Tag: social media

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First Amendment rights ideological culture Internet controversy social media

Google Can’t Have That

censorship

Over the last several years, one has put one’s YouTube speech at risk by addressing such verboten or intermittently suppressed topics as pandemic policy, vaccine efficacy, origin of the COVID-19 virus, “climate change” (are winter, summer, and all natural disasters really caused by carbon footprints? inquiring minds want to know!), 2020 election fraud, and whatever else inspires post-Enlightenment institutional censors to clatter into action.

Because of the emails and other documents that have come to light in various lawsuits, we now know for sure that social-media companies have not been censoring independently. 

They’ve been in cahoots with government agencies — agencies eager to find corporate workarounds to the First Amendment.

A recent target of Google’s YouTube? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Running for president as a Democrat in competition with the alleged incumbent, Joe Biden, this son of assassinated 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy is disturbing the serene pools of so-called thought that constitute Acceptable Opinion and Settled Science.

I often disagree with Kennedy. But I feel that he isn’t just feeding me B.S.; he actually believes stuff. 

He may be mostly wrong, but I prefer that to mostly crooked.

Google has just deleted another Kennedy video, one in which he converses with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson about climate change, COVID-19, and a possible link between exposure to chemicals and sexual dysphoria.

This last musing seems dubious. But, whatever, let the guy talk. Except — hold on — isn’t RFK Jr. causing Joe Biden a lot of political trouble?

Can’t have that. 

Or, anyway, Google can’t have that. 

Or whichever Biden administration officials are directing Google (or vice versa) can’t have that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

X Information

big government, big tech, big business surveillance, censorship

For well over a century, politicians have pushed Big Government/Big Business partnerships. The policy, indeed, is as old as politics. While we who like free markets often like [some of] the products of today’s biggest businesses, we must recognize that much of what these corporations sell us comes with strings attached — as we’ve found out to our dismay in the corruption of major social media outfits; as proven by the attacks on our speech and to the undermining of free elections.

Before the #TwitterFiles revelations, Michael Rectenwald, author of The Google Archipelago and other books, wrote a commentary that appeared in the pre-Christmas edition of The Epoch Times: “Who Really Owns Digital Tech?” In less than a thousand words, Rectenwald makes clear how deep governments have been involved in the tech space — particularly the Internet Space.

“Given the evidence of government start-up funding,” Rectenwald reasons, “we may have to concede the argument that the internet might have developed differently, more slowly, or not at all if the Defense Department hadn’t been involved at the outset. Likely, what we know as the internet would have become a system of private networks” — and in this dispersed-power system, free speech would not become a major issue, because not as easy a target.

As it is, however, “Twitter has operated as an instrument of the uniparty-run state, squelching whatever the regime deems ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’” Rectenwald writes, giving us an ominous list of the topics of xinformation:

  • warfare
  • economics
  • pandemics
  • elections
  • climate change catastrophism
  • the Great Reset

There are big gains for . . . some. Big Biz/Big Gov partnerships imply gains for both partners: business people gain access to governmental power and favors, and politicians and functionaries gain leverage to mold the citizenry. 

And that is where we have seen the partnership’s worst.

So far.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

X Information (alternate illustration)

For well over a century, politicians have pushed Big Government/Big Business partnerships. The policy, indeed, is as old as politics. While we who like free markets often like [some of] the products of today’s biggest businesses, we must recognize that much of what these corporations sell us comes with strings attached — as we’ve found out to our dismay in the corruption of major social media outfits; as proven by the attacks on our speech and to the undermining of free elections.

Before the #TwitterFiles revelations, Michael Rectenwald, author of The Google Archipelago and other books, wrote a commentary that appeared in the pre-Christmas edition of The Epoch Times: “Who Really Owns Digital Tech?” In less than a thousand words, Rectenwald makes clear how deep governments have been involved in the tech space — particularly the Internet Space.

“Given the evidence of government start-up funding,” Rectenwald reasons, “we may have to concede the argument that the internet might have developed differently, more slowly, or not at all if the Defense Department hadn’t been involved at the outset. Likely, what we know as the internet would have become a system of private networks” — and in this dispersed-power system, free speech would not become a major issue, because not as easy a target.

As it is, however, “Twitter has operated as an instrument of the uniparty-run state, squelching whatever the regime deems ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’” Rectenwald writes, giving us an ominous list of the topics of xinformation:

  • warfare
  • economics
  • pandemics
  • elections
  • climate change catastrophism
  • the Great Reset

There are big gains for . . . some. Big Biz/Big Gov partnerships imply gains for both partners: business people gain access to governmental power and favors, and politicians and functionaries gain leverage to mold the citizenry. 

And that is where we have seen the partnership’s worst.

So far.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights government transparency

Cough It All Up

public private partnership

The state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration for censorship. Thanks to the lawsuit, we’re learning more and more about how federal officials have pressed Big Tech social media companies to muzzle users who dissent from the Official Narrative about the pandemic.

Much of the evidence coughed up as a result of the litigation has taken the form of email exchanges. An official might email a social-media rep something like: “We find this post disturbing. Can you do something about? Like maybe censor it?” The rep might double-quick reply: “Done! Anything else I can do today to secretly help the government circumvent the First Amendment?”

Certain officials have been particularly central in the saga, including eight persons that a judge is now letting plaintiffs depose: Anthony Fauci, former press secretary Jennifer Psaki, FBI agent Elvis Chan, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Carol Crawford of the CDC, Daniel Kimmage of the State Department, and a couple of others.

During her tenure Psaki spoke openly about the Biden administration’s demand for more censorship of “misinformation,” which is the new code word for disagreement. So it’ll be hard to deny that she said that stuff.

Crawford is in charge of the CDC’s digital media activities, activities that included regular meetings with staff of social-media companies.

Among other subjects, plaintiffs will be asking Anthony Fauci about an email exchange with Francis Collins discussing a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, which opposed lockdown policies.

I’m all ears.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability defense & war general freedom social media

Pentagon Personae

social media, PSYOP, spying, CIA, FBI, NSA, China

We think of Facebook and Twitter as platforms for you and me and our fellow citizens to share information and opinions and photos and just plain fun.

But our government agencies are also on those platforms, secretly as well as openly.

And not just for fun and games.

It’s a serious information war out there — with mis- and dis- elements, too — and Facebook and Twitter may be in over their heads.

“The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States,” wrote Ellen Nakashima in the Washington Post in mid-September, “was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny.”

Ms. Nakashima’s report begins with the big news: “Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month,” and we are told of a “sweeping audit” to probe how the Pentagon “conducts clandestine information warfare.”

This is largely in response to Facebook and Twitter identifying and removing “fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules.”

Social media companies took down actual U.S. military psy-op accounts. But it is worth noting that the report does not mention Facebook or Twitter taking down foreign equivalents, though that has happened in the past.

It might be time to reconsider all government activity in social media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Accountability First Amendment rights general freedom social media

Facebook, the FBI’s Snitch

Facebook, FBI, spying

All we have is the word of Department of Justice whistleblowers.

They told the New York Post that over the last 19 months, Facebook has been cooperating with the FBI to spy on “private” messages of users “outside the legal process and without probable cause.”

The targets were gun enthusiasts and those who questioned 2020’s election results.

“They [Facebook and the FBI] were looking for conservative right-wing individuals. None were Antifa types.”

According to the whistleblowers, Facebook flagged allegedly subversive private messages and sent them to the FBI to be studied by agents specializing in domestic terrorism.

Facebook provided the FBI “with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” Subpoenas were then issued to obtain the conversations that Facebook had already revealed to the FBI.

According to one DOJ source: “As soon as a subpoena was requested, within an hour, Facebook sent back gigabytes of data and photos. It was ready to go. They were just waiting for that legal process so they could send it.”

Facebook has issued a denial. The FBI has issued a non-denial denial.

The allegations might seem very implausible but for the fact that as the November election approaches, the DOJ has been openly targeting Trump allies for claiming “that the vice president and/or president of the Senate had the authority to reject or choose not to count presidential electors.”

In short, for talking out of turn.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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