Reaction online was swift and harsh[,] with many users declaring via social media that they would be closing their accounts.  Late on Saturday came word that PayPal was reversing course.  A company spokesman stated that the "acceptable use policy" notice "went out in error" and "included incorrect information," insisting that "PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy."  Which begs the question: How did "language [that] was never intended to be inserted in [their] policy" nevertheless find its way... into their policy?  Certainly, it didn't materialize out of thin air.  Someone thought it a worthwhile enough idea to draft the language.  Just one more indicator of the troubling impulses in much of corporate America when it comes to curtailing speech — or "wrongthink."  For many, this reversal came a day late and a dollar short — they're still closing their accounts.  And for those who are eyeing Venmo as an alternative, a word to the wise — PayPal owns Venmo.

The Editor says...
If PayPal has access to your bank account, there may be no way to detach from them and keep PayPal out of your account without moving your business to another bank.

Outsourced censorship: Feds used private entity to target millions of social posts in 2020.  A consortium of four private groups worked with the departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and State to censor massive numbers of social media posts they considered misinformation during the 2020 election, and its members then got rewarded with millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration afterwards, according to interviews and documents obtained by Just the News.  The Election Integrity Partnership is back in action again for the 2022 midterm elections, raising concerns among civil libertarians that a chilling new form of public-private partnership to evade the First Amendment's prohibition of government censorship may be expanding.  The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika.  It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland's Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State's Global Engagement Center to file "tickets" requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.

Biden Regime Paid $12 Million to Censor Political Opponents on 'Enemies List,' Interfere in Elections: Documents.  The Department of Homeland Security paid $12 million to a consortium of private actors to censor President Joe Biden's political opponents and engage in election interference on social media platforms.  The bombshell report was revealed by Robby Starbuck, who had made a bid for U.S. Congress in Tennessee's House District 5, before running into opposition from the Republican Party to appear on the GOP primary ballot.

Federally backed censorship machine raises separation of powers, election meddling questions.  A federal agency-backed censorship machine that affected thousands of web URLs and millions of social posts during the 2020 campaign put a focus on some members of Congress and candidates for federal office, raising concerns about the separation of powers and election meddling.  Four House members, including Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California and oft-censored Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and one Senate candidate are named in the after-action report by the Election Integrity Partnership, set up "in consultation" with the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).  The consortium of four private entities, led by Stanford and University of Washington research centers, mass-reported alleged misinformation for 100 days before the election and about two weeks after, targeting Just the News among other news organizations.  It claimed a success rate of 35% for content removal, labeling and "soft-blocking."

Report: 'Election Integrity' Project Worked with Feds to Censor News Sites in 2020.  A coalition of globalist nonprofits, academic institutions, and one private company reportedly worked with arms of the federal government and Democrat activist organizations to censor news websites in the runup to the 2020 election, and plans to do so again in 2022.  The consortium, called the Election Integrity Partnership, is made up of four organizations:  the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, and Graphika, a social media analytics company.

YouTube restricts video of Dems, critics saying 2016 election was hacked, then backtracks.  YouTube cracked down on a video compilation of Democrats and media pundits questioning the legitimacy of former President Donald Trump's 2016 election victory — then overturned the move amid backlash on Thursday.  The TK News video — put together to highlight the partisan double standard over election denialism — had been tagged to run with limited or no ads, depriving the creators of vital revenue, TK's Matt Taibbi said in a Substack post.  The video includes clips of prominent liberals repeatedly calling Trump's presidency "illegitimate" and using the word "hacked" to describe the 2016 election.  "After manually reviewing your video, we've confirmed that it isn't suitable for all advertisers," the Google-owned video giant wrote to producer Matt Orfalea, according to the post.  "As a result, it will continue to run limited or no ads ... Your video remains playable and is still eligible to earn subscription revenue from YouTube Premium."

That Viral Giorgia Meloni Speech Everyone Fell in Love With?  YouTube Removed It Over "Community Guidelines".  Upon Giorgia Meloni being announced the new prime minister of Italy, a clip from a 2019 speech she gave has gone viral.  The video encapsulates why so many are enamored by her, and why the left and the media are afraid.  Adding evidence to the left being scared are reports that YouTube removed the video over an alleged community guidelines violation.  Let's start with the clip.  This is what the media is calling fascism, for no other reason than it's the new word they use to slander anyone who disagrees with them.

Traitors: NBC News slammed after suggesting that the Feds should begin censoring text messages.  NBC News has proven yet again that 'mainstream' media outlets in America are nothing but propagandists for the deep state, which is exactly the opposite of the vision our founders had for a "free press."  NBC published a story exaggerating the issue of supposed "disinformation" going out via text messages, citing one campaign that nearly ended what the outlet described as "abortion protections" in Kansas to make its point.  In addition, the 'story' referenced a former Obama campaign official, Scott Goodstein, who "built the bulk text messaging apparatus for" the former president's 2008 campaign, who now claims that Americans are being inundated with text message "disinformation."

Facebook [is] 'silencing' activity related to FBI whistleblower Steve Friend.  More evidence of how vindictive, obsessive and downright sinister Facebook is: Now it appears to be monitoring private messages and suppressing material related to the whistleblower complaint of heroic FBI special agent Steve Friend.  After Friend's bombshell revelations last week in a whistleblower complaint to the Department of Justice inspector general, his cause received an avalanche of public and private support, including from former FBI agents and conservative groups.  As reported in this column, Friend's complaint alleges that the FBI has been manipulating case-file management in order to falsely inflate the threat of domestic terrorism, and has been using unconstitutional and excessive force in efforts to persecute political opponents of the Biden administration.  Friend, a SWAT team member in Florida, was suspended by the FBI last week after refusing to participate in what he regarded as an unnecessarily heavy-handed raid over a January 6 misdemeanor.

Court Rules Against Social Media Companies in Free Speech Censorship Fight.  A federal appeals court in New Orleans has ruled in favor of a Texas law that seeks to rein in the power of social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to censor free speech.  The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, handed down on Sept. 16, upholds the constitutionality of a Texas law signed by Gov. Greg Abbott last year and delivers a victory to Republicans in their fight against big tech censorship of conservative viewpoints.  "Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say," U.S. Circuit Court Judge Andrew Oldham wrote in the opinion.  "Because the district court held otherwise, we reverse its injunction and remand for further proceedings," Oldham added, setting the stage for a showdown in the U.S. Supreme Court.

5th Circuit upholds Texas law forbidding social media 'censorship' — again.  A Texas law that bans social media companies from censoring users' viewpoints is constitutionally allowed, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday, in a blow to Facebook, Twitter and Google.  The ruling is a win for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in their efforts to combat what they call censorship of conservative viewpoints by social media companies.  Despite the ruling, the Texas law does not immediately take effect; it will do so once the appeals court issues written instructions to the district court that had decided the case.  The law, H.B. 20, had previously been blocked from taking effect by a May 5-4 Supreme Court ruling, which had granted an emergency request by tech trade groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represent Facebook, Twitter and Google.  The trade groups have alleged the Texas law violates the First Amendment rights of the companies they represent.

Big Tech Whistleblower Exposes Twitter's Close Relationship With The Chinese Communist Party.  A former Twitter executive testified to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday regarding concerns about Twitter's data security issues.  His testimony and the following Q&A with senators revealed many problems relating to the safety and security of user data, but the most disturbing revelation was Twitter's relationship with China.  Peiter Zatko, the former head of security at Twitter, was fired by the company in January of this year.  Zatko filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month, alleging the company "prioritized profits over security" and exposed Twitter users worldwide to data privacy and security risks.

Facebook — not the FBI — is to blame for blocking the Hunter Biden laptop story.  As the Mar-a-Lago raid clearly demonstrated, the Biden administration has militarized the FBI to go after Joe Biden's political opponents. "The FBI is now an organization solely focused on destroying the domestic enemies of the Democratic Party," said radio host Jesse Kelly.  But is the FBI responsible for suppressing the New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop two weeks before the 2020 election?  Based on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's recent confession, the majority of the media say yes — the FBI did it.  A closer examination of Zuckerberg's comments suggests that the correct answer is no.  Zuckerberg himself bears the responsibility.  Weeks before the 2020 election, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies decided to kill the October 14, 2020, New York Post article that confirmed the existence of Hunter Biden's laptop and exposed Joe Biden's corrupt activities in Ukraine.  According to a new poll by Technometrica, nearly four out of five Americans believe that truthful media coverage of the laptop story would have prevented Joe Biden from becoming president.

Judge Orders Fauci, Other Top Officials to Produce Records for Big Tech-Government Censorship Lawsuit.  Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and other top Biden administration officials who were resisting efforts to obtain their communications with Big Tech companies must hand over the records, a federal judge ruled on Sept. 6.  U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, ordered the government to quickly produce documents after it was sued by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri over alleged collusion with Big Tech firms such as Facebook.  The initial tranche of discovery, released on Aug. 31, revealed that more than 50 government officials across a dozen agencies were involved in applying pressure to social media companies to censor users.  But some of the officials refused to provide any answers or answer all questions posed by the plaintiffs.  Among them: Fauci, who serves as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.

Judge orders Fauci, White House press secretary to testify in social media censorship lawsuit.  A federal judge has knocked down the government's objections to require White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to answer "interrogatories" in the social media censorship lawsuit by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general Jeff Landry and Eric Schmitt.  Their First Amendment suit has already uncovered intimate cooperation between social media companies and 50-plus federal officials at a dozen agencies or components, including the White House, to flag, throttle and remove purported misinformation about COVID-19, election security and the Hunter Biden laptop story.  U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty said Tuesday "the requested information is obviously very relevant" to the collusion allegations, citing Fauci's communications related to "alleged suppression of speech relating to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19's origin, and to alleged suppression of speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns."

Fauci, Others Ordered to Produce Records in Big Tech-Gov't Censorship Collusion Case.  Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) announced in a press release and on Twitter Tuesday that more bombshell documentation about alleged collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech will be emerging.  The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted a request to force the federal government to produce records from various White House and Health and Human Services (HHS) officials, according to a press release by Schmitt's office.  The granted request comes amid a First Amendment lawsuit first filed in May by Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration.  "A federal judge has ordered Dr. Fauci and the White House Press Secretary to respond to our discovery requests!" Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry tweeted Sept. 6.  Schmitt confirmed in a tweet that the discovery requests applied to "key WH & HHS officials like Dr. Fauci, the WH Press Secretary, and others."

How to Land in Facebook Jail.  Cast your mind back to Thanksgiving in 2020 and 2021, when J. Edgar Fauci was telling us that we could only have something like six people over for dinner, preferably eating outside, and all socially-distanced by at least twelve turkey-lengths, or 0.2 furlongs or something.  Someone promptly produced a meme of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer saying, "No one is going to tell me how many people I can have for dinner on Thanksgiving!"  Tasteless and sick, to be sure.  Also pretty funny. [...] Well, if you posted that Dahmer Thanksgiving meme on Facebook, it would be struck as violating Facebook's "community standards" for supposedly glorifying "dangerous individuals," and get you sent to Facebook jail if you persisted or made a Charles Manson joke.

Judge Rules that Facebook Repeatedly Violated Washington State Campaign Finance Law.  A judge recently ruled that Facebook repeatedly and intentionally violated the State of Washington's campaign-ad transparency laws and must pay penalties.  Attorney General Bob Ferguson derided Facebook's "cynical attempt" to gut the state's campaign finance laws, challenging the Masters of the Universe to "follow the law."  The Seattle Times reports that Facebook (now known as Meta) repeatedly and intentionally violated Washington's campaign-ad transparency laws and must pay yet-to-be-determined penalties, according to a ruling made by King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North.  The law states that ad sellers must disclose the name and address of political ad buyers, and metrics such as the total number of ad views generated.  Every newspaper and other outlet in the state follows the rule without trouble, but Facebook believed it shouldn't have to.

Facebook Fact-Checkers Are Now Dropping by the Comments Sections of Your Posts to Re-Educate You.  Facebook just keeps finding new ways to be awful.  The latest stunt is to jump into the comments section of your posts to insert some approved agitprop that stays near the top of your feed. [...] This particular "fact" check concerns an estimate from a car dealership showing that a customer would be charged nearly $30,000 for an EV battery for his Chevy Volt.  A Facebook page called Car Coach Reports, which focuses on auto news, posted a picture of the invoice on August 29. Two days later, PolitiFact waded into the comments section to add their take on the story — namely that the battery in question was for a 10-year-old vehicle with 70,000 miles that is no longer under warranty.

When Must a Good Citizen Become a Dissident?  After Facebook's Zuckerberg recently confessed to censoring the New York Post's explosive Hunter Biden "laptop from Hell" story (evidencing a compromised and most likely criminally culpable Biden family) before the 2020 election in response to FBI pressure that the social media giant treat real news as "Russian disinformation" (thereby corroborating that the national security Deep State helped rig the presidential election), the FBI superciliously responded with the equivalent of a teenaged shoulder shrug and a haughty "so what?"  According to the FBI, our domestic spy agency regularly encourages censorship and secretive control over the free flow of information.  No big deal!  Except it is a very big deal.  Recent polling shows that nearly 80% of Americans believe that President Trump would have won re-election had voters "known the truth about Hunter Biden's laptop."  In other words, the Deep State stole an election.

More Than 50 Biden Officials in 12 Federal Agencies Colluded with Big Tech to Censor Their Political Opponents.  More than 50 Biden officials in 12 federal government agencies have been exposed for colluding with Big Tech to censor their political opponents in a major lawsuit filed by state attorneys general.  The state attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana amended a blockbuster lawsuit filed in May that reveals the extent the Biden White House, Department of State, FBI, and major social media companies colluded to infringe on citizens' free speech rights.  The right to fully participate in political debate is a fundamental pillar of America's constitutional system of government.  The lawsuit documents show the government's intent to infringe on Americans' First Amendment Rights and curb their ability to discuss matters of health policy and U.S. elections through social media channels.  In the lawsuit, the state AGs are compelling the Justice Dept. to turn over communications the Biden administration had with Big Tech companies that pertain to matters such as health policy and election interference.

GOP Attorneys General Demand DOJ Reveal Federal Gov't's Communications With Social Media Giants.  The man who may become Missouri's next GOP senator has targeted President Biden's Department of Justice, asking a court to force the DOJ to reveal communications between high-ranking Biden Administration officials and major social media companies.  Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, the GOP senatorial candidate, joined Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry to file a Joint Statement on Discovery Disputes, to ask the Louisiana District Court to force the communications between officials in the White House and Department of State and major social media companies to be revealed.  "Missouri and Louisiana filed a landmark lawsuit back in May that seeks to expose how top Biden Administration officials allegedly colluded with social media companies to censor freedom of speech on a number of topics, including COVID-19.  We won in court in July, and the Court required the Biden Administration to turn over communications between federal officials and social media companies," Schmitt stated.

White House Asked Meta To Remove Fauci Parody Account.  Meta Responded In Less Than 60 Seconds.  When the Biden administration wanted an Instagram account mocking Dr. Anthony Fauci taken down last year, an official reached out to parent company Meta and got action literally within seconds.  The July 20, 2021 incident, revealed in a newly surfaced email exchange, underscores the close communication between the Democrat White House and solicitous social media giants.  "Hi there — any way we can get this pulled down?  It is not actually one of ours," wrote Clarke E. Humphrey, digital director for the Biden administration's COVID-19 response team in an email time-stamped 1:24 p.m.  Humphrey didn't have to wait long for a reply.  "Yep, on it!" replied the recipient, whose name is redacted on the released email.  The time stamp on the reply is 1:24:46 p.m. and appears to denote the same time zone.

Big Tech Gears Up To Throw The Midterm Elections.  There can be no doubt that social media is aligned with the left in a political cleansing of Republican candidates and voters.  According to the Time article, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election, "a well-funded cabal of powerful people" "successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears."  Of course "disinformation" and "viral smears" were anything that hurt Democrats and helped Republicans.  Truth was never a consideration.  And neither is it today.

British Army Veteran Arrested By 5 Cops For A Facebook Post That "Caused Someone Anxiety".  "Someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post.  And that is why you're being arrested."  This isn't something from Orwell's 1984 book.  This is real and it happened in the UK yesterday!  [Video clip]  Yesterday, the UK's Hampshire Constabulary sent five police officers to arrest a man in Aldershot for a Facebook post containing an image that made Progress Pride flags (flags that combine the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rainbow pride flag with a chevron containing the blue, pink, and white stripes of the transgender flag) look like a swastika.  The image that the man was arrested for posting has been widely shared online by thousands of social media users, including Reclaim Party leader and free speech activist Laurence Fox, who was present when the man was arrested.

Facebook fact-checks top economist for stating America IS in a recession after Biden refused to admit it.  Facebook placed a 'fact-checking' label on a post written by a top economist stating that the United States is now in a recession — a move he termed 'Orwellian'.  Two consecutive quarters of negative growth is the standard definition of a recession, and Phillip Magness, the research and education director at the American Institute for Economic Research, posted on Facebook a commentary about the country now being in a recession.  The post — which is no longer visible — was marked by Facebook's fact checkers as being misleading.  'We live in an Orwellian hell-scape,' he tweeted.  'Facebook is now 'fact checking' anyone who questions the White House's word-games about the definition of a recession.'

GoFundMe allows page for Minneapolis gunman Andrew Sundberg after axing one for NYC bodega clerk Jose Alba.  GoFundMe is allowing a small fortune to be collected for kin of the Minneapolis gunman fatally shot by cops after he fired at neighbors, while hard-working Manhattan bodega clerk Jose Alba's fund got the ax, critics rage.  The fund-raiser for the family of dead Minnesota shooter Andrew "Tekle" Sundberg, 20, surpassed its goal of $20,000 within three days, hitting $20,500 by Monday afternoon.  Yet the GoFundMe page for Alba — who killed an ex-con attacker in apparent self-defense at the store — got pulled a day after his case came to light.

LinkedIn Bans Geologist for Posting Facts About Carbon Dioxide.  The Silicon Valley thought police are at it again.  On July 6, geologist Gregory Wrightstone, the current executive director of the CO2 Coalition, announced that he had been banned from LinkedIn, the online employment and professional social networking platform.  Wrightstone's "crime" was, apparently, that he posted graphs that show that the life-giving molecule known as carbon dioxide was much more plentiful in Earth's atmosphere in the past.  Climate hysterics believe that carbon dioxide — a molecule essential for life on Earth — is a major culprit in global warming.  Wrightstone announced his banishment from LinkedIn on Twitter on July 6: "It is official.  I have been permanently banned from LinkedIn.  The last straw apparently was one of the two charts I posted yesterday," Wrightstone wrote.

India: Muslim YouTuber with 303,000 subscribers calls for rape and beheading.  What Nupur Sharma said was accurate, but this rage stems from the fact that she said it critically.  If she had said it was wonderful that Muhammad married a child, all would be well.

I Got Thrown Off Etsy and PayPal for Expressing My Belief in Biological Reality.  If readers recognize my byline, it's because I've spent the last few years arguing strenuously for the (apparently controversial) positions that biological sex is real, that there are only two sexes, and that the differences between males and females matter in some policy contexts.  My views are hardly out of the mainstream.  Indeed, we are now seeing a pronounced (if belated) pushback against activists who've insisted that biological sex is some kind of transphobic mirage.  But for several years, those activists have controlled the commanding heights of many universities, NGOs, and even political parties.  This is one of the reasons why I left my career as an academic biologist in 2020:  I was tired of researching science in a subculture whose gatekeepers demanded that I repudiate basic scientific facts about human beings.

Now YouTube censors House Jan. 6 committee, citing 'misinformation'.  YouTube has deleted a video of testimony from a House select committee hearing probing the Capitol riots — because the platform said the posting advanced election misinformation.  The clip, which was uploaded Tuesday by the Democrat-led Jan. 6 panel, was removed because it featured footage of then-President Donald Trump telling the Fox Business Network that the election had been stolen, the New York Times reported.  The Google-owned platform insisted that the excerpt, which also included videotaped testimony from former Attorney General William Barr, violated its terms of service.  The clip was no longer visible on the committee's website as of Friday.

How the Media Used Russiagate Conspiracy Theories to Create a News Cartel.  In the fall of 2019, Facebook announced that it would be writing selected media outlets some very big checks.  The launch of Facebook News was billed as a way to give consumers more access to information, but it was actually an attempt at appeasing big media companies.  Facebook, with its older and more conservative user base, had become the epicenter of election conspiracies from the Clinton campaign and its media allies.  While Hillary Clinton and her associates were eager to shift the blame for her defeat by relaunching their existing Russiagate smears with false claims that Russian Facebook ads had tilted the election to Trump, the media's obsession with Facebook was even more corruptly self-interested.  About a third of Americans regularly get their news through Facebook.  The tech giant's algorithms had the ability to make or break the news media, and would go on to break the digital media empires of the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and others in the lefty clickbait brigade.

Biden Senior Climate and Energy Policy Advisor Demands Social Media Companies Immediately Block Content Identifying Biden Policy as Source of Energy Inflation.  As things in society start to collapse; and as people begin to really feel the inflationary consequences of the Biden energy policy in action; suddenly all of those 'talking points' about shutting down the fossil fuel industry take on a new meaning.  People didn't realize the Green New Deal was going to mean $10/doz eggs, $15/gal milk, $20 happy meals at McDonalds, or $150/tank of gasoline.  Now they are paying attention.  For former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, the current senior climate and energy policy advisor within the White House, all of these 'in your face' surfacing Green New Deal consequences have become problematic for the Biden administration.  Her proposed solution, however, is rather remarkable.  In this interview discussing the skyrocketing inflation and consequences created by the Green New Deal policies, Gina McCarthy urgently begs all of the social media companies to start removing the content from American people who are giving real world examples of the pain and economic hardship they are feeling.  McCarthy says that if social media do not start to help Joe Biden hide the pain, the climate change agenda might be at risk.  [Video clip]

YouTube is now censoring journalism for the Biden administration.  For as ugly as the worst acts of those who descended on Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, 2021, were, none could justify the chilling assault on liberty and justice that has followed in their wake.  The Ruling Class has used Jan. 6 to wage a jihad against its political opposition, including an assault on our most basic rights such as free speech.  Big Tech has reinforced the narrative that views antithetical to regime orthodoxy are dangerous and must be policed accordingly.  In the latest example, YouTube deleted a Jan. 6, 2021, interview conducted by a Post reporter with a Capitol breach participant.  In the video, Aaron Mostofsky, son of a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge, explains why he was compelled to come to the Capitol, namely "to express ... [his] opinion as a free American ... that this election was stolen."  To Google-owned YouTube, the footage contains dangerous "misinformation" — speech that it equates with harm — meriting removal.  In its removal notice, it asserts that "it's our job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all," arguing that "content that advances false claims that widespread fraud ... changed the outcome of the US 2020 presidential election is not allowed ..."

The Editor says...
Even if there is conflicting information on YouTube, how does that make it something other than "a safe place for all?"

Former Obama Adviser Lets Cat out of the Bag on What Dems Want to Do to Control Us.  Former White House Communications Director for the Obama administration Dan Pfeiffer appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday [6/6/2022] and what he said was revealing, threatening, and great — all at the same time.  Pfeiffer claimed that the people who listen to "right-wing media" were "more likely to believe conspiracy theories about vaccines, conspiracy theories about elections. [...] He put out what was the constant theme of the segment — attacking Facebook for purveying "news," which Mika laughingly said was "not where you get news."  Because how dare you not listen to mainstream outlets like hers?  That was quietly hilarious, when you think about all the conspiracy theories that Democrats and MSNBC have pushed over the last few years, with Russia collusion, paid for and spread by the DNC, with the Clinton campaign top of the list.  People on the left believe all kinds of crazy things about pee tapes and Ginni Thomas (Justice Clarence Thomas' wife) trying to "overthrow" the government (big scoop: she did no such thing) because of the crazy pushed by liberal mainstream media.  Meanwhile, while there's a lot from the mainstream against conspiracy theories on the right, there's not so much targeted at deflating the conspiracy theories that flourish on the left.

YouTube takes down video exposing U.S. involvement in 2014 Ukraine coup.  It's not hard to figure out why Congress does nothing but complain about Big Tech misbehavior and censorship:  It's obvious that the platforms are aligned with the Marxist deep state and the companies that own them with the Washington establishment.  Google-owned YouTube proved that again in recent days by removing a smoking gun video proving that the Obama regime was knee-deep in a plot to depose the duly-elected leader of Ukraine in 2014 because he did not 'align' with them or their globalist values.  "It was one of the most-watched versions of the intercepted and leaked conversation between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, in which the two discuss who will make up the new government weeks before democratically-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a violent coup on Feb. 21, 2014," Consortium News reported this week.

Shouldn't Hillary Clinton Be Banned From Twitter Now?  Last week, in the trial of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis asked ex-campaign manager Robby Mook about the decision to share with a reporter a bogus story about Donald Trump and Russia's Alfa Bank.  Mook answered by giving up his onetime boss.  "I discussed it with Hillary," he said, describing his pitch to the candidate:  "Hey, you know, we have this, and we want to share it with a reporter... She agreed to that."  In a country with a functioning media system, this would have been a huge story.  Obviously this isn't Watergate, Hillary Clinton was never president, and Sussmann's trial doesn't equate to prosecutions of people like Chuck Colson or Gordon Liddy.  But as we've slowly been learning for years, a massive fraud was perpetrated on the public with Russiagate, and Mook's testimony added a substantial piece of the picture, implicating one of the country's most prominent politicians in one of the more ambitious disinformation campaigns we've seen.

Facebook, Instagram Employees 'Censor or Delete' Protests against Iran.  Former and current Facebook and Instagram employees are shedding light onto the "fact checkers" that are censoring vital content such as protests against Iran.  "According to a report by BBC Persian, these employees admitted that at all levels of the company, the Iran regime's influence has infiltrated, leaving biased and pro-regime content monitors to restrict, censor or delete posts about the current protests in Iran" reports The Foreign Desk.

Social media giants brace for lawsuits thanks to Texas anti-censorship law.  Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are likely to be sued by Texans who have been restricted on the platforms thanks to a new anti-censorship law in the state.  HB 20, a Republican-backed anti-Big Tech law that stops social media companies from restricting users due to their political beliefs, was reinstated by a federal appeals court last week, paving the way for Texans to sue platforms that censor them.

Report: Facebook Fought Against Regulation by Manipulating the News.  A recent report reveals that a lobbying group funded by Facebook has been planting stories in newspapers across the United States in an effort to manipulate the media and fight big tech regulation.  A report from the Washington Post reveals that a political advocacy group called American Edge was secretly funded by Facebook (now known as Meta) and has been manipulating news narratives by placing stories in newspapers across the United States.  American Edge aimed to oppose Senate-backed antitrust legislation that attempted to reign in the Big Tech Masters of the Universe.

WHO director calls China's zero-COVID policy 'unsustainable' and gets censored for it.  There was a time in the early days of the pandemic when World Health Organization director Tedros Ghebreyeseus seemed to be China's best friend and chief defender.  And China in turn defended the WHO. Only belatedly did the WHO acknowledge China hadn't been as forthcoming as they had initially claimed.  But gradually the situation seems to have changed.  Last summer Tedros agreed his organization had ruled out the lab leak theory too quickly.  "I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen," he said as part of an effort to pressure China to provide more information about the origin of the virus.

Texas law that allows users to sue social networks for censorship is now in effect.  The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals has paused the temporary injunction on controversial law HB 20, which another court blocked from taking effect last year.  As Houston Public Media notes, the state introduced HB 20 last year after high-profile conservatives, including Donald Trump, were blocked on social media websites.  Under the law, users will be able to sue large social media platforms with more than 50 million active monthly users such as Facebook and Twitter if they believe they were banned for their political views.  HB 20 also prohibits social networks from removing or restricting content based on "the viewpoint of the user or another person."

Texas appeals court reinstates law prohibiting social media companies from banning users over political views.  A federal appeals court has reinstated a Republican-backed Texas law that prevents large social media companies from banning users over their political views.  The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel did not explain its reasoning for granting the state's request for a stay of a December order from a federal judge.  The order also did not evaluate the law on its constitutionality.  It merely allows the law to go back into effect while the case continues in the lower district court.  The decision is a win for Republicans who have accused social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter of being biased against conservatives.  A flashpoint on the issue came when Former President Donald Trump's Twitter account was permanently suspended days after he was accused of inciting the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill.

Wikipedia deletes article on PA senate primary candidate who is surging toward defeating Dr. Oz.  Wikipedia, now a highly politicized propaganda outlet, apparently wants Dr. Oz to win the Pennsylvania Republican Senate nomination.  That is the logical conclusion from their decision to delete an existing article on Kathy Barnette, who has surged into second place, only 1.3% (i.e., within the margin of error) behind Dr. Mehmet Oz in the latest Trafalgar Group poll: [...] As of this writing, the only mention of Kathy Barnette is in an article on the Republican primary.

Lori Lightfoot issues a 'call to arms' against Supreme Court justices.  Chicago's incompetent Mayor Lori Lightfoot, presiding over a city devolving into violent, bloody anarchy on the streets, is encouraging violent protests at the homes of Supreme Court justices believed to be supporting a draft decision by Justice Alito overturning Roe v. Wade.  That is the logical interpretation if two tweets she issued that Twitter believes do not violate its "standards" that prohibit advocating violence:  [Tweet]

Tech Giants Are Censoring, Blacklisting and Banning Posts on the "2000 Mules" Ballot Trafficking Documentary.  The virtual premiere for the movie '2000 Mules' was held last night live from Las Vegas.  In the film, Dinesh D'Souza and True the Vote provide answers and evidence of the stolen 2020 Election.  The explosive documentary was released on Tuesday at select theaters across the nation.  The movie "2000 Mules" proves through geo-tracking and video confirmation that Democrats used ballot trafficking to steal the 2020 election from President Donald Trump.  The national conspiracy involved every battleground state.  THOUSANDS of Americans participated in the virtual premiere last night.

Missouri and Louisiana File Suit Against Biden Administration Over Collusion With Tech Giants to Suppress Free Speech.  On Thursday, the states of Missouri and Louisiana filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana against numerous Biden Administration officials and agencies alleging that they colluded with social media companies to suppress and censor free speech on several topics, including Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell" and the Wuhan lab leak theory surrounding the origins of COVID-19.

When 'Fact Checking' Fails, There's Always Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation.  The media likes to lecture Americans about the increasing threat to democracy posed by 'conspiracy theories.'  The term, historically relegated to UFOs and the JFK assassination, has picked up steam in recent years as it seems to have obtained some political usefulness.  Early examples include the Hillary Clinton private email server, spying on the Trump 2016 Presidential campaign, and the contention that Trump-Russia collusion was a product of the Clinton campaign's opposition research.  In each of these instances, dismissing allegations of wrongdoing as conspiracy theories proved more useful than trying to dispute what later turned out to be reality.  The response proved so effective for politicians and campaigns that now mainstream media and technology companies have adopted it as a key tactic to suppress politically damaging stories.  But what happens when these conspiracy theories turn out to be true?  It seems to be happening more often and consistently in one ideological direction.

YouTube Bans Video Featuring Conservative Expert on Voter Fraud.  YouTube on Tuesday [4/26/2022] removed a video of a podcast discussion of vote fraud and the 2020 election from its platform, but the participants in the discussion insist they did or said nothing wrong.  The video featured an expert from The Daily Signal's parent organization, The Heritage Foundation, and had been on YouTube for more than a year without incident before being taken down.

Amazon Targets Conservative Children's Book About Gender Identity.  Once again, Amazon has shown it's on the side of leftist activists, not free speech.  Matt Walsh, a popular conservative podcast host and writer at The Daily Wire, just released a children's book titled "Johnny the Walrus." The book, according to the description on Amazon, tells the tale of Johnny, who likes to pretend to be a dinosaur or a knight.  But one day "when the internet people find out Johnny likes to make-believe, he's forced to make a decision between the little boy he is and the things he pretends to be — and he's not allowed to change his mind," states the description.  Amazon is clearly trying to squash Walsh's book.

Biden Regime Announces Creation of "Disinformation Governance Board" Under the Authority of Homeland Security with a Lunatic in Charge.  Following Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter last week, which was a triumphant victory in the ongoing war over free speech, the Biden Regime announced the creation of a "Disinformation Governance Board" that will be tasked with silencing anything deemed to be misinformation that's related to homeland security.  And, yes.  It's just as dystopian and creepy as it sounds.  The new board will operate under the authority of the Department of Homeland security with a special focus on Russia and "irregular migration," according to the Post Millennial.

Deep State Response, Dept of Homeland Security Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda.  I think we are now seeing the outlines of how the Fourth Branch of Government are planning to keep control over information, specifically public discussion on Big Tech platforms, even as Elon Musk moves to open the valves of information from the social media platform Twitter.  Previously the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced a new Dept of Homeland Security priority to combat disinformation {LINK} on technology platforms including social media.  Many eyebrows were raised as the announcement appeared to be an open admission that the U.S. government was going to control information by applying labels, that would align with allies in social media, who need a legal justification for censorship and content removal.

Big Tech [has censored] criticism of Biden more than 600 times:  Study.  In a two-year time span, Big Tech censored President Joe Biden's critics 646 times.  The censored cases, including deleted social media accounts or posts and those given "warning labels" that stopped people from sharing or commenting, were counted between March 2020 and March 2022 by Free Speech America's Media Research Center.  Of the 646 cases, 140 involved the New York Post's story about Hunter Biden's laptop, with Twitter being the most aggressive censor.  The largest category of censored cases, however, included 232 posts that attempted to blast the president's behavior with women and children.

Obama Calls for More Social Media Censorship.  If someone says they are for free speech "but" — they aren't for free speech.  While giving a speech at Stanford University, former President Barack Obama lamented the rise of disinformation on social media platforms.  And while Forty-Four claims he is "pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist," he also says that doesn't apply to Twitter and Facebook[.]

Wikipedia deletes entry for Hunter Biden investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners.  Wikipedia editors removed the entry for Rosemont Seneca Partners earlier this week on the ground that it was "not notable," archived comments from its Talk Page reveal.  The deletion happened Wednesday.  The investment company co-founded by Hunter Biden has been at the heart of numerous questions surrounding his overseas business dealings.  "This organization is only mentioned in connection with its famous founders, Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz," said a Wiki editor identified only as Alex who additionally warned that "keeping it around" ran the risk of the page becoming "a magnet for conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden."  Arguments to merge the story with Hunter Biden's official wikipedia page were also overruled.

Former 'Lie of the Year' award winner Barack Obama announces crusade to stop 'spread of disinformation'.  Barack Obama has joined the leftist establishment's efforts to maintain control over their approved narrative, announcing that the Obama Foundation will be devoting its resources to training the next generation of information monitors under the oft-invoked pretense of combating "disinformation." a term which like "democracy" has been twisted into a pretzel in true Orwellian fashion by the political left.  Fresh off of his speech at the big "Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy" conference sponsored by The Atlantic, Obama took to Twitter to announce his involvement in the new initiative, invoking the key buzz words in a pair of tweets that were met with incredulity by many who can recall the former president's tendency to play fast and loose with the truth during his eight years in the White House.

The Editor says...
On a nearby page, I have assembled a partial catalog of Barack H. Obama's lies, which should go a long way towards the disqualification of Mr. Obama as the arbiter of disinformation.

YouTube removes Tucker Carlson interview with woman who detransitioned.  Helena Kerschner began taking testosterone at the age of 18.  She was lured into the realm of trans ideology, and believing that she was not female, after delving into online fan fiction communities.  She spoke to Tucker Carlson, and when a clip of her interview was posted to YouTube, it was taken down for "violating YouTube's policy on spam, deceptive practices and scams."  The video showed a segment of a longer interview Kerschner gave to Carlson about her transition and detransition, what led her down the road of gender identity exploration and questioning, how she found her way out, and what her view on the gender industry is after her experience.  [Video clip]

DuckDuckGo Search Engine CEO Announces Changes to Internet Search Algorithms to Promote Approved Content.  DuckDuckGo used to be the preferred search engine for those who wanted privacy on-line and unfiltered, i.e. organic, search engine responses.  Unfortunately, CEO Gabriel Weinberg is now stating he will change the algorithm to remove independent information and media outlets and will replace them with only approved MSM results.

Big Abortion's Big Tech Allies Aim to Censor Pro-Lifers.  They Won't Win.  The future of abortion law in the U.S. hinges on the forthcoming ruling in a Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, but the pro-life movement must begin gearing up to fight another insidious foe — Big Tech censorship.  Organizations standing for the sanctity of life are well aware of the uphill battle they face.  The prominent anti-abortion group Live Action had its content censored online long before the docket put the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion nationwide in the crosshairs.  In 2019, social media platform Pinterest added Live Action's website to its blacklist of banned sites.  The blacklisting meant users were unable to link to Live Action's content or post it on Pinterest.

Invasion of the Fact-Checkers.  In the past five years, a cadre of fact-checkers has marched through the institutions of journalism and installed itself in the U.S. media as a privatized, quasi-governmental regulatory agency.  What's wrong with facts, you say?  Fueled by a panic over misinformation, the fact-checking industry is shifting the media's primary obligation away from pursuing the truth and toward upholding vague notions of public safety, which it gets to define.  In the course of this transformation, journalists are being turned into rent-a-cops whose job is to enforce an official consensus that is treated as a civic good by those who benefit from — and pay for — its protection.  At Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — content flagged as false or misleading gets downgraded in the platform's algorithms so fewer people will see it.  Google and Twitter have similar rules to bury posts.  In reality, America's new public-private "Ministry of Truth" mainly serves the interests of the tech platforms and Democratic Party operatives who underwrite and support the fact-checking enterprise.

Democrats, Green Activists Pressure Big Tech to Censor More Climate 'Misinformation'.  A House Democrat leading an investigation of oil industry "misinformation" blames social media companies for blocking legislation to counter climate change, even as Big Tech corporations move to demonetize and suppress debate on climate-related issues.  Google acted to demonetize "climate denial" information.  Facebook upped its fact-checking of climate-related posts, and emails obtained by watchdog groups show it targeted conservative site PragerU and independent journalist John Stossel.  Twitter promised to be a forum only for credible content on climate change.  Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee's subcommittee on the environment, which has conducted two hearings on oil "misinformation" and postponed a third.

Social Media:  The Intimidation and Enforcement Arm of the American Left.  The American left uses their dominant position in social media to manipulate the legacy media, set the agenda, browbeat the elected members of the Democrat party, and intimidate corporate America. [...] The latest example:  the unfathomable reaction by these same perfidious entities to the Parental Rights in Education bill recently passed in Florida.  The bill simply codifies the centuries-old and previously never questioned understanding that teaching and discussing gender identity and sexuality to preadolescents (in the case of the bill — children four to eight years old) is solely the prerogative of the parents, not teachers working for the state.  The left immediately dubbed the legislation as the "Don't Say Gay" bill and began an unprecedented national disinformation campaign to obfuscate about the bill and denigrate Ron De Santis and all conservatives as being bigots and opposed to all gay rights.  The initial step in this process was that committed leftists with a massive social media following put out the call to their legion of mind-numbed basement dwellers seeking meaning in their otherwise spiritually empty lives while voluntarily chaining themselves to their laptops and keyboards.  These foot soldiers then begin the campaign of tweeting and posting en masse the predetermined talking points to the media, politicians and major corporations.  Within hours, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC aired stories about the "Don't Say Gay" bill and the unconscionable bigotry of Ron De Santis and all conservatives.

Google Attacks Us For Reporting On Our Own Poll — Calls It 'Harmful lnformation'.  The other day we received a notice from Google's AdSense ad network that one of our articles violated its policies and, as a result, they wouldn't allow any of their network's ads to appear on that article until we "fixed" the violation.  What was the violation?  According to Google, the article contained "unreliable and harmful information."  What does that mean?  Dig deeper and here's how Google describes this particular violation:  "We do not allow content that:
  •   makes claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.
  •   promotes harmful health claims or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus.
  •   contradicts authoritative scientific consensus on climate change."
Previously, we noted in this space that Google had stripped ads from two of our editorials about global warming, and we pointed out that this was likely part of a new post-COVID censorship campaign by the left.

Google Ministry of Information Announces Zero Tolerance Policy Against Any Information That Does Not Support NATO War Against Russia.  Comrade citizens, after success with the Ministry of Information controlling efforts surrounding the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and public health vaccinations, The Division of Correct Thinking has announced they will also not tolerate any information against their war efforts in Ukraine.  [Tweet]  All good global citizens will appreciate the Ministry's effort to protect you from bad Russian influences.  Only the approved truth must remain visible to combat any Russian efforts to influence our thinking.  The only horrors approved for review must be approved by the compliance division within the Google Ministry of Information.

President Trump Weighs In On His Interview With Nelk Boys that Was Deleted From Youtube after 5 Million Views.  President Trump appeared on the Full Send podcast with the Nelk Boys, who are extremely popular social media influencers with 7 million subscribers and 1.15 billion views.  YouTube deleted the video after receiving over 5 million views because it violated their community guidelines.  [Tweet]  Some clips were shared on Twitter after Youtube canceled the interview.

Researchers Working On Algorithm To Diagnose You With Mental Illness Based On Internet Posts.  Researchers at liberal Dartmouth College have created an artificial intelligence model that identifies mental illnesses based on Reddit discussions, the college announced.  Critics of the AI modelling claim its another step on the path to introducing a social credit score, like China, in which citizens are controlled.  Others claim the AI model will pave the way for citizens and internet users to be imprisoned in "cyber Gulags" for daring to disagree with mainstream media narratives.

The Tyranny of Big Tik:  Social Media Giant Outlaws Anti-Government Wrongthink.  TikTok is owned by China-based tech company ByteDance.  As you might've heard, the People's Republic isn't known for its adoration of insolence toward authority.  Apropos of such an absence of amore, the platform's new prohibitions strive to stamp out "Harmful Misinformation."  "Misinformation is defined as content that is inaccurate or false," the update explains.  "We will remove misinformation that causes significant harm to individuals, our community, or the larger public regardless of intent."  What constitutes "significant harm"? [...] Users aren't anymore allowed to engage in the following:  ["]The undermining of public trust in civic institutions and processes such as governments, elections, and scientific bodies["]

The surgeon general calls on Big Tech to turn over Covid-19 misinformation data.  President Biden's surgeon general on Thursday [3/3/2022] formally requested that the major tech platforms submit information about the scale of Covid-19 misinformation on social networks, search engines, crowdsourced platforms, e-commerce platforms and instant messaging systems.  A request for information from the surgeon general's office demanded that tech platforms send data and analysis on the prevalence of Covid-19 misinformation on their sites, starting with common examples of vaccine misinformation documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  The notice asks the companies to submit "exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of Covid-19 misinformation," as well as aggregate data on demographics that may have been disproportionately exposed to or affected by the misinformation.

Facebook is Removing News Articles Exposing Hillary Clinton Spied on Trump, Including Sitting US Senators Posts About It.  In yet another example of how bad Facebook has become in regards to censorship, get this!  After years of allowing the mainstream media to flat out lie about Trump over and over again, now they're censoring an actual investigation that exposed it was actually Hillary Clinton colluding with foreign powers to spy on Trump.  So, a tech company is now dictating what is truth and what is lies.  [Video clip]

YouTube CEO Thinks It Would Be Awesome for Government to Censor Free Speech so She Doesn't Have To.  In August 2021, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent a letter to YouTube Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Susan Wojcicki raising concerns about YouTube's then-latest censorship of religious and politically conservative speech.  Specifically, Rubio questioned three incidents and demanded that the Google-owned company clarify how each incident resulted in a violation of YouTube's community guidelines.  In the letter, Rubio questioned a "series of actions by YouTube to censor or otherwise restrict the speech of its users, particularly ... a pattern of apparent political and religious bias on YouTube's part."

The 2010 Essay that Explains What the Woke Want.  By the time this is published, one of two things will be true:  Joe Rogan will be a martyr to woke cancel culture and the machinations of Leftist PR machines, or he will have survived one of the most sustained attacks ever experienced by a public figure and possibly revealed that wokeness itself has become a paper tiger.  One way or another, the episode has revealed a waning power in the cancel-happy Left, though Rogan's removal from Spotify would most assuredly show that they still have claws.  But it is telling that simply screaming about "misinformation" was not enough to silence a figure of Rogan's stature:  racial blackmail had to be employed, and even that got pushback from the leaders of Spotify, though whether that pushback was enough remains to be seen.

The 'Cancel Joe Rogan' Campaign Enters Its Third Phase — Courtesy of CNN's Jan. 6 Obsession.  First, they tried accusing him of spreading "misinformation" about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccinations.  Then, they dredged up old footage showing him using the N-word and pretended to be offended, calling him a racist.  Now, the effort to cancel comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan has entered its third phase, and it's even more ludicrous than the first two.  Now, they are bringing out one of their favorite ploys, using the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to smear the podcaster in a desperate attempt to compel Spotify to stop hosting his podcast.  In a lengthy op-ed, CNN Enterprise writer/producer John Blake laid out his case for arguing that Rogan's use of the n-word was somehow as deadly to American society as the U.S. Capitol riots.

Letter from Facebook Jail.  On Sunday, I posted a humorous one-stanza poem by Hilaire Belloc, the great English author and member of Parliament.  The title is "Epitaph on the Politician Himself," and it describes how sad the author is at seeing a corrupt politician die of natural causes, when he clearly should have been hanged after conviction for corruption.  A friend asked for clarification on its meaning — not unusual with poetry — and I answered the question.  Within seconds my account was restricted, and I received the all-too-familiar notice of a 30-day suspension from the megalomaniacs of Menlo Park.  There wasn't time for someone to report it, or for a human being to review it.  This was an act of Facebook's famous Artificial Intelligence, known to its users as the Algorithm, or the Bot, or Blinky's Minions.  The system registered a reference to hanging and shut down the user who posted it.  Immediately.  There was no recognition that this was a literary discussion, analyzing a century-old poem by an English parliamentarian.

I am not sorry and I do not care.  If I see one more hostage video of someone offering up a sniveling, groveling apology for something he said or did years ago that was taken out of context, I am going to vomit.  The latest was Joe Rogan.  Now hear this Mr. Rogan and everyone else.  Stop apologizing.  The Marxists don't want your apology; they want you gone.  If you don't play into this stupid game, they will move on.  If everyone takes the 1985 Madonna attitude, cancel culture will be canceled.  This episode isn't about what Rogan said; this is about Rogan having millions of subscribers, while the legacy media has no ratings.  Since the legacy media is the propaganda arm of the Marxist party, they can't have that — especially if Rogan has people on his show who don't agree with Pravda/CCP approved narrative.  That's what this is all about.

Why The Joe Rogan-Spotify Fight Will Define Free Speech For Us All.  Remind us again what it was that Joe Rogan said that got the left so apoplectic.  Did he spew hate speech?  Call for an insurrection?  Say mean things about a protected minority?  No?  The left wanted him canceled because he supposedly aired misinformation about COVID?  Are you kidding?  If this is the new standard for censorship, you can kiss free speech goodbye.  After all, anything can be labeled "misinformation."  Would you dare to say climate change hysteria is unfounded?  Or government-provided daycare is a bad idea?  Or Joe Biden's massive welfare expansion is a bad idea?  Election fraud is real? [...] What information did Rogan spread about COVID that has so alarmed the left?  That masks are ineffective?  That all we needed was a 15-day lockdown to "slow the spread"?  That there was no way the virus resulted from Chinese lab experiments?  That schools had to be shut down?  That this was a "pandemic of the unvaccinated"?  Oh, wait, those were all uttered by people like Anthony Fauci.

Lessons to learn from Joe Rogan's apology spree.  Rogan has been a target for quite some time for deviating from the group think.  Back in 2019, Rogan had caused controversy by stating the obvious about Biden's rapidly declining cognitive abilities.  Last October, Rogan has exposed CNN for misrepresenting alternative COVID treatment.  Rogan is a liberal who supports Bernie Sanders and Michelle Obama.  But the micro-mob wants total surrender.  They think the recent controversies will enable them to force Rogan out forever, labelling him a racist and anti-vaxxer whacko and damaging him to an extent that no other platform will accept him.  The goal is also to make an example out of Rogan and to deter other aspiring rebels.

NY Doctor Proved Everyone Wrong About Hydroxychloroquine.  Many doctors around the world started using the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) early on in the COVID-19 pandemic.  Among them is Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a practicing physician in a Jewish community in Monroe, New York.  He garnered national attention in March 2020 when he told radio host Sean Hannity that he'd had a near-100% success rate treating COVID-19 patients with HCQ, azithromycin and zinc sulfate for five days.  "I've seen remarkable results; it really prevents progression of disease, and patients get better," he said at the time.  In response, county health officials said Zelenko's claims were "unsubstantiated" and urged residents to listen to public health officials.  In this interview, he explains how HCQ works against COVID-19, and discusses the lies spun about the drug to suppress its widespread use.  Zelenko had a very active Twitter account and would get millions of views on his tweets, and like many other truth tellers in this crazy pandemic, he was censored and recently removed from Twitter.  [Video clip]

Elon Musk slams GoFundMe for bowing to Trudeau and Canceling Freedom Truckers, while allowing BLM donations.  Tesla CEO Elon Musk accused GoFundMe of hypocrisy after the company canceled the Freedom Convoy fundraiser on Friday after it actively supported a campaign for the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest in Seattle.  The crowdfunding platform claimed the convoy fundraiser — which raised $10 million Canadian dollars ($8 million USD) in support of truckers protesting against COVID-19 vaccine mandates — violated its terms of service 'which prohibits the promotion of violence and harassment.'  GoFundMe plans to distribute the remaining $9 million of donated funds to 'credible and established charities' that were reportedly chosen by the convoy organizers and have been verified by the platform.

The censoring of Joe Rogan is a tactic right out of old Soviet Union.  Make no mistake, the recent Joe Rogan vs.  Spotify scandal is not about COVID and what constitutes proper medical protocols to fight it.  It's about the future of free speech in America.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki's statement on Tuesday, directing Big Tech and Spotify to do "more" to eradicate alleged COVID "misinformation" on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, suggests that the future of the First Amendment is bleak.  A representative of a ruling party dictating to a private company what content is "accurate" and what is not, is a clear sign that the US government has embraced censorship.  Just like the Soviets, the benevolent authoritarians want to "protect" you from the bad influence of the Rogan type "rogues." Consider that the Rogan interview deemed wrongheaded by America's elites was not with some charlatan but with a medical doctor, a clinician, Dr. Robert Malone.  Malone's thought crime is that he doesn't sing in unison with the "The Science" espoused by Tony Fauci, who has been stood up as the COVID Minister of Propaganda whose every word must be accepted as truth.

American Truckers Organizing Freedom Convoy to DC but Here Come the Censors.  The Freedom Convoy that made it across Canada from Vancouver to Ottawa is now occupying the streets in front of Parliament and is being supported by people in their efforts against vaccine mandates. [...] American truckers are now trying to follow in the footsteps of their Northern brethren — organizing a similar convoy from California to Washington, D.C., to stand against government overreach.  But Facebook is trying to stop them, removing the page from which they were organizing the effort.  Facebook claimed that the page was violating policies around QAnon.  Just as there was an effort to smear the Canadian effort by Justin Trudeau and some in liberal media, even claiming it was somehow associated with Russia, it looks like they're going after the U.S. effort.

Medical journal hints at Facebook lawsuit for throttling investigation of COVID vaccine trial.  The fact-checking industry, empowered by the vast resources of social media giants, is under sustained scrutiny amid a possible legal battle among the British Medical Journal, Facebook owner Meta and a contractor it pays to flag purported COVID-19 misinformation.  Facebook stopped some readers from sharing a BMJ investigation of "data integrity" issues in a Pfizer COVID vaccine trial, BMJ editors wrote in an open letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in November.  It also slapped "missing context" labels on posts that went through, warning users they could be penalized for sharing the article.  Contractor Lead Stories seemed more interested, however, in promoting guilt by association and policing political views than checking the facts, the journal's editors wrote in a blistering New Statesman op-ed last week.

US truckers slam Facebook for removing page organizing DC freedom convoy.  American truckers are following Canada's lead and organizing a protest against vaccine mandates.  The U.S. group's Facebook page, however, was removed early Wednesday in a move that the organizer called "censorship at its finest."  The group, titled "Convoy to D.C. 2022," acted as a place for truckers to plan and coordinate their trek from California to Washington, D.C.  Jeremy Johnson, who set up the Facebook group, said his personal account was also removed, prompting him to contact a civil rights attorney to discuss the next steps.  "They like to silence people that speak the truth," Johnson said of his Facebook ban.

Joe Rogan Makes the Left Look Even Worse With His Reply on Spotify Controversy.  We previously reported how Spotify had weighed in on the controversy being pushed by the left about Joe Rogan.  While they said that they were now going to be putting a content label on any discussions involving COVID, they also made it clear without even mentioning him that they weren't getting rid of Rogan, despite the push from the left.  Now Rogan has also weighed in and he showed exactly why more people are listening to his show than media like CNN.  He's humble, he's looking for the truth, and he's real.  He's not pushing a narrative.  Unlike the media that would like to do him in.

Joe Rogan apologizes to Spotify and musicians amid boycott over his podcast.  Podcaster Joe Rogan has apologized to Spotify, while also addressing the controversy around his podcast.  Musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell recently boycotted the service for continuing to host "The Joe Rogan Experience," which has been accused by medical professionals of spreading Covid misinformation.  Both musicians have since pulled their music libraries from Spotify.  "I want to thank Spotify for being so supportive during this time and I'm very sorry that this is happening to them and that they're taking so much heat from it," Rogan said Sunday.  He also apologized to Young and Mitchell.

Talk Show Host Bongino Permanently Banned From YouTube.  Conservative talk show host Dan Bongino had both of his YouTube accounts permanently banned Wednesday, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.  Bongino's second channel, the Dan Bongino Show Clips, was initially suspended and demonetized for seven days after Bongino posted a video in which he said masks were "useless" in stopping the spread of the coronavirus, violating YouTube's COVID-19 misinformation policy.  Bongino then attempted to upload a video within the seven-day suspension period on his main channel, resulting in a permanent ban for both accounts, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation. [...] Bongino will not be able to create a new YouTube account in the future, the spokesperson said.

Elizabeth Warren may face consequences for practicing censorship.  Elizabeth Warren, a mediocre law professor who parlayed a fake Native American identity into a gig at Harvard and a seat in the United States Senate, thought that, once in government, she'd try her hand at censorship.  When Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins wrote a book about COVID with which Warren disagreed, she used her position as a Senator to try to get Amazon to censor the book. [...] [O]n September 7, 2021, writing in her capacity as a United States Senator, on official Senate letterhead, Warren sent a very long letter to Andy Jassy, Amazon's CEO, expressing her concern that Amazon itself was publishing misinformation by allowing Mercola's and Cummins's book, The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal, to appear on its bestseller list and daring to give it a favorable ranking.  After waffling on for pages several pages, and mendaciously claiming the book was "potentially unlawful," Warren "asked" Amazon to modify the algorithms to destroy the book's ranking.  Chelsea Green responded in November by suing Warren for violating the First Amendment, although news of that filing only reached the media recently.

Amazon and Facebook spent more money than ever lobbying in 2021.  Amazon and Facebook parent company Meta spent more money in 2021 lobbying lawmakers and officials than any year before, according to lobbying disclosure filings.  Amazon spent $20.3 million on lobbying while Meta spent $20.1 million in 2021, according to a review of lobbying disclosure filings by MarketWatch.  The figures are record totals for both tech companies, who spent $18.9 million and $19.7 million on lobbying in 2020, respectively.  Google's lobbying spend for 2021 clocked in at $11.5 million, while Microsoft spent $10.3 million and Apple spent $6.5 million, according to MarketWatch's review.  The high totals come amid increasing government scrutiny of the tech industry as regulators and lawmakers alike look to crack down on the companies' perceived anti-competitive behavior, as well as target social media "misinformation," hate speech and online censorship.

YouTube: Pastor MacArthur's Sermon is 'Hate Speech'.  A sermon delivered by Pastor John MacArthur has been labeled "hate speech" by YouTube.  MacArthur is pastor of Grace Community Church.  His sermons are broadcast on hundreds of radio stations around the nation.  He is a best-selling author and a beloved member of the evangelical community.  Pastor MacArthur delivered a message Sunday about Biblical sexuality — part of a nationwide campaign to draw attention to Canadian legislation that would silence pastors on LGBT issues.

The Murdering Of Free Speech In America.  Nearly a year ago, [Glenn] Greenwald wrote in his Substack newsletter that "in their zeal for control over online speech, House Democrats are getting closer and closer to the constitutional line, if they have not already crossed it."  He was referring to "the third time in less than five months" that lawmakers had "summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them, with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms."  A few months later, the Biden administration "announced that government officials are working directly with Facebook to limit the spread of 'misinformation.'"  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted that "we're flagging problematic posts for Facebook."  Then there is Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat from Connecticut who has demanded, says George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, "that Big Tech companies commit to even more 'robust content modification,'" which is "an Orwellian term for censorship."

Dan Bongino Responds to YouTube After They Suspend His Channel.  Today [1/14/2022], YouTube suspended and demonetized the channel of conservative firebrand Dan Bongino.  According to Bongino's response to the YouTube representative handling the case, which we'll cover in a moment, his channel was nuked for questioning the efficacy of masks.  That seems especially egregious given the overwhelming amount of evidence that masks have been largely ineffective in suppressing the spread of COVID-19 in communities across the globe.  Further, even many coronavirus hawks are now admitting they simply aren't a solution against Omicron, though, various compilations of real-world data never really showed them to be effective prior either.

Google demonetizes meteorologist and researcher Roy Spencer.  The website DrRoySpencer.com has been demonetized by Google, its owner, climatologist and former NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer, announced in a blog post.  According to Spencer — who is considered a climate change skeptic but has rejected the label of being a "climate denier" — Google has cut his website off from Adsense for allegedly spreading unreliable and harmful claims.  Spencer notes that revenue he is now losing was low, but other aspects of this decision concern him more, although the scientist doesn't plan on appealing for the time being, believing that it would be an uphill struggle against what he calls "liberal arts educated fact checkers" — and Google's announced policy to stomp out content it labels as skeptical of the climate change theory.

Naomi Wolf: The Hysteria Is Not Genuine, It's A Strategy.  Author Naomi Wolf has been an outspoken critic of vaccine mandates and Covid tyranny from the start.  Today, she talks to Steve Bannon about her belief that the left's "hysteria" about Covid is actually a well-planned campaign to oppress the people.  "They are starting with a purge of conservatives, but what they are doing is keeping us down home, not allowing us to congregate, not allowing us to hear each other... herding us like horses on to social media and then saying we're going to police what you can say on social media...  We can't say anything about vaccines.  The vaccines are a Trojan horse.  The vaccines are a proxy.  You criminalize speech around vaccines.  You clear away dissent and clear away freedom of speech, and that's the last pillar that protects us."

Facebook Censors Pro-American Children's Books as 'Disruptive Content'.  Writer, commentator, and editor Bethany Mandel only wanted to provide alternatives to the woke books being provided to children in school.  So she was shocked when Facebook took down her page advertising such alternatives due to "disruptive content."  "There was no warning," Mandel says of Facebook's action.  "They told us that our ads were low quality or disruptive content, but they never actually defined what about them was low quality and disruptive content. ... This is a wholesome new children's book [series] that you can buy for your children for Christmas.  It couldn't have gotten less dangerous and more innocuous than our ads.  We're literally just selling children's books."

Big Tech Needs to Be Broken Up.  Unfortunately, a concept so basic as the right to speak your mind is now under siege.  Big Tech monopolies like Twitter and Facebook have become arbiters of what they feel is permitted speech, taking your right to self-expression into their own hands — and promptly crushing it.  Big Tech companies have worked hard over the past several years to enlarge their power and influence over how we live our lives, and we have finally reached a breaking point.  They have carefully cultivated a monopoly on online speech, establishing too-big-to-fail echo chambers that reinforce leftist concepts and punish dissenting patriots, canceling them and banishing them from the internet.  Not only have these companies hijacked the First Amendment by establishing and exercising their new-found power to abuse dissenters, but they have now also launched an all-out assault on the conditions of informed opinions.  They do not want the American people to consider different perspectives and arrive at their own conclusions about medical care.

Big Tech Censors mRNA Pioneer Over Vaccine Safety.  Dr. [Robert] Malone is a world-renowned molecular biologist who, in 1987 as a graduate student at the Salk Institute, mixed strands of RNA with droplets of fat and found that the substance induced human cells to begin producing proteins.  Malone wrote at the time that it might be possible to "treat RNA as a drug."  Malone's pioneering work and that of other scientists ultimately led to the development of mRNA vaccines used against COVID-19.  Malone has raised concerns about possible adverse events associated with these vaccines.  He has been critical of the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the pharmaceutical industry, claiming that they are not honestly communicating these risks to the public.  He also has faulted his fellow scientists, the news media, and others who, he believes, have marginalized scientists who have raised these concerns.

John Ondrasik Catches YouTube's Hand in the Liberal Cookie Jar.  As detailed here a few days ago, musician John Ondrasik, who usually records under the Five for Fighting moniker, released a video earlier this month of him performing his song "Blood on My Hands" while standing within sight of the White House.  He placed the video on Twitter and YouTube.  Given how the song excoriates the Biden Administration for its utterly incompetent handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, one expected pushback.  On Friday, the expectation was met when YouTube briefly pulled the video, returning it to the site only after Ondrasik made a pointed complaint to YouTube.

All of Facebook's "errors" benefit the same people.
Facebook lifts ban on conservative children's publisher Heroes of Liberty, blames 'error'.  Facebook did an about-face after banning the account of Heroes of Liberty, a conservative children's book publisher whose works include biographies of Ronald Reagan, Thomas Sowell and Amy Coney Barrett.  Andy Stone, spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook, tweeted Monday that the decision last month to disable permanently the publisher's account was a mistake.  "This should not have happened.  It was an error and the ad account's been restored," Mr. Stone said.  His tweet came in response to a post from Fox senior political analyst Brit Hume, who called the ban "sickening."  Mr. Hume and others rallied to Heroes of Liberty's defense after editor and board member Bethany Mandel said that Facebook had shut down the newly launched publishing house's advertising account over the "disruptive content" of its ads.

Police State?  Genocide?  Could It Happen Here?  There are many examples in recent years of individuals losing their jobs, having their businesses boycotted, and getting their social media accounts cancelled or suspended because they promoted conservative ideas, supported Biblical standards, or refused to bow down to the demands of the woke culture.  The dehumanization process of conservatives and traditional Christians as "others" and "enemies" is rapidly increasing.  The more it continues to happen, the more many in the media insist that it isn't happening.  A friend of mine recently stated that this can't go on much longer, that millions of Americans are going to stand up against the cancel culture, censorship, and the marginalization of traditional values.  I nodded my head when she said it, but I don't think I really believed it.  When you have a society that is already in the process of banning words, burning Bibles, and allowing four-year-olds to choose their gender, you have a society that has pretty much already jumped the shark.  When you have millions who have sunk so far down the rabbit hole that they actually believe this is "progress," you realize Rome has been burning for a while now.

Did banned mRNA vax inventor Robert W. Malone M.D. just break the Google algorithm?  Did the Twitter punks who banned mRNA vaccine inventor and bona fide vaccine expert Robert W. Malone, M.D. just set off the Mother of all Backfires?  Kind of looks like it, now that they've drawn so much public interest to the man that they've apparently broken the Google algorithm for censoring stories about him. [...] Although Malone is a giant in his field and hard to discredit the way they can do with assorted pipsqueaks out there, somehow they think they need to silence the man.  On Google, they've tried to paint him as a nut, a conspiracy theorist, a vaccine skeptic, a Nazi, based on the search results they tried to throw up.  But the truth got out anyway, and their manipulated algorithms have been exposed, discrediting them, and in any case, not working.

Taking a Cue From China, Facebook Censors Chinese Whistleblower on COVID's Origins.  Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese virologist, escaped to America after facing threats for speaking out on the origins of COVID-19.  China couldn't stop Yan from telling her story, so Facebook is stepping in to help the communist regime censor the whistleblower.  Last week, The Daily Signal published an exclusive interview with Yan about her research that COVID-19 was created in a Wuhan, China, research lab.  Yan believes it was done with the approval of the People's Liberation Army, the armed wing of Chinese Communist Party.  But when Facebook users attempt to share The Daily Signal's story, it's flagged with an obtrusive "partly false information" warning.

Facebook bizarrely claims its 'fact-checks' are 'opinion'.  Facebook is a private company, so it can censor whomever it wants.  But what Facebook is doing lately is just sleazy.  Recently, I sued them because they defamed me.  They, along with one of their "fact-checkers," a group called Science Feedback, lied about me and continue to lie about me.  Now Facebook has responded to my lawsuit in court.  Amazingly, their lawyers now claim that Facebook's "fact-checks" are merely "opinion" and therefore immune from defamation.  Wait — Facebook's fact-checks are just "opinion"?!  I thought fact-checks are statements of fact.  That's how Facebook portrays them on its website:  "Each time a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, Facebook significantly reduces the content's distribution ... We ... apply a warning label that links to the fact-checker's article, disproving the claim."  "Disproving."  Sure sounds like Facebook claims its labels are statements of fact.

Wikipedia Threatens to Purge 'Communist Mass Killings' Page, Cites Anti-Communist Bias.  "A spectre is haunting Europe — the specter of communism."  This is the preamble to Karl Marx's "The Communist Manifesto," a document responsible for inspiring some of the worst dictators in human history.  Men like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot all used the words penned by Marx to justify acts of horrific violence.  And Wikipedia doesn't want you to know about communism's legacy of death and ruin.  Visitors to the "Mass killings under communist regimes" Wikipedia entry were greeted with a disclaimer that the page "is being considered for deletion" for a myriad of reasons including neutrality issues and factual inaccuracies.

5 tips to avoid being cancelled by LinkedIn.  I'm down to around one post a month on LinkedIn in order to avoid censorship, but apparently even that is too often as my LinkedIn account is suspended again.  I suspect I no longer exist and that everything I've written in the past is now "gone" from view in order to protect the community from truth and facts.  I really think LinkedIn should just be honest about it.  Why not call a spade a spade instead of beating around the bush?  They should simply say "those people who think that speaking the truth and using facts and scientific evidence are acceptable behavior on LinkedIn should find another platform.  That's not the way we roll here.  We are all about enforcing the false government narrative on people and any dissenters to the government viewpoint are not tolerated and not welcome."

Facebook court filing admits 'fact checks' are just a matter of opinion.  Surprisingly little attention is being paid to a bombshell admission made by the attorneys representing the corporation formerly known as Facebook, Inc., which has now transitioned into Meta Platforms, Inc.  In a court filing responding to a lawsuit filed by John Stossel claiming that he was defamed by a "fact check" Facebook used to label a video by him as "misleading," Meta's attorneys assert that the "fact check" was an "opinion," not an actual check of facts and declaration of facts.  Under libel law, opinions are protected from liability for libel. [...] But at a minimum, this is a public relations disaster, revealing that their "fact checks" are not factual at all and should be labeled as "our opinion" or some such language avoiding the word "fact."

Wikipedia Community Considers Deleting Entry on Mass Killings Under Communism over Claims of 'Bias'.  The Wikipedia entry for "mass killings under Communist regimes" is reportedly under threat of being removed from the platform over claims of bias.  The Telegraph reports that a Wikipedia entry which details "mass killings under Communist regimes," is at risk of deletion over claims of bias within the entry.  The Wikipedia page which outlines the details of millions of people under one-party Communist regimes such as the Soviet Union and China has been flagged for deletion.

Destroying Democracy by 'Saving Democracy'.  Overwhelming majorities of Democrats now favor the government censoring political views deemed "false" even at the expense of freedom of speech and writing.  Liberal women, in particular, are leading the charge for greater and greater authoritarian censorship.  It's bad enough that a majority of Democrats previously supported tech companies to restrict and censor views, it's far worse that they are now advocating the full force and power of the state to do so.  Democracy, as expressed in our Republic, thrives through a multiplicity of views, opinions, and ways of life.  Conservatives know this, which is why conservatives have historically defended decentralization and civil society, and have been suspicious toward ever-increasing power of the state.  The enforcement of a uniform way of life, opinions, and news outlets is antithetical to democracy.

Losing Confidence in the Pillars of Our Civilization.  For much of 2020 to even suggest that the Wuhan Institute of Virology may have played a role in the birth and spread of the COVID-19 earned media derision.  Few reporters suggested that federal health agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases might be disseminating contradictory or even inaccurate information about the pandemic.  To believe this was happening instead earned condemnation in the media as if one were some conspiracy theorist or nut.  Rarely have communication industries — veritable utilities in the public domain — so asymmetrically censored speech and applied such one-sided standards of suppressing free expression.

How many times must Facebook be caught censoring the truth?  In 2019, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stood at Georgetown University and pledged to "fight to uphold as wide a definition of freedom of expression as possible," promising in uncertainty to "err on the side of greater expression."  He went on, "I don't think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100 percent true."  Such declarations seem almost quaint now, if not outright lies.  In the wake of the 2020 election, COVID-19 and every remotely controversial event that has followed, Twitter, Facebook and Google — America's premier speech platforms, which house and shape our national discourse — have taken the decidedly opposite approach, limiting the free flow of information, dialogue and any opinion that runs counter to what the Silicon Valley speech gods and their army of partisan fact-checkers have singlehandedly determined as fact.

FLASHBACK: GoFundMe deleted Rittenhouse fundraiser but allowed fundraisers for Antifa militants.  GoFundMe is a crowdsourcing platform that many people often use to get help paying for medical and legal expenses, but the administrators of the site don't let just anyone use it.  The rules are different for radical leftists than they are for conservatives.  When supporters of alleged Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse launched a GoFundMe to help with his legal defense fees, the site admins took the campaign down and refunded the donations.  It appears that GoFundMe does not think Rittenhouse is deserving of a defence, but that Antifa militants are.  The site told The Washington Times that the campaigns for Rittenhouse violated their terms of service.  The site's terms of use prohibit "activity that GoFundMe may deem in its sole discretion to be unacceptable."

What privacy concerns?  The trial is a public hearing in a public building.  Everything that happens in the trial is a matter of public record.
All Independent Streams Of The Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Are Being Taken Down By YouTube Over "Policy Violations" — Only MSM Streams Are Available.  Prosecutors and defense lawyers are making their closing arguments in the criminal trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 18-year-old who is charged with homicide after fatally shooting two protesters during unrest last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Rittenhouse and his lawyers have argued that he was acting in self-defense when he shot three people with his AR-15-style rifle.  In a dramatic turn on the stand last week, Rittenhouse testified that he feared for his life.  Prosecutors, led by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, have argued that Rittenhouse created the peril he faced that night through a series of reckless actions that left other people fearful for their own lives.

YouTube censors information about vaccine injuries on Sen. Ron Johnson's channel.  Alphabet, Incorporated, owner of YouTube, Google, and other tech media, has taken on the role of final arbiter of medical science, even in fast-changing fields where data if far from complete.  YouTube, which enjoys a commanding presence in online video, is exercising is market dominance to prevent information of critical importance from reaching most people on the risks of adverse reactions to the pseudo-vaccines developed in hope of containing the Covid epidemic.

YouTube Hides 'Dislikes' Following Mass Downvoting of Biden Administration Videos.  YouTube has announced it will hide 'dislikes' from videos to curb "creator harassment," with critics pointing out that this is merely a way of removing the huge amount of downvotes on videos posted by the Biden administration.  "YouTube has announced that it'll be hiding public dislike counts on videos across its site, starting today," reports The Verge.  "The company says the change is to keep smaller creators from being targeted by dislike attacks or harassment, and to promote "respectful interactions between viewers and creators."  The dislike button will still be there, but it'll be for private feedback, rather than public shaming."  Quite how viewer feedback in the form of a thumbs down icon represents "harassment" is anyone's guess, but the immediate response to the announcement from many was that the Google-owned company was merely moving to protect the Biden White House from ridicule.

The Editor says...
When did YouTube make any effort to protect the Trump White House from ridicule?

Rep. Issa demands apology from Google for removing speech from YouTube.  Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, is demanding an apology from Google after a video of a speech he gave was removed from YouTube for spreading "medical misinformation," according to an exclusive interview he gave with the Washington Examiner.  In the speech, given at the EDGE 2021 conference in Las Vegas, Issa discussed numerous technology areas, including artificial intelligence and open access to data.

Reporting on Muslim Persecution of Christians Offends Facebook's 'Standards'.  Apparently, reporting on the horrific persecution Christian minorities experience in the Muslim word is a punishable offense for Facebook, as that topic falls beneath the social media giant's "standards."  That's what I was told when I logged onto my Facebook account a few days ago.  A box popped up saying, "This post goes against our Community Standards," followed by, "Only you can see this post because it goes against our community standards," with a link to the offensive post in question.  I was then locked out for 24 hours.

Internal Facebook Chats Show Politics Trumps All.  According to documents dubbed "The Facebook Paper," the comapny's internal racial justice chat exposed that the company prioritized left-wing politics in its decision-making.  Which included calls for a right-wing news site to be excluded from a key distribution avenue.  The controversy stems from the News Tab.  Facebook's News Tab aggregates news articles from various outlets and presents them to users within the app and on the desktop.  Internal chats indicate that Facebook employees worked to control the narrative on controversial political issues like the January 6 riot.  Some employees targeted Breibart, a right-wing media platform.  "Get Breitbart out of News Tab," one message read.

Facebook Employees Attack Zuckerberg for Not Suppressing Conservatives Enough.  In leaked internal messages, unhinged Facebook employees harshly criticized CEO Mark Zuckerberg for not censoring conservatives to the levels they feel are appropriate.  One employee ominously wrote:  "History will not judge us kindly."  The New York Post reports that Facebook employees are criticizing CEO Mark Zuckerberg in leaked internal messages, blaming the CEO's obsession with growth for a number of scandals that the company has faced in recent months.  One staffer reportedly wrote on the day of the January 6th Capitol riots which were partly organized via Facebook:  "History will not judge us kindly."  The consistent message throughout the messages is that the company's overwhelmingly leftist staff feel the company hasn't done enough to suppress and censor conservative voices.

Facebook "Whistleblower" Frances Haugen Travels to the UK to Promote Government Intervention and On-Line Censorship.  The goal of the leftist group who organized and coordinated the sequence of events behind Frances Haugen is becoming increasingly obvious.  Ms. Haugen first surfaced during a CBS 60 Minutes episode where she promoted the idea that government needed to intervene in the Facebook censorship process because the content of speech was not being limited enough.  Ms. Haugen advocated for government intervention to enhance Big Tech censorship.  48 hours later, Haugen was testifying before congress.  That should have triggered all alarm bells that far-left political operatives were organizing an advanced censorship campaign to stop speech they deemed as detrimental to their interests.  That speech consists of any speech that does not comply with the leftist world view.  Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that Ms. Haugen is represented by the same legal group, and group of Lawfare lawyers, who supported Hillary Clinton.

The Facebook Papers Are a Big Fat Nothingburger.  More than a dozen mainstream media organizations published reports today on the so-called Facebook Papers, a trove of internal company documents obtained and released by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen.  The headlines promised dramatic revelations and damning indictments.  "Insiders say Facebook's CEO chose growth over safety," reports The Washington Post.  For Axios, the Facebook Papers paint the social media company as "a brutish corporate actor that prioritizes its business over safety."  Bloomberg News tweets that the documents provide "rare, vivid insight into ways Facebook has faltered in its mission."  The gap between those sensational claims and what actually appears in the articles is stark.  If this is the best The New York Times, the Associated Press, etc., could do, then the Facebook Papers are a nothingburger.

Big Mother's Smothering Protection of Little Joseph.  [Scroll down]  Soon, Rapper Bryson Gray produced a wildly viral video repeating the ["Let's go Brandon!"] chant.  The artist also claimed that "they" use the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to censor and oppress.  YouTube, an arm of "Big Mother," deleted the video to control "misinformation."  Nothing like censorship to reassure the public that we're still free.  Don't badmouth little Joseph.  Big Mother is watching.  The censorship follows shortly on the heels of a decision from Big Mother's election "fairness" arm, the Federal Elections Commission.  In that case, the FEC ruled that Twitter and Facebook did not interfere in the election by censoring accurate and truthful reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story which revealed solid evidence of Biden family influence peddling in Ukraine, China, and other countries.  Big Mother also told the public that the evidence was just Russian disinformation — a complete lie.  No matter, Big Mother's FEC dutifully protected little Joseph.  According to the New York Times, "The election commission determined that Twitter's actions regarding the Hunter Biden article had been undertaken for a valid commercial reason, not a political purpose, and were thus allowable."

NYT: Far Left Facebook 'Whistleblower' Is Running an 'Outlet Store' of Leaks in Coordinated Campaign.  In a recent article, the >i>New York Times outlines the seemingly coordinated media blitz orchestrated by far-left Facebook "whistleblower" Frances Haugen.  The Times compares the coordinated release of stories from Haugen's team to an "outlet store" of leaked insider documents.  The New York Times reports in an article titled "Inside the Big Facebook Leak," that far-left Facebook "whistleblower" Frances Haugen is spending her time deciding who she would trust with a number of internal Facebook documents which have since been reported on extensively.  Although she initially fed the information to the Wall Street Journal for what the Times labels a "boutique rollout," she is now running a coordinated campaign to roll out the documents that the Times calls an "outlet store."

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.

In completely unsurprising news, Facebook employees hate conservatives.  Conservatives who post on Facebook know that the site routinely censors their content.  Now, though, whistleblowers are offering concrete proof confirming what conservatives have intuitively understood:  One of the most important vehicles for modern communication has lots of employees who hate conservatives and their ideas.  Three things routinely happen to conservatives on Facebook:  (1) Facebook rejects entirely something they post because it violates Facebook's "community guidelines."  Efforts to get that decision reviewed always fail.  (2) Facebook has allowed people to post something, only to slap it with a "disputed" or "fact checked" label.  (3) There's the infamous "sensitive content" label:  [Illustration]  However, when conservatives complain about these common censorship maneuvers, they're told that they're imagining it.  It doesn't happen because of bias, they're told.  Instead, it's simply that conservative content is less accurate than that from the more careful and honest progressive outlets.  (Please, ignore the entire Russia hoax.)

Facebook's Political Maelstrom Exposed.  The Wall Street Journal has obtained internal Facebook documents that shed light on how politics has affected the social media giant's behavior in recent years.  Some argue that the documents confirm suspicions that Facebook deliberately suppresses conservative views, but to me the story seems more complicated than that: [...] The New York Times and Washington Post are just as partisan as Breitbart, a major focus of the WSJ story, and they are no more accurate.  Yet Facebook pays them for, and features prominently, their content.  Apparently no one at Facebook has ever questioned whether false and hateful reporting by the Post and the Times, such as the Russia collusion hoax to name just one example, should cause their content to be suppressed or downgraded.

YouTube deletes MAGA rapper's 'Let's Go Brandon' song because it contains 'medical misinformation' with lyric 'pandemic ain't real'.  A MAGA hat-wearing rapper whose song Let's Go Brandon went from a YouTube sensation to near the top of the charts on iTunes was removed after the woke streaming giant said the video contained 'medical misinformation.'  Rapper Bryson Gray announced on Twitter Thursday that the music video for his anti-Biden song was canceled by YouTube.  'What medical misinformation is in the song?  Whoa,' he asked.  In the music video, Gray appears in an 'Impeach Biden' T-shirt and a MAGA bucket hat while holding an assault rifle.  The song features the lyrics 'pandemic ain't real, they just planned it,' and 'Biden said the jab stop the spread, it was lies.'

YouTube Removes 'Let's Go Brandon' Song as Reports Indicate Similar Actions Taken Against Others.  'Let's go, Brandon' — the meme with the implicit criticism of Joe Biden — has taken off like a rocket.  As we saw today, it was even used by Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) on the floor of the House as well as by the Attorney General of Texas Ken Paxton when announcing he would be suing Joe Biden over the border for stopping the building of the border wall.  As we noted, while Joe Biden stopped the border wall that would have helped protect Americans, he was having fencing built around his beach house.  But given that criticism of Biden, one might imagine there would be a backlash from some in the media or on the left against the meme.  Now some are asking if that's what's happening after actions taken by YouTube.

YouTube Bans 'The Vietnamese Alex Jones' After Whining John Oliver Complained.  YouTube has banned a radio host after English "Comedian" John Oliver described him as 'the Vietnamese Alex Jones'.  Oliver complained on his HBO show that "While Alex Jones has been removed from YouTube for spreading misinformation," Nguy Vu, the host of King Radio, "is still going strong on the platform despite the fact you just heard him say 'masks are killing people,' which clearly violates YouTube's ban on claims that wearing a mask is dangerous."

Google bans ads, monetized content that questions 'scientific consensus' of climate change.  Google has released strict new guidelines regarding content on climate change on its platforms, promising to ban advertisements and demonetize YouTube videos that challenge "well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change."  In a statement released Thursday [10/7/2021], Google published its new guidelines, "Updating our ads and monetization policies on climate change," seeing fit to disincentivize all content that characterizes claims of man-made climate change as "a hoax or a scam," in the process enforcing some of the most restrictive measures against dissenting from mainstream thought on climate change.  As of next month, any claims which deny that "long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change," will be subject to removal or demonetization.

YouTube temporarily bans Steven Crowder for hurting transgender feelings.  American Marxism, unable to use economics to attack America, now opts for tribalism, dividing Americans into victims and abusers.  The abusers are always straight White men.  Currently, the left's two primary victim classes are Blacks and LGBTers, especially so-called transgender people.  Anything you say about them that is not slavishly supportive is hate speech, and that's true whether your statements are factually accurate or not.  And that's why popular YouTuber Steven Crowder has been put in YouTube's deep freeze.

Big Tech Censors GOP Congressmen More Than Democrats, 54-to-1.  Big Tech censorship is omnipresent in the world and political sphere at large.  There has been an uproar over online censorship against conservatives.  The main targets have included individuals who aim to make an impact in the conservative movement through their own organization or political platform.  The American Principles Project is a conservative group that focuses on the importance of family and protecting parents and children from the attacks of wokeism and progressivism in the 21st century.  With no warning or notice, YouTube shut down its eight year old account.  The account has since been restored but the initial decision still holds impact.  Congresspeople have also been censored which limits their ability to reach new voters and gain support for their political platform.  President Donald Trump was censored 625 times from May 2018 to January 2021 while Joe Biden was censored zero times.

YouTube yanks conservative American group account with no warning, reinstates after backlash.  After deleting the conservative American Principles Project's 8-year account with no warning on Monday, YouTube reinstated it temporarily after massive backlash but has removed a number of videos claiming they are in violation of their online policies.  "At 6:30 am, American Principles Project received an email from YouTube notifying us that our page was shut down.  They failed to give us any reason why whatsoever.  Just that we had either 'severe or repeated violations' of their community guidelines," president Terry Schilling told the Daily Caller. [...] The social media giant cited reuploads of former White House adviser Steve Bannon's War Room on the APP channel as the reason for their suspension.  Bannon's YouTube channel was banned without any explanation in January.

The Fakest "Whistleblower" Ever.  In a lesser-noticed but revealing portion of Frances Haugen's stage-managed PR tour last week, the vaunted "Facebook Whistleblower" took a moment to show off her "national security" credentials for Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska.  After the two had finished rehearsing all the reasons why American children are at such grave risk from a dangerously unregulated internet, they pivoted to another topic — that being Haugen's previous experience at Facebook working in what she describes as "counter-espionage" operations.  Yes, you read that right:  Haugen was apparently a "project manager" at something called the "threat intelligence org," located deep in the bowels of Facebook, at which she claims to have presided over a team carrying out "counter-espionage" ops on behalf of Mark Zuckerberg.

Sen. Ron Johnson Says Lives Are Being Lost Due to Big Tech Censorship of Conservatives.  Censorship of videos and written posts on major social media outlets about successful treatments of victims of the CCP virus — also known as the novel coronavirus — are causing people to lose their lives, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).  "Everything to do with COVID has been most troubling because the internet could have been used so helpfully, so powerfully, by allowing doctors to disseminate their practices of medicine," Johnson told reporters during a virtual news conference hosted Tuesday [10/12/2021] by the Media Research Center (MRC) and the MRC blog Free Speech America (FSA).  "I remember doctors doing videos out of New York recognizing that ventilators weren't working.  I remember a couple of doctors out of California talking about how they were treating COVID with repurposed drugs and those videos were taken down, they were censored," Johnson said.

Google, YouTube to demonetize any content that does not comport with the left's idea of "climate change".  Once again, two major technology giants are choosing left-wing politics over rationality and truth because their CEOs must figure when the Marxist revolution in America is complete they're going to have a seat at the governing table.  This week Google and Google-owned YouTube announced they will no longer allow content questioning the left's "climate change" dogma to be monetized. [...] But again, there is no "consensus" that climate change — and yes, the world's climate is ever-changing — is caused by human activities.  One liberal academic, Dr. Steve Koonin, who served as the undersecretary of energy for science during the Obama regime, told Tucker Carlson earlier this year that the narrative is a fiction made up by politicians and echoed by left-wing media for their personal benefit and empowerment — and he based his opinion on actual science, not speculation or political viewpoints.  According to data from the U.S. government, Koonin said in June that there are "no detectable human influences" on natural disasters like hurricanes and it has been that way for more than a century.  He also said that today's heatwaves in the U.S. are just as common as they were back in 1900.

Facebook Whistleblower's Private Twitter Account Reveals Marxist Sympathies.  The corporate media's fêted Facebook "whistleblower" tweeted a number of racially charged comments, as well as claiming to have bought books by Karl Marx for young children, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.  Frances Haugen — who went from nobody to testifying on Capitol Hill within a matter of days — has been demanding mass censorship on social media, particularly aimed at those who don't share her worldview.  But her own behavior on social media may serve to undermine her moral authority on the matter.  A private profile linked to Haugen which appeared in her biography for speaking events such as the 2015 Girl Geek Dinner reveals an even more bizarre side to the former Facebook staffer.  It also contains posts detailing work for her previous employers such as Google and her time attending Harvard Business School.

Beware of Regime-Approved Whistleblowers.  Last week a new kind of social media witness appeared:  a whistleblower.  Frances Haugen emerged with a great deal of fanfare, complete with a public relations firm, a verified account on Twitter, and a fawning entourage, including members of the press and Congress.  But instead of denouncing social media for its excessive power, wealth, and hostility to traditional American values, Haugen pleaded for regulations that happen to align with the peculiar values and interests of Silicon Valley.  She denounced free speech on the platform as a threat to democracy and lamented Facebook's disbanding of its civil Integrity team, which was the key to Facebook's recent meddling in American elections.  While some of her criticisms were designed to appeal to normal people with normal sensibilities — such as exposing Facebook's shockingly frank willingness to create algorithms to track and engage children — the bulk of her agenda was not so different from the preferences of social media leaders.  Namely, she wants social media to act as a gatekeeper and curator of content, much like the legacy media did before the internet was created.

Google Suspends American Principles Project YouTube Account.  Google suspended the YouTube account of conservative think tank American Principles Project (APP) on Monday, president Terry Schilling told the Daily Caller.  "At 6:30 am, American Principles Project received an email from YouTube notifying us that our page was shut down.  They failed to give us any reason why whatsoever.  Just that we had either 'severe or repeated violations' of their community guidelines," Schilling said.  Schilling tweeted a screenshot of the email YouTube sent APP noting the ban.  YouTube did not explain which guidelines APP broke but did offer Schilling the opportunity to appeal his suspension.

mRNA Vaccine Inventor 'Blocked' From Reading New England Journal of Medicine.  Dr Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA vaccines and RNA as a drug, has apparently been banned from reading the New England Journal of Medicine after they decided to manually block his IP address in a stunningly "petty act."  "This is fascinating.  I am apparently no longer allowed to read the New England Journal of Medicine," Dr Malone said Thursday [10/7/2021] on Twitter.  "They have blocked my internet protocol address."  Malone said he's aware of how to get around IP blocks "but what is fascinating is that the NEJM would even take the trouble to do this petty act."

Here's the Reason Google Is Going After "Climate Denial" Right Now.  Over the weekend, we learned that Google will ban any and all "climate deniers" from advertising on Google's Advertising platform — the largest such platform on the Internet.  True to form, media coverage appears to be largely in lockstep with Google and is wrote it less as a major tech story and more as a press release. [...] Google is under a lot of scrutiny right now in the tech world.  While companies like Apple are doing what they can to further and further protect private information, Google is making it easier than ever for its customers — advertisers — to get the information they need on you, the product they provide those customers.

Throttling free speech is not the way to fix Facebook and other social media.  Listening to former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, senators decried how Facebook is literally killing people by not censoring content, and Haugen proposed a regulatory board to protect the public.  But before we embrace a new "ministry of information" model to protect us from dangerous viewpoints, we may want to consider what we would lose in this Faustian free-speech bargain.  Warnings over the "addiction" and "unhealthy" content of the internet have been building into a movement for years.  In July, President Biden slammed Big Tech companies for "killing people" by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic.  On Tuesday, many senators were enthralled by Haugen's testimony because they, too, have long called for greater regulation or censorship.  It all began reasonably enough over concerns about violent speech, and then expanded to exploitative speech.  However, it continued to expand even further as the regulation of speech became an insatiable appetite for silencing opposing views.

Real Facebook Whistleblower Exposes Frances Haugen: 'She's a Deep State Stooge'.  Facebook 'whistleblower' Frances Haugen is actually a 'Deep State' stooge who was tasked with justifying stricter censorship rules across the internet, a real whistleblower has claimed.  In case you missed it, earlier this week, Haugen came forward to warn the world that Facebook needed to be censored even more than it is so that 'evil' conservatives and independent thinkers are eradicated completely.  She was met by instant universal praise by the mainstream media, given a multi-million dollar legal team, verified on Twitter, given a prime-time television slot, and invited to air her grievances to Congress.  This is in stark contrast to actual whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange or Chelsea manning — all of whom have been exiled, kidnapped, imprisoned and shunned by the media.

Google Attacks Free Speech on Climate Claims.  Google is moving into full authoritarian mode, cracking down on digital ads promoting what they determine to be false climate change claims or being used to make money from such content.  The tech giant is claims it is hoping to limit revenue for alleged climate change deniers and stop the spread of so-called misinformation on its platforms.  Google and other Big Tech publishers have increasingly veered toward active censorship of positions that undermine leftist dogma.  Several of those, however, have later proven to be wrong, such as suppression of reports on Hunter Biden's laptop and the coronavirus lab-leak theories.  The company said Thursday [10/7/2021] in a blog post that the new policy will also apply to YouTube, which last week announced it would also be determining what is and isn't vaccine misinformation.

Google Announces They Will Monitor YouTube Videos For "Prohibited Claims" About Climate Change.  Comrade rebels, the Ministry of Truth is here to guide you in your correct thoughts.  Google, the world's largest internet search engine and owner of the YouTube platform, has announced their intent to demonetize any content providers who challenge scientific consensus on climate change and global warming.  According to CBS, any person who advances a "prohibited claim" will have ads on their their content removed.

YouTube demonetizes climate denialism content.  And while one can still deny that reality in their YouTube content, they won't be able to monetize or run advertisements for it.  On Thursday [10/7/2021], YouTube updated its ads and monetization policies to prohibit the monetization of climate denialism content.  The policy covers content that claims climate change is a hoax or a scam.  Creators will also be unable to monetize content that denies that the global climate is warming or that humans contribute to climate change.  Advertisements for this type of content are now also prohibited on YouTube.  YouTube says the policy decision was simple:  Advertisers and creators do not want to be associated with climate denialism.

Also posted under Silencing the global warming skeptics.

Reopen California Schools Facebook Page Mysteriously Disappears.  After a member of Reopen California Schools PRA'd the vaccine-related death of a 15-year-old Sonoma County teenager, their Facebook page, with over 18,000 members, has mysteriously gone "poof".  [Tweet]  Facebook did have a major outage yesterday, and was down for about six hours.  Once you could access the site, it was still wonky.  So, perhaps this is the reason Reopen California Schools can no longer access their page.  Possible, but doubtful.  With the increasing attacks on grassroots activism groups formed by parents against school boards and teachers unions, this type of naked swipe by Big Tech comes as no surprise.

Facebook 'whistleblower' worked for unit that censored Hunter Biden laptop story.  Facebook "whistleblower" Frances Haugen — who urged members of Congress this week to force the social-media giant to increase its policing of "misinformation" — worked for a unit at Facebook that censored the New York Post's blockbuster Hunter Biden laptop stories last fall.  Haugen testified this week that the Facebook's "civic integrity" unit was established for the 2020 election to combat "misinformation" and wound down when Biden won, Breitbart News reported.  A poll indicated the "laptop story" — which was about evidence that Joe Biden and his family cashed in on his position as vice president in business deals that potentially compromised national security — affected the outcome of the election.  The White House still insists that despite further confirmation that the messages on the laptop are authentic, the claims amount to "Russian disinformation."

What Facebook 'whistleblower' Frances Haugen really wants: more censorship of conservative views.  How convenient that Facebook "whistleblower" Frances Haugen just gave the social network another excuse to crack down on conservative content.  In her congressional testimony Tuesday, Haugen, a data scientist, called on Congress to enact more regulations on her former employer to combat misinformation on the platform, saying the company puts profits over public safety.  At issue for Haugen is Facebook's algorithm, which in 2018 the company changed to prioritize high-engagement content, thereby contributing — according to Haugen — to increased divisiveness and polarization among users.  Haugen even went so far as to say that Facebook's switching off of "safeguards" after the 2020 election led to the Jan. 6 US Capitol riot. [...] Whatever you think of the Capitol riot, Facebook did not cause it.  The way Haugen used the word "insurrection" hinted of her likely progressive-lefty politics — revealing her true motives.  And what Haugen means by "safeguards" is no doubt censoring of conservative content, in a way [New York] Post readers know all too well.

Facebook Censorship Partner Steve Hayes Defends Facebook's Election Meddling On Behalf Of Joe Biden.  Stephen Hayes, the editor and CEO of the Never Trump website The Dispatch, told Fox News viewers on Monday night that his publication, which Big Tech employs to censor content including pro-life posts, did not see enough evidence about the Hunter Biden laptop story to "fact-check" it.  "We didn't do a straight-up fact-check on the Hunter Biden story in part because there wasn't enough information in those early days to do a definitive fact-check," Hayes said of the story that Big Tech throttled and corrupt media ignored in the weeks leading up to the pivotal 2020 presidential election.  "That's part of the role of fact-checkers, determining what's factual so that you're correcting facts rather than trying to correct opinion." [...] The Dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg was one of the many people on the left and in the corrupt corporate media to pretend shortly before the 2020 presidential election that the Hunter Biden story was Russian disinformation.

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor.  There is no doubt, at least to me, that Facebook and Google are both grave menaces.  Through consolidation, mergers and purchases of any potential competitors, their power far exceeds what is compatible with a healthy democracy.  A bipartisan consensus has emerged on the House Antitrust Committee that these two corporate giants — along with Amazon and Apple — are all classic monopolies in violation of long-standing but rarely enforced antitrust laws.  Their control over multiple huge platforms that they purchased enables them to punish and even destroy competitors, as we saw when Apple, Google and Amazon united to remove Parler from the internet forty-eight hours after leading Democrats demanded that action, right as Parler became the most-downloaded app in the country, or as Google suppresses Rumble videos in its dominant search feature as punishment for competing with Google's YouTube platform.  Facebook and Twitter both suppressed reporting on the authentic documents about Joe Biden's business activities reported by The New York Post just weeks before the 2020 election.

Facebook Whistleblower Is a Democrat Activist [...] Republicans Pretend They Cannot See What's Going On.  The transparency of this operation was/is brutally obvious.  Frances Haugen appears on CBS 60-Minutes as a Facebook "whistleblower", and already had a congressional hearing lined up for 48 hours later?  C'mon man... did the lessons of Sandra Fluke or Christine Blasey Ford not register with anyone?  Former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen is a left-wing activist with a long history of giving money to far-left fellow travelers including congressional moonbat AOC.  Haugen is the Blasey-Ford of 2021 and her objective is to further advance the premise of censorship and political targeting under the guise of protecting children.

Facebook 'Whistleblower' Has Ties to Group Behind Trump's First Impeachment, Jen Psaki's Former PR Firm.  As earlier predicted by Becker News, the Facebook "whistleblower" Frances Haugen called for more censorship during her Senate testimony on Tuesday.  "I am here today because I believe that Facebook's products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy," she said in opening remarks.  "The company's leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won't make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.  Congressional action is needed.  They won't solve this crisis without your help."

How to Reclaim Freedom of Speech in a Culture of Censorship.  The First Amendment protects citizens against government censorship and limitations of freedom of expression, though it does not prevent private companies from setting their own rules.  (This is a very important point that must be taken into account anytime freedom of speech limitations come into question.)  Because we live in a world of high-tech communication that's underscored by the internet and social media, it's impossible to have a discussion about free speech without bringing online platforms into the conversation.  And, admittedly, this is where it gets a little sticky.  Because most social media platforms and large online media companies overwhelmingly have a liberal slant or bias, it's often difficult for those on the right side of conversations to express themselves without being attacked or censored.

LinkedIn Bans Geologist for Climate Change Posts: 'This Type of Content Is Not Allowed'.  Greg Wrightstone, a geologist and expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has posted content on LinkedIn for years.  It would often spark discussions and debates among his followers — and the occasional trolls.  That changed last month.  Wrightstone, who serves as executive director of the CO2 Coalition, says he was banned from LinkedIn for posting factual information related to climate change.  His appeal was denied, leaving him without a voice on a platform where he had cultivated a significant following.  [Tweet]  Having been stripped of his ability to communicate on LinkedIn, Wrightstone now is speaking out and sharing his story publicly with The Daily Signal.

The Digital Revolution Eats Its Children.  It can't be a coincidence that Facebook's empire of evil shut down today, the day before whistleblower Frances Haugen will testify before the consumer protection subcommittee of Senate Commerce.  Seven hours after Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram disappeared into the cybersphere Gehenna, the system remained offline.  Reuters reported late Monday that "sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible," and my Twitter feed is full of speculation about an inside job.  There are some things that even the Wokies can't stomach.  The butchery of the souls of young people is one of them.  Leave aside Facebook's totalitarian manipulation of content on behalf of the liberal elite:  Its most egregious crime is the mass manipulation of pre-teens and teenagers through the self-image terrorism of Instagram.

Facebook whistleblower reveals she filed at least eight SEC complaints.  A former Facebook employee has unmasked herself as the source behind damaging leaks about the social media giant — and claimed it deliberately sought to stoke discontent to keep users coming back to their newsfeeds.  Frances Haugen, 37, came forward on America's top-rated news show 60 Minutes Sunday night, with the data scientist also accusing her former employer of contributing to the January 6 riots.  She said: 'Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety.'

Facebook whistleblower speaks publicly ahead of congressional testimony.  A Facebook whistleblower revealed her identity in a Sunday night interview while trashing the social media giant for prioritizing divisive content over safety to garner higher profits.  Frances Haugen, 37, spoke out publicly for the first time since quitting Facebook in May when the company dismantled her unit that attempted to address misinformation on the popular platform.  Before leaving the company, Haugen copied thousands of pages on internal documents — some of which had already been reported on — to back up her claims.  "The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook," Haugen said on CBS's "60 Minutes."

The Editor says...
Yes, but isn't that true of every company?  For example, do grocery stores have self-checkout and "loyalty" cards for your benefit or theirs?

The Largest Autocracy on Earth.  This summer, the population of Zuckerberg's supranational regime reached 2.9 billion monthly active users, more humans than live in the world's two most populous nations — China and India — combined.  To Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, they are citizens of Facebookland.  Long ago he conspicuously started calling them "people" instead of "users," but they are still cogs in an immense social matrix, fleshy morsels of data to satisfy the advertisers that poured $54 billion into Facebook in the first half of 2021 alone — a sum that surpasses the gross domestic products of most nations on Earth.  GDP makes for a telling comparison, not just because it gestures at Facebook's extraordinary power, but because it helps us see Facebook for what it really is.  Facebook is not merely a website, or a platform, or a publisher, or a social network, or an online directory, or a corporation, or a utility.  It is all of these things.  But Facebook is also, effectively, a hostile foreign power.

"Facebook is a lie-disseminating instrument of civilizational collapse".  The Atlantic, the magazine and multi-platform publisher run by a company owned by Steve Jobs' widow, is heaping brutal criticism on Facebook, including calling it an 'instrument of civilizational collapse.'  The essay is making a rough week for the social media giant even worse.  Executive Editor Adrienne LaFrance referred to Facebook as a 'hostile foreign power' and was heavily critical of CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a column titled The Biggest Autocracy on Earth published Monday.

YouTube Bans All 'Harmful Vaccine Content' From Its Platform.  Google-owned YouTube said on Sept. 29 that it will ban all "harmful vaccine content" from its platform, including claims that vaccines are ineffective at reducing transmission of disease, prompting concerns that the firm will escalate censorship of dissenting viewpoints.  "We've steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and we're now at a point where it's more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines," YouTube wrote in a blog post.  So far, the Bay Area-based company said it has removed 130,000 videos for violating its policies that it claims were created in tandem with various "experts" to deal with alleged "COVID-19 and medical misinformation."  Now it removes content that claims "approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines," YouTube stated on its blog, saying that its policy will now apply to content that questions the efficacy of all vaccines, not just those for COVID-19.

YouTube Bans All Content Stating 'Vaccines Are Ineffective or Dangerous,' Deletes RFK Jr And Dr Mercola's Channels.  Under YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's new speech codes, YouTubers can now be banned for quoting CDC director Rochelle Walensky admitting last month on live TV that covid shots do not "prevent transmission" of the virus. [...] [Indeed], just quoting the long list of horrible side effects in Pfizer's own covid vaccine insert now qualifies as "misinformation."

Google Subsidiary YouTube Bans Any Content or Discussion Critical of Vaccines.  Google has made a big move today [9/29/2021] to block any public discussion of vaccines, side-effects or efficacy.  Within an announcement on YouTube, the Google subsidiary has changed its policy and will now block any content that is critical of vaccines.  Only correct thoughts and approved speech, from the global government perspective, will be permitted on the YouTube platform.

YouTube Announces It Will Ban All 'Anti-Vaccine' Content.  The social media giant YouTube will begin banning content it deems "anti-vaccine," claiming that sowing skepticism about the coronavirus vaccine has led to reduced vaccination rates across the country.  "Misinformation researchers" have claimed for years that vaccine skepticism on YouTube was leading to reduced vaccination rates not only for COVID-19 vaccines but for childhood disease vaccines as well.  But YouTube has resisted targeting anti-vax skeptics, saying that maintaining a relatively open platform was a free speech issue.  But the social media company has come under increasing threat from government regulators who want YouTube and other social media sites to spout only government-approved ideas about vaccines.  The YouTube ban could easily include bans on content that discusses side effects or vaccine efficacy.

YouTube bans all content containing vaccine misinformation.  YouTube has banned all videos containing misinformation about vaccines that are currently administered and have been approved by local health authorities or the World Health Organization.  The measure is an expansion of a policy covering COVID-19 vaccines.  The service says that users shouldn't, for instance, post videos in which they claim that vaccines lead to chronic side effects (other than rare side effects that health authorities have acknowledged); content that alleges vaccines don't reduce transmission or contraction of diseases; or videos that have inaccuracies about vaccine ingredients.  There are some exceptions.  YouTube "will continue to allow content about vaccine policies, new vaccine trials and historical vaccine successes or failures."

John Stossel Sues Facebook Alleging Defamation Over 'Fact-Check' Label.  Former TV journalist John Stossel has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Facebook seeking at least $2 million in damages, alleging that the company defamed him by adding "fact-check" labels to two videos he posted related to climate change.  After Facebook's labels, the lawsuit claims "his viewership plummeted due to both Facebook's censorship and the reputational harm caused by the false labels."  Variety reports that former TV journalist John Stossel is suing tech giant Facebook for defamation, seeking at least $2 million in damages after Facebook added fact-checking labels to two videos Stossel posted relating to climate change.  A Facebook spokesperson told Variety in a statement:  "We believe this case is without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously against the allegations."

Republicans [are] blacklisted 53 to 1 over Democrats on social media.  Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got 'em:  According to a review of the actions of the big social media companies against politicians, the Media Research Center has found that Republicans are censored at a rate 53 times more than Democrats on social media.  The attacks on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Instagram, and others have been against both standing Republican members of Congress as well as Republican candidates running for office, with further evidence showing that Facebook very specifically has been favoring Democratic incumbents.  Nor have the top managers and owners of these social media companies been able to counter this data.

Top Republican torches LinkedIn for censoring Americans at the request of China.  A top Republican has become the first member of Congress to call out LinkedIn, the only major American social media platform that operates in China, for censoring American users on behalf of the ruling Communist Party.  Rep. Jim Banks, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee in Congress, sent a letter Friday [9/24/2021] to Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, criticizing them for bowing down to the Chinese government by blocking the profiles of Americans who refer to the Asian superpower in a critical fashion.

'Fact Checks' by Non-Experts Are Shutting Down Genuine Scientific Inquiry.  We recently published a new climate change report in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA).  The nearly two dozen co-authors of our paper are experts in solar physics and climate science from 14 countries.  We were looking at the role of the Sun in climate change.  We found that, depending on which scientific datasets you choose, you could explain the global warming since the 19th century as being anything from mostly natural to mostly human-caused.  The huge uncertainty over such a key question is a major concern.  A few days after our paper was posted online, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published their 6th Assessment Report (AR6).  The IPCC AR6 concluded that it was "unequivocal" that recent global warming was almost entirely human-caused.  The journalist Alex Newman was struck by the contrast between the two different reports.  He interviewed us, representatives for the IPCC, and several other scientists for an article in The Epoch Times.  People began sharing Newman's article on social media.  One of Facebook's "independent fact-checkers," Climate Feedback, quickly stepped in.  This "fact-checker" website, financially supported by Facebook, TikTok, Google News Initiative, and others, declared the article to be "incorrect" and "misleading."  Facebook then began censoring any posts sharing the link.

Facebook Takes Down Project Veritas Video Featuring HHS Staff Denouncing the COVID-19 Vaccine.  On Sunday [9/19/2021], Project Veritas released a bombshell undercover video featuring doctors and nurses from Health and Human Services discussing their doubts about the vaccine and how it may potentially be causing more harm than good.  The same videos were shared to the account of Project Veritas founder, James O'Keefe.  Not long afterward, Facebook and Instagram took down the videos from O'Keefe's account.  Project Veritas Chief of Staff Eric Spracklen posted to Twitter that the reason behind the deletion of the videos from O'Keefe's account was that it "could contribute to physical harm."

How our culture and our government gave too much power to Facebook.  Capitalism offers an optimal paradigm to organize a virtuous society's economic affairs.  But virtue is a precondition for capitalism, not a product of it, and no modern phenomenon better highlights that distinction than the rise of addictive social-media platforms.  This past week, The Wall Street Journal reported on Facebook's knowledge of the harmful impact of its Instagram platform on teen girls; on Facebook's role in promoting anger on its platform; on Facebook's weak response to employee-reported drug-cartel and human-trafficking activity on its platform; on how the Facebook platform thwarted Mark Zuckerberg's desire to promote COVID-19 vaccinations; and on Facebook's "XCheck" program, which exempts high-profile accounts and VIP users from Facebook's enforcement actions.  More stories are still forthcoming.  It's easy to criticize Facebook for these apparent failures, but we should pause to assess what we as a society should hold Facebook accountable for — and not.

A Hinge Moment of History.  [Scroll down]  As recently as a year ago, the clampdowns on free speech, where Twitter or Facebook would delete your account or put a warning on you were about these kind of emotional issues.  Something changed along the way, and now you will be banned or deleted or blocked or silenced simply for disagreeing with the official version of events.  For example, the Great Barrington declaration, which was written by three of the most prominent epidemiologists in the world from Harvard, Oxford, and I think it was Stanford.  That was basically deleted from YouTube, banned from Facebook, simply because it contradicted the WHO, CDC official version of events.  In what world did we suddenly wake up and find ourselves living in in which it is not permitted to disagree with government bodies on a matter of public policy on an issue that has only emerged in the past few months?  Even on an emotionally uncontentious topic such as how best to handle a pandemic, you are not allowed to criticize the official version.  I do not think there are experts.  It is just groupthink enforced by a cabal of woke billionaires, who have more power than anyone else on the planet.

Amazon Reverses Ad Ban for Book Investigating BLM, Cites 'Inaccurately Enforced' Policies.  Amazon on Thursday [9/16/2021] reversed its earlier decision to block an advertisement for a new book that is critical of the leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement, saying it had not properly enforced its own policies.  "BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution" is the latest book by Mike Gonzalez, a former reporter and opinion editor for The Wall Street Journal who is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal.  The Heritage Foundation this week attempted to buy an ad on the digital platform of Amazon, the world's largest retailer, to promote Gonzalez's book.  However, Amazon notified Heritage on Tuesday that it had rejected the ad.  After Heritage officials appealed, Amazon reversed itself.

Does Facebook Have Different Rules for VIPs?  Report of Leaked Documents Suggest It Does.  Facebook reportedly has a specific set of elite users who don't have to follow the same censorship rules applied to average users.  There's a club of elites who don't have to follow the same rules, and Facebook has reportedly hidden it until now.  "A program known as XCheck has given millions of celebrities, politicians and other high-profile users special treatment, a privilege many abuse" reported The Wall Street Journal on Monday [9/13/2021].  The Journal suggested that XCheck "was initially intended as a quality-control measure for actions taken against high-profile accounts, including celebrities, politicians and journalists."  In practice, however, it reportedly "shields millions of VIP users from the company's normal enforcement process."  The report described some users as being "whitelisted" or "rendered immune from enforcement actions — while others are allowed to post rule-violating material pending Facebook employee reviews that often never come."

I've Been Suspended by YouTube.  Last night, as I have been doing for months, I did an episode of "my" internet show, "The World According to Ben Stein."  It's a panel show lasting about an hour.  The producer is my pal, Judah Friedman.  None of us gets paid a dime.  We talk about politics and economics and sometimes about internet dating (although I am happily married and don't do internet dating).  It's a very small little enterprise, and we are all skeptical about everything. [...] The phone rang.  It was Judah Friedman to tell me that he had just been notified by "YouTube" that they would not be showing the "show" we did last night and further that we were banned from YouTube for a week.  Our crime?  That we had questioned the Covid vaccine and gone against the prevailing wisdom of the experts on Covid in our area and nationally.  That was enough to get us banned on YouTube for a week.  Now, observe what has happened.  YouTube is such an immense communications entity that to be banned from it is to banned from national mass communication.  Yes, it's not part of the government, so the First Amendment does not strictly apply to it.  BUT, it is so big that it approximates the government.  And to be banned from it is to be banned from national debate on important issues.

I See Free Speech Disappearing Before Our Very Eyes.  [Scroll down]  But now we have a new and devilish threat:  To understand it, we must know that the USA's founding document is the Constitution.  It is a uniquely perfect document, allowing for the maximum of self-government and self-discipline in a world of confusing and aggressive men and women who do not always agree, often function with hatred in their hearts, and sometimes do not wish well for our nation.  But the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, allows us to function anyway, even with all of these shortcomings and dangers.  If the citizenry can be allowed to self-govern, the nation can work.  If the rights of Americans to speak freely, to worship, to petition for a redress of grievances, can be preserved, the nation will survive and flourish.  It was to demolish that framework towards which Al Qaeda worked.  Again, Al Qaeda did not succeed.  But now we have an alliance between the almighty Big Tech Internet companies of this country and the Democrat regime of this country.  Together, they have done the unthinkable: they have hit the citizens with overwhelmingly potent restrictions on free speech.  They have taken away free speech from a man whom they hate — Donald Trump — and preserved it for the most wicked terrorists on the planet:  Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their friends.

Texas Governor Signs Law Allowing Users to Sue Social Media Companies Over Suspensions.  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill passed by the GOP-led legislature that is designed to stop social media companies from censoring users based on their political statements or viewpoints.  The measure was introduced earlier this year but was delayed when dozens of Democrat state lawmakers left the state to deny Republicans quorum and block the passage of a voting overhaul bill that Abbott, a Republican, signed several days ago.  House Bill 20, the social media bill, was signed by Abbott on Thursday.  It prevents companies from suspending users based on their politics and allows Texas residents to file lawsuits to reinstate accounts that are deemed to have been unfairly targeted and removed.  Namely, the legislation targeted platforms that have at least 50 million users, which would include Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, among others.

Democrats Are Clearing The Way For A Major Social Media Crackdown.  Democrats look poised to beat Republicans to the punch on regulating Big Tech, despite years of complaints from the conservative base about social media censorship.  Former President Donald Trump railed against the likes of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey during his four-year stint in the Oval Office, but GOP lawmakers failed to take action in any meaningful way to respond to the concerns of their voters about Big Tech platforms' aggressive use of power.  Now, Democrats are seizing the opportunity to enforce the biggest social media crackdown yet, and they're threatening to use many of the same tools Republicans have been eyeing for years.

How to Tell What the Government Fears Most.  If truth exists independently from governmental decree, and science is a process in search of truth, then why are governments working with Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor scientific debates?  Is truth so fragile that it will not survive false attacks?  Is science so dependent on "official edicts" that it must be regulated and practiced only by a small priestly caste?  If scientific consensus depends on government creating a monopoly over information, does this mean that truth is whatever government deems it to be?  Since government is incentivized to invest in fear, is it likely that government will ever declare a truth that isn't also scary?

WhatsApp and Facebook pays more than 1,000 workers to READ messages that are flagged as 'inappropriate' and even share them with the DOJ.  WhatsApp's promise of private messages with end-to-end encryption appears to have been false, an investigation revealed.  When Facebook purchased the popular messaging app for $19 billion in 2014, both companies assured users that their data could not be accessed by either company.  But Facebook not only hired 1,000 workers to sift through millions of messages on WhatsApp, which has two billion users around the world, but it also shared some of those messages with law enforcement and the U.S. Department of Justice to help put people in prison, ProPublica claims.

Sky News Boss Lambasts YouTube for Suspension, 'Opaque' Guidelines.  Claims that Sky News Australia is spreading COVID-19 misinformation are "frankly ridiculous," according to CEO Paul Whittaker, who issued a stinging criticism of video-sharing giant YouTube, at a parliamentary inquiry on Monday [9/6/2021].  Fronting the Standing Committee on Environment and Communications, Whittaker questioned why the Google-owned tech giant could be an arbiter of content.  "There is no expectation that our viewers agree with every opinion expressed by every host, guest, or panellist," he said.  "But it now appears commonplace to discredit any debate on contentious issues as 'misinformation'."  "YouTube's actions make clear that it is not a neutral platform, but a publisher selectively broadcasting content and censoring certain views, while allowing videos that are patently false, misogynistic, and racist to proliferate," Whittaker said.

Tech tyrants elevate Biden to 'Dear Leader' status, with criticism forbidden.  Shana Chappell, whose son, U.S. Marine and lance corporal Kareem Nikoui, was murdered in Afghanistan thanks to the Biden administration's fecklessness, took to social media to say exactly what she thought of Biden, including questioning the legitimacy of his presidency.  It was classic free speech of the type the First Amendment protects... so Instagram (which Facebook owns) suspended her.  It later reinstated her, assuring that it was all a mistake when we all know that the only mistake was that Facebook/Instagram got caught.  The mere fact that Facebook/Instagram took this step — and thought it could get away with it — is a perfect example of the fact that the tech tyrants are functioning in the same way as North Korean censors, banning any speech critical of the "Dear Leader" and his policies.

Instagram Deleted Account of Mother of Slain Marine:  Report.  Facebook has reportedly backtracked after it deleted the account of Shana Chappell, the grieving mother of Lance Cpl.  Kareem Nikoui, who was killed in Afghanistan last week.  Like so many other censorship instances before, the Big Tech platform claimed the removal was a mistake, according to the New York Post.  Lance Cpl.  Kareem Nikoui was killed in the recent Kabul attack.  Chappell reportedly posted on Instagram that President Joe Biden was disrespectful when they met after the death of her son.  She added that she told the president that her son's blood was "on [his] hands," according to Reclaim The Net.  Chappell reportedly posted on Facebook that her Instagram account had been deleted, and her Facebook account was subsequently restricted.  "As soon as I posted about what happened to my son Instagram started pulling up my posts from months ago and sending me notifications that if I kept posting stuff like this that they would disable my account.  Posts from months ago," she said, according to Reclaim The Net.  California State Senator Melissa Melendez (R), a Navy veteran, appeared to be appalled by Instagram's actions.

Big Tech Censorship Is an Assault on Individual Liberty.  Most state legislatures are actively considering laws to protect their constituents' online free speech from Big Tech censorship.  In response, Big Tech increasingly advances an argument designed to appeal to libertarians and other supporters of limited government.  Big Tech claims state policymakers should not safeguard their constituents' free-speech rights because doing so would be an assault on free markets and Big Tech's property rights.  Big Tech's reasoning is seriously flawed and undermines, rather than promotes, individual liberty.  Before addressing the serious flaws in Big Tech's arguments, it is worth noting the hypocrisy of Big Tech's decision to assert libertarian, free-market principles in defense of censoring Americans' speech.  Big Tech often claims it has property rights and free-market rights that should be immune from government intervention.  In particular, these businesses claim the government has no right to meddle in the choices private companies make regarding their businesses, including decisions about the kinds of material permitted on social media platforms.

YouTube Yanks Over 1 Million COVID-19 Videos It Deems 'Dangerous'.  YouTube has removed more than 1 million videos on its platform containing alleged misinformation related to COVID-19.  The Google-owned company announced the figure in a blog post Wednesday, "Perspective:  Tackling Misinformation on YouTube," written by Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief product officer.  "Since last February, we've removed over 1 million videos related to dangerous coronavirus information, like false cures or claims of a hoax," he said.  The company focuses on removing content that can directly lead to "egregious real world harm," according to Mohan.  YouTube also said it was addressing misinformation by optimizing search results to prioritize "quality" news and information from "trusted sources."  For information related to COVID-19, the company relied on "expert consensus" from health organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.  "In the midst of a global pandemic, everyone should be armed with absolutely the best information available to keep themselves and their families safe," Mohan said.

The Editor says...
Why are we not allowed to see the less-than-best information, too?

Democrats Aren't Even Bothering To Hide Their Wrongdoing.  Thanks to the news out of Afghanistan, Jen Psaki's recent admission that the executive branch has been colluding with the tech giants to suppress free speech, has apparently passed into the ether with far less scrutiny than it deserves.  In fact, this is such a clear violation of the First Amendment that it defies any obvious logic or rationale.  But Psaki's announcement isn't the first act in this play; it's only the most recent act in the left's years-long flouting of the rule of law.  It appeared, at first, as though there might have been a major revelation in the works and that the administration was simply trying to get out in front of it.  The media, however, know that they control the narrative and no matter how big a bomb gets dropped, they are confident that they can whitewash it or twist it into something else.

I Am Getting Tired of Being Right All the Time.  In the last several months I have written extensively and freely here at RedState about COVID-19 science, including reports on the viability of the lab-leak theory, only because it is now deemed acceptable by BigTech.  Prior to May such posts would almost certainly have been slapped with a Facebook fact-check even though no credible information (only the word of the Chinese Government and financially interested researchers), existed then or exists now definitively proving that the virus came from anywhere outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. [...] We were right, yet to this day Facebook operates its hive of misinformation, policed by "fact-checkers," with impunity.  Their stated goal of preventing the spread of misinformation was compounded by their blocking of and subsequent removal of factual information and reporting.  Why, you may ask?  Well, it might have something to do with the fact that the very people who may be responsible for perpetrating the development of this virus were included in refuting the potential that they were responsible.  Remember Peter Daszak?  The President of EcoHealth Alliance which funneled cash and research information to the Wuhan Insitute of Virology?  The man who sat on the WHO team charged with investigating the virus's origins?  He was a Facebook fact-checker.

Autonomy for Red America, Part 1.  The deplatforming of Parler was a watershed moment, as conservatives realized they would, in short order, become more than just political dissidents out of power for a presidential or Congressional term or two.  Parler's ability to do business — provide conservatives a social network free of onerous ideological censorship — was destroyed by a cabal of larger businesses on which it depended.  These decisions from Apple and Amazon Web Services, most prominently, were coordinated and ideological.  Silicon Valley's willingness to destroy Parler effectively silenced the voices of the 10 million users on its platform.  The turn toward increasingly rigid ideological censorship at micro-blogging and link-sharing sites like Twitter and Facebook has created space for smaller competitors dedicated to free expression, like Locals, Gab, Parler, Telegram and others.  In addition, alternatives to Silicon Valley photo- and video-sharing platforms like YouTube and Instagram have also begun to take shape, as more Americans realize their time on platforms owned by a Big Tech committed to censorship will come to an end — probably sooner rather than later.

The Silent Majority is Going to Get Loud.  In recent years, suppression of expression has taken another alarming turn — outright censorship.  Divergent political views, and even legitimate news stories, are being suppressed by legacy news media, Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and other social media sites.  Some have argued that as private companies they may censor content at their discretion.  However, these social media companies have become the new town squares.  Their control over information goes far beyond that of a private company merely expressing its opinion.  In addition, the Harris/Biden administration recently disclosed that it is colluding with social media oligarchs to "prevent the spread of misinformation."  Of course, anything contrary to their preferred narrative is considered "misinformation."  This is the power of government being used to crush political speech.  It is a clear violation of our right to freedom of speech — and they don't care.

Why We Should Care That YouTube Has Silenced Sen. Rand Paul.  Another day, another instance of a Big Tech company censoring content it doesn't like.  This time, YouTube — owned by Google — took down a video by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in which he discusses face masks and COVID-19. YouTube also banned Paul from its platform for a week.  "We removed content from Senator Paul's channel for including claims that masks are ineffective in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19, in accordance with our COVID-19 medical misinformation policies," YouTube said in a public statement.  Notably, YouTube's policy cites the World Health Organization and "local authorities" as its source of what's correct about COVID-19.  Yet the WHO not only flubbed its early response to the disease, it was criticized and defunded by then-President Donald Trump for its connections with China and general dysfunction.  But this is only one bad part about YouTube's decision.  Paul, a physician, wasn't saying in the video that masks are ineffective against the coronavirus.  He was saying that some masks are effective, while others are not.

Sen. Rand Paul suspended from YouTube, forced to remove video.  Sen. Rand Paul has been suspended from YouTube.  The Kentucky Republican also was forced to remove a video that YouTube said broke its rules against what it deems medical misinformation.  The one-week suspension began Monday over a video in which Mr. Paul said that "cloth masks don't work" and most over-the-counter masks "don't prevent infection," YouTube told reporters.  Mr. Paul took to Twitter to call the suspension "a badge of honor."  [Tweet]

Why I Am Deleting All Content After 48 Hours.  Never in my life, would I believe the sitting President of the United States call out 12 Americans in a McCarthyism like attack in the United States.  As you are aware, I was placed at the top of this list.  The last week has brought a tremendous amount of reflections to me, and a lot of unacceptable threats to a company full of amazing people that have helped me support you in this journey.  By now I am sure you know that there was a recent NY Times article attacking me and it was one of the most widely distributed stories in the world.  The article was loaded with false statements made about me and my organization.  The report would be laughed at if it were to be submitted for peer review, the groups that created it are funded by dark money and operated by an illegal foreign agent.  The press never questioned it, but ran with their orders from above. [...] A dissenter of medical mandates is now a target and obstacle to be removed.  I know — that's 25 years' worth of blood, sweat and tears coming down.  I can hardly believe these words are coming out of my mouth.  It's a testament of just how radical things have degenerated in the recent past.  However, I will continue to publish new articles, BUT going forward, each article I publish will be available for only 48 hours and will then be removed from the website.

CDC and Facebook 'Coordinated Closely' on Censorship of COVID-19 'Misinformation': Watchdog.  Facebook "coordinated closely" with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in controlling the narrative of the CCP virus pandemic, including suppression of alleged misinformation, and gave the health agency free advertising estimated at $3 million, according to Judicial Watch, which obtained emails that were released on July 28.  The CDC released 2,469 new documents to Judicial Watch in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filed against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  In an email exchange beginning on Jan. 26, 2020, days after a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation connected the CDC with Facebook, a representative at the social media giant informed the CDC of the actions it was taking in regards to combating misinformation on the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, that causes COVID-19.

Despite Facebook Bias, Breitbart News Destroys Establishment Media on Platform.  Despite the presence of a range of leftist "fact-checkers" with the power to suppress posts on the platform and open censorship of conservative news stories by Facebook, Breitbart News is demolishing its establishment foes on Facebook.  Facebook has an established track record of censoring conservative media.  It censored the New York Post twice, first for the Hunter Biden laptop story and then for a negative story about a Black Lives Matter co-founder.  It censored Tucker Carlson's page, reducing the Fox News host's reach on the platform little more than a month before the 2020 election.  It censored the Wall Street Journal over an op-ed on coronavirus.  And it censored Breitbart News — for a live video of a press conference.

Facebook shuts out NYU academics' research on political ads.  Facebook has shut down the personal accounts of a pair of New York University researchers and shuttered their investigation into misinformation spread through political ads on the social network.  Facebook says the researchers violated its terms of service and were involved in unauthorized data collection from its massive network.  The academics, however, say the company is attempting to exert control on research that paints it in a negative light.  The NYU researchers with the Ad Observatory Project had for several years been looking into Facebook's Ad Library, where searches can be done on advertisements running across Facebook's products.

The Social Media Giants Call Me a Violent Extremist.  Reading PJ Media the other day, I discovered to my shock that, without my knowing it, I've somehow become a violent extremist.  As a result, the social media giants Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube are determined to eradicate my nefarious presence from the interwebs.  I don't know when this particular boom will be lowered on me, if ever, but if my website Jihad Watch and I suddenly disappear from your daily Internet reading, you'll know that our intrepid self-appointed protectors are working night and day to keep you safe from violent extremism, and are to be commended for doing so.  It turns out that I'm a violent extremist in the view of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), which I might have viewed as yet another crackpot Leftist attempt to deflect attention away from the ongoing reality of Islamic jihad terrorism, and toward the chimeras of "white supremacist terrorism," "Trumpist terrorism," and whatever else they're calling foes of Old White Joe these days.

65,000 Americans censored by social media.  According to the legal team for former president Donald Trump, almost 65,000 people have submitted examples of censorship by the social media companies Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and the lawyers have amended Trump's the lawsuit to add those individuals to it. [...] I personally am not hopeful this lawsuit will change much, even if Trump wins.  The numbers suggest that the blacklisting and censorship is widespread and carries the support of large numbers of people at these companies.  In order to have any impact the damages have to be heavy, so much so that they threaten the very businesses of these tech giants.  Only then will their managements make it clear to all the employees that it is impermissible to blackball commentary, of any sort.  Barring that, I fully expect these brownshirts to shrug off any court defeat and continue their policy of censorship and the silencing of debate.  If anything, I fully expect them to accelerate their effort, teaming up with the Democrats in both Congress and the White House to use all the tools available to them to prevent the public from reading any stories critical of those Democrats.

Dr. Rand Paul Releases Video Slamming YouTube for Censorship.  Today [8/3/2021], physician and U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) released a video calling out YouTube for censoring his content.  Recently, Dr. Paul uploaded a video to his YouTube channel, which was an interview with a journalist, and during the interview they discussed a variety of topics, including the science behind masks.  Despite the fact that Dr. Paul's comments were based on scientific evidence, YouTube, acting in lockstep with the government, claimed it contradicts the government's official position and censored the video.

Database Proving How Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Has Been Taken Offline.  The National Institutes of Health database tracking U.S. taxpayer-backed research grants — including the controversial award from Mr. Anthony Fauci's agency to the Wuhan Institute of Virology — can no longer be accessed.  When searched, the database, which itemizes the billions of taxpayer-funded grants distributed by various National Institutes of Health (NIH) agencies, yields no results and prompts users with an error message.  Among the agencies included in the registry is the Fauci-led National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which has come under scrutiny for funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  The website also previously revealed NIAID-directed funds for joint research between disgrace COVID-19 investigator Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance and the Chinese government-run lab under the auspices of a nearly $3.7 million grant entitled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence."

Trump Amends Big Tech Lawsuit as 65,000 Americans Submit Censorship Stories.  Former President Donald Trump's legal team has amended his class action lawsuit against Big Tech to incorporate additional class representatives and more censorship stories provided by everyday Americans.  According to the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Trump's July 7 lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and Google is adding "additional censorship experiences" from some of the nearly 65,000 people who submitted them to the institute.  "Late last night, Amended Complaints were filed in the Big Tech lawsuits against Facebook, Inc., Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter, Inc., Jack Dorsey, Google LLC, and Sundar Pichai," AFPI said in a July 28 statement.  "Since the initial filing on July 7, 2021, nearly 65,000 American people have submitted their stories of censorship through America First Policy Institute's (AFPI) Constitutional Litigation Partnership (CLP) at TakeOnBigTech.com," AFPI added.

As COVID surges, why is YouTube suppressing SkyNews for its reports on HCQ and ivermectin?  In one of the most outrageous instances of internet censorship, YouTube has suppressed Australian news giant SkyNews for a week, based on its reports about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. [...] And it's wrong on at least two levels.  One, even if the network was wrong (a big 'if'), the censorship would be wrong, too.  In a free society, news agencies sink or swim based on the accuracy of their information.  To shut them down on a false claim of denying COVID, or for reporting on the benefits of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, serves zero useful purpose.  In a country with a free press, if SkyNews is wrong about those treatments, their credibility will vanish and their audience will evaporate.  Viewers are not stupid.  But YouTube seems to think they are.

Sky News Australia Suspended by YouTube.  YouTube has temporarily suspended Sky News Australia from posting on its video platform, issuing a first strike to the popular conservative news channel over "COVID-19 misinformation," according to a statement.  The tech giant said its decision to issue a strike was based on local and global health authority guidance, which Sky News Australia challenged as being constantly "subject to change" alongside updates to guidance from the various authorities.  Sky News Australia said the suspension was over "old videos" posted on its channel.  The strike means that Sky News Australia is suspended for a week from uploading content to its 1.85 million subscribers on its YouTube account.

GOP Fights Back:  House Republicans Launch Massive Assault Against Big Tech, Unveil 32 Bills.  House Republicans launched an effort to rein in Big Tech's growing tyranny with an onslaught of new bills in a massive push to fight back against online censorship.  Republicans in the House Energy and Commerce Committee unveiled a package of 32 bills to hold Big Tech accountable by reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, protecting children and improving transparency, among other goals.  "Big Tech has broken our trust that they can be good and responsible stewards of their platforms," said Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).  McMorris Rodgers did note that "the goal is for these drafts is to lead to concrete legislation and reforms.  The Committee is asking for stakeholder and public engagement on these draft bills as part of their thoughtful process in their Big Tech Accountability platform to drive meaningful change."

Most States Appeal Antitrust Case Against Facebook.  State and territorial attorneys general are appealing a federal judge's dismissal of their antitrust complaint against Facebook.  The complaint, filed Wednesday [7/28/2021] by 48 state and territorial attorneys general and led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, was dismissed in June, along with a complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission.  The attorneys general alleged Facebook illegally maintained a social media monopoly by acquiring smaller competitors and preventing other platforms from operating with its software.  "We filed this notice of appeal because we disagree with the court's decision and must hold Facebook accountable for stifling competition, reducing innovation, and cutting privacy protections.  We can no longer allow Facebook to profit off of exploiting consumer data," James said in a statement to The Hill news organization.

Big Tech 'Counterterrorism' Org Shifts Focus from Islamic Extremism to 'Far Right'.  Big Tech companies including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Reddit, Verizon, Airbnb, and Mailchimp will expand a project of collusion on "counterterrorism" efforts that target domestic right-wing organizations.  The organization, which initially focused on building a database on content shared by Islamic extremists linked to Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban, will now shift focus to right-wing groups including the Proud Boys.

Facebook blocks woman's 'why are men so dumb' comment as 'hate speech'.  A Detroit woman said she was temporarily banished from Facebook for "hate speech" after participating in a time-honored tradition:  commenting on a meme labeling the opposite sex as "dumb."  "At first I thought it was a joke [and] I'm like yeah right I'm blocked ... what?" Candace King told Fox News of her social media timeout, which allegedly occurred after she participated in a thread entitled "why men are so dumb."  The Facebook topic initially focused on how women will notice a difference in two different shades of purple — but quickly devolved into a discussion over mens' purported inability to differentiate nuanced shades.

House Republicans accuse Joe Biden of behaving like a 'Cuban dictator' with efforts to control social media spread of public health 'misinformation'.  Joe Biden has been accused of acting like 'a Cuban dictator' in a letter signed by 190 House Republicans, after his administration moved to force tech companies to clamp down on coronavirus misinformation.  A letter to the president was written on Thursday by Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the three top Republicans in the House — Leader Kevin McCarthy, Whip Steve Scalise and Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.  'The federal government's ongoing efforts to pressure private companies to censor speech that it disagrees with is alarming and an affront to the First Amendment,' they wrote, in a letter obtained by Fox News.

Klobuchar proposes stripping Section 230 protections for 'health misinformation'.  Senate Democrats introduced new legislation Thursday to hold social media platforms accountable for health-related misinformation during public health emergencies, a move that could cause more censorship during crises similar to the coronavirus pandemic.  The Health Misinformation Act, introduced by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the controversial liability shield for user-generated content online.  If passed, the legislation would allow social media giants, such as Facebook and YouTube, to be sued for dangerous health misinformation on their platforms.  The bill would direct the Health and Human Services secretary to issue guidelines about what constitutes health misinformation.

White House Communications Director Admits They're Trying to Censor Conservative News Sites.  During an interview with CNN this week, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield admitted the Biden administration's censorship efforts are specifically targeting conservative news sites for publishing "misinformation."  "You've heard the president speak very aggressively about this.  He understands this is an important piece of the ecosystem but its also the other thing, the president has pointed out and spoke to when he was asked about this yesterday, it is also the responsibility of the people creating the content and again I would go back to, there are conservative news outlets who are creating irresponsible content that's sharing misinformation about the virus," Bedingfield said.

White House Relies on British Dark Money Group to Identify 'Misinformation' and Justify Censorship.  A left-wing dark money group in Great Britain is behind the Biden regime's claim that 12 social media personalities are responsible for the majority of vaccine misinformation online.  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki mentioned the group's findings during the daily press briefing on Thursday after she announced that the administration has been coordinating with social media companies to combat what they consider COVID "disinformation."  "There's about 12 people that are producing 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms.  All of them remain active on Facebook despite some of them even being banned on other platforms including ones that Facebook owns," Psaki said.  Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) discussed the group behind the claim in a series of tweets Tuesday.

The American Descent into Madness.  [Scroll down]  We know from the failed Soviet system and from the French Revolution that the most mediocre in society became its most eager auditors of correct behavior.  The arbiters of proper thought — the self-righteous paid toady, the perpetual victim employed in service to government payback, the freelancing snitch — were always the villains of freedom, productivity, and humanity, whether we read of the killing off of Alexander the Great's inner circle, the forced suicides of the Neronian circle, the Jacobin murder spree, or the nightmarish world described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  That the Biden Administration has now joined with Silicon Valley to hunt down on social media any dissenters from this month's official policy on vaccinations and mask-wearing was not so shocking as to be expected from a media that banned coverage of Hunter Biden's laptop.  In Cuban-fashion, millions of judge-jury-executioner online snitches, with government encouragement, will help root out incorrect thoughts at light speed.

Sidestepping the First Amendment.  Emperor Joe Bay-den and Jen "Goebbels" Psaki have decided to start walking down a very dangerous path into the early stages of fascism:  [Video clip]

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 on Tuesday [7/20/2021].  "We've not asked Facebook to block any individual posts," the Democrat told reporters when pressed for details on its relationship with Facebook.  "The way this works is that there are trends that are out there on social media platforms.  You're aware of them.  We're aware of them.  Anyone in the public can be aware of them."

Fear Free Speech:  Biden Denounces Big Tech as "Killing People" By Not Censoring Speech.  President Joe Biden slammed Big Tech companies this week for "killing people" by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic.  It was a surprising condemnation of companies who have been loyal allies of Biden, including killing stories embarrassing to his family like the Hunter Biden laptop scandal before the election.  It also has censored stories questioning his victory in 2020.  Nevertheless, Biden denounced the range of uncensored free speech as the cause of death for many — the ultimate anti-free speech trope for those seeking to convince people to embrace their own censorship.  Biden was asked by a reporter what his message was to "platforms like Facebook" on the subject of "COVID misinformation."  He responded "They're killing people.  The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they're killing people."  This comes as these companies have been criticized for censoring debates over the origin or treatment of Covid-19.

White House Press Sec.  Jen Psaki Wants To Quash Misinformation — She Has A History Of Promoting It.  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki came under fire on Friday for saying that promoting "misinformation" should get you banned from every social media platform.  "You shouldn't be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation," Psaki said in Friday's White House press briefing, calling on Facebook to "measure and publicly share the impact of misinformation on their platform."  But Psaki herself has a history of promoting many stories on Twitter before becoming White House press secretary that turned out to be false.  After the New York Post published emails in late October 2020 found on Hunter Biden's laptop implicating his father, then-Democratic nominee for President Joe Biden, in his overseas business dealings, Psaki promoted Politico's much criticized story that lauded a letter signed by 50 former senior intelligence officials claiming the released emails had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."

Joe Biden's troubling TECHnique.  Any assessment of Joe Biden's performance last week runs into an obstacle.  While it was awful from start to finish, the hard part is deciding which was the absolute worst moment.  Was it the president's latest attack on state voting law reforms, which he bizarrely called "the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War"?  Was it the administration's outrageous invitation for the pampered popinjays at the United Nations to sit in judgment of America's racial strife?  Or perhaps it was Biden's decision to push a one-party spending spree of trillions of dollars even as inflation levels reached their highest mark in 13 years?  Under almost any president, each of those events would qualify as a low point.  But Biden is proving to be spectacularly awful at his job, and he did something else that captures the award for the week's Worst of the Worst.  Friday, the president accused Facebook of "killing people" and demanded it silence those opposed to or questioning the coronavirus vaccines.

Appeals Court Agrees to Review Decision on Big Tech's Section 230 Immunity.  A little-watched civil rights case that threatens Silicon Valley's Section 230 immunity took a huge step forward on July 16, as an appeals court that rarely does so agreed to review a lower court's decision.  The U.S. Appeals Court for the Second Circuit in New York agreed to review a lower court's ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) protects Big Tech companies such as Vimeo from civil rights liability in censorship cases.  Big Tech censorship became a hot button issue during the 2020 presidential campaign when then-President Donald Trump was selectively censored by Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.  The controversy became especially heated late in the campaign when a New York Post series of news articles regarding the allegedly corrupt business dealings of President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, was banned by the Big Tech giants.

The New Orthodoxy: Jurisdiction over your Thoughts.  [Scroll down]  Their problem is that the truth is an ever-fixed mark.  While they cannot transform the truth — the truth, by its very nature, is unchanging — they circumvent this limitation by exercising power over what can be said.  This gives the impression that what can be said is what is supposed to be said, and that what is prohibited must certainly be false.  Not by the merits of the claim but whether the claim is allowed to be communicated or researched or even debated.  This is how falsehoods win over the truth, and how politics corrupts it all.  Reporting on studies of vaccine effectiveness — even by the inventor of the mRNA technology used in some COVID vaccines — are banned from YouTube.  Medical experts and scientists who present evidence and arguments contrary to government-approved thoughts are silenced.  It seems the only authorized information on these platforms is that which is approved by "the CDC, FDA and other local health authorities."  White House press secretary Jen Psaki, expressing the position of the Biden Administration, called for Americans to be banned from all social media platforms if they dare think for themselves and disagree with "science."

The 'COVID Misinformation' Train Wreck.  White House officials are notifying Facebook about posts that allegedly spread COVID-19 misinformation as part of efforts by President Joe Biden's administration to combat what U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy described as "an imminent and insidious threat to our nation's health."  Murthy and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki discussed their efforts as part of a "new campaign" to fight virus-related misinformation. [...] Psaki said part of the Biden administration's new campaign involves asking social media companies to be more active in combatting misinformation and to share the results of their efforts publicly. [...] Psaki added that an estimated 12 individuals are responsible for about 65 percent of all anti-vaccine misinformation on social media.  Though some of those individuals are blocked on some social media platforms, she said they are not blocked on Facebook. [...] Of course, this raises lots of questions.  Who are these "12 individuals... responsible for about 65 percent of all anti-vaccine misinformation on social media"?  If they are "an imminent and insidious threat to our nation's health," why can't the government just talk to them directly?

The White House Just Confirmed Facebook Works as a Government Censorship Tool.  Speaking to reporters at the White House Thursday afternoon, Press Secretary Jen Psaki explained how the White House and the federal government are working to flag posts on Facebook which they see as "problematic."  "We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation," Psaki said, referring to information about the Wuhan coronavirus vaccine.  [Tweet]  Surgeon General Vivek Murphy is advocating for harsh punishments for those in violation.  [Tweet]  But what's problematic is this type of approach and censorship from the government.  Early last year Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg emailed Dr. Anthony Fauci offering a partnership to promote and police information about Wuhan coronavirus.  That led to Facebook, at Fauci's direction, censoring the lab leak theory for more than year.  Only recently did Facebook start allowing posts about the theory, which is exceedingly credible, to remain on the platform.

Facebook's Top Censorship Board Is Filled With Elite, Power-Loving Bureaucrats.  Facebook Oversight Board co-chair and Helle Thorning-Schmidt made it very clear that she does not believe free speech is a human right.  "How do you moderate content and how do you find that balance between human rights and free speech, which is a human right, but also other human rights because free speech is not an absolute human right," the censorship head asked during a live stream this week.  "It has to be balanced with all the human rights and that is what the oversight is there to do," she added.  Thorning-Schmidt is one of the 20 people who sit on Facebook's newest attempt to create a mass censorship campaign, which the White House just recently publicly endorsed.  The board masquerades as a means of providing support to "people's right to free expression and ensure those rights are being adequately respected."

Mark Levin: 'Jen Psaki Is the Best Witness for the Trump Lawsuit'.  Conservative radio host Mark Levin noted Thursday evening that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made the case for former President Donald Trump's new lawsuit when she urged social media companies to suppress anti-vaccine ideas.  Recently, Trump sued several social media giants for censoring him and other uses, arguing that Big Tech had to abide by the First Amendment since it took direction from the government about public issues such as the coronavirus pandemic.  Levin noted that Psaki's arguments had given new weight to Trump's arguments, which are considered relatively novel.

Twitter explodes after Psaki urges Big Tech to unite on bans for 'misinformation' spreaders.  The White House is courting intense criticism again Friday after press secretary Jen Psaki said that once users are banned from one social media platform for spreading coronavirus "misinformation," they should be expelled from all others as well.  Remarking on steps social media outlets could take for public health, she advised they "create robust enforcement strategies that bridge their properties and provide transparency about rules.  You shouldn't be banned from one platform and not others if you are for providing misinformation out there."  The remarks riled critics already concerned about collaboration between the Biden administration and Big Tech Psaki discussed from the podium on Thursday [7/15/2021], as they seek to vaccinate more Americans amid spikes in coronavirus cases in the past few weeks.

FB oversight member says free speech 'is not an absolute human right'.  A Facebook Oversight Board member says free speech is "not an absolute human right," and must be balanced against "other human rights" when deciding what content to censor.  The board member, former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt, said "free speech is not an absolute human right."  "It has to be balanced with other human rights," she said Thursday at a Politico Europe event.  The 20-member Facebook Oversight Board was set up last year to allow corporate executives to claim distance from politically sensitive decisions.  The board in May recommended that the company uphold a continued ban on former President Donald Trump's account after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

US Surgeon General Asks Big Tech to Restrict Voices That Challenge Biden Regime Narrative on Vaccinations.  Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, Vice Admiral, U.S. Public Health Service Surgeon General of the United States, has produced new guidance to combat "misinformation" about health guidance as provided by the U.S. Government.  Comrades, the 'Ministry of Truth' is becoming very real.  The government push to promote vaccinations for COVID-19 has gone well beyond reasonable advancement for the public health.  Now, we are entering a phase where the ongoing demand is becoming problematic, propaganda.  More government advocates are pushing toward mandatory vaccinations for a virus that has 99.9% survival rate.  If you stand back — the scale of the demand far exceeds the known risk from the virus itself — things just don't add up.

'Bidenflation' — The next thing big tech censors.  They've already started.  Inflation has risen substantially since President Joe Biden assumed office in January, but Sean Parnell, a U.S. military vet and candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, says that topic appears to be the next one to fall prey to social media censorship.  "Big Tech & their partisan leftwing 'fact checkers' don't care about the truth, they only care about protecting Biden & the Dems," he posted on Twitter along with a graphic showing price increases for a basket of commodities depicting a "missing context" label.  "We're seeing rising gas prices & record inflation because of Joe's 2 trillion dollar spending boondoggle & his decision to cripple our energy sector," Parnell, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump who barely lost a race for Pennsylvania's 17th congressional district in November, added.

Biden administration 'flagging problematic posts for Facebook,' Psaki says.  The Biden administration is playing an active role in flagging Facebook posts it considers to be "problematic" or "disinformation," according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.  During a Thursday [7/15/2021] press conference, Psaki said White House senior staff were engaging with "social media platforms" to combat the spread of "misinformation specifically on the pandemic."  "In terms of actions we are taking or that we're working to take, I should say, from the federal government, we've increased disinformation research and tracking within the surgeon general's office.  We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation," she said.

'One of the Worst Narratives for Us': Facebook Execs Feared Trump Win.  Facebook executives were terrified of being blamed for a Trump presidential victory, according to a New York Times story.  Those same executives later censored the Hunter Biden story that helped Joe Biden win the presidency. [...] This is the same Facebook that violated its own rules to censor the Hunter Biden story before the presidential election.  Director of Communications Andy Stone tweeted then that Facebook would be suppressing the New York Post story, saying, "While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners.  In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform."  The International Fact-Checking Network's Associate Director Cristina Tardáguila called that move "dangerous."  Yet now it's pretty clear why they did it.  Facebook executives were terrified about being called "a far-right echo chamber," and didn't want the blame for a Trump sequel.

Big Tech are State Actors.  A 'state actor' is a private company that either acts on behalf of the government or has other special relationships with the government, which subject it to constitutional restrictions on government, including the First Amendment.  Google's YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have been state actors since about 2010.  They claimed to be neutral, non-discriminating in their political and scientific views, and denied any political bias — until about a year ago.  Then they reversed the narrative and said that they are private companies that can discriminate against whomever they want.  I can list half a dozen ways in which they are state actors.  The pressure on them from Democrat officials, asserted by Trump in his lawsuit, is one of them.  Obamanet, or net neutrality, is another one.  But most obviously, they became state actors when federal and state government agencies opened accounts on their platforms and started to use them for interaction with the public.  By accepting (and luring) multiple government accounts, they became public forums and state actors.

Trump's Lawsuits Against Big Tech Will Go 'All the Way' to Supreme Court, Backers Say.  Former President Donald Trump's lawsuits against censorship by Big Tech companies likely will reach the U.S. Supreme Court, the leaders of a public policy group backing the legal action say.  "Ultimately, we are going to take [the case] all the way," Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, said in a press call Thursday afternoon.  When Newsmax's Emerald Robinson asked Pam Bondi, chairwoman of Constitutional Litigation Partnership and a former state attorney general of Florida, to clarify how far the group thinks the case will go, Bondi said both the attorneys on the case and the America First Policy Institute "believe it will go to the United States Supreme Court."  The Constitutional Litigation Partnership was established under the America First Policy Institute to fight the legal battles that threaten Americans' freedoms.  Trump announced the class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, Google, and the companies' CEOs on Wednesday [7/7/2021].

German Court Orders YouTube To Pay 100,000 Euros For Censoring Pandemic Protest Footage.  YouTube has been fined 100,000 euros by the German Higher Regional Court at Dresden after it wrongly deleted a user's video which showed massive pandemic lockdown protests in Switzerland — and then failed to reinstate the video 'immediately' after the court ordered it to do so on April 20.  Instead, the company waited nearly a month to revive the video, which led to last week's fine, issued on July 5th, according to WELT.de.

YouTube deletes Trump video, freezes CPAC account.  YouTube deleted a video of former President Donald Trump from the American Conservative Union's account and prevented the group from live-streaming the former president's Sunday CPAC speech.  In a statement, ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp said the group learned that its account had been frozen for seven days over a video from Friday in which Mr. Trump announces his class-action lawsuit against the Silicon Valley titans such as Google and YouTube.  That loss of access to its video account meant the ACU, which runs the Conservative Political Action Conference, could not upload Mr. Trump's speech or any other live content from its CPAC 2021 Part 2 in Dallas over the weekend.

Trump v. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, et al.  On July 7, 2021, President Trump's legal team filed three major lawsuits in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.  The suits named as defendants:  Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg (21-cv-22440), Twitter and Jack Dorsey (21-cv-22441) and YouTube and Sundar Pichai (21-cv-22445 as defendants.  Judge Kathleen Mary Williams, an Obama nominee, has been assigned to the Facebook case.  Judge Robert Nichols Scola, Jr, an Obama nominee, has been assigned the Twitter case and Judge K. Michael Moore, a George H.W. Bush nominee, has been assigned the YouTube case.  There is no substitute for reading the actual complaints but here are some of the highlights. [...]

Why Big Tech Will Lose the Censorship Wars.  Last Wednesday [7/7/2021], former President Trump filed a class action lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook, and Google pursuant to their partisan censorship of viewpoints that conflict with those of their CEOs and employees.  The next day, Trump took to the Wall Street Journal, where he succinctly summed up his most compelling argument for suing:  "If they can do it to me, they can do it to you."  Ironically, this echoes what Bernie Sanders told the New York Times last March: "[Y]esterday it was Donald Trump who was banned, and tomorrow, it could be somebody else."  If Trump and Sanders take the same position on Big Tech censorship, the issue deserves serious attention.  Yet the Democrats and the media have summarily dismissed the class action lawsuit as a publicity stunt while insisting that "private companies" aren't bound by the First Amendment.

Fight back against Big Tech oligarchs before free speech disappears.  When YouTube recently banned radio host Eric Metaxas for violating their speech guidelines, it hardly rated a headline.  We're too accustomed to Big Tech canceling people, and too afraid we'll be next.  But cases like this have inspired a bipartisan push in Congress to break up the likes of Google (owners of YouTube), Facebook, Apple and Amazon, which presume to decide if your opinion is valid in the public square.  The First Amendment prevents Congress from limiting speech, but the Founders didn't envision corporations so massive, they could silence citizens more effectively than any law.  I've spoken to candidates who fear crossing them because Big Tech can throttle their reach — or worse, deny them sweet campaign cash.  To paraphrase an axiom:  A company big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.

A Coup Against The Constitution?  The information space is dominated by leftist control and ideas.  The outlets that propagate conservative ideas must operate as insurgents and constantly be alert for attacks on their operations.  The usual answer to complaints about this notes, "These are private companies who can do what they want on their own platforms, just build your own".  That requires access to certain technical resources, which, as the alternative to Twitter startup Parler found out, are also controlled by the statist left.  Conservative efforts were shut down by an alliance of Amazon, Google, and Apple.  The monopoly status of the tech tyrants makes competing with them effectively impossible.  The use of this power was painfully evident when the tech firms all conspired to hide evidence of corruption by Hunter Biden and then candidate Joe Biden near the end of the 2020 election.  Hunter's laptop was found and contained a potentially election-crushing trove of information.  The news media and social media propaganda wing of the left went into immediate 1984 mode and hid the story by the New York Post, then banned anyone on social platforms who mentioned it.  They even went back to their old favorite and claimed it was Russian disinformation.

The Week In Review.  During a press conference at Trump National Golf Club on Wednesday, former President Donald J. Trump announced that he has filed class-action lawsuits against the three companies, and their respective CEOs.  The left and their media immediately began pooh-poohing the news, citing so-called "experts" who claim Trump doesn't have a chance of winning the lawsuits, but don't be so sure.  One of Trump's greatest achievements as president was the progress he made in appointing conservative judges and justices within the judicial branch, and there are a lot of conservatives sitting on a lot of benches.  Furthermore, Big Tech has clearly engaged in censorship, not just with Trump but with many other conservatives, and Trump's team should be able to make a strong case.  The real motivation behind Trump's move, according to the left, is greed.  They pointed to the fundraising efforts that began soon after the announcement.  Note that the left practically invented this tactic but are outraged when any conservative applies it to their efforts.

Donald J. Trump:  Why I'm Suing Big Tech.  One of the gravest threats to our democracy today is a powerful group of Big Tech corporations that have teamed up with government to censor the free speech of the American people.  This is not only wrong — it is unconstitutional.  To restore free speech for myself and for every American, I am suing Big Tech to stop it.  Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls, newspapers and television networks were in prior generations.  The internet is the new public square.  In recent years, however, Big Tech platforms have become increasingly brazen and shameless in censoring and discriminating against ideas, information and people on social media — banning users, deplatforming organizations, and aggressively blocking the free flow of information on which our democracy depends.  No longer are Big Tech giants simply removing specific threats of violence.  They are manipulating and controlling the political debate itself.  Consider content that was censored in the past year.  Big Tech companies banned users from their platforms for publishing evidence that showed the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, which even the corporate media now admits may be true.  In the middle of a pandemic, Big Tech censored physicians from discussing potential treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, which studies have now shown does work to relieve symptoms of Covid-19. In the weeks before a presidential election, the platforms banned the New York Post — America's oldest newspaper — for publishing a story critical of Joe Biden's family, a story the Biden campaign did not even dispute.

Wikipedia Co-founder Warns: 'Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever'.  Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, warned that the online encyclopedia is "more one-sided than ever" in light of the website's entries for Black Lives Matter, the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump's two impeachments, and other contentious topics.  Sanger, in particular, took issue with how some Wikipedia entries are sourced.  "In short, and with few exceptions, only globalist, progressive mainstream sources — and sources friendly to globalist progressivism — are permitted," he wrote in an article on his website.  Several centrist news outlets like The Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard are sometimes allowed to be sourced, he said, but Wikipedia editors are "careful never to leave the current Overton Window of progressive thought."

Facebook Takes on New Policing Role, Asks Users to Report 'Extremists'.  It is no secret that over the last several years, Big Tech has been on a wild goose chase for anyone that doesn't align with liberal ideologies, but Facebook has taken the hunt to new heights.  As reported on CharlieKirk.com, messages now pop up asking users "are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?"  The message continues, "we care about preventing extremism on Facebook.  Others in your situation have received confidential support."  The message continues with an information icon that reads, "hear stories and get advice from people who escaped violent extremist groups."

Right Side Broadcasting Network Suspended From YouTube.  YouTube has suspended Right Side Broadcasting Network from its platform and removed the news site's videos of former President Donald Trump's rallies.  YouTube took down the videos because the footage allegedly violated the platform's Community Guidelines, according to RSBN.  Trump's most recent rally in Ohio reached over three million views on RSBN's channel before it was removed.  The channel won't be able to upload any new content for one week.  YouTube claims RSBN violated its policy regarding "spam, deceptive practices and scams."  The platform says it removes content that "take[s] advantage of the YouTube community" prohibits content where the "main purpose is to trick others into leaving YouTube for another site."

1984! Facebook Slammed After Sending 'Extremism' Exposure Warnings.  Facebook is getting bashed for sending notifications to users who it deemed as having been exposed to "extremist content" that may be considered too right wing.  Users across the internet torched Facebook for sending them pop-up warnings that they had been exposed to so-called "extremist" content.  RedState editor Kira Davis tweeted July 1:  "Hey has anyone had this message pop up on their FB?  My friend (who is not an ideologue but hosts lots of competing chatter) got this message twice.  He's very disturbed."  The Facebook notification asked, "Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?"  The platform followed up by assuring users that "We care about preventing extremism on Facebook.  Others in your situation have received confidential support."  One Media Research Center staffer received the message three times within a minute.  The internet was quick to torch the platform for the notification.

Facebook asks Republicans if they need 'support' for becoming 'extremists' and will send the same to anyone who has searched 'key words related to white supremacy'.  Facebook is targeting conservative voices and asking them if they need 'support' after becoming 'extremist' in its latest overreach on free speech and censorship which users say is patronizing and offensive.  Several conservative voices like Newsmax TV host John Cardillo, House Delegate Nick Freitas and Alex Berenson shared screenshots of the alerts they received on Twitter.  One Canadian user who'd accessed a meme [...] got the alert and so did RT journalist Rachel Blevin.

Facebook's New "Hate Group" Warning For Users Is Terrifyingly Orwellian.  [Scroll down]  Is it crazy to believe that there are right-wing hate groups out there who pose some type of danger?  No.  What is crazy here is that "extremism" is equated with "right-wing extremism."  There seems to be no option or even descriptions for those "concerned" about left-wing extremism.  It's almost as if it doesn't exist.  Other Facebook users are receiving messages with dire warnings that they may have been exposed to hateful content.

YouTube Takes Down Right Side Broadcasting's Video of Trump Rally with Over 2 Million Views — Bans Them from Covering Trump Rally Tomorrow.  President Trump held his first rally of the political season on Saturday in Wellington, Ohio at the Lorain County Fairgrounds.  Trump held the rally in support of Max Miller who is challenging Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, a Never-Trumper who voted to impeach President Trump in January.  The event was PACKED hours before President Trump's speech.  Right Side Broadcasting Network aired the live feed for the rally tonight in Ohio.  38,000 supporters were watching the rally at 5 PM ET — two hours before the event.  This compares to a typical Biden speech that draws around 700 viewers during the entire live speech!

Report: Emails Show Biden Team Pressured Facebook to Censor the Trump Campaign.  During the election, we saw an effort by Big Tech to cashier stories that might have hurt Joe Biden.  Twitter even banned the url of a New York Post story about an email on Hunter Biden's laptop.  The story was critically important because it showed Joe Biden had lied about not knowing anything about his son Hunter's business associates.  But, Twitter blocked the story at a critical time in the month before the election, claiming they had done so because it was "hacked" material, when there was no such evidence that was true.  They later admitted it was a mistake, but oh well, too late.  Facebook also admitted they reduced the distribution of the story.  So, here's another question that needs to be asked to the Big Tech guys.  Did the Biden team ask to take down that story or any other stories/posts?  There's a story that came out this week, oddly enough from CNN, that really raises that question again about what influence the Biden team had on Big Tech before the election to remove things they didn't like from social media.

Newly Uncovered Emails Show Top Biden Officials Demanding Facebook Censor Their Opponent Before Election.  Recently released emails reveal that, during the lead-up to the November election, Biden campaign hacks pressured Facebook to silence his political opponent, the sitting president of the United States.  The radical Democrats had become concerned with so-called "violent rhetoric" and "misinformation" coming from the Trump campaign's Facebook accounts.  This resulted in a years-long barrage of complaints from the party in an attempt to exert political influence over the world's largest social media giant.

Mailchimp suspends the Babylon Bee for "harmful information".  At the shallowest level, there is a layer of dumbness over this story, but buried underneath is something even more disturbing.  The Babylon Bee, a popular satire site, had been using the services of Mailchimp to manage their email list.  Then, on Thursday of this week, they were notified that their account had been suspended.  The reason offered was that the system had detected "harmful information" in some of the site's emails.  After the Bee's CEO went public with the news, someone at Mailchimp apparently realized how foolish they looked and quickly moved to restore the account.

The Books Are Already Burning.  Last month, DarkHorse had almost five million views on YouTube.  But speaking freely has come with a price.  The couple's two YouTube channels have each received several warnings and one official strike, which the company says was because of their advocacy of the drug ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19.  Three strikes from YouTube and a channel can be deleted.  According to Weinstein, that would mean the loss of "more than half of our income."  How have we gotten here?  How have we gotten to the point where having conversations about important scientific and medical subjects requires such a high level of personal risk?  How have we accepted a reality in which Big Tech can carry out the digital equivalent of book burnings?  And why is it that so few people are speaking up against the status quo?

Fact-Check Site Used by Google Lists All Conservative Outlets as "Low Credibility" — But Lists All Far Left and Liberal Mainstream Outlets as High Credibility.  Amid rampant censorship and demontization of the truth, conservatives are being purged from the internet.  Left-wing propaganda is brazenly permeating the airwaves, dominating the narrative in mainstream media, entertainment and academia.  In an effort to bolster the iron curtain and reinforce misinformation, an explosion of "fake-news" fact-checker sites devoted to delegitimizing The Gateway Pundit to continue to emerge.  The self-appointed gatekeepers of facts operate under the guise that they have no bias whatsoever and are typically cloaked behind a veil of anonymity.

Why Has "Ivermectin" Become a Dirty Word?  On December 8, 2020, when most of America was consumed with what The Guardian called Donald Trump's "desperate, mendacious, frenzied and sometimes farcical" attempt to remain president, the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on the "Medical Response to Covid-19."  One of the witnesses, a pulmonologist named Dr. Pierre Kory, insisted he had great news.  "We have a solution to this crisis," he said unequivocally.  "There is a drug that is proving to have a miraculous impact."  Kory was referring to an FDA-approved medicine called ivermectin.  A genuine wonder drug in other realms, ivermectin has all but eliminated parasitic diseases like river blindness and elephantiasis, helping discoverer Satoshi Ōmura win the Nobel Prize in 2015.  As far as its uses in the pandemic went, however, research was still scant.  Could it really be a magic Covid-19 bullet?  Kory had been trying to make such a case, but complained to the Senate that public efforts had been stifled, because "every time we mention ivermectin, we get put in Facebook jail."

Big Tech Is Outsourcing Censorship Through Dishonest 'Fact Check' Firms.  With new online trends around social media "fact check" companies and with new narratives around misinformation and disinformation, there has been criticism that the people pushing for this are engaging in political censorship and oftentimes suppressing legitimate inquiry.  [Video clip]

Facebook "Overwhelmingly" Being Used For Online Recruitment In Active Sex Trafficking Cases.  A stunning new report ties social media platforms — the most prominent of which is Facebook — to "the majority" of online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases.  The data was revealed in the Human Trafficking Institute's 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report, according to CBS.  Human Trafficking Institute CEO Victor Boutros said on CBSN Wednesday:  "The internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites.  Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases."  [Video clip]

Where Were Facebook Fact Checkers For Feckless Fraudulent Fauci?  If Inspector Clouseau and Dr. Joseph Mengele had a love child, it would be Dr. Anthony ("I am science, hear me roar") Fauci, who fumbled his way through a pandemic he helped create and whose misleading, self-serving, and contradictory pronouncements between baseball games, magazine photo-shoots, and talk show appearances contributed to the deaths of millions.  Leading the pack of Fauci's unindicted co-conspirators is Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook.  Facts, as Ronald Reagan would say, are stubborn things.  They do not change.  So when Facebook went from banning and nuking posts and posters asserting that the China virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology to allowing posts considering the possibility after Fauci's incriminating emails exposed his lies, Facebook acknowledged several things.  First, the information it proclaimed "false" was in fact not false, not even 'partly' and, that its fact-checkers were wrong.  Second, as heavily redacted emails between Fauci and Zuckerberg hint at, the two were in cahoots to actually suppress the truth in support of a false narrative that would not embarrass Fauci or China.

Tucker Carlson, Buckhead, and Why Our Cities Fail.  If you attempt to watch the YouTube version of Tucker Carlson's report on what's going on in Atlanta from Monday night, you'll find yourself wading through warnings that "the following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences."  There is nothing pornographic in Carlson's report.  Nor is there foul language.  What's "inappropriate" or "offensive" in it is the truth about the people who run Atlanta, truth that everyone knows and understands.  It's the fact someone might speak the truth in a video appearing on YouTube that is offensive to the "YouTube community."  The funny thing is, Carlson isn't telling the half of it.

Fact-checking Facebook's carbon dioxide fact-checkers.  The false face of Facebook is once again presented in the censorship of our organization, the CO2 Coalition, an Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit that promotes the benefits of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.  On Earth Day this year, The Washington Times published my op-ed "There is no climate emergency — We love CO2 and so should you."  Shortly after publication, the paper's Facebook post on the commentary was labeled "false and misleading" and its ad for it was rejected.  Facebook's actions were based on a lengthy "fact-check" by eight scientists titled "Washington Times presents list of false and misleading statements about the impacts of CO2 and climate change" by Climate Feedback (CF).  However, a detailed analysis by actual experts of CF's "fact-check" showed it to be the real purveyor of false and misleading information.

YouTube Suspends Ron Johnson Over Hydroxychloroquine Claims.  Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has been suspended from YouTube for seven days after he posted content promoting experimental treatments for COVID-19.  The senator led two Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearings on the potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.  Johnson slammed the decision, saying it was just another example of Big Tech censorship.  "YouTube's ongoing COVID censorship proves they have accumulated too much unaccountable power," he told Fox News.  "Big Tech and mainstream media believe they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives," he added.

UK Govt Tells Social Media to Censor Videos of Illegal Migrant Crossings.  Home Secretary Priti Patel under "conservative" PM Boris Johnson has been working to flood the UK with record migration and is now pressuring social media companies to censor videos of illegal migrant border crossings.  Patel tried to justify the censorship by claiming that allowing the public to see what's really happening on their borders only serves to "encourage" illegal migrants to make such crossings.

Instagram is Forcing Users to Remove Satirical Posts about Fauci Emails.  Shortly after Dr. Anthony Fauci's emails were published by BuzzFeed and The Washington Post after Freedom of Information Act requests, Facebook and Instagram started to suppress mentions and screenshots of them after they were flagged by its third-party "fact checkers."  Now, Instagram is using these third-party fact checks to flag satirical posts about these emails and force users to delete them.

How Facebook is fueling the border crisis by failing to close down dozens of groups offering passage into the US.  Facebook has been blamed for fueling the border crisis as human smugglers are using its platform to organize the passage of desperate migrants into the US in exchange for as little as $1,700.  Dozens of Facebook pages and groups openly offer illegal crossings across the US-Mexico border, posting prices, routes, discount options, videos they claim show successful trips — and even testimonials from what they claim to be happy customers.

Facebook Censored My Video Questioning Climate Change Alarmists.  Whom does Facebook trust to censor content posted on its platform?  A Ph.D. graduate from France.  Really.  The Frenchman, Emmanuel Vincent, started a fact-checking group he calls "Climate Feedback."  It does "a new kind of fact-checking."  It sure is new — and wrong.  I released a video in which some climate scientists argue that climate change is not a "crisis."  They believe people adjust to changing temperatures.  [Video clip]  The video features clips of a debate I moderated in 2019 at the Heartland Institute.  Well, it was supposed to be a debate, but it turned into a panel when the 30 to 40 climate change alarmists Heartland invited did not show up.  "It's warmed up around one degree Celsius since 1900 and life expectancy doubled in industrialized democracies," said panelist Pat Michaels, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists.  "And yet, that temperature ticks up another half a degree, and the entire system crashes.  That's the most absurd belief."  I included that clip in the video that Facebook then censored.  More than 25 million people watched it on Facebook.

House Republicans demand answers about why Facebook censored lab leak theories after it emerged that Mark Zuckerberg was emailing Dr Anthony Fauci.  Senior Republicans are demanding to know why Facebook censored posts that shared the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis after it emerged that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was in e-mail contact with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's leading coronavirus scientist.  Republicans on the House judiciary and oversight committees have written to Zuckerberg asking him to hand over all documents and communications between Facebook employees and U.S. government officials.  They accuse the federal government of using a private company to skirt First Amendment protections.

Sen. Cruz Argues Facebook Was Censoring COVID-19 Content 'On Behalf Of The Government'.  Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, argued on "Sunday Morning Futures" that "it now is clear" that Facebook was "utilizing their monopoly position to censor on behalf of the government" regarding information related to COVID-19 and its origins.  Cruz made the comment reacting to Facebook saying on May 26 that it would no longer ban posts suggesting COVID-19 is man-made amid mounting calls from President Biden and other officials for further investigation into the pandemic's origins.  The announcement marked a reversal for the social media giant.  In February, Facebook said it would remove posts claiming the virus was man-made or manufactured "following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization" who had "debunked" the claim.

Ted Cruz Says Facebook Is Acting as a State Agency with Significant Liability.  [Video clip]

Microsoft says error led to no matching Bing images for Tiananmen 'tank man'.  Microsoft Corp on Friday blamed "accidental human error" for its Bing search engine not showing image results for the query "tank man" in the United States and elsewhere after users raised concerns about possible censorship around the Tiananmen Square crackdown anniversary.  Users, including in the United Kingdom, Germany and Singapore, reported Friday that when they performed the search Bing returned the message, "There are no results for tank man."  David Greene, civil liberties director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that content moderation was impossible to do perfectly and "egregious mistakes are made all the time."  But he said it could be more sinister:  "At worst, this was purposeful suppression at the request of a powerful state."

Media Destroy Their Own Credibility.  [Scroll down]  Quite simply, as long as there was a 2020 presidential election in doubt, Donald Trump and anyone else who even suggested that COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, was dismissed as a "conspiracy theorist."  The self-aggrandizing "fact-checkers" at Snopes epitomized part of this coordinated effort.  Citing an interview between Tucker Carlson and Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan, during which Yan insisted the virus was made in a lab, Snopes labeled the assertion "controversial and outright false" and further insisted "conspiracy theorists have peddled notions that the virus was made in a lab and intentionally released as a biological weapon despite rigorous scientific research proving otherwise."  Facebook epitomized the other half of the equation, enacting a policy whereby all claims that "COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured" would be deleted.  In short, anything challenging the idea that the virus originated in nature was either ridiculed or censored.

The New Secession Crisis: The Democrats have already left the Union.  The Democrats have already seceded from America's historic conception of nationhood in many respects: [...] THEY have attacked us through their Big Tech proxies, damaging our ability to speak freely in the new public square, coordinate political action, or share information with each other outside of a tightly-controlled corporate media apparatus.  This censorship campaign started with popular but more politically marginalized figures such as Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos and moved, boiling the frog slowly, to deplatforming the sitting president of the United States.  Thousands of right-wing dissidents, many with large followings, have been effectively removed from public discourse for political reasons, often with only the flimsiest proceduralist justifications.  When Project Veritas conducted devastating undercover exposes on the misbehavior of quasi-state corporate media, in which key figures from these entities actually directly admitted they are engaged in propaganda, the group was banned from social media.

Hey Facebook, Ban This!  Last week, we learned that Facebook had been banning posts suggesting that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab.  We became aware only when Facebook announced that it would no longer ban such posts, raising the question of why it was doing so in the first place.  It wasn't as though there was no possibility that a lab leak was responsible.  There was an ongoing discussion of this.  Then over the weekend, we learned that Facebook apparently has plans to ban posts that might encourage "vaccine hesitancy."  What does that mean?  Who knows.  Facebook never reveals how it makes such decisions.  "Anything that questions the vaccine or the narrative regarding the vaccine, which is, you know, everyone should get the vaccine and the vaccine is good and you're not going to get many bad side effects, anything outside of that realm is basically considered under 'vaccine hesitancy' by Facebook's algorithms," Morgan Kahmann, a former data center technician for Facebook, told Fox News.

Group of Tech Execs Takes On Social Media Censorship.  Facebook's abrupt decision last week to change its policy of censoring any posts elevating the theory that COVID-19 might have been manmade came as no surprise to Mike Matthys, a tech venture capital executive who has worked in Silicon Valley for several decades.  The social media giant only made the about-face once President Biden acknowledged that some facets of the U.S. intelligence community believe that COVID escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.  Biden then announced a 90-day investigation into the virus's origins.  Before that, many Democrats and most members of the media had dismissed the COVID-came-from-a-lab narrative as a crackpot conspiracy theory.

Free speech under attack.  It has been said that "everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power."  An intriguing notion, but incomplete.  Speech, especially the fight to control the speech of others, is also about power.  How else to describe Facebook's ban on users sharing the claim the COVID-19 virus came from a Chinese lab?  The sudden lifting of the ban, following a White House plan to investigate the pandemic's cause, only underscores the social media giant's desire to restrict users' speech.  Now you can't, now you can.  Either way, it's speech control.  If just Facebook and others in Big Tech lusted for such power, it would be bad enough.  But free speech is under attack everywhere over the simple right to express ideas that break with the party line.

Facebook says mentions of COVID-19's possible origins in Wuhan are now allowed.  How generous.  Facebook has long banned anyone who discussed the evidence that a worldwide pandemic killing millions and destroying the global economy may have been released from a government lab in Wuhan, China.  Facebook would not allow the theory to be discussed as "debunked" despite widespread criticism that the social media giant was, again, engaging in corporate censorship.  The false claim that this theory was "debunked" was pushed by various media platforms as part of the criticism of then-President Donald Trump and his administration.  Now, however, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, and others have acknowledged that there is a basis for suspect the lab as the origin of the outbreak.  So now Facebook will allow you to talk about it.

Report: Facebook Is Censoring COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy.  Facebook is suppressing comments and posts expressing doubts about the COVID-19 vaccine to "drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy," a new report states.  "Reducing the visibility of these comments represents another significant opportunity for us to remove barriers to vaccination that users on the platform may potentially encounter," the Facebook documents say.  Project Veritas first reported the censorship after two whistleblowers shared leaked documents demonstrating how the Big Tech company is testing algorithms to limit the spread of vaccine skepticism.  The internal memos examined by Project Veritas revealed that the algorithm currently affects 1.5 percent of users who question the immunization on health authority pages.

Facebook will no longer remove posts claiming the coronavirus is 'man-made'.  Facebook will no longer remove posts claiming the coronavirus is "man-made," it said Wednesday [5/26/2021].  In February, the tech giant said it would take down "debunked" claims that humans created the virus that causes COVID-19, but it has reversed its policy amid renewed interest in the virus' origins from scientists and politicians.  "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps," a Facebook representative told Insider in an emailed statement.  "We're continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge."

If you love Hitler, you can find a home on Twitter.  According to CNN, "Facebook will no longer remove claims that Covid-19 was man-made."  Wonderful!  Yet why did Facebook appropriate the right to be an arbiter in scientific disputes to begin with?  That is similar to AT&T eavesdropping on your phone conversations and interrupting them each time AT&T believes that you made an erroneous remark.  To be fair, according to the same CNN article, Facebook took part in this scholarly dispute following "consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO)."  That is the same WHO that has consistently provided cover for Chinese propaganda since the very beginning of the pandemic.

PJ Media Demands an Apology for the Damage Facebook's Dishonest Partisan Fact-Checkers Have Done to Our Reputation.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, left-wing media outlets are falling all over themselves to report evidence pointing to the COVID lab-leak theory — formerly called the lab-leak "conspiracy."  A few months ago it was the stuff of the tinfoil-hat brigade.  The science was settled!  The SARS-CoV-2 virus came from bats and definitely not from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  Thus saith the fact-checkers, who are never wrong about anything and who have the final say about which information you're allowed to see on social media!  Defy them at your own peril!  Let's review:  Science Feedback, official fact-checkers for Facebook, announced in a February 2020 headline that "Scientific evidence indicates virus that causes COVID-19 infection is of natural origin, not the result of human engineering:  The article claimed there was no evidence that biosecurity failures at the Wuhan lab precipitated the pandemic.  Facebook began labeling all articles that suggested otherwise as "Incorrect," "Misleading," and "Unsupported".

Beauty Influencer Dropped By Sephora for Being a Conservative Files Defamation Lawsuit.  Beauty influencer Amanda Ensing has filed a defamation lawsuit against the makeup giant Sephora after they very publicly cut ties with her for being a Christian conservative in January.  The makeup shop responded to liberal activists who were outraged that they would dare to work with a Republican by saying that she "shared content on social media that is not aligned with Sephora's values around inclusivity."  Ensing posts family friendly beauty content mixed with some posts about her Christian conservative views — such as her support for the Second Amendment.

Nobody is checking the social media fact checkers.  It's time that changed.  For most of 2020 the supposed arbiters of truthiness insisted that lab leak stories should not be taken seriously and should be suppressed on social media.  Just yesterday Facebook finally lifted is baseless ban of the lab leak theory.  The real problem here is not that fact checkers got something wrong, it's that they have the power to censor what journalism Americans see and consume unilaterally.  Nobody is checking the fact checkers, and it is time that changed.  It's time for government to regulate the fact checking industry.  This may seem antithetical to traditional conservative values of small government, but the ubiquitous and monopolistic nature of social media, the power it has to frame how we see the world, is an existential challenge.  We cannot be slaves to orthodoxy if that means Americans are subject not only to lies, but also the censorship of the truth.

Fact-checking the fact-checkers.  It is time for the news business to admit that "fact-checking" is a tiresome, misleading, and dishonest blight on actual reporting.  It hardly existed in Fleet Street when I left Britain in 1997.  Checking facts was understood to be the core of a reporter's job, not something sloughed off to someone else.  Perhaps this was because British education was mostly essay writing, not checking multiple-choice boxes.  Students quickly learn to write fluently when faced with blank sheets of foolscap and limited time to fill them.  Quality obviously varied, but educated people were assumed to be capable of coherent composition.  The residual challenge was knowing the facts or, in the case of reporters, finding them out.  So, it was startling at first to encounter America's bifurcated system, in which "fact-checkers" monitor reporters like gamekeepers trying to catch poachers.  And it's far worse now than it was back then.  Fact-checking has grown beyond recognition in the past 25 years and chokes the news business like a parasitic vine.

Five reasons not to be optimistic about America's future.  [Scroll down]  Next, we are experiencing a concerted assault on free speech, from which all our rights emanate.  Free speech is regarded by the Left as an outdated concept.  The cancer known as political correctness is a way of stifling free expression in favor of socially controlled thought.  As liberals take over our colleges and universities, they are indoctrinating young people to believe that conservative ideas amount to hate speech and should be suppressed.  The result is that today's students are demanding limitations to free expression.  In a poll of 800 undergraduates, 51 percent favored codes limiting free speech on campus.  30 percent said the First Amendment is outdated.  Where do we go from here?  Free speech is being replaced with the thought police, political correctness, and the cancel culture — all of it enforced by the woke crowd.

Facebook's censorship of Wuhan lab story shows 'its true ugly colours'.  Facebook was today [5/27/2021] accused of 'showing its true and ugly colours' and smothering free speech as it scrapped its ban on posts debating whether Covid-19 could be man-made — but only after Joe Biden ordered the CIA to probe if the virus came from a Wuhan lab.  Mark Zuckerberg's global policy chief Nick Clegg, the former British MP and Liberal Democrat leader, has also been branded 'feeble' for allowing months of censorship on the social network.  Critics branded Facebook's behaviour 'contemptible' and begged them to respect free speech rather than 'ingratiating' themselves with states such as China, which has banned the website but remains a $5 billion-a-year ad market.

Facebook Gives American Journalists Permission to Write About COVID Originating From Wuhan Lab.  Comrade Citizens, the magnanimous leader of Facebook has decided to allow the previously censored discussion to take place.  Big Technocracy has given permission to the U.S. media to write investigative articles about COVID-19 originating from the Wuhan bioweapons lab. [...] Please remember to thank Dear Leader Mark Zuckerberg for his decision to allow conversational debate on Facebook.  However, also remember your responsibilities as good citizens to remain compliant to the topics that are permitted, and do not stray into conversations that are not approved by the technocratic command and control authority.

The Editor says...
The Editor has never been on Facebook.  Be smart — don't start!

Facebook lifts ban on suggesting COVID-19 was man-made after Biden orders intel agencies to probe whether coronavirus leaked from Wuhan lab.  Facebook will allow users to claim on its platform that COVID-19 may have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China — a reversal of its previous policy which banned comments suggesting the coronavirus was man-made.  The move comes after Fauci changed his tune on where the virus may have originated — and after Biden ordered his intelligence agencies to launch a probe into whether it leaded from a Wuhan lab.  'In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps,' the company said in a blog post on Wednesday [5/26/2021].

DeSantis Torches Reporter, Asks Why Iran Leader Allowed To 'Talk About Killing Jews' On Social Media But Trump Is Banned.  Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis torched a reporter Monday who asked whether the governor signed a Big Tech censorship bill because of former President Donald Trump.  "You're loyal to former President Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is now a resident in Florida and he was de-platformed," the unidentified reporter asks.  "Is this bill for him?"  "The bill is for everyday Floridians, this is what we've said and it will allow any Floridian to be able to provide what they're doing.  But I do think that's another issue that has been brought to bear:  when you de-platform the president of the United States but you let Ayatollah Khomeini talk about killing Jews, that is wrong," DeSantis said, referring to the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Facebook Blocks Doctor's Message on COVID's Low Infant Mortality Rate.  A physician's message about low pediatric deaths from COVID-19 was blocked from Facebook for violating "community standards on spam."  Dr. Tracy Høeg, sports, spine, and regenerative medicine doctor responded to a poster's question about the infant mortality rate due to COVID.  Dr. Høeg told users following her account that there were 19 infant deaths due to COVID in April, a number that is rapidly declining.  "Part of the reason I have (for the most part) left Facebook is they delete my post/responses that are factual, which I triple check," she wrote.  "I was responding to a question about what the number of pediatric deaths were due to COVID in April.  I don't feel like directly citing numbers from CDC and AAP should be deleted as spam, but maybe that is just me.  I have moved to Twitter FYI."

The Truth Behind the Partisan Machinations of Facebook's 'Fact-Checkers'.  Last month PJ Media ran a syndicated column by radio host Dennis Prager — an opinion piece about the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  A few days later, the article was rated "factually inaccurate" by the supposedly "nonpartisan" fact-checkers at Facebook partner Health Feedback, an organization under the umbrella of France-based "Science Feedback."  This is not the first time we've been fact-checked by this activist group masquerading as a fact-checking organization.  In fact, Townhall Media sites, including Townhall, RedState, and PJ Media, have been fact-checked at least 20 times over the last two years.  The vast majority of these attacks were not fact checks at all, rather differences of opinion on policy issues, particularly in the areas of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Steven Crowder Is Suing YouTube Over Vague Rules, but It's Not Just About Him.  Conservative comedian Steven Crowder filed notice last week of a lawsuit against YouTube, claiming, "This is the big one, boys and girls."  Crowder's May 14 filing follows his second "strike" in as many months.  In March, YouTube demonetized Crowder's channel and issued his first demerit of 2021 on grounds that one of his videos contained COVID-19 misinformation.  In April, Crowder earned "strike two" under the pretext of harassment and cyberbullying.  One more infraction in the designated 90-day window and he will be permanently cut off from his 5 million YouTube followers.  Crowder is polemical — he is, after all, a comedian — but his undue scrutiny ignores a morass of unpunished "violations" that proliferate on YouTube all around him.

Censorship: A Personal Story.  All Islamic political and religious doctrine is found in 3 texts — Koran, traditions of Mohammed (Hadith) and life of Mohammed (the Sira).  The only ideas that I speak about come from Allah and Mohammed.  Political Islam is the part of Islamic doctrine that deals with the non-Muslim, the Kafir.  Oddly enough, more Islamic doctrinal text is devoted to politics than religion.  My books sold like crazy.  I was selling books by the tens of thousands.  My Sharia Law for Non-Muslims was a #1 best seller on Islamic law on Amazon.  My video "Why We Are Afraid" had millions of views on YouTube. [...] But a storm cloud appeared on the horizon.  The Tennessean newspaper put out a Sunday front page article which said that I was an anti-Muslim bigot and a hater.  This was followed by several other attack pieces.  An organization called the SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, (the SPLC is not a civil rights group, is not southern, is not poor and is not a law center) declared that I was one of the biggest bigots in the US.  Indeed, the SPLC said Nashville was a hate city because I live here.  Then the media tornado hit.

Satirical Impressions of Dr. Anthony Fauci Banned on TikTok.  To the growing list of banned topics on Chinese Communist run TikTok, we can now add satirical impressions of Dr. Anthony Fauci.  According to comedian Tyler Fischer, whose hilarious Fauci impressions have gone viral on Twitter and YouTube, apparently TikTok is not amused.

Facebook Shuts Down Huge Israel Prayer Page After Radical Muslims Targeted It with Hate Speech.  The Jerusalem Prayer Team (JPT), established in 2002, with more than 75 million followers has been shut down by Facebook.  Mike Evans told CBN News the FB page has been the target of radical Islamists.  "There was an organized attempt by radical Islamic organizations to achieve this objective.  They posted over a million comments on our site, and then had the people contact Facebook saying that they never posted to the site.  That was a complete scam and fraud.  It was a very clever, deceptive plan by Islamic radicals."  The attack came during the midst of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas and other Islamic groups in the Gaza Strip.  Michael

Top Facebook official says social media companies are 'not bound by the First Amendment'.  A top Facebook official dismissed criticism that the social media giant violated former President Donald Trump's First Amendment rights by keeping him off the platform.  Michael McConnell, co-chairman of Facebook's Oversight Board, discussed the company's recent decision to uphold its ban on Trump for six months while the company clarifies its policy.  The former president was kicked off the platform after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.  "Private companies are not bound by the First Amendment," McConnell said Sunday on Fox News.  "And so, he has no First Amendment rights.  He's a customer.  Facebook is not a government, and he is not a citizen of Facebook."

The Democratic Party finds a new but shaky faith in corporate free speech.  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." [...] Notably, Warren felt that one company (Masterpiece Cakeshop) can be forced to speak while another corporation (Facebook) should be able to stop others from speaking.  When Facebook barred Trump, Warren declared:  "I'm glad that Donald Trump is not going to be on Facebook.  Suits me."  House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) also celebrated and added:  "Facebook must ban him.  Which is to say, forever."

Six Insane and Idiotic Positions by Democrats, and How Republicans Should Respond.  For me, the most disturbing position that's been taken by Democrats' over the past several years has been their direct opposition to Americans' freedom of speech.  They don't even try to hide it anymore.  If they don't like what you're saying, they want you silenced, which is a major departure from years past.  It used to be that we could have open and honest discussions on issues, but not anymore.  The party of tolerance has become entirely intolerant.  Democrats have been clever in framing their anti-speech argument around two boogiemen they've used to scare their sheep: hate speech and misinformation.  It's a clever approach because for anyone who's not paying attention — which apparently describes a large swath of our electorate — hate speech and misinformation are easy to rally against.  The problem, of course, comes when we try to answer this question:  Who gets to decide what is hate speech, and what is misinformation?

The Social Media Witch Trial Of Trump — And America.  Pursuant to the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy — which sounds like it could have only come straight out of either Hogwarts or the Politburo — Facebook's "independent" Oversight Board has exiled Donald J. Trump from the realm of modern communication.  Put another way, about 20 unelected former political leaders, journalists and human rights activists have suffocated the speech of a former president of the United States of America.  But hey, what do politicians, not to mention journalists or human rights activists, know about the universal right of freedom of expression these days, anyway?  So there you have it, America — the Bill of Rights is kaput — subsumed to relativism, faceless technocrats and an international oligarchy. [...] The question we all need to ask now is this:  If an American who formerly held the highest public office in the land isn't entitled to enjoy the fruits and protections of the First Amendment, then what hope do we possibly have as everyday citizens?

Sen. Warren after Facebook's Trump ban: 'They're acting like they're bigger than government'.  Sen. Elizabeth Warren blasted Facebook as having too much power and "acting like they're bigger than government" after the company decided to uphold its suspension of former President Donald Trump Wednesday [5/5/2021].  "I'm glad that he's not on Facebook," the Massachusetts Democrat told Cheddar News.  "I think that he poses a real danger.  But I don't think that Facebook ought to have this kind of power.  We need to break up these giant tech companies, and Facebook is one of them.  "They are crushing competition," she continued.  "And in cases like Facebook, they're acting like they're bigger than government.  The group that made this decision calls itself 'the Supreme Court' — they are not the Supreme Court, they're part of a private company.  They need to be broken up, we need a chance for competition to flourish here, and we need a chance to have some power that balances out what these giants are up to."

First Trump, Then Who?  Facebook Makes Wrong Call in Censoring Trump.  Facebook's Oversight Board decided Wednesday to uphold Facebook's and Instagram's suspension of former President Donald Trump from their platforms.  This decision is the wrong one, and one that all Americans, regardless of political affiliation, should be concerned about.  However, the Oversight Board was entirely appropriate to admonish Facebook for the fact that its penalty was vague and standardless.  Big Tech companies should not be allowed to play by a set of rules that give them undue influence over American society while also avoiding any accountability for how they use that influence.  It is time for Congress to act and reform Section 230 — which protects publishing platforms from being held liable for content posted by users — in a way that respects the rights of those engaged in private enterprise.  True reform must also ensure that companies like Facebook and Instagram take responsibility for the choices they make — especially when it comes to censoring individuals and opinions they don't like.

"Content Modification" - Facebook's New Campaign Should Have Free Speech Advocates Freaking Out.  [Scroll down]  The ads are clearly directed at younger users who may be more willing to accept censorship than their parents who hopelessly cling to old-fashioned notions of free speech.  Facebook knows that it cannot exercise more control over content unless it can get people to stop worrying and love the censor.  There was a time when this would have been viewed as chilling:  a corporate giant running commercials to get people to support new regulations impacting basic values like free speech and privacy.

Florida Passes Bill Prohibiting Social Media Giants Deplatforming Politicians.  The Florida legislature on April 29 passed a bill to prohibit social media platforms with huge user bases from knowingly deplatforming politicians and other Floridians.  If a social media company deplatforms a user they know to be a political candidate they face penalties of up to $250,000 per day for statewide officials and $25,000 per day for a candidate for other offices, the bill states.  This applies to platforms with over $100 million in annual revenue and over 100 million monthly users, eliminating many but the giants like Facebook and Twitter.  The move comes amid significant criticism from all over the world that social media platforms Facebook and Twitter have de-platformed users for merely expressing differing political viewpoints.

Official documents reveal officials colluded with a PR firm working for the Biden campaign pressuring social media to suppress posts.  Forget about those claims that Big Tech has every right to censor political information on their platforms because they are private firms.  That's not true when these companies operate as "state actors" working in collusion with or at the command of government entities.  Judicial Watch once again has uncovered stunning proof of malfeasance through lawsuits based on freedom of information laws. [...] I am so old that I remember when liberals celebrated the free market of ideas, and thought censorship was bad.  Now that the left is engaged in shoving election-rigging, race quotas and mob rule down our throats, they are behaving like all the other totalitarian [political regimes and suppressing all views but their own.  "Misinformation" today means views that progressives don't like.

Judicial Watch FOIA Request Uncovers Direct Evidence of California Government and Biden Campaign Instructing Social Media Firms to Remove Content.  Judicial Watch has done an excellent job discovering direct evidence of collusion between government officials, the Biden campaign and social media companies Facebook, Twitter, Google (YouTube) to censor speech and remove content.  California officials were using a list generated by a firm called SKDK (working for Biden campaign) to inform the social media companies of content for removal. [...] This is an explosive new element to an ongoing story of big tech censorship because the documents directly highlight California government officials and tech companies working together to remove political content adverse to the interests of the Biden campaign; and later the Biden administration.  One of the California government officials, Deputy Secretary of State and Chief Communications Officer Paula Valle, even begins to question the legality of their coordinated conduct after journalists and people who had their content removed started asking for specific answers why.

Facebook Oversight Board Member Warns Against Censoring Misinformation.  A member of Facebook's Oversight Board said the company's misinformation policies need overhauling in an exclusive interview with the Washington Free Beacon.  "I regard the category of misinformation as being one where we need to be extremely cautious," Michael McConnell told the Free Beacon.  "There are legitimate differences of opinion on lots of matters, and we need to make sure we don't squelch legitimate disagreement of historical, scientific, or political nature in the name of misinformation."  The Oversight Board faces increased scrutiny as it prepares to decide whether former president Donald Trump should be allowed back on Facebook.  Facebook banned Trump from the platform on Jan. 7, following the Capitol riots.  At the time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the risks of allowing the president to continue using the platform were "simply too great."

The Editor says...
In order to competently censor (mis)information, you would have to know everything, which you don't, and you would have to be 100 percent trustworthy, which — if you work for Facebook — you probably aren't.

How to Starve Big Tech.  It's not an exaggeration to say that if America remains on her current trajectory, she will be unrecognizable in another generation. [...] The sad part is that Big Tech's control over the free flow information is almost entirely illusory and based wholly on our submission to it.  Much in the same manner that consumers become zealously brand-conscious, we have come to accept that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have some innate value that makes them indispensable.  We forget that Big Tech's dominance has come about in just one generation and we can track a direct trajectory between the rise of Big Tech and the radical Left's ascendancy.

Is Big Business Now A Greater Threat To Free Speech Than Government?  [Scroll down]  Today, however, something novel is happening in America:  private actors have become a greater threat to free speech than the government is.  Part of that comes from a laudable achievement — we have tamed free speech's historical foe, the state.  But part also comes from the rise of new means of communication that not only displace the old but are uniquely susceptible to monopolization in a way the old media were not.  That means that for the first time, corporate power might be a greater threat to our rights — especially our right to free speech — than the power wielded by the state.  This accounts in part for the recent resurgence in antitrust advocacy.  Not long ago, there was considerable diversity not only in the sources of news and entertainment but also in the distribution of such things.  Not only have the sources of news been subject to consolidation, but they have become separated from the methods by which they reach us.  This vertical dis-integration might be seen as an antitrust success, except that the distribution methods are even more consolidated than the news sources.

LinkedIn censors ex-DHS senior official's posts decrying censorship of Hunter Biden laptop story.  When the U.K.'s Daily Mail published a bombshell report on the verified contents of Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop earlier this month, sharing the "shocking details" the president's son left out of his low-selling memoir, Stewart Baker tried to share it.  Baker, a former National Security Agency general counsel and Department of Homeland Security subcabinet appointee now in private practice, took to LinkedIn.  "The social media giants that won't let you say the 2020 election was rigged are the people who did their best to rig it:  Hunter Biden laptop was genuine and scandalous — Daily Mail," Baker wrote, providing the report link.

Fights over free speech and the future of social media.  Would you say social media platforms offer "a forum for a true diversity of political discourse?"  Congress used this language over 20 years ago to describe the internet when it passed Section 230, a federal law that provides liability protection for online service providers when they transmit or take down user-generated content.  While the internet generally does offer such a forum, on social media platforms, it is disappearing.  Big Tech, including social media platforms, are now under the microscope, and legislators have very different ideas on what, if anything, needs to be done.  The recent hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee — billed as an investigation of digital misinformation among Facebook, Twitter and Google — showed just how divided members of Congress, both parties and the public are on the future of social media.

Facebook Bigwig Donated Millions to Black Lives Matter.  Then The Company Censored Criticism of BLM's Controversial Founder.  Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz has poured over $5 million into a network of nonprofits run by Black Lives Matter leader Patrisse Cullors, according to financial disclosure records, raising questions about whether this relationship played a role in the company's decision to censor unflattering news articles about the activist last week.  The social media giant blocked its users from posting links to a New York Post story that revealed Cullors, a self-described Marxist, spent $3.2 million on high-end real estate as her Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation raked in millions in donations.  Facebook said the reporting violated its "privacy and personal information policy."  The Post argued that the decision was "so arbitrary as to be laughable" and noted that the media routinely report on real estate purchases by other celebrities and political figures without facing social media censorship.

Facebook Just Gave 2.8 Billion Users A Reason To Quit Their Accounts.  Facebook has had a bad month and, having lost the data of 533 million users, new revelations may just make the social media giant's 2.8 billion active users think about calling it quits.  The revelations come from two very different sources: a university student and a prominent UK newspaper, but both are likely to significantly undermine trust in the social network.  The first comes from a viral thread posted by student Zamaan Qureshi:  "So I decided to download my Facebook data after learning I was a part of the 533m breach," he explained.  "Clicked on a folder called "your_off_facebook_activity" and was unsurprised to learn that Facebook is following me all over the internet."

Pushing Back at the "Redcoats" Who Are Next Door to Us.  As Big Tech tightens its censorship noose around conservative communication, it becomes even more critical that patriots stay informed and connected.  If farmers and shopkeepers in the 1770s could devise ways to communicate around the superior British Army to win the Revolutionary War, certainly conservatives in 2021 can be just as creative devising ways to circumvent our own "Redcoats" — Big Tech. [...] From boycotts to buy-cotts; from writing letters and emails to making phone calls; from joining organizations to attending rallies and other imaginative ways — patriots must peacefully push back against tech and corporate authoritarian insanity or soon we will become the Marxist States of America.

Facebook censors DailyMail.com story on BLM co-founder's multi-million dollar LA property empire.  Facebook has stopped users from sharing articles by DailyMail.com about a BLM founder Patrisse Cullors' multi-million dollar property empire while users were allowed to share it from other outlets.  Users that wanted to share links to the DailyMail.com were met with a message that said it 'couldn't be shared.'  'This content was removed for violating our privacy and personal information policy,' a Facebook spokesperson told DailyMail.com.  However, other outlets, such as Black Enterprise, a media company that covers black-owned businesses, was allowed to be shared by Facebook users.  It's not the first time Facebook has censored content from conservative voices.

When Government Demands Social Media Censorship, Americans of All Political Beliefs Lose.  In what's becoming a Capitol Hill ritual, lawmakers recently called the leaders of Facebook, Google, and Twitter back before Congress to give them their latest pummeling.  This particular session focused on "misinformation" and how social media companies purportedly played a role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but it easily could have been mistaken for any number of previous hearings, where lawmakers berated and demanded action from the tech giants.  For some lawmakers, concerns about the spread of "misinformation" led to suggestions that social media platforms disregard free speech and increase the content they censor.  In recent months, tech companies have already ramped up censorship in the name of a nebulous "social good."

YouTube bans Sebastian Gorka's channel for repeated violations of 'presidential election integrity policy'.  After repeated violations of YouTube's "presidential election integrity policy," the video platform terminated the channel for a radio show hosted by Sebastian Gorka, a onetime aide to former President Donald Trump.  Gorka's show, America First, was removed sometime over the past three days.  The Washington Examiner can confirm it was live as recently as Thursday.  The show features right-wing commentary on politics "to be the new front lines in the ongoing Culture War against the Left," according to a description on Apple Podcasts.  "In accordance with our long standing strikes system, we terminated the channel America First with Sebastian Gorka, for repeated violations of our presidential election integrity policy," Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson, told the Washington Examiner on Sunday [4/11/2021].

The FBI / DOJ is MIA on Hunter Biden, Seth Rich, Anthony Weiner laptops.  The FBI and DOJ have been missing in action for years.  Failing in disclosing and acting on the information in the Hunter Biden, Seth Rich, and Anthony Weiner laptops.  The two-tiered system of American justice has never been more hypocritical on display.  Democrats and the deep state lie, cover-up and protect the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, and the Biden crime family.  Yet the full weight and power of the government are brought against any Republican connected to Donald Trump.  The story of the Hunter Biden, Seth Rich, and Anthony Weiner laptops is a tale of just how debased and corrupt our Government institutions and modern media have become. [...] Attorney General William Barr covered up the existence of the Hunter Biden FBI investigation for two years.  Twitter, Facebook, and corporate media censored the Hunter Biden laptop story with weeks to go before the election.

Clarence Thomas Provides Legal Roadmap To Tearing Down Social Media Censorship.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas offered a roadmap to eliminating rampant social media censorship from online monopolies on Monday [4/5/2021].  In a ruling for writ of certiorari on the case of President Joe Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Thomas concurred in an opinion to send the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit with instructions to dismiss as moot, now that Biden is in the White House.  The case, launched in August, questions whether the First Amendment strips government officials of their ability to block third-party accounts on Twitter if the personal account is used to conduct official business.  The lower court ruled Trump violated the First Amendment when blocking users on the platform, which served as a public forum.

Data Show Biden 'Dislikes' Deleted by the Millions on YouTube.  To conservatives who have been throttled and even censored online, this will make perfect sense:  YouTube appears to be working on behalf of the Biden administration.  An analysis of data indicates that the platform has deleted more than 2.5 million "dislikes" from various White House videos featuring Joe Biden, likely in a bid to make him seem far more popular than he really is.

YouTube Deleted 2.5 Million 'Dislikes' From Biden White House Videos, Data Indicates.  YouTube has deleted about 2.5 million 'dislikes' from videos on the official White House channel of President Joe Biden, according to data collected and posted online by a researcher who wished to remain anonymous.  YouTube recently announced that it's testing a new page design that hides the dislike count.  The Google-owned video platform allows users to give videos either a thumb up (like) or thumb down (dislike). For at least two years, it's had a policy to remove likes and dislikes it considers spam.  "We have policies and systems in place to ensure that the engagement on YouTube is authentic, and remove any fraudulent metrics," a YouTube spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email, but when asked, wouldn't go into details on what criteria it uses to make these calls.  The White House videos have seen these kinds of interventions on an ongoing basis, but it appears it's only the dislikes that are disappearing.

Terms of Servitude.  [Scroll down]  While online platforms claim only to be applying their terms of service in neutral fashion, those terms themselves stink of delegitimization.  Once this shadow falls upon you and your account, you are as good as deactivated.  You know this; you know they know this; they know you know they know it.  Forced de facto to impose a precautionary principle on yourself, you "voluntarily" recoil well from the fuzzy line of unofficial censorship that advances far beyond the bright official line.  Already in March of 2020, Google had erased heterodox research on COVID-19. But things escalated rapidly when election season came in earnest.  The New York Post was locked out of Twitter for breaking a story about Hunter Biden's Chinese business ventures.  The sitting president had his social media accounts shut down entirely.  Twitter competitor Parler was removed from Amazon's servers for hosting discussions among Trumpists about the unfolding events.  And YouTube banned even the allegation of widespread election fraud.  Americans realized — or should have — that they had suddenly been herded into a communications control system unlike any ever imposed — or even conceived — in America.

Today's blacklisted Americans:  Conservatives on the email provider MailChimp.  They're coming for you next:  The email provider MailChimp has since the November election made it a clear policy to routinely cancel the accounts of conservatives if they dare send out any emails it deems politically incorrect.  In November MailChimp instantly disabled the email account of two tea party organizations, one in Virginia and the other in South Carolina, when they each tried to send out email notices to their members about post-election pro-Trump rallies.  In January MailChimp did the same to a conservative organization in California that was running a conference calling for the end of the overbearing lockdown rules imposed by the Democrat governor Gavin Newsom.

The Editor says...
For helpful tips, please see "If you think somebody is reading your email..." on this page or this page.

Report: Big Tech Employees Donated 12 Times More to Democrats than Republicans.  The Internet Accountability Project (IAP) released a report showing big tech employees and corporate PACs contributed more than 12 times the money to Democrats than Republicans in 2020.  The IAP, whose mission it is to "rein in big tech before it's too late," discovered employees of Facebook and Twitter, compounded with their PAC donations, have contributed over $5.5 million to Democrats while contributing less than $435,000 to Republicans, a ratio of 12 to one.

Trump blasts big tech 'censorship' after interview pulled by Facebook.  Former President Donald Trump on Thursday night [4/1/2021] decried big tech "censorship" after an interview he gave to his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was taken off Facebook.  "I did a very nice interview with Lara," the former commander-in-chief said in a separate interview on cable news channel Real America's Voice.  "Facebook took it off and it's disgraceful," he told host Dr. Gina Loudon.  The interview was for Lara Trump's podcast and published Tuesday.  When she posted the footage to Facebook and sister-company Instagram, it was removed.  "What's happening now in this country, nobody ever thought would happen," the former president said in Thursday's interview.  "It is total censorship."

YouTube is like the Soviet Union, and conservatives are Voice of America.  [I]n the last two years, social media companies went from limiting access to or deleting individual posts and users to almost a full ban on conservative viewpoints. [...] The latest victim to fall to the social media totalitarianism is a conservative news and comedy host, Steve Crowder, who was forbidden to post YouTube for a week.  That suspension comes on the heels on Steve's recent Twitter ban.  Apparently, the cause for the YouTube suspension was Crowder's episode investigating individual cases of voter fraud in Nevada.  Steve's crew went to dozens of addresses in Nevada, showing that addresses were nonexistent or that people who voted from those addresses did not live there.  For each voter fraud case, Steve's episode provided a detailed explanation on how the vote that came from a particular address was invalid.  There were no "harmful or dangerous acts," "hateful and derogatory content," or "violence" in the video.  Everything contained in the video was verified, so there was no false information, either.  Steve went farther to explain that YouTube had cleared the episode, because no assertion of "widespread voter fraud affecting the outcome of the election" was made in the video.

Instagram Removes Kaitlin Bennett's Iconic Graduation Photo From 2018 for 'Inciting Violence'.  Instagram has removed conservative political commentator Kaitlin Bennett's iconic graduation photo from three years ago for "violence and incitement."  Meanwhile, the platform has allowed an endless stream of threats against the right-wing firebrand to continue for years.  Apparently, Instagram believes that photos of you peacefully exercising your Second Amendment right are a crime.  In their notification to Bennett, they said "we don't allow content that may lead to a genuine risk to physical harm or direct threat to public safety."

Facebook removes video of Trump interview with daughter-in-law Lara Trump.  Facebook removed a video of an interview with former President Trump conducted by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, saying any content "in the voice of Donald Trump" would be scrubbed from the social media platform.  Facebook permanently banned the former president from their platform in January after the Capitol riot.  On Tuesday [3/30/2021], Lara Trump, a Fox News contributor, posted an image on Instagram of her sitting across from her father-in-law, urging followers to "Join us tonight!"  A group of Trump officials were sent an email from a Facebook employee, warning that any content posted on Facebook and Instagram "in the voice of President Trump is not currently allowed on our platforms (including new posts with President Trump speaking)" and warned that it "will be removed if posted, resulting in additional limitations on accounts that posted it."

[Discard] Your Mask:  Take Back Your Freedom — Hope Is Eternal!  [Scroll down]  Another Holocaust will not materialize from the mask.  But it does clearly show what happens when a piece of cloth isn't questioned.  We are told to simply wear a mask — any piece of cloth covering the mouth and nose will work.  The scientific data behind this idea is weak at best.  What is the percentage of completely healthy individuals in their 20s [to] 50s who have died from COVID only?  And what, if any, were the circumstances?  There is so much the Government doesn't tell us.  No, questions can't be asked.  If you dare speak up, share data from other sources or call the Virus Hysteria a sham, you will now become part of the censure culture — no Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or other platforms for you!

The Commonalities Between the Rise of the Nazis and the Tactics of the American Left Cannot be Ignored.  [Scroll down]  Second, the Nazi Party was fixated on censorship and eliminating any cultural institution, publication or speech that did not fully support them.  In other words, their version of today's "cancel culture."  The Nazis were notorious for book-burning rituals in order to intimidate and send the message that they would shut down anyone and anything that did not align with their ideology.  Once in control of the national levers of powers, they did so with impunity.  The American left is figuratively burning books as it uses social media mobs as the vehicle to send the message that they will shut down anyone or anything that does not align with their ideology.

Democrats' Proposed Changes To Section 230 Will Shut Down Conservative Outlets.  While Congress was grilling some Big Tech CEOs this week, Democratic leaders were busy in the background, working on proposals to change how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is written.  Sadly, there are plenty of people on both sides of the ideological divide who have become so angered by the actions of Twitter and Facebook, along with the other social media heavyweights, that support for this sort of action seems to be growing.  But what House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and his cronies are planning to do won't stop some of the worst abuses of Jack Dorsey and company.  Instead, it will open the door to unofficial censorship of anyone with insufficiently woke views and could lead to endless lawsuits, not just against the social media platforms, but all publishers of online content.

Conservatives need to attack the tech monopolies aggressively.  Conservatives need to acknowledge a paradigm shift has occurred:  Big Tech companies are not "free market capitalists," but are, in fact, agents of American socialism.  When Michelle Obama tweets out that Twitter and Facebook should deplatform the sitting President of the United States, and they follow that directive within a day or so, we need to realize there is a new power structure in place.  Keep in mind that Hitler rose to power with the support of German industrialists.  He never needed to have his government pass a decree ordering the Final Solution; his followers knew what was expected.

Mark Zuckerberg:  Facebook Will 'Honor Oversight Board's Decision on Donald Trump's Account.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during a hearing Thursday [3/25/2021] that he will "honor" the potential decision by the company's oversight board to reinstate former President Donald Trump's Facebook account.  The Facebook "Supreme Court" is packed with anti-Trump and progressive individuals.  Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) asked Zuckerberg if he would respect the Facebook oversight board's decision to reinstate Trump's Facebook account if the group, nicknamed the "Facebook Supreme Court," were to rule in Trump's favor.

Why The Oligarchs Fear Christianity.  Gab has been banned from three different banks over the course of the past three weeks.  We operate a legal US business. [...] Gab is the test case for the oligarchs, they will soon start attacking churches and Christian organizations in the same way that Gab has been persecuted for nearly five years now.  Perhaps this secession will become geographic next.  Time will tell, but personally I'm mentally prepared for it.  We didn't choose this, the psychopathic oligarchs in the American regime did.  We will gladly embrace it and no longer associate with wickedness and their death cult of communism and critical theory.  They can keep their drag queen story hours, 87 genders, degeneracy, moral depravity, and endless chaos.  We choose our humanity, freedom, order, and Jesus.  This is, of course, exactly why those in power are attacking Gab.  Tens of millions of Christians are using Gab's services every month to unite and access an uncensored free flow of information that can't be found anywhere else on the internet.

Disqus' De-Platforming of Frontpage:  The Left's fascistic purges continue.  The relentless de-platforming of conservatives in general and of the David Horowitz Freedom Center specifically, continues.  On March 3rd the Editors at FrontPage received an email from Disqus, the networked community platform used by hundreds of thousands of sites all over the web. [...] As of tomorrow, March 17th, Disqus is de-platforming us.  They have refused to respond to inquiries seeking further explanation.  Disqus has taken on faith the libelous accusations of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a widely-discredited, partisan group that frequently characterizes mainstream conservative organizations as "hate groups."

"I'm working for a company that's doing a lot of damage in the world.".  The latest from Project Veritas.  [Video clip]

Glenn Greenwald Testifies to House Subcommittee About Big Tech and Media Aligned Censorship.  Journalist Glenn Greenwald appeared today [3/12/2021] before the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law holds a hearing entitled, "Reviving Competition, Part 2: Saving the Free and Diverse Press."  Mr. Greenwald testified about the inherent dangers of Big Tech arbitrarily controlling speech, and the ideologically aligned media looking the other way.  One of the examples Greenwald uses to highlight the alignment is how Big Tech suppressed the New York Post and their factually evidenced and well documented Hunter Biden story; and how the aligned media apparatus then supported that silencing.  In essence, the institutions of the U.S. government are collapsing; the institutions of communication technology are advancing censorship without oversight; and the institutions of the Fourth Estate are completely compromised.

A new way to burn books:
Amazon stops selling books that frame LGBTQ identities as illness.  Amazon has decided to stop selling books that cast lesbian, gay and transgender identities as mental illnesses.  The e-commerce titan revealed its decision in a letter to three Republican senators who cried foul last month over the removal of a conservative scholar's book about transgender people.  The book, "When Harry Became Sally:  Responding to the Transgender Moment," was published in 2018 but recently disappeared from Amazon's website, Kindle store and Audible audiobook platform.  "As to your specific question about When Harry Became Sally, we have chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness," Amazon executive Brian Huseman wrote in the Thursday [3/11/2021] letter to Sens. Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Mike Lee and Mike Braun, which was published by The Wall Street Journal.

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell claims he is launching his own social media site.  My Pillow founder Mike Lindell has made the grand claim that he is launching his own social media site — after he was booted from Twitter for spreading baseless claims about election fraud.  The pillow pusher said on conservative radio host Charlie Kirk's podcast Friday that his Big Tech rival could even be live within a month, Business Insider reported.  "Every single influencer person on the planet can come there.  You're going to have a platform to speak out," Lindell announced, adding that he has been working on the site for four years.  "It's not just like a little Twitter platform," said the businessman, who has claimed that he lost $65 million in revenue this year because of mass boycotts over his ongoing claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

The CDC Is About To Be Canceled By Google & Facebook For COVID Heresy.  According to the CDC's analysis, between March 1 and December 31 last year, statewide mask mandates were in effect in 2,313 of the 3,142 counties in the United States.  And, looking at the county-by-county data, the CDC concludes that mask mandates were associated with an average 1.32% decrease in the growth rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths during the first 100 days after the mask policy was implemented.  Wait, what?  Only 1.32%?  You read that correctly, they didn't misplace the decimal:  according to the federal government agency that is responsible for managing the COVID-1984 pandemic, the difference between mask mandates and no mask mandate is literally just a 1.32% difference.  And bear in mind, it's entirely possible that the real figure is even lower than that, given all the questionable COVID statistics.  For example, the CDC reports that influenza cases in the United States have dropped to almost zero in the 2020-2021 flu season, down from 56 MILLION the previous year.  It's amazing they expect anyone to take this data seriously.  Are we honestly supposed to believe that the flu has been eradicated?

Conservatives snicker as Urban Dictionary censors term 'BLUE ANON,' the hot new label for left-wing conspiracy theorists.  Conservatives chalked up a victory in the battleground of pejorative labels, concluding that the trending 'Blue Anon' branding of left-wing conspiracy theorists is sufficiently stinging after the term earned censorship bona fides.  The term made it into the online Urban Dictionary of slang words and phrases earlier this week, only to be removed by Sunday [3/7/2021].  A search of the term, a play on 'QAnon' that has been used increasingly in recent months to mock leftists, now comes up empty.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Announces Bill Prohibiting Social Media Censorship.  Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) announced on Friday [3/5/2021] that he plans to sign a bill into law that would prohibit social media companies from censoring Texans' viewpoints online, adding that censorship is "not going to be tolerated in Texas."  "We see that the First Amendment is under assault by these social media companies, and that is not going to be tolerated in Texas," said Governor Abbott at a press conference on Friday alongside State Senator Bryan Hughes (R).

YouTube: Trump's account will be restored when 'risk of violence has decreased'.  YouTube's CEO said the video sharing platform will lift its suspension of former President Donald Trump's account once the company determines "the risk of violence has decreased."  In comments at an Atlantic Council forum Thursday, CEO Susan Wojcicki said Trump's account was suspended after the channel uploaded videos that violated YouTube's incitement of violence policy.  The move came in the days following the Capitol riots on Jan. 6 and was one of several social media platforms to suspend the former president's account.  Trump had uploaded videos after the riot in which he said that impeaching him for inciting violence at the Capitol would be "very dangerous for the USA."

YouTube Blacklists Donald Trump's CPAC Speech, Suspends RSBN Channel.  The Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), a conservative news broadcaster, received a two-week suspension from YouTube because it covered President Donald Trump's speech at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  The video nearly accumulated 4 million views before being censored by the Google-owned platform.  The official Twitter account of RSBN reported the news.  "RSBN has been suspended from YouTube for two weeks because of the Trump #CPAC2021 speech, which violated their guidelines on election misinformation.  The video was approaching 4 million views.  They have also removed it from their platform."

Abbott Moves To End Big Tech Viewpoint Censorship: 'Un-American' And 'Soon To Be Illegal' In Texas.  Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday [3/4/2021] that he's seeking to outlaw viewpoint discrimination on social media.  "I am joining [state Sen. Bryan Hughes] to announce a bill prohibiting social media companies from censoring viewpoints," Abbott announced late Thursday night via Twitter.  "Too many social media sites silence conservative speech and ideas and trample free speech," he asserted.  "It's un-American, Un-Texan, & soon to be illegal."

Google Censorship Continues — RSBN Suspended for Carrying President Trump CPAC Speech.  Control is a reaction to fear; it has always been thus.  In this example Google, the parent company of YouTube, is removing all copies of President Trump's CPAC speech claiming the content violates their terms of service.  RSBN broadcast the speech then hosted it on their YouTube channel.  As a result RSBN has been suspended from their YouTube account.

Unreleased Federal Report Concludes 'No Evidence' that Free Speech Online 'Causes Hate Crimes'.  Freedom of speech on the internet did not lead to a rise in "hate crimes," according to a report sent from the U.S. Department of Commerce to Congress in January — a report that has yet to appear on any government website.  Breitbart News has obtained a copy of the report, [...].  But sources close to the government say they are baffled as to why it wasn't released publicly after being sent to Congress.  The report was prepared by the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is responsible for advising the President on all matters related to telecommunication and the internet.  It was drafted to revise the findings of a previous report from NTIA in 1993 titled The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes.

Amazon Prime Stops Streaming Clarence Thomas Documentary During Black History Month.  Amazon showed it has its limits when it comes to its dedication to diversity and inclusion when it failed to continue streaming a critically acclaimed and popular documentary on the only black Supreme Court justice during Black History Month.  Recently, Amazon Prime dropped Created Equal:  Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, an acclaimed and popular PBS documentary on Justice Clarence Thomas, making it unavailable to stream during Black History Month.  Thomas is our nation's only black justice currently serving on the U.S. Supreme Court, and one would think that between Amazon's claim to "building an inclusive culture" and the fact that it's Black History Month, Amazon would want to stream this inspiring documentary on its platform.

Judicial Watch to Facebook:  End Censorship of Trump.  Judicial Watch announced today it asked Facebook's Oversight Board to end the censorship of former President Trump and allow him back onto the platform.  Judicial Watch told the Oversight Board that the decision to suspend Trump is an affront to free speech and transparency.  The Oversight Board is empowered by Facebook to review and overturn Facebook's censorship decisions.  "Facebook and Big Tech censorship of former President Trump is an attack on the free speech of every American," stated Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch President.  "Simply put:  Big Tech must stop censoring conservatives in their effort to help Joe Biden."

Facebook [has been] Found Primarily to Blame for the Capitol Hill Riot, Yet Parler Is Still the Only App Punished for It.  After the Capitol Hill riot on January 6 happened, Democrats and the media pointed every finger they had available at Trump supporters as a whole.  Moreover, they began blaming anything that might even be connected to conservatives.  Immediately, Democrats began targeting Parler, a free-speech platform that disaffected and banned Twitter users moved to, in order to be able to say what they wanted without big tech punishing them for it.

Trump Versus Big Tech.  A Twitter equivalent could be built for a few hundred grand.  It could run on hardware that fits on a dining room table and easily support a billion users, run in triplicate so it could survive a nuclear war.  It just would not have any users.  Adding significant numbers of users takes several years.  Here comes President Trump!  President Trump brings an ingredient to the party no technology company can recreate, even in an artificial intelligence lab.  President Trump brings an audience — tens of millions — passionately connecting with their pals and building the kind of scale that weathers any setback.  These users show up because it is a cause, not a platform.  While it would take a decade for some technologist to build another Twitter with a new tech stack, President Trump and the MAGA team could do it in months.  There is nothing Twitter can do about it.  Nobody is going back to Twitter from the MAGA equivalent.  Twitter needs massive revenue to make a buck, mostly from ads.

Twitter Locked Focus On The Family's Account Because The Christian Group Said Boys And Girls Are Different.  Global Christian ministry Focus on the Family remains locked out of its Twitter account after the organization tweeted a link to an article by writer Zachary Mettler on its affiliated-platform, the Daily Citizen.  The tweet recited basic biology, and Twitter was not happy.  In today's censorious bully culture, speaking truth will land you in the digital gulag.  "On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden announced that he had chosen Dr. Rachel Levine to serve as Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of HHS. Dr. Levine is a transgender woman, that is, a man who believes he is a woman," the Daily Citizen account tweeted. [...] This is not the first time Focus on the Family has been censored by the tyrannical powers that be.

Canada To Follow Australia's Lead In Charging Facebook For Links.  After blocking links to all news content in Australia, Facebook has reportedly "friended" the country again by coming back to the negotiating table, at least according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.  That doesn't mean that Mark Zuckerberg has dropped his objections to Austrailia's pending legislation that would force the social media giant to pay for links to Australian news content, however.  Neither side seems to be backing down at this point.  Australia may not be in this battle alone, though.  We're learning this weekend that Canada is drafting a similar measure and basically daring Facebook to impose a blackout on them as well.

YouTube Takes Down Video of Testimony Given During Ohio House Session.  Google's YouTube last week removed a video that showed an attorney testifying to the Ohio legislature.  Thomas Renz, an attorney with the Ohio Stands Up! group, spoke to the Ohio House State and Local Government Committee in support of House Bill 90, which would implement legislative oversight of orders given by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.  Renz said over the course of around 36 minutes that he opposed the harsh orders imposed by DeWine, a Republican, and health officials amid the COVID-19 pandemic.  Renz noted that officials initially believed the fatality rate from the disease, which is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, was much higher than the flu, but it's now close to the influenza's rate.  He also alleged that no one under the age of 19 has died from COVID-19 in the state, among other claims.  State officials say 11 children under 19 have died from the disease.

Censored Hunter Biden Laptop Story Comes Back Around to Bite Twitter.  The former Delaware computer repair shop owner who gave Rudi Giuliani and the FBI emails alleged to be from Hunter Biden's laptop has again sued Twitter for defamation.  John Paul Mac Isaac claimed that Twitter defamed him by censoring a New York Post story over its alleged use of "hacked materials."  Due to Twitter's suppression of the story, Americans branded Mac Isaac a hacker, costing him business opportunities and ultimately leading him to shut down his business, the lawsuit claims.  "Plaintiff is not a hacker and the information obtained from the computer does not constitute hacked materials because Plaintiff lawfully gained access to the computer, first with the permission of its owner, Biden, and then, after Biden failed to retrieve the recovered data despite Plaintiff's reuses, in accordance with the Mac Shop's abandoned property police," the lawsuit claims.  "Plaintiff, as a direct result of Defendant Twitter's actions and statements, is now widely considered a hacker."

Facebook's Ban on News in Australia Is Waking People Up.  The saying "if you're not paying for it then you're the product" is a popular explanation for why some Internet services, like the Google apps, Facebook, Twitter, etc., let users join them for "free."  The situation is better understood when restated as "the users supply the content and the giant Internet platforms monetize it."  Big Silicon has become mind-blowingly rich by selling advertising and data mining access to content provided by billions of 'members.'  In return, the members receive the privilege of being 'allowed' to upload their videos, post their rants, share their snaps, and do reportage on these magnificent sites.  Ever since users captured the 2004 tsunami on their brick cell phone cameras, it is Joe Ordinary, not Robert Capa or Margaret Bourke-White who records breaking events.  Joe Ordinary creates videos, literature, and memes, and documents occurrances at a level of detail never seen before.

YouTube Takes Down New Trump Interview.  YouTube took down a newly recorded interview with former President Donald Trump in Google's latest action against conservatives.  A Newsmax spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that the company was told the Feb. 17 interview was removed because it violated YouTube's community guidelines.  A Google spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email:  "We have clear Community Guidelines that govern what videos may stay on YouTube, and we enforce our Community Guidelines consistently, regardless of speaker and without regard to political viewpoints."  "In accordance with our presidential election integrity policy, we removed this video from the Newsmax TV channel," the spokesperson added.  The set of policies cited is aimed at preventing spam, scams, and deceptive practices, the California-based company says.  Included is a policy implemented late last year.  Google said in announcing the policy that it would remove "content that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election."

Biden Silent Over Big Tech Suspensions Because He 'Benefits From the Censorship,' Banned Journalist Says.  After he was suspended from Twitter this week, journalist Paul Sperry said the White House is silent over Big Tech censorship because it benefits certain politicians.  Sperry told The Epoch Times that President Joe Biden has been "silent" about companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google taking action against certain accounts — namely conservatives — because he "benefits from the censorship."  "In fact, he's in the White House now largely because Twitter blocked the New York Post's scoops about the Biden family's shady foreign dealings and influence peddling in Communist China and Ukraine," Sperry said, referring to the Post's reports and other reports that claimed his family members' including son and brother, business dealings in China and Ukraine.  Biden, during the 2020 campaign, denied the allegations that he did anything untoward and said he had no knowledge of his family's business ties.

Democrats Work on Plan For Big Tech to Shut Down Dissent.  An interesting article within Reuters points out how the Democrats in congress are working with the White House to craft legislation to make "social media companies accountable for the spread of disinformation."  Or put another way, the Democrats are attempting to eliminate any ability of those who disagree with them; or worse yet, would outline their corrupt endeavors.  Ultimately this level of control is a reaction to fear.  So the logical question is:  what exactly are they fearful of?  Perhaps the answer is in alignment with the reason Democrats have surrounded the capital with military guards, fence and barbed-wire.

Poland fights Big Tech with push to block social media censorship.  Social media companies that censor users or remove posts for ideological reasons could soon face fines in Poland in a world-first attempt to curb the power of Big Tech through legislation.  Speaking to Fox News, the architect of the law, Deputy Polish Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta, said social media companies have for too long been targeting conservatives, Christianity and traditional values by banning them and removing posts and the Polish government is saying "enough!"  "We see that when Big Tech decides to remove content for political purposes, it's mostly content which praises traditional values or praises conservatism," he said, "and it is deleted under their 'hate speech policy' when it has no legal right to do so."

Instagram Will Now Monitor Your Private Messages To Watch For 'Hate Speech'.  Instagram announced in the past week that they will begin policing private direct messages in their latest crackdown on so-called "hate speech" on their platform, a report says.  In line with the recent racial abusive comments that are "targeted at footballers in the U.K." after losing a match, the social media platform Instagram announced Wednesday that they will be imposing stricter measures in order "to help prevent" the further spread of abuse and hate speech in direct messages, Daily Wire reported.

Media's censorious gatekeepers are mad, because they're losing power.  With Donald Trump out of office and de-platformed, you'd think mainstream media gatekeepers would be happy.  You'd think wrong.  Though the media-Big Tech regime is doing its best to silence opponents and seize control of the high ground, the news from within is grim.  They aren't happy with how things are going.  That's because they know they're losing.  Some are losing audiences and revenues.  But more important, they're losing control of the narrative.  And since control of the narrative, and the power and self-importance that accompany that control, is the most important thing in their lives, they can't be happy.

Facebook will debunk myths about climate change, stepping further into 'arbiter of truth' role.  Facebook announced Thursday [2/18/2021] it will now debunk common myths about climate change, further leaning into the "arbiter of truth" role that the company once renounced.  The social media giant said it is adding a section to its climate change information hub that will features facts with accurate information about misconceptions and falsehoods.  This will include the fact that polar bear populations are declining because of global warming, as well as the fact that too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere harms plant life.  The company said it plans to rely on experts from George Mason University, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the University of Cambridge to identify and debunk climate change myths.  Facebook has introduced these information hubs and relied on them as a key part of its tactic to combat the widespread problem of misinformation on its services.  It's a stark turnaround from CEO Mark Zuckerberg's statement last May, when he defended unfettered speech from politicians on the platform and said he did not think "Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth."

Also posted under Silencing the Global Warming Skeptics.

Facebook Censors Australia from Posting News, Censors Australian Publishers Globally.  A proposed law from the Land Down Under did not go over well with Facebook.  Facebook has decided to block all news in and from Australian users in response to a proposed law that would require the platform to pay news publishers for stories that appear on Facebook.  "In response to Australia's proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content," said William Easton, Facebook's Managing Director, Facebook Australia & New Zealand in a blog post.  "The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content.  It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia.  With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter," Easton continued.

Prime minister Scott Morrison attacks Facebook for 'arrogant' move to 'unfriend Australia'.  The Australian government has been blindsided by Facebook suddenly blocking all news on the platform in Australia but says the "heavy-handed" move will not stop parliament from passing landmark laws to force tech giants to pay for journalism.  Australians woke up on Thursday [2/18/2021] to discover they couldn't view or share news on the social network after Facebook blocked the content in an escalation of a row over whether it should have to pay media companies for displaying their content.  Facebook is opposed to the federal government's news media code which has already passed the lower house of parliament and is expected to soon pass the upper house.

Facebook Blocks News From Australia — Yes, The Entire Country.  Australian officials are pushing back against the totalitarian grip of Big Tech.  As a result of investigations into Google and Facebook the Australian government is set to establish fines against tech companies for anti-trust violations.  However, some officials are now discussing taking actions that are beyond civil lawsuits, and are now advocating for arrest of company officers for unlawful conduct.  The battle lines are being drawn, and in response to the Australian government position on anti-trust Facebook (feeling they are elite and above the law) has now decided to block all news articles from the entire country from their social media platform.

Following Australia's Lead Russia Has Passed A Law On Fines For Censorship Against Russian Citizens The Law Will Apply To Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.  Big Tech's efforts to restrict user access to various Internet platforms are a serious challenge, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with leaders of parliamentary factions on Wednesday [2/17/2021].  He responded to the recent statements made by Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma (lower house), who put the spotlight on Big Tech's violation of freedom of speech.  "What you said about these so-called platforms, IT companies, is a serious challenge not only for us — we see what has happened in the [United] States," Putin noted.  According to him, it is quite obvious that such an "ideological divide" runs throughout the world.

Kevin Sorbo left in the dark by Facebook after 500K followers purged: 'Told absolutely nothing'.  Facebook is giving actor Kevin Sorbo the silent treatment about a 500,000-fan purge of his official page.  The former "Hercules" star appears to be the latest high-profile name to be digitally exiled by the social media giant.  Content policing temporarily took out former Republican politician Ron Paul, in addition to more serious bans for former President Trump's page and Brandon Straka of the once-500,000-strong "Walk Away" page.

Social Media App Parler Resumes After Finding New Computer Servers.  Parler, a social media app that was shut down last month by tech giants, said Monday that it has secured new computer servers and resumed operations.  "We are off of the big tech platform, so that we can consider ourselves safe and secure for the future," Parler CEO Mark Meckler said in an interview with Just The News.  Meckler said the platform will employ artificial intelligence and "human editors to police for illegal speech that violates its service agreement but otherwise is remaining true to its free speech, no censorship roots," the site said.  Dan Bongino, a prominent Parler user and shareholder, applauded the move, saying, "Cancel culture came for us, and hit us with all they had.  Yet we couldn't be kept down.  We're back, and we're ready to resume the struggle for freedom of expression, data sovereignty, and civil discourse.  We thank our users for their loyalty during this incredibly challenging time."

Facebook's Trump Ban an Example of Uneven Standards, Republicans Tell Oversight Board.  Republicans in Congress told Facebook's oversight board that the social media company's suspension of former President Donald Trump is an example of uneven deplatforming standards.  Top House GOP members, including Reps.  Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), told the board in a letter that they see violent speech published from all parts of the political spectrum on social media platforms, including Facebook, pointing to calls for the murder of police officers from the far-left Antifa network and a top Iranian official promising violence against the United States.  "The debate about how to effectively deal with these and other individuals is necessary and important," the lawmakers wrote.  "However, we remain concerned that the deplatforming standards are not applied in a fair and neutral manner."  Republicans referred to a report compiled by a team led by former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), about conservative concerns with Facebook, alleging the report "found numerous issues that resulted in a clear political bias against conservative viewpoints."  They also noted that Facebook limited a story about President Joe Biden's son Hunter from being shared shortly before the 2020 election, claiming it contained disinformation, even though subsequent reporting confirmed many of the points presented.

American Police State:  No Questions Allowed.  [Scroll down]  All of these questions are now too dangerous or too inconvenient for the U.S. government to abide.  They are too dangerous or too inconvenient for Google, Facebook, and Twitter to tolerate on their "free speech" platforms. [...] Look how fast questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election became a state offense.  In November, doing so was mocked as mere "conspiracy-mongering."  In December, it had become a "threat to democracy."  By January, it was "insurrectionist."  And by February, Congress is holding a Soviet show trial to punish the president; the FBI is busy arresting his supporters; the military is purging MAGA troops from its ranks; and prominent media personalities openly suggest drone strikes against American citizens.  This is not normal in a free country, and it is important to say so.  Free people neither fear nor punish debate; open and continuous disagreement is, in fact, a hallmark of all free societies.  Anybody who claims that political speech should be punished as criminal incitement is no friend to freedom.  Anybody who pretends that words are violence is only looking to police thought.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been banned from Instagram.  Instagram on Wednesday [2/10/2021] took down the account of controversial anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  "We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines," a spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement.  Kennedy, the son of late former US Attorney General, US Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, has repeatedly spoken out against vaccines.  He has lobbied Congress to give parents exemptions from state requirements that mandate they vaccinate their children.  The lifelong Democrat downplays his anti-vaccine views, though, by saying that he is actually in favor of safe vaccines and noting that all of his children have been vaccinated.  Kennedy's Facebook page, with more than 300,000 followers, was still active at the time of publication.  The company spokesperson said there were no plans to take down that page "at this time."

Nothing To See Here:  Facebook's Leftist Oversight Board Member Leaves To Join Radical Biden Regime.  A law professor who's been sitting on leftist Facebook's oversight board stepped down to accept a position in President Joe Biden's Department of Justice.  Pamela Karlan will serve as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's Civil Division after spending less than a year on the Facebook board set up in 2019 to review the social media behemoth's content policing decisions.

Facebook Will Take Down Posts With Claims About Vaccines It Deems False.  Facebook announced on Feb. 8 that it will take down posts with claims about vaccines that health organizations or its fact-checkers deem false.  "Today, we are expanding our efforts to remove false claims on Facebook and Instagram about COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccines in general during the pandemic," said a post from the social media giant.  "Since December, we've removed false claims about COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts."  "Today, following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove to include additional debunked claims about the coronavirus and vaccines," Facebook stated in a blog post.

The NYU Study:  The Claim Of Anti-Conservative Bias In Social Media Is Unfounded But Inconclusive?  There has been much press about the New York University study, "False Accusation:  The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives."  It is being touted by the media as establishing that any allegations of bias against conservatives is "disinformation," the term used by authors Paul M. Barrett and J. Grant Sims of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.  That term of course is now used as a basis for flagging or censoring material.  The problem is that the study is largely conclusory and, though buried in the study, acknowledges that it is not based on any real hard data and is therefore "inconclusive."  Conservatives have hit the study as funded by Craig Newmark, a billionaire tech titan who is a major donor to Biden and Democratic candidates.  Newmark has reportedly supported groups in favor of blacklisting and called on Big Tech to take action against "bad actors."  However, the authors did reveal Newmark's funding and, while Barrett has also been attacked for a record allegedly supporting Big Tech, the credibility of the study would be judged on its actual support and analysis.

DeSantis takes aim against social media platforms.  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference Tuesday [2/2/2021] to announce the support of legislation to protect social media users' privacy, saying "big tech has come to look more like big brother with each passing day."  The governor said the legislation will seek a slew of changes that DeSantis says will protect privacy and censorship by social media platforms.  He called out Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple and Amazon for being "nameless, faceless boards of censors."  "Over the years, however, these platforms have changed from neutral platforms that provided Americans with the freedom to speak to enforcers of preferred narratives," DeSantis said.

Project Veritas Reveals Top Facebook Execs Discussing Their Power and Plans to Help Biden Administration.  Project Veritas released footage of Facebook executives acknowledging they have "too much power" and expressing their commitment to working with the Biden administration on a number of shared priorities.  "In his first day, President Biden has already issued a number of executive orders on areas that we as a company really care quite deeply about," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says in the Jan. 21 recording.  "I think that these were all important and positive steps, and I am looking forward to opportunities where Facebook is going to be able to work together with this new administration on some of their top priorities, starting with the COVID response."

Louder with Crowder is Suing Facebook.  That's right, we're putting our money where our mouth is.  Time to sue Facebook.  [Video clip]  We want Facebook to stop these practices or to be honest about what it is they're doing.  Simply stated, is Facebook a publisher or a platform?  They need to be open about what they are and act accordingly.  There is a double standard here.  What are the actual standards by which Facebook says we, its users, govern ourselves?  Facebook needs to disclose what they're doing as a business, especially as they solicit money for advertising.  We need Facebook to stop throttling pages and content and to stop favoring certain outlets over others.  In a word, stop acting like a publisher or just admit that they are one.

Facebook's squad of thought police:  Devine.  When you see him speak, it's hard to believe that such a gormless geek as Mark Zuckerberg may be the most powerful person in the free world.  But socially inept tech oligarchs now wield unprecedented power to censor political thought and speech and are transforming America into an authoritarian surveillance state.  For now, it is conservatives they are silencing and demonizing, in partnership with the Democratic Party.  We already know Silicon Valley leans left, judging by political donations that went almost exclusively to Joe Biden from top social media executives and accounted for 95 percent of employee contributions, according to Wired.  But the partisan power of Big Tech was laid bare this month when they acted in concert to censor Donald Trump and many of his 74 million voters, and then crushed free speech competitor Parler.

Facebook Abandons Any Pretense Of Being A Neutral Private Business Player.  As you may have already heard, there's a recall effort going on in California right now, aiming to remove Governor Gavin Newsom from office.  Even if the proponents of that movement manage to gather the required number of signatures and get the measure on the ballot, it's far from a sure thing that there will be enough votes to actually replace him.  But a little thing like public debate isn't going to stop Facebook from making its intentions clear well in advance.  As our colleague, Scott Hounsell reports this week at RedState, the social media giant is now refusing to sell any advertising space for messages supporting the recall effort.  This sort of blatant liberal bias and favoritism is just so painfully obvious and Facebook isn't even making the slightest effort to disguise it.

Crossing the Digital Rubicon.  Behold the technological behemoths Apple, Google and Amazon flexing their monopolistic powers fatally crippling a competitive forum for public discourse in the form of a plucky app called Parler.  The leader of the most powerful nation on Earth was summarily ejected by Twitter, et al. — with no accountability and no recourse — severing communications with millions of followers.  Leaders of the world express dismay at the brazen display.  The corporate technological overlords claim the moral high ground.  In 2016, Apple defied federal investigators' requests for 'back door' access to a dead terrorist's iPhone.  Apple's flapping flag on Public Relations Hill was roundly praised by privacy advocates and civil libertarians.  Yet Apple's flag meekly bowed to the Chinese Communist Party, denying Hong Kong protestors safety of virtual private networks, or exposing overseas Chinese citizen's data to CCP inspection, or cutting off access to news and information beyond the Great Firewall.  Apple's obedience to Beijing is joined by none other than the sanctimonious Google and Amazon, whose hypocrisy facilitates the genocide of the Uighurs.  Politicians and partisans in the U.S. called for the social media ban of the President and the corporations finally complied.  Employees of the very same corporations are joining the government, the very same employees that approve of Parler's crippling, and that overwhelmingly financially support one political party.

The political storm ahead.  It looks to me as if we are about to enter a very dark and dangerous political storm such as our nation has not seen.  The sunlight of a free exchange of ideas, of thought-provoking discussion, of attending church, of tolerating a simple different point of view appears close to being extinguished.  History is being rewritten and even statues of Lincoln are being brought down.  One must wonder, how long it will be until we are no longer allowed to have cities, counties, colleges, or streets named Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Jackson or Roosevelt.  Is Darkness now falling in America?  The cabal of Big Tech, the Deep State, and the progressive/socialist party is for all practical purposes ignoring and curtailing the Bill of Rights.  At this time, the Thought Police appear to be winning. [...] Since the controversial Election of 2020, The left has "disappeared" citizens, outlawed free association, cancelled books, had people fired or made them unemployable because they thought or voted in a different way.  This new regime has actually discussed publicly, re-education camps.  Publishers are being threatened.

West Virginia newspaper publisher files antitrust lawsuit against Google and Facebook for 'monopolizing the digital advertising market'.  A West Virginia news publisher has filed an antitrust suit against Google and Facebook, who together receive roughly half of all digital ad dollars in the U.S. and are facing antitrust charges from federal and state authorities.  The company, HD Media, owns several papers in the state, including the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington and the Charleston Gazette-Mail.  HD Media claims Google has so monopolized the online ad market that 'it threatens the extinction of local newspapers across the country.'  The suit also alleges that Google and Facebook conspired to further their dominance with a secret agreement, referring to a suit filed by 10 Republican attorneys general in December.

YouTube removes actual Senate videos of doctors testifying about early treatments of COVID.  Senator Ron Johnson tweeted last night [1/27/2021] that YouTube, which is owned by Google, removed two official videos from his Senate hearing last year with doctors testifying about early treatments of COVID: [...] Google and our other big tech overlords have decided that we can't talk about HCQ and how well it works at getting rid of the virus for people.  There were COUNTLESS stories about it working, but because President Trump was pushing it, the media hated it and are trying to rid it from existence as a COVID treatment.  We are at a very dangerous place in our country.  As I've said before we aren't just at a tipping point, we are beyond that now.  We are in the age of information oppression and censorship.  If you don't agree with everyone, then your voice must be silenced.  Pretty soon they will be deleting videos and banning accounts of people disagreeing with Climate Change.  This is where we are now.

Big Tech is suppressing information about writ of quo warranto, the 'Trump play'.  President Trump has a play he and his team can make to challenge the results of the 2020 election.  It's a longshot, but it doesn't fall into the realm of shadow-government-military-coup or some of the other theories we've heard lately.  This one is legitimate, legal, and does not require suspension of disbelief.  It's called a "writ of quo warranto," something we've covered a couple of times on NOQ Report recently.  Unfortunately, unless you're a regular reader of Leo Donofrio, 100percentfedup, or a handful of other websites, you've probably never heard of it.  We've found a strong suppression of the facts and opinions surrounding this, a suppression that has hit close to home here.  Google, after showing our original article on the first page for searches for the term, has removed the article altogether.  Links of Facebook and Twitter were quickly censored.

This Is How Conservatives Get Erased From the Internet.  Two companies, Google and Apple, each control about half of the smartphone market.  So when the two companies made a move against Parler, the conservative social media alternative, it effectively erased its app from existence.  Joining the party was a third member of the FAANG Big Tech consortium, Amazon, which deplatformed Parler from Amazon Web Services.  AWS controls a third of the cloud marketplace.  Microsoft and Google are in 2nd and 3rd place.  Blocking an app doesn't permanently kill a social networking service, though it places it at a structural disadvantage, but Apple and Google can flag sites as unsafe through their browsers.  Google's Chrome commands 45% of the browser market in America while Apple's Safari has a little under 40%.  While browser flags can be currently bypassed, it would add a further structural disadvantage that would make people less likely to use the service, and there's nothing stopping Apple and Google from permanently blocking access to any conservative site.

Facebook Says No More Ads For Movement To Recall Gavin Newsom.  Fascbook is doubling down.  Since the violence at the Capitol our dear leader, the almighty Zuck, has sought out to silence dissent against his comrades in the Democrat party.  While of course Fascbook is free to do as they please as a private company, somehow claiming to be a free and open forum at the same time is a bit disingenuous.  Their actions continue to threaten the free exercise of speech by individuals and by the press, as numerous personal accounts have been suspended for alleged "hate speech" and seemingly innocuous articles posted by news organizations on only one side of the aisle (guess which side) are now being flagged by Fascbook's "fact checkers" as false or for other vague violations.

Facebook Hires Biden Transition, Obama Admin Official as VP of 'Civil Rights'.  Facebook has hired Roy Austin, an Obama administration veteran and a member of President Joe Biden's transition team, as the social media company's vice president of civil rights and deputy general counsel.  Austin had been a civil rights prosecutor and served as a Department of Justice (DOJ) supervisor before becoming a deputy assistant to President Barack Obama in the Office of Urban Affairs, Justice, and Opportunity in 2014.  In 2017, he went into private practice as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney at Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis.  In November, Biden named him as one of the volunteers on the Agency Review Team for the DOJ in his transition.

Experts see legal counteroffensive against Big Tech crackdown on conservative dissent.  Amid a Big Tech crackdown on conservative-leaning social media content and users, legal experts say such firms are exposing themselves to potential legal challenge across several broad fronts, including antitrust action for collusion, revocation of Section 230 liability shields, and shareholder suits breach of fiduciary duty.  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Jan. 13 issued civil investigative demands (CIDs) to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon Web Services, and Apple, asking the companies for their policies and practices regarding content moderation and, more specifically, for information related to Parler, a social media application popular among conservatives that was recently terminated or blocked by Google, Amazon, and Apple.  Parler had become a popular alternative to Twitter, particularly among conservatives and followers of former President Trump, whose own Twitter account was permanently suspended by the platform earlier this month for content purportedly violating its rules.

Disagreeing With Biden's Transgender Policy Is 'Incitement' Now?! Facebook Says So.  On Tuesday, Facebook suspended Robert A.J. Gagnon, a prominent Christian scholar on the topic of Bible sexuality, for 7 days.  His crime?  Speaking out against transgender ideology and President Joe Biden's new transgender military policy.  Facebook claimed that Gagnon's criticism of this government-imposed ideology violated the platform's "Community Standards on violence and incitement." Ironically, Gagnon's post drew attention to Facebook's suspension of his friend, Laurie Higgins, who got a 7-day ban for criticizing Biden's policy.  "There was absolutely no incitement to violence on our part.  We abhor violence done to any person," Gagnon told PJ Media on Tuesday.  "This is just a thinly veiled and pathetic excuse for censorship of any critical views toward trans-tyranny over our consciences, religion, and reason."

Donald Trump's ban from YouTube extended indefinitely.  Former President Donald Trump's YouTube channel will remain suspended indefinitely, the online video platform said Tuesday [1/26/2021].  Trump was first banned from the Google-owned company Jan. 12 for at least a week in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol.  YouTube announced the extension of that suspension last week — before issuing yet another one Tuesday.  "In light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, the Donald J. Trump channel will remain suspended," YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said in a statement.  "Our teams are staying vigilant and closely monitoring for any new developments."  More than 2.79 million people subscribed to Trump's YouTube channel.

YouTube strips rising media company Epoch Times of ability to monetize video content.  YouTube, the video platform service that is a Google subsidiary, has banned The Epoch Times, a rising, conservative-leaning media outlet, from earning money off its videos.  "YouTube demonetized the Epoch Times and related accounts last week," Stephen Gregory, publisher of The Epoch Times confirmed to Just the News on Tuesday in an email.  "This is the latest example of big tech suppression of free speech, a step on the road to communist-style censorship."  A YouTube spokesperson acknowledged Tuesday in an email to Just the News that the company had demonetized the publication's channel and affiliated channels and had suspended them from the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) — over issues related to harmful or sensitive content.

Taking Cara Babies Founder Is Bullied And Doxed For Privately Supporting Trump.  Despite President Joe Biden's promise to unite the country, his supporters have continued to wage a dangerous, illiberal war against people with whom they disagree.  While prominent outlets such as Forbes have focused their attention on blacklisting former Trump administration officials, everyday Biden supporters are extending the search-and-destroy campaign to include individuals who supported Trump in their private capacity.  The latest victim of the left's Great Purge is Cara Dumaplin, a beloved baby sleep consultant who has saved thousands of new parents countless hours of sleep.  Cara is a mom of four, a neonatal nurse, and married to a pediatrician.  The program she founded, Taking Cara Babies, offers classes, e-books, and personal phone consultations to new parents struggling to get their newborns to sleep through the night.  In addition to these paid resources, Cara offers free sleep training advice on her social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, where she has 1.3 million followers.

It's time to stand up against the muzzling of America.  Everyone knows what a credit score is.  But social credit scores are new.  They're the latest corporate import from Communist China, where government and big business monitor every citizen's social views and statements.  And they're the latest form of cancel culture in this country, as corporate monopolies and the left team up to shut down speech they don't like and force their political agenda on America.  For those who still believe in free speech and the First Amendment, this is the time to take a stand.  Like the old-fashioned kind of credit score, your social credit requires a lot of maintenance.  You'll need to get good grades in school and stay out of trouble with the law.  But that's just the start — you have to earn your right to live in polite society these days.  So if you want to get a good job, stay at hotels and be served at restaurants, you will need to do a few other things.  You will need to voice the right opinions.  You will need to endorse the right ideas.  You will need to conform.  That's what the corporate chieftains tell us, anyway.

Censorship Goes Official:  House Democrats are Now Urging FBI to Investigate Parler.  The social media app known as Parler took a heavy blow when it had its entire website ripped out from under it due to Amazon pulling it off its servers following the riot at the Capitol.  Parler is now getting back on its feet, but now it has a new foe, the United States Government.  According to Fox News, the House Oversight Committee's top Democrat, Carlyn Maloney, is attempting to sic the FBI on Parler, claiming that it was the platform that made the riot possible.  Not only that, but she's also claiming that it's a possible breeding ground for foreign countries to incite sedition.

House Oversight chair asks FBI to investigate Parler.  Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, House Committee on Oversight and Reform chair, on Thursday requested the FBI to investigate the social media platform Parler and any role it may have played in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.  The New York Democrat wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to ask that he investigate Parler, which was a platform that became popular with Trump supporters that felt unwelcome on larger social media apps such as Twitter and Facebook.  "I am writing to request that as part of its comprehensive investigation of the January 6 assault on the Capitol, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conduct a robust examination of the role that the social media site Parler played in the assault, including as a potential facilitator of planning and incitement related to the violence, as a repository of key evidence posted by users on its site, and as a potential conduit for foreign governments who may be financing civil unrest in the United States," Ms. Maloney said in the letter.

Parler's fight is every American's fight.  Parler, the social media alternative to anti-conservative, anti-President Donald Trump, anti-Christian speech police at Twitter, has responded to Amazon Web Services' yank of hosting privileges with a lawsuit.  And in its lawsuit, Parler is alleging that Amazon elites "repeatedly asked whether the president had joined or would join Parler now that he was blocked by Twitter and Facebook," as Breitbart reported.  Isn't that interesting.  That would mean the social media censors took a particular dislike to Trump to the point of going after those who might be his friends or allies.  Or business partners.  Or those who would grant him the ability to have a voice.  It's a chilling and complete clamp-down of Trump's constitutionally backed, God-given rights to freely speak and express himself.

New Facebook competitor adds 2.5 million subscribers — in a single week.  Will MeWe prove to be the "anti-Facebook"? The three-years-plus-old social media platform got a big boost toward that objective over the past week.  They added as many users as people who live in the Twin Cities metro area — 2.5 million — based on the platform's promises to make their subscribers their only customers. [...] If a MeWe can rise up and launch successfully enough to start signing people up at a rate of 2.5 million a week, should Congress get involved at all in dealing with Facebook, Twitter, et al?  Its success so far does appear to challenge the perception of de facto speech monopolies — at least at the moment.

Democrats Outsource Political Repression to Corporate Monopolies.  The repression will be televised.  It will go better with Coke, it will promise to clear up your bad breath and make your toilet shine.  It will be in the cloud, it will be digitized and monetized.  It will have a trademark, a brand, and it will be outsourced to the private sector.  Democrats love public-private partnerships and they outsourced political repression to the private sector.  The Constitution has inconvenient things to say about freedom of speech and so the Democrat government of elected and unelected officials outsourced the problem of censoring and suppressing speech to the handful of Big Tech monopolies of the internet.  That same old document written by old white dead men, not to mention centuries of jurisprudence and tradition, prevents the government from kicking down your door in the middle of the night for wrongthink.  But nothing keeps corporations from firing you for wrongthink, for being related to someone who committed wrongthink, or for insufficient political correctness.

Somewhat related:
CNN Demands Cable Companies Blacklist OAN and Newsmax TV.  After spending five years attempting to claim President Trump stole the 2016 election, after five years of pushing the Russia Collusion Hoax, after five years of promoting and encouraging violence against Trump and his supporters, the far-left CNN is now demanding that its competition at OAN and Newsmax TV be blacklisted.  CNNLOL isn't bothering to hide its McCarthysim anymore.  CNNLOL is straight-up calling for the big cable TV companies to rip OAN and Newsmax TV off of their bundles, to no longer make either network available to their customers.  And after the cable companies agree to do this (and they will), CNNLOL will go after every streaming outlet that carries OAN and Newsmax, and on and on and on.

Josh Hawley Strikes Back; Finds New Publisher For His Book On Big Tech Abuses.  Senator Josh Hawley has been the target of a ferocious campaign of personal and professional destruction from the rabid left as well as his own colleagues but it looks like he may be getting the last laugh.  Following the Missouri Republican's principled stand to protect democracy by calling into question of the legitimacy of the election in blue states where fishy activity took place, he was savagely attacked by the media and corporations that wanted to cancel him.

Mika Brzezinski Scolds Facebook Leadership for Trying to Suck Up to Biden: 'You Need to Be Shut Down!'  "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski went on a rant against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg for helping foment the Capitol riot, saying their social media website should be shut down.  Brzezinski said the actions Facebook has taken, such as targeting QAnon conspiracy pages and removing President Trump's accounts, are too little, too late since the riot already happened.  "And Mika, the amazing thing is again, I just want to underline this really quickly, the algorithms at Facebook actually promote this extremism.  They promote the extremism within," Joe Scarborough said.

Big Tech, Big Brother and the End of Free Speech.  In George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," members of the Outer Party of Oceania engage in the Two Minutes Hate ritual against Emmanuel Goldstein, who is supposed to be the enemy of the people but may actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real enemy — Big Brother.  In Nancy Pelosi's "Twenty Twenty-One," members of the Democratic Party engage in the Two Hours Hate against Donald Trump, who is supposed to be the enemy of the people, but may actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real enemy — Big Tech.  Two hours of hate — er, debate — was held in the House of Representatives last Wednesday for the avowed purpose of removing a president of the United States.  That's all it took.  Two hours.  That should tell you everything you need to know about the state of democracy in our country.

Corporations' Worrying Embrace of Censorship.  In recent days, some of the nation's most powerful corporations have engaged in a concerted effort, at the behest of a major political party, to limit the speech of millions of Americans who engaged in wrongthink.  First, Twitter permanently banned the sitting president.  As is its right.  And when millions of his fans left and bolstered Parler, a different platform, Apple, Google, and Amazon went ahead and shut it down as well.  But if you say that targeted deplatforming, though not Stalinist, is troubling, the same people who want to compel everyone to buy state-mandated health insurance, who want to dictate how corporations compensate their employees, who want to force nuns to buy abortifacients, and who want to destroy the lives of bakers and florists who run businesses according to long-held religious beliefs, will vigorously defend the value of free-association rights that allow corporations to act this way.  So I'm pretty skeptical that most of these people are genuine champions of individual market choices, and aren't just super excited about silencing people.

Why Was Parler Censored by Its Competitors?  I've been a big fan of Medium, although I've learned quickly that there are certain "publications" — essentially sub-blogs — that it's best to avoid.  Today I saw a piece published two days ago, The Moderation War Is Coming to Spotify, Substack, and Clubhouse, that addressed how Parler was censored and destroyed by Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon, and then warned that Parler won't be the last.  The given reason, of course, was that people were saying violent things on Parler and all the bien-pensants are, of course, shocked, shocked that this was "permitted."  It might be different if the double standard weren't so glaring.

Former Facebook Executive Advocates for Reeducation and Deprogramming to Protect The U.S. Totalitarian State.  They are no longer hiding it any more.  The leftists are publicly demanding that government intervene using the same tactics deployed against ISIS propaganda to target wrong-think by conservative American citizens.  [Video clip]

The Great Digital Escape.  Did you know you can back up your social media data?  It's officially a good thing to do and the major social media platforms provide utilities to permit this. [...] Of course the question becomes: where does one move the data and to what end?  Enter the emerging world of personal data services which allow you to store your data under encryption and let you control access and potentially sell your data to who you choose.  For decades Big Silicon has been making billions by hoovering up their user's data and monetizing it.  Now some entrepreneurs see a business opportunity in providing storage spaces to users from which companies have to negotiate permissions to access.

Double Standard:  Amazon Is Still Selling 'Kill All Republicans' T-Shirts After Banning Parler For 'Violence'.  Even as Amazon took away Parler's right to exist by kicking the platform off Amazon Web Services (after AWS has become a near-monopoly in providing Internet access) after accusing Parler executives of allowing users to 'incite' the Capitol Building violence and rioting earlier this month, the gargantuan hypocritical gatekeepers of expression and speech appear to have no problem hosting a vendor who sells a t-shirt calling for the elimination of Republicans.

The Five Most Obvious Acts of Fraud in the 2020 Election that You Are No Longer Allowed to Discuss.  For months now, since Election night on November 3rd, The Gateway Pundit has been exposing the massive and unprecedented fraud in the 2020 presidential election.  The days when Democrats find 500 ballots in a trunk of a car are over.  Today their election fraud includes likely every segment of the election process from illegal voters to fraudulent counting.  Since the US Capitol rioting on January 6th the Democrat-Media Complex, including the tech giants, will no longer allow ANY discussion on fraud in the 2020 election.  Democrats and RINO Republicans like Lindsey Graham are determined to shut this discussion down.  This is a lie.  They are trying to control what you can say, read or see.

How Media Bias Hurts the Country.  Recent events, especially those connected with the rhetoric and activities of President Donald Trump, have shown that an "enlightened few" in a small number of unelected, unaccountable companies have acted to control the norms of open debate and part of the global public conversation on the internet, and perhaps thereby embitter political debate.  On January 6, 2021, Twitter suspended the account of Donald Trump, and a day later, Facebook, and then Twitter, issued an indefinite suspension and a permanent ban on messages by Trump.  They cite their rules forbidding content that incites violence.  At the same time, Google and Apple removed Parler, a small social network with ten million, popular with conservatives, from its stores, and Amazon eliminated Parler, which broadcasts parleys, from its hosting service.

Republican-Governed States Can Stop Social Media Censorship.  Legislation has been introduced in the North Dakota legislature to prohibit social media companies from censoring messages and posts, as reported by Breitbart and ARS Technica. [...] The legislation would provide that websites with over 1 million users would be "liable in a civil action for damages to the person whose speech is restricted, censored, or suppressed, and to any person who reasonably otherwise would have received the writing, speech, or publication."  Lead bill sponsor Rep. Tom Kading said, "It's just wrong to ban a sitting president."  More controversially, perhaps legislation could provide a right for anyone world-wide to sue in the state on the theory that people in North Dakota were denied the opportunity for open dialogue and exposure to different ideas.

Former Facebook Official Calls For Verizon, AT&T, Others To Deplatform OANN And Newsmax.  Former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos called for carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and others to deplatform One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax during a Sunday morning appearance on CNN's "Reliable Sources."  Discussing the ongoing political polarization in America in the wake of the November election and the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Stamos suggested that since people now "are able to seek out the information that makes them feel good," an incentive exists for some outlets to "become more and more radical."

It's Not Censorship, It's a Coordinated Effort.  Big Tech, social media, and the press used the violence on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 as a pretext to purge their platforms of conservative figures and Republican officials, most notably President Donald Trump.  Amazon, Apple, and Google conspired to deplatform Parler, regarded as a conservative, or free-speech, alternative to Twitter.  Critics of the sweeping actions argue, rightly, that censorship violates not only First Amendment freedoms but also the spirit of the law protecting internet service providers from liability.  But this isn't censorship.  Rather, it's part of the strategic logic of mass conflict.  The leadership of the political, corporate, and cultural establishment that today rules America shut down the communications of those against whom they are waging war.

Parler website appears to [be] back online and promises to 'resolve any challenge before us'.  The website of controversial social media platform Parler was back online Sunday, following a nearly week-long outage after it was booted from Amazon Web Services and kicked off Apple and Google's app stores.  Amazon, Google and Apple cut ties with Parler for what they said was a failure to moderate content and threats of violence by some of its right-wing user base.  Some of the Pro-Trump rioters who descended on the US Capitol on January 6, fueled by baseless allegations of voter fraud, had been planning the event and spreading misinformation about the presidential election on Parler.

Apple CEO Tim Cook defends removing Parler from its App Store.  Apple CEO Tim Cook defended removing Parler from his company's App Store — saying he doesn't see an "intersection" between the right to freedom of speech and the ability to provoke violence.  Apple and Google booted the conservative-leaning social media site's app and Amazon Web Services dropped Parler from its servers — following the violent riots at the US Capitol on Jan. 6 that led to the deaths of five people, including a cop[.]  "We looked at the incitement to violence that was on there.  And we don't consider that free speech and incitement to violence has an intersection," Cook told host Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday."  Cook said there are more than 2 million apps on the App Store and they all are expected to abide by the terms of service.

Amazon Goes Mad.  Amazon abruptly de-platformed Parler last week, terminating its web services hosting account with a speed and lack of notice clearly designed to ruin the company.  Amazon covered up this action by a fig leaf of allegations that Parler did not adequately control incitements to violence, or that someone might sometime use Parler to suggest that someone think about using violence, ignoring the extent to which Facebook, Twitter, and other social media freely allow all sorts of Progressive groups to glorify, incite, and condone violence.  By doing this, Amazon has exposed itself to an impressive spectrum of risks, both legal and business.

Apple's Tim Cook Just Comes Right Out and Says It About Canceling Parler: 'We Don't Consider That Free Speech'.  What, in a word, did Parler do, to first be removed from Apple and Google app stores, and ultimately kicked off Amazon servers in a blatant effort to eliminate Parler?  In a clip released Friday of an interview on this week's "Fox News Sunday" with host Chris Wallace [of course; safe space], Cook [said,] "We looked at the incitement to violence that was on there, and we, we don't consider that free speech and incitement to violence has an, has an intersection." [...] Want some more elitist arrogance from Cook?  He reminded Wallace that Apple has only "suspended" Parler, and if they "get their 'moderation' together, they would be back on there."  So who moderates the moderators, Tim?  You?  Dorsey?  The mayor of Zuckerville?  Who bestowed that responsibility on you?

The organized disappearing and banning of Donald J. Trump.  In recent times, most presidents upon leaving office have quietly retired to their home states to pen their memoirs, appear at patriotic or commemorative events, and lend their wisdom to university panels or think-thank sessions.  Former President Bill Clinton (D), by virtue of his wife's political ambitions, his daughter's whatever, and of course his own ego, was much more visible, remaining on the world stage with his Clinton Foundation, which keeps the entire family nicely afloat.  And very unlike the others, the Obamas (D) have remained very visible — not leaving Washington, D.C., but instead purchasing a lavish home in the city's most upscale neighborhood plus another $14,000,000 estate while flitting around the world.  However, Big Tech, Big Media, major entertainment, all populated by many people with small and minor minds, are now waging an all-out campaign to have President Trump disappear.  He and his followers are being purged, censored, fired, silenced, unhosted, destroyed.

Big Tech Targeting Leads to Massive Increase in Signal App Users.  An interesting development as Big Tech decides to go into full totalitarian surveillance and targeting mode.  Encrypted communication apps are now exploding with new users.  This outcome will not come as a surprise to CTH readers because the 'Rebel Alliance' has been using encrypted communication like Signal App for several years and planning to deal with the mass targeting currently underway.  This is why CTH has/is so closely guarded the privacy of CTH readers. [...] Inherently people want freedom, liberty and privacy.  The more Big Tech shows they are ideologically totalitarian, and simultaneously supportive of the big surveillance state, the more the free market will provide options to get away from their reach.

Conservatives accuse liberals and Big Tech of using Capitol assault as pretext for censorship.  Conservatives say Big Tech companies, pressured by liberals, are using the Capitol attack to justify the unfair censorship of Republicans and the removal of platforms like Parler.  Nathan Leamer, former adviser to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, said there was a "cabal of reporters, writers, influencers, who generally work at places like MSNBC, the New York Times, and such" who get to decide what is or isn't allowed on social media and who is or is not censored.  "Through their influence, they have a direct line to those in charge of the moderation practices of Twitter," said Leamer, who is now a vice president at the Republican strategy firm Targeted Victory.  Since last week's Capitol riots, almost all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, have announced bans, in some form, of President Trump's accounts, justified by arguing that they fear he will incite further violence.

Parler CEO says social media app may not return.  Parler CEO John Matze said his controversial social media platform may never get back online after major service providers accused it of failing to police violent content and booted it from their networks, according to a report.  Matze said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday that he didn't know when, or if, the fledgling outfit would be back.  "It could be never.  We don't know yet," he said, but later sounded a more optimistic note.  "It may take days, it may take weeks but Parler will return and when we do we will be stronger," Parler told the news outlet.

Parler Claims Amazon 'Repeatedly Asked' if President Donald Trump Joined Platform.  Parler says in a legal filing that a representative from Amazon Web Services (AWS) had "repeatedly asked whether the President had joined or would join Parler now that he was blocked by Twitter and Facebook."  In a lawsuit filed against Amazon on Monday, Parler says that the tech giant was "motivated by political animus," and violated antitrust law when it booted the social media platform from its web hosting service.  Amazon claims that it kicked Parler offline because because words on the platform might "incite violence."  In Parler's latest legal filing against Amazon, the social media platform says that between January 6 and 8, "AWS expressed no concerns with Parler's content moderation."

Assault on the Capitol Has Let Loose the Electronic Octopus.  [President] Trump has been banned for life from Twitter and barred indefinitely from Facebook.  Twitter said in a statement it excluded Trump "due to the risk of further incitement of violence."  The president had called for thousands of his followers to assemble at a massive Washington, D.C., rally protesting the results of the election.  Splinter groups broke off from the massed protesters.  Some stormed into the halls of Congress, social media platforms canceled Trump after he urged his followers, albeit "peacefully and patriotically," to go protest at the U.S. Capitol, where the mayhem followed.  After the assault — and after Democrats won the presidency, kept the House, took the Senate and threatened to pack the Supreme Court — furor broke out against Trump.  The outrage included the banning of Trump and some of his supporters from social media.  Thousands of scared social media users then retreated to the more conservative site Parler.  But in near-unison, Google, Apple and Amazon removed Parler from their platforms.

Refuse to Be Silenced.  Parler's gone for now, the victim of a conspiracy to silence, but it will return.  The fascists can try, but they can't shut us up forever.  Truth flows like water around obstacles.  The Twitbookgram decided to start playing whack-a-prole to bonk unapproved ideas on the noggin and pretty soon too many heads will be popping up out of too many new holes.  They will pop up on Gab, or Clouthub, or Dave Rubin's Locals.com.  People will find a way to be heard.

Here's How We Flatten the Democratic Party During the Next Four Years.  Trump made a colossal tactical blunder by telling his supporters to fight vote fraud in the streets.  That led to last week's excesses, and the biggest crackdown on conservatives in American history. [...] The suspension of President Trump's Twitter account (denounced by Germany's Angela Merkel and top French officials as a violation of basic rights) is an affront to democracy:  Whatever Trump did or didn't do, he is the elected president of the United States, convicted in no court of law, and the people have the right to hear from him.  The suspension of the free-speech social media platform Parler is another totalitarian outrage by what France's Finance Minister calls "the digital oligarchy."

Facebook to remove all posts using 'stop the steal' phrase.  Facebook announced Monday [1/11/2021] that it would remove all content that includes the phrase "stop the steal" leading up at least to the presidential inauguration.  The social media giant said it is "treating the next two weeks as a major civic event," and using precaution following last week's fatal siege of the US Capitol, it said in a statement.  "We're taking additional steps and using the same teams and technologies we used during the general election to stop misinformation and content that could incite further violence during these next few weeks," the statement said.  The announcement comes less than one week after Facebook suspended President Trump's account indefinitely — and said the site is not allowing "any ads from politicians, including President Trump."

GAB CEO: "What we're seeing in America right now is the rise of Communism".  During an interview with WBRE, a local tv station in Scranton, PA, Andrew Torba, the Christian CEO of Gab, answered many of the questions Americans are asking about the alternative, free speech platform.  Torba explains why he founded GAB in 2016 as an alternative, free speech social media platform:  "I was living and working in Silicon Valley at the time, and I had very close relationships inside of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, by nature of my last start-up company which was a digital advertising company," Torba explained, adding, "I got to see the evils of their business model for many years."  The GAB CEO explained that because of the many relationships he developed within these big tech companies, he had "insider sources" who warned him that "the rise of censorship was coming and was inevitable."

Glenn Greenwald Perfectly Sums Up Dems' Love of Big Tech Censorship.  Left-learning journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald has become the voice of reason with a number of issues, the biggest one being censorship.  In fact, when he left The Intercept, the very online news organization that he co-founded, it was because he believed editors were doing everything in their power to bury negative stories about the Biden family.  Greenwald spoke out about Twitter's desire to hide the New York Post's story on Hunter Biden's laptop.  And now he's speaking out about Big Tech censorship.  The investigative reporter shared a thread on Twitter explaining the real reason the left cheers Big Tech censorship:  because it takes out their political opponents.

Tulsi Gabbard Pulls Back the Curtain on Why Congress Won't Act Against Big Tech.  Conservatives have been calling for a reform of tech company power for some time, including the reformation of Section 230.  Moreover, politicians talk a big game about coming down on these tech companies but never really seem to move on their threats or declarations.  Ever wonder why?  Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard will tell you.  Gabbard sat down with the Daily Caller and revealed just why politicians seem to freeze when it comes to acting against big tech and the reason is simple and predictable; it all boils down to money.

Amazon seeks to keep right-wing app Parler offline.  Seattle-based Amazon.com, Inc. has asked a federal judge to deny a request to reinstate the cloud-service account for conservative social media network Parler.  The company's lawyers on Tuesday [1/12/2021] claimed Parler shrugged off police violence content on its site before and after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.  The Seattle Times reported that Parler filed a lawsuit Monday against Amazon claiming a breach of contract and antitrust violation after its account was suspended.  Attorneys for Amazon said the case was not about suppressing speech but about what they called Parler's "demonstrated unwillingness" to remove content that threatens public safety.  Parler claims Amazon colluded with Twitter to "kill Parler's business."

YouTube suspends President Trump's channel for 'a minimum' of one week.  YouTube announced Tuesday [1/12/2021] it is suspending President Trump's channel for at least a week.  Content from Trump's channel was removed Tuesday for violating YouTube's policies and over concerns it would incite violence, the company said in a statement to The [New York] Post.  The tech giant added it will also be disabling comments underneath videos on his channel.  "After careful review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to the Donald J. Trump channel and issued a strike for violating our policies for inciting violence," a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement to The Post.

The Cold Civil War:  Social Media Bans Threaten Free Speech For All.  After last week's Washington, D.C., protests, it didn't take long for the Big Tech billionaires who own, control and run much of the internet and social media to reveal what they truly are: willing tools, a Fifth Column even, of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and enemies of free speech.  A reckoning is due.  In a scene reminiscent of "The Godfather," the Big Tech companies moved aggressively last weekend to "settle all family business" by deplatforming President Donald Trump, his supporters, a swath of the conservative movement, and anyone else who dares to voice an "unWoke" opinion.

The world's biggest gun forum was booted off the Internet because they can be.  AR15.com is a forum with a robust community that serves as a clearinghouse of sorts for firearm dealers and suppliers.  In a statement provided to The Federalist they said in part,  ["]On Monday, January 11, 2021, I received notice from our site registrar that AR15.com had violated their terms of service and that AR15.com would be shut down immediately.  The registrar's decision to de-platform AR15.com was final and no method to appeal was offered.["]  Their registrar is GoDaddy.com.  The fact that GoDaddy did not give a specific example of how AR15.com violated their terms of service I'm going to hazard a guess and say it's because they just discovered it's a gun forum.

Regulate Social Media Like Public Utilities.  Democracy took a big blow when Twitter shut down President Donald Trump's accounts and Google and Amazon ousted Parler, a site favored by millions of conservatives.  Big Tech, which is run by the left, is robbing Americans of their right to communicate freely and exchange ideas.  The nation's founders worried that the government would use its power to censure and crush competing viewpoints.  Their remedy was the First Amendment, guaranteeing all of us freedom of speech and association and barring government censorship.  They had no way of anticipating that tech companies would grow more powerful than governments and have the monopolistic ability to suppress or cancel political viewpoints.  Yet, Facebook and Twitter now "wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions," explains ACLU lawyer Kate Ruane.  And Google, now the eponym for all internet searching, suppresses content by placing it on a distant page few searchers will ever get to.

There May be a Number of Ways Big Tech Implicated Themselves In Their Purge of Parler.  The web giants of this country exhibited a deeply troubling level of power in the past week, but in their zeal to exact their influence these tech titans may have unintentionally created problems for themselves.  Things began with Twitter initially blocking President Trump's account a month or so back, in the name of election security.  Following the mob scene in D.C. last week they flexed these digital muscles once again, and then things escalated between the major companies driving our tech sector.  Soon after the melee in the Congressional chambers, the President's Twitter account was again locked down.  FaceBook ramped that action up, and suspended his account outright, and then Twitter followed suit.  The company then took down the official Presidential Twitter account as well.  This only begins the unforeseen minefield these companies might be stomping through today[.]

Ron DeSantis Shows Why He's a Boss.  With big tech cracking down on internet speech, specifically conservative viewpoints, it's far past time for the GOP to fight back in ways they can.  While there's little that can be done at the national level now because Trump and the Republican Senate squandered those opportunities the last four years, there's plenty that can happen downstream.  Contrary to the media's narrative, the GOP is still fairly dominate at the state level.  [Ron] DeSantis is once again leading on the big issues, coordinating with the GOP led Florida House of Representatives to divest his state from Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and Google.

Rush: If Democrats Can Erase Us from Social Media, Can They Erase Our Votes?  Now that the Democrats have abandoned all pretenses of being a legitimate political entity instead of a power-mad pack of rabid authoritarians, the future is bleak for conservatives.  Last Friday [1/8/2021], in an audacious move that many previously believed was unthinkable, the Dems' indispensable allies in Silicon Valley acted in a coordinated manner to ban President Trump from all of their platforms along with tens of thousands of his supporters.  Such censorship is commonplace with the Democrats' partners in totalitarian China but that it is taking place in America despite the First Amendment shows the dangerous power that has been placed in the hands of the leftist tech oligarchs who are now arguably more powerful than governments.  The blitzkrieg that also included the takedown of competitor Parler is only the start and if they can silence the voices of conservatives, can the Democrats and their tech cohorts also take away their votes?  That is the question being asked by talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh who on Monday's edition of his nationally syndicated show said that the titans of tech are running the United States."

Florida State Rep Calls on DeSantis to Take Massive Action Against Apple, Amazon, Facebook & Twitter.  On Tuesday, Florida State Rep. Randy Fine called on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to take massive action against several Big Tech companies in response to their disgusting attacks on free speech.  "Florida taxpayers should not be forced to do business with entities that censor them." — said Fine.  Fine is urging DeSantis to divest state funds from key players in Big Tech including Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter due to their attack on conservatives.

The Parler purge is just the beginning.  President Donald Trump has been booted permanently from Twitter.  Parler, the low censorship, zero censorship alternative to Twitter has been suspended from Google, Apple, Amazon.  Conservatives by the droves have lost thousands of followers on Twitter overnight — and all coincidentally come just after it's solid and clear, Democrats will hold the White House, House and Senate come January's end.  Democrats and America's foreign enemies are cheering.  Everyone else is feeling the chill.  And rightly so:  Mark these words, this is a purge of conservative speech, conservative expression, conservative rhetoric — and this is all just the beginning.  With tyrants, the mission is to blot out all dissenting viewpoints.  This Big Tech tyrannical purge is all about testing waters, to see what can be accomplished to make Trump and his supporters completely irrelevant on the political landscape.  Call it stage one.  Stage two is to expand the tyranny beyond the scope of social media.

Progressives Who Desperately Want to Censor Parler Just Got Some Bad News.  They tried, and it looks like they may have failed.  Social media company Parler, which has been under attack from the far-left for not censoring conservatives, seems to have found a new home after Amazon Web Services decided to stop hosting the company's site.

Parler finds refuge with right-leaning webhosting service.  A handful of Big Tech companies moved to take down social media platform Parler over the weekend, but it appears to have found a new company to help try to keep its website running.  On Monday, Parler registered its domain and server to be hosted by Epik, an internet webhosting company known for working with right-leaning websites.  Gab, another social media platform popular with conservatives, also uses Epik.  A web domain search shows that Parler is now registered with Epik.  Epik put out a statement on Monday claiming it had no discussion of providing future services to Parler.  Epik did acknowledge, however, that Parler was "working on satisfying the requested terms placed upon them."

It's not just Twitter: Numerous online services take action against Trump, Trump-related content.  It's not just Twitter.  The U.S. Capitol riots provoked an avalanche of online backlash against President Donald Trump on Thursday and Friday, causing numerous online services to sever ties with Trump or his associated political activities.  Twitter, of course, permanently banned Trump from the platform late Friday, citing "risk of further incitement of violence."  Financial Times reporter Dave Lee noted Friday that Trump's campaign has not been sending emails to its supporters since Wednesday, an indication that its email service providers are severing ties.  In fact, one service provider — Campaign Monitor — confirmed it had suspended the Trump campaign's access to its service.

Parler SUES Amazon!.  Parler is suing Amazon Web Services for removing Parler from the internet.  This is a brief summary and explanation as to why.  [Video clip]

Internet Browsers Gearing Up to Silence President Trump, Conservatives.  If you didn't think things could get worse, think again.  Earlier this week, Big Tech conducted one of the most disgusting and massive assaults on free speech in American history.  Here is a quick recap of some of the key events that took place last week against President Donald Trump and conservatives across the world: [...] Don't be fooled.  The Democratic Party will strip every right from you until you are left with nothing.

Ron Paul locked out of managing his Facebook account for violating 'community standards'.  Former Rep. Ron Paul said Facebook suspended him from managing his account, citing a violation of its community standards.  "With no explanation other than 'repeatedly going against our community standards,' @Facebook has blocked me from managing my page.  Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified," Ron Paul tweeted Monday.

Jack is straight up gloating about Parler being destroyed.  In just a matter of hours Parler went from being the number 1 free app in Apple's App Store to being murked into digital oblivion.  And Twitter's Jack Dorsey wouldn't have it any other way.  It's really nice to have options when it comes to social media.  And people were making known their displeasure with Twitter's aggressive censorship by moving to alternative platforms like Parler.  But as we all know Parler was savagely cornered by a Silicon Valley mob, beaten to death, and its body dumped into the San Francisco Bay.

'PARLER' Social Media alternative site has been scrubbed from the internet.  The far-Left fascists are coming for us, ALL of us.  [Video clip]

Parler Sues Amazon, Asks Court to Reinstate Platform.  Social media company Parler sued Amazon on Monday, alleging that the Seattle-based firm's hosting service violated anti-trust laws and their contractual agreement.  The company, which was taken offline by Amazon's services early Monday morning, asked a federal judge in Washington state to reject Amazon's shutdown of its services.  Parler argued that Amazon's move was "motivated by political animus" and designed to reduce competition to benefit Twitter.  Twitter is a customer of Amazon Web Services' division.  The emergency order asked a judge to reject Amazon's shutdown of Parler's account and said it is akin to "pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support."

Parler sues Amazon for antitrust violations.  According to Kruzel, Parler is demanding in federal court that Amazon reinstate the platform on its servers.  Amazon faced heavy criticism from conservatives after it announced that it would be kicking Parler off of its web hosting servers.  The move came shortly after Apple and Google removed the Parler app from their respective application stores, causing many to criticize the companies as oligopolies acting in concert with social media giants to stifle competition.

Parler sues Amazon, asks court to reinstate platform.  Social media company Parler sued Amazon on Monday [1/11/2021], alleging that its suspension from Amazon's hosting service violated antitrust law and breached the companies' contractual arrangement.  In its lawsuit, Parler, which is especially popular among conservatives, asked a federal judge to order that the platform be reinstated online.  The 18-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, accuses Amazon Web Services (AWS) of applying a politically motivated double standard to Parler in contrast to its treatment of the more mainstream social media giant Twitter.  "AWS's decision to effectively terminate Parler's account is apparently motivated by political animus," the lawsuit reads.  "It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter."

It Looks Like the Big Tech Conspiracy Just Killed Parler.  Last evening I posted on how Apple, Google, and Amazon had allied to destroy the upstart social media company Parler.  Parler's competitive advantage was that it was a place where the nasty, vicious little multi-sexual SJWs who control the ability to use Twitter didn't have power.  In the space of just a few hours, Google and Apple removed the Parler app from their app stores, and Amazon announced it was booting Parler off its hosting service.  That sequence of events dealt a major blow to Parler.  Not only was Parler basically off-limits to about 95% of the world's phones, but it no longer had the necessary infrastructure to operate.  Never fear, we were told by the "build your own internet" crowd.

Parler and the Problem of Escaping Internet Censorship.  Back when Parler was first taking off, I warned that its app-based dependency meant that two companies, Apple and Google, can eliminate it anytime they like.  It was only a matter of time.  The transition from desktops and laptops to Android and IOS devices mean that users are operating in a walled garden run by two very lefty companies.  Those companies can do with the garden what they please.  Those users who choose to jailbreak their devices have more options, but most don't.  Conservatives can try to distribute the knowledge more widely and encourage that kind of self-empowerment.  But the bottom line is most smartphone, Kindle, Chromebook, etc users want a simple device that just works and runs all the apps in the app store.  Doing anything more complicated would be inconvenient.

Crazy 2020 Is Dead!  Long Live Crazier 2021!.  [Scroll down]  Multimillionaire Michelle Obama, who seems seldom to allow a serious crisis to go to waste, was calling for the complete weaponization of social media and the permanent banning of Trump.  A scared Mark Zuckerberg seemed to agree.  The multibillionaire had infused $350 million of his own money into key preselected precincts to boost voting turnout in a way the Left in the old days would have called the dark money that undermines democracy.  A day after Michelle Obama's call, Trump coincidentally was indeed banned from Twitter "for life," along with a number of conservatives, and "indefinitely" canceled from Facebook.  Trump followers fleeing to alternate social media sites discovered that their apps could be blocked by Apple and Google.  Amazon joined in blocking the servers of one of these, again coincidentally. [...] The trillion-dollar social media monopolies, on cue from the Obamas and the Left, are now making the necessary adjustments for a hard left-wing controlled presidency and Congress.  Soon, in calmer times, antitrust lawyers will be suing Big Tech for its efforts to destroy its business rivals and ideological opponents as a textbook case of corporate market rigging.

Parler CEO: Attorneys Drop Company as Website Goes Offline.  Parler's website is offline on Monday after Amazon, Apple, Google, and a slew of other companies took action against the social media platform.  Users trying to access Parler were notified that the site couldn't be reached.  Parler CEO John Matze said on Fox's "Sunday Morning Futures" that companies had colluded "to make sure that at the same time we would lose access to not only our apps, but they're shutting all of our servers off tonight, off the Internet.  He also revealed that other companies, including the law firm that was representing Parler, had joined in acting against the company.

The Progressive Purge Begins.  The digital purge started shortly after idiots stormed the Capitol, but it was planned for a long time.  The left spent the middle of the last century burning books, now they're deleting social media accounts, but the objective is the same: eliminate thought they do not like.  The average Democrat doesn't see it as that and can't fathom the idea that they're embracing fascism.  All they see is a people they've been convinced are evil being removed from the digital world in the name of tolerance.  The irony is lost on them.  So is the danger.  Banning Donald Trump and Trump supporters from the digital world is not an end step; it's the beginning.

Nunes Calls on DOJ, FBI to Launch RICO Investigation Over Parler.  House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Sunday called for a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) investigation into Big Tech stifling the new social media platform Parler.  "The effect of this is there is no longer a free and open social media company or site for any American to get on anymore because these big companies — Apple, Amazon, Google — they likely destroyed what was likely a billion dollar company," Nunes explained to Fox News' Maria Bartiromo.  "Poof.  It's gone."  The congressman explained the concern is bigger than a company taking a financial hit.  "Republicans have no way to communicate.  It doesn't even matter if you're Republican or conservative.  If you don't want to be regulated by left-wingers that are at Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or you get shadowbanned, nobody gets to see you, they get to decide what's violent or not violent.  It's preposterous," Nunes said.

Parler CEO Says Service Dropped By "Every Vendor" And Could End His Business.  Parler CEO John Matze said today [1/10/2021] that his social media company has been dropped by virtually all of its business alliances after Amazon, Apple and Google ended their agreements with the social media service.  "Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day," Matze said today on Fox News.  Matze conceded that the bans could put the company out of business while raising free speech issues, calling it "an assault on everybody."  "They all work together to make sure at the same time we would lose access to not only our apps, but they're actually shutting all of our servers off tonight, off the internet," Matze said.

Book Burners 2.0: Clinton-Tied Groups Push Joe Biden to Kill Free Speech.  Left-wing organizations are plotting to suppress dissent.  A coalition of extremely well-funded radical groups, many with direct ties to the Clintons, have signed an open letter to Joe Biden requesting that he host a range of federal government "solutions" to the problem of "disinformation."  From questions about the coronavirus vaccine to "climate denialism" to "lies about abortion," and more, these leftist groups are tapping into their well-known tyrannical tendency to squash dissent.  If readers have not yet caught on, "disinformation" is a dog whistle for speech that challenges left-wing orthodoxy.  By seeking to silence opposition, the leftist organizations are following in the footsteps of book-burners from the Nazis in Germany to Mao's Red Guards.

Silicon Valley Is a Clear and Present Danger to Our Rights.  In case you haven't been paying attention, the battle over personal data, free speech and the free flow of information between the American people and the tech giants is heating up.  As the Googles and Facebooks of the world take an unconstitutional role in deciding what speech and information should be online, it's becoming clear much more is at stake than first meets the eye.  It's also becoming apparent that there are some voices on the Right who are either deeply naïve and ignorant about what is at stake or they are in fact paid collaborators of the tech companies.  Most people who use social media are not entirely sure what their personal data is being used for, or to what extent they've actually given permission for the use of such data.  Fact is, most people have given far more permission to the tech companies than they may realize.

Unelected, unaccountable, non-transparent entity will censor Americans for the Dems.  The latest tyranny comes from the social media giants.  I always thought Glenn Greenwald was too extreme left for me, but he nails it here.  This is unprecedented extreme behavior from the tyrannical new government ruled by the media.  Silicon Valley is more powerful than the President and is destroying free speech.  Glenn Greenwald said this is the "initiation of a new war on terror."  He doesn't say that lightly.  Biden said he wants a new law on terrorism to criminalize free assembly and speech.  They explicitly say it will be directed INWARD, Greenwald states correctly.  Once Trump is gone, their strategy is clear to make any Trump supporter or anyone on the right into terrorists and treat them as such.  Silicon Valley has our data and all the control.  They are more powerful than any nation-state and are unaccountable and non-transparent.  [Video clip]

Big tech is staging a digital coup.  Big tech censorship is coming for conservative voices and it is coming fast.  In their actions to remove conservative voices from the public sphere, big tech companies that collectively control the flow of information for billions of people have all but announced that they are in control of the American political system.  We cannot meet in person because of COVID-inspired restrictions, and now we cannot meet online out of fears of being silenced.  With support from influencers like Michelle Obama, as well as many in congress and media, social media sites are banishing conservatives from their user base.  It's happening with alarming speed.  The government has been forcing people to not meet in person.  All life has turned online.  And now the spaces that nearly everyone uses to interact with friends, work, family, strangers, to meet, to exchange ideas, are being purged of those who do not adhere to progressive or Democratic ideas.

Parler has now been booted by Amazon, Apple and Google.  Parler, the alternative social media platform favored by conservatives, now finds itself virtually homeless on the internet as Amazon, Apple and Google have all booted it from their platforms in a span of a little more than 24 hours.  Amazon will remove Parler from its cloud hosting service, Amazon Web Services, Sunday evening, effectively kicking it off of the public internet after mounting pressure from the public and Amazon employees.

The Streisand Effect kicks in:
Parler No. 1 On App Store A Day After Apple Warns Of Removal.  Conservative social media platform Parler is trending on the App Store, a day after Twitter Inc banned Donald Trump's personal account.  What Happened:  The platform that describes itself as a "non-partisan public place" has risen to the No. 1 spot for downloads on Apple Inc's App Store, TechCrunch has reported.  According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, Parler had around 210,000 installs on Friday, a 281% rise from the day before, when there were 55,000 downloads.

The Purge Is Here:  Twitter [is] Banning Influencers on Right, [and] Removing Followers.  The left and Big Tech have been moving quickly over the past couple of days.  The President of the United States has been booted off Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.  Shopify has booted MAGA merchandise from their stores.  Parler is getting pressure by both Apple and Google to 'moderate' their site, 'moderate' their belief in free speech.  So far their CEO is refusing the pressure.  Meanwhile Joe Biden is thinking up a new law to deal with "ideologically-inspired" "domestic terrorism."  He declared the thousands of protesters who had been at the Capitol were "domestic terrorists," making no distinction between those who committed crimes and those who had not (which was most of the people).

Apple Removes Parler From App Store After Use in Capital Riot.  Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are removing Parler from their services, part of a growing backlash after the social media network was among those used to organize Wednesday's riots at the Capitol.  Apple dropped Parler from its App Store, while Amazon's cloud unit decided to stop hosting the social media company starting Sunday night.  They joined Alphabet Inc.'s Google, which removed the app from its Google Play store on Friday, saying that it created an "ongoing and urgent public safety threat."

3 overseas leaders who know how repression and tyranny work speak out on censorship of Trump and election skepticism.  When people with experience of political corruption and repression warn Americans about danger signs in the current efforts to shut down dissidents, we should take note.  The democratically elected leaders of 2 major Latin American countries are speaking up and warning Americans about the efforts to censor and repress skepticism about the legitimacy of an election.  They are joined the leader of Russia's opposition, the bête noire of Vladimir Putin, in whose pocket Donald Trump supposedly resides.

Google Purges Parler App; Apple Threatens to Remove It.  Big Tech's crusade against conservatives continued furiously Friday night.  Google removed the Parler app from its store and Apple threatened to do the same.  Free market advocates repeatedly told conservatives the solution to Big Tech censorship was building their own platform.  Now Google has removed a free speech platform from its store, blocking millions from accessing the app.

Trump Campaign No Longer Able To Send Out Emails After Mail Service Suspends Access.  Continuing this unprecedented day of internet purges and censorship, Nationalist Review can inform our readers that the mail server used by the president's campaign team has been suspended.  Campaign Monitor, the service in question, confirmed to the Financial Times' Dave Lee that they have suspended access to Trump's ability to send out emails to his millions of subscribers.  The move effectively cuts off communication between his team and his core supporters.  What is not clear however, is what other services have banned his team.  The Trump campaign sends out a massive amount of emails — 33 in January so far.  But, it has been 48 hours since the campaign has reached out to its supporters via email, prompting most journalists to speculate that other providers have shut off access as well.

No More Newsletters?  Trump Suspended from Email Service.  President Donald Trump has reportedly been banned from using at least one email service, severing his ability to communicate with his supporters.  "At least one of the services the team used, @CampaignMonitor, has suspended Trump's access, the company confirmed," Financial Times writer Dave Lee announced on Twitter Jan. 8.  Lee commented earlier in that same tweet that Trump as a result has been silenced on email, "There hasn't been any Trump emails for more than 48 hours.  Almost unheard of — he sent 33 in the first six days of Jan; 2,500+ last year. (h/t @TrumpEmail)."  Lee tweeted a statement allegedly from Campaign Monitor itself, declaring in no uncertain terms that Trump's presence there was terminated.

The All-Out Assault on Conservative Thought Has Just Begun.  After the white nationalist riots in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and others renewed their demands for the suppression of conservative speech on social media.  After Trump's supporters breached the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Big Tech companies clamped down on President Donald Trump and many of his supporters.  Incoming President Joe Biden has said he plans to pass a law against domestic terrorism.  While conservatives rightly denounced the violence this week, this response bodes ill for conservative speech not just on social media, but in the public square and even in private organizations.  In the aftermath of the Capitol riots, Twitter suspended President Donald Trump's account for the first time and Facebook permanently banned the president.  After Trump deleted the tweets Twitter had flagged and had his account restored, Twitter proceeded to ban him entirely on Friday, and then it banned the official President of the United States (POTUS) account.

The new dark age of silencing.  Very quickly, the Democratic Party's allies in at Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Apple have moved to shut down many legitimate and popular conservative and Republican news outlets, including the Twitter feed of the President of the United States.  With the Democrats in control of the government, these leftist internet platforms know they have nothing to fear by doing this, that if anything the Democrats controlling Congress will applaud them and encourage them to censor more conservative and Republican outlets, to shut them all down if possible.  Beforehand, these social media platforms had held their fire somewhat out of fear that the Republicans would change their special tax status exemptions that define them as open platforms, not publishers.  No longer.  Their desire to silence their opponents can now swing into high gear, and they are pushing it for all it is worth, including attempting to silence their direct competitors, such as Parler, a twitter-like platform that prides itself on censoring no one.  It is also very important to recognize that this isn't being done only by the big corporate bosses.  No, sirree, this censorship of conservatives and Republicans is fully endorsed by the workforce at these companies.

Michelle Obama Gave The Order for Big Tech to Delete President Trump From Social Media Platforms.  It really is a thing to behold the Left's active effort to send all the riots, unrest, and fires of the past several years down the memory hole.  When Ferguson, Missouri, was set on fire by Black Lives Matter and Lisa Fithian-trained shock troops, no one called for Barack Obama to be taken off Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media.  However, his wife, Michelle Obama, this week called for the permanent removal of President Trump from all social media platforms because of Wednesday's siege at the Capitol Building.  The next day he was.

CNN Parties Over Twitter's 'Amazing' Choice to Ban Trump:  He's 'Been Kneecapped!'  Mark it down, NewsBusters readers:  January 8, 2021 will go down as one of the greatest days in the lives of more than a few CNN charlatans due to the massive, unprecedented crackdown on American free speech, including Twitter's permanent banning of President Trump.  On CNN's Situation Room, the mood was euphoric as they celebrated the "amazing situation" and "historic moment" of Twitter having "kneecapped" Trump before our very eyes, even though it was many years later for these censorship fiends.  Chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta delivered the news, feigning concern for what Trump will do now and how it'll affect his "state of mind" considering "he's been unstable."  Acosta boasted that, if Trump were to send out a video message, the White House would have to rely on the media even though they're "their least favorite people in the world."

Let me say something briefly about the Big Tech purge tonight.  [Thread reader]  Now there is a sizable percentage of Americans who flat out believe the election is stolen.  So they won't believe that voting matters any more.  And now Twitter and the Tech giants have decided you shouldn't be able to complain about it either.  The old refrain used to be "if you don't like how a social media platform behaves start your own."  Well, that looks pretty hollow tonight, doesn't it?  I guess now the left will say "if you want to speak freely start your own internet, create your own cell phone companies, IOS, computers, and so on."  And this ignores that there are anti-trust laws designed to keep one side from controlling everything.  Indeed, often traditional methods of expression are shut down.  Many states have imposed limitations on gatherings applied to expressive activities and the courts have mainly collectively gone on an extended bathroom break.  So to a person who thinks this way, they can't vote and they can't even complain and get their message out effectively. [...] Twitter and big tech thinks they are helping to lower this nation's temperature.  But my fear is that they just threw a match on a puddle of gasoline.  For that reason, [I] hope they stop this.

Welcome to West China.  Did you ever wonder what it's like to live in a one-party state?  Well, wonder no more.  You're living in one.  The major means of communication — in today's terms that means social media — have now been taken over completely by the left.  Not only has Donald Trump — still the president of the United States — been permanently banned from Twitter, its rapidly growing, open-to-all substitute Parler has almost simultaneously been de-platformed by Google.  You can't get their app for Android anymore.  Apple threatens to be next, demanding Parler kowtow (by Saturday!) to Cupertino's vision of what the world should be.

Big Tech has become a tyranny.  In a crowded field, those cheering the suspension of Donald Trump's Facebook account might just be the most idiotic people in political life today.  The decision announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday to close down Trump's page for the rest of his presidency, perhaps indefinitely, represents the most profound assertion yet of Big Tech's right to police democratic politics.  At a stroke, unaccountable billionaire capitalists have decided to deprive a democratically elected president — the leader of the free world, no less — access to a large part of what now constitutes the public square.  A line has been crossed that can never be uncrossed.  And yet, among commentators and politicos, many of them liberals and left-wingers, this has been met not with shock and horror, but a boneheaded chorus of 'what took you so long?'.

Blaze Reporter Who Covered Riot Deplatformed.  The Blaze journalist Elijah Schaffer, who has put his own physical safety at risk to report on riots throughout 2020 has been shockingly deplatformed for unknown reasons.  "Journalist Elijah Schaffer has been banned from Facebook and Instagram on Friday [1/8/2021].  He reported on Twitter that the two social media platforms, both of which are owned by Facebook, took down his profile and content," The Post Millennial posted Jan. 8.  Schaffer announced that his Instagram account had been banned earlier that same day.

Google Play suspends Parler until app develops moderation policies.  Google suspended the social media platform Parler on Friday from its Google Play app store until the "Twitter for conservatives" adopts content moderation policies following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump supporters.  [Which had been infiltrated by Antifa.]  Parler, founded in 2018, has found traction among conservative users looking for alternatives to more mainstream apps like Facebook and Twitter, which moderate content more rigorously.  Parler has banned users for trolling conservatives but doesn't have a formal set of moderation policies.

Steve Bannon's podcast is REMOVED from YouTube.  Steve Bannon's podcast has been removed from YouTube just hours after Rudy Giuliani appeared on the show blaming the MAGA mob riot that left five dead on the Democrats for 'censoring and suppressing' Donald Trump supporters.  The YouTube account for Bannon's War Room podcast was taken down Friday [1/8/2021] for violating the platform's Terms of Service, according to the Washington Examiner.  A Friday evening [1/8/2021] search for the podcast brought up an error message reading: 'This page isn't available.  Sorry about that.  Try searching for something else.'  Youtube had warned earlier this week that it would ban accounts that continued to spread misinformation about voter fraud.

The Editor says...
Please tell me about the "misinformation about voter fraud" that was spread by Steve Bannon.

Apple Threatens to Remove Parler Social Networking Service From App Store.  Alphabet Inc's Google on Friday [1/8/2021] suspended the Parler social networking service from its app store, citing posts inciting violence and demanding "robust" content moderation from the app favored by many supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump.  Apple Inc on Friday also gave the service 24 hours to submit a detailed moderation plan, pointing to participants using the service to coordinate Wednesday's siege of the U.S. Capitol building.  The actions by the two Silicon Valley companies mean that the network seen as a haven for people expelled from Twitter could become unavailable for new downloads on the world's main mobile phone app stores within a day.  It would still be available in mobile browsers.

ACLU raises concerns amid Twitter's ban of Trump.  The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday is raising concerns about social media platforms banning users, in the aftermath of Twitter's decision to permanently suspend President Trump.  While the ACLU has repeatedly locked horns with Mr. Trump and his administration over issues such as the president's travel ban, the ACLU is worried about the ramifications of tech companies diminishing online speech.  "We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now, but it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions — especially when political realities make those decisions easier," said Kate Ruane, ACLU senior legislative counsel, in a statement.  "President Trump can turn to his press team or Fox News to communicate with the public, but others — like the many Black, Brown, and LGBTQ activists who have been censored by social media companies — will not have that luxury."

Brandon Straka, 500K-strong 'Walk Away' page banned by Facebook:  Every member of my team!'  The "Walk Away" movement has been flushed down an Orwellian "Memory Hole" at Facebook.  Founder Brandon Straka, his team, and his 500,000-strong Facebook page with citizens who abandoned the Democratic Party were purged from the site this week.  "Facebook has removed the #WalkAway Campaign and has banned me and every member of my team!!!" he tweeted Friday.  "Over half a million people in #WalkAway with hundreds of thousands of testimonial videos and stories is GONE.  Facebook has banned everything related to #WalkAway."

The Zuckerberg heist.  In September 2020, [...] I sounded the alarm over Silicon Valley's hijacking of our election system through a private nonprofit called the Center for Technology and Civic Life. [...] In case you were snoozing, as far too many citizens in this country are, CTCL is the deep-pocketed liberal advocacy group subsidized by Big Tech oligarchs and radical philanthropists.  The center received $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.  Election information-rigging Google is a top corporate partner.  The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Democracy Fund (founded by "Never Trumper" billionaire and eBay former chairman Pierre Omidyar) also pitched in.  There are unknown other wealthy donors to the 501(c)(3) "charity," but I can't tell you who and how many they are because their identities are protected by IRS rules.

Facebook bans Trump for at least [the] remainder of [his] presidency.  Facebook on Thursday [1/7/2021] banned President Donald Trump from using its social network or Instagram "indefinitely, including the last two weeks of his presidency.  In a post on the site, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that Trump's refusal to condemn his extremist supporters who stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday showed that he "intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden."  For weeks leading up to the count of Electoral College votes in Congress on Wednesday, some Trump supporters openly planned a violent confrontation at the Capitol.  Trump had repeatedly endorsed the gathering, at which he encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol.

Big Tech Launches Massive Coordinated Cyber Attack on 74,000,000 Trump Voters — GOP Silent.  Big tech has launched an unprecedented and coordinated cyber attack on President Donald Trump and his 74,000,000 voters.  As this was happening, the GOP was dead silent.  On Friday, Twitter permanently banned hundreds, if not thousands, of Trump supporters and prominent allies — before banning the president himself.  Nearly every account that helped to promote the Stop the Steal rallies or challenge the election results were banned, including Ali Alexander, Michael Coudrey, Gen. Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, and Lin Wood.  Countless smaller accounts that supported the president were also getting suspended in a seemingly constant rate.  The same has been happening over on Facebook and Instagram.

The tech monopolies have sprung into action.  [Scroll down]  Trump did not instigate violence.  The tech tyrants have systematically deleted Trump's words and the search engines will not help you find them, but you can, with difficulty, discover what he said on January 6:  ["]We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.  I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.["] [...] Having erased facts so they could claim Trump incited violence, the tech monopolies were set.  To date, this is the purge, in chronological order, all predicated on Trump "promoting violence":
  •   Believe it or not, it started with Pence unfollowing Trump on Twitter.
  •   Zuckerberg personally banned Trump from Facebook.
  •   Snapchat locked Trump's account.
  •   Shopify removed Trump's organization and campaign store.
  •   Michelle Obama called on all tech companies to ban President Trump.
  •   Facebook deleted the Walk Away movement page, including 500,000 Walk Away testimonials.
  •   Twitter banned General Flynn.
  •   Twitter banned Sidney Powell.
  •   Google's YouTube terminated Steve Bannon's War Room podcast while 500,000 were watching in real-time.
  •   Twitter permanently banned President Trump's personal account.
  •   The Gateway Pundit says that Twitter banned hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other lesser-known sites that challenged election results.
  •   The Trump campaign's email service has banned the campaign from its platform.
  •   Twitter deleted the official President of the United States account (@POTUS)

Here Comes the Crackdown.  After the Capitol protest/riot occurred, I said to my colleagues the folks on the left will use it to go after President Donald Trump, Republicans and Trump supporters in general.  They will use it to justify a crackdown on social media and other arenas.  That's already coming to pass and it only happened yesterday.  They're calling to ban anyone who went into the building from plane travel. [...] By the way, where's the crackdown on the Antifa terrorists who fly from state to state?  But the left is not just stopping with going after the folks who were in the Capitol at the protest, they are going after Republicans, and not just because of the riot.

Twitch Suspends Donald Trump Indefinitely.  Twitch has locked President Donald Trump's account indefinitely following the riots that took place on Capitol Hill on Wednesday [1/6/2021].  "In light of yesterday's shocking attack on the Capitol, we have disabled President Trump's Twitch channel," a Twitch spokesperson said in a statement, according to the Verge.

Shopify Pulls Trump Campaign, Trump Organization Online Stores; Claims Trump Condoned 'Violence'.  The online retail platform Shopify has shut down online stores for any entity affiliated with President Trump, claiming that the president has violated its standards for threatening or condoning violence.  Shopify announced the move on Thursday [1/7/2021] following a Wednesday riot by a pro-Trump crowd in the Capitol over the results of the election.  Online stores for Trump's campaign and the Trump Organization, which is largely a real estate company, were shut down on Thursday.

Yes, it was a Fraudulent Election.  [Scroll down]  Election fraud in a democracy is pretty serious, no?  And yet, apart from a small though intrepid group pushing failed court cases, our fearless leaders and their media propagandists just want to sweep it under the rug.  YouTube will not even allow postings that suggest the election outcome was changed by "widespread fraud or errors."  Which, of course, is exactly what may have happened.  Why the silence and creepy censorship?  The answer leads to a very dark place.  Some of the people who occupy positions of influence and power, including both Republicans and Democrats, saw President Trump as an existential threat to this country, so getting him out by any means necessary was justified in their minds.  That was a sinister, and also very foolish, calculus.  But stealing the election was a scheme that went too far; a scheme which would itself pose an even greater threat to the country.  They may see that now.

How to Steal an Election in Four Steps.  [Scroll down]  The media and social media considered the Hunter Biden story so politically devastating to Joe Biden that they censored it.  The American free press banned a true, well-documented, relevant news story because it harmed their candidate politically, something a totalitarian government does.  In the days preceding the election, that same media tried to make it seem as if covid was getting much worse, quickly, and that we needed to mandate closures nationwide: we needed to elect Biden.  Dr. Fauci and the CDC implied the virus could be a problem for years.  Two days after the election they announced that a vaccine had been discovered, which actually had been found weeks or months earlier since a number of researchers and Trump himself had made references to it in tweets, but the news — and the vaccine — had been withheld from the public because it could've helped Trump politically.

Facebook Censors Ad Highlighting Raphael Warnock's Praise of Jeremiah Wright.  Facebook has censored an ad drawing attention to Democrat senate candidate Raphael Warnock's praise for far-left hate-preacher Jeremiah Wright, [...] The ad was bought by American Crossroads, a nonprofit linked to Karl Rove.  It highlights Warnock's praise for Wright, but was taken down by Facebook after it was "fact-checked" by Lead Stories, one of Facebook's approved third-party fact-checkers.  Lead Stories claims the ad "leaves out context," because it implies he was "communicating the same sentiment" as Wright.  But Lead Stories also admits that Warnock referred to Wright as a "preacher and a prophet."

More about Jeremiah Wright and the TUCC.

YouTube Removes Trump Lawyer's Opening Statement From Senate Committee Hearing.  One of President Donald Trump's lawyers said YouTube removed his opening statement from a Senate Homeland Security hearing on election fraud.  "YouTube has decided that my opening statement in the U.S. [Senate], given under oath and based upon hard evidence, is too dangerous for you to see; they removed it.  To this day, 'our evidence has never been refuted, only ignored.'  Why is Google so afraid of the truth? #BigBrother," lawyer Jesse Binnall wrote on Twitter.  Another video of his testimony at the hearing, uploaded on Dec. 17 by a separate account, appeared to still be up.

Protect Election Integrity - Censor Anyone Who Questions the Election.  Last week, Google's YouTube announced that "supporting the integrity" of the election required it to censor anyone alleging that "widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S. Presidential election".  By historical presidential election, Google meant this one.  Democrats are still free to allege that they would have won in 2000 or 2016, if it hadn't been for the chads or the Russians.  A huge tech monopoly closely tied to the Democrats, which was sued by the Trump administration over its illegal abuses, censoring critics of the Democrat election fraud is protecting and supporting something alright, but that thing is very definitely not integrity.  Election integrity, like fact checking, is one of those curious terms whose meaning was 'Orwellianized' in the last decade.  Fact checking used to mean media organizations checking their facts before they published a story.  Now the media has mostly done away with internal fact checking and uses fact checking to describe its efforts to censor conservative media.

Google's YouTube Shuts Down Dilbert Creator Scott Adams.  Google-owned YouTube shut down Dilbert Comic strip creator Scott Adams on Friday, stripping a video off the platform from the podcaster's channel without warning.  "Google (YouTube) just shut me down," Adams wrote on Twitter featuring a screenshot of the message from YouTube.  "The video they deleted is no different from all of my other content.  I assume they'll come for the other videos soon."

Big Tech and IT Security.  Big Tech is impairing and maliciously exploiting the nation's critical IT and communications infrastructure for their own benefit and the benefit of third parties.  During COVID-19, a declared national emergency, they have:
  •   Interfered with medical advice and communications of doctors and other medical practitioners regarding COVID-19.
  •   Prevented patients and doctors from accessing medical information and/or blocked medical advice about COVID-19.
  •   Banned accounts and/or deleted content from physicians and scientists who recommended specific COVID-19 treatments, such as Hydroxychloroquine.
  •   Threatened to block all medical advice contradicting recommendations of the World Health Organization.
  •   Replaced (rather than merely deleted or restricted) medical content which they do not like with their own content and denigrated the original content.
Almost all the interventions related to COVID-19 went against any useful treatments and prophylaxis, but spread panic, and promoted lockdowns, and masks.  This nicely aligned with their own interests — reducing interpersonal communication, leading to increased reliance on their services, and thus, increasing their profits and power.  Big Tech profits have skyrocketed during this pandemic.  This also coincided with the strategy of the Democrat party to use COVID-19 as a pretext for adopting fraud-ridden mail-in voting, for blaming President Trump for COVID-19 suffering, and for blanket house arrest orders (lockdowns).  Big Tech also interfered with the bidirectional communications between the government and the public in general.

Curiouser and Curiouser.  [Scroll down]  All the people that hate America have aligned for this coup.  This is the Hail Mary of all times and they're going for it.  Big tech such as Google, You tube, Twitter and facebook have shut down conservative commentary.  If you do something as simple as tweet about the irregularities of this election, you're booted.  Total control, and there's nothing you can do about it.  Well, TV is worse.  On Monday, Rudy and the crew were in Arizona presenting their case.  If you thought that the witnesses, mathematic anomalies, extended time frames, weird ballots, etc, in Pennsylvania were pretty amazing, that was just a warm up to Arizona.  I have to believe that anyone who is being honest with themselves and not running on blind hatred of Trump, would have to say after that hearing, that there's NO WAY that there wasn't massive fraud involved.  So let me ask those who continue to tell me that I'm spreading vile [falsehoods], that Trump lost because people hate [him], and I should suck it up and move on:  Why isn't the media broadcasting these hearings so the American people can make up their own minds?  If it's just smoke and mirrors, if there's no substance, then why not air it.  Make fools out of people like me??  Better yet, if Rudy and his evidence and witnesses are really [baseless], why isn't the media covering it, so they can rip it all to shreds?  You know why.  They don't want YOU to see what really happened.  The less people that see what these folks have as evidence, makes their job of pushing their agenda much easier.  So, we have big tech in on this.  We have the media in on this.  Who else is in on this?  I'm afraid that it's so widespread that we really are in the biggest clash between good and evil we have ever seen.

Systemic discrimination?  In the U.S.?  Study after study shows that the mainstream media have presented President Trump and stories surrounding his administration in a negative light roughly 90 to 95 percent of the time, while fawning over Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama.  Almost every newspaper and magazine features page after page of smears, innuendo and outright lies about Trump and his every action, while proffering glowing coverage on his political opponents.  And then there is Big Tech.  The giant social media companies have made a mockery of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which indemnifies "platforms" from potential legal issues stemming from their content.  They have eagerly utilized the benefits the act grants to those entities supposedly not censoring and discriminating content, while continually censoring and discriminating against content, including that of the President of the United States, in the manner of a partisan "publisher."

The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and Will Backfire.  Start with the headline: Supporting the 2020 U.S. Election.  YouTube in its company blog can't even say, "Banning Election Conspiracy Theories."  They have to employ the Orwellian language of politicians — Healthy Forests, Clear Skies, "Supported" Elections — because Google and YouTube are now political actors, who can't speak plainly any more than a drunk can walk in a straight line. [...] This announcement came down at roughly the same time Hunter Biden was announcing that his "tax affairs" were under investigation by the U.S. Attorney in Delaware.  Part of that investigation concerned whether or not he had violated tax and money laundering laws in, as CNN put it, "foreign countries, principally China."  Information suggestive of money-laundering and tax issues in China and other countries was in the cache of emails reported in the New York Post story blocked by Twitter and Facebook.

Youtube Announces It Will Delete All Posts Alleging that Widespread Fraud Cost Trump the Election.  Google-owned Youtube has announced that it will summarily delete all videos that claim that Donald Trump lost the presidency due to widespread voter fraud.  In a Wednesday blog post, YouTube said any post "that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome" of the election will be removed.  The content will be removed starting Wednesday [12/9/2020].  YouTube added that it is already rigging search results and algorithms to hide "misleading" election videos from its users.  YouTube said that the censorship effort will be "Limiting the reach of borderline content and prominently surfacing authoritative information." YouTube added that "Problematic misinformation represents a fraction of 1% of what's watched on YouTube in the U.S," and adds, "we know we can bring that number down even more."

Facebook faces U.S. lawsuits that could force sale of Instagram, WhatsApp.  Facebook Inc could be forced to sell its prized assets WhatsApp and Instagram after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and nearly every U.S. state filed lawsuits against the social media company, saying it used a "buy or bury" strategy to snap up rivals and keep smaller competitors at bay.

YouTube Announces New Censorship Rules — Will Take Down Videos Alleging Fraud and Disputing 2020 U.S. Presidential Election Results.  YouTube announced Wednesday [12/9/2020] it will take down videos questioning the integrity of the U.S. presidential election that millions of Americans, most notably President Trump, believe was stolen through numerous fraudulent actions, lawfare chicanery and computer manipulation.  YouTube says it already has been rigging search results and algorithms to hide "misleading" election videos, describing the censorship effort as, "Limiting the reach of borderline content and prominently surfacing authoritative information."

How Google Falls.  America just lived through the first wave of what might be called a one-sided software war.  Software, as in Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other "Big Techs," worked together to impact an election cycle.  Nobody disputes that, not even the techs.  Actually, they are pretty proud of it.  Americans, particularly the ones daily censored on Twitter and Facebook, look at these monoliths and see eternal weaponry arrayed against them.  Their senators and reps will never break them up.  Most take money from Google, and the rest live in fear of crossing them.  One man's monolith is another man's dinosaur.  Don't fear these guys; they just got there first.  Looking at the technology behind all these firms, one finds they are using conventional software stacks, the kind pretty much everyone uses today.  They just have scale — they spent billions on hardware, software, programming.  An impossible hurdle to duplicate.  But it's not.  Not at all.

Dehumanizing Americans.  By now, most Americans are well aware of the efforts to block communication countering the alternate reality of the "Great Reset."  Mainstream Media, Facebook, Twitter and other communication networks are working overtime to censor speech contrary to the approved narrative.  Even the president of our country is being censored.  He routinely has had corrections added to his Twitter feed; his speeches are not carried by MSM, and his attorneys' attempts to get the facts out about the stench of election fraud are sidelined or ignored.  As for Joe Average Citizen, social media giants such as Facebook pointedly block communication that is out of line with their "standards," while so-called "fact checkers," aka brainwashers, post relentless reminders about the newly favored "realities" of the Great Reset.

Facebook 'de-prioritizes' removing slurs against white people, men and Americans and will police them less aggressively than anti-black hate speech.  Facebook has de-prioritized removing hateful slurs against white people, men and Americans, instead focusing on blocking slurs against black people, gays, Jews and other groups.  The change on Thursday [12/3/2020] in Facebook's algorithm is a shift from the social network's 'race-blind' system that previously removed anti-white insults as well posts such as 'men are dumb' or 'Americans are stupid.'  The changes are to the social network's automated systems, meaning hateful posts about whites, men or Americans that are reported by users can still be deleted if they violate Facebook policies.

Etsy Bans MAGA Knitter for 'Harmful Misinformation'.  E-commerce platform Etsy says it is stamping out "harmful misinformation... from knitters making MAGA-themed beanies.  Conservative author and activist Michelle Malkin reported that Etsy user "Deplorable Knitter" had received a permanent ban from the platform for trying to sell beanie hats bearing the "Stop the Steal" slogan, a Republican rallying cry against voter fraud.

Without Censorship, There Can Be No Control.  We can all attest to the fact that social media companies have been censoring conservative viewpoints for quite some time now, though when it started can be debated. [...] We know all too well that colleges across America have been blocking conservative speakers from appearing on campus for years, but social media has remained relatively free in the area of speech.  Until the age of Trump, that is.  From Youtube removing videos and users to Twitter blocking the president of the United States, social media censorship has gotten out of control.

Facebook is censoring information about the election.  Whether on Facebook, on Twitter, or in the Senate, these people think you're stupid, and they're no longer trying to hide it.  If we bow down to them, they will be proven correct.

The Big Tech Occupation.  Big Tech has infiltrated the American homeland and is imposing speech laws that resemble those of Europe, challenging the authority and longevity of the First Amendment.  Although we share common ideals with other Western nations, we pursue and defend those ideals very differently.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in our approach to speech.  It is important to understand how fundamentally different our country is from the rest of the world if we want to understand why Big Tech's speech codes shout not be inflicted on American citizens in American jurisdictions.  Put another way, if the would-be monarchs of Silicon Valley get their way, their speech codes will ultimately undermine our American values of free speech and the First Amendment itself.

Saying, 'Trust The Science' Showcases Democrat Ignorance.  [Scroll down]  Instead, as we've seen throughout history, anything that challenges the "accepted science" gets ridiculed and censored.  Dr. Scott Atlas, a professor of neuroradiology and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, certainly someone who knows something about science, has consistently made the case against lockdowns due to their severe consequences.  For instance, the World Food Programme reports the economic consequences from shutdowns will push 135 million worldwide to the brink of starvation.  Yet Atlas is consistently censored on Twitter and ridiculed in the media.  Similarly, a Danish group completed the largest study of mask use ever, over 4000 people back in April, but only managed to find a publisher for this important work this November.  Why?  Perhaps because their study showed — what every peer-reviewed study has shown over the past 20 years — "no statistical significance" of mask effectiveness.  Not surprisingly, the "accepted science" community has been suspending accounts tweeting the link to the study.

Facebook fact-checker issues correction to censoring of Candace Owens post after she threatens legal action.  Political commentator Candace Owens took a victory lap after a third-party Facebook fact-checker retracted the censoring of her post after lawyers were allegedly involved.

Voter Fraud — Second Of Three:  More Dead Voters In Pennsylvania.  If you have ever read the novel "1984" you know the most terrifying aspect of the book is its description of how the government has come to control the people via its absolute control over information. [...] The book was once very abstract science fiction.  No longer.  As I write it has been all of two days since the last time my Twitter account was shut down, because I dared to espouse an opinion with which the "fact checkers" disagreed.  We will see if I make it through the weekend without being silenced again.

The Left's Adoption of Schrödinger's Cat.  In the modern-day Wild West that is the internet, actual fact-checkers would be not only beneficial, but welcomed.  Instead, what we've witnessed in recent years is that supposed fact-checkers actually check news stories for the sole purpose of ensuring they concur with their own individual worldview.  If not, they automatically label them as false or just suppress their distribution.  The most disturbing example has to be the decision made last month by Facebook's third-party fact-checkers to shut down the New York Post story detailing the damning content of Hunter Biden's emails.  Was the story false?  No, but the "fact-checkers" argued that it couldn't be verified.  In a subsequent hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, both Facebook and Twitter — who conducted similar censorship — admitted that they had zero evidence indicating that the story was false.  The fact that over a month later the Biden Campaign has still not contested the authenticity of the emails is a clear indicator that they are genuine, and the self-proclaimed fact-checkers are more accurately described as fact-suppressors.

'Orwellian': Parler CEO Eviscerates Facebook's 'Secret Internal Algorithm'.  Parler CEO John Matze had some harsh criticism for Facebook after it was revealed that they employed a secret algorithm to boost left-leaning media outlets on its platform.  It seems like yet another issue that will motivate conservatives to migrate over to alternative social media organizations like Matze's company.  During an appearance on "Fox & Friends," Matze reacted to a reported published by The New York Times outlining Facebook's conduct in the aftermath of the presidential election.  The report alleged that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to change the platform's algorithm after Nov 3 to push corporate media outlets like CNN to the forefront.  The change "resulted in a spike in visibility" for "big, mainstream publishers."

Amazon versus Alex Berenson (& me).  Alex Berenson brings and independent mind and a formidable set of skills to his heterodox coverage of the COVID-19 epidemic.  He is a former New York Times investigative reporter and a writer of spy thrillers.  He has just released his third pamphlet in the series Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and Lockdowns.  When the first pamphlet in his series was published this past June Berenson had a close encounter with Amazon of the kind with which we have become all too familiar.  His pamphlet was rejected by Kindle Direct Publishing.  And then ensued the usual dance: [...] Berenson published the third pamphlet in his Unreported Truths series this week and went through the same routine with Amazon.  One had to follow the story via Berenson's Twitter feed.

Lots of Takeaways From November 2020.  [Scroll down]  The social media monopolies closed off communication of matters that advantaged Trump and disseminated matters that advantaged His Fraudulency [Biden].  The ban on news published by the New York Post about the Hunter Biden laptop was only the tip of an iceberg.  Millions of Americans were fed controlled news, as Stalin did in the Soviet Union with Izvestia and Pravda, and as Hitler and Goebbels did in Nazi Germany with Der Stürmer.  Twitter, Facebook, and Google are monopolies more dangerous than John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil ever was.  These people have an agenda, and they — not Putin — engineered massive election fraud.  Yes, they are smart.  Much smarter than the Republican senators who question them.  They engineered His Fraudulency's election, broke all kinds of rules, and then they "humbly" apologized ... after the fact, after the damage was done, after it could not be remedied.  That was the game:  manipulate voters and, afterwards, apologize.

When has this writer ever called any news organization "far-left?"
YouTube Suspends Far-Right News Network OANN Account for One Week, Citing COVID Misinformation.  YouTube has penalized the right-wing One America News Network for promoting a bogus cure for COVID-19.  On Tuesday [11/24/2020], YouTube said it removed a video posted by OANN, a relentlessly pro-Trump outfit owned by Herring Networks, because it violated the site's policy prohibiting coronavirus misinformation.  Because OANN has received a "strike," it is temporarily prevented from uploading new videos or live-streaming for one week.  YouTube also has demonetized OANN's channel, meaning it is no longer eligible to participate in the site's advertising revenue-sharing program.

Mainstream Media Thinks Parler Is a "Threat to Democracy" Because Libertarians and Conservatives Get to Post.  After years of being censored on Facebook and Twitter, conservatives, libertarians, and other fans of free speech are making a mass exodus to new platforms.  One that has really taken off since the election is Parler, which has been the most downloaded app in the country over the past two weeks.  Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media and left-wing extremists are outraged.  How dare the people who have been censored, deplatformed, and shut down on their social media sites move to a site that promises not to treat them like pariahs?  They go as far as to say it's a "threat to democracy" because libertarians and conservatives get to post.  I mean, seriously, we can't be letting conservatives and libertarians post their opinions all willy-nilly, right?  What will happen without the "fact-checkers?"

The Censorious Left Is Obliterating Free Speech.  A lot of things worry me about a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, but nothing troubles me more than that it will accommodate the left's disturbing march toward selective suppression of free speech.  Much of the war against this sacred liberty occurs at the level of our culture, but when a leftist-friendly administration is in power, our efforts to combat this culturally will be more difficult.  As a result of structural and technological changes in our society, threats to free speech no longer come from the government alone, and so, our constitutional guarantees against encroachments are now inadequate.  There has been such a consolidation of power in the media and social media that these two institutions pose a great danger to our speech apart from any state action.

Big Tech's free speech suppression is dangerous information warfare.  It may just have been the fact that they were beamed in virtually to the hearing room, but our billionaire Big Tech overlords looked more cyborg than human when they testified before a Senate committee Tuesday [11/17/2020].  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, 43, in funereal black, with a castaway beard and nose ring, stood stiffly in front of an austere shelf of white bowls and empty bottles and talked about "humans" versus "algorithms."  Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, 36, was freckly and clean-shaven, but came across as equally robotic.  He wore a white shirt, blue jacket and striped tie against a bland backdrop of silk drapes and a potted plant.  Both spoke in a slow monotone.

Hawaii's gift to the rest of us:
Democrat Senator Hirono:  Conservative Bias On Social Media Is 'Completely Baseless'.  Hawaii's Mazie Hirono is either very good at playing dumb, or just plain ignorant.  Probably both, though.  She's not a Senator, so much as a left-wing entertainer — just like 99% of her colleagues.  [Video clip]

Sen Josh Hawley Blows The Lid Off Of Facebook's Censorship Collusion With Other Platforms.  Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Tuesday pressed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a newly revealed whistleblower complaint alleging that Facebook employees coordinate with Twitter and Google employees to make certain content moderation decisions.  Hawley said a former Facebook employee "with direct knowledge of the company's content moderation practices" contacted his office about an "internal platform called Tasks that Facebook uses to coordinate projects, including censorship."  [Video clip]

Big Tech Corporate Leftists at WordPress Suppress Critical Public Watchdog.  The maverick website Conservative Treehouse (CTH) recently announced that WordPress would no longer host them due to alleged violations of its terms of service.  When CTH asked WordPress to identify the alleged violations, it cited its policy against "prohibited content" and "calls to violence."  WordPress didn't bother to identify any specific offending content or explain how the site's content violated the terms.  But fans know the truth.  WordPress is part of a coordinated corporate crackdown to silence conservative voices.  CTH played an indispensable role in the pushback against the Russia collusion hoax.  The site is known for its long analytic pieces that spotted overlooked details in court documents and publicly-available transcripts.  It had a knack for finding context to seemingly irrelevant developments.  Perhaps no other source demonstrated as much skill in deciphering redactions to uncover the identity of bad actors within the government.  CTH frequently embarrassed the Department of Justice and the FBI for their blatant hypocrisy and protection of insiders.

Why I Left Facebook — And Why You Should Too.  [Scroll down]  I've been on Facebook for more than a decade.  I credit it with renewing old friendships I thought were lost to diverging lives, and for making many new friends.  But this combination — selling me to the highest bidder and treating me like a rat in a maze — is simply too much.  I will miss Facebook and the ready possibility of conversations with friends and family, but I'm gone.

Why Not Trust Rudy Giuliani?  [Scroll down]  Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, the three juggernauts of mass communication, have gotten in bed with big media, and now all the news that's fit to print is all the truth that's fit to say.  People are being banned for trying to sift new information and share it.  I've personally seen accounts blocked not when a man threatens violence on Antifa, but when he posts pictures of Antifa using violence against him.  (One man among many, a public celebrity known as Philip Anderson to his friends and KingFreeSpeech to his fans, had his teeth knocked out and was called a n----- by white radicals.  He posted a picture with his face bloodied and teeth hanging and was almost immediately banned from Instagram.  I repeat, one man among many.  I, Hypocrite, a Facebook page that simply posts pictures of leftists being leftists, has been deleted several times and is constantly on the ropes.  Garbage Human, which does exactly the same thing, is gone.)

Six Takeaways as Facebook, Twitter CEOs Testify at Senate Hearing.  [#1] 'Tasks' and Coordination:  Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., one of the staunchest critics of the social media companies, said that a Facebook whistleblower had contacted his office about an internal platform called Tasks.  Hawley said the whistleblower, a former Facebook employee with direct knowledge of the company's content moderation policies, explained that Facebook's censorship teams used Tasks.  As an exhibit, Hawley showed a Tasks screenshot that seemed to show communication among Facebook employees and those of other tech giants.  "So, as I understand it, Facebook censorship teams communicate with their counterparts at Twitter and Google and then enter those companies' suggestions for censorship onto the Tasks platform so that Facebook can then follow up with them and effectively coordinate their censorship efforts," Hawley said.  "Let me ask you directly under oath, now:  Does Facebook coordinate its content moderation policies or efforts in any way with Google or Twitter?"  Zuckerberg didn't give a clear answer.

Welcome to Social Government.  [Scroll down]  Well what if I told you a Policy Director at Facebook was Nancy Pelosi's Chief of Staff before taking said job directing policy at Facebook?  What if I told you the head of algorithm policy at Facebook worked for Hillary at The State Department?  Or that the Head of Content Policy worked for the Hillary presidential campaign?  What if I told you the person in charge of privacy policy at Facebook used to work for Al Franken, before he worked for Senator Bonoff, before he worked for Congressman Oberstar?  Or that the Director in charge of "countering hate and extremism" at Facebook came from the Clinton Foundation?  Did you know that the person at Facebook who currently "oversees programs on countering hate speech and promoting pluralism", and "develops internal third party education and drives thought leadership on hate speech and content moderation" was one of Obama's policy advisers at The White House?  Do you even know what "pluralism" is?

A Twitter Tale of Two Timestamps.  As I noted yesterday [T]witter has once again upheld my appeal of their 3rd lockdown of me over the Benford's law post that they've been auto locking people over for a week but I noticed something interesting about my latest appeal and reversal. [...] This process involves a series of falsehoods & dishonorable actions by the crew at [T]witter.
  [#1]   Falsely flagging said link as some type of intimate image without consent
  [#2]   Falsely (and automatically) accusing users in writing of spreading intimate images without consent.
  [#3]   Falsely flagging people who delete said tweets as having broken said rules
  [#4]   Falsely claiming to review appeals
  [#5]   Falsely claiming (in writing) that they have reviewed said appeal and that all of this has been an "error".
  [#6]   And Falsely apologizing for said "error" with the full intention of repeating it if you dare send out that tweet again.
Now if I expected better from these folks I might be disappointed, after all there is a reason why so many have left this platform or have gone elsewhere, and some have asked why I don't to the same.

Sen. Blumenthal Urges Mark Zuckerberg to Remove Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Steve Bannon from Facebook.  You are witnessing your future under Democrat-Marxist control.  On Tuesday Senator Dick Blumenthal questioned Mark Zuckerberg on why Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit and Steve Bannon still have accounts on his platform. [...] Obviously, Blumenthal and today's Democrats show NO REGARD for the US Constitution.  Conservative publishers have been censored and put out of business by Facebook since the 2016 election.

Josh Hawley Confronts Mark Zuckerberg with Evidence of Internal Facebook Censorship Tool.  At the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on Big Tech censorship today, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) confronted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with evidence of an internal tool used by the social network to coordinate censorship with Google and Twitter.  The tool, called Tasks, is used improve the workflow of Facebook employees, but is also used by Facebook employees to collaborate with Google and Twitter in censoring users across platforms, according to Sen. Hawley.

The Conservative Treehouse is being de-platformed.  An invaluable source of facts, documents, and analysis of the deep state and ruling class is being driven off its web platform.  Techno-fascism looms.

The Treehouse is Deplatformed.  Most CTH readers are likely aware of the term "deplatforming."  Unfortunately, the big tech control mechanism to shut down speech & assembly has now arrived on our doorstep. [...] What does this mean?  It means CTH is being kicked-off the WordPress website hosting platform because the content of our research and discussion does not align with the ideology of those who define what is acceptable speech and what is not.  What was our violation?  After ten years of brutally honest discussion, opinion, deep research and crowdsourcing work — with undeniable citations on the events we outline — there is no cited violation of any term of service because CTH has never violated one.  The WordPress company is not explaining the reason for deplatforming because there is no justifiable reason for it.  At the same time, they are bold in their position.  Perhaps this is the most alarming part; and everyone should pay attention.  They don't care.

Free Speech Platform Gab Enjoys Explosive Growth Due to Big Tech Censorship.  Free speech platform Gab has enjoyed a major boost in traffic this year, particularly surrounding the presidential election, and is set to reach over 55 million page views this month.  Gab has doubled the number of people visiting the site every week, now visited by 8 million people from around the world.  Breitbart News recently spoke with Andrew Torba, the CEO and founder of the free speech platform Gab.  Torba told Breitbart News that the site has enjoyed major growth this year, particularly surrounding the 2020 election.

GoFundMe Derails Fundraiser For 'Whistleblower' Mail Carrier From Pennsylvania.  A GoFundMe account for "whistleblower" mail carrier Richard Hopkins from Erie, Pennsylvania, had his account put on "hold," unable to withdraw funds, journalist James O'Keefe reported Sunday [11/8/2020].  Hopkins claims he was instructed to collect late ballots, with the apparent intent from Postmaster Rob Weisenbach to backdate the votes.  The mail carrier made the explosive claims in a signed affidavit under the penalty of perjury.  [Quoting a tweet:]  "BREAKING: [GoFundMe] has flagged [USPS] Whistleblower Richard Hopkins campaign after raising nearly $120,000 in 24 hours," O'Keefe said.  "Your fundraiser is currently under review and withdrawal are on hold," read a notice from the company, according to a screenshot posted by O'Keefe.

Benford's Law Shows Biden Vote Fraud.  I was just going to include this in Monday's state-of-play voting fraud roundup, but since I found out that Facebook is blocking access to one of the source articles, literally preventing you from posting a link to it (I tested), saying that it "this link goes against our community standards."  So I decided to do this post to let you have something you can share on Facebook.  The first link I saw on the topic was this GitHub piece forwarded to me by reader Brandon Byers, who noted "the Wikipedia entry for Benford's Law was edited 11/5 in order to downplay its usefulness in detecting election fraud."  It appears that a lengthy edit war is still going on there.

Saturday's Media Declaration Is A Naked Attempt To Silence Republicans, And Nothing Has Changed.  Nothing has changed since Friday night.  You might find that strange, given the media stampede to certify the election results for their man, but it's crucial.  The calls made Saturday morning are as arbitrary as they were last Tuesday, could just as easily have waited for Monday, and fly in the face of massive evidence of voter irregularities that, at minimum, should be heard in court before anyone considers calling the election.  Add pending lawsuits and official recounts in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin, and the conclusion is an attempt by the American media to pick our president and decide our election.  The danger comes now, when in concert with Silicon Valley censors they use their own decree to dismiss and silence anyone who says otherwise.

When Establishment Republicans Tell You This Election Was on the Level, Do You Believe Them?  If Democrats looking into alleged Democrat ballot fraud find no Democrat crimes; and Democrat news anchors hold off on calling states for Trump until they've flipped days later for Biden; and Democrat social media companies censor online discussions questioning how it's possible for the president to expand his vote shares in states like Florida and Ohio and in Democrat precincts across the country while simultaneously losing in Rust Belt states run by Democrats after late-breaking vote bursts for Biden magically appear, then Republicans surely have nothing to worry about.

These "errors" only go in one direction.
'Enforcement Error': Facebook Reinstates 'New Jersey Women For Trump' Page After Trump Complains.  Facebook reinstated a pro-Trump Facebook page with more than 29,000 members after President Donald Trump slammed them for taking it down days before the presidential election.  "Put them back NOW!" Trump tweeted at Facebook on Sunday morning [11/1/2020], along with a story from NJ.com explaining what happened.  [Tweet]  Shortly after Trump complained, Facebook reinstated the page, claiming they made an "enforcement error," according to the president, who thanked them.

Trump reacts swiftly after Facebook removes 'Women for Trump' group: 'Put them back Now!'  Facebook's seemingly blatant censorship of conservative voices appears to be reaching a fevered pitch the closer Election Day looms.  The latest example of the media network's censorship came to the public's attention very early Sunday morning thanks to the keen eyes of President Donald Trump.  At 12:47 am Sunday morning [11/1/2020], he retweeted a report from NJ.com detailing how a Facebook group with nearly 30,000 pro-Trump women was outright deleted Saturday afternoon without any explanation.

Facebook censorship board is comprised mostly of foreign nationals with ties to George Soros.  The recently appointed Facebook oversight board tasked with deciding which posts get blocked from the world's most popular social networking website is stacked with leftists and foreign nationals who will be functionally regulating the speech rights of American citizens in the United States.  The Board includes a close friends of leftwing billionaire George Soros who generously funds the Open Society Foundations (OSF), a network of left-leaning groups across the world that ostensibly function as non-profit organizations.  Soros dedicates huge sums to spread an agenda ideologically driven by the objective of global market integration, which threatens the sovereignty of nations.  More than half of the members of the censorship board have ties to Soros.  Soros is known for targeting conservative politicians.

Live Not By Lies.  On October 16, 2020, in a Parisian suburb, a Muslim refugee decapitated 47-year-old schoolteacher Samuel Paty.  Previously, during a lesson devoted to freedom of expression, Paty had shown a Charlie Hebdo cartoon depicting Islam's founder, Mohammed, to his students.  On October 17, at nine a.m., I posted Paty's photo on Facebook with a salute to his courage.  Within minutes, I received notification from Facebook that my salute to Samuel Paty "goes against our Community Standards on hate speech."  Note the capitalization of "Community Standards." [...] What exactly is happening here?  In saluting Paty and naming his killer's ideology, I violated a new religion.  In demonizing Christianity, others also followed the dogma of the new religion.  What to call this new religion?  In the past, we used terms like "Political Correctness," "cultural Marxism," "social justice warrior," "woke," "liberal," "progressive," and "leftist." I use the term "Team Anti-Western-Civilization," but this is clearly too awkward.  We need a handy new term for a new, powerful religion that is now affecting all of us.

Verifiability, Not Truth:  How Wikipedia Buries Stories Like the Biden Corruption Scandal.  The foundation that owns Wikipedia and its co-founder Jimmy Wales bill the online encyclopedia as the solution to Silicon Valley's alleged problems with "fake news" due to the site's sourcing standards and neutrality policy.  Corporate media have echoed their narrative in touting the online encyclopedia.  Yet thanks to skewed policies, the site is itself a huge source of partisan opinion and fake news masquerading as fact, leading to incidents such as editors censoring recent revelations regarding the alleged corruption of the Biden family.  There is a long-running understanding that Wikipedia is about "verifiability, not truth," meaning that even when corporate media and academic sources are provably wrong, the falsehood will stand on the online encyclopedia.

Mark Zuckerberg was 'not aware' that Facebook's head election integrity official used to work for Biden.  During a period of intense questioning with senators on Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he was not aware that a person who identifies herself as the person who "leads efforts to ensure election integrity on [Facebook]" was formerly a policy adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.  The exchange, which was held via video conference, came in response to a question from Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who was quizzing Zuckerberg about the prevalence of prominent former Democratic staffers in key positions at Facebook.  According to Fox News, Thune asked, "My understanding is that the person that is in charge of election integrity and security at Facebook is a former Joe Biden staffer, is there someone closely associated with President Trump in the same role at Facebook?"  Thune's question appears to have been referring to Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Anna Makanju, whose work for Biden is prominently stated on her Atlantic Council biography.

Vimeo Removes Video Showing Ties Between Pro-China Group, Black Lives Matter Founder.  A popular video platform has removed a video critical of apparent connections between the Chinese Communist Party and a founder of the Black Lives Matter organization.  New Zealand investigative journalist and author Trevor Loudon said the video was posted on Vimeo for only "a few hours" and had about 1,600 viewers before Vimeo took it down.  "It really touched a nerve for Vimeo to take it down after just a few hours," Loudon told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.  The move by the New York-based video hosting and sharing platform follows a pattern of major tech companies such as Twitter and Facebook restricting or censoring conservative content.

Yes, [the] Media Are Rigging [the] Election Against Half The Country.  Here's How.  [Scroll down]  Twitter and Facebook have been openly meddling in the 2020 election by censoring political opponents, suppressing their supporters, limiting the distribution of articles and arguments in their favor, and other draconian efforts.  The media have more or less cheered them on.  NeverTrumpers, and their more traditional Democratic media colleagues, seem to think that so long as they are protected by social media companies — and there is no reason to think they won't be — that censorship of non-leftist media is not anything they will fight.  Some openly support bans on anyone they politically disagree with.  Failure to defend journalists who are actually under attack — as opposed to those who are merely criticized — is a hallmark of many in the media.

Ted Cruz rips Jack Dorsey over censorship of Post's Hunter Biden bombshell.  Sen. Ted Cruz teed off on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey over the social-media giant's censorship of The [New York] Post's reporting on Hunter Biden, in a stunning rebuke during Wednesday's [10/28/2020] Big Tech hearings on Capitol Hill.  "Mr. Dorsey, who [...] elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?" Cruz thundered at the social-media mogul.  "Why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC, silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?"  Dorsey, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, testified via live feed before the Senate Commerce Committee on topics including election security and preventing the spread of misinformation regarding the coronavirus.

Big Tech On Trial.  CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google testified today before the Senate Commerce Committee on Big Tech censorship, and its naked support of the Democratic Party.  The hearing lasted for nearly four hours.  This exchange between Ted Cruz and the apparently homeless Jack Dorsey has been the most discussed moment in the hearing:  [Video clip]  [...] Basically, the Silicon Valley giants are sitting tight and counting on Joe Biden to win the election.  If that happens, there will be no accounting.  But if Trump wins, they could face serious trouble.

Facebook Just Lied to Congress About Its Censorship of Conservatives.  [Thread reader]  Mark Zuckerberg just told [Senator] Markey that FB doesn't make "exceptions".  I have direct evidence that they do make exceptions.  See thread with many examples and screenshots from when I filmed with a hidden camera at FB.  [Numerous photos]

Censorship In America; Amazon Refuses Controversial Documentary On Their Platform.  I wrote back on September 25th about the upcoming release of noted author and documentary filmmaker Dr. Shelby's Steele's latest film called "What Killed Michael Brown?" [...] One prescient reader foretold accurately the censorship this film would soon encounter:  "It sounds like and seems to me that the 'blowback' from 'conservatives' is not from conservatives at all but from someone who KNOWS who Shelby Steele is and what he stands for and want to shut him up."  Well that "someone" turned out to be Amazon.com.  Two weeks before the October 16th release of the film, Amazon (whose owner is Washington Post owner Jeffrey Bezos) sent a notice to Eli Steele, Dr. Steele's son, informing them their documentary would not immediately be available on Amazon's video platform.

Zuckerberg:  We Censored the Hunter Biden Story Because an Unnamed Individual at the FBI Told Us to be On the Lookout for Russian Disinformation.  Two possibilities:  [#1] The FBI gave him a general, nonspecific warning about Russian disinformation, and Zuckerberg is just using this as an excuse for his own company's partisan censorship.  [#2] More chillingly — the FBI, which was sitting on the laptop for a year and thereby keeping the story bottled-up, took the extra step of poisoning the well and claiming that the story was Russian disinformation to Zuckerberg, to make sure it got censored if it did come out.  If Zuckerberg's telling the truth, it's #2.

Marsha Blackburn Calls Out Google CEO Sundar Pichai over Suppression of Breitbart News.  Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) criticized Google's Sundar Pichai for suppressing the visibility of Breitbart News in Google search results during a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee today.  Pichai was present along with the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook.  "Google searches for 'Joe Biden' generated approximately 30,000 impressions for Breitbart links.  This was on May 1.  And after May 5th, both the impressions and the clicks went to zero," Senator Blackburn noted.

Tech Tyrants Who Have Eliminated a Majority of Conservative Content on their Platforms Insist Stripping Them of 230 Protections Would Harm Free Speech.  This is rich.  Tech tyrants Jack Dorsey from Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook are arguing that stripping them of 230 protections will harm free speech online.  Since late 2016, after the election of Donald Trump as President, the tech tyrants have been censoring and banning non-approved conservative content on their platforms.  The partners in crime at Google have blacklisted conservative websites in their algorithms and search results.  The same is not happening on the left or with the fake news mainstream media.

Media Firemen Scramble to Save Biden Candidacy.  During the Biden stretch run, the firemen on the left have shredded what is left of their reputations as journalists to destroy information the Deep State does not want their audiences to have.  Even before Hunter Biden's laptop surfaced, the media busied themselves suppressing information that was readily available to the ordinary citizen — montages of Biden plagiarizing, groping little girls, making racially insensitive comments, eulogizing exalted KKK cyclops, threatening Ukrainian prosecutors, even sexually assaulting at least one very credible Democrat — and they did so with enough success that the Biden camp felt comfortable positioning Joe as the candidate with "character."  The Hunter laptop was too tangible to dispose of subtly.  Not since Joseph Goebbels urged the German Student Union "to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past" has a western nation so flagrantly thrown in on the side of ignorance.  Twitter has gotten most of the attention for its total blocking of the New York Post, which broke the laptop story, but the firemen at NPR were not far behind.

Trump's Grassroots MAGA Army Working Around Platform Controls.  A diverse and patriotic MAGA movement is overwhelming the mechanisms of narrative control; and they are doing it by flooding the zones with a combination of "old school" and "modern tech" workarounds.  It's quite honestly the most remarkable political dynamic since the organic Tea Party erupted in 2009.  Before getting into the details of how this truly organic situation is unfolding it is worth looking at how big tech is freaking out.

Facebook censors AT, backs down hours later.  A Taiwanese media outlet owned by Guo Wengui, a Chinese dissident billionaire, published some of the Hunter Biden sex tapes.  Other Guo-owned outlets allege that (a) Nancy Pelosi and the DOJ have known what's on Hunter's hard drive since September; (b) China "owns" Joe Biden; (c) Joe was responsible for the deaths of CIA informants; and (d) the outlet has millions of videos and photos of people who have also allowed the Chinese government to compromise them.  Facebook has spent most of the day suppressing the spread of this information.  On October 14, 2020, the New York Post began reporting on emails about Ukraine from a laptop that Hunter Biden had allegedly dropped off for repair and never recovered.  Since then, the FBI has said that the computer is legitimate.  No one from the Biden camp has denied the authenticity of either the laptop or its contents.  We learned too that the computer contained videos and photographs of Hunter Biden engaged in sexual activity.  These images allegedly include impropriety with underage girls.  What almost overshadowed the shocking allegations was the ferocity with which the Tech Tyrants acted to prevent the news from spreading.  Twitter blocked any attempts to tweet the story and locked the New York Post out of its Twitter account.  Even though the laptop has been authenticated, Twitter has not budged from this stance.

Confronting political censorship.  The bombshell discovered on a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden, were quickly contained last week when dominant social media platforms chose to shield them from public view.  A New York Post exclusive, including email references to a meeting between then-Vice President Biden and an executive of corruption-tainted Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, lent fresh rationale to President Trump's call last year for investigation of the Bidens for peddling access.  Congressional Democrats retaliated and tried unsuccessfully to oust Mr. Trump from office.  The Hunter Biden revelations comprise an epic October surprise with the potential of tarnishing Mr. Biden's image weeks before his Election Day faceoff against the Republican president.  But Twitter and Facebook chose to block users from linking to the story, effectively forcing readers to engage in a game of online hide-and-seek to read it.

With the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than The Actual Story.  The flow of information in the United States has become so politicized — bottlenecked by an increasingly brazen union of corporate press and tech platforms — that it's become impossible for American audiences to see news about certain topics absent thickets of propagandistic contextualizing.  Try to look up anything about Burisma, Joe Biden, or Hunter Biden in English, however, and you're likely to be shown a pile of "fact-checks" and explainers ahead of the raw information.

Nothing Funny About Facebook's Serial Attacks On The Babylon Bee.  Seth Dillon oversees one of the web's funniest destinations, but there's an edge to his voice that's hardly comic.  Dillon, the CEO of The Babylon Bee, is at war with social media.  Again.  It's an odd place for a humor site to be, but it's in sync with the current wave of Big Tech bullying.  Dillon says the trouble began two years ago when Facebook aligned with third-party fact checkers like Snopes to battle misinformation on the platform.  That seemingly noble stance led to Snopes and, by extension, Facebook, labeling a satirical Bee article as "false."

3 Ways Donald Trump's Debate Performance Will Affect The Race.  [Scroll down]  You could almost hear the "No! No! No!" coming from [Joe Biden's] campaign war room, but there he went, claiming his family's now-public, corrupt dealings with foreign corporations seeking access to power are just Russian disinformation. [...] For a week, the titans of the American left have worked to quash this story, sending surrogates out to argue with the evidence while Big Tech actively suppresses the information and Biden hides from reporters more interested in asking him the flavor of his milkshake.  It was going to be hard to hide until Election Day, but any hope of that is now dashed.  Even the allied news networks that have diligently worked to ignore the story have now unintentionally aired it.  There's no part of this story that plays into the vice president's campaign message, and no aspect of it will do well with voters.

Meet the Bidens, the one family who made a fortune in the Obama economy.  In their self-absorbed, navel-gazing, illiterate dyslexia, the American political press gets the words all out of order.  It's not "free speech" they back, but "speech-free."  It's not the pen that's mightier than the sword.  For these lazy jackals, it's the eraser that is mightier than the sword.  The eraser and the gag.  And the mute button.  This is what happens when truth and facts become entirely subservient to rage and posturing.  Pick what you like and mute all the rest.  The stuff of Cafeteria Journalists.

Is China Now In Control of Our Flow of Information?  Big Tech, no stranger to censorship, is guilty of silencing conservative voices on their platforms.  For years, conservatives have been locked out with trumped up charges of not following "community standards" with no clear definition of what standards were being violated.  It has become increasingly clear that conservatives were targeted for their content.  This week, the matter came to a head when Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed they will prevent Americans from seeing the New York Post's explosive article about incriminating emails, documents, and pictures stemming from Hunter Biden's laptop.  The emails implicate Joe Biden and the Chinese Communist Party.  They had no concerns exposing President Trump's illegitimately released tax records or the release of the phony Steele dossier, but they are clearly covering for Joe Biden lest it halt his presidential aspirations, and by doing so they are interfering in a presidential election.

The 'Black Problem' in Television.  Larry Elder produced a fantastic documentary titled Uncle Tom that simply asks why blacks are expected to think and vote monolithically on issues critical to the black community.  It has been roundly ignored by the media since its release.  Sure, it can be viewed as a rental on places like YouTube or directly from Salem Radio's website, but in terms of equity of distribution, there is a sizable market loss when not accessed through a paid subscription service.  Likewise, it has become known that Shelby Steele, the independent black thinker, had a project titled What Killed Michael Brown? that was rejected by Amazon streaming services.  As the title suggests, this film explores the history and facts of the infamous Ferguson incident that ushered in a reinvigorated narrative of police-on-black brutality and murder.  For simply asking a question that runs counter to a prevailing (and acceptable) viewpoint, his material is effectively censored.

Facebook ghosts anti-Whitmer pages in Michigan, extends crackdown to state politics.  Social media blackouts raising conservatives' ire are not confined to the national level, as Facebook has for the second time erased without warning a group that opposed Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's stringent lockdowns.  The group "Impeach Whitmer" had never been flagged or warned for any post by its roughly 7,000 members before Facebook suddenly scrubbed it on Oct. 8, hours before authorities made the first arrests in an alleged plot to kidnap the Michigan governor.  The group's founder, Brandon Hall, said he was announcing Facebook's action now because he had received no reply from the social media giant explaining how he allegedly violated company policies.

Report: Facebook Successfully Suppressed Reach of NY Post Biden Bombshell by Half.  A recent study by the social media engagement tracking firm Newswhip found that the New York Post's recent bombshell story on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and their alleged deal with Burisma had its reach cut in half by Facebook compared to anti-Trump stories from other publications.  This stands in stark contrast to Twitter's efforts to censor the story, which actually doubled the attention it received according to the MIT Technology Review.  Newsweek reports that social media tracking firm Newswhip recently analyzed the engagement that the New York Post's bombshell story on Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden received across social media.

Meet your (Chinese) Facebook censors.  China is one of the most censorious societies on Earth.  So what better place for Facebook to recruit social media censors?  There are at least half a dozen "Chinese nationals who are working on censorship," a former Facebook insider told me last week.  "So at some point, they [Facebook bosses] thought, 'Hey, we're going to get them H-1B visas so they can do this work.'"  The insider shared an internal directory of the team that does much of this work.  It's called Hate-Speech Engineering (George Orwell, call your office), and most of its members are based at Facebook's offices in Seattle.  Many have Ph.D.s, and their work is extremely complex, involving machine learning — teaching "computers how to learn and act without being explicitly programmed," as the techy website DeepAI.org puts it.  When it comes to censorship on social media, that means "teaching" the Facebook code so certain content ends up at the top of your newsfeed, a feat that earns the firm's software wizards discretionary bonuses, per the ex-insider.  It also means making sure other content "shows up dead-last."

Facebook Demonetizes Satire Site Babylon Bee, Claims Monty Python Spoof 'Incites Violence'.  Facebook is demonetizing the Christian, political satire page "The Babylon Bee" after they published an article satirizing Sen. Mazie Hirono's comments during the Amy Coney Barrett hearings in a fictional depiction.  The Bee's CEO Seth Dillon announced the demonetization on Tuesday in a tweet, claiming that the big tech company pulled down the article based on a "regurgitated joke from a Monty Python movie."

Facebook workers [are] 'ashamed' by tech giant's censorship of Post's Hunter Files reporting.  "Facebook is almost an arm of the Democratic Party — an arm of the far-left wing of the Democratic Party."  So said the former Facebook insider as we sat down for an interview at a Midtown restaurant Friday afternoon.  A gloomy rain had left the joint deserted, yet the man across the table from me spoke in hushed tones and looked over his shoulder in between remarks for fear of retaliation.  Yet he felt he had to speak out, because staffers are "intentionally trying to swing people further to the left," as he had put it in an e-mail requesting the meeting.  I already knew that, of course.  It was a Facebook communications manager, Andy Stone, who on Thursday [10/15/2020] announced the firm was reducing circulation of The Post's still-undisputed reporting on the Hunter Files — an employee who happened to work for Democratic lawmakers before joining the tech giant.  What the Facebook insider wanted to impress upon me, however, was how Facebook's partisan tilt is common knowledge inside the firm.  He had the secret chats to prove it.  Facebook employees who wish to speak freely take to Blind, an anonymous social network for the tech industry, where workers at major firms like Uber, Google, Twitter and the like trade gossip and occasionally blow the whistle on malfeasance.

Wikipedia bans editors from expressing support for traditional marriage.  Wikipedia has decided to restrict its editors from expressing opposition to same-sex marriage on its platform — a decision that comes months after co-founder Larry Sanger said the site's neutrality policy was "dead."  Volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia's articles can no longer include on their profile page any "userbox" — a badge expressing their beliefs — that is against gay marriage.  For example, one such userbox states, "This user believes marriage is between one man and one woman." The decision was made after a recent discussion where "predominantly left-wing editors" argued such a stance was "discriminatory" and against site policy, according to Breitbart.

Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes — or Joe Biden's Big Mouth.  The move by Facebook and Twitter to censor a New York Post story about Joe Biden was Silicon Valley's version of an October surprise.  Since publication of a story last week alleging that Hunter Biden was introducing foreign business colleagues to his father, Twitter has kept locked the account of the 200-year-old newspaper until it deletes its tweets about its Biden reporting.  By removing the story from news feeds, locking the accounts of the Trump campaign and White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany, and prohibiting editors of the newspaper from sharing the piece even from their own accounts — actions taken without evidence anything in the story was false — the tech oligarchy signaled it was throwing its weight behind what it believes to be the coming Democratic order in Washington.  It also provided Americans with an authentically shocking snapshot of the type of "managed" society that we now inhabit.  In the new American system, large Silicon Valley corporations use their government-sanctioned and immensely profitable monopoly status to routinely censor information and libel anyone they please at the behest of unelected partisan verticals that have colonized large segments of the federal bureaucracy and security agencies.  As each corrupted interest rubber stamps each other's actions, power is removed from public hands and public view.

Crackdown on QAnon continues as TikTok bans conspiracy theory content.  TikTok is the latest social media company to go after the QAnon conspiracy theory.  The mega-popular video app is now deleting accounts that post QAnon-related content, NPR reports, an escalation from its previous policy of reducing the visibility of the posts.  "Content and accounts that promote QAnon violate our disinformation policy and we remove them from our platform," the company told NPR.  "We've also taken significant steps to make this content harder to find across search and hashtags by redirecting associated terms to our Community Guidelines."  QAnon's content often focuses on undocumented claims of a Satanic conspiracy between Democrats and pedophiles.

The Tech Lords are Fools and Knaves.  [Scroll down]  I can even see an innocent reason for censoring the [New York] Post's piece for "hacking" and publishing embarrassing private information.  It's understandable that the Tech Lords would want to damp down the plebs from publishing each other's sordid little scandals. [...] And where were you, dear Tech Lords, when the Obama administration "hacked" the private conversation between LTG Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador?  Where were you when the Hillary Clinton campaign publicized false embarrassing private information about Donald Trump?  Where were you when the New York Times published President Trump's private tax returns?  Exactly.  It would never have occurred to you noble lords that those Trump scandals, that you published without a second thought, are exactly the same as the New York Post story that you censored.  Why?  Because you chaps know literally nothing about politics.

MIT Tech Review:  Tech Censorship Nearly Doubled Attention for NY Post Biden Bombshell.  The attempt by the social media Masters of the Universe to stop the spread of the New York Post bombshell article about Joe Biden and his son Hunter's alleged dealings with Burisma, has nearly doubled the level of attention the story gained.  What is known as the "Streisand Effect" — a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing it instead — went into overdrive after social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter attempted to suppress a NY Post article about Hunter Biden, according to data published in the MIT Technology Review.

Facebook, Twitter censored Trump, campaign 65 times, Biden zero:  Study.  Facebook and Twitter have censored President Trump and his campaign accounts at least 65 times in the last two years, while Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden and his camp have never been dinged, according to a report released Monday [10/19/2020].  The conservative Media Research Center's Techwatch department found that the tech giants had a decidedly lopsided approach to the presidential candidates and their campaigns when it comes to flagging and axing their content.  The biggest discrepancy came with Twitter, which accounted for 98% of the censorship incidents against the Trump camp from May 2018 to Oct. 16, 2020.  The analysis did not include ads from PACs or super PACs.

Censoring the Biden story:  How social media becomes state media.  [Scroll down]  Yet the funny thing about kompromat — a Russian term for compromising information — is that often it is true.  Indeed, it is most damaging and most useful when it is true; otherwise, you deny the allegations and expose the lie.  Hunter Biden has yet to deny these were his laptop, his emails, his images.  If thousands of emails and images were fabricated, then serious crimes were committed.  But if the emails and images are genuine, then the Bidens appear to have lied for years as a raw influence-peddling scheme worth millions stretched from China to Ukraine to Russia.  Moreover, these countries likely have had the compromising information all along while the Bidens — and the media — were denying reports of illicit activities.  Either way, this was major news.  The response of Twitter and Facebook, however, was to shut it all down.  Major media companies also imposed a virtual blackout on the allegations.  It didn't matter that thousands of emails were available for review or that the Bidens did not directly address the material.  It was all declared to be fake news.

Is Twitter, Facebook censorship of New York Post Biden-Ukraine story the beginning of social tyranny?  Twitter and Facebook have both limited distribution of an Oct. 14 report from the New York Post's Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge entitled, "Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad" detailing an alleged meeting between former Vice President Joe Biden and Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi who Biden's son, Hunter, used to work for, in April 2015.  The Wall Street Journal's Robert McMillan and Jeff Horwitz reported on Oct. 15, "Twitter on Wednesday blocked users from posting links to the articles, initially citing a potential violation of its rules regarding hacked materials.  The company later said the articles also violated its policies on displaying private information like email addresses and phone numbers without a person's permission... Twitter's move came after Facebook also limited the distribution of the articles on its platform, saying it was awaiting guidance from its third-party fact-checking partners — independent organizations that routinely review the accuracy of viral content.  Facebook has slowed the spread of the Post articles pending a decision by those partners, company spokesman Andy Stone said in a Twitter message on Wednesday morning."

How Big Tech is Working on Stealing the Presidential Election From Trump.  Allum Bokhari, an investigative tech writer for Breitbart, published a book last month explaining how Big Tech intends to defeat Trump.  If anyone should know, it's him, having written about Big Tech's attacks on conservatives for years.  And it's important to read this book, because the censorship is now so vast it is difficult to learn about it by merely digging up article after article.  In #Deleted:  Big Tech's Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election, Bokhari goes over how it's being stealthily done on many fronts, usually under the guise of something else.  Big Tech uses certain buzzwords to justify its censorship, cleverly all vague, used as excuses to crack down on conservative content.

Facebook's Lead Executive on Election Policy Was Vice-President Joe Biden's Advisor to Ukraine.  Anna Makanju is the Facebook executive in charge of "election integrity on the platform"; and guess what her job was before that position.  "Previously, she was the special policy adviser for Europe and Eurasia to former US Vice President Joe Biden". [...] That's right folks, the Facebook executive currently blocking all of the negative evidence of Hunter and Joe Biden's corrupt activity in Ukraine is the same person who was coordinating the corrupt activity between the Biden family payoffs and Ukraine.

Somewhat related:
Amazon Prime Cancels Shelby Steele.  Though most of the focus is on Twitter's White Knighting of Joe Biden, it's also worth noting that many other voices are inhibited by Big Tech because they fail to conform to leftist orthodoxy.  Just today [10/15/2020], the Wall Street Journal reported that Shelby Steele's documentary What Killed Michael Brown?, which explores race relations in the United States, has been rejected because it "doesn't meet Prime Video's content quality expectations."  Amazon claims the documentary, which Steele made with his son Eli, isn't "eligible for publishing" and that they "will not be accepting resubmission of this title and this decision may not be appealed."

Biden campaign 'glad' Twitter, Facebook censored Post's Hunter Biden exposé.  Joe Biden's campaign said Thursday [10/15/2020] they had no problem with Twitter and Facebook's unprecedented censoring of The [New York] Post's bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden's business dealings — even admitting they were "glad" it happened.  Biden campaign national press secretary Jamal Brown went so far as to claim that the gagging of one of America's largest news organizations "made clear" that The Post's reporting on Ukraine- and China-related documents from a Hunter Biden hard drive was untrue.

By censoring The Post, Big Tech is begging for big-time reform.  The increasing brazenness with which the various Big Tech behemoths distort their search algorithms to hide conservative viewpoints, undermine conservatives through "shadow banning" and weaponize the sanctimonious and self-serving "fact-checking" cottage industry to suppress conservative voices has long been clear.  The 2017 dismissal of Google engineer James Damore exposed the search giant as an "ideological echo chamber" (Damore's words) — a company that, incidentally, has a jaw-dropping 87.3 percent share of the US search market.  Facebook has outright banned anti-lockdown pages and removed posts supportive of the besieged teenager Kyle Rittenhouse.  Twitter affixes "fact-checking" warnings exclusively to the tweets of conservatives. [...] Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has even raised the possibility that the shameless censorship may amount to in-kind political contributions in violation of extant campaign-finance law.

Bring Them In.  By banning Republican content while amplifying Democratic Party messaging this close to a national election, Big Tech in essence is contributing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in free advertisements (in-kind contributions) to Democratic candidates, including their nominee for president.  "Twitter, and Facebook... they're like really, it's a massive campaign contribution," President Trump said on Fox Business News Thursday morning [10/15/2020].  Their involvement will extend past Election Day and into January 2021 if the results are still unknown.  In the interim, Silicon Valley oligarchs plan to crush any online dissent, including by the president of the United States, if a message runs afoul of plans to install Joe Biden in the White House.  Even if Trump legitimately wins reelection, any premature declaration of victory will be suppressed or outright removed from social media and Internet search engines.

Social Media Acts Like a Cartel.  It Should Be Treated as One.  Social media had spent four years training for this moment.  Democrats had spent four years arguing that the media paying attention to Hillary's emails and social media allowing them traction on their services elected Trump.  And Big Tech had defined its election role as preventing history from repeating itself.  Everything else is a haze of excuses and meaningless buzzwords like "disinformation", not to mention newfound standards that just arrived last week.  The bottom line is that there's a coordinated campaign to suppress material damaging to Biden before the election.  And, unlike the media, social media is a Big Tech cartel.  Facebook, whose Democrat spokesman made a point of expressing his disgust with the story and announcing that it was being throttled, controls 80% of social media.  Google, which controls 80% of search, buries the original Post story under media "explainers" dismissing it.  There's a coordinated political program here [...]

Conservatives Must Fight Big Tech or Lose.  Is technology going to be a tool of individual choice or social control?  Facebook and Twitter's desperate attempts to block a damaging story about Joe and Hunter Biden is the culmination of four years of work to transform social media into the media.  Under the guise of false claims about disinformation, foreign election interference, bots, networks, deepfakes, public health risks, and assorted tech paranoia, free speech died on the internet.  The moment when the White House Press Secretary had her account locked for tweeting a damaging news story about Joe Biden brought home the Big Tech reality to most Republicans.  Just like the media, Big Tech is the Democrat Party, and the Democrat Party is Big Tech.  But, unlike the media, Big Tech controls the marketplace of ideas to an unprecedented degree.

Kamala spokesman, Democrat PAC staffer now hold top comms posts at Twitter, Facebook.  Twitter's efforts to suppress a New York Post article about Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter come with renewed interest over the political biases of its top officials, including a communications officer who previously worked for Biden's running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris.  The ongoing debate over free speech on social media took on new urgency Wednesday when Twitter flagged as "potentially harmful" a report in the Post about emails indicating that Hunter Biden introduced his father, then the Vice President of the United States, to Vadym Pozharskyi, a top adviser to the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, less than a year before the elder Biden openly pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor tasked with investigating the company.

The Last Copier in the Woods Arrives Sooner than Expected.  If anybody is around to write history in a generation or two, October 14th 2020 will go down as the first day of a new Year Zero.  Yesterday, with less than three weeks to go in a national election in a settled democratic society with an ostensibly free press, the woke billionaires of the social media cartel decided to freeze and/or cancel the Twitter/Facebook accounts of the President's press secretary, the Trump campaign, Republican Senate candidates and Republican House members.  So America is now formally a one-party state, at least as far as fair access to media platforms is concerned.  In old-school "people's republics", the dictator keeps the opposition party off the air.  In the subtler version operated by social media, woke dictators of a nominally two-party state are now openly keeping one of those two parties off your telephones and tablets.

YouTube bans QAnon, other conspiracy content that targets individuals.  YouTube said Thursday [10/15/2020] that it would no longer allow content that targets individuals and groups with conspiracy theories, specifically QAnon and its antecedent, "pizzagate."  "Today, we are taking another step in our efforts to curb hate and harassment by removing more conspiracy theory content used to justify real-world violence," the company announced on its blog.  The new rules, an expansion of YouTube's existing hate and harassment policies, will prohibit content that "threatens or harrasses someone by suggesting they are complicit in one of these harmful conspiracies, such as QAnon or Pizzagate," the post read.  YouTube said it would be enforcing the updated policy immediately and plans to "ramp up in the weeks to come."

YouTube Just Banned QAnon.  Will It Actually Work?  On Thursday [10/15/2020], YouTube became the latest platform to crack down on QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory promoting the idea of a deep state leftist cabal of pedophiles and child traffickers.  In a blog post, the company said that it would be "taking another step in our efforts to curb hate and harassment by removing more conspiracy theory content used to justify real-world violence."  It specifically cited QAnon as an example, noting that it had removed thousands of individual QAnon-themed videos and hundreds of QAnon-affiliated channels as a result of this policy update.

Gregg Jarrett:  Facebook and Twitter's censorship is an insult to democracy — they must stop or be broken up.  The great Twitter and Facebook masquerade is over.  Posing as disinterested and neutral media platforms, they have unmasked themselves as partisan protectors of Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and propaganda advocates of the progressive cause.  It is time that Twitter and Facebook be forced to halt their destructive practices or be broken up.  The two technology giants wield too much marketplace power in the ever-expanding social media universe.  With power comes abuse.  This was on full display Wednesday when both Twitter and Facebook blocked access to a New York Post story offering stunning email evidence that Biden may have exploited his position as vice president to financially benefit his son, Hunter Biden.

Cruz Blasts Twitter, Facebook For Censoring Story Linking Joe Biden to Burisma.  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote to the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday, asking why their platforms had chosen to censor a New York Post story reflecting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in a poor light, calling the move an "obvious and transparent attempt" to influence the forthcoming election.  Twitter "shouldn't act as Biden's PR team," Cruz tweeted earlier in the day.  Cruz in his letters to the tech giants contrasted the way the social media platforms have treated "less well-sourced" reporting critical of other candidates — citing in Facebook's case a 2017 Buzzfeed report on the so-called "Steele dossier" and New York Times reports on President Trump's tax returns.  "This rush to limit the dissemination and reach of a report — containing information of high public interest and consequence — and the contrast with how similarly situated material on other candidates has been handled, strongly suggests that the true motivation is to influence the upcoming presidential election," he wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Biden campaign, MSM, and social media oligarchs all are signaling voters that Joe Biden's pay-for-play scandal with Hunter as bagman is a BFD.  The surest way to convince people that they ought to pay attention to something is to tell them they shouldn't be allowed to see it.  About a century ago, when Boston had a municipal movie censor, producers vied to be "banned in Boston" as a way of convincing the public to flock to their flicks.  This century's version of the same lesson is called "the Streisand effect," after the singer drew attention to her lavish seaside estate in California by attempting to suppress aerial pictures taken of it. [...] The Biden campaign has already badly blundered in its handling of the scandal unearthed when a computer repair store took legal ownership of a MacBook left with it more than 90 days and discovered thousands of emails as well as images and videos, some of them pornographic, showing Hunter Biden.  The store owner turned the laptop over to the FBI late last year, which has taken no public action and, out of frustration with the story being buried, released a copy of the hard drive to Rudy Giuliani, through an intermediary.

Hawley Demands Facebook Explain Its Censorship Of Bombshell Hunter Biden Report.  Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley is demanding Facebook explain its preemptive censorship of a bombshell report from the New York Post contradicting Joe Biden's repeated assertions that the former vice president never discussed his son's potentially criminal overseas business conduct.  Emails published by the New York Post Wednesday morning show that contrary to Joe Biden's claims that he never talked business with his son, Hunter Biden, "or with anyone else," the vice president at the time was indeed introduced to Ukrainian Burisma advisor Vadym Pozharskyi by Hunter.  Hunter Biden was raking in upwards of $50,000 a month in excess compensation for serving on the board of Burisma while his father served as the "public face" of the Obama administration's policy towards Ukraine.

Hunter Biden's Smoking Guns.  [Scroll down]  Good job by Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge of reporting on the story for the New York Post.  Absolutely no one is surprised that Joe Biden lied about this contact when asked.  Now we just have proof of it.  You wouldn't think a story that merely confirms what people already knew about Biden's lies would have been the tripwire for Internet media giants to abandon even the pretense of objectivity, but you'd be wrong.

Bookmark Today's Date — Big Tech Has crossed the event horizon to protect Joe Biden.  Everyone knew it would eventually happen and today is the day.  In an effort to influence the 2020 U.S. election, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and the social media technocrats have crossed the Rubicon today and banned all sharing of the explosive information about Hunter and Joe Biden's self-serving deals with Ukraine.  In an effort to stop evidence from surfacing showing candidate Joe Biden lied about his involvement with corrupt Ukraine business deals, Facebook and Twitter have openly deployed their activist technicians to generate algorithms blocking content sharing of The New York Post article(s).  Additionally all users, including White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany are being removed from all platforms for sharing the story.

Liberal Reporter:  What Twitter and Facebook Did on Biden Story Is 'Creepy and Authoritarian'.  The New York Post obtained emails showing that Joe Biden lied about not knowing what his son, Hunter, was doing regarding his Ukrainian activities.  Hunter Biden was allegedly selling access while sitting on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, despite having zero experience in this field, while earning tens of thousands of dollars a month.  This corrupt arrangement occurred back in 2014 when Joe was leading anti-corruption efforts in the country.  Multiple people raised the alarm over this gig.  And it's a sore subject, as evidenced by Joe Biden's aggressive reaction toward it.

If 'unreliable' is the issue, why did social media never block anti-Trump stories?  This is what totalitarianism looks like in our century:  not men in darkened cells driving screws under the fingernails of dissidents, but Silicon Valley dweebs removing from vast swaths of the Internet a damaging expos  on their preferred presidential candidate.  That's what Facebook and Twitter did to the New York Post's bombshell report on Hunter Biden, revealing why the illustrious vice-presidential son was hired by a shady Ukrainian energy firm in exchange for at least $50,000 a month.  According to e-mails obtained by The Post, Hunter introduced the firm's executives to his father — just when Joe Biden was the second-most powerful man on earth, with outsize influence over the fate of the embattled Eastern European country.

Justice Clarence Thomas:  Section 230 Protections for Big Tech Are Too Broad.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) is applied too broadly to social media companies in a recent letter.  The law, which was passed at the beginning of the dot-com era, allows internet companies to avoid liability for content that has been posted by users on their platform.  According to Thomas, "many courts have construed the law broadly to confer sweeping immunity on some of the largest companies in the world."  According to a report by Axios, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that Section 230 of the CDA should be narrowed.  Section 230 grants broad legal protections to social media companies with regard to content posted by users.

'This is Digital Civil War': NY Post Editor Fumes After Facebook and Twitter Censor Biden Bombshell.  Both Facebook and Twitter are censoring a bombshell story in the New York Post that implicates Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his ne'er-do-well son Hunter Biden in major corruption involving Ukraine.  Blockbuster emails from Hunter Biden's laptop reveal that he introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a Ukrainian energy executive.  Sohrab Ahmari, the op-ed editor for the Post expressed outrage on Twitter over the censorship, calling it a "Big Tech information coup" and a "digital civil war."  "I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nation's largest papers by circulation, can't post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden," said Ahmari.

Democrats, Mainstream Media, Silicon Valley Try to Suppress Biden-Burisma Story.  The Biden campaign lashed out at the New York Post after it reported Wednesday [10/14/2020] on emails showing that Hunter Biden arranged a meeting between an adviser to the Ukrainian company he worked for and then-Vice President Joe Biden, despite the elder Biden's repeated denials he ever discussed business dealings with his son.  One email dated April 17, 2015, said, according to the Post:  "Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.  It's realty [sic] an honor and pleasure."

Tucker Carlson Hits a Home Run Describing Censorship and Biden Emails:  "This is a dark moment".  Tucker Carlson described Hunter and Joe Biden's dealings tonight [10/14/2020] in a brutally honest monologue.  Carlson began by describing the censorship of social media monopolies trying to keep the truth from the American people about what Joe and Hunter Biden were doing to make big money.  Influence peddling seems to be the main focus with the Bidens, who are accused of selling access to the former VP.  The monologue described the Computer Repair Shop owner who came to find the emails and photos on a laptop brought in for repair but never claimed.  The description Carlson gives of the corruption should be devastating but CNN reported zero minutes about the emails tonight.  Our media is actively protecting Joe Biden right before an election.

Hunter Biden and the Big Tech information coup.  There is nothing to see.  In 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma on a reported salary of $50,000 a month.  Hunter knows nothing about the energy business, and he doesn't seem to speak Ukrainian.  'I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,' Joe Biden said in 2019, though he had been photographed playing golf in the Hamptons with Hunter and another Burisma board member, Devon Archer, in 2014.  But there is nothing to see.  On Wednesday, the New York Post published an email from Vadim Pozharskyi, an adviser to the Burisma board, from April 2015.  Pozharskyi thanks Hunter for 'inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spend some time together'.  But there is nothing to see. [...] There is nothing to see because Facebook doesn't want you to see it and Twitter won't let you share it.

Facebook reducing distribution of Hunter Biden story in New York Post.  Facebook is limiting the distribution of a story in the New York Post about a purported email between Hunter Biden and an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company.  The 2015 email indicates that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to Burisma, thanked Biden for "giving an opportunity" to meet former Vice President Joe Biden.  The former vice president has previously said he has "never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."  Facebook said it would rely on its fact-checking partners to determine the story's legitimacy, but until then, it is taking steps to tamp down on its spread.

Benghazi hero John Tiegen's Facebook and Instagram accounts disabled by Facebook.  John "Tig" Tiegen, a retired U.S. Marine who served on the security team that defended the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya during the Sept. 11, 2012 attack, had his Facebook and Instagram accounts disabled over the weekend.  On Saturday, Tiegen tweeted a screenshot of a Facebook notice that his account was disabled.  According to the screenshot, Tiegen was told his account had been disabled because it "did not follow our Community Standards."  It was not clear from the message Facebook sent Tiegen why his account was disabled.  On Monday, Tiegen shared another screenshot showing that his Instagram account was also disabled.  Facebook is a parent company to Instagram.

Levin: Facebook Folds, Any Future Censorship Efforts 'Will Not Be Tolerated'.  "What chance do average Americans have for free speech" if Big Tech platforms like Facebook blatantly censor conservative commentator and Constitutional Scholar Mark Levin, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked Thursday, prompting Levin to agree and vow that future censorship "will not be tolerated."  "Absurd.  If Big Tech will blatantly try to censor The Great One, what chance do ordinary Americans have for free speech?" Sen. Cruz tweeted, linking to a Washington Examiner article, titled "Mark Levin says he was 'prepared to go to war' before Facebook backed down on censorship of his page."

Facebook banning all QAnon accounts to stop 'militarized social movements'.  Facebook is banning all QAnon accounts from its platforms as part of its move to block "militarized social movements" from operating and organizing online, the social media giant announced Tuesday [10/6/2020].  The move, which also extends to Instagram, represents the company's strongest response yet to the controversial online right-wing conspiracy movement that has increasingly inserted itself into the nation's political discourse.  "Starting today, we will remove Facebook pages, groups, and Instagram accounts for representing QAnon," the company said in a press release.  "We're starting to enforce this updated policy today and are removing content accordingly, but this work will take time and will continue in the coming days and weeks."  "Our Dangerous Organizations Operations team will continue to enforce this policy and proactively detect content for removal instead of relying on user reports," the release said.

House Democrats say Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple enjoy 'monopoly power' and recommend big changes.  A Democratic congressional staff report recommends changes to antitrust laws and enforcement that could result in major changes for Big Tech companies, such as spinning off or separating parts of their businesses or making it harder to buy smaller companies.  The staff found, after a 16-month investigation into competitive practices at Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, that the four businesses enjoy monopoly power that needs to be reined in by Congress and enforcers.  In a nearly 450-page report, the Democratic majority staff laid out their takeaways from hearings, interviews and the 1.3 million documents they scoured throughout the investigation.

Facebook Removes Trump Campaign Ad.  Facebook has reportedly removed a recent ad from the Trump campaign, claiming that the ad features factually incorrect information about refugees and the coronavirus pandemic.  NBC News reports that Facebook stated this week that it took down political ads by the Trump campaign that claimed that accepting refugees from abroad could increase the risk of exposure to the coronavirus. [...] Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement on the removal:  "We rejected these ads because we don't allow claims that people's physical safety, health, or survival is threatened by people on the basis of their national origin or immigration status."

The Editor says...
They don't allow such claims — even if they're true.  Americans most certainly are at risk when immigrants come here, especially those who have never been to a doctor, and those who are running from the law.

Amazon blocks sale of merchandise with "stand back" and "stand by".  Amazon, eBay, and other online retailers are pulling merchandise from their sites emblazoned with the words "stand back" and "stand by" and displaying the insignia of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group.  Shirts bearing the words cropped up for sale after President Trump uttered the phrase on Tuesday night, referring to the white supremacist group, during his debate with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.  Individuals associated with the Proud Boys online took Mr. Trump's directive as words of encouragement, and products displaying the phrase quickly made their way onto sites including Amazon and Teespring, an online platform that lets users create and sell their own merchandise.

Tucker Carlson calls out 'censorship' after Facebook limits his show's account for 'sharing of false news'.  Facebook limited Fox News host Tucker Carlson's show page recently for repeatedly sharing "false news," according to a post the conservative commentator shared on his Facebook profile.  "Today's censorship by Facebook.  'Reduced Distribution.'  It's no coincidence that the election is just weeks away," said a post on the Tucker Carlson Tonight Facebook page Thursday.  The post contained a screenshot of a notice from Facebook warning Carlson that his page's reach is getting limited due to consistently sharing fake news.

The Shocking Full Extent of Big Tech Censorship of Conservatives.  In the runup to the 2020 elections, the social media giants mean to shut down whatever outlet or voice that helped elect President Trump, the greatest upset in left-wing history, in 2016.  And this has been going on for a long time.  [Allum] Bokhari details how Facebook, Twitter, Google and the rest depend upon Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) under the First Amendment, which provides them with immunity from lawsuits, thereby permitting these social media giants to engage in what is essentially U.S. government-sanctioned censorship (despite the fact that they are determined to destroy the President of the United States) and discriminatory business practices free from legal challenge.

As Joe Rogan's Platform Grows, So Does the Media and Liberal Backlash.  Why?  Joe Rogan has amassed one of the largest and most influential media platforms in U.S. politics, if not the single most influential.  The value of his program was quantified in May when the streaming service Spotify paid a reported $100 million for the exclusive rights to broadcast his podcast.  As one illustrative example of his reach, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden appeared on Rogan's program six days ago, and the episode has already been viewed more than 5 million times on YouTube alone.  The first time Snowden appeared on his program was last October, and that episode, just on YouTube, has more than 16 million views.  To put that in perspective:  The top-rated cable news programs are the Fox News shows hosted by Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, and they average between 4 to 5 million viewers, or one-fourth the number of views Rogan's discussion with Snowden generated.  Rogan is rarely discussed in mainstream political and media circles, which raises its own questions.

DOJ Unveils Proposed Legislation To Rein In Speech-Policing By Corrupt Tech Monopolies.  The Department of Justice introduced draft legislation to Congress Wednesday [9/23/2020] outlining specific reforms requested by the agency in compliance with President Donald Trump's Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship, which curtails big tech liability protections under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.  The proposed reforms stem primarily from the department's recommendations in June which were developed and released in response to the president's directive in May seeking to roll back protections that provide blanket immunity to online platforms hosting third-party content.

Celebrities Push Zuckerberg to Censor More Speech on Facebook and Instagram.  Show-business luminaries led by reality television personality Kim Kardashian are "freezing" their Facebook and Instagram accounts for a day to let Mark Zuckerberg — the principal owner of those social media platforms — that he needs to step up his anti-free speech campaign and remove posts and accounts that spread so-called hate, propaganda, and election misinformation.  The 39-year-old Kardashian — the wife of presidential candidate and rap mogul Kanye West — has 188 million followers on Instagram and over 30 million fans on Facebook.  She believes that those platforms are responsible for spreading hate and deceiving many people about the important facts of the news of the day.

Big Tech Shuts Down Chinese Virologist for COVID Claim.  Big Tech has cracked down on the Chinese scientist who says the Chinese government engineered the COVID-19 virus in a lab and released the pathogen intentionally.  Facebook and Instagram warn that virologist Li-Meng Yan's claims are false, and Twitter has suspended her account.  Fox talker Tucker Carlson discussed the censorship on last night's program after broadcasting Yan's claims on Tuesday [9/15/2020].  Yan's claims are in a research paper published at the non-peer reviewed website Zenodo, and the mainstream media is pushing the claim that Yan is peddling a "debunked conspiracy theory."

Ted Cruz vs.  Big Tech.  Yahoo, Google, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as other social media sites, are extremely biased against conservatives, Republicans, and President Trump.  A Pew Research Center survey conducted in June finds that about three-quarters of U.S. adults say it is very (37%) or somewhat (36%) likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints that they find objectionable.  Just 25% believe this is not likely the case.  Americans are divided over whether social media companies should label posts on their sites as inaccurate or misleading, with most being skeptical that these sites can accurately determine what content should be flagged.  Take Twitter, for example.  A tweet included a picture of the viral "Moscow Mitch" meme, which took the internet by storm in mid-2019 when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rejected an election security bill.  Yet, these social media sites censor President Trump.

Facebook Censors Pro-Trump Ad After Fact-Checker Admits Claim May Be True.  Amid pressure from left-wing activists and media outlets to clamp down on "misinformation" from the right, Facebook has begun censoring political ads that receive negative fact-checks — fact-checks that are produced by mostly left-leaning fact-checkers and that mostly target right-leaning ads.  In at least two new cases, these fact-checks do not actually check facts — they instead merely state that factually true claims are "missing context," then downgrade the ads.  The danger of this political speech-silencing policy by the social media giant — which nearly 70% of Americans use and where more than 40% read their news — is on full display in the case of the censoring of the pro-Trump 30-second political ad "Too Risky."

Spotify is reportedly fighting with employees about hosting episodes of Joe Rogan's podcast that some consider transphobic.  Spotify is facing a heated internal struggle with employees over whether it should host episodes of "The Joe Rogan Experience" that some staffers described as transphobic, Vice reported.  Vice reported that CEO Daniel Ek addressed staff concerns at an all-hands meeting on Wednesday [9/16/2020].  "In the case of Joe Rogan, a total of 10 meetings have been held with various groups and individuals to hear their respective concerns," Ek said, per three sources who spoke to Vice on the condition of anonymity.  Vice said its sources shared questions that had been submitted for the Q&A portion of the meeting.  The questions, which shortened the name of the podcast to "JRE," suggest that friction is building between Spotify's leadership and its staff over the podcast.

Big Brother Bezos May Be Watching.  Let me apologize in advance for a lament that is more than a little self-serving, but as an author, I feel compelled to speak out.  I just received an email from Susan Daniels, the Ohio private investigator who first broke the story that Barack Obama was using a Connecticut Social Security number.  Hers is one of the stories I tell in my book Unmasking Obama.  Without my prompting or editing, Daniels wrote a review of my book and sent it to Amazon.  Amazon has become not only the most popular way to buy books, but also the primary way authors and publishers keep score.  The Amazon sales ranking matters as do the reviews.  Unfortunately, low-level, leftist, cyberbeavers work tirelessly to undermine authors who challenge the progressive agenda.

Facebook [is] Paying Social Media Users to Suspend Accounts Ahead of November Elections.  Need a little stimulus money to get you through the pandemic and sick of political nonsense on social media?  You're in luck!  Facebook is offering money to those who are willing to stop using Facebook and Instagram in the weeks before the November presidential election.  "To assess the impact of social media on voting, the company will pay selected members up to $120 to deactivate their accounts beginning at the end of September" according to the New York Post.  The announcement came from yet another social media outlet, when Facebook spokesperson Liz Bourgeois tweeted last week, "anyone who chooses to opt-in whether it's completing surveys or deactivating FB or IG for a period of time — will be compensated.  This is fairly standard for this type of academic research."

Fmr Acting AG Whitaker:  Facebook, Twitter Algorithms Could Be Viewed by DOJ as an 'Illegal Campaign Contribution'.  Friday [9/4/2020], during an appearance on Fox News Channel's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker argued for a Department of Justice investigation into how Facebook and Twitter were altering their algorithms for the sake of politics.  Whitaker told host Tucker Carlson he did not see American democracy surviving another election cycle under the circumstances by which those social media outlets function.  "Yes, I actually do believe we are going to get to the bottom of this insidious, really, censorship of mostly conservative voices on social media," he said.  "And I think the Department of Justice has been looking at this issue, and I also believe that because of the way the algorithms that Facebook and Twitter and the like use to provide your news feed, I think that could be viewed, and maybe viewed by this Department of Justice, as a campaign contribution, an illegal campaign contribution, that ultimately, I think, they will step in and take action."

America's tech tyrants will do anything to elect Biden.  If you watched Tucker Carlson's show on Friday night [9/4/2020], you're probably pretty depressed right now.  The entire show was devoted to the fact that the Big Tech companies — Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube (which Google owns) — are working hard to ensure that Trump cannot win the presidency.  Their work takes many forms.  There's the money aspect — these young(ish) tech titans emerged from an American education system that taught them to hate their country. [...] Tucker discussed the known fact that Google has altered its search algorithms to ensure that, when people type in a query, the search engine will not return any conservative sites in its answers. [...] Through YouTube, Google also pulls down or demonetizes conservative content, especially content that channels the Democrats' Wuhan virus narrative.  Facebook does the same.  Twitter routinely locks out conservative views with which it disagrees, including censoring President Trump.

Facebook accused of pulling post about Kenosha gunman after declaring shooting 'mass murder'.  Facebook has been accused of removing a commentator's post about Kyle Rittenhouse, the gunman in last week's deadly shooting in Kenosha, Wis., after the social media giant labeled the incident a "mass murder."  In a Twitter thread on Tuesday, media analyst Mark Dice claimed that Facebook had removed a video that purportedly shows Rittenhouse offering to help a wounded protester.  Images posted by Dice purportedly showed Facebook notifying him that it doesn't allow "symbols, praise or support of dangerous individuals or organizations."  Actions considered "dangerous" by Facebook included "terrorist activity," and "mass or serial murder."

Facebook to Limit Political Ads Week Before Election, Label Premature Calls.  Facebook Inc. will prohibit new political advertisements in the week before the U.S. presidential election in November and seek to flag any candidates' premature claims of victory, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said.  The steps are meant to head off last-minute misinformation campaigns and limit the potential for civil unrest, Mr. Zuckerberg said in a statement Thursday [9/3/2020].

Or, to put it another way...
Zuckerberg Says Facebook Will Suppress Trump Victory Claims After Election.  In another example of social media companies putting their fingers on the scales in the upcoming president election, Facebook has announced it will suppress what it calls "premature claims of victory by candidates," while failing to identify what that means.  The news comes as The National Pulse highlights the attempts by the left to delay the naming of a winner by several days or over a week after the election.  President Trump shared The National Pulse story with the question:  "Rigged Election?"

Facebook Will Ban Campaigns from Uploading Ads in Last Week of Election to Avoid 'Civil Unrest'.  Social media giant Facebook has announced plans to ban new political ads for the week leading up to Election Day on November 3. Mark Zuckerberg announced the ban along with several other changes because he fears "there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country."  NBC News reports that Facebook has announced plans to ban new political ads in the week leading up to Election Day on November 3.  The site will also remove posts that try to suppress or discourage voting according to company CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

YouTube may ban California's most popular political satirist.  A best-selling political author and commentator based in Los Angeles could be deleted from YouTube after posting a short clip of Kyle Rittenhouse and criticizing Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Kamala Harris.  Mark Dice, who has 1.6 million YouTube subscribers and millions of weekly video views, warned his audience on Wednesday that his days could be numbered on the Google-owned platform for so-called policy violations, from which liberal commentators seem immune despite posting violent and inflammatory rhetoric.

A Tyranny Perpetual and Universal?  [Scroll down]  To cite only two examples:  free speech is under attack as it never has been before.  Right now, the battlefield is mostly social media sites, hence the attacks are publicly justified as legitimate acts by private businesses.  "The First Amendment doesn't cover the private sector; property rights mean they can do what they want!"  Leave aside the extent to which the ruling class cares about property rights for property not their own (answer: not much); how meaningful is the distinction between public and private speech when the modes of public discourse increasingly are concentrated in the private hands of the ruling class?  Answer:  also not much.  When it comes to freedom of association, the government arm of the ruling class is absolutely ruthless in declaring everything a "public accommodation" so that freedom effectively becomes nonexistent.  But when half a dozen (or fewer) big tech companies take over the means of disseminating speech and ideas — oh, no!  That's not a public accommodation!  Those are private firms and the rights of private firms are sacrosanct!  As if this were not enough, take a look at how free speech polls these days: the younger the demographic, the less support one sees.

Biden's "Dislikes" Mysteriously Disappear From YouTube.  During Joe Biden's 'acceptance' speech on Thursday, there were strong, negative reactions posted to his YouTube channel, as well as the Democrat Party's page.  In real time, live audience "dislikes" significantly outnumbered "likes."  However, suddenly, those 'dislikes' have been removed.

Joe Biden's mysteriously disappearing "Dislikes" on YouTube.  During Joe Biden's presidential nomination acceptance speech Thursday night, both his personal YouTube page and the Democratic Party's YouTube page saw strong, negative reactions from live audiences.  In fact, "Dislikes" outnumbered "Likes," in real time.  Yet both pages' "Dislikes" mysteriously dropped in the hours after the Democratic National Convention (DNC) had concluded.  The changing statistics led some on social media to wonder if the Google-owned YouTube platform was protecting Biden.  The number of Democratic convention stream "Dislikes" — or people pressing a button saying they did not like the content onscreen — dropped on Friday below where they stood on Thursday last night.  The removed Dislikes could be a signal that YouTube is concerned about fake accounts or bots trying to influence the election or indicative of something else, experts said.

Amazon Livestreamed All 4 Nights of DNC, Ignores RNC Day 1.  Amazon Prime Video did not offer a live stream of the Republican National Convention during primetime on Monday after it livestreamed all four nights of the Democratic National Convention last week.  The RNC blackout meant that Amazon Prime subscribers couldn't watch the first night of the convention through the Prime Video mobile app or through Fire TV devices.  Breitbart News made multiple attempts to search for a primetime RNC livestream on Amazon but only found archived RNC footage from earlier in the day.

Wikipedia Is Badly Biased.  Wikipedia's "NPOV" is dead.  The original policy long since forgotten, Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy.  There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call "false balance."  The notion that we should avoid "false balance" is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy.  As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science.  Here are some examples from each of these subjects, which were easy to find, no hunting around.  Many, many more could be given. [...]

Candace Owens Will Sue Facebook over 'Blatant Censorship'.  BLEXIT founder Candace Owens will sue Facebook over its "blatant censorship" after the social media platform demonetized her page following her comments about senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) swearing into congress in 2017 as an "Indian-American."  Candace Owens said that Facebook has suppressed her page after she commented her thoughts on senator Harris being chosen as Democrat nominee Joe Biden's vice president for the upcoming November election.

No Need for a Conspiracy Theory.  In recent days, social media like Twitter and Facebook have taken action to prevent Q-Anon, a shadowy entity that promotes various conspiracy theories, including the "Deep State," from using their platforms.  For those who haven't been following this matter, the "Deep State" is basically also a shadowy conspiracy, within the government, that seeks to undermine the policies of Republicans. [...] I call such people the "permanent government," people who have chosen to make their careers in and off government.  The existence of these people is not open to any serious debate: residents of the Washington area see them morning and evening, commuting in and out of the city; they're why suburban Washington exists, why the Beltway has a near permanent traffic jam, and why it became necessary to build a modern subway system.  Some of these people, mainly at lower levels, are largely unaffected by what policies are being pursued, while for others, those policies have direct consequences.

Facebook's "Fact Checker" Rates Another True Statement False.  We live in an era where even fact checkers require fact checks.  Facebook has partnered with a number of "third-party" fact checkers due to what they call their commitment "to fighting the spread of misinformation on Facebook."  Once once of Facebook's independent fact checkers rates a claim false, every page that has shared that information receives a warning, and their page's traffic can be throttled as punishment.  If their "fact checking" was implemented honestly, MSNBC and CNN wouldn't even be on their platform anymore.  While plenty of bunk does get refuted by Facebook's fact checkers, those legitimate fact checks seem to serve the purpose of cloaking the purely ideological "fact checks" that they implement.

Facebook is lying — and people are dying.  In the 1930's, a skillful propagandist named Paul Joseph Goebbels was able to exercise great control over the news in Germany.  Using radio — a new media at the time — and film, Goebbels influenced the country's opinions on antisemitism, churches, and even the arts.  One of his most useful techniques was censoring any message that didn't agree with the Nazi Party's objectives.  In 2020, the new media platforms of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are similarly influencing the world's opinion on matters of antisemitism, the church, the arts, and even healthcare.  And, like Goebbels, one of their most useful techniques is censoring any message that doesn't agree with their common objectives.

Facebook censors American Thinker.  Two weeks ago, I wrote that the social media giants are refusing to allow people to publish anything about the Wuhan virus that contradicts information from the World Health Organization.  This censorship hit close to home on Monday when Facebook banned an American Thinker reader from posting William Sullivan's post about Sweden's successful decision not to implement lockdowns.

Who Elected Twitter and Facebook to Censor Speech?  I have spent my professional life defending the First Amendment and the free-speech rights it enshrines.  It is the bulwark of all our freedoms.  The attacks on it are proliferating alarmingly.  Now, the most powerful social media platforms — which function as today's public square — are arrogantly silencing a U.S. president.  If a president's right to be heard in the public square may be freely assaulted, who is safe?  This is extremely dangerous to self-government and the perpetuation of our civil rights.  Yet politicians, many of them bought off by those social-media giants, do nothing.  And the news media, which in the days of more objective journalism boldly championed free speech, say little or nothing if Republicans or conservatives are the targets.  The same is true of former civil-liberties organizations.

Corriher: We're Being Disappeared.  In the latest case of internet censorship and election meddling, Twitter has decided to effectively ban the main competitor to YouTube:  Bitchute.  Censorship will continue to increase as we get closer the U.S. election.  [Video clip]

Facebook, Twitter Censor President Trump's Fox News Interview.  Facebook and Twitter censored a video clip of President Donald Trump's recent interview on Fox News' Fox & Friends over alleged coronavirus "misinformation."  Facebook said it removed the video of the interview because President Trump claimed that children have heightened immunity to coronavirus.  The Trump campaign stands by this claim, but Facebook disagrees, and used it as an excuse to prevent American citizens using the platform from hearing what their president has to say.  This is despite repeated assurances from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the platform will not censor politicians.

Facebook's Claims That Their 'Fact-Checkers' Are Free Of Bias Doesn't Stand Up To Scrutiny.  According to RealClearInvestigations,18 of the board's 20 members are tied to groups that have taken funds from the progressive billionaire's foundation.  Their links with Open Society Foundations do not necessarily reflect their political affiliations but the percentage of members tied to the organizations raises some concerns.  Some of the members are directly connected to Soros-funded groups.  For example, Afia Asantewaa Asare-Kyei is a program manager at Soros' Open Society Foundations in West Africa, and Pamela Karlan, a Stanford University Law professor, is a member American Constitution Society, which was founded and funded by Soros.

Facebook removes Trump post for first time citing coronavirus misinformation rules; Twitter also clamps down.  Facebook and Twitter are both taking action after a video shared by President Trump they say contains misinformation about the coronavirus.  "This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation," Facebook spokesperson Liz Bourgeois told Fox News in a statement.  In the removed video, the president told Fox & Friends that schools should remain open.

YouTube censored my talk on policing.  If your 12-year-old son goes on YouTube, he can watch [various inappropriate things.] [...] Yet your children can't watch a livestreamed speech on policing I gave Thursday, arguing that US law enforcement isn't engaged in systemic violence against blacks.  YouTube has deemed the speech inappropriate for children under 18 and blocked access to minors.  I suppose I should be grateful — at least it's on the Web at all.  YouTube had initially wiped the speech off its servers entirely on the ground that it violated the site's "community guidelines" for keeping YouTube a "safe place."  No further explanation was given.

Big Tech Censorship is the IRS Scandal of 2020.  This week, Breitbart News revealed that Google, is trying to intervene in the 2020 elections by censoring conservative news and preventing voters from receiving information they need to make an informed decision in November.  Google has killed search traffic to Breitbart.  Moreover, Twitter suspended Breitbart News' account after the website streamed a press conference of dissident doctors on Facebook Live.  YouTube — owned by Google — removed the video, and Twitter censored tweets that included excerpts from the video, including a tweet by the President of the United States.  Facebook also suspended private groups that posted the video.  Though there are a few cases of liberal posts being flagged or taken down, Big Tech is distorting the national debate to benefit Democrats and hurt Republicans.

Social Media Censorship Won't Keep Trump from Being Reelected.  Remember a couple of months ago people were all excited about Dr. Robert Epstein claiming Google preventing Trump-related searches or banning Trump ads was going to throw the election to the Democrats and Joe Biden?  I certainly do, because at the time Dr. Epstein went public with his predictions about the forthcoming 2020 election, my Twitter account blew up from people bringing it to my attention.  Dr. Epstein is a prominent American psychologist and author.  He was formerly editor-in-chief of Psychology Today magazine and a distinguished professor at the University of California — San Diego.  Epstein has been involved in controversies and criticisms of Google and other Big Tech platforms since 2012 when Google began placing security warnings on links to his website, which reduced his site traffic.

Social Media Censorship Is Scary.  One of the many great things about being an American is that we have the right to freedom of speech.  I may not agree with what my neighbor has to say, but I will fight to the death for his or her ability to say it.  This concept was a founding principle that is now in jeopardy because of the monopoly power wielded by social media giants.  An example of this disturbing trend occurred this week when a video from several frontline doctors who questioned the status quo position on COVID-19 treatments and protocols was summarily scrubbed from most top internet and social media sites.  After going "viral," the video was immediately taken down by Twitter, YouTube, and several other prominent platforms.  Unfortunately, many Americans missed the opportunity to watch the video before it was removed.

The Worthlessness of Congressional Hearings.  [Scroll down]  These businesses are unquestionably the largest monopolies in world history.  Google has gone from completely dominating internet searches to basically owning the internet, dominating online email and gobbling up other internet giants like YouTube.  Facebook is the Coke to Twitter's Pepsi, but Facebook also gobbled up the #3 social media site Instagram.  Amazon is the all-time undisputed king of merchandise sales, making owner Jeff Bezos the Richest Man on Earth. [...] This tiny handful of tech companies aren't just big.  They're on a scale never seen in history.  Being big, in and of itself, isn't a problem.  But the people controlling these companies are doing what powerful people do.  They're flexing their power to either buy or crush competitors.  Which is ultimately bad for everyone.  But they're not just exerting dangerous market dominance, they are using their massive size and power to impose their personal social and political preferences on the public.

Use Antitrust Against Big Tech.  On July 27th, a landmark hearing will take place in Washington, DC.  For the first time, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will all testify before the House's Antitrust subcommittee.  These four extraordinarily powerful Big Tech CEOs, whose companies are worth a combined $4 trillion, have never testified together — and it will be the first time that Bezos has ever testified before Congress.  Bezos, Pichai, Zuckerberg, and Cook will almost certainly argue that their companies are not monopolies.  Google and Facebook offer free services; Amazon offers incredible prices and excellent service; Apple offers beautiful products and competes with Android.  But that's a surface level analysis of the sheer power that these men wield.

Jim Jordan to tech executives:  You're 'out to get conservatives'.  Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan put technology and social media executives on notice at the outset of a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday [7/28/2020].  Citing several areas of concern, the GOP congressman sent a clear signal that the issue of censoring conservative voices will be front and center when Republicans question Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and other tech leaders.  "I'll just cut to the chase:  Big Tech is out to get conservatives," Jordan began.  "That's not a suspicion.  That's not a hunch.  That's a fact."

Big Tech must be brought to heel over election influencing.  As the war on conservative voices online reaches fever pitch in the run-up to November's presidential election, Silicon Valley's oligarchy finally was called to account Wednesday [7/29/2020] on Capitol Hill.  "Big Tech is out to get conservatives" Ohio Republican Jim Jordan told the bosses of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.  "That's not a suspicion, that's not a hunch.  That's a fact."  Then he laid out a litany of censorship atrocities in a blistering opening statement before the congressional antitrust panel.

Big Tech, Establishment Media Crush Free Speech Through a Form of Prior Restraint.  Big tech and mainstream media have joined forces to crush free speech and press freedom.  Not only are they censoring alternative medical views on coronavirus, but they are also censoring news outlets that happen to cover those views.  On Monday night [7/27/2020], Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (owned by Google) took down video from a Facebook live stream of a press conference on coronavirus in Washington, DC, by a group of doctors that was covered by Breitbart News that day.  The press conference was held by a group called America's Frontline Doctors, which was organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots.  The press conference featured doctors talking about their own views about the treatment of coronavirus or COVID-19, sometimes presenting perspectives that are not featured by the "experts" making policy for the country.  Some talked about hydroxychloroquine; others touted the scientific case for reopening schools.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz Calls Out Google for Censoring Websites.  Representative Matt Gaetz called out Google for censoring conservative news sites like the Gateway Pundit, Daily Caller, Breitbart, Western Journal and the American Spectator.  Of course Google's Head denied any such thing.  If you go to Google and search for top stories in various categories where the Gateway Pundit has led in the news cycle you won't find Gateway Pundit included in the list of related articles on the subject.  This happens over and over and over and today Rep. Matt Gaetz from Florida asked Google's Head Sundar Pichai about it.

Election Interference:  Google Purges Breitbart from Search Results.  A few days after the 2016 election, at an internal meeting later leaked to Breitbart News, top Google executives, including Sundar Pichai, Sergey Brin, and Kent Walker, lamented President Trump's victory, comparing Trump voters to "extremists" and discussing their desire to make Trump's election and the populist movement a "blip" in history.  True to their word, four years later, Google is deliberately working to interfere with the reelection of Trump in 2020.

Why is Big Tech censoring doctors who have treated COVID-19 patients?  [Thread reader]  We organized a group of practicing physicians, many of whom have personally treated COVID-19 patients, and we spoke directly to the American people about our experience and understanding of the virus and its treatment options.  As a result:
  •   Facebook removed the livestream of our conference that had 15 million+ views
  •   Twitter forced us to delete video testimonials from our physicians
  •   Our web host removed our website and claimed a "violation of their TOS"
  •   The media smeared us with lies & falsehoods
Why are social media company employees with no medical degree or clinical experience censoring the perspectives of practicing physicians?  Why are journalists claiming hydroxychloroquine is ineffective when there are numerous studies showcasing its efficacy against COVID-19?  Why are state governors restricting physicians from prescribing an FDA approved medication for 65 years and empowering pharmacies to over-rule your doctor?  These actions are unprecedented and have never happened before in medicine.

The Establishment Has No Clothes.  [Scroll down]  Many of the richest men in America didn't even graduate from college.  Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg certainly didn't.  Gates and Zuckerberg, and the rest of Big Tech, hardly conduct themselves in a manner one would term as elite.  Gates engages in suspicious, if not nefarious, activity in the realm of vaccines; there are credible stories of his having corrupted the public health bureaucracies in this country and others.  Zuckerberg and his cohorts in social media are busy attempting to censor the very free speech that made them billionaires.  So much so that on Monday and Tuesday a newly formed group of physicians called America's Frontline Doctors held a two-day summit in Washington to bring public attention to the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a treatment for COVID-19 and to call for an end to economic lockdowns and mask mandates, and by Tuesday afternoon social media and Big Internet was actively engaged in scrubbing any evidence they had bothered to speak.  The doctors speaking out on behalf of HCQ were calumnied and insulted.

Facebook's Neutral "Fact Checkers" Exposed As Ex-CNN Staffers And Democratic Donors.  Today in news about the radical left-wing censorship machines our social media companies have become, it was exposed this week that Facebook's fact-checker, Lead Stories, is an outfit that is stocked to the brim with ex-CNN staffers.  The organization presents itself as neutral yet "most of its employees" have donated to the Democratic party, according to RT.  The National Pulse reached out to Facebook's fact checkers this week after a story they published about Black Lives Matter was flagged as "partly false" by the platform.  This led TNP to "do some digging" on who was behind the smear.  What they found was stunning: an organization "staffed almost entirely by Democratic donors, half of whom had worked for CNN in the past."

Cancel Culture is a Mighty Tool of Fascism's Advance.  When all opposition is silenced, certainly totalitarianism will prevail.  Every day The Mainstream Media (MSM) and the tech giants (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Google, et al.) abet or conceal what "cancel culture" does.  In fact, they are the perpetrators of many of the cancel culture's manifestations.  They, MSM and the tech giants, are our rulers now, but they are only placeholders for the rulers they hope will come:  A Grand Socialist State Paradise.  This GSSP would, of course, be led by Democrats.  It is laughingly ironic that the MSM and the tech giants don't realize that the crocodile will eat them, too, for there is no free press under totalitarianism!

Popular chess channel hit by YouTube's racial justice algorithm.  Apparently, saying things like "white knight takes black pawn" is now too racist for Google's artificial intelligence.

Biden Campaign Asks Facebook To Censor President Trump's Posts.  The Biden campaign doesn't believe Facebook is doing enough to censor President Trump.  In a letter to Facebook's vice president for global affairs and communications Nick Clegg on Monday, Biden's campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon criticized the tech giant for "haggling" with the White House and requesting "edits and deletions" of Trump's posts about the George Floyd protests, rather than removing them entirely.  She specifically asked Facebook to remove posts from President Trump that suggest a connection between mail-in ballots and voter fraud.  Dillon insisted that such posts were unfounded and constituted voter suppression.  Meanwhile, in a special election in New Jersey last month nearly a fifth of ballots collected were discovered to be fraudulent.

Woke censorship is basically a superstitious cult.  We live in a society gripped by a quasi-religious fervor — and obsessed with symbols and irrational fears.  Anything that is thought to have the slightest association with racism, no matter how attenuated the connection or how innocent the explanation, must be crushed and expunged.  The mere presence of a possibly offending word is deemed a threat, whether it is truly offensive or any real people have actually taken offense.  We are engaged in a war with shadowy forces that we can't truly understand, but must exercise the utmost vigilance, lest they sneak up on us unawares.

Facebook to Prohibit Hate Speech in ads:  Meaning — Conservatives & Trump Supporters Free Speech Rights Null & Void.  As companies boycott Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has decided to join Twitter and the Stalinists who demand he become the arbiter of so-called hate speech.  Under its new policies, Facebook will ban ads that claim people from a specific race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, gender, sexual orientation or immigration origin are a threat to the physical safety or health of anyone else, Zuckerberg said, according to CNBC.  What exactly does that mean?  Does it mean BLM can't be criticized?

Conservatives Are Treated like Second-Class Citizens, and That's Dangerous.  For years we have been screaming at the top of our lungs that Google and Twitter and Facebook were censoring our political speech.  The social media giants are so certain that they can get away with their discrimination that they cancel in broad daylight the most popular voices and publications with hardly a whimper from our elected representatives.  They seek out and eliminate the revenue streams of viewpoints they despise without any due process.  Private companies or not, they represent the modern equivalent of the town square, long protected and made available for all Americans, and submitting to Big Tech's authority to choose winners and losers in the great American public forums of our time is not different from requiring subjects to beseech the royal crown for permission to speak.  It's impermissible and un-American and a threat to social stability, yet everywhere, conservatives are targeted for their beliefs, and the federal government does nothing.

The Facebook Ad Boycott Is About Silencing Conservatives, Not Stopping 'Hate'.  In the latest twist on cancel culture, major corporate advertisers are pulling ads from Facebook as part of a #StopHateForProfit campaign launched last week by the Anti-Defamation League.  But this campaign isn't about stopping hate.  On Wednesday [6/24/2020], Goodby Silverstein & Partners — which represents companies such as BMW, Frito-Lay, PepsiCo and HP — said it's joining what is supposed to be a month-long Facebook boycott in July.

Defund the Thought Police.  Due process is not the strong suit of mobs.  Neither is nuance, open discussion, or disagreement.  These inherent defects should be painfully obvious as mobs pull down statues, seize sections of cities, and demand the public approach them on bended knee, literally.  Anyone who dares push back, perhaps with a mild tweet saying "All lives matter," faces immediate censure.  If the mob is successful, any offenders will lose their jobs.  Feckless employers are all too eager to appease the mob and hope it turns on another target.  In this perilous environment, the most frenzied voices do more than dominate the public square.  They monopolize it by silencing dissent.  They have received full-throated support from the tech giants that control electronic discussion and the media giants determined to shape the narrative rather than report the news.  Twitter and NBC are the poster children for this assault on free and open discussion.

Facebook Conservative targeting case breaks wide open with undercover evidence, stunning content moderator confessions.  Facebook content moderators discussed using their positions to censor Republicans and conservatives in an undercover video released by activist group Project Veritas on Tuesday [6/23/2020].  The video shows individual Facebook content moderators working for a third party contractor, Cognizant, expressing their eagerness to censor supporters of President Donald Trump.  The footage also shows that CNN host Don Lemon was granted an "exception" by a Facebook for speech that would have otherwise violated Facebook's rules against hate speech.  The footage includes a shot of an internal order to the Cognizant team instructing moderators not to censor a video of Lemon saying that white men are "the biggest terror threat in this country."  "This is implying that white men are terrorists and so would typically violate [Facebook rules against "dehumanizing" speech].  As this is a newsworthy event, FB's content policy team is allowing a narrow exception for this content on the platform," a manager told moderators in a November 2018 message.

Facebook moderators brag about deleting pro-Trump posts in Project Veritas sting.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long insisted that the company is politically neutral, but the same apparently can't be said for all of its content moderators.  The social-media giant said it would review its training and oversight after a Project Veritas sting released Tuesday showed moderators on hidden-camera footage claiming that they delete pro-Trump and conservative posts; that the company harbors an anti-Trump bias, and that Facebook shadow-bans content, despite its claims to the contrary.

Intolerance threatens US - here's who to blame for 'cancel culture'.  Activists sue to block a Trump rally, the New York Times fires a non-compliant editor, Twitter "fact-checks" conservative voices.  Ivanka Trump, Sid Rosenberg, Erik Prince, Raymond Ibrahim, Jeh Johnson, Kevin McAleenan and countless others "disinvited" to speak on college campuses.  Wonder where today's "cancel culture" comes from?  It comes from college campuses, fueled by young people and abetted by an older generation that has not had the courage to say no.  This is how the slide toward totalitarianism begins.  Silencing the opposition is essential to creating "legitimacy" for despots like Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un; if political opponents have no voice, people will assume they don't exist.

Project Veritas Video Shows Facebook Content Moderators Discussing Censoring Conservatives, Reveals 'Exception' Given To Don Lemon For Hate Speech.  Facebook content moderators discussed using their positions to censor Republicans and conservatives in an undercover video released by activist group Project Veritas on Tuesday [6/23/2020].  The video shows individual Facebook content moderators working for a third party contractor, Cognizant, expressing their eagerness to censor supporters of President Donald Trump.  The footage also shows that CNN host Don Lemon was granted an "exception" by a Facebook for speech that would have otherwise violated Facebook's rules against hate speech.

Man Tried To Share His Regrets About Transgender Life.  YouTube Censored It.  Information provided exclusively to The Federalist shows YouTube removed a Heritage Foundation video featuring testimony from a former transgender-identifying woman for violating the company's hate speech policy.  YouTube confirmed the decision in a Thursday [6/18/2020] email to The Federalist.  Now Heritage is fighting back with a new video, released first to The Federalist, in which Federalist contributor Walt Heyer doubles down.  "I said that children suffering from gender dysphoria should not be encouraged to try experimental hormones in surgery, and I stand by that statement," Heyer emphasizes.  The seven-minute clip, which Heritage will publish on YouTube, includes footage of Heyer's remarks from the original panel, with the allegedly hateful six-word violation bleeped like a curse word.

Conservative Clergy of Color Rips Google Over 'Deliberate Censorship' of Conservatives.  The Conservative Clergy of Color took Google to task in a statement slamming the Internet giant over its "deliberate censorship" of conservatives.  "As pastors and leaders in our communities, we are appalled by the blatant bigotry and bias against conservative and Christian voices in our country today.  We are sickened by the dirty trick Google played against two conservative websites over a simple difference of opinion," Conservative Clergy of Color leaders, which include Bishop Aubrey Shines, Rev. Derek McCoy, Rev. MJ Reid, and Pastor Francisco Vega, said in a statement.

Let's 'Demonetize' NBC News And Google.  his week saw a depressing new low in the attempt by the left to silence voices with which it disagrees when an NBC News "reporter" tried to enlist Google to block two conservative websites' ability to make money.  In a report on Tuesday [6/16/2020], NBC News' London-based Adele-Momoko Fraser claimed that Google had banned The Federalist and Zero Hedge from its ad platform over articles that were "pushing unsubstantiated claims about the Black Lives Matter protests."  Google soon tried to correct the record, saying that "The Federalist was never demonetized."  Google had only threatened to blacklist the site from its ad network.  (It did "demonetize" Zero Hedge.)  What's more, contrary to NBC News, Google's actions against The Federalist and Zero Hedge had nothing to do with articles they published, but with reader comments on those sites.

NBC Appoints Itself Internet-Speech Arbiter.  Wow.  I guess every day at the "NBC News Verification Unit" is a game of "Two Truths and a Lie."  Yesterday [6/16/2020] NBC News, the employer of Brian Williams and former employer of Matt Lauer, Mark Halperin, and Chris Matthews, revealed that it has an obscure self-described "verification unit" that appointed itself to police American political discourse, and initially reported that Zero Hedge and the Federalist had been banned from generating revenue through widely used Google Ads, deeming their content to be racist.  The report characterized those sites as "far-right," even though the Federalist publishes a variety of right-of-center viewpoints and Zero Hedge is an idiosyncratic libertarian-leaning financial and market news site.

NBC News' Attempt to Demonetize the Federalist Is Illiberal Insanity.  NBC News reported today that two sites, ZeroHedge and the Federalist, had been banned from generating revenue through widely used Google Ads.  A Google spokesperson initially told NBC News that it "took action after determining the websites violated its policies on content related to race."  I don't know much about ZeroHedge, but the contention that the Federalist (where I worked as a senior editor from 2013 to 2019) is "far-right," as reporter Adele-Momoko Fraser claims twice in her piece, is utter nonsense.  The Federalist publishes a wide variety of opinions.  Some pieces are more provocative than others.  Some are very provocative.  So what?  NBC News is trying to make the site sound like the Daily Stormer, when in fact it has contributions from well-known mainstream libertarians, social conservatives, and moderate Republicans.  All of the content falls well within normal parameters of contemporary political discourse — which is exactly what outlets such as NBC News are trying to shut down.

Did NBC and Google engage in antitrust collusion against two conservative sites?  Leftists cannot allow ideological competition.  If their ideas have to go head-to-head with conservative ideology, their ideas lose.  Leftists and other fascists win only by shouting more loudly and breaking things more aggressively than do people committed to individual rights.  Sometimes, though, if you're arrogantly confident that you have the upper hand, you get careless.  That's what happened with NBC and Google when they colluded to demonetize The Federalist and Zero Hedge.  It's no coincidence that the Department of Justice almost immediately afterward announced that it was going to end the immunity that protected internet platforms from antitrust actions if they try to stifle competition — something that may save American Thinker from a demonetizing attack.  There's a lot to unpack here.  First, under §230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, the big platforms were made immune from liability for third-party content on the ground that they were functioning as bulletin boards, not publishers.  They're still protected even though they're now making judgments about the content (usually in ways that hurt conservatives). They're also immune from antitrust actions if they work with other parties' to silence the latters' competition.

NBC Tries and Fails to Wreck a Conservative Website.  Here's Why It's Deeply Problematic.  If you value a robust media offering a variety of voices, you should be troubled by a chilling incident that occurred this week.  Citing the work of two foreign-based activist groups, NBC News reported Tuesday that Google would demonetize a conservative news and opinion outlet, The Federalist — meaning not allow it to carry Google Ads on its site.  Why?  Because of The Federalist's coverage of the George Floyd protests.  Later that day, Google clarified that its specific issue was the comments section below articles on The Federalist, not the articles themselves.  When The Federalist removed its comments section, Google said it considered the issue resolved.  This episode shows how a media outlet such as NBC News apparently is willing to collude with radicals alongside one of the world's most powerful tech companies to ruin the competition.

NBC News Reporter Thanks Foreign Groups for 'Collaboration' in Pushing Google to 'Defund' The Federalist.  NBC News reporter Adele-Momoko Fraser thanked two foreign non-profit organizations for their "collaboration" in urging Google to demonetize The Federalist, a respected conservative American news website, on Tuesday [6/16/2020]. [...] The Federalist is a conservative news and opinion site that features, among others, Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway.  Zero Hedge, another site targeted by the groups, is a blog featuring commentary on politics and economics.

NBC News under fire for apparently pushing Google to remove conservative sites from ad platform.  NBC News is facing intense backlash for apparently influencing Google to punish two conservative news sites over what was deemed offensive coverage of the George Floyd protests.  In a report published Tuesday afternoon, NBC News claimed Google "banned" The Federalist and ZeroHedge from Google Ads for "pushing unsubstantiated claims" about the Black Lives Matter movement.  Google later pushed back, claiming that The Federalist "was never demonetized," and adding, "We worked with them to address issues on their site related to the comments section."  "We have strict publisher policies that govern the content ads can run on and explicitly prohibit derogatory content that promotes hatred, intolerance, violence or discrimination based on race from monetizing," a Google spokesperson initially told NBC News.  NBC, however, did not link to the "derogatory content" from The Federalist or ZeroHedge.

More about Google.

Snapchat CEO says platform has 'First Amendment' right to censor Trump, Zuckerberg weighs in.  The CEOs of two of the world's biggest social media platforms are attacking President Donald Trump anew as they angle to censor some of his comments and 'fact-check' his responses.  Snapchat chief Evan Spiegel is defending his platform's actions to limit the reach of the president's content by actually invoking the First Amendment's free speech guarantee while urging other platforms to do the same.  Spiegel, who heads up Snapchat and Bitmoji, made his remarks during an interview with Bloomberg News that was published Thursday.  They come after Twitter started fact-checking President Trump's tweets last month, referencing cherry-picked articles to support the claim that he's been dishonest.  "The government is explicitly threatening private platforms about exercising their First Amendment rights," Spiegel said.

GoFundMe suspends Candace Owens' campaign to help bar owner in stunning censorship move.  Amid all the turmoil in America of late, there may not be a more far-reaching crisis than the ongoing effort to censor speech.  In the run-up to the November election, Big Tech platforms like Google, which owns YouTube, Twitter and Facebook now censor content with abandon, deciding what is and is not acceptable speech.  The latest example of this involves a GoFundMe account set up by Candace Owens, titled "Mob rule has no place in America," which was subsequently shut down after raising $205,000 in a few hours.  The conservative activist launched a GoFundMe campaign in support of Michael Dykes, a Birmingham bar owner who called George Floyd a "thug" — Floyd served at least four stints in prison, including a 5-year sentence for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.  The media narrative is that at the age of 46, he was turning his life around, though a toxicology report said he had fentanyl in his system at the time of his death, as well as meth.

The Left Is as Scared of the Truth as of a Plague.  Why is it that the Left needs to censor and shout down any opposing views rather than debating the merits of their arguments?  Because their narratives cannot withstand scrutiny beyond clever videos and slogans.

Things you're not allowed to say: lowlights of the new censorship.  Liberals don't want to change minds, to have a debate; they want to banish the argument.  The things that you're not allowed to say.  And then they'll bemoan that we live in a fragmented society, where people retreat to their bubbles, and they'll be shocked when the next election doesn't go the way they think.

Pro-Police Site Taken Down Amid Anti-Cop Hysteria.  At the moment, police officers are in an awful position.  The good officers — and they make up the bulk of the police officers in this country — are being held accountable not just for what other officers did, but often for what officers in completely different states have done.  It's hardly fair, yet most officers know that life isn't fair.  However, there are a handful of outfits that have been unapologetically pro-cop, and one is Blue Lives Matter.  Of course, with a name like that, you'd kind of expect them to be pro-police.  However, the site is being taken down after its parent company faced an internal backlash.

Blue Lives Matter Website To Be Shut Down Because Shut Up, They Said.  Cancel culture remains on the march.  Barring any sort of intervention, it appears that the next victim will be the website Blue Lives Matter, dedicated to highlighting assaults on police officers and offering support for their families.  You might be wondering what anyone would find so offensive about a site specializing in that sort of content.  Well, you actually probably aren't wondering if you've been following all of the protests in the news lately.  All cops are bad now.  And some people working at other publications owned by the media company responsible for the site (Defense Maven) noticed the existence of BLM and expressed their "embarrassment and horror" at realizing their employer published such claptrap.  They immediately demanded that the site be shut down.

Facebook pulls ad from gun-toting Georgia candidate taking on Antifa: 'Big Tech censorship of conservatives must end'.  A GOP congressional candidate is accusing Facebook of "censorship" after the social media giant took down a campaign video that shows her holding an AR-15 rifle and warning Antifa to "stay [...] out of northwest Georgia."  Marjorie Greene, a businesswoman running in Georgia's 14th District, posted the ad on Facebook Tuesday [6/2/2020].  By Thursday, Facebook told her campaign the video was coming down because it violated company policies against promoting the use of firearms.  The video is still running on Twitter, and Greene has bought air time to run the ad on broadcast and cable TV in advance of the Tuesday primary.

Trump should just kill social media altogether.  [Scroll down]  Social media concerns have thus far been immune to legal recourse for content published on their domains thanks to a twenty-six-word catena of legalese tucked into §230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.  This single sentence is credited with giving rise not just to social media, but to the entirety of the internet:  "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." [...] The pith of Trump's order is to treat social media channels like news publishers, thus making them legally answerable for what appears on their public-facing feed.  It would also strip the veneer of impartiality these digital giants use to distinguish themselves from traditional paper-and-ink publishers.  Then, presumably, anti-conservative bias in the form of subtle suppression of right-wing opinion could be tackled.

YouTube reinstates Giuliani podcast exploring Biden ties to China.  YouTube removed and then reinstated an episode of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani's podcast about former Vice President Joe Biden's relationship with China.  A spokesperson for the platform told the Washington Examiner on Thursday [5/28/2020] that the video, which was posted on April 24 and deleted on May 12, was removed accidentally and has been reposted.  "Our team is glad the mistake was rectified," Giuliani's spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.  Giuliani's team was informed early in the morning on May 12 that "video has been removed from YouTube" because it "was flagged to us for review," and upon that review, they "determined that it violates our guidelines," according to a representative for the former New York City mayor.

The New Internet Censorship.  [Scroll down]  Not to be outdone, Facebook recently has begun "fact-checking" posts from conservative voices and censoring content — remember the Ukrainian "whistleblower," Eric Ciaramella, whom John Roberts refused to name during President Trump's impeachment trial?  Everyone who wanted to know his name could find out because Adam Schiff had carelessly neglected to black out his name from hearing transcripts, but Facebook made a policy of deleting any posts naming Ciaramella under the pretense of protecting him from retribution.  Angry Trump supporters soon figured out that the way to circumvent the censors was to create a post naming Ciaramella as the whistleblower and taking a screen shot of it, deleting the post, and then posting the screenshot.  The robot censors can only read typed text, not text in photos.

Trump to sign executive order on social media companies.  President Trump is signing an executive order Wednesday [5/27/2020] aimed at social media companies, a White House official said.  White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that the president is signing the order "pertaining to social media," but she could not provide details.  The president has criticized Twitter this week for posting, for the first time, fact-checking items to his tweets about mail-in voting.

This is not news.  Wikipedia hasn't been politically neutral for at least a decade — if it ever was.
Wikipedia Co-Founder:  Site's Neutrality No Longer Exists, Favors Leftism.  Conservatives have long been blowing the whistle on Wikipedia's leftist bias.  The site's co-founder Larry Sanger apparently agrees with them.  In a blog post last week, Sanger argued that Wikipedia has abandoned all neutrality in the name of avoiding what activist journalists call the "false balance" — the idea that not all opposing views of an argument should be given equal time.  He goes through several pages to support his thesis, noting the rather charged language often employed.  When comparing the pages for former President Barack Obama and the current President Donald Trump, the differences are night and day, with the former receiving overwhelmingly positive treatment while the latter is frequently portrayed negatively.

President Trump wants a commission set up to review complaints of anti-conservative bias and censorship on social media.  President Donald Trump is considering creating a commission to review complaints of anticonservative bias and censorship on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google.  It is understood that the new body will take the form of White House commission, the Wall Street Journal reported.  A White House official told the paper:  'Left-wing bias in the tech world is a concern that definitely needs to be addressed from our vantage point, and at least exposed [so] that Americans have clear eyes about what we're dealing with.'

YouTube Censors Former CBS Journalist Sharyl Attkisson For Reporting On Hdroxychloroquine.  YouTube is not a group of doctors, nurses, or have any sense of medical education, but their Nazi CEO claims that they will not tolerate and they will remove any videos that present a different, lawful narrative against the current one they are presenting.  Former CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson has come under their attack just as The Sons of Liberty have in attempting to investigate certain claims about COVID-19, 5G, coronavirus and drugs used as treatment, including hydroxychloroquine and chlorine dioxide.

Plandemic: The COVID-19 Video YouTube and Facebook Don't Want You to See.  Over the last couple of days, I've had several friends send me a link to a video about COVID-19 called "Plandemic."  They said they can't post it on Facebook; Facebook either removes it or threatens them with suspension before they try to post it.  When I went to the URL on YouTube, it had been pulled for allegedly violating YouTube's terms of service.  A YouTube spokesperson told Buzzfeed News that they remove "content that includes medically unsubstantiated diagnostic advice for COVID-19."

Google slaps down conservative sites reporting the truth on coronavirus.  Google, the top search engine in the United States, appears to be hitting conservative sites who are publishing articles that run contrary to the accepted narrative surrounding the coronavirus.  Multiple reports have come into NOQ Report concerned with major drops in traffic from the search giant.  So, we checked our own stats and realized it had started happening to us as well.  We will not be "outing" other conservative sites who may require Google traffic to function properly (our biggest search traffic source is DuckDuckGo, which I highly recommend from a privacy perspective).  I will not be disclosing the names or websites associated with the people I talked to on this matter.  Google's various teams, for their part, have not responded to requests for information.

YouTube Censors Noted Anti-Lockdown Epidemiologist.  Welcome to the 2020 New World Order, when a social media platform like YouTube thinks it knows more about the coronavirus pandemic than an epidemiologist.

You can't criticize CCP influence of WHO.  That would be un-YouTube.

Epidemiologist's Video On Coronavirus 'Herd Immunity' Had 1.3 Million Views, Until YouTube Removed It.  YouTube removed a video of a prominent epidemiologist explaining his view that achieving "herd immunity" is the best way to combat the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski is a former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University, but his contrarian take on tackling coronavirus was removed by the tech company for purported "misinformation."  A prominent advocate for the concept of "herd immunity" as being the only effective way, short of a vaccine, that society can fully return to normal life, Wittkowski considers social distancing and lockdown measures to be unnecessary and even counterproductive.

Washington Post Media Columnist Wants an 'Executive Editor' for 3 Billion Facebook Users!?  Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan acknowledged Facebook has nearly three billion users, but she still wants it to have an "Executive Editor" to punish and censor the "misinformation" that is harming our democracy.  The fact that Facebook's new Oversight Board has only two out of twenty members who are conservative does not seem to impress Sullivan.  Sullivan asserted in her Friday [5/15/2020] column, "Facebook has a huge truth problem.  A high-priced 'oversight board' won't fix it."  That "truth problem" starts with allowing Donald Trump to be elected.

Google Erases the Existence of Those Who Speak Unwelcome Truths.  Daniel Greenfield, the peerless Shillman Fellow and FrontPage writer, tweeted the news on May 7: "Google just erased my Sultan Knish blog and Front Page Mag articles from the first pages of results for my name doubt very much this is accidental."  I did too, so I checked for myself, and sure enough: a Google search for "Robert Spencer" now does not bring up Jihad Watch, where most of my writing outside of books has been published for the last seventeen years, but it does give you defamatory and distorted attack pieces from the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center and the Saudi-funded Bridge Initiative, and nothing that doesn't portray me and my work in the most unfavorable possible light.  This latest example of the tech giants' determination to silence all dissenting voices reveals one often overlooked fact: they are desperately afraid.  Google is so afraid of Jihad Watch, in fact, that it is going to great lengths to make you think that the site (which you can find here) doesn't exist at all.

YouTube censors epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski for opposing lockdown.  Big Tech companies are aggressively tamping down on COVID-19 "misinformation" — opinions and ideas contrary to official pronouncements.  Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski, former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University, says YouTube removed a video of him talking about the virus which had racked up more than 1.3 million views.  Wittkowski, 65, is a ferocious critic of the nation's current steps to fight the coronavirus.  He has derided social distancing, saying it only prolongs the virus' existence and has attacked the current lockdown as mostly unnecessary.  Wittkowski, who holds two doctorates in computer science and medical biometry, believes the coronavirus should be allowed to achieve "herd immunity," and that short of a vaccine the pandemic will only end after it has sufficiently spread through the population.

Truth, not politics, is at the root of the left-right divide.  From Lenin to today's left, lying, especially about opponents, is morally acceptable as long as it serves the left's goals of defeating opponents and attaining more power.  Once you realize this, the divide becomes explicable.  Why has YouTube taken down the video of two emergency room physicians who argue that the lockdown may not be called for?  Because the left does not argue with opponents; it shuts them down.  And that is because it has no interest in truth.  That's why the left is pressuring YouTube and Facebook to prohibit anything the left differs with from appearing on their platforms.  Just as the Soviets labelled everything in the Western press "imperialist propaganda," the left labels everything with which it differs "misinformation."

Facebook Is Giving $1,000 To Content Moderators Who Said Online Trolls Turned Them Into Conspiracy Theorists.  Facebook agreed to pay out a $52 million settlement to thousands of current and former content moderators who said they are suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome after viewing upsetting content on the job, The Verge reported Tuesday [5/12/2020]. Each moderator will receive a minimum of $1,000 and will be eligible for additional compensation if they are exhibiting other trauma due to the kind of content they regularly view, the report noted.  The settlement applies to 11,250 moderators, some of whom told the Verge in 2019 that they became conspiracy theorists while moderating content people post online.

Facebook Puts Soros, Muslim Brotherhood, Activists in Charge of Censorship.  Facebook controls as much as 80% of social media traffic.  That means that it has the power to erase conversations, shift narratives, and control how people speak to one another.  With 190 million users in the United States, the social network monopoly has more control over what people see than all of the media giants combined do.  And now Facebook is putting some very troubling political activists in charge of its Oversight Board who will decide how it censors. [...] What does Facebook's Supreme Court of Censorship look like when you zoom in?  Only a quarter of the Oversight Board originates from the United States.  That means three quarters of the censorship court comes from countries with no First Amendment.  While people from outside the United States may believe in certain kinds of free speech, political speech in this country will be determined by a majority Third World board of left-leaning political activists.

Social media networks scrambling to remove viral 'Plandemic' conspiracy video.  Social media networks are scrambling to get rid of a viral conspiracy video spreading false claims about the coronavirus, according to a report.  The roughly 26-minute "Plandemic Movie" has been viewed and shared widely on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and clips of it also circulated on Twitter this week, CNBC reported.  The clip, apparently an excerpt of a larger documentary to be released this summer, makes a number of bogus, unproven or misleading claims, like that the coronavirus pandemic was created to make profits off vaccines.  And in defiance of the advice of medical experts, it suggests that masks can make people sicker and that sheltering in place harms the immune system.  One video, shared on Facebook by someone claiming to be one of the filmmakers, had been viewed more than 1.7 million times and shared more than 140,000 times as of Thursday [5/7/2020].

Tumblr Announces Crackdown on 4.47M 'Reblogs' for 'Hate Speech'.  Tumblr has launched its new witch-hunt style initiative to wipe out "hate speech" on the platform.  Tumblr released a blog announcing its crackdown on offensive speech headlined "Updates to how we enforce our Community Guidelines on hate speech" on May 4.  Tumblr claimed to be "steadfast believers in free speech" before showing its true colors — bragging about its accomplishment of "approximately 4.47M reblogs being removed from Tumblr."

Russian Prosecutors Order Deletion Of Corona Conspiracy Videos From YouTube, Social Media.  Russia is punishing anti-lockdown protesters and coronavirus conspiracy theorists with fines and prison and ordering the deletion of conspiracy videos from Russian social media. [...] I don't think this virus is a bioweapon and strongly believe the US government's claims it was leaked from a Chinese lab are just war propaganda (they need someone to blame with 30-50 million Americans unemployed) but it has become abundantly clear our "authorities" are just using the virus as an excuse to seize power.

Facebook Bans Popular Alt Media Website, Likely to Censor Post about Coronavirus as a Bioweapon.  A popular alternative media website that regularly publishes controversial information, Unz Review, has been censored by Facebook shortly after publishing an article that considers the possibility coronavirus could be a bioweapon.  Academic Ron Unz, the publisher of the website, made the announcement on Friday morning that his website was being censored by the monolithic social media giant.

Why Did YouTube Remove The Doctors' Briefing?  [Scroll down]  I absolutely believe that it's wrong to censor what qualified medical professionals (read: not quacks) are saying about the crisis, which is so unique in our experience as a nation.  A strong lockdown was necessary at first.  If there is good medical evidence that the lockdown, and related public health strategies, might be doing more harm that good at this date, then let's hear that argument.

California Doctors Go on Ingraham Angle, Challenge Official COVID Policy — YouTube then takes down their videos!  On Saturday [4/25/2020] two California doctors of Immunology went on with KERO News 23 in California and made a video disputing the official state coronavirus policy in California.  Doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi said their facilities have tested over 5,200 patients for the coronavirus throughout the county, making up for over half of all testing in Kern County.  According to their data, the death rate of the coronavirus is similar in prevalence to the flu.  And they believe only the sick and elderly should be quarantined and that businesses should open.  They also revealed that the state of California is pressuring doctors to pad the COVID-19 numbers. [...] On Monday night the two California doctors went on The Ingraham Angle with Laura Ingraham to discuss their expertise and challenge the official state narrative on the coronavirus.  Following their appearance on the show their videos were removed from Google-YouTube!  They did not pass official WHO policy.

Thank You, Democrat Governors, for Re-Electing President Trump!.  Government-imposed totalitarianism is not going over well in the land of the free.  Citizens are rising up across the nation against officials restricting their lives and destroying their livelihoods in ways unheard of here before now.  Sparked by the Operation Gridlock that recently brought ten thousand protesters to the Michigan capitol, citizens in dozens of states are creating their own gridlocks.  On the sunny Sunday of April 19 in Denver, Colorado, thousands staged a drive-by car protest, honking horns and flying flags for hours on streets around the Capitol.  A thousand more families and friends gathered happily on the Capitol lawn to cheer them on with homemade posters pleading with the Democrat governor to let them get back to work.  A fun picnic, but without the deviled eggs.  Facebook censors shut down the main group, Operation Gridlock Denver, the morning of the protest, but since many groups were publicizing the event, it wasn't hard for people to find information.  Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that Facebook has decided that these rallies are "harmful disinformation," so they will protect us by eliminating it.  Oh, thank you, mini-god Mark.  Nevertheless, the Denver Gridlock was a spectacular success.

Facebook's dangerously fake "fact checking".  I've been drawing attention to the increasingly aggressive efforts by political and corporate interests to control the information you get on the new and online.  I have often spoken of disingenuous "fact checking" efforts conducted by conflicted third parties who are actually trying to shape public opinion and control the information the public can access.  One chilling example comes in the form of Facebook's fake "science fact checks."  The social media company has improperly been censoring and flagging material as "false."  A recent example is a popular documentary by Epoch Times about the possible link between Covid-19 and a research lab in Wuhan, China.

YouTube CEO Says You Better Parrot the World Health Organization or Face Removal.  YouTube's CEO went on CNN to chat with Brian Stelter yesterday about how her platform is handling "misinformation" about the Wuhan virus.  The media's hall monitor is always down for talk of censorship of anyone who disagrees with him and Susan Wojcicki was more than happy to throw some fodder his way.  But it's the organization she's choosing to use as the standard for "truth" that caught my ear.

Sorry, Facebook:  Announcing a protest isn't 'harmful misinformation'.  A scattering of protests aimed at coronavirus lockdowns erupted across the country, sparked not by social-distancing guidelines but by politicians' unilaterally dictating what products citizens are permitted to purchase in box stores, attempting to shut down drive-in Masses at churches and closing parks and beaches, among other ill-conceived and gratuitous intrusions.  So naturally, Facebook decided to censor organizers' posts.  Like any protest movement, this one is a mixed bag:  Some of the protesters are acting in bad faith, some are idealists and some are merely terrified of losing their livelihoods, their homes and their careers while waiting around for a government check that might never come.

Protests by the Left Get a Pass - While Conservatives Get Arrested.  On Monday, April 21st, members of National Nurses United (NNU), a radical union that advocates for socialized medicine, gathered outside the White House to protest against President Trump.  Video of the protest was carried on Facebook Live by the same dot com monopoly which had banned 'Reopen' protests as being harmful.  After the rally, protesters clumped together with reporters, and there was no social distancing in sight.  Despite that Facebook did not take down the NUN page.  And the media celebrated the protesters. [...] In the same weeks as the 'Reopen' protests against state lockdowns and for reopening businesses were taking place, a parallel series of protests against President Trump were also happening across America.  Police cracked down on the 'reopen' protests, arresting an organizer in New Jersey, while the media condemned them, spun conspiracy theories trying to tie them to members of the Trump administration, and falsely accused protesters of causing an increase in coronavirus in Kentucky.  Facebook deleted protest groups in coordination with state governments, labeling the protests, illegal.  Blue state governments, dot com overlords, and the media all warned that protesting in the age of the coronavirus was dangerous and illegal.  Even if the protesters were in cars or maintaining social distance.

Facebook Assists Dems in Shutting Down Bill of Rights.  Topping the list of assaults on our Constitutional freedoms is the war on our right to speak freely and peacefully assemble as governors warn their citizens to stay safe, stay home, and shut up.  Joining them is the social media giant Facebook which, in its general censorship of conservative thought and opinion, has now decreed that using their platform to communicate complaints about government overreach during the Wuhan virus crisis and to organize protests against said overreach violates Facebook's Alice-In-Wonderland "community standards[.]"  In the age before cable, there was an iconic sci-fi program called The Outer Limits whose opening featured a series of test patterns, flickering screens and a narrator known as the "control voice" who solemnly intoned, "Do not attempt to adjust your television set.  We will control all that you see and hear."  Today that is a chilling reality as social media giants like Facebook routinely censor what people can see and hear on their sites.

Blue State Governors Demand Facebook Remove Information Organizing Protests Against Their "Orders" — Facebook Complies.  There's some misinformation quickly spreading about Facebook taking down all content where people are organizing protests against state "orders."  In reality what Facebook is doing is responding to requests from state officials to remove content the state dictators claim is defiance of their orders.  Facebook is complying with those removal requests.

Facebook Working With State Governments to Take Down Coronavirus Lockdown Protest Announcements.  Facebook says it is working with state governments to take down organizing announcements for protests of the COVID-19 Chinese coronavirus lockdowns.  The protests have been spreading around the nation by Americans concerned the cure is worse than the disease and is killing the country and that the orders by governments go far beyond what is necessary to control the spread of the virus and are more about controlling citizens.

Facebook's 'fact checkers' are the real fake news after censoring Post story.  Way back on Feb. 23, The Post ran an opinion piece by Steven Mosher saying that we couldn't trust China's story about the origins of COVID-19.  He argued that the virus might — might — have jumped to the human population thanks to errors at a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, rather than via that city's now-notorious "wet market."  The piece was widely read online — until Facebook stepped in.  The social media giant's "fact checkers" decided this was not a valid opinion.  If you tried to share Mosher's column on Facebook, the social network stuck a "False Information" alert on top, saying that finding was "checked by independent fact-checkers" and preventing your friends from clicking to connect to the original article to see for themselves.  Again, this was an opinion column, not a news report.

On 4 Fronts, How China Quietly Infiltrates American Life.  TikTok, a rapidly growing social media app that allows users to post short videos, has come under scrutiny for its connection to China.  TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a company based in China, though the service — like countless other social media and internet platforms — isn't available in its home country.  But TikTok has a massive audience overseas.  The app had been downloaded over 750 million times in a year, The New York Times reported in late 2019.  The parent company denies any kind of censorship or tracking of data; however, many accuse TikTok of doing both.

Planning Three Steps Ahead:  On the Need and a Plan to Divorce From China.  China Virus 19 has brought home to more Americans than ever before that we absolutely have to divorce from China. [...] We knew that Apple makes iPhones and so much else of their stuff there.  So do all the other Silicon Valley high-tech behemoths.  On the one hand they all are blazing Kaepernick-quality leftist Democrats.  Their money goes solid Democrat.  Their politics is so far to the left that they even violate free speech values to tilt towards Democrats.  Twitter closes down mainstream conservatives and Republicans.  YouTube bans Dennis Prager lectures on the "Ten Commandments" because Prager mentions such words as "murder," as in quoting "Thou Shalt Not Murder."  Diamond and Silk get expelled from the Facebook "community."  And yet these same flaming Silicon leftists flock to China to build all their products there because the labor can be had dirt-cheap and exploited shamelessly.

Hillary Clinton:  Facebook Is Conspiring Against Me.  Name three things that will never go away.  Cockroaches, human evil, and Hillary Clinton.  And now, Hillary is back for some reason to rant some more about a vast conspiracy.

Clinton's Facebook Conspiracy Theory.  After proclaiming a myriad of excuses and airing her wounded pride in the New York Times best-selling book What Happened, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now points a manicured finger of blame at the conservative takeover of social media for the embarrassing, unthinkable, and clearly unmanageable loss.  What?  Back up a minute.  Conservatives rule social media?  Yep, Mrs. Clinton said that and more.

Facebook Removes Trump Campaign Ads — Saying They Violate Their Census Policy.  Tech Giants Google and Facebook continue to purge conservative content from platforms — They are hiding conservative pro-Trump news on Google — They are shadow-banning conservative news on all social media platforms.  In February 2018 Facebook launched a new algorithm to ensure that conservative news would not spread on the social media platform.  The algorithm change caused President Donald Trump's engagement on Facebook posts to plummet a whopping 45%.  In contrast, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) did not appear to have suffered a comparable decline in Facebook engagement.

Researchers have already tested YouTube's algorithms for political bias.  In August 2018, President Donald Trump claimed that social media was "totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices."  Not much was new about this: for years, conservatives have accused tech companies of political bias.  Just last July, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked the FTC to investigate the content moderation policies of tech companies like Google.  A day after Google's vice president insisted that YouTube was apolitical, Cruz claimed that political bias on YouTube was "massive."  But the data doesn't back Cruz up — and it's been available for a while.  While the actual policies and procedures for moderating content are often opaque, it is possible to look at the outcomes of moderation and determine if there's indication of bias there.  And, last year, computer scientists decided to do exactly that.

Rand Paul Blasts YouTube over Censorship of Speech on Senate Floor.  Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has called out Google-owned YouTube after it blacklisted a clip of him speaking on the Senate floor, an act of censorship he calls "chilling and disturbing."  Google censored Paul because he read out the name of the alleged "whistleblower," Eric Ciaramella.  Politico reported the story as "new," even though Breitbart News first revealed that YouTube was blocking clips of the Senator mentioning Ciaramella's name last week.

Google Censors Rand Paul's Speech Naming the Whistleblower.  The Big Tech company Google, along with its video-sharing subsidiary YouTube, has been banning videos of a speech from the floor of the U.S. Senate where Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) named the whistleblower, according to Breitbart News.  In the speech, Senator Paul highlighted the highly questionable and suspicious interactions between a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, Shawn Misko, and the whistleblower, CIA operative Eric Ciaramella.  Although numerous investigative journalists have speculated Ciaramella is the whistleblower, Democrats and the media have been suppressing any mention of his name.  As Breitbart notes, YouTube's actions to censor the video in question constitute a direct censorship of the congressional and historical record, an unprecedented act of censorship of public information.

'Whistleblower' Censorship Hits Facebook and the Senate.  When Facebook last fall said it would delete "any and all mentions" of the name of the CIA operative believed to be the "whistleblower" who sparked President Trump's impeachment, it wasn't kidding.  A number of Facebook members complain the social media giant has been taking down recent RealClearInvestigations stories about the whistleblower within hours of sharing them with friends.  "I posted your article to Facebook, got a bunch of likes and comments and shares," said a user in Sacramento who linked to RCI's Jan. 22 story, "Whistleblower Was Overheard in '17 Discussing With Ally How to Remove Trump."  "But when I looked to see if there were additional responses, I saw that Facebook had removed the post.  Wow!  The story disappeared overnight, no message to me."  She said she tried reposting the story twice, but Facebook's content police removed it both times within an hour or so.

The Editor says...
If you depend on Facebook as a primary news source, you are badly misinformed.

YouTube blocks links to texts of Virginia anti-gun Bills.  YouTube is now blocking links to the State of Virginia Legislative Information System (LIS).  On Saturday [1/11/2020], the YouTube channel Guns & Gadgets posted a video titled "Virginia Anti-Gun Bills To Be Heard Jan 13," wherein the proprietor discussed the 10 bills that will come before the Virginia legislature beginning January 13.  In the video's description, he listed LIS links to the text for each bill.  As of 1 a.m.  Sunday morning, YouTube was blocking the links with the following warning: [...]

Tucker Carlson calls out DC establishment conservative nonprofits for selling out and protecting hi tech bullies that censor conservatives.  I was frankly shocked by Tucker Carson's courage last night [12/20/2019]; he's not going to be getting a lot of cocktail party invitations from the cream of the beltway conservative establishment anymore.  If you missed Carlson's epic denunciation of the big DC establishment think tanks — the likes of the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute — do yourself a favor and spend the next six-and-a-half minutes watching the video embedded below.  He points out that Google, Facebook, Twitter and the others are all enjoying special legal protection that enables them to get away with censoring conservatives, and that the biggest and richest conservative think tanks support continuing this legal protection, and coincidentally they receive donations from Google and other tech titans.  [Video clip]

Inconvenient Anti Socialism Video Banned by Social Media Censors.  I have made peace with the fact that social media censors like Twitter and Facebook have shadow-banned me.  Google has not allowed any advertising on my website.  What I found disturbing is that on the infamous phony impeachment day, Wednesday, December 18, 2019, my Facebook page censors removed content to an article that was inconvenient to the liberal false narrative that "socialism is great once we get to do it," more specifically, the video (I've seen the breadlines of communism) in which Donald Jr. talks about his 93-year old maternal grandmother whom he visited every summer in the former Czechoslovakia.  He talked about himself as a five-year old boy, dressed in a blue jean jacket with stars on it, experiencing fear for the first time, going through communist customs, being pulled out of the line at the airport, by a drab-uniformed soldier from the communist era, armed with an AK-47, asking him if he was there to preach capitalism and America.  What could a five-year old boy possibly know about capitalism?  Donald Jr. told a crowd in a recent speech, "I've seen the breadlines of communism" while he visited his grandparents in the former Soviet satellite, Czechoslovakia.

YouTube new harassment policies ban racial, sexist or LGBTQ insults.  YouTube said Wednesday [12/11/2019] it will intensify harassment policies on its massive video site, including removing videos that insult people based on race, gender or sexual orientation — whether the victim is famous or a private figure.  Personal threats, even ones that are veiled or implied, will be prohibited, and video creators with a pattern of harassing behavior could be prevented from making money with their videos.

DNC Demands More Censorship by Facebook of 'Misinformation'.  The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg containing yet another complaint about "misinformation" on the platform.  In the letter, obtained by Reuters, DNC CEO Seema Nanda wrote that "we have significant remaining concerns about Facebook policies that allow the platform to be used to spread misinformation and undermine our democracy."

Google and YouTube Take Down Over 300 Trump Ads.  60 Minutes found over 300 Trump ads have been taken down by Google and YouTube for violating the companies' policies.  The report notes the campaign videos generally ran over the summer but were taken down by the companies after only a few days.  During an interview with 60 Minutes, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki was asked to respond to conservative critics who say YouTube discriminates against content creators with a conservative viewpoint.

Trump supporters create social media platform tailored for them.  A new social media platform for supporters of President Trump has emerged as his backers continue to migrate away from traditional forums such as Reddit.  The new website, [...] was created [...] after Reddit became more controlling about what content could be posted in the forum.  In June, the company announced that the subreddit would be "quarantined."  The quarantine, which is still in effect, doesn't ban the forum but removes certain features and restricts how its content is shared.  It also includes a warning about viewing the subreddit.

YouTube and Facebook are erasing content with whistleblower's name.  The day has finally arrived when our online media monopolies are blatantly censoring the news that Americans can see. [...] [Eric] Ciaramella is being made into a non-person, because House Democrats are dead set against calling him to testify in the impeachment inquiry that they are putting on starting Wednesday.  They don't want the public to know that he was an associate of John Brennan, evidently a central figure in the manufacturing of the Russia hoax, that he worked for VP Biden, and that he is a registered Democrat.  History has seen similar efforts to pretend in the media that persons inconvenient to the powerful don't exist.

President Trump. vs. the Media.  In order to try to protect and further their myriad of deceitful anti-Trump, anti-conservative, anti-Christian narratives, leftists in the media (and in academia) have engaged in a widespread campaign of censorship.  Google (in more ways than one), YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and the like, have all either blacklisted, banned, or otherwise tried to keep Americans from the receiving the truth.

Facebook Removes News Reporting, Mention of Alleged 'Whistleblower's' Identity.  Facebook is removing any mention of the potential whistleblower's name and is cracking down against Facebook publishers that mention any allegation of the potential whistleblower's name, claiming they are violating Facebook's Community Standards and Policies.  For example, on Wednesday evening [11/6/2019], Facebook removed Breitbart posts reporting on the fact other respected news outlets have reported the identity of the alleged whistleblower is Eric Ciaramella.  Any Facebook user who attempts to click on that article on Facebook is now given a message that says, "this content isn't available at the moment."

The Sentence a Doctor Cannot Say on YouTube.  There is a sentence so devastating to liberal dogma that a doctor is not allowed to speak it in a YouTube video.  Michelle Cretella, executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, is the thought criminal who had to be censored.  The forbidden sentence:  "See, if you want to cut off a leg or an arm, you're mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you're transgender."  Dr Cretella has plenty more to say that the liberal establishment won't like regarding just how evil it is to sacrifice children to the transgender agenda:  [Video clip]

YouTube Bans Daily Signal Video On Gender Transitions Over 'Hate Speech'.  The Daily Signal, the Heritage Foundation's investigative reporting, news, and commentary outlet, says that one of their videos, a YouTube testimonial from a pediatrician about gender transition surgery for children, was censored by YouTube for "hate speech."  According to the Daily Signal's Kate Trinko, the group's 2017 video starring Dr. Michelle Cretella, "pediatrician with many years' experience and the executive director of the American Academy of Pediatricians," was pulled off YouTube because, in the video, Cretella suggested that, "if you want to cut off a leg or an arm you're mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you're transgender."

Greta Thunberg Calls on Facebook to Censor Her Critics.  The celebrated Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has threatened to quit Facebook if the social media platform refuses to silence her critics.  "I am, like many others, questioning whether I should keep using Facebook or not," Thunberg wrote in a Facebook post last week.

Film Featuring Dennis Prager Premieres Today As PragerU Goes to Court.  [Scroll down]  Only hours before the premiere and approximately 700 miles northwest, lawyers for nonprofit group Prager University will face off against tech behemoth Google in a California courtroom located in the heart of Silicon Valley.  Their case, Prager University v. Google, contends YouTube has exercised viewpoint discrimination against the nonprofit by restricting more than 200 of its short educational videos.  "YouTube continues to restrict more and more PragerU videos, and they have never given us a logical or rational answer as to why," said Craig Strazzeri, chief marketing officer for Prager University.  "It's obvious it's because of our conservative ideology.  We've had more than 600,000 Americans sign a petition saying they don't think our videos should be restricted."

PragerU Plays Censored Videos on LED-Covered Truck Outside YouTube HQ.  In response to censorship by YouTube and Google, the conservative social media giant PragerU sent an "LED-covered truck" to Silicon Valley, playing some of PragerU's banned videos on a giant screen and loudspeakers, Fox News reports.  PragerU, founded by and named after author and radio host Dennis Prager, specializes in publishing five-minute videos featuring experts, media personalities, and political figures breaking down the major issues of the day, with illustrations and research included.

Facebook shouldn't be political speech police.  [Joe] Biden recently complained when Facebook declined to censor an ad from the Trump reelection campaign that said, "Joe Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion if they fired the prosecutor investigating his son's company."  Even though that is an entirely defensible assertion — "Everything in the ad is factually accurate," Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told me, adding that the spot was reviewed by lawyers prior to its release — and even though it is certainly in line with the political debate that dominates today's news, the Biden campaign demanded Facebook ban the ad.

Democrats Are a Clear and Present Danger to Internet Freedom.  Some readers may be familiar with Section 230, which protects social media platforms from standard publisher liabilities on the premise that they operate as neutral forums and not as publishers.  Many conservatives have wanted to target this perk as punishment for Big Tech's flagrant bias and censorship.  Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) proposed a bill this summer that would revoke this protection if they are found to censor too much.  In contrast, Democrats want to revoke the privilege if the tech giants don't censor enough.

Is 'Hate Speech' Dangerous?  Many social media platforms are currently demonetizing thinkers they do not agree with (YouTube does this regularly); and in some cases, out and out banning them from utilizing the platform at all, which silences their voices.  Steven Crowder was has publicly shown us a "black list" of channels that are hidden via YouTube.  Other recent examples of this are Facebook and the subsequent Instagram banning of Paul Joseph Watson.  Watson is an outspoken man and free speech enthusiast.  His articles, videos, and views on current events tend to send some into a "triggered" state of utter turmoil; believe it or not, that is good thing!

YouTube's Concerning Suppression of Conservative Speech.  Every week, PragerU releases a five-minute video on virtually every subject outside of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).  Some of the finest minds in the world have presented these videos — including professors from Harvard, Stanford, and MIT; four Pulitzer Prize winners; three former prime ministers; liberals; conservatives; Democrats; Republicans (including never-Trumpers); gays; and, of course, many women and members of ethnic and racial minorities.  Yet YouTube, which Google owns, has placed hundreds of our videos on its restricted list.  In addition to the inherent smear of being labeled "inappropriate for children," this means no family that filters out pornography and graphic violence, no school and no library can see those videos.  Among those restricted videos is one [in which] former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper defends Israel.

NeverTrumper Ben Shapiro and Others Were Meeting with Zuckerberg for Private Dinners — While Facebook Pillaged ALL Prominent Pro-Trump Websites.  Ben Shapiro still rips President Trump on a regular basis.  But for some odd reason Ben's website "The Daily Wire" has seen its traffic take off thanks to Facebook these past three years since the 2016 election.  At the same time EVERY major pro-Trump website has seen its Facebook traffic erased since 2016.  Many pro-Trump sites even went out of business after Facebook altered its algorithms to target and eliminate pro-Trump voices.  Now we know why.  Ben Shapiro and other "conservatives" have been meeting with Mark Zuckerberg — presumably to bring attention to Facebook's attack on conservative speech.  But, more importantly, to grow his own website.

Social Media Platforms:  Stop Blocking Us!  I now make my living by releasing short videos on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  I assumed you who subscribed to my feed or became Facebook "friends" would receive that video every Tuesday.  Wrong!  Turns out social media companies send our posts to only some of our friends.  (That's why I ask for your email address.  Then they can't cut us off.)  Why might they cut us off?  One reason is that we'd drown in a fire hose of information if they showed us everything.  The companies' algorithms cleverly just send us what the computer determines we'll like.  Another reason may be that the companies are biased against conservative ideas.

Election Blacklist:  YouTube Buries Viral Video of Hillary Clinton Lying For 13 Minutes Straight.  Despite the video obtaining over 15 million views, it remains buried under over a dozen mainstream media search results even when you search for the direct word for word title.  YouTube election blacklisting has been a hot topic since Steven Crowder drew attention to the fact that the Google-owned company was deliberately preventing conservative channels from appearing in search results.

30 of The Biggest Lies & Hoaxes Perpetrated on The American People.  [#28] Social Media:  Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have been controlling minds, narratives and elections.  If you believe that any of these were created for your benefit rather than theirs, you would be sadly mistaken.

Zuckerberg targets me for supporting Trump.  Mark Zuckerberg keeps proving that he is bully, a thug, a liberal and a liar.  He is a bully and a thug because he uses his powerful Facebook platform to target conservatives.  Zuckerberg is a liberal because he was raised in the San Francisco Bay area.  He is a liar because he repeatedly tells Congress that he is not targeting political opponents.

Facebook Censors Pro-life Group Live Action, Backs Off After Outrage.  The Live Action Facebook page has 2.5 million followers.  A popular site.  And a controversial one, of course, because pro-choicers and liberals don't like what they say and do.  Almost predictably, Facebook has put it under restrictions.  Why?  Because two pro-abortion doctors don't like what the site says.

Beer Money Guy Donates $1 Million to Children's Hospital, Gets Cancelled for Bad Tweets.  Recently, a young Iowan named Carson King went viral after being photographed at a football game while holding up a sign asking people to send him money, via Venmo, to buy more Busch Light beer.  He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, bringing in more than $1 million.  Instead of keeping the money, King decided to give it to a children's hospital.  And for that amazing act of charity, Carson King had to be destroyed.

Instagram is Now Banning Photos of People at Gun Ranges, Claiming They Promote 'Violence'.  Instagram is now blurring out images of women at gun ranges, saying the photos violate "violence or dangerous organization guidelines."

Report: Mark Zuckerberg Admits Facebook's 'Clear Bias,' Dependence on 'Activist' Fact Checkers.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted a "clear bias" in the way his platform handled the pro-life organization Live Action, according to a report by the group's founder and president, Lila Rose.

YouTube Censors Top Trump Media Outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network — Removes Live-Stream Capabilities.  RSBN is a popular pro-Trump publisher that live-streams Trump public appearances and rallies.  In February 2017 Google-YouTube began censoring and preventing views to RSBN. [...] On Sunday [9/15/2019] Right Side Broadcasting Network announced that after 300 million+ views of PresidentTrump rallies and four years of following the rules on YouTube, their live-streaming ability was taken away with no explanation.

Four Republican Senators Write to Facebook over 'Censorship' of Pro-Life Content.  Four Republican senators sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this morning, criticizing the social-media platform's recent "fact check" of pro-life organization Live Action. [...] At the end of last month, Facebook notified Live Action that fact-checkers had given a "false" rating to two videos shared by the group's president Lila Rose.  One featured Rose herself and the other featured Dr. Kendra Kolb, a board-certified neonatologist; both videos included the claim that abortion is not medically necessary.  After bestowing a "false" rating on the videos, Facebook prevented Rose and Live Action from promoting or advertising content and alerted users who had shared the two videos that they had spread "false news."  But as the senators' letter points out, Facebook's "fact check" was conducted by two abortion providers, both of whom also have formal ties to abortion-rights activist groups:  Daniel Grossman, who is on the board of NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, and Robyn Shickler, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health.

PragerU: Google Censors Us Because We're Effective.  PragerU Chief Marketing Officer Craig Strazzeri spoke to Breitbart News on Friday [9/6/2019], where he talked about PragerU's struggles with Big Tech censorship, and the indoctrination by the left on college campuses, which has weakened young people's belief in free speech.

Despite Denial Of Bias, Facebook Continues To Censor Pro-Life And Conservative Content.  Despite frequent claims that tech companies are not intentionally censoring or shadow-banning conservatives on social media, the tech behemoth Facebook has flagged two prominent users in the past week for posts with conservative content.  Last week, two videos about abortion posted by the pro-life group Live Action were labeled "false" by one of Facebook's partner fact-checking organizations, Science Feedback.  Both of the videos, which discuss why abortion is not a medically necessary procedure, were labeled as "sharing false news." Consequently, Live Action's page was punished with "reduced distribution."

Ravelry's Ban On Conservative Yarn Hobbyists Presaged Site Owner Coming Out Trans.  Ravelry is somewhat like the Amazon of the knitting world, with a side of social media. [...] This community for knitting, a seemingly pretty apolitical activity, suddenly this year got very political.  The site banned all Donald Trump talk with a policy succinctly named "No Trump."  It banned all Trump patterns, MAGA wear and gear, and usernames with these themes.  It pushed off users who had been on the site for years, all in the name of protecting diversity and standing up to white supremacy.  The users who were banned weren't engaging in racism on the site.  They weren't name-calling.  They were existing and selling patterns and knitting along happily.  Not all political speech on the site is gone, just right-leaning speech.

Facebook Suppresses Pro-Life Group Live Action Based on 'Fact-Checkers'.  Facebook notified Live Action founder and president Lila Rose on Friday [8/30/2019] that her organization's pro-life posts would be subjected to "reduced distribution and other restrictions" after "additional reporting from an independent fact-checker" had deemed the content "false news."  Live Action is a non-profit organization "dedicated to exposing the truth about abortion and affirming the life of every child."  The alleged third-party "fact checkers" quoted abortion doctors as evidence that Live Action's claim that "abortion is never medically necessary" is false.

The Big Tech Censors Strike Again.  YouTube on Monday [8/26/2019] banned three more independent commentators:  James Allsup, "The Iconoclast," and "Way of the World."  Their crime?  Outspoken defense of Western Civilization, which apparently now is considered "hate speech."  Taken together, the videos posted by these three commentators had been watched more than 100 million times.  The most prominent of the newly banished, James Allsup, had over 450,000 subscribers.  Thanks to this latest move by YouTube, America's de facto Ministry of Truth, nearly a half-million Americans now have less reason than ever to believe their First Amendment rights will be respected, or, by extension, any of their constitutional rights.

Laura Loomer WINS Appeal!  A federal court in Washington D.C. has agreed to hear an appeal of a lawsuit filed by Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomer and D.C. watchdog group Freedom Watch alleging that Big Tech giants perpetrate anti-conservative bias online.  Big Tech has acted with impunity to shut down conservatives and Republicans and until now have faced NO consequences for their actions.

A Small Number of Fact-Checkers Now Define Our Reality.  Social media platforms have come to define the modern digital world — and the real world it's meant to represent.  We turn to these platforms for news, to interact with elected officials, to catch up with friends and to converse with the greater world beyond our own.  Yet these platforms are not neutral forums.  They actively intervene to remove speech with which they disagree.  Increasingly, they also turn to a small number of fact-checking websites to arbitrate what constitutes "truth," placing a small number of people in charge of, essentially, defining reality.

Facebook bans ads from the Epoch Times.  Facebook has banned conservative news outlet Epoch Times from advertising on its platform.  The news organization spent more money on ads supporting President Trump than any group, except the Trump campaign itself.  The organization reportedly shifted its spending on Facebook in the past month in order to obscure its connection to $2 million in ads advocating for fringe conspiracy theories and promoting the president, NBC News reports.  "Over the past year we removed accounts associated with the Epoch Times for violating our ad policies, including trying to get around our review systems," a spokesperson for Facebook said.  "We acted on additional accounts today and they are no longer able to advertise with us."

My Instagram Growth Suddenly Stopped; Am I a Victim of Viewpoint Discrimination?  My radio colleague Dennis Prager heads a nonprofit, tax-exempt charitable organization called Prager University.  It shares five-minute educational videos from a conservative perspective.  There have been over 2 billion views.  No sex.  No profanity.  No chase scenes.  But YouTube has placed restrictions on over 100 videos, including videos on the Ten Commandments, according to Allen Estrin of PragerU.  YouTube also restricted one I wrote and narrated, "Is America Racist?" in which I refute the narrative that police engage in "institutional racism" against blacks.  In a 2016 press release, PragerU said:  "YouTube is censoring these videos by placing them under 'restricted mode.'  Many families and schools enable restricted mode in order to keep inappropriate language, and explicit adult and sexual content away from children — not to prevent them from watching animated, age-appropriate, educational videos on topics ranging from economics and history to happiness and philosophy."  In response, Google, which owns YouTube, said, "We don't censor anyone," adding that they "take into consideration" the video's "intent" and its "focus."

Is Snopes a satire site?  The Babylon Bee, which describes itself as "Christian news satire," has been engaged in a running battle with Snopes.com, a liberal "fact check" site that serves mostly as a mouthpiece for the left.  Snopes has repeatedly undertaken, with a straight face, to "fact check" Babylon Bee stories that are obviously humorous.  This has given rise to considerable ridicule, but some suspect that Snopes has a more sinister purpose in mind: to give liberals at platforms like Facebook an excuse to downgrade or even ban the sharing of Bee posts.  The humorless left has nothing like the Bee, and would like to get rid of it.

The Censorship of Alternative Media Is Virtual Book Burning.  Recent discussions about an executive order that would "help protect" conservatives from bias on social media have brought a bone of contention to the forefront.  Are alternative and conservative media actually being censored or are non-mainstream journalists and bloggers just whining?  As the owner of a website that is demonstrably facing censorship, I can tell you that from my point of view, we Americans are currently in the midst of a virtual "book burning" akin to the ones we look back on in shame.

Can Facebook be saved?  Last year, Facebook hired former senator Jon Kyl and lawyers from Covington and Burling, a prominent D.C. law firm, to look into allegations of bias against conservatives.  The Kyl group released its first report today [8/20/2019].  My impression of the report is that it does a pretty good job of summarizing conservatives' concerns about the Facebook platform.

Report: Donald Trump Will Use FCC, FTC to Fight Social Media Censorship.  The White House is reportedly planning an executive order that would give the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a role in determining what gets censored on big tech platforms.  According to CNN, which obtained a draft copy of the order, the White House will ask the FCC to develop regulations aimed at clarifying the laws determining how social media companies are allowed to police speech on their platforms.  The existence of the draft order was first revealed by Politico earlier this week.

A Directory of Politically Incorrect, Algorithmically Stifled Vloggers.  Anyone who doesn't believe the Right is being suppressed systematically by the communications monopolies of Big Tech either is not paying attention, is hopelessly biased, or is thoroughly brainwashed.  The process of suppression takes many forms.  It isn't merely suppression of conservative viewpoints on the major social media platforms (Google, Facebook, Twitter), but suppression of the related apps (Apple, Amazon), exclusion from the principal funding sites (Patreon, Kickstarter, GoFundMe), exclusion from the major online payment processors (PayPal, Stripe), and in some cases even access denial by the internet service providers (AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon).

Paul Gosar Introduces Bill to Stop Online Censorship.  Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has introduced a new bill to stop censorship by Big Tech, aimed at rolling back legal perks that allow Silicon Valley companies to suppress political speech with impunity.  The bill would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which currently allows tech platforms to censor material they consider "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected."

The Banality of Google's Wokeness.  There are technological and morally dubious (at best!) forces that control the flow of information we see and can release into the world.  Facebook, Twitter, and Google — our current rendition of "The Big Three" — rightfully have been accused of censorship, as example after example comes to light.  Yet, even as more is revealed with each new example, nothing seems to be done to change the situation.  The rest of the population — i.e., the users — are powerless to do anything about it because the structure of all social media companies allows rhem to operate under the guise of privatization.  If the company is private, then logically it would follow that we have no right to criticize their company policies.  Add to that the fact that their services, mainly, are free to users, and complaints are often met with dismissive charges of ingratitude.

The Gatekeepers of Facebook.  Last month, employees contracted by Facebook to perform content moderation, broke their non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to speak with Casey Newton, who then published a 7000-word, pseudo-expose on The Verge.  While Newton's purpose of his article was to portray Facebook as running a de facto labor camp through contractors like Cognizant, using language like "sweatshop" and that moderators "fear for their lives," he missed the most important aspect.  Facebook moderators have the biggest impact on each user's Facebook experience, arguably more than designers, developers, and IT security.  But they are hired, trained and paid as though their job function were inconsequential. [...] Cognizant employees are not qualified or prepared to have this much control over our collective social media experience — and Facebook knows it.

Google censored video on Ten Commandments, conservative producer tells Congress.  Google denies viewers access to educational content on its YouTube subsidiary without explanation, radio host and commentator Dennis Prager testified Tuesday at a Senate hearing.  "Google, which owns YouTube, has restricted access to 56 of our 320 five-minute videos and other videos we produce," Prager, co-founder of Prager University, told the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.

Sen. Mazie Hirono: 'Claims of Anti-Conservative Bias in the Tech Industry Are Baseless'.  Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) used her opening statement at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Tuesday on Google and censorship through search engines to condemn the focus of the hearing, claiming that "claims of anti-conservative bias in the tech industry are baseless."  "The calendar says it's July 16th, but it feels like Groundhog Day in the United States Senate.  A little more than three months ago, this subcommittee held a hearing to explore allegations of anti-conservative bias in the tech industry.  My friends on the other side were critical of witnesses from Facebook and Twitter.  They claimed a vast conspiracy to silence conservative voices," Hirono said.

Facebook:  More Government Censorship.  It is often argued that Facebook is a private enterprise and therefore free to censor whatever it wishes.  However, Facebook and the other internet giants, such as Google, YouTube (a subsidiary of Google), and Twitter, have come to control the flow of information on the internet, to such a degree — as virtual monopolies — that they have become the 'public square' of our times.  That outcome makes them far more than merely private enterprises and endows them with a special responsibility:  Those who cannot publish on Facebook or Twitter, effectively no longer have full freedom of speech.

Privatizing Tyranny.  Private censorship is more dangerous even than mass immigration because absolutely anything can be done by our leftist revolutionaries if citizens' voices are swallowed up by the self-annointed conniving, dishonest, leftist zealots who run Big Tech.

Welcome To 'Social Government' - Privatizing Tyranny.  How is it that Facebook, who refuses to dox any of the violent Antifa terrorists that use its platform, are happy to give up the personal details of the Facebook user who anonymously uploaded a slowed video of Nancy Pelosi, within minutes, to some rando journalist on the phone?  (How do you even call Facebook?)  Well what if I told you a Policy Director at Facebook was Nancy Pelosi's Chief of Staff before taking said job directing policy at Facebook?  What if I told you the head of algorithm policy at Facebook worked for Hillary at The State Department?  Or that the Head of Content Policy worked for the Hillary presidential campaign? [...] Each day we wake up and see the latest way conservative voices are being censored, shadowbanned, silently deleted, hidden from view, buried in searches, algorithmed out of existence.

Facebook Bans St. Augustine Quote as 'Hate Speech'.  The Director of Community Engagements for Massachusetts Citizens for Life claims that Facebook has labeled a quote by St. Augustine as hate speech.  In a blog post, Domenico Bettinelli wrote, "Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I've posted it. [...] What happened was a notification from Facebook informing him that the St. Augustine quote, "goes against community standards on hate speech."  As Bettinelli explains, "Part of the problem here is that this takedown notice leaves me with no understanding of how I violated their policy."

American-hating Americans are the ultimate ingrates and hypocrites.  [Scroll down]  American anti-Americans freely indulge their First Amendment rights, but they and their social media tech-allies don't want their opponents to have the same freedom.  Thus their calls for "hate-speech" exclusions to the First Amendment, which as our universities have demonstrated for decades, mean censorship based on political ideology and standards of offense determined by the subjective or neurotic feelings of politically favored "victims."  Thus the barrage of question-begging epithets like "racist" and the rest, which by now are empty of meaning and function as verbal smog intended to shut people up and pollute political discourse with toxic emotionalism and bathos.  As for Trump, once again he has said what many Americans think, but seldom hear from the Republican elite.

Trump Social Media summit reveals the liberal bias of old media - big tech.  Legacy media and big tech are in agreement:  there is no left-wing liberal bias operating in the corporate offices of the information gatekeepers at the New York Times and among Silicon Valley.  Unfortunately, they are as biased as Google's search results.  Project Veritas reveals that liberal bias. [...] And so, both old media and big tech dismissed last Thursday's [7/11/2019] White House Social Media Summit as a conclave of online, conservative "conspiracy theorists."  The New York Times described summit attendee and Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe as a man that "captures videos under false pretenses to embarrass liberals and journalists."

Laura Loomer Files $3 Billion Lawsuit Against Facebook for Defamation.  On Tuesday [7/9/2019], Larry Klayman, the founder of Freedom Watch and a former federal prosecutor announced the filing of a defamation lawsuit by conservative investigative journalist Laura Loomer against Facebook.  The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Facebook and its wholly owned sister company Instagram, in banning Ms. Loomer from the social media sites, maliciously defamed her by publishing that she is a "dangerous individual" and a domestic Jewish terrorist.

Why Is Amazon Blocking Reviews Of The No. 1 Best-Selling 'Justice On Trial?'.  Amazon is refusing to publish many reviews and ratings of the No. 1 best-selling "Justice on Trial:  The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court," according to multiple reports from readers who purchased the book directly from Amazon.  The behind-the-scenes dive into the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which was written by Carrie Severino and The Federalist's Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway, debuted at No. 1 on Amazon's list of best-selling books.

Facebook Under Scrutiny Following Controversial Policy Changes.  Facebook recently updated their "community standards" policies, resulting in those who noticed to publicize and raise concern over the controversial changes.  In the policy regarding violence and incitement, the big tech company wrote in new exceptions to its own rules, which appear to discourage violence unless its against those on the platform's so-called "dangerous individuals" list.  Among those on the list are Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, and Infowars staff member Paul Joseph Watson.  Watson originally broke the news about the policy change, which he argues breaks U.K. law.  "They've actually instituted a new policy on Facebook, where talking about me unless you're denouncing me, is verboten," he stated.

Why Hawley's Bill Is The Right Tool To Fight Big Tech's Censorship Of Conservatives.  Every day brings news of Facebook or Twitter de-platforming yet another conservative writer.  Academic studies confirm that major social media firms disproportionately de-platform conservatives.  This should not surprise given that more than 90 percent of donations from big tech employees go to Democrats.  A majority of Americans now get their news from social media, and it is the primary source of news for young Americans.  Such a marketplace of ideas, skewed by a discriminatory Internet, will further disadvantage conservative ideas in a media environment already hostile to them.  Given this reality, conservatives have a clear and compelling interest in ensuring that our views can be seen on 21st-century news sources.

WordPress Would Not Tell Me Why They Removed Refugee Resettlement Watch.  As many of you know I began blogging 12 years ago when I became interested in educating Americans about just how the process of Refugee Resettlement works in our country.  My work began when refugees were being quietly placed in nearby Hagerstown, Maryland and I simply wanted to know how the program works and who is paying for it.

Intolerant knitting site Ravelry losing members.  More Ravelry members are voicing their objections to Ravelry banning President Trump supporters by posting videos on YouTube.  Well-spoken, moderate, and reasonable, these women provide some unexpected points of view concerning their reasons for departing.  That said, it seems that a significant number of Ravelry members have launched an ad hoc WalkAway movement.  But this time, it's WalkAway from Ravelry.  Some of these knitters are mothers of six and seven children who are starting or running small businesses.  Others established designers issued calls for their groups to disband.  They are conducting orderly shutdowns of their Ravelry accounts, which includes removing shops, patterns, social media references, and videos, as well as tweets, Facebook entries, and website references.  Their choice to WalkAway from Ravelry involves a significant amount of work, moving in some cases a lifetime of patterns and videos to other sites and/or creating their own.  It's not a trivial matter.

Ravelry: Woke "tolerant" knitting site bans open Trump supporters.  Piqued by a Fox video news report concerning the banning of Trump supporters by the popular online knitting site, Ravelry, I checked things out late last week.  After all, I've been a member of Ravelry since 2011.  Obviously, I wanted to find out what was happening.  Here's what I viewed on the main page of Ravelry:  "We are banning support of Donald Trump and his administration on Ravelry.  We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy.  Support of the Trump administration is unambiguously support for white supremacy.  For more details, read this document:  [URL]"

When Does the Deep State Morph into the Police State in Our Country?  Gone are the days of Democrats attempting to win voters in the court of public opinion with a free, open, and honest debate of ideas and policies.  With the complicit support of a Democratic Party-aligned mainstream media plus academia, the entertainment industry, and much of Big Tech, including the most important players such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, traditional democratic practices, including the free and open exchange of ideas, transparency, and open debate on policies and the proper direction for our country, are rapidly disappearing from our political landscape.

Michelle Malkin:  Big Data 'Pulling the Plug' on Conservatives 'Who Might Tip the Scales' in 2020.  Michelle Malkin warned of tech companies' increasing political censorship ahead of the 2020 presidential and congressional elections, offering her remarks in a Tuesday [7/2/2019] interview [...] "What's alarming is the coordination and collaboration between so-called mainstream journalists and Antifa," said Malkin.  "And along with that, you turn it into a little triumvirate because the Silicon Valley overlords are simpatico with these forces of Antifa whose agenda is destabilization, disruption, destruction of the civil order."

Facebook Purges Yet Another Conservative Site.  Facebook continues to ban conservative sites and members.  One of the latest victims is Dysfunctional Veterans.  The group, run by a veteran, raises money to house homeless veterans.  Michael Rivers told Big League Politics how Facebook temporarily banned the page because he bought ads to raffle off an AR-15.  The group didn't violate any of Facebook's policies, he said.  They used a licensed firearms dealer and is composed of two online retailers that comply with all laws.  Facebook initially approved the ads, but took them down after eight days.  The company unpublished Rivers' group and suspended three staff members for 30 days.  He has appealed the suspension, citing Facebook's own policies to them.  The group appears to be back up now.

Facebook Deletes Another Pro-Israel Page.  Facebook has summarily deleted another pro-Israel, pro-truth, pro-reality page for the crime of supporting the Jewish State.  I've had my run ins with Facebook, lets see if we can raise a shout and get this reversed.

Social Media Companies Barraged by Homeland Security Committee.  On Wednesday [6/26/2019], the House Committee on Homeland Security drilled witnesses from social media companies.  Though the hearing's main focus was the companies' efforts to combat terrorist content, misinformation, and hate speech, representatives took the opportunity to attack the companies for alleged censorship and bias.

While We Are on the Subject of Nazis....  Hitler and the Nazis loved censorship. [...] Section 14 of the Reich Press Law of October 1933 decreed that editors must "keep out of the newspapers anything which in any manner is misleading to the public."  Under the guise of truth and facts, the Nazis suppressed freedom of the press in a stroke and shut down all competing voices that did not bend the knee to the new regime.  Given the direction that Big Tech is headed on censorship, this should be of concern to all Americans no matter where they sit on the political spectrum.

Vimeo Bans Project Veritas Over Google Video.  On Monday [6/24/2019], Project Veritas unveiled a new investigative video of a Google employee describing how the company wants to stop a "Trump situation" in 2020.  YouTube removed the video, but Vimeo went one step further.  The company chose to ban Project Veritas from its platform for uploading a video with "hateful, defamatory, or discriminatory" content.

Sen. Cruz Grills Google on Allegations of Politically Biased Censorship.  A video clip that is well worth 7½ minutes of your time.

The Google Fascists.  Project Veritas and founder James O'Keefe have scored a scoop from an identified Google whistleblower, replete with video and inside documents. [...] The anonymous Google insider, whose identity and voice were shadowed and changed to protect him, also said in his detailed interview with O'Keefe that the Google-owned YouTube has deliberately targeted Dennis Prager's "Prager U" and conservative talker Dave Rubin for content suppression because they are "right-wing."

We're Unravelling.  Yes, the world has officially gone mad.  First YouTube and Facebook imposed their "standards" for group-think.  Then the role-playing gaming site RPG.net joined the community opposed to free speech with this announcement:  ["]We are banning support of the administration of President Trump.  You can still post on RPG.net even if you do in fact support the administration — you just can't talk about it here.["]  Most generous of them to at least let you think things you are not allowed to speak of.  So they haven't yet gone full 1984.

A Conservative Civil Rights Movement to End Internet Segregation.  [Scroll down]  The scope of the problem is both smaller and larger because while the internet platforms engaging in affiliation discrimination are fewer than the number of segregated businesses banned by the Civil Rights Act, their reach is far vaster, extending across state lines and even across borders with a global reach.  Facebook has 2.3 billion active users, Google processes 3.5 billion searches per day, Twitter has 321 million monthly users, and 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day.  Segregation at this level can shut entire populations out of political participation in the marketplace of ideas.  AI can then invisibly automate discriminatory policies and structurally embed them into countless sites across the internet.  And yet the fundamental problem is essentially the same.  A powerful elite has decided that a certain class of people should be shut out from being able to fully make use of public services.  These policies of political segregation have not been openly articulated, but they have been exposed by hidden camera investigations, by lawsuits from employees fired for their political views, and by the pattern emerging from the mass of bans, shadowbans and demonetizations.

Popular Knitting Platform Ravelry Bans All Trump Support: 'Undeniably Support for White Supremacy'.  Ravelry, a company that describes itself as a community of knitters and crocheters, announced Sunday [6/23/2019] that its website is erasing President Trump — banning any and all expressions of support for the duly elected president of the United States.  Not being a crafter myself, I had never heard of Ravelry — a site that boasts 8 million users.  The announcement was brought to my attention by a reader who uses the site.  "Not even crafting is safe," she lamented in an email to PJM.  Indeed, it appears that social justice warriors have taken control of the site, which is the go-to source on the internet for crafting, knitting, and crocheting patterns.

Facebook algorithm kills conservative news feeds, boosts left's.  The analysis proving Facebook's clear political bias to shape Americans' take on hot-topic issues was by no means weighted, as researchers used a wide array of media outlets from both the right and the left before coming to the conclusion that Facebook is the orchestrator of a new leftist news movement.

Live Action gets banned after whistleblower spills all.  Pinterest made headlines last week when a whistleblower divulged that Live Action's website is classified as pornography, which limits users' ability to share — or "pin" — information with others.  "I did this because I saw wrongdoing," fired Pinterest engineer Eric Cochran told Tucker Carlson on Fox News.  "And the normalization of censorship within big-tech companies is un-American."  Veritas, the undercover investigative team led by James O'Keefe, published Cochran's account in a May 10 story describing how the popular website is blocking access to Live Action by including it in a list of literal X-rated adult websites.  One day later, Live Action spokesperson Alison Centofante was talking to reporters in a live press conference when she learned via email that Live Action had been permanently banned from Pinterest.  The email cited "medical misinformation and conspiracies" that violate the company's policy.

Leftist Big Tech's Censorship Of Conservatives Grows Increasingly Blatant.  The Internet Association (IA) is a huge Big Tech lobbying group. [...] IA's President and CEO is Michael Beckerman.  In defense of his members — and against the rising, bipartisan call for DC examination of Big Tech's practices and legal protections — he recently, ridiculously penned the following:  "As more lawmakers speak out about Section 230, it's important to understand that this section of the law enables us all to have a voice online."  No, it quite obviously does not.  Big Tech mis-classifies conservative and Christian content — and then bans it.

WordPress De-Platforms Blog That Posted Statistics About Muslims.  A blog that posted statistics about Muslims has been squashed from WordPress in an apparent effort to censor information that might portray the "religion of peace" in a negative light.  The site, called muslimstatistics.wordpress.com was suspended for an alleged terms of service violation:  [Screenshot]  One of the pieces from the website, archived here, shows that the content was in no way malicious.  Rather, it was factual.

Social networks unite to suppress conservatives, boost left-wing fantasies.  The late publisher of the Washington Post, Katharine Graham, once said, "News is what someone wants to suppress.  Everything else is advertising."  No one knows the truth of this observation better today than the dwindling number of conservatives still clinging by their fingernails onto their social media accounts.  In an increasingly blatant move toward outright censorship, America's key social networks are uniting to suppress conservatives and boost their cherished left-wing fantasies.

Pinterest Blocks Conservative Websites And Christian Terms.  A whistleblower at Pinterest revealed to Project Veritas that the service was actively censoring conservative views.  The leaks came in the form of product code, Slack messages, and internal policies that enforced censorship of conservative terms and websites, which it added to a "porn domain blacklist."  The Pinterest insider revealed the San Francisco-based company has actively suppressed pro-life and Christian content on the website.  The insider came forward to Project Veritas after discovering pro-life advocacy group LiveAction added to the blacklist.

Exclusive: Facebook's Process to Label You a 'Hate Agent' Revealed.  Facebook monitors the offline behavior of its users to determine if they should be categorized as a "Hate Agent," according to a document provided exclusively to Breitbart News by a source within the social media giant.  The document, titled "Hate Agent Policy Review" outlines a series of "signals" that Facebook uses to determine if someone ought to be categorized as a "hate agent" and banned from the platform.  Those signals include a wide range of on- and off-platform behavior.  If you praise the wrong individual, interview them, or appear at events alongside them, Facebook may categorize you as a "hate agent."

Farmington band Signal 99 questions removal of its video from YouTube.  An eight-year-old video made by a Farmington metal band apparently has been caught up in a recent purge of controversial material by the website YouTube, although the group's leader is mystified about why.  Chuck Haven, the guitarist and lead singer for Signal 99, said he received a message last week from YouTube informing him the video for the band's song "Banner of Corpses" had been flagged for review and was determined to violate the site's guidelines.  The company informed the group it was removing the video from its website.

Pinterest Blocks Conservative Websites And Christian Terms.  A whistleblower at Pinterest revealed to Project Veritas that the service was actively censoring conservative views.  The leaks came in the form of product code, Slack messages, and internal policies that enforced censorship of conservative terms and websites, which it added to a "porn domain blacklist."  The Pinterest insider revealed the San Francisco-based company has actively suppressed pro-life and Christian content on the website.  The insider came forward to Project Veritas after discovering pro-life advocacy group LiveAction added to the blacklist.

Facebook Says Using the Word "Honk" Violates Its Community Standards.  Facebook removed a post which consisted simply of the word "honk," asserting that it was a violation of their community standards.  Yes, really.  The use of the word stems from the 'clown world' meme — a nihilistic position many on the right are taking in light of a society in the grip of 'progressive' degeneracy run amok.  Apparently, it's now verboten to even allude to the meme on Facebook.

Fight Back Against Big Tech Censorship.  We all know about the leftist leanings of the so-called masters of the universe, the internet giants.  We all know about the discriminatory treatment many of us on the right are experiencing.  The question is:  How do we respond?  Do we pick up our marbles and leave?  Do we build our own platforms?  Do we stand up and fight?  Or perhaps it's a combination of all of the above?

The Collusion Between Twitter, Google in Silencing the Pinterest Investigation is Cartel Behavior.  Pinterest had a covert policy of censoring conservatives.  The policy was exposed by Live Action, a pro-life group that was a target of Pinterest censorship, and by Project Veritas.  Since then, YouTube (Google) and Twitter have shut down Veritas efforts to broadcast material about the investigation.

Tech Insider Blows Whistle on How Pinterest Listed Top Pro-Life Site as Porn, "Bible Verses" Censored.  Project Veritas has received and published documents from an insider at Pinterest.  The documents, which include product code, Slack messages, and internal policies, reveal terms and websites that Pinterest apparently censors.  In an interview, the Pinterest insider who leaked the documents explains how the company censors pro-life and Christian content on the website.

James O'Keefe:  Pinterest Listed 'Bible Verses' on 'Sensitive Terms' List.  James O'Keefe, founder and head of Project Veritas, joined Tuesday's edition of SiriusXM's Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak to discuss how Pinterest secretly used censorship against news media outlets such as Gateway Pundit, PJ Media, and Zero Hedge.  He also explained how the social media company placed the term "bible verses" on its own "sensitive terms" list.

NY Times Labels Top Conservative YouTubers as 'Far-Right' in Continued Push to Ban Conservative Content Online.  The push to eliminate conservative content online continued on Sunday in The New York Times.  Since the 2016 election there has been an organized and well funded movement on the left to eliminate conservative content online.  And it has worked — thanks to a weak and ineffective Repubican party.

Don't Minimize Conservative Concerns About Big Tech Censorship.  One glaring lesson of the last four years is that making assumptions about the Republican electorate is a dangerous game.  Yet I'm told in the pages of National Review it's a "blunt truth" that "most red Americans either don't know or don't care about social-media censorship."  I wouldn't be so bold as to assume "most," in fact, do care.  But the signs are hard to miss.

YouTube Caves, Penalizes Steven Crowder.  Vox's campaign to deplatform comedian Steven Crowder from YouTube has snowballed into an avalanche of censorship against other creators caught in the crossfire in the war against offensive speech.  Critics are calling it the #VoxAdpocalypse.  YouTube's actions in response to complaints caused confusion amongst both Crowder's detractors and supporters.

Something Totalitarian This Way Comes.  [Scroll down]  The censorship follows similar moves by tech companies, including Twitter bans on American Spectator writer Robert Stacy McCain, political consultant Roger Stone, and radio personality Anthony Cumia, and Google rigging its search engine to suppress results for numerous conservative outlets, including The American Spectator.  Why do progressives censor?  Because it works.  While a muzzle resulting in a megaphone surely results from censorship on occasion, the more likely outcome involves suppression.  Progressives understand this.

How the Media Earns Its Dismal Approval Numbers.  Over the weekend we were reminded why Americans hold so little regard for the mainstream media. [...] The Daily Beast has made clear that there are no more "warnings" from the media if you dare to create viral content that the mainstream media deems offensive. [...] Not only is the media using its power to destroy private citizens, but Facebook is joining in with an assist.

Not completely off-topic:
Media Outlet Tied to Qatar Tricks Young Liberal Americans into Spreading Anti-American Propaganda, Experts Say.  AJ+ has become a major video creator on Facebook, with its viral videos in the style of Buzzfeed or NowThis targeting liberal millennials.  But unknown to some, it's actually a branch of Al Jazeera and is owned by the government of Qatar, a Middle Eastern nation long accused of meddling in the affairs of other countries.  The AJ+ videos often focus on progressive ideals and are framed in a way that emphasizes the divisions in U.S. policy and politics.  And Facebook doesn't disclose the Qatar connection on videos AJ+ posts and apparently hasn't blocked its content, even as the social media platform cracks down on fake news and hidden foreign influence.

CrossFit Deletes Its Facebook Account, Denounces "Utopian Socialists".  In a sprawling, occasionally hyperbolic, and definitely adversarial public statement, CrossFit announced on Thursday that it has deleted its main Facebook and Instagram accounts.  Citing data and privacy concerns and spurred by the brief suspension of one private Facebook diet group, the fitness and trademarked workout company has cut ties with this cabal of "utopian socialists," as CrossFit described the individuals who run Facebook, a company estimated to be worth $512 billion.  Evidence of the social media exodus was apparently first unearthed by Armen Hammer, a fitness podcaster who posted a screenshot of the now-deleted CrossFit account on Instagram on Monday [5/27/2019].

Facebook Rejects Ad for Dennis Prager's 'No Safe Spaces' Screening as 'Partisan'.  Facebook has rejected an advertisement for a screening of Dennis Prager's new film No Safe Spaces over a charter school's refusal to identify the event as "partisan."  According to a report from the Hollywood Reporter, Facebook has rejected an advertisement for a screening of Dennis Prager's new No Safe Spaces film, on the grounds that screening's host refused to answer intrusive questions about the nature of the event.

Crossfit Deletes Facebook and Instagram After User Group Is Deplatformed.  For all the the talk of arbitrary, capricious, or ideologically motivated deplatforming of people, publications, and groups by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms, there's been less discussion about high-profile individuals and companies deleting their accounts in response to what they see as unfair, unethical, or misguided behavior.  That might change now that CrossFit, the immensely popular exercise and nutrition enterprise, has announced that it is permanently pulling its Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Kassam Banned From Facebook on UK Election Day.  Global Editor-in-Chief of Human Events Raheem Kassam was suspended from Facebook on the day of the EU parliamentary elections in the UK, hours before polls were due to close across the country.  Kassam, a former senior advisor to Nigel Farage, had been in London reporting on the Brexit Party's campaign when he was hit with a seven day ban for an 11-year-old post.

Facebook Doubles Down on Blocking Trump Advisory Board Member Over Pro-Life Post.  On Wednesday [5/15/2019], Facebook blocked Trump 2020 advisory board member Jenna Ellis Rives over a pro-life post.  She appealed the decision.  On Sunday, Facebook finally got back to her, and doubled down, claiming the post violated its "community standards" on "hate speech." [...] It is also particularly conspicuous that Facebook has blocked Rives, a Trump advisory board member, but not the dozens of others who posted Matt Walsh's tweet verbatim on Facebook.

Facebook bans user for entire MONTH over mischaracterizing a simple "A-OK" hand gesture.  Not only is the militant American Left working to stifle conservative, pro-Trump speech, they are also working to stifle freedom of expression even to the point of mislabeling a harmless gesture that has always meant nothing but "OK."  The speech Nazis at Facebook are in cahoots with the militant American Left, as evidenced by the increasingly ridiculous and baseless excuses used to kick supporters of POTUS Trump off the platform.

Candace Owens:  Big Tech Trying to 'Subvert a Mass Awakening'.  Pundit and black conservative activist Candace Owens blasted big tech bias after Breitbart News' exclusive story that she has been placed on a list of "hate agents" maintained by Facebook.  Yesterday [5/17/2019], a source at Facebook exclusively spoke to Breitbart News about the "hate agents" list, which includes a number of prominent recently-banned individuals including Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Alex Jones.  A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the existence of the list, but denied that Candace Owens has been investigated.  The spokeswoman also emphasized that a recent seven-day ban of Owens was a mistake and has been reversed.

YouTube [is] Demonetizing More Gun Channels.  Firearm YouTubers have had to take the blame for mass shooting after mass shooting, all despite the fact that no evidence has been presented that any of these people had anything to do with gun YouTubers.  Doesn't matter.  The platform's cracking down.

The Media at Their Lowest.  Not surprisingly, the playbook isn't limited to the national mainstream media.  Media technology group AllSides published a report that Google News results lean heavily toward media outlets with a "left" bias.  The author of the study, John Gable, stated that the bias is a result of "most news outlets and most news consumption online being from a left perspective."  The purveyors of Google News are well aware of this egregious bias, but because Google's corporate culture sways heavily left, we can hardly expect the company to create an algorithm that provides a fair and balanced narrative.

YouTube Flags Tommy Robinson, Pamela Geller 2012 videos as HATE Speech in 2019!.  A video of Tommy Robinson and Pamela Geller from that conference has now been flagged as offensive by You Tube.  In 2019 it has been flagged and restricted as "hate speech". [...] They are afraid of Geller, Spencer, and Robinson.  Not the sharia war machine.  Sharia violence and intimidation go unchallenged.  Why is You Tube afraid of Tommy Robinson?  Their focus should be on the deaths, threats, fear and harassment perpetrated by Islamists against the "infidels" and aided by media and governments who bow to Sharia.

Facebook Targets Michelle Malkin:  Gives Pass to Antifa.  Facebook has censored Michelle Malkin — for protesting censorship.  Meanwhile, as noted in this space just last week, Facebook has no problem with the pro-fascist and deliberately misnamed "Antifa" — the pro-fascist group that pretends its use of hooded faces and clubs is somehow "anti-fascist."

Facebook Suspends Candace Owens For Saying Liberal Policies Incentivize Fatherless Homes.  The social media monopoly has suspended activist and commentator Candace Owens for the crime of claiming that liberal policies incentivize fatherless homes in the black community.  Owens was hit with a 7 day ban for posting, "Black America must wake up to the great liberal hoax.  White supremacy is not a threat.  Liberal supremacy is."  She then included a screenshot of a tweet which pointed out that the poverty rate amongst married blacks is 7 percent, compared to 22 percent for blacks generally.

Trump White House asks the public to report social media giants if they're 'suspended, banned, or fraudulently reported' for being conservative.  President Donald Trump's White House is asking the public to report social media companies if they suspect 'political bias' resulted in their account being suspended or banned by platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.  Trump has repeatedly attacked Google, Facebook and Twitter for what he claims is bias in their treatment of conservatives — a theme he is likely to expound on during the 2020 election.  Now the White House wants data on the tech giants's actions along with information on the user reporting them — including the person's citizenship status and contact information.

Nothing is what it seems.  [Scroll down]  This is where reality and rumor meet up.  What others say shouldn't be censored by any major multi-media platform ever.  But since the government called on Mark Zuckerberg to testify, the wheels have begun.  While this writer is happy that people are now taking notice of Minister Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitism to heart, this is a good thing, but to ban Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopolus, is just absurdist logic beyond all comprehension.  This would be interesting but people's lives are being ruined.

Facebook Shuts Down Pro-Populist Italian Pages Before EU Elections.  Facebook has shut down 23 major populist Italian pages with 2.5 million followers just two weeks before the European elections.  According to Italian media, the majority of the pages supported the populist parties La Lega (The League) and the 5-Star Movement (M5S) — who currently govern Italy in a temporary coalition.  Facebook has justified its dramatic move by claiming that the sites shared fake news, so-called "hate speech", and "divisive content" regarding immigrants, vaccines, and Jewish people.

Deplatforming the Platformers:  Why Antitrust Legislation Is the Way to Go.  Evicting dissident voices from social media platforms may be the most effective device of the left.  How can such high-tech despotism be challenged or negated?  Citizen journalists, who can be seen as liberal democracy's samizdat warriors, are to be applauded and supported for trying to counter a significant bias, but far more is required to thwart what amounts to an organized campaign to commit doxa violence — a modus operandi perhaps even more effective than the practice of totalitarian terror.

Why the Media is Pushing to Break Up Facebook, Not Google.  Google's dominance of search has locked down the internet.  Combine that with its mobile power and growing strength in the assistants market gives it a virtual strangehold.  Its future is far less fragile than that of Facebook which is extremely dependent on public whims.  Hardly anyone under 40 even uses Facebook anymore.  So why is the media aggressively pushing to sanction Facebook, not Google?

Google Censors the Claremont Institute.  Last week Facebook kicked Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan and Paul Watson off of their platform because of their extremism.  While I have no brief for any of these individuals, I agreed with the critics who said "don't think it will just stop with them."  Sure enough, it appears Google is censoring the Claremont Institute.

Big tech has launched an attack on your rights.  Social media censorship goes into overdrive.  [Video clip]

'AOC Press' Parody Killed in Latest Big Tech Election Interference..  Twitter has banned the popular parody account @AOCPress despite it complying entirely with the service's rules on satire by self-labelling as such.  This account — a satire of Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — had over 85,000 followers at the time of the ban and is now permanently suspended.

Facebook Is a Government-Protected Monopoly.  [Scroll down]  This tale came to mind last week as Facebook and other social media platforms banned lots of people for their political beliefs.  In a healthy society, Facebook would have been reverse engineered 20 times by now, and the banned voices would simply take their business elsewhere.  Instead, Facebook and other social media sites are government-protected monopolies.  They have successfully sold themselves as inventions that are protected by intellectual property laws.  The Department of Justice and federal courts act as their leg breakers, making sure nobody competes with them.

CNN is More Dangerous Than Banned Voices.  Well, the gradual censorship of right-wing voices took another lurch forward this week.  Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Paul Joseph Watson are now all banned permanently from Facebook and their subsidiary, Instagram.  In fact, the tech giant that controls almost three-quarters of all social media interactions doesn't just want to silence Alex Jones; it wants to erase him from existence.  If you so much as share any content from Jones' site Infowars, you might find yourself banned along with him and the others whom Facebook, Inc. has decided are too "dangerous" to have a voice.

Tucker Carlson Outlines Big Tech's Moves To Control Political Speech.  This is a discussion point CTH has outlined for quite a while; the new aspect is the scale and scope of Big Tech's latest effort to silence voices they define as against their interests. [...] In the final analysis, the big picture is about authoritarian control.  Currently the largest tech companies are leveraging their power and influence to remove dissenting voices from commonly used social media platforms.

Right wingers have been unceremoniously banned from Facebook.  Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer and Milo Yiannopoulos have been unpersonned by the digital tech giant Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram.  They're coming for you, next.  Or more likely, for us.

Banned by Google for Opposing Infanticide.  America's PAC is a conservative political action committee run by Tom Donelson.  It produces, among other things, radio and television advertising on behalf of, and in opposition to, politicians.  Today America's PAC revealed that it has been permanently banned from advertising by Google.

Demonetized: Steven Crowder has been tried and convicted by YouTube of being a conservative.  Conservatives fell for a trap. [...] The trap was to believe that even hyper-leftists in the tech industry would be fair when it came to the use of their platforms.  By "fair," I mean they would accept that there are views that differ from their preferred progressive standpoints and those views are worthy of being expressed on their platforms.  For a time, this was true.  But as the giants such as Google in search, Facebook and Twitter in social media, and YouTube for video grew to the point that they're essentially unchallenged and virtually invincible, they've now changed their tune.  The worst crime anyone who uses their services can commit is to be conservative.

Cruz Hearing Exposes Big Tech Censorship Of Conservatives.  The Senate subcommittee on the constitution heard testimony from conservative activists about Big Tech restricting access to their on-line audiences.

Here's What Facebook's New 'Standing Up to Hate' Policy is Really About.  Facebook's campaign of anti-conservative censorship took another step forward with the announcement that the social media giant will silence speech based on the guidance of left-wing activists and will help social justice warriors lecture users who search for content designated as "hate." [...] But I'm not convinced that this is really about "standing against hate," as Facebook claims.  Anyone genuinely concerned about free speech ought to be skeptical of the new policy, if not outright alarmed, because the people cheering it most loudly are the same ones who routinely use the term "white nationalism" as a blanket condemnation of mainstream conservative viewpoints.

More Fascism in Action:  Top Liberal Groups Send Out Communist Blacklist of Trump Officials to US Corporations.  The Democrat Party is finally lifting the curtain on their true intentions.  Democrats want complete control so they can institute their Socialist state without out interference.  To do that they decided in 2016 to eliminate conservative content online.  Since that time the tech giants have eliminated over one billion page views to conservative websites.

Mark Zuckerberg Complains About FCC's Lack Of Free Speech Regulations — Wants More Silencing of Voices, But Especially Conservative Voices.  Everyone's favorite self appointed world speech policeman, Mark Zuckerberg, recently took part in a long form sit down interview with leftist hack "journalist" George Stephanopoulos on ABC, where they talked about user's privacy on Facebook, putting "strong data controls in place" for policing speech.  Zuckerberg also complained that there's too much free speech, especially "divisive" political speech, even suggesting that the FCC should regulate speech online.

Telling the Truth About Andrew Yang is Hate Speech on Facebook.  It is hard to say why Facebook said my recent video about Andrew Yang was "hate speech."  It could have been the fact that Yang, a dark-horse contender for the Democrat presidential nomination, gave a speech at Harvard where he predicted that within ten years, roving gangs of Caucasian youths would be roaming the streets of America, attacking Asian people because white people were jealous of their professional success.

Facebook Might Decide You're a Hater.  Austin is the only city in America where Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could speak — as she did last week at the South by Southwest Festival — and listeners say, "She's a little too conservative for my tastes."  That's why it's odd that, in my home state's capital, this mini-San Francisco, this island of ultraliberalism, Facebook has hired several thousand "moderators" to police speech around the world.  Call me old-fashioned, but I remember when liberal Democrats were First Amendment radicals.  Apparently the left-wing credentials of Silicon Valley are overrated:  They have fifteen thousand people in the United States and Ireland searching for "hate speech" in order to eliminate it from Facebook.

Apparel Website Is Banned from Payment Processor Evalon for Selling Ocasio-Cortez Is an Idiot T-Shirts — Considered "Hate Speech".  Enrique Tarrio runs a popular apparel website known as 1776.shop.  Recently Enrique was dropped by payment processor Evalon for selling a t-shirt labeling Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an "idiot" and "communist".

Facebook Just Banned Zero Hedge - Announces It Will Ban "Misinformation" About Vaccines.  This is exactly why you make your move and let your voice be heard by abandoning Facebook.

Project Veritas Video on Facebook Deboosting.  How Facebook deliberately limits the reach of conservative users using "deboosting."  [Video clip]

Facebook Engineers Share Strategies to Suppress Right-Wing Arguments, Leaked Documents Indicate.  Facebook engineers have proposed measures to suppress content on the platform that attempts to convince people to shift their viewpoints away from the left, as revealed by photographs of internal documents and messages obtained by Project Veritas.  The photos show that several prominent right-leaning Facebook pages were marked with code that appears to have handicapped the pages.  Facebook has long faced accusations of left-leaning bias, underscored by the overwhelmingly leftist leanings of its staff.

You're being censored but you don't know the whole story.  If you're a conservative who's been on Twitter, FB, YouTube, Google, etc. for personal or business use in the last 2 years, then you are probably familiar.  Businesses and livelihoods of people supporting their families have been destroyed by these people and no consequence.

Tommy Robinson Banned from Facebook, Instagram.  Facebook has banned British citizen journalist and street organiser Tommy Robinson from its platforms, including Instagram, in a move that comes days after he released a new documentary exposing what he claimed to be dishonest practise at establishment media giant BBC.  The social media giant claimed in a statement published Tuesday that Tommy Robinson's own Facebook page, which had around one million 'likes' before deletion, "has repeatedly broken [Facebook community] standards, posting material that uses dehumanizing language and calls for violence targeted at Muslims.  He has also behaved in ways that violate our policies around organized hate."

More about Tommy Robinson.

YouTube Demonitizes Anti-Vax Channels After BuzzFeed Contacts Advertisers.  YouTube on Friday [2/22/2019] demonetized channels which promote anti-vax content, after BuzzFeed notified a spate of advertisers that their ads were being run alongside anti-vax videos, reports BuzzFeed.  YouTube said that such videos fall under its policy prohibiting videos with "dangerous and harmful" content to be monetized.  "We have strict policies that govern what videos we allow ads to appear on, and videos that promote anti-vaccination content are a violation of those policies.  We enforce these policies vigorously, and if we find a video that violates them, we immediately take action and remove ads," reads an emailed statement from YouTube to BuzzFeed.

The Progressive Race to the Bottom.  In terms of electronic media, the way the news is delivered through Twitter, Facebook, and Google is itself massaged to censor, aggravate, and impede conservatives and conservative thought.  Orwellian selective censorship, the warping of Internet searches, and the banning of political opponents insidiously magnify progressive influence, and to such a degree that leftists are now the biggest defenders of monopolies and trusts, given the power that accrues from them to progressive causes.

Facebook Rejects Ads From Producers Of Pro-Life Film Starring Jon Voight.  Facebook has banned pro-life 'Roe v. Wade' film starring Jon Voight from advertising the movie on the social network because it considers it a 'political ad.'  Filmmakers Nick Loeb and Cathy Allyn produced and directed the movie Roe v. Wade but when they tried to promote the movie through an ad on Facebook they were denied permission because of ad's sensitive nature.

Facebook Refuses Ads for 'Roe v.  Wade' Film.  Social media giant Facebook has allegedly refused to allow the upcoming Roe v. Wade film to run advertisements on its platform under the new "issues of national importance" rule, treating the movie as if it were a political ad.  The producers and writers behind the upcoming film Roe v.  Wade starring Jon Voight and Stacey Dash, which tells the story surrounding the landmark legal case legalizing abortion, recently attempted to advertise the film on Facebook but were denied under Facebook's new "issues of national importance" rules.

How Facebook Makes Up Its Own Rules About Free Speech.  A shocking New York Times exposé published on Friday about how a few Facebook executives apparently decide what can or cannot be said on the world's largest social media platform shines a disturbing light on Silicon Valley's "handling" of freedom of speech — if it can be called that.  "Every other Tuesday morning, several dozen Facebook employees gather over breakfast to come up with the rules, hashing out what the site's two billion users should be allowed to say.  The guidelines that emerge from these meetings are sent out to 7,500-plus moderators around the world," The Times piece noted bluntly.  "The closely held rules are extensive, and they make the company a far more powerful arbiter of global speech than has been publicly recognized or acknowledged by the company itself," The Times piece also said.

Report: Facebook Insider Leaks 1,400 Pages of Guidelines for 'Political Speech'.  A recent report from the New York Times has provded [sic] an insight into how Facebook polices global political speech.  A trove of internal Facebook documents obtained by the Times shows how the social media platform is "a far more powerful arbiter of global speech than has been publicly recognized or acknowledged by the company itself."

Facebook apologizes to evangelist Franklin Graham after banning him for 24 hours over a 2016 post.  Facebook has apologized to evangelist Franklin Graham after banning the pastor for 24 hours over a 2016 post he made arguing in favor of a state law restricting transgender individuals to the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate.  The social network issued the apology to the North Carolina-based pastor on Sunday, saying it had 'made a mistake' by banning him and removing the two-year-old post.  Graham thanked Facebook for the apology but went on to blast the social network and founder Mark Zuckerberg in a statement.

Franklin Graham blasts Facebook over temporary ban: 'A personal attack towards me'.  The Rev. Franklin Graham was kicked off Facebook for defending North Carolina's "bathroom bill," which the social-media giant's review team decided was hate speech.  Facebook acknowledged over the weekend it had banned the prominent evangelist over transgender issues and called the 24-hour ban a mistake that it had already undone.  But Mr. Graham was having none of it Sunday, calling the move "a personal attack towards me" and an example of the censorship that Silicon Valley has in store for Christians and/or conservatives.

Apple CEO To Ban 'Sinful' Conservative Speech; Leaves Nasty Music on iTunes.  "We only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence," [Apple CEO Tim] Cook said.  "You have no place on our platform.  You have no home here."  Of course, content that allegedly pushes "division" only applies to conservative content.  Cook would be hard-pressed to remove far-left content because conservatives are the ones pushing "division" in the eyes of the left.  In reality, without "division," the left would simply dominate everyone without opposition, which is clearly big tech's goal.

Franklin Graham Claims He Was Banned From Facebook.  Reverend Franklin Graham says that he was banned from Facebook pursuant to a more than two-year-old post in support of North Carolina's House Bill 2, which mandated that citizens use the bathroom that corresponds with their biological sex.  The bill was signed into law in 2016 and was considered by many to be bigoted — and it provoked a wave of corporate boycotts targeting the state.  It's not clear which specific post got Graham banned, but the evangelist has been outspoken in support of that bill and of other similar pieces of legislation.

After Hemp Is Legalized, Facebook Bans Hemp Pages In Apparent Move To Protect Big Pharma.  Because government is the antithesis to freedom, industrial hemp has been banned nationwide since 1937 ostensibly due to the plant's similarities to marijuana.  Many have speculated that this move was also due to the fact that cannabis is in direct competition with the pharmaceutical industry by providing far safer alternative treatments as wel.  However, all this changed this month after President Donald Trump signed the Agriculture Improvement act of 2018, legalizing industrial hemp on a national scale.  Industrial hemp is once again legal in all 50 states but its legalization has set off a new disturbing trend.  In a move that appears to be a give away to big pharma, Facebook has begun banning hemp pages.

Mainstream Media Drives Getaway Car for Alt Media Purge.  Facebook purged more than 800 accounts earlier this week, continuing its scorched-earth campaign of eradicating dissent as Americans prepare to go to the polls.  The social media platform is nicely settling into its role as official censor, working hand in glove with the imperialist Atlantic Council to silence all popular voices to the left and right of neoliberal orthodoxy.  As the boundaries of acceptable political discourse narrow online, Big Tech has been drafted to do Big Brother's dirty work — the methodical dismantling of First Amendment protections using the smokescreen of private enterprise.

Facebook suspends accounts over Alabama Senate race tactics against Republican Roy Moore.  Facebook has suspended five accounts for misleading tactics during last year's U.S. Senate race in Alabama.  A statement from Facebook says the company "recently removed five accounts run by multiple individuals for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook around the Alabama special election." Facebook says the investigation is ongoing.  The Washington Post and New York Times have reported that a social media researcher acknowledged testing misleading online tactics during U.S. Sen. Doug Jones' campaign against Republican Roy Moore last year.

Google CEO Lies to Congress:  Says No Bias in Search Results But 13 of 15 Top Images for "Idiot" are Pictures of President Trump!.  On Tuesday [12/11/2018] Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified before the House Judiciary Committee.  Pichai was called into Congress to explain Google business practices including data collection and targeting of conservative voices.  During the hearing, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) asks Google CEO Sundar Pichai to explain how a picture of Donald Trump comes up when looking up the term "idiot" under images.

What the Facebook Wars are Really About.  Facebook got its start as FaceMash: a site comparing the attractiveness of female Harvard students.  It was then reborn as a social network for Harvard students, Ivy League schools and then everyone.  More recent surveys showed that the average Facebook user in the United States is 40 years old. [...] Mark Zuckerberg had created a company to appeal to college students who wanted to rate the cutest girls on campus, but is instead stuck with a monster worth hundreds of billions (that number will continue fluctuating with media hit pieces) used by people with actual jobs to share family photos and talk politics.

The Editor says...
Facebook started out as a web site primarily for rating and ranking female college students based entirely on their physical attractiveness.  And yet the easily-offended feminists are completely silent about this.

Facebook's audit of alleged anti-conservative bias ongoing, won't commit to releasing final report.  Earlier this year embattled tech giant Facebook agreed to review claims that it silences conservative voices, but a question mark remains over when the findings will see the light of day.  The social network agreed in May to conduct a review over accusations of anti-conservative bias, but it has not committed to publicly releasing its final report — something that isn't expected until 2019.  The tech giant, which enlisted the help of Washington, D.C. law firm Covington and Burling with the review, has been hit by prominent Republican lawmakers for censoring conservative content or banning conservatives outright due to ideological reasons.

Former Employees:  Facebook Poised for Exodus of Current Employees.  In the midst of one scandal after another, Facebook — already dealing with plummeting stock prices — is also facing what could prove to be an exodus of its workforce.  Current employees are increasingly reaching out to former employees to ask for job references and opportunities outside the social-media giant.  Facebook's woes began in March with reports of the Cambridge Analytica data breach involving at least 50 million (and possibly as many as 87 million) users of the social-media platform having their personal data harvested and used to manipulate the 2016 election.  While it is almost certain that Cambridge Analytica used the harvested data to benefit the Trump campaign, it is equally true that Team Obama did the same and more in 2012.

Exclusive: Google Employees Debated Burying Conservative Media in Search Results.  Google employees debated whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company's search function as a response to President Donald Trump's election in 2016, internal Google communications obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal.  The Daily Caller and Breitbart were specifically singled out as outlets to potentially bury, the communications reveal.  Trump's election in 2016 shocked many Google employees, who had been counting on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to win.

Report: Facebook's Zuckerberg Pushed A Top Executive To Publicly Disavow Support For Trump, Then Fired Him.  In one of the most shocking stories to get little media coverage this year, The Wall Street Journal reported ten days ago that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg pressured a top executive at his company to apologize for his support of President Trump in the 2016 election, and issue a letter just before that election explaining that he had switched his support to libertarian Gary Johnson.  According to reporters Kirsten Grind and Keach Hagey, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey says that he was put on leave and then fired for his support for Trump.

How Social Media Is Becoming an Arm of the State.  Say the wrong things and you might get kicked off of your favorite social media platform.  Tech titans Apple, Facebook, and YouTube have wiped out talk-show host Alex Jones's social media presence on the Internet.  But the social media crusades weren't over.  Facebook recently took down popular pages like Liberty Memes and hundreds of other prominent libertarian-leaning pages.  In the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, social media network Gab was on the receiving end of suspensions from payment processors like PayPal and Stripe and cloud hosting company Joyent.  Although these companies did not provide clear explanations for their dissociation with Gab, the media had a field day when they learned that the synagogue shooter, Robert Bowers, had an account with the social media network.  Should libertarians fear social media de-platforming?  Or is this a case of private actors exercising their legitimate property rights by excluding those they wish to no longer do business with?

Saying 'Only Hitler is Hitler' is Offensive to Facebook.  [Scroll down]  My point being that Hitler was a particularly evil historical figure, and that to call everyone you disagree with Hitler diminishes his evil, and diminishes the horrors he committed, which is incredibly callous towards his victims.  I'm used to social media unfairly suspending me and banning me.  Twitterstan banned me for good after I criticized Marvel's Islamic propaganda comic book, Ms. Marvel.  We're in the middle of a global jihad, but you'd never know it if you read the comic book, as the only Muslims in it are heroes or victims.  After Pakistan blocked me on Instagramistan, my account is dead.  I'm tired of social(ist) media companies focusing on punishing their ideological opponents, while allowing leftists and Muslims to get away with murder.

Cartoonist Asks Everyone to Stop Calling Everyone Else Hitler, Facebook Bans Him.  Godwin's Law now joins the legion of things that Facebook inappropriately bans.  The target is talented cartoonist Bosch Fawstin, who was the target of the first ISIS attack in America over his Mohammed cartoon.  The Southern Poverty Law Center responded by naming Bosch, rather than ISIS, as a hate group.  Facebook has managed to go one better by banning Bosch for a cartoon pointing out the fallacy of accusing everyone else of being Hitler.

Gofundme Bans Conservatives, Allows $150K Fundraiser for Black Teacher Who Punched Student.  The only rules in social media censorship is that there are no rules.  And conservatives get banned while lefties get a free pass.

The 'Mistake' Facebook Keeps Making.  Facebook says it accidentally silenced a pro-life organization's advertising on the social network.  But the pro-life group says this alleged accident has been happening over and over again.  Also happening again is the spectacle of a Silicon Valley social media giant, which is happy to tell advertisers how efficiently and precisely it can deliver marketing messages, explaining that somehow it still can't figure out how to allow the transmission of a political ad from a longtime participant in the national debate.

Facebook says it 'mistakenly' removed rabbi's story about harassment by Farrakhan supporters.  Facebook said Friday [11/2/2018] that it "mistakenly" removed a New York City rabbi's story about being harassed a day earlier by supporters of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.  Rabbi Avram Mlotek of Base MNHTN posted his account on the social media site about an incident on a train where he was confronted by a man who called him a "f------ fake" Jew and "impostor."  "This man told me repeatedly that Israel was not mine, that I was a fraud, and that Jews are responsible for the mess we find ourselves in today in the city of New York and all over the world," Mlotek wrote in a now-viral post.

Facebook Apologizes, Restores Previously Censored Ad Promoting Marsha Blackburn.  Facebook told Breitbart News in an exclusive statement on Thursday [11/1/2018] that they have restored a Susan B. Anthony List ad promoting Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and apologized, contending that the ad did not violate their advertising policy, which raises questions over social media companies' influence in American electoral politics.  On Thursday [11/1/2018], Facebook decided not to approve one of Susan B. Anthony List's ads within one week of the contentious 2018 midterm elections, which raises the question of social media companies' undue influence in American electoral politics.

Google Is Trying To Censor Marsha Blackburn Campaign Ads.  Google Ads informed Rep. Marsha Blackburn's campaign Tuesday that her advertisements including video footage of protestors interrupting her moment of silence for victims of the recent deadly mass shooting of a synagogue were disapproved because they contained "shocking content."  Google Ads, an online advertising platform, would not allow the Tennessee Republican's campaign for Senate promote two campaign videos as search ads because the content doesn't meet Google's standards, according to an email sent to the campaign.

Christian News Site 'LifeSite' Blacklisted by Web Host.  LifeSite, a Christian pro-life news outlet, was allegedly blacklisted by its web host and given just 12 hours to find another host the website, or risk being offline.  "LifeSite just received an email at 8:30 p.m. EST from our web-hosting company alerting us that they will be taking our website down within 12 hours, if not sooner," claimed LifeSite in a statement, Saturday.  "We received absolutely no forewarning whatsoever about this decision."

Congratulations, Facebook, Nobody Trusts You Much Anymore.  We've seen many surveys in the past ranking the institutions in which Americans have the most confidence.  But a new one includes a few big tech companies.  The results are illuminating, particularly when it comes to Facebook.

Facebook Deletes Disabled Veteran's Page Without Warning — After Taking $300,000 for Ads.  Facebook blacklisted the conservative news page run by disabled Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage with no warning or explanation — after he reportedly spent more than $300,000 on Facebook advertising.  On his new website which aims to put an end to social media censorship, Air Force veteran and triple-amputee Brian Kolfage explains who he is and the challenges he's facing [...]

Documentary Explores How Google and Facebook Can Undermine Democracy.  The new documentary The Creepy Line explores how the Masters of the Universe in Silicon Valley can utilize their platforms to suppress speech and undermine democracy — a topic of vital importance for elections in 2018, 2020, and beyond.  The Creepy Line is a new feature-length documentary that explores how Silicon Valley tech companies can use their vast influence to crack down on speech and undermine democracy.  The film focuses specifically on Facebook and Google, and analyzes exactly what these companies do once they have unlimited access to user's data.  The film uses first-hand accounts, scientific experiments, and detailed analysis to explore the risks of allowing these two tech giants free reign over the personal information of millions of people.

Louis Farrakhan 'Termites' Video Removed From Facebook.  A video posted to the Facebook account of Louis Farrakhan in which the Nation of Islam leader compares Jews to termites was removed for violating the social media platforms hate speech policies.  It remains posted on Twitter, which said last week that it does not violate company policies.

Midterm Meddling:  Democrats Surge on Facebook After Algorithm Changes.  Democrat candidates for the Senate and House are vastly outpacing their Republican opponents on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, according to analysis by the New York Times — although it's impossible to say how much of their upsurge is the result of mass-bans and algorithm changes on the part of Facebook.

Triple Amputee Veteran Brian Kolfage Vows to Haul Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg into Court.  Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage is vowing to fight Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — all the way up to Supreme Court if necessary — if the social media giant does not reinstate his Facebook pages, which Facebook deleted without warning or explanation. [...] "We are not going to stop until Facebook is held accountable on this for everybody.  This is not about me.  This is about free speech and this is about what they are doing to Americans," he said.

Former Facebook engineer who railed against liberal culture explains why he quit.  A former senior Facebook engineer who wrote a memo earlier this year decrying the social media giant's "political monoculture" told Fox News on Tuesday night that the company has a "vocal minority" intent on implementing "social justice policies across our mission."  Brian Amerige, whose last day at Facebook was Friday, told Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that "you can't have conversations about ... anything that's a tenet of the social justice ideology, effectively, without being attacked personally."  He added that the company's recent policy cracking down on so-called hate speech was a particularly sensitive topic.  "You can't even have conversations about that policy inside the company without having your character attacked — and I've experienced this personally — without being called a sexist or a racist or a transphobe or an Islamophobe," said Amerige.

Internet Censorship Just Took An Unprecedented Leap Forward, And Hardly Anyone Noticed.  While most indie media was focused on debating the way people talk about Kanye West and the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an unprecedented escalation in internet censorship took place which threatens everything we all care about.  It received frighteningly little attention.  After a massive purge of hundreds of politically oriented pages and personal accounts for "inauthentic behavior", Facebook rightly received a fair amount of criticism for the nebulous and hotly disputed basis for that action.  What received relatively little attention was the far more ominous step which was taken next: within hours of being purged from Facebook, multiple anti-establishment alternative media sites had their accounts completely removed from Twitter as well.

Online Censorship Has Arrived — Here Are The Companies Behind It.  Almost on cue, Facebook announced today [10/11/2018] that it had removed over 800 sites.  According to reports, most were politically oriented.  Facebook claims that its actions were "against behavior violations, not content violations."  Some of the sites, including ones managed by friends of mine, do not violate any kind of rules, to the extent that we even know what rules Facebook uses.  I am highly skeptical but if there were "behavior violations," then Facebook should explicitly explain what they were, perhaps with a warning so inadvertent violations can be fixed.  But they don"t.  And they change the rules all the time.  There is absolutely no excuse for this.  It looks very much more like Facebook is repeating the headline to this piece.

Supreme Court Will Hear Case to Decide if Far Left Tech Giants Can Censor Users.  For over a year The Gateway Pundit has spoken out about how the tech and social media giants are censoring and eliminating conservative publishers and conservative content.

Right Wing News Responds To Facebook Purge.  [Scroll down]  What we're seeing now is a war on conservatives and a war on President Trump.  It's not by mistake, this happened weeks before the midterms.  This nation is no longer what I loved or the one I fought to defend, which I paid a huge price for.  People are being punished for their simple beliefs — beliefs of freedom, beliefs of religion, beliefs on anything that differs from that status quo.  If you have an alternate view, you're attacked — physically, financially and socially.  Tech giants have been implementing their own bias into business, blatantly attacking anyone who has a view that differs from theirs.  Just like we saw with Justice Kavanaugh and his family.  And it's only going to get worse.

Facebook Purges Several Top Conservative Pages Four Weeks Before Election.  On Thursday [10/11/2018] Facbeook announced the company took action on 559 Pages and 251 accounts that violated their "spam" and coordinated "inauthentic behavior" policies. [...] Facebook says the enforcement was based on violations of Facebook's existing spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior policies, the type of content posted by all accounts impacted was not a factor.  And now, several hours later, we are hearing that most of the purged political pages were on the right.

Facebook Purges Over 800 Accounts With Millions Of Followers; Prominent Conservatives Vanish.  Just in time for midterms, Facebook has removed 559 pages and 251 accounts they claim have been spreading misinformation and spam.  Several of the pages however — some with millions of followers, were pro-Trump conservatives who had spent years cultivating their followings.

Top Ten Alternative Media Sites Banned on Facebook and Twitter.  Sites dealing with government transparency, pages dedicated to police brutality and alternative media — take a closer look at the top ten accounts with millions of followers that were recently suspended by Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Etc. are Subversive to American Government.  What if I told you that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google and other big tech companies are subversive to American government; and what they are advocating is completely illegal in this country?  Facebook sells itself as an American online social networking service company.  Apparently, it is only for those who are willing to socialize in pushing the same illegal propaganda.  For example, they advance homosexuality and sodomy (Jude 1:7).  For those who have not taken the time to peruse the United States Constitution and its enumerated laws you may want to do so, that is if you would like to remain a free people (2 Corinthians 3:17).  In every state in our Union, homosexuality and sodomy is a felony.  Yet, these big tech companies are banning and censoring people who are making reference to our constitutional laws (Romans 3:20) in exposing the crimes of those who are guilty as charged.  With the use of the revisionists, they now call it "hate speech."

Social Media:  Is Trump Right About Anti-Conservative Bias?  You Bet He Is.  President Trump has criticized the major social media and web search sites, in particular Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter, for their anti-conservative bias.  Is his critique valid?  A controversial new report suggests the answer is yes.

Mark Zuckerberg just proved he has no clue how to fix Facebook.  The most important piece of business journalism published last week was a 14,000-word article in the New Yorker titled "The Ghost In the Machine."  The headline is plucked from a 1967 book by Arthur Koestler, the central theme of which is that man has "some built-in error or deficiency which predisposes him towards self-destruction."  In this case, it's one man in particular:  Mark Zuckerberg, the 34-year-old founder and chief executive of Facebook Inc.  Over the summer, he gave a series of interviews to the New Yorker's Evan Osnos.  What emerges instead is a portrait of a man who not only doesn't know how to fix Facebook's problems — which include the spread of political misinformation, the misuse of people's data, and the accusation by the right that conservative speech is being stifled — he barely knows how to think about them.

A word to the wise:  Overthrow your tech overlords while you still can.  Sure we love our smartphones, but is that any reason to surrender our freedom to think for ourselves?  The more dependent we become on Google, Twitter and Facebook for information, the less certain we can be that we are looking at the real world and not the manufactured Matrix deemed suitable for adult consumption by Silicon Valley.  What price are you willing to pay for the convenience of unlimited access to limited truth?  These questions arise this week, as they have almost every week for the past decade, as the evidence mounts that search engines and social media are not just a conduit of reality, but a filter of it.  There is the whole truth, and then there is the Google Truth.  More and more, we are getting the Google Truth, and the devil take the hindmost.

#WalkAway Founder Brandon Straka Banned From Facebook.  Brandon Straka, the founder of the #WalkAway movement has been banned from Facebook for linking to Infowars ahead of being interviewed by the outlet.  Straka's ban comes as he is planning a #WalkAway march on Washington this October.  The movement is for Democrats who are leaving the party over their increasingly ridiculous antics.

The glory days may be dead and gone for social media giants.  We all know you can "like" or "share" something on Facebook, but it turns out more and more people are instead hitting the "delete" button and taking down their accounts altogether.  According to a new survey from Pew Research, some 26 percent of Americans have wiped their phones clean of the social media platform over the past year; another 54 percent have adjusted their privacy settings, and 42 percent claim to have taken a break from the site for several weeks or more.  These actions came on the heels of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and suggest that Facebook's careless and dishonest handling of user information came back to bite them.

The Broken Soapbox.  Social media entered our world with a promising offer: you can communicate here — with virtually everyone on Earth. [...] But now social media have a near monopoly on public discourse, and the age of censorship has arrived.  Ideas and messages that once were tolerable are now forbidden.  Users have spent a decade or more building their audience with a consistent message — and thus filling the platform-owners' pockets — and now find themselves banned when their message hasn't changed.  In no other arena of commerce would owners be considered justified in arbitrarily changing the rules to exclude certain customers, particularly if the reasons were amorphous, largely unexplained, and applied to a certain type of customer and not to others.

Majority leader partners with Trump to 'stop the bias' and censoring of conservatives.  Ahead of expected hearings on Capitol Hill by social media companies, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been actively promoting a campaign to "stop the bias."  The California Republican has targeted alleged discrimination against conservatives on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, leading Republicans in the charge while echoing President Donald Trump who shared a video message and the hashtag #StopTheBias last week.

CNN Boosts Left-Wing Campaign to Censor Breitbart; Approves 'Blacklisting'.  CNN swept aside journalistic ethics on Sunday by endorsing a blacklisting campaign with a glowing interview of Matt Rivitz, the founder of Sleeping Giants, a failed effort to censor Breitbart News by harassing and intimidating companies whose advertisements may (or may not) have appeared on the website.  The interview took place on Reliable Sources, a Sunday morning show that once focused on analyzing the media, but which in recent years has been turned into the editorial mouthpiece of CNN president Jeff Zucker, voiced through host Brian Stelter.

Hall Monitor Nation.  Last May, I was notified by Facebook's Julia Smekalina that "one of your posts was reported and found to be in violation of our Community Standards."  Little Nazi block watchers are constantly reporting conservatives.  They can't just stop following people they don't like.  Liberals used to mock fundamentalist Christians, claiming they feared that someone, somewhere, may be happy.  Now they're the ones haunted by the fear that someone, somewhere, may disagree with them.

Social Media Censorship II.  On CNN last week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said, "I think we need to constantly show that we are not adding our own bias, which I fully admit is left, is more left-leaning."  At least Dorsey admits that.  Usually, powerful social media platforms push their political agendas while pretending not to have any.  Roy Spencer, author of "Climate Confusion," points out that when he does a Google search for "climate skepticism," the first 10 pages aren't links to skepticism.  Instead, they're links to articles criticizing climate change skepticism.

Save the Culture from the Modern Vandals.  Time was when Bowdlerism and pecksniffery were alleged to be characteristics of conservative Christians and small-town Babbitts: reactionary squares from Squaresville, who couldn't handle a little overt sexuality or transgressive humor from the likes of Lenny Bruce.  These days, the censorship comes almost exclusively from the perpetually outraged cultural-Marxist Left.  Like their Soviet, Chinese, and Cambodian forebears, they cannot abide anything that does not conform to their world-view right this minute, and therefore must constantly update their "Index of Forbidden Books, Films, Words, and Cultural Artifacts."

Oops: Net Neutrality Advocates Just Made The Case For Regulating Google And Facebook.  This week a coalition of internet giants — including Google, Facebook, Netflix, Twitter and others — urged a U.S. appeals court to reinstate federal "net neutrality" regulations on internet service providers.  But when it comes to keeping the internet "free and open," those companies are among the worst offenders.

Trump: 'We As a Country Cannot Tolerate Political Censorship, Blacklisting, and Rigged Search Results'.  Speaking at a campaign rally in Indiana Thursday night [8/30/2018], President Trump added a new element to his stump speech — political censorship.  He told the crowd that his administration is standing up for the free speech rights of all Americans, liberals and conservatives alike.

Dozens at Facebook Unite to Challenge Its 'Intolerant' Liberal Culture.  The post went up quietly on Facebook's internal message board last week.  Titled "We Have a Problem With Political Diversity," it quickly took off inside the social network.  "We are a political monoculture that's intolerant of different views," Brian Amerige, a senior Facebook engineer, wrote in the post, which was obtained by The New York Times.  "We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology."  Since the post went up, more than 100 Facebook employees have joined Mr. Amerige to form an online group called FB'ers for Political Diversity, according to two people who viewed the group's page and who were not authorized to speak publicly.  The aim of the initiative, according to Mr. Amerige's memo, is to create a space for ideological diversity within the company.

Cuomo: We Shouldn't Care About Censoring Conservatives Online.  Former White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short appeared on Cuomo Prime Time on Tuesday [8/28/2018].  He brought the case for scrutiny into social media and other web companies based on recent evidence that they are collectively censoring conservatives.  CNN's Chris Cuomo claimed he cared about conservative voices allegedly being silenced, but not really.  To him, it was all just another distraction from whatever he thought the 'real issue' was, a distraction Trump was using to his advantage.  Cuomo's next brilliant leap in logic was that if Trump is tweeting about it, it doesn't really matter.  And, according to him, Fox News was behind it all.

Zuckerberg's dissent from within:  Facebook group rips left-wing 'monoculture'.  Facebook employees apparently do not agree with Mark Zuckerberg's pronouncements on the ideological tolerance of the company.  An internal post titled "We Have a Problem With Political Diversity" — a rebuke of the idea that Facebook offers an environment conducive to the free exchange of ideas — was shared this week with The New York Times.  "We are a political monoculture that's intolerant of different views," Brian Amerige, a senior Facebook engineer, wrote in the post, the newspaper reported Tuesday [8/28/2018].  "We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology."

Facebook engineer reveals how colleagues 'attack — often in mobs — anyone who opposes left-leaning ideology'.  A senior Facebook engineer has revealed the firm's aggressive 'left-leaning' culture in a damning memo that levels a series of damaging claims against the firm.  Brian Amerige alleges that colleagues 'attack — often in mobs' anyone who is not left-leaning, tear down Trump posters and demand HR investigates anyone who criticizes Islam's human rights record.  Amerige issued his rallying cry in an internal memo that has sparked a group called FB'ers for Political Diversity which has already attracted hundreds of members, and complaints from other members of staff for being offensive to minorities.

New Website Documents Biased Facebook Censorship.  That the meme "Facebook Jail" has become so popular, especially among conservatives, who make up at least 90% of its inmate population, is a sad commentary on the times we live in.  Many who rely on this social media leviathan for exposure and, concomitantly, a living are finding themselves blocked, banned, or censored.  Some users have even had their accounts disabled for no good reason and without explanation or appeal.  Now a new site has emerged that seeks to swap the roles of the jailer and jailed.  Its name, Facecrook Jail, is a riff on the meme, and it not only documents instances of bias, censorship, and abuse by Facebook but also lets users share their own experiences and grievances with the social media site.

Senior Facebook Engineer Admits "We Tear Down Posters Welcoming Trump Supporters".  It's no secret that the Silicon Valley tech giants discriminate against conservatives and conservative content.  On Tuesday [8/28/2018] President Trump warned Google about it's biased practices against conservatives and conservative content in their search feature.

Trump threatens action against Google for 'rigged' search results.  President Trump, chafing against news coverage he says is unfair, accused search-engine operator Google of suppressing positive stories about him and threatening a government response.  "This is a very serious serious situation — will be addressed," he wrote on Twitter, the social media platform where he has more than 50 million followers.  The president and congressional Republicans have all accused tech companies based in liberal-leaning Silicon Valley of suppressing news favorable to them, a claim that firm executives have denied in a number of hearings.  What action the president might attempt wasn't immediately clear.  Constitutional guarantees bar the government from restricting freedom of speech or the press, but those don't apply to the actions of private companies or individuals.  Google, Facebook, and Twitter have all denied presenting content in a way that favors either end of the political spectrum.

Google Responds To Trump Vowing Action Against 'RIGGED' Search Results.  President Trump vowed to take action against Google early Tuesday morning in response to a report suggesting that the search engine's algorithm was suppressing conservative outlets' coverage of Trump.

Youtube Buries Ann Coulter Video To Prevent Users From Finding It.  This is a perfect example of how big tech firms like Facebook, Google, and Youtube fashion their code to prevent conservatives from being found in search results and how viewers are given all liberal sources instead.  The folks at Information Liberation did a search for an Ann Coulter video entitled "How Trump Should Deal With Cohen & Manafort — Ann Coulter."  This video featured the best selling author's appearance on C-Span last week where she slammed Big Tech for its bias against conservatives.

Searching for unbiased news:  Trump rips Google as 'rigged'.  It seems like just about everyone is unhappy with Google at one time or another, given its dominant role in helping the world sort through the endless flood of online information.  Politicians, journalists, entertainers, business owners and others all want their names, links, articles and videos to come up higher in the searches.  For some, it's a matter of political life and death; for others, a matter of business survival; for still others, a question of sheer ego.  If you're pushed way down in the rankings, then as a practical matter, you don't exist.  President Trump has loudly added his voice, taking to Twitter to attack the search giant.

The Gathering Civil Liberties Storm.  Yesterday morning [2/23/2018], Facebook took down all five of my posts, declaring each time that "We removed this post because it looks like spam and doesn't follow our Community Standards."  Really?  Here are the "radical" links I posted: [...] Many Facebook friends have had the same experience yesterday, with no explanations.

Fahrenheit 404.  Recently, Apple, Spotify, Facebook, and YouTube (owned by Google's parent, Alphabet) almost simultaneously tried to erase Infowars from existence (so-called deplatforming).  Libertarians and some Republican candidates for the U.S. Congress in the 2018 elections were similarly excommunicated soon after.  In a week, numerous conservatives got permanently banned from Twitter. [...] The fact is that these internet companies created a cartel to get rid of dissenters.  Exile from the virtual space does not mean the end of the world for the victims.  Also, there was no "double standard" about dissenters from these companies.  These sites from the very beginning were created as platforms for spreading exclusively leftist ideas, but for some time, they just closed their eyes to dissenters.  However, the defeat in the elections in 2016 led the leaders of these companies to the conclusion that without the organization of an anti-conservative cartel, the elections of 2018 will be lost, too.

The Editor says...
Upon reading the article above, I had the brilliant idea that I should acquire the website 101km.com — but alas, I'm too late!

Facebook Censorship Strikes Again.  As I wrote [elsew]here, the Left is outsourcing censorship of the internet to the tech companies of Silicon Valley, all of which are happily — if you are a leftist — run by liberals.  What the government can't do, on account of the First Amendment, private companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can do with impunity.  Increasingly, conservatives are persona non grata on social media platforms.

Google-Facebook 'Can Shift 12 Million Votes This Election'.  A study of the how Google and Facebook are manipulating the political views of their users shows internet tech giants have the power to shift "upwards of 12 million votes" in November's midterm elections, psychologist Robert Epstein told Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson.

The Dark, Ugly Truth About Google is Oozing Out.  Though I have been an outspoken critic of Google for a long time — dating back more than 10 years — I figured out only last year that what I call the "Speech Code Cartel" of Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Apple, along with other tech companies, represents the gravest threat to American liberty in the history of the country.  Unlike weapons of mass destruction that kill us all, this is another kind of WMD — a weapon of mass delusion — one that stealthily kills our freedom and the individual spirit that made America great.

We are Slaves to the Children of the Lie.  Just this week MasterCard and Patreon pulled services from conservative David Horowitz Freedom Center and Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch.  David Horowitz exposes communists who hate America, and Robert Spencer exposes radical Islamists who hate the West.  Horowitz and Spencer were targeted by the radical, evil organization the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).  The SPLC pretends to oppose "hate," but actually spreads hate and defamation, with the support of the media and government.

David Horowitz:  Visa, Mastercard Cut Off Payments to My Think Tank Based on SPLC 'Hate Group' Label.  The David Horowitz Freedom Center has had their donation processing system blocked by Visa and Mastercard allegedly following a campaign by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Visa has since contacted Breitbart News to deny involvement in the blacklisting of the Freedom Center.  The David Horowitz Freedom Center stated in a recent email that its ability to accept donations by credit card has been disabled by both Visa and Mastercard following a campaign by the SPLC to label the Freedom Center as a hate group.  This situation comes shortly after Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch was forced off the funding platform Patreon following pressure from Mastercard.

A Facebook Story.  [I]f being silenced — banned — on Facebook is my lot, I am sure I will be only one of many.

This Is What 'Election Interference' Actually Looks Like.  The purge of the right on social media was once a slow trickle, with high-profile bans happening only occasionally, and then subsiding.  With just three months until the midterm elections, the Masters of the Universe in Silicon Valley have turned online censorship into a cascade.  Earlier this month, Alex Jones was blacklisted on virtually every major social media service, including Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, and even Pinterest and Linkedin.  Following pressure from CNN and Media Matters, Twitter eventually followed suit with a week-long suspension.

Facebook censored my column — and I still can't find out why.  At 7:55 a.m.  Thursday morning [8/23/2018], I posted a story I had written for The New York Post on both Facebook and Twitter.  It was a reported piece on how people who voted for President Trump were feeling after both former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his lawyer Michael Cohen found themselves on the wrong side of the law.  Within two hours I started receiving a handful of notes from people who are friends on my personal Facebook page that their posting of my piece, entitled "Why Trump's supporters won't care about Cohen and Manafort," had been removed.  Sometimes the removal was accompanied by a message from Facebook.  "Spam" was the most common reason given, but a couple of people were told Facebook removed the post because "it did not follow our Community Standards."

From One Psychodrama to Another.  The warping of the national media last week also crested with scant mention that Silicon Valley has redoubled their efforts to label expression it finds non-progressive as hate speech and find ways to ban it on their platforms.  At the same time, the national media coordinated its opinion pages in a simultaneous effort to voice its collective and scripted outrage that Donald Trump had done the unthinkable:  in crude fashion, he questions the very autonomy and integrity of the media.

Memo Reveals Soros-Funded Social-Media Censorship Plan.  The recent wave of censorship of conservative voices on the internet by tech giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Apple mirrors a plan concocted by a coalition of George Soros-funded, progressive groups to take back power in Washington from President Trump's administration.  A confidential, 49-page memo for defeating Trump by working with the major social-media platforms to eliminate "right wing propaganda and fake news" was presented in January 2017 by Media Matters founder David Brock at a retreat in Florida with about 100 donors, the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time.  On Monday [8/20/2018], the Gateway Pundit blog noted the memo's relationship with recent moves by Silicon Valley tech giants to "shadow ban" conservative political candidates and pundits and remove content.

Guess How Many Hits WND Gets from Google Search.  Seven or eight years ago, it was not unusual for WND stories to be among the top breaking news stories in the main Google News display.  In at least the last five years, I can't recall ever seeing one WND story cited on its first page where daily, hourly, you will find the left-wing editorials of Huffington Post and Daily Beast topping the referrals, along with the New York Times, CNN and Washington Post.  You won't see the Daily Caller or Breitbart up there, either.  In other words, it's a systematic boycott of the independent media that is not sold out to the fake news left, the Democratic Party and the conspiracy mongers of global warming, Russian collusion and anti-Trump hysteria.

And They Wonder Why We're Angry.  America is experiencing a major culture war between its interpreters and the people. [...] The polarity is profound, and the interpreters believe they hold the upper hand with regard to education, the media, the government, the church, and the press.  These epistemological agents control the story dispensed to the people, and though they failed miserably in 2016, they believe they will in 2018 rise again to dictate outcomes for the people.  The interpreters decide what things mean.  Is something offensive?  Is something racist?  Is something sexist?  Is something homophobic or transphobic?  These decisions destroy the people's access to the public sphere and public legitimacy.

HUD sues Facebook, which could jeopardize all Internet ads.  HUD today sued Facebook for promoting illegal discrimination in housing.  This could be the first legal challenge to how Internet oligarchs target ads.  One man's tailoring ads to audiences is another man's discrimination.  The agency's press release said, "The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced today a formal complaint against Facebook for violating the Fair Housing Act by allowing landlords and home sellers to use its advertising platform to engage in housing discrimination.  "HUD claims Facebook enables advertisers to control which users receive housing-related ads based upon the recipient's race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, disability, and/or zip code.  Facebook then invites advertisers to express unlawful preferences by offering discriminatory options, allowing them to effectively limit housing options for these protected classes under the guise of 'targeted advertising.'"  That triggered so much laughing that I had a coughing spell.

Facebook Censors Brigitte Gabriel Post Calling Accused Terrorist 'Sick and Depraved'.  Facebook censored the account of ACT! for America founder Brigitte Gabriel for publishing a post which called an accused terrorist who allegedly trained children to go on school shootings "sick and depraved."  "This is the smile of a sick and depraved Muslim terrorist who is back on the streets (on bail) after training children to shoot up schools," posted Gabriel in response to alleged terrorist Siraj Ibn Wahhaj.  "The judge who allowed this to happen should be removed from their [sic] post ASAP.  If he harms anyone while on bail, the blood is on their hands."

Robert Spencer:  Silicon Valley Blacklisting Conservatives 'with No Recourse, No Appeal, No Discussion'.  Robert Spencer, founder and director of Jihad Watch and author of "The History of Jihad:  From Muhammad to ISIS," warned of expanding online left-wing political censorship via large technology companies. [...] Spencer said, "The social media giants, now, have more control over the means of communication than the Soviet Union did in its heyday, or Nazi Germany, and they are pursuing a genuinely totalitarian initiative, and it's based largely on the work of Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a far-left group trying to demonize all dissent from the leftist agenda by lumping in legitimate conservative voices with groups like the KKK and neo-Nazis.  If you end up on the Southern Poverty Law Center's hate-group list, then the tech media giants will deplatform you on that basis with no recourse, no appeal, discussion; nothing."  [Audio clip]

Elizabeth Heng:  Big Tech Can 'Swing Elections as They Censor Conservative Voices'.  Elizabeth Heng, the Republican nominee running to represent California's 16th Congressional District, warned of left-wing technology companies' increasing capacity to determine electoral outcomes. [...] Earlier on Thursday [8/16/2018], Twitter blocked a campaign video advertisement of Heng's.  It described Heng's video as containing "inappropriate content" deemed "offensive, vulgar, or obscene."

Trump Goes Off On Social Media 'Censorship' and 'Discrimination' Against Conservative Voices.  2017 was a very challenging year for TGP.  Facebook and Twitter often altered their platforms to prevent TGP stories from being shared.  They have employed far left operatives who deem which stories are acceptable and others they kill off before they go viral.  Stories like 'Hillary is going to win in a landslide', 'Hillary is not sick' or 'Trump colluded with Russia' are considered accurate news reports.  These powerful tech firms act as gatekeepers and prevent conservative content from being shared online.

PragerU Claims They've Been Shadow Banned on Facebook.  YouTube video giant PragerU claims Facebook is shadow banning their account or intentionally suppressing their videos from follower news feeds.  According to PragerU, several videos were flagged as "hate speech" by Facebook.

Conservative Journalist Laura Loomer Banned from Facebook.  A conservative journalist and Big League Politics contributor was banned from Facebook on Sunday [8/12/2018] in the midst of a purge of prominent right-wing figures by Silicon Valley tech giants.  "Laura Loomer has been unpublished for repeatedly posting things that don't comply with Facebook Terms," the site informed Loomer.

Facebook Censors Benghazi Hero After He Is Interviewed By Infowars.  This is about a once free society that is becoming more Orwellian with each passing day.  Now that they have come for Alex Jones, they aren't going to stop.  It might not be tomorrow, but eventually, they are going to come for you.

Forget 1984, It's 2018.  In the last week, Antiwar.com editorial director Scott Horton, former State Department employee and author Peter Van Buren, and Dan McAdams, the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, had their Twitter accounts suspended.  The hammer came down on them just one day after Alex Jones and InfoWars were banned and had all of their content removed from Facebook, YouTube, Apple's iTunes, and Spotify.

Report: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Personally Made Decision to Ban Alex Jones.  When an ordinary account gets banned on Facebook, it's possible that no human was ever involved in the decision.  Not so for Alex Jones and Infowars.  According to the New York Times, the order to ban the radio host came from the very top.

Now YouTube Is Adding 'Fact Checks' to Videos that Question 'Climate Change'.  YouTube is now adding "fact checks" to videos which question the man-made global warming scare narrative. [...] Sure, in many ways it's a trivial and pathetic gesture.  Quoting Wikipedia as your credible source is a bit like citing CNN as the go-to site for all the latest info on Donald Trump.  And anyway, that "scientifically accurate explainer" is at best vague, at worst far more misleading than the videos it is supposed to be "fact checking."

The Deep State is Censoring Voices That Do Not Agree With Them.  Alex Jones is the latest victim of the Deep State silencing voices that speak out against it.  The Alex Jones and Infowars Facebook, Youtube, Apple, and Spotify content has been removed for violating hate speech, bulling, and violence policies while pages on the left that violate the same policies remain and thrive.  [Video clip]

Don't let Big Tech become Big Brother.  I have never read anything by Alex Jones or InfoWars, nor have any desire to read any of his conspiracy theories.  However, I do care if 2.4 million of his followers on YouTube want to see his material and are now unable find it.  It is their basic right as Americans to have unimpeded access to the material of their choice.  But what some tech companies are doing today takes them away from operating as open platforms to becoming big media companies even though they are, by and large, legally immune from responsibility for user content.  They cannot claim both the exemption under the guise of being just a neutral utility then turn around and use editors and algorithms to pick opinion losers and winners.

Social media and the hate-speech slippery slope.  If Facebook has truly become the world's public-information highway, then efforts to censor it by either the tech giants or the government should be something thinking people should worry about it, even when the intended objects of such bans are exactly the people we wish to expose as liars and hatemongers.

Jared Holt the Fascist Who Got Alex Jones Banned from Internet Works for Soros Funded Website.  Jared Holt works for the George Soros funded website Right Wing Watch.  Right Wing Watch says on its "About Page" the Soros funded group is a project of People For the American Way (PFAW) dedicated to monitoring and exposing the activities and rhetoric of right-wing activists and organizations in order to expose their extreme agenda.

Midterm Meddling:  Facebook Blocks Republican Candidate's Ad.  Facebook has banned Republican congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng's campaign video ad about communist crimes that led her family to flee Cambodia for the U.S., claiming the platform doesn't allow "shocking, disrespectful, or sensational" content.  Elizabeth Heng, who is running for California's 16th congressional district seat, made the video about her parent's escape from mass-murder by the Khmer Rouge communists in the 1970s.

Alex Jones's InfoWars Has Been De-Platformed and This Is Just the Beginning.  [Scroll down]  None of the companies involved in this action are considered "publishers."  While publishers bear some legal culpability for what they print, YouTube, etc., have a legal safe harbor in that they are considered communications platforms and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms from being sued for what appears on that platform.  This is not a bad law.  You shouldn't be able to sue a bullhorn company because Al Sharpton used one to generate an anti-Semitic riot.  What it does mean is that the decision to pull Jones, while leaving Louis Farrakhan untouched indicates this is less about "community standards" than it is about politics.

Instagram Bans Tommy Robinson As Conservative Purge Continues.  Anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson was imprisoned in May for filming outside of a Muslim grooming trial in Great Britain.  Tommy Robinson was freed on bail last week after appealing his imprisonment for contempt of court.  A 13 month sentence was imposed on the same day as Robinson's arrest in May for filming outside a grooming gang trial in Leeds.  On Wednesday [8/1/2018] it was struck down by Lord Chief Justice Burnett and two other judges.

More about Tommy Robinson.

Facebook: Farrakhan's Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories Don't Violate 'Hate Speech' Rules.  Videos posted to [Nation of Islam leader Louis] Farrakhan's Facebook page show the Nation of Islam leader claiming that Jews are secretly controlling government agencies to suppress black Americans and blaming Jews for "weaponizing" marijuana with "chemicals" to "feminize" black men.  Neither of those videos violate Facebook's rules prohibiting hate speech, a Facebook spokeswoman told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a phone interview Tuesday [8/7/2018].  Another video that showed Farrakhan warning against interracial marriage — which he blames on "the enemy" in Hollywood — to keep the black race "from being any further mongrelized," was originally ruled not to violate hate speech rules, according to the Facebook spokeswoman.

Facebook goes off the deep end again, bans GOP candidate Elizabeth Heng's Cambodian genocide images.  Communists have always sought to cover up the crimes of communism.  It started in Ukraine in the 1930s, when New York Times commie-symp reporter Walter Duranty covered up the man-made mass starvation in that part of the Soviet Union, and it's continued today in Venezuela with dictator Nicolás Maduro forbidding photos of empty store shelves and refusing to permit aid to the country's starving people, for fear of the truth getting out.  National Socialists are at least as zealous in seeking to cover up the truth about their Holocaust against the Jews.  So I stare, appalled, as Facebook has been caught censoring the images of the Cambodian holocaust presented by GOP congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng of the Central Valley in a video that can be seen here.  [Video clip]

Alex Jones shutdown ignites debate over social media content policing, censorship.  Facebook and YouTube shut down accounts Monday run by radio host Alex Jones, saying his charged rhetoric violated their policies and were detracting from their efforts to spawn a civil conversation.  Apple also said it nixed Mr. Jones' podcast from its iTunes subscription lists, and Spotify erased the host's program from its feed, as social media companies began to take a more active role in policing their content.  The decision ignited a debate in technology circles, with even some of Mr. Jones' critics wondering whether social media companies are capable of, or should be, policing content to this extent.

Conservative Speech Be Banned!  Over on Twitter, Paul Joseph Watson, one of the leading contributors to Infowars, raised his voice in protest and warning:  "Facebook has permanently BANNED Infowars.  For unspecified 'hate speech'.  They didn't even tell us what the offending posts were.  This sets a chilling precedent for free speech.  To all other conservative news outlets — you are next.  The great censorship purge has truly begun."  He added, "Whatever you think of Infowars, they're coming for you next."  Now, I've mentioned before that, by and large, I am not a fan of Infowars (although Watson's takedowns of the radical left are often bitingly on target).  At the same time, I've stated that YouTube's conflict with Infowars (the precursor to the current attack) should concern us all.

A bit of clarity on the Alex Jones situation.  The number of problems with the entire "Facebook should be handled like a public utility" concept and the many ways the analogy falls apart are too numerous to go into here yet again.  But with that said, I'll agree with Jonah's point that the electric company doesn't come over and cut off your power because you peddle theories about 9/11 or tell people that Jews control the weather.

Democrats attempt to stifle dissent:
'Survival of our democracy' depends on banning sites like InfoWars, Dem senator says.  Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., is calling on other tech companies to ban more sites like InfoWars, and says the survival of American democracy depends on it.  "Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart.  These companies must do more than take down one website.  The survival of our democracy depends on it," Murphy tweeted Monday [8/6/2018].

Legislators swore....  ... to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, not to defend their parties against all inconvenient dissent.

Are Tech Giants Working Together To Censor Conservatives?  Liberal Tech Giants Facebook, Twitter, Google-YouTube and Wikipedia have all stepped up their harassment of conservative publishers since the 2016 election.  The far left and Democrats understand that conservatives get their news from online publishers.  Since the election The Gateway Pundit found from traffic analysis that Facebook has eliminated 93% of traffic to top conservative websites.

Facebook and Apple remove pages and podcasts from Alex Jones for hate speech violations.  Apple, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest clamped down on content by Alex Jones Monday [8/6/2018].  Apple confirmed on Monday that it had removed five out of six podcasts, which includes Jones' infamous "The Alex Jones Show" as well as a number of other InfoWars audio streams.  The news was originally reported by BuzzFeed News.  Facebook and Google made similar decisions later on Monday.

Facebook Caves to Leftist Media Mob, Permanently Bans InfoWars.  In the latest Orwellian nightmare to come from Silicon Valley, Facebook has caved to the leftist media mob demanding censorship of InfoWars and permanently banned their page.

Poor Facebook.  Facebook claims that it can bring more and more people together, and yet it chooses to exclude the voices of those it disagrees with via some "magic" algorithm.  All this in an effort to keep the "bad" actors from offending or angering many of us who disagree.  We all risk being offensive when we speak to others.  Frankly, many Americans are just plain tired of being told we are being offensive with every thought and phrase and thus are more inclined to speak out with reckless abandon.

On Social Media, Freedom of Speech Is Under Attack.  The fact that Facebook and Twitter are the platforms on which political discussion largely takes place, and probably will remain such for the foreseeable future, given the network effects that entrench them, is deeply troubling.  Both companies are run by liberals, and free speech is under attack on both platforms.

Facebook executives defend having Fox News, 'atrocious' Infowars on platform.  Facebook executives promoting their video-on-demand service got into a combative exchange with reporters while at the Television Critics Association's press tour in Beverly Hills on Wednesday.  The issue: the presence of right-wing conspiracy site Infowars and Fox News on the social network's platform.  The kerfuffle started when Fidji Simo, Facebook's vice president of video, was asked about Infowars stories on their platform while touting new Facebook Watch entertainment shows.

Facebook's Censorship in Germany.  Marlene Weise was banned from Facebook for 30 days, for posting a set of two pictures:  One showed the Iranian women's national volleyball team from the 1970s, wearing t-shirts and shorts; the other, the current Iranian team, wearing hijabs and clothes that cover arms and legs.

Facebook's philistines back at it, now censoring art of Flemish masters.  Are the leftists running Facebook really that stupid?  According to the Flanders tourist authority, they're censoring images from Rubens paintings, unable to distinguish art from pornography.  Someone told them "nude, bad," and not a one of them had sufficient art education to know that these painting represent the pinnacle of Western cultural achievement.

Exploring the Depths of Democrat Depravity.  Facebook bans "hate speech" with their algorithms which usually turns out to be conservative opinions.  Google manages to arrive at something from a Conservative website around the 15th or 20th posting.  Twitter celebrates vicious anti-Trump inanities from celebrities who guarantee more followers, and bans anyone with a conservative opinion.  There are two large organizations working to get the public to refuse to patronize any business that does not fall in the Leftist Line.  One is "Sleeping Giant" exposed as the work of one Matt Rivitz, a San Francisco advertising person who utilizes social media mobs to silence conservative voices.  There is also "Grab Your Wallet" which reaches out to get people to boycott all companies who do not fall into the clear Lefty Line.  Any store selling Trump products.  Anyone who raised funds for Trump, Anyone religious like Chick-Fil-A, anyone connected in any way with the gun industry, any Trump hotels, branded or operated business.  Anyone whose CEO donated to Trump.

Sparks fly at hearing on anti-conservative bias in tech.  [Scroll down]  The lawmakers cited high-profile examples of conservative posts being censored, including one incident when a video for Rep. Marsha Blackburn's (R-Tenn.) Senate bid accusing Planned Parenthood of selling "baby body parts" was taken down as a campaign ad on Twitter.  Blackburn didn't speak during the hearing, but she told The Hill before that the "subjective manipulation of algorithms is of tremendous concern for us."  "We've addressed it and we plan on keeping the pressure on big tech," she added.  Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) questioned technology companies' legal responsibilities.  Issa pressed Google on an incident where search results claimed Nazism was an ideology of the California Republican Party.  The mistake happened because of an incorrect entry on a Wikipedia page that Google used to auto-populate search information boxes.  "When you absorb content, aren't you absorbing the responsibility?" Issa asked.  He asked if major tech companies should now be held to the same standards as media outlets.

How Facebook Is Fact-Checking Conservative Sites into Oblivion.  Facebook announced last year that they will be using third-party fact-checkers to root out "fake news" on their platform.  At the time of the announcement, conservatives sounded the alarm about how some of the fact-checkers they're using are left-wing hacks like PolitiFact and Snopes (who recently, with straight faces, fact-checked a piece of satire from The Babylon Bee).

Country band claims Facebook denied ad request for patriotic song.  A country group is speaking out against Facebook, after the social media platform did not permit the band to promote its song "I Stand for the Flag" on the social media site, a new report says.  The Wes Cook Band released a video for the song on Tuesday and submitted a request using Facebook's paid promotion tools to promote the content.  Although it was initially approved, Facebook then declined the request due to the video's "political content," Fox News reports.

UK Police Shut Down Popular Gun Channel on YouTube, Branding it a 'Forum of Extremism'.  On Sunday [6/10/2018], YouTuber Callum Long-Collins announced he would be effectively shutting down the channel EnglishShooting, a YouTube channel that racked up more than 15,000 subscribers and more than 12 million views in the past four years.  Long-Collins said the police had marked his YouTube channel as a "forum of extremism," and that he had to "show the police that I am a fit character to own firearms within the U.K."  "I was told that due to repeated comments from other people on the videos [police] felt that the channel was a forum of extremism and it was promoting views that were not in line with legal firearms ownership within the U.K.," Long-Collins said in a YouTube video announcing "The End of EnglishShooting."

Facebook permanently bans young anti-migration "Identitarian" movement.  Over the last few years, Westerners have been conditioned to accept madness.  Calling out human rights abuses and trying to save Western countries from becoming mirror images of Islamic states is not "extremist," and does not constitute "hate."  The young "identitarian" movement has been expanding to defend against Islamization.

The Time I Got Punished for Hate Speech.  It's been quite a week for me already, because I was thrown in jail and released 24 hours later.  I had no counsel, no Miranda rights, and no chance for an early release.  However, this wasn't a literal jail.  It reaches farther into society than the place people go when they break our criminal laws.  This was Facebook jail.  I've used Facebook since 2009, and despite my sometimes heated political rhetoric and, admittedly, outright troll-baiting, this was the first time I was censored and banned.  The alleged offense?  Hate speech.  Yes, that vague and often indefinable term that nevertheless causes liberals to gasp and swoon.

They're calling you stupid.  Every time you hear some young hip woke leftist at a technology company like Facebook telling you he needs to protect you from fake news, remember that what he's saying is that you're a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal who is too stupid to figure out that it's okay for good people like Hillary to break the law.  In fact, he's saying the majority of Americans are too intellectually challenged to discriminate between fact and fiction.  Historically, "common" folk were able to figure out that the National Enquirer's stories about two-headed alien Elvis clones are fake and even that professional wrestling is staged.  They were able to see through the lies of Nazis and communists.  Yet for some reason, we're now being told that we need our betters to protects us from what they think we shouldn't read because we're just too stupid to differentiate between what's true and what's not.

Facebook Exec Details 'Path Toward More Quality News' Without 'Becoming a News Organization'.  Campbell Brown, head of global news partnerships at Facebook, said the original news content that Facebook is starting to roll out does not mean the company is becoming a news organization.  "We're not becoming a news organization but we have a lot of news on the platform and we are a huge part of the news ecosystem, and it means we have a responsibility to the news ecosystem and we are responsible for the news that is on our platform.  So with that in mind, we have a lot of work we are going to have to do over the course of this year that is really foundational work around defining what is and isn't a news organization — it's akin to what Google has done with Google News," Brown said during a discussion organized by Axios about the future of media on Monday evening [6/11/2018].

Will YouTube Block the Bible?  I know the very question sounds outlandish, but in light of recent developments, it's only fair to ask:  Will YouTube block the Bible?  If you've followed the LGBT outcry surrounding our recent video on the Bible and homosexuality, you're aware that YouTube came under tremendous criticism for running ads for our video (along with one from the ADF) on some LGBT YouTube channels.  As a result of the outcry, which was totally disproportionate to YouTube's offense, the internet giant responded with a strong statement on June 7, directed to "our LGBTQ community."  YouTube noted that, "Over the past few days, we've heard many questions around monetization and how ads are served against videos by LGBTQ creators.  We know this has been both confusing and painful, and want you to know that we hear you."

Facebook, Amazon, Google And Twitter All Work With Left-Wing SPLC.  Four of the world's biggest tech platforms have working partnerships with a left-wing nonprofit that has a track record of inaccuracies and routinely labels conservative organizations as "hate groups."  Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter all work with or consult the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in policing their platforms for "hate speech" or "hate groups," a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.  The SPLC is on a list of "external experts and organizations" that Facebook works with "to inform our hate speech policies," Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja told TheDCNF in an interview.

Facebook to Replace 'Trending News' with 'Breaking News', Limited to 80 Undisclosed Publications.  Facebook has announced the end of their controversial "trending news" feature.  It is to be replaced by a "breaking news" label that it is testing with a select group of 80 publications.  Facebook has not yet said if the feature will become available to all publications.  Facebook said they will replace trending news — the list of "trending stories" that appear in users' sidebars — with three new features, one focused on breaking news, another on local news, and another on video.

Facebook 'doctoring' news, says Brexit leader.  Adding to Facebook's woes after it breached its users' trust by giving out their private information, a key Brexit leader is now calling the social media giant out for "doctoring" its news to align with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's leftist "personal political views."  British politician Nigel Farage — a major orchestrator of the British Brexit movement — publicly accused Zuckerberg of manipulating news to conform to his political worldview as European parliament interrogated the social media guru about privacy issues, bias witnessed on the Web and various other topics of concern.

Mark Zuckerberg Envisions a Facebook 'Supreme Court'.  At the Viva Technology conference in Paris, France, Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the audience that he envisions a "Supreme Court" that would evaluate appeals from users who have had their posts removed from the social media platform.  Asked about some of his goals for the future, Zuckerberg said that he wants to spend time focusing on governance of the two billion people in the Facebook community.

Amazon demonitizes conservative website (us).  For as long as I can remember, Legal Insurrection has participated in Amazon Associates, a way for websites to earn fees when readers shop at Amazon.com via links from our website.  It was an important source of revenue to us, and paid for some of the operating expenses readers never see.  On Saturday morning, April 28, 2018, I woke up to an email in my inbox from Amazon Associates telling me our participation in the program was terminated, our account closed, that the decision was final and there was no appeal.  On top of that, Amazon was holding back any accumulated money it owed us.  There was no prior indication of a problem, or chance to cure.

Spotify Announces Partnership with Far-Left Groups Including SPLC to Police Platform.  Music streaming service Spotify has announced a partnership with several far-left groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in an attempt to police the platform and remove "hate content."  The groups include the SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Color of Change, GLAAD, Showing Up For Racial Justice, Muslim Advocates, and the International Network Against Cyber Hate.

Are Google and YouTube Blocking Searches for Red Pill Videos?  A year or so ago, there were a spate of articles about the red pill videos on YouTube — millennials turning off to the bullying by feminists and race hustlers, thinking for themselves, becoming conservative, and posting a video of their personal journey from blue to red online.  I googled 'red pill' and had a cheerful time following links.  I learned about Candace Owens at that time, and a lot of other black and white millennials who had posted articulate, heartfelt, intimate, sometimes funny YouTubes explaining why they'd become conservative.  For months afterward, when I was sick of all the bad news about millennials becoming little fascists, I would turn to the red pill videos and cheer myself up.  And then I found I could no longer find them.  When I went to YouTube and searched for red pill, all I got was the documentary by that name (worth seeing) available for $3.99.  The most famous videos are still there.  But even they are hard to find.

Are Facebook And Google Trying To Shut Down Pro-Life Voices In Ireland?  While Facebook remains under fire in the US for its role in amplifying "fake news," critics across the sea allege that the social-media platform has joined forces with Google to shut down news in Ireland.  Both platforms have refused to accept any advertising related to the May 25th referendum to repeal the country's Eighth Amendment, which would legalize abortion in Ireland.  The move has some wondering whether this reveals a threat to free speech and public debate.

Platform, or Publisher?  The dominant social media companies must choose:  if they are neutral platforms, they should have immunity from litigation.  If they are publishers making editorial choices, then they should relinquish this valuable exemption.

Google Bans Pro-Life Ads Ahead of Ireland Vote to Legalize Abortion.  As the vote on abortion quickly approaches in Ireland, another online media giant has decided to ban all ads related to the referendum.  Google no longer will run ads related to the Irish abortion vote on its search site or YouTube, according to the Irish Independent.  Google said the policies will apply to ads from both sides of the abortion debate; but when LifeNews searched Google for ads just prior to its new policy taking effect, it found only one ad — a pro-life ad — when it searched "Ireland abortion referendum" and "Ireland 8th amendment"  The ad is for the Love Both campaign, a coalition of Irish pro-life groups working to defend unborn babies' rights in the country.

How Misinformation Spreads on Social Media — And What To Do About It.  "We take misinformation seriously," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote just weeks after the 2016 election.  In the year since, the question of how to counteract the damage done by "fake news" has become a pressing issue both for technology companies and governments across the globe.  Yet as widespread as the problem is, opportunities to glimpse misinformation in action are fairly rare.  Most users who generate misinformation do not share accurate information too, so it can be difficult to tease out the effect of misinformation itself.  For example, when President Trump shares misinformation on Twitter, his tweets tend to go viral.  But they may not be going viral because of the misinformation:  All those retweets may instead owe to the popularity of Trump's account, or the fact that he writes about politically charged subjects.

Does This Article Contain Hate Speech?  Last Wednesday morning [5/2/2018] for about twenty minutes, Facebook users in the USA saw a new custom button at the bottom of each post that asked the following question:  ["]Does this post contain hate speech?["]  This message appeared under every Facebook post, so if it was a picture of your grandchild, you'd be asked whether it contained hate speech.  If it was a stock photo of a cat sitting on a windowsill and squinting serenely, you would be asked if that, too, constituted hate speech.  Users could select "yes" or "no," whereupon they'd be directed to further options such as "Test P1" and "Test P2" — and if those options don't make any sense, that's because Facebook's Hate Squad was still testing a script and it accidentally went live.

Prominent Christian Legal Group Barred From Amazon Program While Openly Anti-Semitic Groups Remain.  Amazon has barred prominent Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) from participating in its Amazon Smile charitable program, which allows nonprofits to recoup a small fraction of the money their supporters spend through Amazon.  ADF, which specializes in First Amendment law and has won cases at the Supreme Court, is barred from Amazon Smile on account of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, which labeled ADF a "hate group."

Zuckerberg's Announcement Means Final Remaining Conservative Voices on Facebook Will Be Eliminated by Election Day.  Since the 2016 election Facebook has been cracking down on conservative and pro-Trump content.  Top conservative websites have seen a stunning drop in their Facebook traffic.  This was no accident.  This was the plan.  In January 2017, Facebook began making algorithm changes to make sure conservative news was no longer so influential.

Facebook Plans To 'Dial Up' Suppression Of Certain News Outlets.  Facebook plans to "dial up" the suppression of certain news outlets, CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed on Tuesday.  Zuckerberg made the comment while holding an off-the-record meeting with a select group of media outlets.  Zuckerberg briefly went on the record at the end of the meeting to answer questions about Facebook's recent changes to the newsfeed, according to BuzzFeed, which first reported his comments.  "We put [that data] into the system, and it is acting as a boost or a suppression, and we're going to dial up the intensity of that over time," Zuckerberg said.  "We feel like we have a responsibility to further [break] down polarization and find common ground."

Facebook Asks on Every Post: 'Is This Hate Speech?'.  On Tuesday [5/1/2018], Facebook launched an initiative enabling users to identify "hate speech."  On virtually every single public post, an option has emerged.  "Does this post contain hate speech?" the site asks, giving two options:  "Yes" or "No."  Each post also gives the option to dismiss the question with a tiny "x" box to the right of the answers.  The "hate speech" question even appears on a user's own posts.

Diamond and Silk Destroy Democrat for Defending Facebook Censorship.  Democrat Hank Johnson (D-GA), famous for asking if too many marines would make the Island of Guam tip over, had an opportunity to talk to Facebook personalities Diamond and Silk on Thursday, during a hearing on web censorship.  Instead of taking the opportunity seriously and trying to understand what it's like to be censored by the tech giants (Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, etc), Johnson instead chose to go on the attack and pester the two women about making money with their videos.  (As if this is somehow wrong, or even controversial?)  [Video clip]

Over at YouTube, cartel hit men, si — conservatives, no.  [Scroll down]  So, according to YouTube, a thug accused of a crime almost too ghastly to contemplate, on behalf of a Mexican drug cartel — an organization that nearly matches ISIS and Hamas for sheer foulness — meets the standards of the net's premier video-sharing site.  It's a good thing QBA didn't do something truly unforgiveable, like criticize illegal aliens, characterize Muslims as terrorists, or recommend that Planned Parenthood be defunded.

Facebook Blocks Daily Caller Story On FBI Texts — Blames 'Spam' Algorithm.  Facebook blocked users Friday from sharing a Daily Caller story on the 300 "missing" text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page that were turned over to Congress on Thursday night [4/26/2018].  The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained and published the text messages early Friday morning.  Sometime Friday afternoon, however, Facebook began blocking users from sharing the story with their friends, warning them that the story could be spam.

Amazon Accused of Slashing Over 900 Negative Reviews of Hillary's Book.  Amazon is batting down claims that it deleted hundreds of one-star reviews of Hillary Clinton's new book about the 2016 campaign, "What Happened," and says that it doesn't delete reviews because they are negative.  "We never suppress reviews based on star rating or sentiment," Amazon told LifeZette in an emailed statement.  "We have triggers in place to detect when numerous reviews post in a short amount of time that are unrelated to the product.  When these triggers are activated, we suppress all non-Amazon Verified Purchase (AVP) reviews on the product."

After Muslim Attacks Frontpage Editor, Threatens Violence, Facebook Bans Editor.  Facebook is on the defensive.  Mark Zuckerberg is dealing with bad publicity on all sides:  the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the grilling in front of Congress and Senate, the ongoing scandal about his property in Hawaii, and the fact that China continues to show a lack of interest in allowing him to offer Facebook to their nation.  Because of this, Facebook seems to be bending over backward to earn good PR with certain groups.  However, that apparently doesn't extend to right-leaning groups.  A right-leaning individual found that when he was threatened by a Muslim with physical harm, Facebook not only didn't penalize the Muslim, but instead banned the FrontPage Editor from access and use of his account for seven days.

Video/Audio of Silencerco Maxim 9 on new Video platform GunStreamer.com.  [Here] is a link to a video/audio of the Silencerco Maxim 9 from the industry day at the range at the Shot Show in 2017.  The video is on a new platform GunStreamer.com, to compete with Youtube.  Youtube is actively demonitzing and marginalizing gun videos and gun writers.  This amounts to private censorship.  It has become particularly bad since Youtube was acquired by Google.  Google motto "Don't be Evil" seems particularly ironic.  The insurrection is going to have to find ways to get the message out against the forces of the empire/establishment.  Google is clearly one of the prime movers in the Establishment/empire.

Why Zuckerberg's testimony doesn't add up.  Mark Zuckerberg proudly trotted out a number when he was being questioned last week by Congress:  His company, Facebook, would soon double the security team that monitors content on the site, to 20,000.  There are now 10,000 people who keep watch for the bad things that users can put on Facebook and the monkey businesses they can conduct through the website.  So that figure would be multiplied by two.  Wow, 20,000!  That seems like a lot.  And the lawmakers who questioned Zuckerberg must have thought so because nobody brought up what I am about to.  Facebook proudly claims to have 2 billion active users, although some question that number.  But let's give Zuckerberg that one — 2 billion users it is.  Divide 2 billion by 20,000 and you'll see that each one of Facebook's monitors will be responsible for keeping 100,000 Facebook users in line.

The Editor says...
With the current 200,000-to-1 ratio of users to censors, Facebook is remarkably effective at finding and suppressing conservative speakers.

Mark Zuckerberg: 'We Don't Think What We Are Doing Is Censoring Speech'.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted today to altering the site's algorithm to shut down certain speech on the platform.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives in Washington today [4/11/2018] where he admitted that Facebook does alter its algorithm to shut down certain types of speech.

Are conservative black women really 'unsafe' to hear?  Or just on Facebook?  Mark Zuckerberg may be a master of the universe, but there are two things even he shouldn't have done — one, allowing Facebook users' private information to be shared with Cambridge Analytica, and two, getting on the bad side of Diamond and Silk.  Error No. 1 is what brought Zuckerberg, the baby-faced founder of Facebook, to the halls of Congress last week to be grilled by politicians who can condone any political sin except the cardinal one — getting caught.

Big Tech Is a Boot Stamping on the Face of Diamond and Silk Forever.  I'm glad that at least some politicians are waking up to the seriousness of the problem of Big Tech's censorship of any voices which don't align with its left-liberal agenda. [...] What bothers me is how very much the liberal-left clearly doesn't reckon there's a problem at all, here, no sirree.

Zeroing In On Facebook's Anti-Conservative Tilt.  Conservatives are used to the national media excluding our viewpoint or loading up a pundit panel with eight liberals and one marginal Republican.  We're not going to be happy if the social media start hindering us from communicating with one another on what Zuckerberg claims is a "platform for all ideas."

Tim Scott Torches Facebook for Censoring Diamond and Silk.  Trump celebrities Diamond and Silk were told by Facebook they're "unsafe" for the community.  I'm not sure what community.  Or what exactly makes them unsafe.  But Senator Tim Scott has an idea.  [Video clip]

Mark Zuckerberg promises Cory Booker to protect Black Lives Matter from improper surveillance.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised Sen. Cory Booker on Tuesday [4/10/2018] to prevent improper police surveillance of groups such as Black Lives Matter and to work to ensure the social media platform's targeting tools are not used to redline ads for real estate and credit.  Using the five minutes allotted during a marathon hearing two Senate committees had with Zuckerberg about personal data privacy, Booker raised what he called "disturbing" reports that law enforcement groups had used Facebook to monitor African American organizations such as Black Lives Matter.  "I know you've expressed support for the group," Booker said.  "But there are a lot of communities of color worried that data can be used to surveil groups like Black Lives Matter, like folks who are trying to organize against substantive issues of discrimination in this country."

The Editor says...
Yes, I agree that there are "substantive issues of discrimination in this country."  And a lot of it has to do with Facebook and Google.

Obama Harvested Data from Facebook and Bragged About It.  Why Are We Only Freaking Out About This Now?  A short line is being drawn from Facebook data-profiteering to the election, still unfathomable to many Democrats, of some guy named Donald J. Trump.  Given the political leanings at Facebook, it seems unlikely that such an effect was deliberate.  In 2016, Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, struggled to find praise sufficiently fulsome to describe Hillary Clinton; in return, Sandberg was imagined as a Clinton Cabinet official.  This was approximately the same time as the flap over Trending Topics, during which we learned that Facebook's stable of editors seemed to shun conservative news sites instinctively.

Sen. Ted Cruz:  Facebook has been censoring or suppressing conservative speech for years.  When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee and Commerce Committee joint hearing Tuesday, I asked a relatively simple question: does Facebook consider itself a neutral public forum?  Zuckerberg said that Facebook is a "platform for all ideas," but declined to give a "yes" or "no" answer.  The problem is, this is not merely an academic distinction between words.  Facebook's answer to the question could affect millions of users, and attract (or prevent) a lot of attention from federal regulators.

Blackburn Takes on Zuckerberg Over Alleged Censorship:  Diamond & Silk Are 'Not Terrorism'.  Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) went after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for the social media giant's alleged censorship of Lynnette "Diamond" Hardaway and Rochelle "Silk" Richardson when Zuckerberg testified before Congress on Wednesday.  Diamond and Silk, two outspoken supporters of President Trump, have alleged discrimination and censorship after they said Facebook branded them as "unsafe to the community."  The company later backtracked, but Diamond and Silk claim there are still algorithms in place that make it difficult for their fans to view their content — and other conservatives' content — on Facebook.

Ted Cruz Hammers Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook censorship of conservatives!  Ted Cruz really put Mark Zuckerberg on the spot today in regard to Facebook censorship of conservatives and conservatives sites, grilling him over specific pages that have been blocked by Facebook in what appears to be political bias, including the most recent Diamond and Silk.  [Video clip]

Ted Cruz Grills Zuckerberg on Facebook's Alleged Neutrality.  Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg ran smack into questions about the site's neutrality during his testimony in front of members of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) questioned Zuckerberg, asking if the site is a neutral platform for people to express different political opinions.  Zuckerberg said he is "very committed to making sure that Facebook is a platform for all ideas."  During his questioning, Cruz said that Americans are "deeply concerned" over allegations that Facebook engages in political censorship and bias.  Cruz mentioned the 2016 Gizmodo report which claims that Facebook's news curators section stopped topics such as the Conservative Political Action Conference and Mitt Romney from appearing in users' "trending" feeds.  He also mentioned various anecdotes that lead people to believe Facebook is biased against conservatives, such as Fox News' Todd Starnes having his Facebook post deleted (before receiving an apology).

Ted Cruz Grills Zuckerberg on Facebook Censorship:  Who Moderates Your Moderators?  While other senators on today's committee on Facebook panicked about "hate speech" and "fake news," Texas Senator Ted Cruz, alone, grilled Zuckerberg on an issue that matters to voters: censorship of dissident voices and political bias at Facebook.  Cruz raised a number of issues during his questioning, including the recent censorship of Diamond & Silk on Facebook, the controversial firing of Oculus VR founder Palmer Lucky, and the question of Facebook's legal status as a neutral public forum.

Facebook Bans German Historian for Saying 'Islam Is Not Part of German History'.  Last month, Facebook censored a German historian who posted a message about Islam's historic impact on Germany.  Facebook banned the historian for 30 days, even though 76 percent of Germans agree that Islam does not "belong to Germany."  Michael Hesemann, a journalist and Vatican historian with an honorary doctorate for his work in uncovering documents from the Armenian Genocide, posted a message that Facebook said did "not correspond to our community standards."  The offensive message was an accurate — if overstated — historical statement.

Zuckerberg says he's unaware of Facebook pushback for liberal groups after conservative targeting.  Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers Tuesday [4/10/2018]that he was "not specifically aware" of any instance where the social network had removed content posted by liberal groups amid concerns that the platform is biased against conservatives.  Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Zuckerberg that "a great many Americans" are "deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship."  Cruz then ticked off a list of conservative content that he claimed had been "suppressed" by Facebook, "including stories about [2012 GOP presidential candidate] Mitt Romney [and] stories about the Lois Lerner IRS scandal."  "In addition to that, Facebook has initially shut down the Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day page ... has blocked over two dozen Catholic pages, and most recently blocked Trump supporters Diamond and Silk's page — with 1.2 million Facebook followers — after determining their content and brand were 'unsafe to the community.'

Facebook Has Dozens of Ex-Obama and Ex-Hillary Staffers in Senior Positions.  During his recent apology tour, Mark Zuckerberg notably failed to mention recent revelations about the Obama 2012 campaign's exploitation of the platform's weak pre-2014 data protections to harvest masses of data from non-consenting users.  The number of ex-Obama staffers on his payroll, according to Linkedin, might explain why.  The establishment media narrative on the Facebook data scandal hit a snag last month.  They hoped the story would be restricted to Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that they linked to the Cruz and Trump campaigns, and their alleged misuse of data.  But a bigger story soon emerged, linked to a longtime media favorite:  Barack Obama.

Mark Zuckerberg Lied:  Here Are Ten Charts to Show How Facebook Is Censoring Conservative Publishers.  Tech Giants Google and Facebook are currently purging conservative content from Facebook and YouTube[.]  They are hiding conservative stories on Google[.]  They are shadow-banning conservative news on all social media.  In February Facebook launched a new algorithm to ensure that conservative news would not spread on the social media platform.  This was after Facebook announced it was losing 50,000,000 user hours a day in the previous quarter.  The algorithm change caused President Donald Trump's engagement on Facebook posts to plummet a whopping 45%.

Facebook reconsiders 'unsafe for community' tag on pro-Trump Diamond and Silk videos after Fox & Friends appearance.  Facebook is reconsidering classifying videos produced by Diamond and Silk, two of President Donald Trump's most ardent supporters, as "unsafe to the community" after the dynamic duo went on Fox News' morning show asking why the embattled social media giant had labeled them as such.  In a statement to Fox News, a Facebook spokesperson said:  "We have communicated directly with Diamond And Silk about this issue.  The message they received last week was inaccurate and not reflective of the way we communicate with our community and the people who run Pages on our platform.  We have provided them with more information about our policies and the tools that are applicable to their Page and look forward to the opportunity to speak with them."

Diamond and Silk accuse Facebook of discrimination, censorship over 'unsafe' label.  Diamond and Silk, two fervent conservative supporters of President Trump, accused Facebook Monday night of discrimination and censorship after they said the social media giant branded them as "unsafe to the community."  Speaking with Fox News' Laura Ingraham on "The Ingraham Angle," the duo recalled what they called a months-long battle with the company after noticing a drop in engagement in September 2017.

Diamond and Silk 'If a Private Bakery Has to Go Against Their Christian Values to Bake a Cake Then Zuckerberg Has to Allow us to Speak Our Truth'.  Diamond and Silk unloaded on Facebook Friday night [4/6/2018] after the social media giant finally responded to their many inquiries as to why Facebook is censoring their content and brand.  The dynamic duo boast over 1.2 million Facebook followers on their main Diamond and Silk page.

The NOT Dangerous Diamond And Silk Fight Back Against Facebook Attack.  As we and others reported Saturday [4/7/2018], Facebook, the social media giant once dubbed the "world's most dangerous censor," told the outspoken pro-Trump duo Diamond and Silk that their content was "dangerous" to their community.  If you are familiar with Diamond and Silk you will realize how ignorant that charge is.  If you aren't familiar with the two, a link to their facebook page and videos are at the end of this post and I suggest you go enjoy.  Appearing on Fox and Friends Sunday morning, the not dangerous pair shredded CEO Mark Zuckerberg, telling him to "suck it up, buttercup" and let them speak their truth.

Diamond and Silk Furious After Facebook Reveals Why Their Content Has Been Censored.  Diamond and Silk unloaded on Facebook Friday night after the social media giant finally responded to their many inquiries as to why Facebook is censoring their content and brand.  The dynamic duo boast over 1.2 million Facebook followers on their main Diamond and Silk page.

Facebook Labels All Breitbart Stories 'Intentionally Misleading' with Wikipedia Pop-Up.  Facebook is displaying a link to Wikipedia's smear-job description of Breitbart News next to all Breitbart articles shared on the site.  The linked Wikipedia article describes Breitbart as a "far-right site" that publishes "falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories."  The social network, which has been under pressure from Democrats and the mainstream media since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, has added a button marked "about this article" next to all posts linking to Breitbart News pieces on the site.  Currently only viewable for American users, the button brings up a pop-up screen that displays Wikipedia's misleading description of Breitbart News.

Zuckerberg Starts Talking, And Makes Facebook's Problems Even Worse.  After days of silence in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking up a storm.  Given the kinds of things he's been saying, it might be better if he went back to his Silent Zuck routine.  Case in point is his interview with Vox.com, in which Zuckerberg managed to generate a new round of bad press over Facebook's privacy scandal, talked about having some sort of Supreme Court decide what constitutes "acceptable speech" and how Facebook hampers independent media outlets.  Oh, and he apparently thinks patriotism is arcane.  The latest privacy flap came when Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook scans private messages sent over its Messenger app and blocks those it deems inappropriate.  During the interview, he talked about blocking "sensational messages" that Facebook believed were meant to incite harm.  "Our systems detect that that's going on," he said.  "We stop those messages from going through."

Facebook Wants A License to Censor.  During her recent remarks in India, Hillary Clinton took aim at online free speech. [...] Clinton's remarks were not made in the abstract.  Rather, they were targeted to the alumni of the Obama Administration that migrated to tech and social media companies.  Those tech executives who were not Obama alumni were overwhelmingly 60:1 her donors, as Clinton received 95 percent of campaign contributions from tech executives and employees in 2016.  Her message in India was to them, and it was blunt:  you can't let the left lose again.  Message received.  Almost immediately after Clinton's remarks, Facebook announced that it was suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm that used data from Facebook for the Trump campaign in 2016.

Sadistic YouTube Deletes Channels, Demonetizes and Censors Content and Refuses to Respond to Press.  YouTube creators have been asking for over a year for YouTube to communicate honestly and fairly with its creators, demanding an explanation for why some channels are demonetized and others with similar content aren't.  Here's a recent example:  Mandy O'Brien has a popular body language channel on YouTube with over two hundred thousand subscribers.  She's funny and smart and provides good insight into human behavior.  While she seems to like Trump, her videos are not terribly political.  Most of them center around breaking news stories and reading the unspoken communications given off by interviewees on the news.  Her channel, Bombard's Body Language, was targeted for deletion by YouTube.  It all began after the Parkland school shooting, when O'Brien made a video about the body language of the untouchable David Hogg.

Facebook Shuts Down Fan Pages for Brazilian Presidential Candidate with 900,000 Combined Followers.  Brazilian newspapers reported Monday that Facebook had shut down two fan pages for conservative presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro over the weekend, leaving over 900,000 social media users in the dark about the fate of their groups.  Bolsonaro — a lawmaker with a military background who is running on an anti-corruption, socially conservative platform — has consistently polled in second place to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former socialist president convicted of corruption crimes and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

2,000 years too late Facebook bars Crucifixion as 'excessively violent'.  Now, as if Facebook didn't have enough troubles, a Roman Catholic university in Ohio is charging that the social media behemoth rejected its Easter ad last weekend because the crucifixion it depicted was "shocking, sensational and excessively violent."

Microsoft May Censor "Offensive Speech" Made Using Microsoft Products.  Microsoft is cracking down on what people say while using their services online.  According to a new services agreement written by the company, the tech giant is planning to ban accounts that use "offensive language" and will go through your private data to "investigate" users.  In a March 1 release, Microsoft is warning customers using Office, Xbox, Skype, and other products that the company is prohibiting offensive language and inappropriate content starting on May 1.

Microsoft Joins the Censors.  The Left has enlisted Big Tech to help suppress conservative activism and conservative ideas.  We are seeing this on a number of fronts, one of the more recent (March 1) being Microsoft.  Microsoft announced a new Service Agreement effective May 1 that applies to the company's "consumer products, websites, and services."  Those include the Office suite, Xbox and Skype, among others.  The new Service Agreement includes a Code of Conduct: [...]

Facebook Suppresses Certain Media Outlets In Your Newsfeed.  It Won't Tell You Which Ones.  Within the span of eight days in January, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced two different key changes to Facebook's newsfeed algorithm that together have boosted a "trusted" minority of news outlets while suppressing their competitors.  First, Facebook would slash news articles' share of the newsfeed from five percent to four percent in the coming months, Zuckerberg said.  Second, Facebook would boost certain "trusted" news outlets and suppress other, ostensibly less trustworthy sources.

Top Psychologist on Tucker Carlson:  The Threat of Google-Facebook to Manipulate Elections is Absolutely, Positively Profound.  Dr. Robert Epstein is a research psychologist at the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology.  On Friday [3/23/2018] Dr. Epstein joined Tucker Carlson to discuss an upcoming presentation on "The Search Suggestion Effect (SSE): How Search Suggestions Can Be Used To Shift Opinions and Voting Preferences Dramatically."  The AIBRT researchers looked at the power of Google and Facebook to influence elections.  The study spanned five years of investigations.

YouTube Bans Firearms Channels.  Those who follow firearms, shooting, and tactical channels on YouTube know about the travails of Hickok45 on YouTube.  Venerable and old school, Hickok45 tests and comments on firearms manufacturers send him.  Sometimes he shoots his own firearms, but always, he shoots, comments and often provides history and mechanical commentary on the machines he is using.  Sometimes it is with admiration, sometimes slight disdain, but always honest and interesting.  Hickok45 met with disapproval from some redditors when he supported the NRA in light of the compromises the NRA recommended (e.g., bump stocks, enhanced background checks), but being a former LEO and old school like he is, I wouldn't have expected anything else from him.  Just as interesting to me is Jeff Quinn of Gunblast, especially when shooting and commenting on revolvers, but always interesting.

The Social-Media Panic.  "Make no mistake:  2016 will never happen again."  Historians are not always reliable predictors of the future, but Niall Ferguson's analysis of how Silicon Valley and the center-Left would react to the successive and surprise victories of Brexit and Donald Trump is proving correct.  Conservatives and populists will not be allowed to use the same tools as Democrats and liberals again, or at least not use them effectively.  Silicon Valley is working with its media and governmental critics to limit the damage to the center-Left going forward.  You can see the dynamic in the way that the media generates a moral panic out of stories about how Brexit and the Trump election happened, and the way Silicon Valley responds.  Fake news becomes a problem, and Silicon Valley responds by hiring progressive journalists as censors.  I mean "fact-checkers."  You can see it in the demonetization of YouTube videos.  Or in the new sets of regulation being imposed in European countries that deputize the social-media networks themselves as an all seeing social censor.

Mark Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire.  I think I understand why Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg hasn't publicly responded to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  He's stuck in a catch-22.  Any fix for Facebook's previous big problem — fake news — would make the current big problem with data harvesting worse.  As a media company and one of Americans' top sources of information, Facebook's de facto anonymity and general lack of responsibility for user-generated content make it easy for propagandists to exploit.  Making matters worse, it isn't willing to impose tighter identification rules for fear of losing too many users, and it doesn't want to be held responsible in any way for content, preferring to present itself as a neutral platform.  So Zuckerberg has been trying to fix the problem by showing people more material from friends and family and by prioritizing "trusted publishers" and local news sources over purveyors of fake news.

Facebook Tells Publishers It Will 'Minimize the Bad' and 'Promote Quality'.  Facebook Head of News Product Alex Hardiman expressed the company's plans to "redefine its relationship" with news publishers in an effort to "minimize the bad" and "promote quality" during a panel at the South by Southwest film festival.  CNN reports that during a panel discussion at the South by Southwest film festival, Facebook's head of news product, Alex Hardiman, stated that the social media platform was working on "redefining its relationship" with news publishers.

The Great Social Media Purge:  No One Is Safe.  Social media is often abuzz with politics — from immigration and gun control to infrastructure and tariffs.  Rarely is the social media itself the topic of discussion.  But now is long past time for that discussion.  It is certainly no secret that social media companies are overwhelmingly left-wing, fueling the fake "Russia" conspiracy theory, and endlessly bashing President Donald Trump.  But now, the social media giants of the Internet — Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (one of the main subsidiaries Alphabet, which is the corporate parent of Google) — have been preparing their next big, heinous move:  an attempt to ban right-wing voices outright from their platforms.

The Great Information War is Here.  A few days after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, many conservative commentators began to notice they were also being targeted.  They were not being "flamed" by bloggers or online trolls but instead were simply erased from social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube by the Big Tech companies.  Some of them were little known, while others were popular media figures such as Dennis Prager and Mike Cernovich.  In some cases, their videos were taken down on YouTube without warning; or their Gmail accounts were terminated without explanation; or their Twitter pages were shadowbanned.  Much of the censored material had nothing to do with the Parkland tragedy.  It was simply a moment for the Left to flex its muscles.

The Worst Purge Of Conservative Voices In The History Of The Internet.  In recent weeks, we have witnessed an unprecedented social media crackdown on conservative voices.  YouTube's war with Alex Jones has gotten the most attention, but literally hundreds of conservative content creators have had their accounts penalized, suspended or deleted by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants.  There appears to be a coordinated effort to target conservative viewpoints, because similar voices on the left are not receiving equal treatment.

Sebastian Gorka Calls For Social Media Companies To Stop Censoring Conservatives And Start Censoring ISIS.  Former White House deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka said social media companies should stop worrying about censoring conservatives and start censoring radical Jihadis instead, Thursday [3/8/2018] on "Fox & Friends."  "Al Qaeda's publications like 'Inspire,' the publications of ISIS as well — they're all out there still on the internet.  They have detailed instructions.  That's how the Boston bombers made their pressure cooker bombs.  Those instructions were on one of the Jihadi publications," Gorka said.  [Video clip]

The Corporate War on Free Speech.  One of my countless gripes about the grotesquely empty public display of sneering moral condescension that is the modern left is their continued posturing that they are fighting the power rather than representing it, consciously or otherwise.  Conveniently ignoring the legions of discrimination lawyers, human-resources hall monitors, and corporate-diversity rectal inspectors, modern progressives are somehow able to maintain the delusion that "corporations" are by definition right-wing entities.  Of course they are.  That must be why Google canned James Damore for daring to suggest the world's largest company was hopelessly biased in favor of leftists.  It also must be why it seems that the only people getting banned from social media or fired from their jobs based on nothing more than their opinions are those who are critical of the left.

Obama Pressures Facebook to Censor News; Zuckerberg Complies and Crushes Trump on Facebook.  Facebook has caved to Democrat political pressure and is censoring newsfeeds on users' pages, as Mark Zuckerberg explains, for their own good.  The progressives at Facebook have gone nuclear. [...] After Donald Trump's election, Zuckerberg came under tremendous pressure to use Facebook for the Democrats' Resistance.  All the bludgeons were brought out — Russian bots, fake news, that Facebook handed an unearned victory to Trump.  And the greatest of all, the threat of government regulation.  At first Zuckerberg resisted the Resistance, but then he caved suddenly, following a personal intervention by Obama.

Companies Suspend Ads On Alex Jones, InfoWars' Youtube Channel After CNN Contacts Them.  Many companies have suspended advertising on Infowars' Youtube channels after CNN contacted them about their ads appearing on the website.  A CNN article published Saturday reads, "CNN has discovered ads on InfoWars' channels from companies and organizations such as Nike (NKE), Acer, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Network, the Mormon Church, Moen, Expedia (EXPE), Alibaba (BABA), HomeAway, the NRA, Honey, Wix and ClassPass."  The article also indicates that after CNN got in touch with the companies, many suspended their ads.

Snopes Fact Checks, Facebook Threatens Satire Site for Mocking CNN.  The Christian satire site Babylon Bee has been fact-checked by Snopes and threatened by Facebook after it published an Onion-style article about CNN about purchasing a washing machine to "spin the news."

Satire Website Babylon Bee is Being Marked as Fake News on Facebook.  I'll be the first to admit I've been snagged by a few Babylon Bee headlines.  Not to the point I needed them fact-checked.  More of a double-take.  "Wait, did this really happen... oh, you Babylon Bee guys!"  But that's just me.  Others have needed the stories fact-checked for them.  To the point where Facebook is threatening to penalize the Bee's Facebook page.

Exclusive: Trump's Facebook Engagement Declined By 45 Percent Following Algorithm Change.  Engagement on Donald Trump's Facebook posts has dropped by approximately 45 percent since the platform introduced a new algorithm change, following a year of pressure from left-wing employees and the mainstream media for "allowing" the President to win the 2016 general election.  In January, Facebook introduced a major change to its newsfeed algorithm.  In a post, CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the change aimed to give greater emphasis to posts from "friends, family and groups" and less to "businesses, brands and media."  The change was followed by a promise to promote what Facebook calls "broadly trusted" news sources on the platform.

Exposing Parkland 'Shooting' Crisis Actor David Hogg gets you 3 Day Suspension From Facebook.  Just presenting a Video showing David Hogg and fellow actors recording on a Cell Phone an Anti Gun message during the 'Actual Shooting', while they were whispering and 'hiding' in lock-down, is enough to get a 3 days suspension from Face-it-facebook-is-working-for-the-enemy (Facebook).

Laura Loomer Banned From Facebook For 30 Days For Post Calling David Hogg A Liar.  Investigative journalist Laura Loomer received a 30-day banishment from Facebook Monday [2/26/2018] after she wrote a post calling student and gun control activist David Hogg a liar. [...] "Everything in my post was factual.  These interviews compiled together show that David Hogg... is lying during his interviews," Loomer said in a statement.  "If you watch the video, he says his sister lost 4 friends, 3 friends, and then 2 friends during the school shooting, which reveals a flaw in his narrative and suggests he isn't telling the truth," Loomer stated.

Stop treating the Southern Poverty Law Center like it's a respectable and responsible organization.  YouTube has tapped the Southern Poverty Law Center to help it police objectionable content, according to the Daily Caller.  Hopefully, this isn't true.  But if it is, it's a disaster.  YouTube couldn't have chosen a worse or less trustworthy partner.  The SPLC is a dishonest, irresponsible and obnoxiously partisan organization.  Trusting them to decide what constitutes objectionable and "extremist" content, as YouTube's more than 100 "Trusted Flaggers" have been asked to do, is like asking the inmates to run the asylum.  YouTube's monitoring program dates to 2012.  However, according to the Caller, it has "exploded in size in recent years amid a Google push to increase regulation of the content on its platforms, which followed pressure from advertisers."

Exclusive: YouTube Secretly Using SPLC To Police Videos.  The Southern Poverty Law Center is assisting YouTube in policing content on their platform, The Daily Caller has learned.  The left-wing nonprofit — which has more recently come under fire for labeling legitimate conservative organizations as "hate groups" — is one of the more than 100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government agencies in YouTube's "Trusted Flaggers" program, a source with knowledge of the arrangement told The [Daily Caller].  The SPLC and other program members help police YouTube for extremist content, ranging from so-called hate speech to terrorist recruiting videos.

CNN is Directly Lobbying YouTube to Shut Down Infowars.  CNN is now directly lobbying for YouTube to terminate Infowars from its platform entirely, with the news network brazenly admitting as much in an article published today [2/23/2018].  The piece, entitled, How the Florida school shooting conspiracies sprouted and spread, notes how an Infowars video questioning whether Parkland school shooting survivor and now anti-gun activist David Hogg was being coached on what to say during interviews was removed by YouTube.  CNN then relates how it "identified three similar YouTube videos from InfoWars" which were brought to YouTube's attention for potential removal.  A YouTube spokesperson responded that those videos were also now under review.

YouTube Restricts PragerU's Planned Parenthood Video, Then Reverses Course.  Conservative digital media organization PragerU tweeted Monday that its latest YouTube video on Planned Parenthood had been restricted soon after it was posted.  PragerU observed that, just hours after it was posted to Google-owned platform YouTube, a video that is narrated by Lila Rose, president of pro-life organization Live Action, was placed in "Restricted Mode."  In the video, titled What You Need to Know about Planned Parenthood, Rose discusses "deceptions" generated by Planned Parenthood, including its claim to be a "healthcare provider," and that abortion constitutes only three percent of its services.

Alt-right leaders can no longer spread disinformation on Medium.  Medium has suspended the accounts of Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, and Laura Loomer.  Unfortunately, this means that "articles" like Cernovich's "How I Would Run for Congress" are no more.  Links to any of the suspended accounts (or their published works) redirect to the dreary white suspension page, which reads "This page is unavailable."

Facebook Ad Executive Rob Goldman Apologizes for having "Uncleared Thoughts".  After President Trump re-tweeted a discussion thread from Facebook VP of Ads Rob Goldman, which cited analysis done last year of Russian ad purchases/engagement, the liberal hive instantly attacked the executive.  According to Wired.Com Rob Goldman quickly began apologizing for expressing "uncleared thoughts", where those thoughts are actually based on facts — but run counter to the necessary liberal narrative — so they must be repelled at all costs.

Mark Zuckerberg colludes with Russia.  As of this week, Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook, is now directly colluding with Putin to influence world opinion in favor of the tyrant's regime.  It's happening before your very eyes.  Zuckerberg created one of the world's largest and most important platforms for spreading news and information — and fake news and disinformation.  It was one of the platforms Russian and other foreign propagandists used most effectively in 2016 to pass off lies as real news stories and to spread messages designed to divide Americans by race.  But what Facebook once allowed through organizational passivity, it is now doing willfully.  Zuckerberg's company, the owner of Instagram, has caved to pressure from Moscow and has agreed to suppress Instagram posts that Putin's critics have dug up and presented as concrete evidence of astounding official corruption.

The Urgent Case for Legislation against Facebook and Google.  Having been one of the early targets of social media censorship on Facebook, YouTube et al, I have advocated for anti-trust action against these bullying behemoths.  It is good to see establishment outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and National Review coming to the same conclusion, or at least asking the same questions.  Just this week, Facebook launched its latest of many attacks on my news site, the Geller Report.  It labeled my site as "spam" and removed every Geller Report post — thousands upon thousands of them, going back years — from Facebook.  It also blocked any Facebook member from sharing links to the Geller Report.  The ramping up of the shutting-down of sites like mine is neither random nor personal.  The timing is telling.  The left is gearing up for the 2018 midterm elections, and they mean to shut down whatever outlet or voice that helped elect President Trump, the greatest upset in left-wing history.  In fighting this shutdown, we had to go back to the drawing board in our lawsuit against these social media giants.

Facebook:  Calling For The Murder Of AfD Members 'Does Not Violate Our Community Standards'.  Though Germany has the most strict censorship regime in the world when it comes to censoring right-wing political speech on social media, calling for members of the patriotic Alternative for Deutschland party to be murdered is A-OK.

YouTube: Keeping Americans In The Dark On Islam.  In certain respects, the real struggle between Islam and the West has less to do with an inherently weak Islam and more to do with subversive Western elements that cover up for and thus empower Islam.  Out-and-out censorship is one of these tactics.

Google Must Be Destroyed.  In "The New Censorship" Robert Epstein examines the methods Google employs to censor voices it disagrees with such as manipulating the auto-complete results, altering images displayed in Google Maps, and demonetizing YouTube videos its employees find offensive.  Epstein writes, "If a librarian were caught trashing all the liberal newspapers before people could read them, he or she might get in a heap o' trouble.  What happens when most of the librarians in the world have been replaced by a single company?  Google is now the largest news aggregator in the world, tracking tens of thousands of news sources in more than thirty languages and recently adding thousands of small, local news sources to its inventory.  It also selectively bans news sources as it pleases."

Libertarian Banned from Facebook for Tide Pod Joke That Mocked Liberals.  Facebook doesn't seem to think Tide Pods are a joking matter.  Tom Champlin, who owns the libertarian news aggregator The Liberty Review and runs its associated Facebook page, was slapped with a 30-day Facebook ban for posting a Tide Pod meme.  His post showed a screenshot of a teen who was stupid enough to bite into a Tide Pod; the caption said, "This is why I can't pay for your health insurance." Facebook sent Champlin a message telling him that his post had violated the site's community standards and he would be temporarily locked out of his profile as a punishment.

Facebook is a 'living, breathing crime scene,' says one former tech insider.  With more than 2 billion users, Facebook's reach now rivals that of Christianity and exceeds that of Islam.  However, the network's laser focus on profits and user growth has come at the expense of its users, according to one former Facebook manager who is now speaking out against the social platform.

Facebook, Google tell Congress they're fighting extremist content with counterpropaganda.  Facebook, Google and Twitter told Congress Wednesday that they've gone beyond screening and removing extremist content and are creating more anti-terror propaganda to pre-empt violent messages at the source.  Representatives from the three companies told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that they are, among other things, targeting people likely to be swayed by extremist messages and pushing content aimed at countering that message.  Several senators criticized their past efforts as not going far enough.  "We believe that a key part of combating extremism is preventing recruitment by disrupting the underlying ideologies that drive people to commit acts of violence.  That's why we support a variety of counterspeech efforts," said Monika Bickert, Facebook's head of global policy management, according to an advance copy of her testimony obtained by CNBC.

Someone Needs to Sort Out the Tech Idiots on Censorship.  The real relationship between politics and government is the gangster relation: nice little business you got here; pity if something should happen to it.  Most conservatives don't have a gangster bone in their bodies and really don't want to get in the faces of good honest businessmen.  Problem is, then all the businessmen in America will end up paying protection money only to the Democratic Party, because liberals do care about power and do want to tell business who is boss.  Unless our leaders throw a bit of elbow, these poor innocent businessmen will continue to truckle to the liberal activist agenda as the path of least resistance.  Then one day they will wake up, like the National Football League, to find out that their customers are leaving in droves.

Facebook's Feed Filtering.  In what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls "a major change in how we build Facebook," the company announced Thursday that it plans to reduce publisher and brand content in news feeds while prioritizing what friends and family interact with.  "[R]ecently we've gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other," Zuckerberg wrote yesterday in a Facebook post.  "Since there's more public content than posts from your friends and family, the balance of what's in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do — help us connect with each other.  We feel a responsibility to make sure our services aren't just fun to use, but also good for people's well-being."

Facebook Bans Bestselling Author over 'The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama'.  Bestselling conservative author Matt Margolis has a new book coming out that is already banned on Facebook.  Margolis's first book, The Worst President in History, which detailed the failures of the Obama administration, was an instant hit last fall.  Margolis used social media to market his presidential biography to #1 on Amazon.  When he tried to market his latest, The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama, he was banned from Facebook groups for six days with no explanation.

How to Get Kicked Off YouTube.  The first time YouTube sent me a one-way ticket to ride was right after I saw a video in Pittsburgh of a large group of large "teenagers" surrounding and beating a smaller "teenager."  But everything was blurred out — faces and voices.  I called the victim's mom in Pittsburgh and asked if I could get a copy of the original video, unblurred.  Soon I was watching a totally different, far more sinister scene:  a large group of black people were surrounding a smaller white kid, harassing, threatening, taunting, and ultimately beating him.  That's what I do in my books, articles, videos, and podcasts:  I expose the enormous level of black violence and how reporters and public officials are in denial, deceit, and delusion about it.  This was just another example, one of many thousands that we document, wildly out of proportion.  Soon after the video went up, good ol' Colin was going down:  YouTube said the video encouraged violence against children.  I told YouTube I was exposing violence against children.  People who removed that video were complicit in that violence.  YouTube did not care, and off I went.

How Conservatives Are Being Destroyed by Facebook, Twitter and Google Without Even Realizing It.  So, why would Facebook want to kill extremely successful Facebook pages that its users enjoyed?  One of the reasons goes back to something I told multiple reporters during the 2016 election.  I believe that all of the thriving right wing Facebook pages activated large numbers of what I like to think of as "instinctive conservatives."  You know, the sort of people who love God, guns and America, but who don't follow politics day to day, read National Review or consume any of Milton Friedman's books.  From what I could see on Facebook, that group of people [loved] Donald Trump and I believe they were responsible for getting him the GOP nomination and probably even got him over the hump in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  I think the liberals that run Facebook came to that same conclusion.

Google caught in the censorship cookie jar again?  The Daily Caller reports that Google has taken to throwing shade almost exclusively on conservative websites through its search engine mechanism, using a sort of "fact-checking" system to discredit certain news-providers so no one will want to click on them.  Kind of an odd thing for a search engine company to do, given that its business is built around gaining clicks.  But it's not the first time the Silicon Valley giant has been accused of disguised censorship against conservative news outlets under the guise of the war on fake news.

Google's New Fact-Check Feature Almost Exclusively Targets Conservative Sites.  Google, the most powerful search engine in the world, is now displaying fact checks for conservative publications in its results.  No prominent liberal site receives the same treatment.  And not only is Google's fact-checking highly partisan — perhaps reflecting the sentiments of its leaders — it is also blatantly wrong, asserting sites made "claims" they demonstrably never made.  When searching for a media outlet that leans right, like The Daily Caller (TheDC), Google gives users details on the sidebar, including what topics the site typically writes about, as well as a section titled "Reviewed Claims."  Vox, and other left-wing outlets and blogs like Gizmodo, are not given the same fact-check treatment.

Google Sued for Censorship of Conservatives.  Leftists often accuse you of the thing they are really guilty of.  So, when the left tries to smear conservatives with labels such as Nazis, Fascists, and intolerant, they are really describing themselves.  Case in point is the story of Prager University, run by radio-talk-show host Dennis Prager whose videos on YouTube have received restricted status making it impossible for people to watch.  Thus, Prager fought back suing Google and YouTube for violation of his First Amendment rights.

YouTube assigns 10,000 employees to censor videos.  Google will assign 10,000 staff members to eliminate what the company regards as extremist content on YouTube next year.  YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki wrote at Britain's Daily Telegraph that some YouTube users were exploiting YouTube to "mislead, manipulate, harass or even harm."  Google owns YouTube.  She wrote that YouTube is using "computer-learning" technology to find extremist videos.  Since June, more than 150,000 of these videos have been removed, she said.

More Proof: How Google Skews Autocomplete to Protect Democrats.  Google's "Autocomplete" function has operated since 2008 to assist users in searching for the right phrases.  How does it work? [...] Well, it's based on actual searches, so long as they don't negatively impact Democrats.

If we don't fight now, conservatives will vanish from the internet.  How can you tell that internet censorship is really taking off?  Easy.  It's becoming a business model.  Steven Brill is raising $6 million to launch News Guard.  This new service will rate news sites on their trustworthiness from green to red.  Forget politically unbiased algorithms.  The ratings will be conducted by "qualified, accountable human beings" from teams of "40 to 60 journalists."  Once upon a time, journalism meant original writing.  Now it means deciding which original writing to censor.

Google Can No Longer Be Trusted With Private Data.  Google needs to stop treating its users like lab rats for its machine learning.  Already, their attempt to crack down on YouTube videos have cost perfectly well-meaning and sometimes entirely apolitical channels thousands of dollars in ad revenues over absurd misapplications of the rules by content flagging bots.

Forget Washington.  Facebook's Problems Abroad Are Far More Disturbing.  For months, Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., has been in crisis mode, furiously attempting to contain the damage stemming from its role in last year's presidential campaign.  The company has mounted an all-out defense campaign ahead of this week's congressional hearings on election interference in 2016, hiring three outside communications firms, taking out full-page newspaper ads, and mobilizing top executives, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, to beat back accusations that it failed to prevent Russia from manipulating the outcome of the election.  No other predicament in Facebook's 13-year history has generated this kind of four-alarm response.  But while the focus on Russia is understandable, Facebook has been much less vocal about the abuse of its services in other parts of the world, where the stakes can be much higher than an election.

Google Preaches 'Net Neutrality,' Then Censors Conservative Videos?  YouTube promises that it is "a community where everyone's voice can be heard."  But that promise doesn't seem to apply if the voice espouses conservative viewpoints.  The latest evidence of this comes from Dennis Prager, a conservative talk-show host whose syndicated column appears regularly in IBD and who also runs Prager University.  PragerU produces hundreds of educational videos from academics and other experts on various topics, ranging from the history of the Korean War to Israel's founding.  There's no profanity, no nudity, no calls to violence.  But the videos do give conservatives a voice.

Prager University SUES Google & YouTube for Censoring Conservatives.  Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock knows that Google and YouTube have been taking serious and discriminatory action against conservatives and anyone who has an opinion that is contradictory to that of the "advertisers."  We have taken this for a while now, but someone is finally taking legal action.  Dennis Prager of Prager University is taking this discriminatory practice to the courtroom and is determined to bring attention to the matter, which has been largely ignored in the media.

PragerU sues Google, YouTube for 'censoring' conservative videos.  PragerU, a conservative educational site, is suing Google and its subsidiary YouTube, accusing the video site of censoring its online videos because of their political leanings.  The company filed the suit on Monday, saying that YouTube had been "restricting" some of their videos, which cuts them off to viewers with certain parental settings and prevents them from generating ad revenue.  "Watch any one of our videos and you'll immediately realize that Google/YouTube censorship is entirely ideologically driven," Dennis Prager, PragerU founder, said in a statement.

Patriot outraged as Facebook 'BANS' him from calling himself English.  A proud patriot has slated social media giant Facebook after it banned him from using the word "English" in his profile.  Electrician Tim Cox, 54, was given the nickname "English" at school and has been using it on his profile since he signed up to the site nine years ago.  But it has now been removed by Facebook chiefs after a complaint from a fellow user.  The site says the word "English" represents a violation of its policies on fake names, despite other profiles using the names of mass murderers like Peter Sutcliffe or Osama Bin Laden.

Apple Removes Pro-Life App from App Store.  Apple removed a pro-life app from its App Store after misleading stories about the app were published over the summer.  The app, Human Coalition, allows "pro-life individuals and church groups to pray for Human Coalition's abortion-seeking clients, who remain anonymous, in real time."

James O'Keefe Busts YouTube Deciding What Is 'Legitimate' News, and What Isn't.  James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has released a follow-up to its exposé of bias at the New York Times earlier this week.  This time, the target is YouTube, the ubiquitous video-sharing platform owned by technology giant Google.  Project Veritas picks up where the first video left off, in conversation with the Times' Audience Strategy Editor, Nicholas Dudich, a former Democratic campaign operative who was shown suggesting that his political views informed his work publishing Times videos on social media platforms.

Reassessing Orwell to Understand Our Times.  Social media have great power to narrow the range of acceptable thought.  On Facebook, those who openly support a politically correct view — what appears to be the popular majority view — are frequently lauded with thumbs up, while dissenters often remain silent to avoid being criticized or denounced.  All of which leads to what is called "the spiral of silence," which reinforces the groupthink of what seems to be the social and cultural majority.

10 reasons to stay calm about those Russia Facebook ads.  [#1] Of the group of 3,000 ads turned over to Congress by Facebook, a majority of the impressions came after the election, not before.  Indeed, in a news release Monday [10/2/2017], Facebook said 56 percent of the ads' impressions came after the 2016 vote.  [#2] Twenty-five percent of the ads were never seen by anybody.  (Facebook also revealed that Monday.)  [#3] Most of the ads, which Facebook estimates were seen by a total of 10 million people in the United States, never mentioned the election or any candidate.

YouTuber Demonetized Hours after Rush Limbaugh Reads Her Article on His Show.  On the same day that Rush Limbaugh read my recent column on air, YouTube — in the dead of night — demonetized a large percentage of videos on my channel.  My YouTube channel has been around for years with many recordings of very boring village meetings highlighting local Chicago-area corruption.  Recently, I started doing reaction videos and comedy and gained a bunch of new subscribers and it's been fun.  I don't swear (certainly no "F" words) and there's nothing really controversial unless you count making fun of gender-confused rabid leftists with blue hair "controversial."  Yesterday, October 5, after Rush read my article on his show, I made a video that included my reaction to him talking about it on the air.  It wasn't up for three hours before my videos started getting the dreaded yellow dollar signs — which means YouTube just took away my ability to be paid for them.  YouTube made sure that whatever bump in subscribers or views I got from Rush would not benefit me in any way.

YouTube Has Joined Other Social Media In Censoring Conservatives.  Social media was a brazen boon for the free press, who were virtually shut out of the national, televised media landscape which has been dominated by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, and other liberal outlets for decades.  Print news, however fleeting their time in the spotlight may be, also tends to fly left of center thanks to decades upon decades of democratic infiltration.  The internet, however, was once a land of opportunity for everyone.  A level playing field of exposure and ideology.  That is, until Facebook, Google, and their subsidiaries discovered a tool that they too could use to funnel their own political beliefs to the forefront.

Here's an example of what Facebook WILL allow:
Russian-bought Black Lives Matter ad on Facebook targeted Baltimore and Ferguson.  At least one of the Facebook ads bought by Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign referenced Black Lives Matter and was specifically targeted to reach audiences in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, sources with knowledge of the ads told CNN.  Ferguson and Baltimore had gained widespread attention for the large and violent protests over police shootings of black men.  The decision to target the ad in those two cities offers the first look at how accounts linked to the Russian government-affiliated troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency used geographically targeted advertising to sow political chaos in the United States, the sources said.

The Curious Case of the Democrats vs Zuckerberg.  The worst kind of fight in one in which you wish for both sides' demise. [...] Watching Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defend his digital empire before menacing lawmakers was one such brawl.  In early September, Facebook disclosed that it had suspended hundreds of accounts associated with a St. Petersburg-based website that dispensed pro-Kremlin propaganda.  The long-held suspicion that Putin operatives attempted to influence the 2016 election was confirmed.  Then the levee broke.

Facebook admits it promoted fake Vegas massacre stories.  Facebook admitted Monday [10/2/2017] that its system automatically promoted stories that falsely identified the shooter in the Las Vegas massacre.  The social network said links from websites such as The Gateway Pundit and others were posted and spread across their site Sunday night.  The stories claimed the shooter was an "anti-Trump" Democrat and displayed pictures of a man who is not identified as a suspect.

The Long Night Ahead.  Facebook just declared war against "disruptive" information.  In addition to hundreds of new human censors, they are training AI censors capable of identifying and deleting 'unacceptable' information found in the discussions of all two billion members in real time. [... But] Disruption, although potentially painful in the short term, doesn't last, nor is it truly damaging over the long term.  In fact, the true danger posed by an internetworked world is just the opposite of disruption.  This danger is an all encompassing online orthodoxy.  A sameness of thought and approach enforced by hundreds of millions of socially internetworked adherents.  A global orthodoxy that ruthless narrows public thought down to a single, barren, ideological framework.  A ruling network that prevents dissent and locks us into stagnation and inevitable failure as it runs afoul of reality and human nature.

Amazon defends deleting one-star reviews of Hillary Clinton's new book.  Amazon is getting flak for policing the reviews posted on its page for Hillary Clinton's new book, which went on sale this week.  The internet quickly realized Wednesday that some of the reviews of "What Happened" — notably 1-star reviews — were being removed.  But the company defended its move, saying it had the right to make sure that reviewers were actually commenting on the product at hand, not just expressing dislike of the former Democratic presidential candidate (of which there is plenty, nine months after the election).

Imposing 21st Century Sensibilities on 18th and 19th Century Actions.  Perhaps the most beloved hymn of the past two centuries is Amazing Grace [...] Yet if one-issue social pressure continues to mount, Amazing Grace may disappear from politically-sensitive YouTube, Facebook, Google, and more broadly from popular culture.  Why?  Because the man who wrote this hymn, English sailor John Newton, had been a slave trader before experiencing a Jonah-like miraculous salvation of his own. [...] The ultimate "logic" of Black Lives Matter will see the destruction of Monticello and the Jefferson Memorial, Mount Vernon and the Washington Monument, the defacing of Mount Rushmore and — perhaps — the renaming of Washington DC and the State of Washington.  One wonders.  With Washington and Jefferson now under fire, can Amazing Grace be far behind?

Google's 'Left-wing bias has alienated its own workers'.  Internet giant Google has been accused by one of its own employees of 'alienating conservatives' with its politically correct left-wing bias.  A senior software engineer at the company claimed in a document that was distributed to colleagues that right-wing employees were forced to keep their views 'in the closet' to avoid hostility.

YouTube continues to restrict many PragerU videos.  Fight back!  YouTube does not want young people to hear conservative ideas as they currently list 28 PragerU videos — over 10 percent of our entire collection — under "restricted mode" making it impossible for many young people to access our videos.

Facebook Blocks More Than Two Dozen Popular Catholic Pages Without Explanation.  Social media giant Facebook blocked more than two dozen conservative Catholic pages in a 24-hour period, some with millions of followers, saying only they were "suspected of suspicious activities."  Facebook seemed to target only conservative Catholic pages with a significant following, since almost all had between hundreds of thousands and up to six million followers, according to Catholic News Agency (CNA), which broke the story.

Google Censors Popular Pro-Life Page With Extensive Abortion Information.  The Abortions in America page, which displays graphs and data about a wide variety of abortion facts, had been receiving an average of about 16,000 views per month — all with virtually no promotion.  Since the fact page was created in October 2012, web stats show the page steadily increased in popularity.  The page's views peaked in January 2017, at 37,111 views, and was well on the way to a record-breaking year.  Within the month of May, views mysteriously decreased by more than half over the previous month.  In June, it received only 1,512 views.  During the last seven days of June, it only received 307 views.  It appears that OperationRescue.org has been singled out by Google for discrimination.

Supreme Court strikes down sex offender social media ban.  The Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina law Monday [6/19/2017] that bars convicted sex offenders from Facebook, Twitter and other popular sites.

YouTube removes latest Planned Parenthood video on judge's order.  YouTube removed a video showing top Planned Parenthood officials making gruesome comments about abortion on the order of a federal judge in California.  U.S. District Judge William Orrick, who granted the preliminary injunction in favor of the National Abortion Federation to halt the release of the videos, ordered any links to the video to be removed after it was published by the Center for Medical Progress on Thursday [5/25/2017].  Judge Orrick also ordered CMP lead investigator David Daleiden and his attorneys to appear in court June 14, The Associated Press reported, for a hearing where he will consider holding them in contempt for releasing the footage.

Facebook says it will act against 'information operations' using false accounts.  Facebook Inc acknowledged on Thursday [4/27/2017] that it has become a battleground for governments seeking to manipulate public opinion in other countries and outlined new measures it is taking to combat what it calls "information operations" that go well beyond the phenomenon known as fake news.  In a report and summary of response plans on its website on Thursday, Facebook describes well-funded and subtle efforts by nations and other organizations to spread misleading information and falsehoods for geopolitical goals.

How the Media Try to Lay Waste to the Trump Administration.  The war on "fake news" could extend into the censorship of social media.  Former Federal Election Commission chair Ann Ravel told a UC Berkeley audience that "We know that there's a lot of campaigning that's moved to the Internet, whether it's through fake news or just outright advertising and there is almost no regulation of this, very little."  In the past, Ravel has called for the regulation of political websites such as The Drudge Report.  "Ravel claimed that the use of Facebook and other social media platforms by political campaigns is a problem," reports Breitbart News.  She also claimed that "by 2020 most of the advertising is going to move from television to the Internet" — i.e., to unregulated space.

Facebook Gives Staff Green Light to Protest Trump on May 1.  Facebook Inc. said it won't punish employees who take time off to join pro-immigrant protests on May 1.  And, in a nod to security staff, janitors, shuttle-bus drivers and others who work for Facebook contractors on campus, the company also said it will investigate if any of its vendors illegally crack down on their employees' protest rights.

#FakeNews Purveyors Snopes and Politifact Now Adjudicating #FakeNews for Google.  Google rolled out a new feature Friday for its search browser, which uses media outlets like Politifact and Snopes to help combat "fake news."  After inputting a search query on the tech conglomerate's platform, a user is shown results with "fact checks for one or more public claims" or news stories. [...] Snopes, Politifact, or any such publication deciding which news stories are legitimate leads to editorializing as fact checking is prone to subjectivity.  This notion is further evidenced in that not a single fact checker at Snopes comes from a conservative background, which a Daily Caller investigation revealed.  In fact, Snopes employs liberals and leftists almost exclusively.

'Hunt & Kill All White Women' Facebook Post Deemed Not Hate Speech.  "White women should be hunted and killed then we won't get white babies who think the(y) own the world," the user posted.  When the post was reported by another user for "hate speech," Facebook responded with the message, "We reviewed the comment you reported for displaying hate speech and found it doesn't violate our Community Standards."

$53M Fines for Politically Incorrect Social Media Posts?  In a move designed to chill free speech, a German "justice" official has proposed fining social-media sites up to $53 million for not swiftly deleting "hateful" posts.  Welcome to the new Germany — same as the old Germany. [...] While German Ministry of Justice spokesman Piotr Malachowski had in January cited entries such as "gas the Jews" as an example of the kind of repugnant postings justifying government action, that's just a selling point.  The extreme concern over politically incorrect online speech arose only after Germany invited an influx of unassimilable Muslim migrants, who are generally impossible to vet and sometimes criminally inclined, prompting some Germans to complain online.  The current crackdown is aimed at anti-Muslim sentiment — not anti-Jewish sentiment.

Chilling story of one twisted oddball and a handful of anonymous activists who appointed themselves as censors.  [Scroll down]  Last month, 'Hillbillyholiday' was the architect of a cynical PR stunt which saw this newspaper publicly smeared by damning its journalism 'unreliable'.  He and 52 like-minded anti-Press zealots, almost all of whom remain anonymous, collaborated in a vote which persuaded Wikipedia, the sixth most popular website in the world, that it ought to ban the Daily Mail.  The move by the online encyclopedia — which was founded in 2001 and has in a few short years become a hugely influential source of information — was revealed in the pages of the Left-wing Guardian newspaper.  It reported that Wikipedia's editors had decided, in a democratic ballot, that the Mail's journalism cannot be trusted.

Google adds tool to flag 'offensive' search results.  Google is now directing its review teams to flag content that might come across as upsetting or offensive in search results.

Marine Le Pen could be jailed for three years for 'distributing violent images' over ISIS beheading tweets.  French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has lost her European parliament immunity from prosecution in an obscene videos case that could see her jailed for three years.  The 48-year-old leader of the far-right Front National (FN) now faces being summoned by a French judge, and being charged with 'distributing violent images'.  Le Pen caused outrage by using Twitter to publish films including one showing the decapitated U.S. journalist James Foley.

The Wikipedia Purge.  Conservative circles, especially in the US, have long been accusing Wikipedia of bias.  Some disgruntled users have set up Conservapedia.com, as you may have guessed, in order to provide a conservative counterweight.  They compiled a list of examples of (mostly left-wing) bias in Wikipedia.  Often it is about subtle differences:  the page about the former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet (as it exists today) mentions that his government was a dictatorship, while Fidel Castro's page says that "critics say he was a dictator."

Is Google News Suppressing Center-Right News Sites?  The big story this evening is the fact that President Trump has fired the acting Attorney General, a far Left Obama holdover.  Her dismissal was well-deserved, given the fact that she ordered the Justice Department to ignore the Commander-In-Chief's entirely legal order, one similar to bans enacted by Presidents Obama and Carter.  But I was fascinated to see the Google News coverage of the event.

YouTube removes influential conservative website's channel.  The YouTube channel of influential conservative politics and law website Legal Insurrection has been removed by the video sharing service, citing copyright infringement claims.  "This account has been terminated because we received multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement regarding material the user posted," explains YouTube, in a notice posted to channel's page.  Legal Insurrection founder and publisher and Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson voiced his anger and astonishment at the channel's removal.  "It's very frustrating, it's very scary, to have 8 years of content removed without a chance to defend yourself," he told FoxNews.com.

The Coming Speech Wars Online.  As political speech evolves, new threats emerge as old ones cling to power.  The fight for free political speech isn't over, but it has changed, and we must remain vigilant lest our freedom slip.  About 87 percent of Americans use the Internet and 74 percent use social media, the Pew Research Center recently found.  For campaigns, this means that the communications gatekeeping function is as obsolete for campaign consultants as it became for network-news executives last century.

Facebook's New Arbiter Of News Is A Former CNN Anchor Who Can Barely Hide Her Anti-Conservative Bias.  Former CNN anchor Campbell Brown announced on Facebook Friday that she has been hired by Facebook to lead its news partnerships team.  The social media company has been pressured to help decipher and purge news stories that are false or unsubstantiated, even though doing so in a completely objective way will be a difficult (perhaps virtually impossible) task — especially when Brown has a history of holding an anti-conservative bias.

Fed-up with Facebook.  I made perhaps the worst mistake of my life recently when I happened to investigate Facebook, a site I've never had an account on (nor shall I ever). [...] At first I noticed a recurring trend:  Every single person, many of whom do not even know each other, all had French-Flag colors over their pictures, so as to immortalize the Paris massacre.  These are the same people fighting for Islamists to pour into their cities and their towns. [...] I suppose that what alarmed me the most (save the abundance of meaningless tattoos) was the ethereal obsession with Hillary Clinton.  There were links to no other sites — I kid you not — than CNN, Huffington Post, and Slate.

Fake News and Fake Intelligence.  Fact and truth are often very different things. [...] Most arbiters of truth are self-anointed.  Mark Zuckerberg is a modern example, the poster child for Millennial vacuity and the nerd generation.  The CEO of Facebook, enfant terrible of herd exploitation, is about to appoint a posse of thought police to monitor and censor "fake news" on the internet.  If you are devotee of Facebook news, you might have the civic awareness and attention span of a gerbil.  Still, Zuckerberg is a good modern example of how digital wealth gets confused with maturity or wisdom.  Having Zuckerberg, or any cyber-cohort, as a digital news cop is a little like appointing Bill Clinton as scoutmaster for a Girl Scout troop.

Facebook Fact-Checker PolitiFact Funded by Clinton Foundation Donor.  Alberto Ibarguen, president and CEO of the Knight Foundation, one of PolitiFact's largest contributors, donated $200,000 to support the 8th annual Clinton Global Initiative University meeting in February 2015.  The President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton-hosted event was held in Miami, Florida where the the Knight Foundation is based.  The Knight Foundation also gave between $10,000 and $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent years, Politico reports.

Guess Who's Behind Facebook's New 'Fake News' Detector?  As anyone active on the Internet is aware, there have been increasing calls for social media companies (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to address the mostly manufactured crisis of "fake news" making its way onto people's computer screens. [...] Yesterday [12/17/2016], Facebook announced that it was going to employ a variety of "fact-checking" organizations to make sure no "fake news" made it onto people's Facebook news feeds.  So Facebook will be using Snopes, PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, ABC News, and the Associated Press, among others, to check its members' postings and label them as "fake news" if these organizations determine them to be so.  One problem:  these organizations themselves are among the biggest purveyors of real fake news!  PolitiFact has a whole website dedicated to exposing the organization's biases.  The popular site Snopes is in fact run by a husband and wife out of their home in California.

Mollie Hemingway Speaks Truth to Facebook: 'PolitiFact Is a Joke'.  Mollie Hemingway over at The Federalist has made a list of "5 Major Problems With Facebook's Attempt To Limit 'Fake News'."  The most passionate argument was with PolitiFact.  The second problem listed was "PolitiFact is a joke.  They should be trusted with nothing.  They are the worst candidates to adjudicate fakery in the entire media establishment.  Even among the disreputable 'fact' 'checking' class, they are noteworthy for their awfulness."  They cannot be trusted with hard facts on Planned Parenthood.

'Neutral' PolitiFact Rated Just 15% of Trump's Campaign Claims as True but 51% True for Hillary.  PolitiFact rated just over 15% of Donald Trump's campaign claims as true, while marking 51% of Hillary Clinton's as such, according to PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman.  "I've been tracking every @PolitiFact fact-check of the 2016 candidates since they announced," posted Sharockman on Twitter just one day before the election.  "I think this will be the final score."

Guess Who's Behind Facebook's New 'Fake News' Detector?  As anyone active on the Internet is aware, there have been increasing calls for social media companies (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to address the mostly manufactured crisis of "fake news" making its way onto people's computer screens.  The mainstream media, which finds itself increasingly viewed as untrustworthy by the American public, has latched on to the idea that the relatively free flow of ideas and opinions on the Internet actually poses a threat to our well-being.  As could be expected, political leaders jumped in early on this attack on independent media.

Facebook announces strategy to tackle fake news.  Facebook has announced its plan to tackle fake news by harnessing fact checking and, potentially, making disputed stories appear lower in users' News Feeds.  "We believe in giving people a voice and that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves, so we're approaching this problem carefully," said Adam Mosseri, Facebook's VP of News Feed, in a blog post Thursday [12/15/2016].  "We've focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both our community and third party organizations[.]"  The issue of fake news on Facebook has been a hot topic for months, particularly during the recent U.S. presidential election.  In one hoax article, for example, Pope Francis was falsely reported to have endorsed Donald Trump.

Clinton mega donor George Soros leads line-up of liberal billionaires who are funding Facebook's fake news fact checker.  Billionaire Clinton donor George Soros is among a line-up of wealthy liberal figures who will fund Facebook's fake news fact checker.  The 86-year-old Hungarian financier's Open Foundation Societies is listed among organizations which are backing The International Fact Checking Network, the body tasked with flagging bogus news stories to social media users, on its website.  Soros, a staunch Democrat who tried to block George W. Bush's campaign in 2004, has given $25 million to Clinton and causes dear to her.

The real truth about Facebook's 'fake news' filters.  Before the 1990s, the mainstream media had a monopoly on the news.  Then came the rise of talk radio, Fox News, and the internet.  This was a wonderful thing for freedom of information.  Facebook has already faced a scandal for having "filtered out stories on conservative topics from conservative sites."  But to get an idea of how bias also affects fact checkers, just consider a few evaluations from Politifact.

George Soros Finances Group Helping Facebook Flag 'Disputed' Stories.  The organization partnered with Facebook to help determine whether a certain story is "disputed" is financed by billionaire George Soros and a slew of other left-wing funders.  The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept, and Facebook yesterday [12/15/2016] announced it will work with "third-party fact checking organizations" that are signatories to the code of principles.

Facebook under fire for picking 'liberal' outlets to fact-check.  Mark Zuckerberg is taking heat from the right for Facebook's new "fact-checking" initiative to police fake news.  Conservative pundits and publications are charging that most of the third-party organizations recruited this week to filter fake news stories from Facebook have a track record of liberal bias.  Snopes, ABC News, Politifact and FactCheck.org all "have records of left-wing partisanship — particularly throughout the 2016 election," Breitbart News reported Thursday [12/15/2016].  For example, the alt-right news site noted, Politifact had reported it was "mostly false" when Donald Trump claimed in a presidential debate that Hillary Clinton wanted "open borders."

Left-Wing War On Conservatives Websites:  Facebook, Google, LA Times, Obama Take Aim.  The left-wing elites and their running dogs in the enemedia are in one of their fictional publicity campaigns that they masquerade as urgent news.  Their latest terror is "fake news sites."  The New York Times reported shortly after the election that Google and Facebook "have faced mounting criticism over how fake news on their sites may have influenced the presidential election's outcome."  That was fake news in itself:  "fake news" didn't influence the presidential election's outcome, all too real news about the wrong direction in which our nation was headed under Barack Obama did.  Nevertheless, the Times said that "those companies responded by making it clear that they would not tolerate such misinformation by taking pointed aim at fake news sites' revenue sources."

Facebook Develops Censorship Tools to Gain Access to Chinese Market.  To say that Facebook has a spotty record where privacy and censorship are concerned would be an understatement. [...] Now, for the sake of gaining official access to China, Mark Zuckerberg's company has developed tools to allow the Communist Chinese government unrestrained censorship of Facebook posts. [...] While there is little doubt that Facebook would profit from access to China's 600 million Internet users, Beijing would be the real beneficiary of any deal between the social media giant and the communist regime.

Reddit CEO admits he secretly edited comments from Donald Trump supporters.  He made the admission on Reddit, where he posts under the username Spez.

Facebook's ad metric problem is becoming Zuckerberg's headache.  Mark Zuckerberg has a credibility problem.  The tech mogul's Facebook just admitted to finding more "bugs" in the way it measures ads — and once again, those bugs benefited Facebook.  The social-networking giant said Wednesday it has found numerous errors in the ways it calculates how many people view its ads, artificially inflating their perceived value to advertisers and publishers.  Key metrics that Facebook has exaggerated include the weekly and monthly reach of marketers' posts, which got inflated by 33 percent and 55 percent, respectively, as the site improperly included repeat visitors in its figures.

YouTube censors video about left-wing censorship after liberals exploit flagging algorithm.  A video by Prager U about left-wing censorship was ironically listed as 'restricted' by YouTube, making it inaccessible to schools, libraries and young users whose parents have YouTube filters enabled.

YouTube Censors Video on ... Left-Wing Censorship.  What do you suppose happens on YouTube to a video that is a "discourse on the First Amendment and the tactics that progressives are using to limit speech and political engagement by conservatives"? Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, it falls victim to an algorithm with absolutely no sense of irony.  A video titled "The Dark Art of Political Intimidation" was posted last week by WSJ columnist Kimberly Strassel as a PragerU lecture.  "Within several hours of PragerU posting the video," said a WSJ editorial, YouTube placed it in 'restricted mode,' making it inaccessible to schools, libraries and young Americans whose parents have enabled YouTube technology filters."

Facebook reportedly allows advertisers to exclude racial groups in housing ads.  Facebook advertisers can now exclude racial and ethnic groups when creating a housing ad on the social media site, according to a report from ProPublica.  The feature, called "ethnic affinities," lets advertisers exclude certain groups of Facebook users.  Under the federal Fair Housing Act, people are prohibited from discriminating based on race, gender, religion and other factors.  ProPublica created an ad aimed at house hunters and got it approved in 15 minutes despite excluding African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Hispanics.  Facebook declined to comment to the site about its approval.

YouTube blacklists PragerU educational videos.  YouTube has placed 21 PragerU videos on "restricted mode," a category meant for inappropriate and objectionable adult and sexual content.  PragerU stands for Prager University.  Its four- to five-minute videos promote Judeo-Christian values and principles and are ideal for young people as they distill complex issues into concise bullet points with stimulating graphics.  "We've worked quietly behind the scenes for months to resolve this, but YouTube's censorship continues, leaving us with no option but to go public," PragerU announced Tuesday [10/11/2016] on its Facebook page.

Fraudbook: Top Facebook Democrat funding 'Republicans for Clinton'.  Cast as a grassroots Republican movement for Hillary Rodham Clinton, most of the money for "Republicans for Clinton" is actually coming from a key Democrat and onetime co-founder of Facebook, according to a new investigation.  Billionaire Democratic megadonor Dustin Moskovitz has forked over 70 percent of the donations to the Super PAC's started by two former George W. Bush advisors, essentially muddying the whole point that it is a group of Republicans so upset with Donald Trump that they'd back Clinton.

Facebook Co-Founder Drops $35M to Defeat Trump.  Dustin Moskovitz, one of the co-founders of Facebook, has donated tens of millions of dollars to defeat Donald Trump.  Moskovitz is not one of the usual Democrat deep-pocketed suspects.  Politico reports that his donations came "suddenly and without any advance warning to the top rung of Democratic party megadonors with two unheralded tears through his checkbook in the past six weeks."  The party is excited about adding their own Sheldon Adelson-esque donor into the political mix.  Democrats don't need as much money as Republicans do because Republicans don't get billions of free media advocacy from the networks and cable stations, and they don't get free promotion from the Hollywood crowd, from ESPN, from the NFL, and from "volunteers" from the labor unions.

Facebook employees fume after push to censor Trump posts rebuffed.  Some of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's posts on Facebook have set off an intense debate inside the social media company over the past year, with some employees arguing certain posts about banning Muslims from entering the U.S. should be removed for violating the site's rules on hate speech, according to people familiar with the matter.  The decision to allow Mr. Trump's posts went all the way to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who ruled in December that it would be inappropriate to censor the candidate, according to the people familiar with the matter.  That decision has prompted employees across the company to complain on Facebook's internal messaging service and in person to Zuckerberg and other managers that it was bending the site's rules for Trump, and some employees who work in a group charged with reviewing content on Facebook threatened to quit, the people said.

The Roof Blows Off the Echo Chamber.  There is no news cycle.  There is no national debate.  There's no Ed Murrow, no Walter Cronkite, no figure of authority from whom the public can learn the facts with a reasonable degree of trust. [...] Sixty-two percent of Americans get at least some of their news via social media according to a Pew Research survey and the proportion is growing fast.  Facebook and other social media allow individuals to customize their news consumption on the basis of recommendations and re-posting by friends, and news consumers increasingly depend on their networks rather than the media. [...] Only one in nine Americans believes that Hillary Clinton is "honest and trustworthy."

The Purges Are Activated.  Social media monopolies have begun large-scale purges of any and all effective pro-Trump voices using their platforms.  CH was blocked two weeks ago from Twatter.  Today, Ricky Vaughn got suspended (until further review post-election?).  Apparently, Scott Adams was kicked off as well.  The night of the long knives is right on cue, one month before The Trumpening.  Leftoids have lost the argument.  Now they reach for the only weapon they have left:  silencing.

FEC Complaint Accuses Clinton Campaign of Illegally Working With David Brock's Super PAC.  A legal complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday [10/6/20167] accuses the Hillary Clinton campaign of illegally coordinating with David Brock's super PAC.  The Campaign Legal Center charges that Brock's PAC Correct the Record contributed nearly $6 million in in-kind donations to the Clinton campaign in the form of coordinated expenditures, Law Newz reported.  Such donations are prohibited by federal law, according to the complaint.  Brock launched Correct the Record in 2015 to serve as a rapid response team for Clinton's presidential bid.  The PAC pledged to spend $1 million to "push back" against users posting negative comments about the Democratic nominee on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram.

Facebook Thought Police Purge Over 100,000 Comments In One Month Alone Because They Said They Were "Hateful".  Per official Facebook statistics released for the first time, 100,000 comments were purged for being "hateful."  If that is not bad enough, it is even more disturbing that this number only comes from one country.  What does that say about the rest of the world?

Trump Supporters Outraged Facebook Bans 'Deplorable' Profile Names.  Ever since Hillary Clinton's PR blunder referring to Trump supporters as a "basket of deplorables," Trumpeters have squandered no opportunity to appropriate the word for their own snarky uses. [...] Hundreds of Facebook users have jumped on the Deplorable bandwagon and changed their profile names to "Deplorable" in one form or another.  And Facebook just isn't having it.

Google/Facebook Subverting Election for Hillary.  Google/Facebook/Twitter and the mainstream media are using social engineering on you to achieve their political goals.  [Video clip]

Facebook Bans "911 Conspiracy" from Trending Topics.  Facebook says it is working to fight the spread of fake news on its platform after false stories claiming the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy and that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was backing Hillary Clinton appeared among its "trending topics."  The trending section is supposed to include news stories that are popular among users, but the algorithms used to determine their selection have backfired on the company.

How Left-Wing is Facebook.  Facebook came under attack a few months ago for selecting liberal themes and news stories and downplaying conservative ones in its "trending" news section.  Mark Zuckerberg responded by hosting a meeting with influential conservatives in which he was conciliatory and promised to do better.  But my own experience during the past week has caused me to wonder what is going on at Facebook.

'Hide It Hillary' mobile app game banned by Apple; titles like 'Punch Trump' approved.  A new game called "Hide it Hillary" originally was denied access to Apple's App Store because company gatekeepers said it "includes content that could be considered defamatory or mean-spirited."  The same vetting process allowed titles like "Punch Trump," "Slap Donald Trump," and "Smack a Trump" into the marketplace.  The conservative website Heat Street reported Friday that "Hide it Hillary," which is now available on Google Play for Android devices, does not condone violence or even feature the former secretary of state's image.  Instead, users are tasked with putting documents into a "laptop, server, shredder, or closet."  A day after the Heat Street report, the app was available for 99 cents at the iTunes store and had garnered multiple 5-star reviews by Sunday night [9/4/2016].

Facebook fires human editors, algorithm immediately posts fake news.  Earlier this year, Facebook denied criticisms that its Trending feature was surfacing news stories that were biased against conservatives.  But in an abrupt reversal, the company fired all the human editors for Trending on Friday afternoon [8/26/2016], replacing them with an algorithm that promotes stories based entirely on what Facebook users are talking about.  Within 72 hours, according to the Washington Post, the top story on Trending was about how Fox News icon Megyn Kelly was a pro-Clinton "traitor" who had been fired (she wasn't).

Facebook, Instagram Delete Accounts for Gun Parts Dealer Without Explanation.  The owner of a Missouri gun parts and accessories retailer said his Facebook and Instagram accounts were deleted without explanation over the last two weeks.  TJ Kirgin, head of Tactical Shit, said the company's Facebook account, with roughly 480,000 fans, was deactivated last week without warning or explanation.  The company's Instagram account, which Kirgin said had 250,000 fans, was then deleted without warning on Wednesday.  The Facebook account has since been restored, but the Instagram account remains deactivated.

The Revolt of the Media.  [Scroll down]  It turns out that popular opinion is not all that popular with the people in the media. All over, news and opinion sites are clamping down on comments.  They are heavily policed or they are shut down entirely.  Twitter has allowed a band of angry lesbians to take over the moderation duties.  Reddit hired Chinese grifter Ellen Pao to chase off the bad thinkers.  Faceberg, of course, is run by howling lunatics, who ban people for any deviation from the orthodoxy.  The media is slowly shutting down public comment in a rather deliberate effort to shut down dissent.  This started a couple of years ago, but the process has been accelerating.

This is How Facebook 'Accidentally' Blocked DNC Email Leak Scandal.  Once again, the impartiality of Facebook's news feature is being called into question.  This time, the social network claims it "accidentally" obstructed all links to the leaked Democratic National Committee emails published by Wikileaks just ahead of the party's convention. [...] Complaining about Facebook is nothing new, but this episode of newswire censorship amounts to more than ignored demands for a Dislike button.  In May, former employees of the social networking service blew the whistle on how news stories and trends were generated on the platform.  Instead of an unbiased algorithm, human "curators" were revealed to be making decisions on what deserved to be a top headline.

Facebook blocks Michael Savage for posting news on Islamic crime.  Facebook has temporarily blocked talk-radio host Michael Savage from posting stories to his page after he put up a link to a story about a Muslim migrant killing a pregnant woman in Germany.  A message from the social media giant on Savage's page said:  "You recently posted something that violates Facebook policies, so you're temporarily blocked from using this feature."  The message then refers the user to Facebook's "Community Standards" and states the block will be active for 21 hours.

Apple's App Store Rejects Anti-Hillary Game, Sells Nasty Trump Games.  Charlie Nash at Breitbart reports that after months and months of making a profit at the expense of Republican nominee Donald Trump, Apple is refusing to publish a political satire game about Hillary Clinton's email scandal.

The Blurred Lines Between Social Media and Censorship.  Indiana's governor and D.C.'s transit agency got caught up in controversies after removing comments off their social media accounts. [...] The exact number of comments is unclear because staff in the governor's office deleted some comments, initially defending the action on the basis of the office's policy prohibiting obscenity, vulgarity and personal attacks.  It prompted an apology the next day from the governor.  "On careful review, it appear [sic] that this was not always the case and some comments were being deleted simply because they expressed disagreement with my position," wrote Pence.

Censorship vs.  Activism on Social Media.  Free speech and social networks don't always work together.  User agreements often give social networks the right to pull any content they deem objectionable, and this seems to be the case with the campaign on Tinder.  User agreements don't make the distinction of worthy speech, or legally protected speech; they only serve as a roadmap for acceptable speech on the network.

Should Social Media Censor Content?  Most sites describe their censorship to some degree within the terms of service (TOS) that all users must agree to.  However, the censorship process itself need not be disclosed, and these private entities have the final word when it comes to what users can and cannot post.

Facebook Quickly Admits to Censoring WikiLeaks DNC Links, Doesn't Say Why.  Despite famously swearing that they took a long, hard look at themselves and found no hint of bias, Zuckerberg and Co. still have a hard time hiding their agenda.

France Terrorist Posted 'kill. kill. kill.' on Facebook; Motive for Attack Remains a Mystery.  That part about it being a mystery is what we surmise they're saying in the White House today.  The rest of the planet outside the dopey left and the media (redundancy) know what the deal is.

Pamela Geller Suing Facebook Over Censorship.  Tired of having your content censored by Facebook?  Pamela Geller is, and is suing Facebook over their censorship.  Good for her!

Facebook Sued for $1b for Alleged Use of Medium for Terror.  Lawyers filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Facebook Inc., alleging it allowed the Palestinian militant Hamas group to use the platform to plot attacks that killed four Americans and wounded one in Israel, the West Bank and Jerusalem.  "Facebook has knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas in the form of Facebook's online social network platform and communication services," making it liable for the violence against the five Americans, according to the lawsuit sent to Bloomberg by the office of the Israeli lawyer on the case, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.  "Simply put, Hamas uses Facebook as a tool for engaging in terrorism," it said.

Facebook Says Its Integrity Depends on Being 'a Platform for All Ideas'.  Facebook is sharing publicly for the first time the core values that guide its news feed — the main source of news and information from your friends, family, and publications like The Daily Signal.  The decision to disclose more information about the news feed comes a month after the social media giant faced accusations of anti-conservative bias.  Conservatives who attended a meeting with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Menlo Park, California, on May 18 asked the company to be more transparent about how it operates.  Today's announcement is the latest step.

Facebook scores hits, misses as it reaches out to right after bias accusations.  Facebook's reboot with the right was firing on all cylinders last week as Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg met with conservatives in Washington, D.C., and announced a program to manage employee political bias.  And then she publicly endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president.  Still, Ms. Sandberg did enough during her two-day charm offensive to reinforce hopes that Facebook's efforts to address its widely alleged anti-conservative tilt represent more than lip service.

Facebook is keeping its employees' politics in check with bias training.  Facebook is training its top leaders and employees on how to manage their political bias, according to the social network's COO Sheryl Sandberg.  The revelation comes less than two months after Facebook's trending topics controversy, which saw the company fending off accusations of human bias affecting its news algorithm.  In a discussion with Arthur Brooks at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on Wednesday [6/22/2016], Sandberg stated:  "We have a managing bias class that all of our leaders and a lot of our employees have taken that I was part of helping to create.  And we focused on racial bias, age bias, gender bias, national bias, and we're going to add in a scenario now on political bias."

I suspect they are already familiar with bias, and see nothing wrong with it.
Facebook to Provide 'Political Bias' Training for Employees.  Facebook is adding a training program for its employees to address concerns that the company has a bias against conservatives.  Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, announced the addition of a "political bias" section to the company's managing unconscious bias class during a Wednesday event at the American Enterprise Institute.  "We have a managing bias class that all of our leaders and a lot of our employees have taken that I was part of helping to create.  And we focused on racial bias, age bias, gender bias, national bias, and we're going to add in a scenario now on political bias," Sandberg said.

Texas fisherman:  Facebook removed photo of huge hammerhead shark for violating site rules.  Corpus Christi fisherman Eric Ozolins posted some amazing photos last weekend of a giant hammerhead shark he caught on Facebook, but the social media site reportedly removed the photos Wednesday for violating terms and policy.  "Facebook had removed my recent post and hammerhead photos due to going against 'terms and policy'."  Ozolins said on Facebook.  "Wow.  There was not a single thing against any terms etc.  Not that I am worried about it, I'm just amazed (or rather appalled) by how they can gain influence from uneducated tree-huggers and break their own rules to remove something rather innocent despite all the other horrendous stuff they fail to remove on their actual system."

In Aftermath of Orlando, Facebook Bans Gay Magazine on Behalf of Islam.  Who is higher up in the P.C. caste system, Muslims or gays?  In the aftermath of the Islamic slaughter of 49 gays in Orlando, Facebook gives the answer:  ["]Facebook has banned the page of gay magazine Gaystream after they published an article critical of Islam in the wake of the Orlando massacre.["]

Pamela Geller And 'Stop Islamization Of America' Reinstated On Facebook Following Breitbart Story.  Despite initially saying they would suspend her for 30 days, Facebook has restored the account of Islam critic Pamela Geller and her group, "Stop Islamization Of America" following multiple stories from Breitbart Tech and across the media drawing attention to the social network's double standards and history of liberal bias.  Facebook's clampdown on the prominent critic of Islam, who has faced death threats from ISIS over her outspoken criticism of the religion, began shortly after the murderous Islamic terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida over the weekend.

Facebook Bans Gay Magazine Critical Of Islam.  Facebook has banned the page of gay magazine Gaystream after they published an article critical of Islam in the wake of the Orlando massacre.  The social media platform has again been censoring pages that criticise Islam.  Facebook banned the page of gay magazine Gaystream after the publication wrote an article attacking people for defending the attitudes of the religion towards homosexuals.

Reddit Will Adjust Algorithm To Censor Trump Supporters Following Orlando Shootings.  Reddit has announced a change to its algorithm on /r/all, the page that is meant to rank the most popular posts trending across the site's user-run communities.  According to Reddit, the algorithm will be changed to promote more "diversity" on the subreddit. [...] /r/all collects and ranks posts on Reddit according to how many "upvotes" they receive from users.  A post typically requires several thousand upvotes to reach the front page of the site.

Media Ignoring a MAJOR Part of the Facebook Scandal.  The liberal media are all over one part of the Facebook scandal story — and ignoring another.  Generally, media have covered the accusations that the social media site is censoring conservative news and sources from their trending news feed.  Coincidentally, this is also the part of the Facebook story affecting the media.  Potentially a bigger scandal (because it affects more people) is the accusation that Facebook censors individual member pages, blogs, smaller media outlets, and discussion groups reflecting a conservative point of view.  Sometimes, the sites are shut down, sometimes they are simply threatened into silence.

Former Facebook Insider:  We Buried Conservative News.  In an interview with Gizmodo published Monday morning [5/9/2016], [a] former journalist said that stories about CPAC, Mitt Romney and Rand Paul, among other topics, were not allowed to "trend" on Facebook, despite the fact that these stories met all the criteria for a story to be listed as highly influential.  In fact, not only did news curators apparently block conservative news sites, they also regularly boosted unpopular stories into the trending news feed, so as to push a narrative.  This practice occurs even though Facebook maintains it only curates stories that become popular on their own.

Former Facebook Employees Claim Website Snuffed Conservative News.  Former Facebook employees have told Gizmodo that the company regularly told them to stamp out conservative news even if it trended on the website. [...] "Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending," stated the former employee, who identifies as a conservative.  "I'd come on shift and I'd discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn't be trending because either the curator didn't recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz."

Censoring the news isn't Facebook's only threat to democracy.  To recap:  After interviewing several former so-called "news curators," responsible for Facebook's trending news section, Gizmodo says that the social-media platform decided to ignore some stories about conservative topics that had actually generated a lot of discussion among users.  One curator kept a list:  Omitted stories, he said, included CPAC, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and, in a weirdly ironic twist, bias by the Internal Revenue Service against conservative groups.  Some curators reportedly considered conservative media outlets insufficiently credible, including their news only after more left-leaning or centrist publications also picked up the story.

The RNC Pounces, Rails Against Facebook for 'Conservative Censorship'.  The RNC was quick to pounce tonight on the report about Facebook suppressing conservative news with their own hashtag: #MakeThisTrend.  Former Facebook employees claimed that news favorable to conservatives was left out of the Trending News section.  Facebook has denied this, but the report has already sparked a great deal of outrage online.

Conservatives Blind to Racism, says RedState Seer.  Over the weekend in Indianapolis, the video of a group of black people stalking, taunting, and beating a white girl and her four-year old brother went viral.  Facebook found it so objectionable it declared the video "violated its terms of service," removed it, and threatened to shut down your humble correspondent's Facebook page if I ever posted something like that again.  They even removed the comments that said the black on white violence is justified because white people deserve it.  Here's the offending video.  Attack in Indianapolis.  Facebook and YouTube often take down other videos of black on white racial violence as well.

Group develops software to block terrorists online.  A nonprofit dedicated to combatting terrorist propaganda on Friday [6/17/2016] said it has new technology that can help social media companies better identify the type of posts and videos that investigators believe helped drive Omar Mateen to shoot 102 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on Sunday.  The Counter Extremism Project, which was founded by a group of former world leaders and diplomats, has taken Twitter, Facebook and Google to task for not doing enough to prevent groups such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State from exploiting their platforms to recruit adherents, incite lone-wolf attacks, raise money and distribute their barbaric videos.

It begins:  Facebook deletes page of critic of Muslim migrant invasion.  Yesterday I wrote that the new initiative of Twitter and Facebook to eliminate so-called "hate speech" would be directed not at jihad terrorists, or at least not solely, but also at foes of jihad terror and related issues.  Now it begins.  This kind of action is the death knell of free society.

What viewer discretion?  YouTube bans video exposing Muslim Brotherhood.  We've reached a point in western civilization where it is more offensive to expose Islamic terrorists than engage in Islamic terrorism itself.  Our enemies understand this phenomenon, which is why they have so successfully exploited "liberal" western values against America and Europe.  In the words of the Muslim Brotherhood's explanatory memorandum, "destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands."  The latest example of the West's instant capitulation and adherence to Sharia is YouTube's decision to ban a video produced by Counter Jihad, which exposes the stealth jihad of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America and sharia law as the source of the problem.  The video is a simple 3-minute explanatory of the root cause of today's jihad — the strict dictates of sharia to wage war against the West.

Wikipedia and the Climate Non-Debate.  Wikipedia, known as the "people's encyclopedia," has proven to be anything but a reliable source in regards to the debate concerning the causes and possible consequences of climate change.  Wikipedia is written and edited "by the people who read it," and it receives more than 400 million unique visitors every month worldwide, according to GuideStar.  The massive website has about 80,000 volunteers, a substantial number of whom are devoted enough to earn the unpaid rank of "editor."  Editors are provided with a fat book of rules to follow and a code of civility to honor.  Wikipedia has emerged as an influential tool used by climate alarmists against climate change realists, who are unwilling to accept political proclamations that humans are causing catastrophic climate change.  Dogmatic climate doomsters ignore Wikipedia's rules and spend days plowing through reams of Wikipedia pages to track down and purge or alter any entry daring to challenge the view humans are responsible for global warming.

Down the Memory Hole.  George Orwell warned us, in his 1949 novel titled 1984, of how totalitarian regimes could exercise control over their citizens by making news of past events and articles about forbidden ideas disappear "down the memory hole."  The Party's Ministry of Truth would frequently edit, revise, or simply destroy documents that contradicted its propaganda.  The Internet makes it easier for governments and their allies to do this.  The results of Google searches increasingly show evidence of bias and behind-the-scenes manipulation.  Websites and articles expressing conservative and libertarian ideas appear only after page after page of politically correct sites and blogposts, making them unlikely to be seen by all but the most determined searcher.  Facebook and even Twitter appear to be succumbing to the same pressure to conform to the political creed of the current occupant of the White House.  Digital documents are easily edited or deleted.  Probably the most tragic example of this is Wikipedia, the self-described "people's encyclopedia."  Thousands of its entries — particularly profiles of organizations and individuals and articles about climate change — have been rewritten to reflect a pervasive left-wing bias.

The Hate Speech Patrol

Facebook flags Declaration of Independence as hate speech.  In the week of America's Independence Day, the algorithms of Facebook decided that the Declaration of Independence was hate speech.  The Liberty County Vindicator, a community newspaper between Houston and Beaumont, had been posting the whole declaration in small daily chunks for eight days on its Facebook page in the run-up to July 4.  But the ninth excerpt was not posted Monday [7/2/2018] as scheduled, and the paper said it received an automated notice saying the post "goes against our standards on hate speech."

Facebook Removes Declaration of Independence Excerpt for 'Hate Speech'.  Facebook removed an excerpt from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, claiming the text violated the social network's policies on "hate speech."  The Liberty County Vindicator had been uploading the Declaration of Independence in parts to their Facebook page, only for the tenth part to be removed by the social network.

Facebook Apologizes For Flagging Declaration of Independence as Hate Speech — Blames Al Gorithm.  This Al Gorithm guy should be fired, no?  He's blamed for every totalitarian hammer the right gets on everything from Twitter to Facebook.

Facebook Apologizes for Censoring Declaration of Independence as 'Hate Speech'.  Facebook has apologized to a Texas newspaper after flagging a post containing text from the Declaration of Independence as "hate speech." [...] Casey Stinnett, managing editor of the Liberty County Vindicator, suspects the term "Indian Savages" might have triggered Facebook's "filtering program."  He said the censorship was an "automated action."

Bosch Fawstin vs. Facebook and The Religion of "Peace".  Part of growing into adulthood from infantile immaturity is accepting what you cannot control.  Of all the things we cannot control, the minds, thoughts and feelings of others are the least under our control.  Sure, we can persuade people when they wish to hear from us, and when or if they're open to persuasion.  But one basic foundation of emotional health and maturity is an acceptance that others will think or feel whatever they wish to think or feel — and you have to get over it.  For whatever reasons, in today's society this is no longer the standard — at least not with certain groups or belief systems.

How will Facebook, Google and Twitter define the "Hate" they plan to censor?  [Scroll down]  What is "hate," as defined by leftists, the very community from which these curators hail?  The Southern Poverty Law Center is a prominent radical leftist group hell-bent on poisoning society against conservatives, especially the social kind.  It features a "Hate Map" with the locations of conservative organizations of all stripes.  The Family Research Center, The Center for Security Policy, the Center for Family and Human Rights, ACT for America and the Traditional Values Coalition — these are but a few.  And what views do these "haters" hold?  Some support traditional marriage, some stopping illegal immigration, some fighting radical Islam.  A writer for the leftist website Salon has his example of hatred — the Confederate flag, which he calls "the American swastika."

Twitter and Facebook Vow to Eliminate 'Hate Speech'.  Vera Jourova, whom AP identifies as "the EU commissioner responsible for justice, consumers and gender equality," explained:  "The internet is a place for free speech, not hate speech."  She added that the new rules would "ensure that public incitement to violence to hatred has 'no place online.'"  But incitement to violence isn't all that the social media giants are planning to stamp out:  Karen White, Twitter's European head of public policy, declared:  "We remain committed to letting the Tweets flow.  However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate."  The problem with both Jourova's and White's statements is that they assume that "hate speech" is an entity that can be identified objectively, when actually it is a subjective judgment based on one's own political preconceptions.  And given the years-long insistence from Leftists and Islamic supremacists that any honest discussion of how Islamic jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism constitutes "hate speech," these new rules could mean the end of opposition to jihad terror on the Internet.

Turkish Man Held in Preventive Detention for Insulting Erdogan on Facebook.  A Turkish court ordered preventive detention for a 17-year-old young man for insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his Facebook account, Dogan news agency reported on Monday [12/28/2015].  After the Turkish authorities checked the account's content, the teenager was arrested by the police and taken to court, which issued its decision.  The Turkish criminal code stipulates sentences of between one and four years in prison for insulting the president.

On the other hand, stuff like this is okay:

Facebook Says 'Death To Jews' Group Falls Within Community Standards.  Social networking website Facebook has stated that a group created by anti-Semitic users entitled, "Death to zionst [sic] baby killer israeli jews" falls within its Community Standards guidelines, despite inciting hatred and violence against a particular race.  Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner originally reported the news, stating:  "A Facebook page calling for the death of Israeli Jews does not violate the social network's "community standards," according to multiple messages sent by Facebook in response to user complaints."

Facebook Fatwa on Rifqa.  Facebook is full of death threats and other vicious material about Rifqa Bary, the teenage convert from Islam to Christianity who is in a fight for her life in juvenile court on Franklin County, Ohio.  She left Islam and converted to Christianity, and she has been persecuted for it ever since.

When the First Amendment and terror collide.  Nohemi Gonzalez, an ambitious 23-year-old student of fashion and design at California State University, Long Beach, was eating at a restaurant on the Rue de Charrone during her fall semester in Paris when gunmen attacked and murdered her.  She was the only known American among the 129 people who were killed in the Nov. 13, 2015, Paris terror attacks.  Last week Nohemi's father, Reynaldo Gonzalez, filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California against Twitter, Facebook and Google, alleging that they are liable for his daughter's death because they "knowingly permitted the terrorist group ISIS to use their social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda."  The suit calls this "material support" for terrorism, saying that without social media, the growth of ISIS "would not have been possible."

7 Reasons You Should Quit Facebook.  [#1] It Wastes Your Time.  It's estimated that the average casual user (17 minutes per day on Facebook) who has been active on the site for 10 years has wasted upwards of 40 entire days of their lives scrolling and liking and commenting on pictures and posts.  And more engaged users, who spend at least an hour a day on the site, have clocked 150 days feeding the Facebook beast during the same time.  Think about how long you spend on the site each day, and what else could be a more productive use of your time.

Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives.  Facebook announced Monday [5/23/2016] it was sending employees out for retraining and would discontinue some of its practices as it sought to defend itself against charges of political bias against conservatives.  The online giant denied that it's shown "systematic political bias," but admitted employees played a bigger role than previously acknowledged in determining what news is highlighted in the trending topics section.  Facebook also acknowledged that rogue employees may have unintentionally discriminated against conservative stories or even acted with malice in "isolated improper actions."

Glenn Beck:  Fooled by Facebook?  I'll get right to the point.  Fraudbook employs a group of young journalists, known as "news curators," who are empowered to manage the algorithmic results and "refine" what qualifies for the site's "Trending Topics" section.  As company vice president of search Tom Stocky put it, the curators "audit topics surfaced algorithmically:  reviewers are required to accept topics that reflect real world events, and are instructed to disregard junk or duplicate topics, hoaxes, or subjects with insufficient sources."  So already evident is a Fraudbook deception:  the Trending Topics section is supposed to reflect "popularity," not politically correctness.  Who decides what constitute "real world events"?  What is a "junk" topic and who defines such?

Facebook Concludes Internal Investigation, Declares Itself Not Guilty!  The findings have been released in a letter to Senator John Thune, who earlier this month called the social network to account for allegations that it artificially suppresses conservative topics on its "Trending News" feed, and artificially promoted progressives ones.  In the letter, which can be read in full [elsew]here, Facebook reiterated their long-standing claim that there is no bias in the way they select Trending Topics.

Perino: Facebook recognizes its 'trust problem' with conservatives.  Dana Perino, co-host of Fox News Channel's "The Five," says that Facebook recognizes that it has a 'trust problem' with conservatives following her meeting Wednesday with the social network's CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  Perino, former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, was among a group of leading conservatives invited to the meeting at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., following a Gizmodo report that stories about conservative topics were prevented from appearing in Facebook's trending module.  "FOX & Friends Weekend" co-host and Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson also attended the meeting.

Facebook's Troubling One-Way Mirror.  Facebook says it will not share your identity with advertisers without your permission.  And you can set limits on what they can know.  But at the heart of the relationship is a level of trust and a waiving of privacy that Facebook requires from its users as it pursues its mission to "make the world more open and connected."  But how open is Facebook willing to be in return?  The way it initially handled this month's flare-up over accusations of political bias in its Trending Topics feed can only lead to this answer:  not very.

Mark Zuckerberg Still Denies Suppressing Content After Hosting Conservatives at Facebook.  Mark Zuckerberg has released a statement following his widely-publicized meeting with conservative figures at the company's headquarters earlier today [5/18/2016].  The Facebook CEO acknowledged the predominance of conservatives on his platform, noting that Donald Trump has "more fans on Facebook than any other presidential candidate" and that Fox News "drives more interactions on its Facebook page than any other news outlet in the world."

Zuckerberg's Conservative Battle:  Where There's Smoke, There's Fire.  Mark Zuckerberg and his massive social-media site Facebook have come under strong criticism for allegedly suppressing stories of interest for conservative readers from its influential "trending" news section.  Facebook has roughly 1.6 billion users worldwide, 167 million of whom are in the United States.  Its "trending" section is therefore a powerful political influence.  Zuckerberg has denied the charges, and he will meet Wednesday with a handful of conservatives to discuss allegations that Facebook's "news curators" have manipulated its list of stories.  The way it works at Facebook is that this powerful group of curators, or editors, who have access to a ranked list of trending topics generated by the company's algorithms, control the content of the trending-news section.  In effect, these curators exercise gatekeeping powers, which amount to political news-making powers that are transmitted to Facebook's massive audience.

How Facebook Warps Our Worlds.  Those who've been raising alarms about Facebook are right:  Almost every minute that we spend on our smartphones and tablets and laptops, thumbing through favorite websites and scrolling through personalized feeds, we're pointed toward foregone conclusions.  We're pressured to conform.  But unseen puppet masters on Mark Zuckerberg's payroll aren't to blame.  We're the real culprits.  When it comes to elevating one perspective above all others and herding people into culturally and ideologically inflexible tribes, nothing that Facebook does to us comes close to what we do to ourselves.

How Facebook Became The Old Media, Only Worse.  A report on the inner workings of Facebook's "Trending Topics" headlines exposes how Facebook contractors routinely manipulated the news feed to exclude topics and news sources of interest to people on the right. [...] The giveaway, really, is that the people who manage Trending Topics call themselves "news curators."  Whenever you see the word "curator" or "curate" outside of an actual museum, it means paternalistically chosen based on some hipster recent college grad's notion of what's good for you.  Facebook is a private company and has a right to do what it wants with its news feed.  But this is still big news, for three reasons. [...]

Former Facebook Insider:  We Buried Conservative News.  In an interview with Gizmodo published Monday morning [5/9/2016], [a] former journalist said that stories about CPAC, Mitt Romney and Rand Paul, among other topics, were not allowed to "trend" on Facebook, despite the fact that these stories met all the criteria for a story to be listed as highly influential.  In fact, not only did news curators apparently block conservative news sites, they also regularly boosted unpopular stories into the trending news feed, so as to push a narrative.  This practice occurs even though Facebook maintains it only curates stories that become popular on their own.

Meet The New Media, Same As The Old Media.  While the Washington Post is known as a liberal newspaper, many people were shocked this week to learn that Facebook, the social media giant, is also staunchly liberal.  Thanks to an expose by Gizmodo, Facebook's internal operations involving trending news stories were revealed.  Former news "curators" reported that Facebook suppresses conservative news reports, while promoting stories involving radical leftists.  This has a major influence on younger voters, who tend to learn about news stories from Facebook and other social media sites.  After this story broke, the founder and CEO of Facebook, Marc Zuckerberg, defended his website and refuted the allegations.  In a personal post, Zuckerberg claimed that there was "no evidence that this report is true."  However, frequent Facebook users can attest that the report of liberal bias is unquestionably true.

My conservative page got blocked by Facebook.  [Scroll down]  And a few hours after banning me, Facebook had a change of heart.  "A member of our team accidentally removed something you posted on Facebook," they told me in an email.  "This was a mistake and we sincerely apologize for this error."  Since that fateful day, I've noticed that my page has been subjected to random censorship by the Facebook gods.  I've received dozens of complaints from readers who tell me my content no longer appears on their pages.  In some cases, Facebook won't allow them to share my postings.  And I've lost count of the number of fellow conservative writers whose pages have been blocked, banned or censored.

5 Huge Stories the Media Ignored While Arguing Over Which Bathroom to Use.  [#3] Last week, Gizmodo published an in-depth story detailing how journalists working for the "Facebook Trends" feature of the social networking site were mistreated and quarantined from the rest of the staff.  This week, Gizmodo published a follow-up piece documenting allegations from former employees that curators of the trending section excluded stories from conservative outlets and deliberately failed to include conservative topics from the IRS discrimination scandal to Rand Paul.  Though these exclusions appeared to be unintentional displays of bias from individual employees, they dominated coverage of the story.  But other manipulations of the feed were more deliberate.

Facebook — More Dangerous than the NSA.  A while back, Edward Snowden blew the whistle on our National Security Agency.  They're spying on all our digital devices, have been for years.  Our privacy has vanished. [...] But if you're looking for something to really worry about, how about an equally large computer-based organization with the genuine power to invade our privacy, warp our minds and distort our culture that is actually in the process of doing it — Facebook?  In a media world where print journalism is disappearing and young (and many older) people gather the vast percentage of their information online, its dominance is overwhelming and its effect pernicious, maybe poisonous.

'Fakebook' ups Friend Requests to conservative sites they suppress.  [Scroll down]  Then came word in a stunning Gizmodo exposé that there is no algorithm determining which stories on the Internet are the most popular only "a bunch of young, average liberals actually choosing the news". [...] Since no algorithms but staff choosing what news will go viral on Fakebook, the social media giant has been bending itself into pretzels with the "none of this is true" alibi.

Media Ignoring a MAJOR Part of the Facebook Scandal.  The liberal media are all over one part of the Facebook scandal story — and ignoring another.  Generally, media have covered the accusations that the social media site is censoring conservative news and sources from their trending news feed.  Coincidentally, this is also the part of the Facebook story affecting the media.  Potentially a bigger scandal (because it affects more people) is the accusation that Facebook censors individual member pages, blogs, smaller media outlets, and discussion groups reflecting a conservative point of view.  Sometimes, the sites are shut down, sometimes they are simply threatened into silence.

Censoring the news isn't Facebook's only threat to democracy.  To recap:  After interviewing several former so-called "news curators," responsible for Facebook's trending news section, Gizmodo says that the social-media platform decided to ignore some stories about conservative topics that had actually generated a lot of discussion among users.  One curator kept a list:  Omitted stories, he said, included CPAC, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and, in a weirdly ironic twist, bias by the Internal Revenue Service against conservative groups.  Some curators reportedly considered conservative media outlets insufficiently credible, including their news only after more left-leaning or centrist publications also picked up the story.

Former Facebook Employees Claim Website Snuffed Conservative News.  Former Facebook employees have told Gizmodo that the company regularly told them to stamp out conservative news even if it trended on the website. [...] "Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending," stated the former employee, who identifies as a conservative.  "I'd come on shift and I'd discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn't be trending because either the curator didn't recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz."

Top Republican demands answers over alleged Facebook political bias.  A top Republican senator on Tuesday demanded answers from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over allegations that the social media giant's trending news feature omits topics popular with conservatives.  "Facebook must answer these serious allegations and hold those responsible to account if there has been political bias in the dissemination of trending news," said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) in a statement.  "Any attempt by a neutral and inclusive social media platform to censor or manipulate political discussion is an abuse of trust and inconsistent with the values of an open Internet."

The Editor says...
True, but only if Facebook makes claims to be a news medium rather than an enhanced chat room.  (And perhaps that is the case.  I wouldn't know — I've never been on Facebook.)  Otherwise, Facebook is a private company that is free to pass or block anything on its web site.

The Senate Has No Business Investigating Facebook.  If you're put off by freedom-hating Attorneys General trying to shut down speech, or the Democratic Party's crusade to inhibit political expression by overturning Citizens United, or you thought the Fairness Doctrine was basically censorship, I'm not sure how you rationalize supporting the GOP Senate's investigation into the conduct of Facebook.  Though in this case, many liberals will argue that corporations deserve the same constitutional protections as regular people, but it's been the Left that wanted to give government the power to dictate what kind of cakes Americans bake, who they have to let into their bathrooms, what ingredients they must not put in their food and whose contraception they must buy.  Conservatives have, in the past few years, avoided such intrusions.  Now they want to get involved in demanding private companies adhere to speech codes?

Facebook news selection is in hands of editors not algorithms, documents show.  Leaked documents show how Facebook, now the biggest news distributor on the planet, relies on old-fashioned news values on top of its algorithms to determine what the hottest stories will be for the 1 billion people who visit the social network every day.  The documents, given to the Guardian, come amid growing concerns over how Facebook decides what is news for its users.  This week the company was accused of an editorial bias against conservative news organizations, prompting calls for a congressional inquiry from the US Senate commerce committee chair, John Thune.

Facebook's Trending Topics Executive Is A Big Hillary Clinton Donor.  The Facebook executive who oversees the Trending Topics product for the social media giant is a big Hillary Clinton donor, public records show. [...] Facebook claims it has "rigorous guidelines" to prevent political bias from corrupting its news aggregation service, but Tom Stocky, the Facebook executive in charge of the Trending Topics product, has a long history of progressive political activism.  In October of 2015, for example, Stocky and his wife, a Google executive, donated $5,400 to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics:

Facebook exec: 'No evidence' to support political bias allegations.  A Facebook executive said early Tuesday morning that the company had found "no evidence" to support allegations that conservative subjects had been kept out of its "Trending" section.  "We take these reports extremely seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true," said Tom Stocky, the company' vice president for search, in a post on Facebook.

Is Facebook Censoring Conservative News?  How Social Media Controls What We See.  Gizmodo's Michael Nunez is out today with a sensational story in which former Facebook employees claim they regularly censored the platform's "trending" news section to eliminate stories about conservative topics that were organically trending, blacklisted certain news outlets from appearing and artificially "injected" stories they felt were important but that the site's users were not discussing or clicking on. [...] In short, as the curtain has been lifted on Facebook's magical trending algorithm, the mythical unbiased algorithm powering what users see on the site is seen to be less machine and more biased human curator.  Yet, given Facebook's phenomenal reach across the world and the role it increasingly plays as primary news gateway for more and more people, the notion that it is systematically curating what its users see in an unalgorithmic and partisan way raises alarm bells on the future of how we access and consume information.

Facebook Is Censoring Conservative News And Opinion.  Facebook has often been accused of being liberal and censoring conservative news and commentary, but now people are offering proof that those accusations may, indeed, be true.  The social media site is censoring conservative news and opinion on both their news feed and posts on individual member pages.  Gizmodo, a major tech blog, interviewed some of the former editors for Facebook's news aggregation service (Facebook calls them "news curators"). While technically not Facebook employees, these curators have "the power to choose what stories make it onto the trending bar and, more importantly, what news sites each topic links out to."  They contend the selection of stories and sources for Facebook is automated but, based on the directions they received, some sources and topics are "blacklisted" to avoid exposing readers to conservative points of view.

Somewhat related:

A blogger was dragged off to a mental ward because of his Facebook posts.  Exactly what you'd expect in North Korea, China, or Cuba.
'Outraged' judge frees veteran Raub from Virginia psych ward.  [Scroll down]  His saga began Aug. 16.  That's when [Brandon] Raub was taken into custody at his Richmond home by FBI and Secret Service agents and Chesterfield County Police.  He was not charged with a crime, yet he was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police vehicle.  From there, Mr. Raub was taken to a police station and then to the John Randolph Medical Facility in Hopewell, Va., for a psychiatric evaluation.  He was never formally arrested or charged with a crime, Mr. Whitehead said.  "He was in his underwear, in his living room, he sees a group of police, FBI agents walking up, he talks with them, he's asked about some Facebook postings, they handcuff him," Mr. Whitehead said.

There is more about Brandon Raub on this page.

Ohio Cops Think This Guy Should Go to Jail for Making Fun of Them.  Anthony Novak's parody of the Parma Police Department's Facebook page included what the Cleveland Plain Dealer describes as "obviously fake news posts," but this is not one of them:  The Parma Police Department wants to charge the 27-year-old with a felony for creating the page.  The felony, disrupting public services, is punishable by up to 18 months in prison — a pretty steep penalty for irking local police officials.  "We believe the material that Novak posted on the fake account crossed the line from satire to an actual risk to public safety," Lt. Kevin Riley told The Plain Dealer.  "We presented the facts of this case and the investigation to our law department, and they agreed that Novak's actions were criminal in nature."  It is hard to see how.  Novak's page is no longer online, but there is nothing in The Plain Dealer's description of of it that sounds like a crime.

This is a lot like the zero-tolerance nonsense in the public schools.
Eagle-Eyed Detective Thwarts Inmate's Theft Of Jail Spork Valued At Two Cents.  After completing a jail sentence, a Florida woman left the Manatee County lockup last month with a smuggled memento of her time behind bars.  In a Facebook post, the woman wrote, "just a pic of a souvenir I picked up on my 6 month vacation."  Next to that caption was a photo of a spork, the spoon/fork hybrid used by inmates during jail meals.  In a subsequent message, the inmate noted that, "it wasn't easy to get out with me... that's for sure!!!"  What the inmate, whose last name is Jones, did not anticipate was that her Facebook page was being monitored by Detective Todd Zink of the Manatee County Sheriff's Office.

Woman issued citation by authorities for Facebook comment.  Christine Adamski said she was surprised last week when she received a citation in the mail for a comment she made on Facebook, but she also knew immediately she wasn't going to pay it.  Adamski, 25, opened the $50 ticket from the Will County Forest Preserve District last week and read the letter alleging she had used a dog park without a proper permit.  The citation arrived at her Bolingbrook home with a letter explaining the ticket, an application for a dog park permit as well as a copy of her social media post "admitting her guilt."  "I laughed," Adamski said Thursday.  "I was like, this is totally untrue.  Obviously I'm not going to pay this."

Facebook Monitors Your Private Messages and Photos For Criminal Activity, Reports them to Police.  Facebook has a new little known software that monitors your profile chat and pictures for criminal activity.  The software will proceed to alert an employee at the company who will then decide whether to call authorities or not.  The software will monitor individuals who have a 'loose' relationship on social media networks, according to an interview with Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan.

When Cops Check Facebook.  For the past several years, police and prosecutors across the country have been quietly using social media to track criminal networks.  Their methods have become more sophisticated:  by combining social media APIs, databases, and network analysis tools, police can keep tabs on gang activity.  In New York's Harlem neighborhood, at-risk teens are identified as members of gangs based on their affiliations and are monitored on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

The Department of Homeland Security Is Searching Your Facebook and Twitter for These Words.  The Department of Homeland Security monitors your updates on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, to uncover "Items Of Interest" (IOI), according to an internal DHS document released by the EPIC.  That document happens to include a list of the baseline terms for which the DHS — or more specifically, a DHS subcontractor hired to monitor social networks — use to generate real-time IOI reports.

That's what Carnivore was all about.

List reveals keywords feds monitor on Facebook, Twitter.  Have you ever wondered if the government — or more specifically, the Department of Homeland Security — is monitoring your Twitter or Facebook posts?  If the answer's "yes," give yourself a pat on the back because you're right and not simply paranoid.  There's even a list of keywords for which subcontractors hired by the DHS check social networks.

Government Set Up A Fake Facebook Page In This Woman's Name.  The Justice Department is claiming, in a little-noticed court filing, that a federal agent had the right to impersonate a young woman online by creating a Facebook page in her name without her knowledge.  Government lawyers also are defending the agent's right to scour the woman's seized cell phone and to post photographs — including racy pictures of her and even one of her young son and niece — to the phony social media account, which the agent was using to communicate with suspected criminals.

Somewhat related:
Navy veteran fired for posting Homeland Security vehicles on Facebook.  A Facebooking employee of Chesterfield's Drury Plaza Hotel is out of a job after curiosity over dozens of Homeland Security vehicles in the hotel garage got the best of him.  His photos on social media got him fired.  Mark Paffrath saw the collection of vehicles last Thursday [11/13/2014], and it certainly got his attention.  "It was very odd that there was a bunch of Homeland Security cars there and I was shocked and took a picture and a short video and posted them to Facebook with the status update, 'What are these vehicles doing here?  I wonder if it has anything to do with Ferguson?'"

Man Who Leaked DHS Pictures Branded a Terrorist: "You Will Be Incarcerated".  Did you know that taking pictures of Department of Homeland Security vehicles and posting them on the internet could land you on a terrorist watch list, or even in prison?  Navy Veteran Mark Paffrath, who recently took pictures of DHS vehicles parked in full public view at the Drury Plaza Hotel in Missouri has been terminated from his job, threatened with imprisonment and branded a terrorist.  Paffrath was on his way to work when he saw the vehicles and decided to snap some photos and a video.

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