Tag: censorship

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom international affairs

Virtual Private Communist

Eileen Gu, Olympics, China, censorship

“China censors Olympic gold medalist’s defense of China’s internet censorship . . .” informed Mashable.com’s ironic headline. 

The medalist in question? Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old phenom who just became the youngest ever Olympic freestyle skiing champion. Born in San Francisco to an American father and a Chinese mother, Gu is an American citizen, but chose to ski on the Chinese national team at the Beijing Olympics, which means she is also a Chinese citizen. (Which is completely against Chinese law. But ssshhh.*)

Miss Gu’s now-you-see-it/now-you-don’t Instagram post of February 7th garnered a reply from a Chinese netizen, who inquired, “Why can you use Instagram and millions of Chinese people from mainland cannot, why you got such special treatment as a Chinese citizen?” The commenter added, “That’s not fair,” noting that “millions of Chinese . . . don’t have internet freedom.”

Gu quickly replied, “Anyone can download a vpn its literally free on the App Store.”

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are indeed easily available outside of China, but “it is illegal to use them to get around China’s Great Firewall,” Mashable explained. 

“And, as the Weibo post featuring Gu’s Instagram comment started to gain traction on the social network, it was subsequently censored.”

“Let them have VPNs,” mocked a column in the Taiwan News, dubbing it Gu’s “‘Marie Antoinette’ moment.”

The reality of VPNs in China? Not so easy, and the laws against VPN usage are increasingly enforced.

Gu’s ignorance about the reality of living under Chinese rule may be caused by the wealth showering over her. “Eileen Gu’s China choice pays off for now,” says Yahoo News, noting she has made over $30 million since the beginning of 2021 and is poised to make far more.

This makes her a Communist Party asset, and thus a danger to herself and the rest us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “China does not allow for dual citizenship,” Mashable informs, “and there is no record that Gu has given up her American citizenship.” It appears we can add “looking the other way” and “duplicitousness” to the Chinazis’ long rap sheet of crimes against humanity.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom local leaders nannyism

The Next-Worst Thing

New York City, big apple, mayor, censorship

New Yorkers can breathe easier now — they’re finally rid of the repellent Mayor Bill de Blasio.

But — uh oh — the new mayor, Eric Adams, may be another worm to keep that bitter taste dominant in the Big Apple.

Mayor Adams dislikes guns and violence, so he wants social media to censor rap videos that display and glorify guns. It’s unclear whether he also wants social media to censor links to westerns and Matrix movies and lots of other movies and media in which guns to fight bad guys or bad algorithms are approvingly deployed.

“You have a civic and corporate responsibility,” Adams intones, enjoining social media firms to expand their list of banned things.

“We [we?] pulled Trump off Twitter because of what he was spewing. Yet we are allowing music displaying of guns, violence. We allow this to stay on the sites.”

 “Stagecoach” and a rap video proposing that one “[expletive deleted] that [expletive deleted]” may have little in common in the categories of values and sensibilities. But if violence is “glorified” in both, well, that’s bad. Right?

Adams is a government official. A “public servant.” And a functionary in such a position cannot make solemn, well-publicized declarations about what companies should censor without thereby seeking to enlist them — deputize them, you might say — as agents of government censorship.

He is not sending police to the offices of Twitter and Facebook and ordering them to ban rap-video tweets or else. But he’s doing the next-worst thing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom ideological culture international affairs social media

LinkedIn, Red-Handed

Breitbart, LinkedIn, censorship, China, freedom

How dare they? 

In their eagerness to chastise tyrannical governments and Western lackey tech firms, some persons appear to go so far as to cite — get this — investigative reports.

That’s what one LinkedIn user recently did, anyway. 

So no wonder Microsoft’s LinkedIn felt obliged to censor him for it.

The trouble-making investigative report? Peter Schweizer’s Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win. The LinkedIn user in question tried to share a Breitbart piece about the book: “Red-Handed Exposes Communist China’s Silicon Valley Sympathizers.”

In his own remarks, the censored LinkedIn user chimed in with a condemnation of China’s genocidal policies and American Big Tech’s abetting of the Chinese Communist Party.

LinkedIn says the user’s post violated its policies against “bullying.”

This is “not the first time LinkedIn has been caught censoring criticism of Communist China on its platform,” observes Breitbart.com. LinkedIn is now suppressing posts “that expose Big Tech’s own links to the authoritarian regime in China.

“Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, is exposed in Schweizer’s book for working with the Chinese military on artificial intelligence research.”

I have the answer to this problem.

Before you say something on mainstream social media, ask yourself: “Is the thought I’m about to express something that the Chinazi government would approve? What about LinkedIn and other spineless Chinazi-government-appeasing social-media companies like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook? Would they approve?”

If not, take your heretical thinking to Rumble, Odysee, Teamspeak, Telegram, Gab, MeWe, and/or Clouthub, and express your thoughts there instead. 

I dare you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights ideological culture

The Anti-Free Speech Boycott

Neil Young, Spotify, censorship, free speech, freedom

Now that The Atlantic — a once- or twice- or thrice-upon-a-time great magazine — toes a statist line relentlessly, it is most valuable for its hints at the exact opposite of the truth. 

While Spencer Kornhaber’s article, “Spotify Isn’t Really About the Music Anymore,” may be mostly correct regarding the facts presented in Neil Young’s and Joni Mitchell’s boycotts of Spotify — pulling their music off the Internet platform — the whole angle is off. 

Spotify, we learn, rarely turns a profit in its long tail music biz. By making an exclusive podcasting contract with The Joe Rogan Experience, the company seeks to entice users to pay up to listen to talk-show audio, and thereby become more profitable. 

But is the service not really “about the music anymore”? 

Adding an allied genre does not negate the provision of entertainment to the core audience.

The article’s tagline gets it exactly backwards: “In choosing Joe Rogan over Neil Young, the company has made its new priorities clear to listeners.” Well, no. It was Neil Young (and then Joni Mitchell) who went the narrow, exclusionary route. Spotify had made a long-term contract with Rogan in a bid to attract listeners of podcasts and other spoken-word content. Young and Mitchell didn’t have the same kind of relationship with Spotify, so their attempt to cancel Rogan was doomed.

Unless they get other artists to do the same. Which could sink the company.

Then we would see the culture war ramp up another notch, with the artistic community segregating itself against those of differing (non-leftist*/non-statist/pro-freedom) opinions.

It’s something rich old rock-n-roller cranks can do. 

But a dangerous strategy for younger artists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Even leftists with differing opinions shall be shunned; back in 2020, Joe Rogan endorsed socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for president. 

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights social media

Google Shareholders vs. Google Censorship

Joe Biden, censorship, big tech

Some Google shareholders are pressing Google for records of its communications with the Biden administration. And not just any old records. They are specifically demanding those pertaining to the administration’s demands for censorship.

Per the First Amendment, it is unconstitutional for government to seek to muzzle people for saying things that government officials disapprove of.

Yet the Biden Administration and others, including members of Congress, have openly (and repeatedly) urged big-tech social media companies to more assiduously censor discussion of COVID-19 policy, COVID-19 vaccines, the nature of COVID-19. The president did this again just last week: “I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets — please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop.”

Everything we’ve seen adds up to a slam-dunk case against the government for violating the First Amendment. We know that government officials are asking social-media companies to censor. They’re not hiding it.

Suing the government’s big-tech lackeys — and government officials, when plausible — is one way to combat the evil.

The National Legal and Policy Center, a Google shareholder, is trying to secure a requirement that the company disclose the content of any communications between itself and the government related to the Biden Administrations calls for censorship. Last summer, the administration stated that it was “in regular touch” with the big-tech giants.

Will Google voluntarily produce documents showing that it acquiesced in specific Biden administration demands for censorship?

No. But as Charles Glasser has pointed out, there is precedent for a judicial finding that media are de facto “government agents” when they work “hand-in-hand with government in violating constitutional rights.”

The effort may not succeed, but it’s worth a shot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
social media

Reversing the Irreversible

Heroes of Liberty, censorship, Facebook

Facebook has reversed its “irreversible” decision to strip Heroes of Liberty, a publisher, of all advertising revenue.

On December 23, Facebook locked the publisher’s ad account because of “low quality or disruptive content.” The ads pitched children’s books about figures like Ronald Reagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Thomas Sowell.

When Heroes of Liberty appealed, Facebook dug in its heels: “You can no longer advertise with this ad account and its ads and assets will remain disabled. This is our final decision.”

Heroes of Liberty editor Bethany Mandel suspects that a small group of hysterical critics of the Heroes of Liberty series provoked the action.

“These are the same people who riot and take down statues of our founding fathers,” she says. “They want to strip us of our ability to honor our heroes in the digital sphere and in children’s books.”

After sharp public criticism of the action, Facebook restored the account. The scope of the censorship proved a little too embarrassing, for now.

Just a silly little mistake that could happen to any giant high-tech censor?

Well, no. 

One, somebody writes the algorithms.

Two, somebody confirmed the decision to kill a publisher’s advertising account solely because its books have the “wrong” mission.

Fortunately, we are getting more and more alternatives to the high-tech censors . . . and the alternatives we already have are growing fast. The sooner we can make the Facebooks, Googles, and Twitters of the world irrelevant to online success, the better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism social media

Tom Paine Sues Facebook

Thomas Paine, truth, offense, censorship

The ghost of Thomas Paine is suing Instagram and Facebook.

Mr. Paine, the eloquent champion of the American Revolution who penned such zeitgeist-capturing volumes as Common Sense, The American Crisis, and The Rights of Man, is going to court to protest the indignity that these social-media forums recently inflicted upon his spirit by censoring his statement that “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

The statement comes from an op-ed Paine published in the April 24, 1776 issue of the Pennsylvania Journal: “Cato’s partizans may call me furious; I regard it not. There are men too, who, have not virtue enough to be angry, and that crime perhaps is Cato’s. He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

Mr. Paine seems to be saying that persons of craven mettle often eschew the challenge of being standard-bearers of truth, especially when controversial matters are involved. Articulating such views forthrightly tends to offend — somebody.

The particular mentalities of censorious Facebook flunkies and algorithms are new to Mr. Paine, of course. But he is ready to fight.

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” he declares when asked to assess his prospects, “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. . . . [I]t would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

If that be hate speech, Mr. Paine seems to suggest, make the most of it.

This is Common Sense. Happy New Year! I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies social media

Should I Sue?

Senator Amy Klobuchar, censorship

Well, why not? According to some politicians, I have a perfect right to. 

But, you ask, on what grounds?

Because of the emotional injury I suffer when I listen to these bozos.

Legislation being considered in Congress would permit social-media companies to be sued for causing physical or “severe emotional injury,” a provision of the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act.

This legislation would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act so as to make Internet service providers liable if they algorithmically recommend content that results in “severe emotional injury to any person.”

The text of the legislation is — you guessed it! — vague and murky. And would doubtless be applied with extreme selectivity if enacted.

Other bills being pondered would tackle things like “health misinformation.” Senator Amy Klobuchar declares that it is “our responsibility to take action.” 

Uh, what action?

The action of penalizing social media for inadequately censoring those with whom the senator disagrees.

Such rationalizations of assaults on freedom of speech are severely emotionally injurious to me.

Will I sue? Nah. I wouldn’t win. I doubt I would be one of the ones allowed to collect such bounties. Nor would any successfully passed legislation ever permit congressmen to be sued for their own psyche-pummeling lies, psy-ops, and blather.

Perhaps more importantly, it’s wrong to seek to penalize others merely for exercising freedom of speech, no matter how lousy or dispiriting that speech.

Lousy legislation, though — yes. If only we could sue for that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Klobuchar

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights international affairs

Disney’s Memory Hole

Simpsons, China, censorship

China’s leaders fear Winnie the Pooh.

And The Simpsons.

The totalitarian regime’s opponents liken Xi Jinping, the latest Dear Leader, to Winnie the Pooh — due to an obvious resemblance. So Xi’s government works hard to expunge Winnie images.

The Chinazis also want everyone in China and Hong Kong (not to mention across the universe) to forget the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, when hundreds or thousands of people demanding democratic reform were killed. 

The Walt Disney Company is eager to cooperate with this besieging of memory.

The Simpsons is part of its new streaming service in Hong Kong, where citizens have been losing the last remnants of political freedom permitted under the two-systems agreement of 1997. Whether preemptively or in compliance with instruction from the Chinese government, Disney has deleted a certain episode from the series’ archive available to Hong Kongers.

In the memory-holed episode, “Goo Goo Gai Pain,” Homer, presiding over the corpse of Mao, opines that Mao is “like a little angel that killed fifty million people.”

Another character has a stare-down with a tank, recalling the briefly effective “tank man” confrontation with a row of tanks in that fateful June of 1989.

The episode also satirizes the Chinazi determination to erase all discussion of Tiananmen. For instance, the Simpsons see a sign at Tiananmen Square announcing “on this site, in 1989, nothing happened.”

Instead of appeasing Xi’s government, what should Disney do? 

What anybody who is paid to help repress a people and blank out the past: Stop doing that. 

Forfeit the money. 

Stand up for human rights. 

Or lose them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall international affairs social media

Somebody . . . to Squelch

Punjab, Paul Jacob, Facebook, censorship

I AM . . . somebody!

. . . with an officially “restricted” Facebook account.

I’d like to thank my family and friends for always believing in me — even many decades ago when it was unclear if I had what it takes to even get arrested. And now, after repeated validation per that previous metric, comes my crowning Internet-era achievement: running afoul of the information-squelching policy of massive Meta censorship. 

I’m deeply humbled by the recognition. 

“Your post didn’t follow our Community Standards” was all the information provided. It flagged a post of nearly a month earlier.

“Tomorrow is the big day for the first city — London — to take part in the Punjab Referendum organized by Sikhs for Justice,” my October 30th post read. “It will be a long day . . . but so glad to be part of the international commission advising on best practices, monitoring the actual voting and issuing a report.” Five photos of a meeting and a handout promoting the referendum adorned the post. 

An “Account Restricted” label appeared on my homepage with the note: “Only you can see this.” 

The ban stops me from personally “going live” or “advertising” for 30 days. Two things I don’t do. 

But let’s not allow the absurdity of it all to mask what’s happening: Voices that do not fit the official government-induced corporate narrative are harassed and silenced in a major avenue for communication. 

The too-often-violent situation in the Punjab region of India, what many Sikhs call “Khalistan,” is tense. The non-binding, non-governmental referendum I posted about has been outlawed by India’s government. 

Blocking and punishing posts that speak truthfully about a democratic approach to that ugly division hardly solves the problem.

It works in this case (and others) to prevent a peaceful resolution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts