Tag: censorship

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

The Latest Fake Mystery

alt tech, social media, MeWe, Gab, Parler

We Americans want to have our say, speak our piece — we do not wish to be gagged. No mystery to that. No puzzle. No strange, arcane, unexpected turn of our temper.

But that’s how it must seem to Nathan Bomey, author of “Parler, MeWe, Gab gain momentum as conservative social media alternatives in post-Trump age,” gracing the pages of USA Today.

“America’s crisis of political segregation — we increasingly don’t live alongside, associate with or even marry people who think differently from us — is increasingly leading conservatives to congregate together on social media outlets designed specifically for people who think like them.”

This is a passage of surpassing dumbness.

To pick one fundamental ideological divide at random: capitalist twitterers have never had any problem with posting tweets “alongside” socialist twitterers. The problem is the growing censorship of tweets that officials and employees at tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Google happened to dislike or disagree with for any reason.

This censorship was revved up during the recent election.

Bomey does mention claims of censorship by the persons being censored, but treats these as the ravings of “the extremist crowd.” He adds: “Experts on political polarization say [the rise of alternative social media] is a natural outgrowth of our divided culture. . . .”

Again: a major reason the alternatives to Twitter etc. are gaining such traction is the censorship. People are leaving the Big-Tech-sponsored discourse because they are being censored. 

You don’t kick people out of the room and then scratch your head in wonderment, asking, “Gee willikers, why are you guys going away?”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. I have Minds and Gab accounts, but do not use them. Should I start again? I just set up a MeWe account. What alternative social media apps do you use?

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Twitter’s Election Interference

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Twitter, censorship,

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube . . . they sucked us in by pretending to be non-biased platforms for everybody, yet now suppress content that chiefly rubs against one set of clients, supporters of the Democratic Party.

The current case regards the water-damaged computer of (reportedly) Hunter Biden, the content of which reached the New York Post by way of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But the bigger story is that Twitter won’t allow links to the Post’s reporting, going so far as to lock the Post’s primary account; Facebook has also tried to suppress the story. 

Now it’s blowing up everywhere.

It’s bad for the Bidens: emails suggest the former Vice-President played more of a role than previously claimed in what has always looked improper — no, corrupt — except to most mainstream media.*

No wonder, then, that we hear calls for government regulation of social media.

Shivers down my spine.

But what I have not heard? Giving Democrats a dish of what they love: federal campaign finance law.

Does not social media’s clearly uneven content suppression amount to material support for one set of political candidates over others? Why not stick Democrats with their own beloved regime?

But great minds think alike: while proofreading the above, I found a tweet by Lee Spieckerman, a Texas media specialist: “The @TheJusticeDept should immediately begin investigating @jack [Twitter’s CEO] for illegal in-kind campaign contribution to @JoeBiden.”

While I oppose campaign finance regulation, we must not** let such regulations only be used by one side against the other. 

Yet maybe if we make the threat, social media will come to its senses, and Democrats will see the error of McCain-Feingold.

Too crazy? Or the right amount of 2020 crazy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* A state-connected Chinese bank and a well-connected Russian woman lathered Hunter up with millions and billions of dollars for only one plausible reason: his father’s position in our government. Hunter Biden joined that Ukrainian oil company board after Joe Biden became point-man for our country’s Ukrainian policy.

 ** In the past, I have addressed this notion of applying bad regulations equally, including campaign finance laws specifically.

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international affairs media and media people

Defying China . . . for Now

China, Hong Kong, Big Tech, censorship, surveillance,

According to a New York Times report, “American Internet giants are struggling to respond” to China’s recent crackdown on Hong Kong.

For now, the outcome of the struggle is that Facebook, Twitter, and Google have stopped sharing data with Hong Kong officials. Doing so has become tantamount to sharing data with the Chinese government.

If this wasn’t clear before China’s repressive new “national security” laws in Hong Kong, it’s clear now. The Chinese government is systematically working to muzzle and punish anyone who threatens “national security” by openly criticizing the Chinese government.

Yahoo has changed its policies as well, so that users are now governed in their dealings with Yahoo by American law, not local Hong Kong law (rapidly becoming synonymous with the mainland’s edicts).

So far, so good. 

Worrying, though, is how inconsistent the tech giants have been. Yahoo once helped the Chinese government to identify and imprison two dissidents, claiming it had “no choice” but to turn over the info. Google and others have worked with China to censor information that the Chinese government doesn’t want its citizens to see.

These companies should never — in no way, shape, or form — help China go after dissidents. 

They should never cooperate, rationalize, compromise. 

It would be better to pack up their services and leave Hong Kong altogether than to “struggle” to find a middle way that “sort of” cooperates with China’s repression — and “sort of” leaves Hong Kongers in the lurch.

To bolster these companies’ new backbones, we had best leverage our power as customers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Second Amendment rights

Students Fight Back

Austin Tong, David Dorn, Hong Kong

Everywhere, assaults on freedom and free speech are going full blast. Violent True Believers are on the march as others, even if less overtly barbaric, provide cover, an excuse.

For example, the State University of New York at Binghamton has cooperated with left-wing thugs to suppress conservatives.

The mob stole or destroyed posters and the table students were using to promote an appearance by Arthur Laffer, the noted supply-side economist. The same mob also disrupted the lecture itself. A lawsuit brought by the victimized students accuses officials of failing “to take action to defend College Republicans’ constitutional rights” and supporting the “physically abusive actions of the College Progressives.”

Another student under attack is Austin Tong. Recently, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has been going to bat for Tong, a Fordham University student suspended for social media posts.

One is a picture of Tong holding (not pointing) a legally owned rifle, intended to draw attention to the Tiananmen Square massacre. The other shows black police captain David Dorn, who was murdered by looters. Its caption chastises members of the Black Lives Matter movement for apparent indifference to Dorn’s fate.

Before suspending him for “bias” and “threats,” university personnel showed up at Tong’s house to interrogate him about the posts.

Tong is unapologetic, and FIRE says that Fordham has “acted more like the Chinese government than an American university, placing severe sanctions on a student solely because of off-campus political speech.”

Far from isolated cases, unfortunately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Wrong Field for You

New York Times, toilet paper, editorial, censorship, 1st Amendment,

“If you’re an emotionally unstable baby who regards disagreement as ‘violence,’” tweeted “roving journalist” Michael Tracey, “journalism is probably the wrong field for you.”

Only half-right. Given their goals, filling jobs that would otherwise be filled by journalists is indeed the right thing for hysterico-new-new-Left activists — just as bank-tellering is right for inside men helping bank robbers rob banks.

Tracey is commenting on how New York Times “journalists” — and others — apoplexed over the Times’ sin of permitting unqualified disapproval of mass rioting to grace its editorial pages. In his June Third op-ed, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton argued that the rioters, “if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives.” He recommended invoking the Insurrection Act in order to deploy the military.

One can argue about whether invoking the Act would be a good idea. 

Or one could, even in the Times . . . if one weren’t thereby invading the “safe space” of pseudo-journalists who had supposed that they need never face the hazards of fundamental debate within its pages.

An abject but vague apology now prefaces the op-ed. 

The Times has also fired the editor who let it be published. 

After all, by the time it reached print, Cotton’s piece did continue to contain evaluations with which someone might disagree.

This is a new low for the Times, which continues its downward spiral. The rest of us, I trust, will escape that vortex, resisting the great flush down to the sewer at civilization’s end.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Who’s Banned What?

Facebook, censorship, protests, corona virus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic,

Has dissent about pandemic policy been outlawed? 

I mean, “for the duration”?

Well, no. 

The Internet displays every possible view of policy and epidemiology, expressed with every possible degree of temperateness or intemperateness.

Yet we are indeed seeing signs of indifference to freedom of speech even when that speech cannot entail breathing a coronavirus on anybody.

According to CNN, Facebook told the network: “Anti-quarantine protests being organized through Facebook in California, New Jersey, and Nebraska are being removed from the platform on the instruction of governments in those three states because it violates stay-at-home orders.”

Online posts “violate stay-at-home orders”? 

Who knew? 

Obviously, a protest that violates social-distancing rules (if it does) is not the same thing as a communication about the protest.

Apparently, Facebook is a willing functionary of whichever state governments will instruct it to carry out their censorship. Tyler O’Neil opines that “it is disconcerting that Facebook would work with local governments to remove pages organizing protests against them.” 

Yes, indeed.

But such reports have been disputed. Facebook may be acting on its own. For example, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy says that his office “did not ask Facebook to remove pages or posts for events promoting lifting the provisions of the Governor’s stay-at-home order.” Nebraska also denies making such a request. 

Which version of the story is true? 

Which is worse? 

Both are creepy.

I just hope that this muzzling-speech-just-to-help thing doesn’t start spreading like a virus.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

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Facebook, censorship, protests, corona virus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic,

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people Snowden

The Whistleblower Who Shall Not Be Named

Rand Paul

“YouTube — Google, one of the largest, most powerful companies on the planet — has just censored political discourse from a U.S. senator on the Senate floor,” reports independent, online journalist Tim Pool. 

The case refers to the alleged “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, around whom hangs a sort of hush-hush infamy regarding the Ukraine phone call that became the centerpiece of the Democrat’s impeachment of Donald Trump. YouTube, under a self-imposed/tribe-imposed gag order not to mention the man’s name, takes down all videos that dare breach this rule. YouTube just took down a C-Span video featuring Senator Rand Paul discussing Mr. Ciaramella on the Senate floor — in which he defended whistleblower protections, but notes that they do not enforce anonymity.*

“Think about how dangerous that will be.”

“It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure [sic] speech,” the senator was quoted in The Washington Examiner after YouTube removed the clip. “Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people.”

Rand Paul has been demanding full disclosure of possible conspiracy on the part of Ciaramella — working with Representative Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment push — but has not been getting very far. During the Senate impeachment trial, presiding officer Chief Justice Roberts declined to read a question (“as written”) by the senator that had specified the Unnamable Name without identifying him as the “whistleblower.”

Google is free to play censor, of course, but who wants an information age without the information?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The senator also expressed some incredulity about the near-universal proclamations in support of whistleblower laws, calling Edward Snowden “the greatest whistleblower of all-time” but noting that half the Senate wanted Snowden put to death and the other half to plunk him “in jail forever. So it depends on what you blow the whistle on whether or not they’re for the whistleblower statute.”

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education and schooling ideological culture

The Awful Strain of Insurmountable Parody

Hitler, Downfall, parody,

What if “political correctness” were really a problem of rampant cowardice?

University of Massachusetts Amherst administrators removed Catherine West Lowry from her 13-year gig as an accounting lecturer because of an extra-credit project. 

She had shown a previous year’s student-produced parody video using the infamous Hitler breakdown scene in the excellent 2004 movie Downfall. I assume you’ve seen dozens of these; I know I have. Their ubiquity notwithstanding, the university claims to have received student complaints about the one Ms. Lowry showed.

The proper response to a protestation of offense at a Downfall parody? Eye rolls. Were I a professor, I’d have to resist the nearly irresistible desire to reduce office hours starting immediately. 

Any other response, especially dismissing the lecturer, is pure pusillanimity.

Or, make that cowardice of the impure variety, for I suppose something else could be going on here.

Lowry claims that she’d shown this particular effort in previous years and no one had complained. And I believe her.

Can we believe the university’s claim to have received complaints from students this year?

Before we accept such a statement, we should peruse the evidence. After all, in the case of the Wilfrid Laurier University mistreatment of the T.A. who had shown a Jordan Peterson video in class, administrators had simply lied — there had been no complaints.

Had UMass Amherst actually received complaints, then their response would be merely cowardice. But were there no complaints, the whole thing becomes far more ominous.

And I wonder: what would today’s university make of Hogan’s Heroes?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hitler, Downfall, parody,

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Popular too much government

Gloating Time?

net neutrality, censorship, control, FCC,

“The freak-out was something to behold,” I wrote two years ago.

Newly appointed chair of Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, had just nixed ‘net neutrality,’ and reactions from the left end of the political spectrum were overwhelmingly negative.

I, on the other hand, prophesied good times ahead. But we free-market folks were outshouted.

At least on Twitter. 

Now, two years later, with something like a free market returned to Internet regulation, Casey Given at the Washington Examiner urges us not to “forget how the Left cried wolf.”

Contrary to doomsayers — whose alarm was that, sans net neutrality, we would experience “the End of the Internet as We Know It” — things are turning out pretty well. Mr. Given tells us that “since the repeal of net neutrality, more than 6 million people have gained access to the internet. Internet speeds have increased as well.”

Which shouldn’t shock. After all, the whole net neutrality mania was fear-based anti-capitalist prejudice. 

“The Internet had stumbled along just fine until 2015, when President Barack Obama’s FCC put ‘net neutrality’ in place — a point Ajit Pai ably makes in his defense,” I argued two orbits ago. “Do the doom-sayers really believe that a set of regulations that had been in place just a few years was going to ‘ruin the Internet’ and unleash Big Corporations upon the world to the detriment of regular consumers and start-up service providers?”

What most net neutrality advocates wouldn’t acknowledge, at the time, was that net neutrality was supported by key telecom corporations. This should have given them a hint that net neutrality itself was the thing to be most feared: a rigged system for a few at the expense of the many.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights media and media people political challengers

The Silence Option

gatekeeper, Twitter, Facebook, censorship, political advertising,

“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said last month in announcing a complete ban on political advertising for candidates or issues, “that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.”

But is it the risk to “the lives of millions” that is at issue here?

Really?

Pressure for social media companies to police “renegade” voices came mainly from the left . . . in Congress and major media. These are the groups with the most to lose by the free flow of political debate, as spurred by paid political advertising, which is what challengers often use to break through the incumbents’ natural advantage. 

Congress is filled with incumbents, by definition.

Major media sees itself as gatekeeper for political discourse, and feels threatened by an unregulated online culture.

Accordingly, Twitter’s ban received rave reviews from the political left. “Good call,” progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded. A spokesperson for former Vice-President Joe Biden’s campaign called it “encouraging.”*

“Good,” tweeted Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (also sort of a presidential candidate). “Your turn, Facebook.”

But Facebook is thankfully not bending to pressure.

“[I]f Facebook were to cut off political ads, it could end up undercutting the scrappy, first-time candidates . . .,” reports The Washington Post. “Voters are more likely to see Facebook ads than television ads from challengers, according to the findings, published in a working paper whose first author is Erika Franklin Fowler of Wesleyan University.”

“Online advertising lowers the cost and the barriers to entry,” Fowler told The Washington Post.

Which is bad for the political establishment because it is good for challengers, the outsiders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*  Perhaps the ban encourages top Democrats for the same reason the president’s campaign manager sounded the alarm: “This is yet another attempt to silence conservatives since Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever known.”

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