Feds Use Facebook to Study COVID Vaccine, Testing, and Mask Messaging

healthcare worker giving vaccination

Legislation that would use federal agencies to “nudge” social media platforms to reduce the spread of “harmful content” isn’t going anywhere in the waning days of the 117th Congress. 

As evidenced by the ongoing release of the “Twitter Files,” however, that’s no impediment to the government — and the research universities that so heavily depend on federal funding — enlisting Big Tech to promote favored narratives and throttle competing arguments on contentious topics.

Federal agencies and U.S. universities together have funded or sponsored a dozen studies mentioning Facebook and COVID-19, according to the National Institutes of Health’s ClinicalTrials.gov database.

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10 Major Revelations Exposing Extent of Government Pressure on Big Tech to Censor Americans

Two hundred and thirty-one years ago this month, America’s founders enshrined free speech as the first protection in the ratified Bill of Rights with a declaration that the government could not infringe expression. A series of blockbuster revelations at the end of 2022 show just how imperiled those protections have become in the era of Big Tech.

From Elon Musk’s “Twitter files” to an FBI agent’s candid testimony, Americans have gotten a glimpse into a once-hidden enterprise where federal agencies pressured social media platforms – directly and through proxies – to censor content under their terms of service. The goal, it appears, was to preserve the ruling elite’s favored narratives on everything from the pandemic to election integrity.

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Is There Anything the FBI Won’t Do?

The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant – ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech. 

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.” 

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GOP to Pursue FBI ‘Secret Files’ Regarding Contact with Big Tech

On Sunday, Congressman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said that the new GOP majority in the House of Representatives will investigate recently-revealed examples of collusion between Big Tech and the FBI by pursuing any “secret files” the FBI may have kept on the matter.

The New York Post reports that Turner, the incoming Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that “it is my understanding from our contacts that we have had with the FBI that there are secret files that the FBI has of these contacts that they were having with social media and with mainstream media.”

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More Evidence Reveals CDC Colluded with Social Media Giants to Silence COVID ‘Misinformation’

America First Legal (AFL) released a fourth set of documents obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that reveals more evidence of alleged collusion between the nation’s public health agency and social media companies to censor free speech and silence Americans under the government’s label of “misinformation.”

Last week, AFL’s 600-page document release uncovered evidence that Twitter operated a “Partner Support Portal” for government employees and other selective “stakeholders” that would allow them to delete or flag posts viewed as “misinformation,” noted AFL, which is led by former President Donald Trump’s immigration advisor Stephen Miller.

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FBI Met with Twitter ‘Weekly’ Ahead of 2020, Warned of ‘Hack-and-Leak’ Operations

In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, FBI agents would hold “weekly” meetings with Big Tech company Twitter to discuss content moderation, eventually leading to the agency warning the platform of so-called “hack-and-leak operations” by foreign “state actors” shortly before the company censored the Hunter Biden laptop story on these grounds.

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Commentary: The Administrative State Can Put a Bug in Your Phone

n the age of cellphones and the internet, consumers often face a simple choice: convenience or privacy? Do we let Big Tech have access to our private communications and free email accounts because it’s so easy?

Once you’ve said yes — and who among us has not? — it’s not a stretch to think that Big Data already has almost all your information, so why get picky at the next juncture?

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Judge Denies Jen Psaki’s Attempt to Avoid Testifying About White House-Big Tech Collusion

A federal court denied former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s request Monday to avoid deposition in a lawsuit alleging coordination between Biden administration authorities and social media companies to suppress free speech.

The lawsuit first filed by Republican Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry in May accuses President Joe Biden and administration parties, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of colluding with or coercing the companies to “suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content” on their platforms with “dis-information,” “mis-information” and “mal-information” labels. Psaki filed a motion last week in a bid to avoid complying with the subpoena requiring her to testify, but Judge Terry Doughty of the Western District Court of Louisiana decided Monday to reject the motion and Psaki’s alternative request to stay her deposition.

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Twitter Removes Warning Flag on ‘Just the News’ Ballot-Harvesting Story After Direct Appeal to Musk

Elon Musk

Twitter has removed its warning label on a post from the account of Just the News editor-in-chief John Solomon about his story on a whistleblower alleging ballot harvesting in Florida, following Solomon’s direct appeal to the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk.

Solomon made the post Thursday that included a link to his interview with the whistleblower. The label was put on the post Friday, and as of Monday morning, it was no longer there.

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Elon Musk Vows to Review Why Just the News Story Was Censored

Twitter owner Elon Musk on Sunday said he would “look into” why a story from Just the News about election ballots was marked as “unsafe” on the social media platform.

“I will look into this. Twitter should be even-handed, favoring neither side,” Musk tweeted early Sunday morning in response to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who posted the Just the News article, “Election ‘misinformation’ policing returns as Twitter flags JTN ballot harvesting report.”

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On Musk’s First Day, Twitter Flags Just the News On-the-Record Story on Election Ballots as ‘Unsafe’

On the day Elon Musk took over Twitter, the social media platform flagged a post by Just the News Editor-in-Chief John Solomon aboutt Florida Gov. GOP Ron DeSantis’ administration asking for a police probe into a Democrat politician’s whistleblower complaint about voting irregularities.

Solomon argues Twitter action Thursday night unfairly flagged the post – with the note “Warning: this link may be unsafe” – and is asking Musk, who has vowed to stop the platform from unjustly censuring content, to intervene.

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Big Tech in Trouble After Brutal Earnings Reports

Big Tech stocks dropped this week as firms across the industry posted a series of weak earnings reports, with social media giant Meta set to post a significant slowdown after markets close Wednesday.

This year, Meta, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple have lost $2.5 trillion in market value combined, Reuters reported Wednesday. Meta is expected to post a 5% decline in revenue compared to last year due to reduced ad traffic as users struggle with inflation and spend more time with rival TikTok, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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Commentary: The Tentacles of the Social Media Octopus

Washington DC

by Victor Davis Hanson   A shared theme in all dystopian explorations of future and current totalitarian regimes – whether China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba – is government control of all media information, fueled by electronic surveillance. A skeptical public learns to say one thing publicly but quite another privately. It nervously nods yes at the news while at work, but at home cynically assumes the opposite of whatever is publicly said to be true. RIP, First Amendment Such electronic propaganda has sadly become characteristic of the world’s oldest consensual government. In America we once believed our First Amendment prevented a government monopoly on information. But in the age of globalization, the Internet, and social media, the state has become the enemy – not the protector – of free speech. One obvious sign is that the Biden Administration keeps trying to create new sorts of ministries of truth or “Disinformation Governance Boards.” It alleges such Orwellian censors must combat “disinformation” and “misinformation.” In fact, these bureaucracies are designed to criminalize unwanted free expression while also advancing state propaganda. Among our Washington officials, the following myths were once declared the official version of the “truth”: Mounted border patrol agents “whipped”…

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Commentary: The Monopoly Hiding in Plain Sight

With persistent inflation and growing concerns over a recession, pundits, policymakers, and the president have expressed concern about an alleged lack of competition lurking in the dark corners of the U.S. economy. As President Biden himself said, “capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism, it’s exploitation.” From Big Tech to baby food, both sides of the aisle are on the lookout for monopoly power. But sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight.

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Twitter Blocks, Then Restores, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s Post Noting Rise in Cardiac-Related Deaths Among Young Men After COVID Shots

Social media giant Twitter first blocked, then restored, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s tweet regarding the state health department’s guidance in which is noted a study showing an “84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination COVID-19 mRNA shots.”

“Today, we released an analysis on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines the public needs to be aware of,” Ladapo tweeted. “This analysis showed an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39. FL will not be silent on the truth.”

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Radicalized Medical Associations Ask DOJ and Big Tech to Censor and Prosecute Journalists Opposing Gender Surgeries for Minors

National medical associations that have been infiltrated by radical leftists wrote to Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland this week requesting the Department of Justice (DOJ) “do more” to block the views of those who spread “disinformation” regarding transgender surgeries for minors and to “take swift action to investigate and prosecute all organizations, individuals, and entities responsible.”

Journalist and author Christopher Rufo posted the letter from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the Children’s Hospital Association to Garland.

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Arizona AG Brnovich Discusses Settlement with Google over Deceptively Obtaining Users’ Location Data for Profit

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has sued numerous big players throughout his two terms, including the Biden administration, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, Arizona State University, and the City of Tucson. Perhaps the biggest entity he sued was Google in 2020, for “deceiving consumers” by tracking their location on smartphones without their knowledge and then selling the information. After over two years of litigation, the tech giant capitulated, settling for $85 million, more than the country of Australia snagged in a similar settlement with Google, $60 million. 

The first attorney general in the country to sue Google over the practice, Brnovich told The Arizona Sun Times that what prompted him in part to file the complaint was the shocking extent of how much personal information was obtained. “Google knew more about where you were going and who you hung out with, more than your travel agent or spouse,” he said. He found out about the practice after a news article revealed that Google was tracking users through its app preloaded on Android smartphones even after they’d disabled their “Location History” setting. Google was told to stop and did not.

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Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Big Tech’s Section 230 Protections

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear a case that challenges Big Tech companies’ broad protections against lawsuits regarding the content they host, as a result of a policy known as Section 230.

Politico reports that the case will mark the first time that the nation’s highest court will hear any challenge to Big Tech’s immunity under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which forbids legal action against such platforms over third-party content that is hosted on their sites. The case, Gonzalez vs. Google LLC, will see the court determine if these protections go too far when it comes to such content as terrorist videos being allowed on YouTube, the video-sharing platform that is owned by Google.

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House Passes Sweeping Antitrust Package Targeting Big Tech

The House of Representatives passed sweeping antitrust legislation targeting Big Tech with bipartisan support following a Thursday afternoon vote.

The bill, known as the Merger Fee Filing Modernization Act, passed 242 to 184, combining a trio of antitrust bills designed to limit the impact of Big Tech firms by increasing merger application fees to fund stricter antitrust enforcement, requiring companies to disclose foreign subsidies when applying for a merger and exempting antitrust lawsuits brought by state attorneys general from processes that can result in court cases being transferred to districts more favorable to defenders. The package, passed with 39 Republican votes, was endorsed by the White House on Tuesday as part of its ongoing efforts to beef up antitrust enforcement.

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Georgia Congressman to Introduce Legislation Banning Federal Agencies from Pressing Big Tech to Censor

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) plans to introduce legislation called the Free Speech Defense Act that will prohibit federal officials from collaborating with Big Tech to censor Americans’ voices and create some legal recourse for those harmed by free speech infringement.

Clyde unveiled his plans for the bill during an appearance Thursday night on the “Just the News, Not Noise” TV show.

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Biden Admin Must Produce Docs About Alleged Collusion with Social Media Giants, Court Rules

A U.S. district court Tuesday ordered the Justice Department (DOJ) to produce communications between National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and social media companies.

Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana filed a lawsuit against the administration in May for allegedly colluding with social media companies or coercing them to suppress disfavored content on platforms using “disinformation,” “misinformation” and “malinformation” labels in violation of the First Amendment. District Judge Terry Doughty mandated as part of the case Tuesday that communications between the companies and Fauci and Jean-Pierre be provided based on Schmitt and Landry’s requests.

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Government-Social Media Communications Reveal ‘Vast Censorship Enterprise,’ State Attorneys General Allege

Newly released communications between federal officials and social media companies reveal how the Biden administration and Big Tech coordinated to silence opposing views on a number of topics—especially COVID-19— in “a vast censorship enterprise,”  the attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana alleged in a court filing Thursday.

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Civil Rights Experts Challenge Google Fellowship’s Race-Based Requirements

A fellowship hosted by Big Tech giant Google is facing heavy legal criticism due to its use of racial quotas, which critics say are unconstitutional.

Newsbusters reports that the prestigious fellowship, which offers $100,000 to students pursuing their doctorate in computer studies, requires that a certain number of students nominated for the fellowship by their university must be non-White.

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After Zuckerberg Revelation, FBI Says It Routinely Warns Social Media About ‘Malign Influence’

The FBI said it “routinely notifies” private companies, including social media platforms, of potential threats after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook “decreased” the distribution of the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 election because of a warning from the FBI.

The FBI’s defense comes after Zuckerberg appeared Thursday on the “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. Host Joe Rogan asked Zuckerberg about how Facebook handled the story first broken by The New York Post involving the questionable contents on the laptop of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

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Commentary: Congress Can Save the Press from Big Tech’s Iron Grip

US Capitol Infrastructure

Big Tech controls more and more of the news and information we read. Although Big Tech platforms employ few, if any, journalists, most Americans read news on large tech platforms, such as Facebook News and Google News. Profits and ideology motivate Big Tech managers more than promoting a free press, so Big Tech often fails to fairly compensate the small and local news outlets whose stories appear on their platforms.

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GETTR CEO Jason Miller Discusses Musk’s Failed Twitter Takeover

Claiming that Twitter was in “material breach” of its agreement to sell the microblogging platform to him, Elon Musk said in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that he does not intend to purchase Twitter, invoking a massive response in the tech space. 

“Today’s announcement that Elon Musk is abandoning his takeover of Twitter comes as no surprise to those of us who predicted the implosion for months,” GETTER CEO Jason Miller said in a statement. “But the lasting result of the failed acquisition will be permanent, and Musk deserves credit for further exposing the incurable, rotting, politically discriminatory culture inside the Blue Bird.”

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Elon Musk Cancels Bid to Buy Twitter

Twitter logo

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Friday announced that he was canceling plans to purchase social media giant Twitter, citing the company’s failure to produce information on fake accounts.

Musk sent a letter to Twitter’s board of directors on Friday announcing he would not acquire the company. He told the Securities and Exchange Commission that Twitter has “not complied with its contractual obligation,” according to the Associated Press.

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Google Offers to Break Up to Prevent Antitrust Lawsuit

Google has offered to break apart in a bid to avoid greater punishment for antitrust violations from federal regulators, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The tech giant has raised the prospect of separating a major business operation off from Google—the auctioning and placing of online advertisements—to form a separate entity also under the umbrella of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, people close to Google reportedly told the WSJ. It was unclear if the offer would satisfy the Department of Justice (DOJ), which declined to comment on the story, according to the WSJ.

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Author and Feminist Naomi Wolf Discusses Her New Book, ‘The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human’

Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed feminist, author, and champion of liberty Dr. Naomi Wolf to the newsmakers line to discuss the motivation behind her upcoming book, The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human and explain the changing landscape of publishing.

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Thousands of Medical Professionals Demand Accountability for COVID ‘Corrupt Alliance’ Causing ‘Crimes Against Humanity’

More than 17,000 physicians and medical scientists have joined together in a “declaration” that demands an end to the COVID-19 medical emergency and accountability for those in the “corrupt alliance” of Big Tech, media, academics, and government who, they say, committed “crimes against humanity” by profiting from ineffective and dangerous COVID vaccines while banning early treatment drugs.

The statement, released Wednesday during a press conference of the Global COVID Summit, calls for a restoration of “scientific integrity, and a move to address the corrupt alliance’s “catastrophic decisions” which, the medical professionals assert, were orchestrated “at the expense of the innocent, who are forced to suffer health damage and death caused by intentionally withholding critical and time-sensitive treatments, or as a result of coerced genetic therapy injections, which are neither safe nor effective.”

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Commentary: Americans Are Sounding the Alarm over Big Tech Monopolies

Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition — which can be summed up as the world’s wealthiest person buying one of the most powerful social media and news platforms — underscores one of the big problems with Big Tech.

In the absence of modernized anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, Big Tech companies in the U.S. have amassed far too much economic and political control over society, and especially over the news and publishing industries.

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Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward’s Husband Michael Ward Permanently Suspended from Twitter for ‘Multiple, Severe Violations’

Twitter suspended Michael Ward, the husband of Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward, Wednesday morning for “multiple, severe violations” according to his wife. She tweeted, “Weird. He’s not a terrorist or a tyrant. He’s a doctor, dad, & veteran. That must be it!”

https://twitter.com/kelliwardaz/status/1519313005174874113

Michael Ward told The Arizona Sun Times, “I want to know whether they’re targeting me because I opposed COVID-19 restrictions, or because I am a conservative physician, or because I’m a retired colonel who opposes the Biden administration.” He believes he was probably singled out because of who he’s married to. He said Twitter first suspended him on Jan. 7, 2021, his first account, @JimmyTheMole01, because he retweeted former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol. He was never given a warning, temporary suspension, or second chance when he tried to appeal, the account was permanently banned.

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Google Launches New ‘Inclusive Language’ Function

Person on laptop

The search engine giant Google has rolled out a new feature that acts as an auto-suggestion for changing certain language to more politically correct terms.

According to the Daily Mail, users who type out certain words will be faced with several suggestions encouraging them to adopt language that is gender-neutral, or otherwise more politically correct. For example, “landlord” will yield suggestions such as “proprietor” or “property owner,” while “mankind” will lead to the suggestion of “humankind.” “Policeman” is now recommended to be “police officers,” while “housewife” is to be replaced with “stay-at-home spouse.”

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Commentary: Twitter Is Not a Business, It’s a Political Operation

Person holding phone up with Twitter sign up page on smart phone.

Here’s your first clue Twitter is not really a business with a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value – when Elon Musk made a public offer to buy the company for $54.20 a share (roughly $40 billion) the company’s management not only turned down the offer, but began to work on a poison pill defense aimed solely at Mr. Musk, who is already Twitter’s largest shareholder.

According to reporting by the New York Times, some investors and Wall Street analysts said that Mr. Musk’s offer of $54.20 a share was too low, and that he would need to go to at least $60 a share to appeal to shareholders. That would be 25 percent higher than the share price when Mr. Musk announced this month that he had acquired a 9 percent stake in Twitter.

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Bill to Help Small and Conservative Media Orgs Stand Up to Big Tech Gains Traction in Congress

Legislation designed to help media organizations negotiate with major online platforms is gaining Republican support in Congress due to provisions protecting small, local and conservative publications, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The Journalism and Competition Preservation Act (JCPA), a bill led by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers including Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, Democratic Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline and Republican Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, seeks to help media organizations negotiate with tech platforms like Google and Facebook for compensation over the use of their content.

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