A shocking new undercover video from Project Veritas exposes the rampant anti-conservative bias of Facebook’s content moderators, the employees who are responsible for deciding what posts are censored.
Zach McElroy, a former Facebook employee who worked as a content moderator in Tampa, Florida, told Project Veritas that he’s willing to testify before Congress about Facebook’s bias against Trump supporters and conservative causes.
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Amazon, Twitter, and other major tech companies are facing intense criticism on antitrust issues and censorship claims in the months since government officials reportedly began asking for help from Silicon Valley on ways to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
The president and lawmakers have turned their sights on Twitter and Amazon, respectively, while Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other attorneys general are reportedly ratcheting up their antitrust investigation targeting Google’s business model. The White House asked them in March to fight coronavirus disinformation while also assisting the government in its virus response.
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A conservative journalist has sued Gov. Tim Walz’s administration after he was barred from participating in the governor’s daily press briefings on the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the lawsuit, Scott Johnson, an attorney and writer for PowerLine, was allowed to participate in the daily briefings until April 27, when he was suddenly “excluded from all future daily briefings without explanation.”
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Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio.
During the second hour, Leahy and Carmichael discuss the Democrat Party’s opposition to Conservative and common sense speak as recently witnessed by the shaming of New Orleans Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees and Denver Broncos Head Coach Vic Fangio. Recently, both men have walked back their comments and apologized due to accusations of racism.
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Instagram reportedly believes a children’s book written by U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and her daughter, about the history of the 19th Amendment, may “influence the outcome of an election,” so the tech giant has banned advertising for it.
The Federalist reported on the book’s ban.
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President Trump’s long-hoped-for Executive Order on social media censorship is a good first step in dismantling the Left’s dangerous influence over these 21st-century communications vehicles. (You can read the draft that was available online when this article was posted through this link to The National Pulse, edited by Raheem Kassam.)
We particularly agree with this part of the EO’s statement of principles, “In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey online. This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.”
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Twitter censored the White House’s official Twitter account after it shared and quoted a President Donald Trump tweet Friday that the company’s moderators hit for “glorifying violence.”
The account shared a tweet Trump composed early Friday morning in which he called people rioting and looting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, “THUGS” and suggested that he will send in the military, adding that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter hid Trump’s tweet under a banner noting that the post violates company rules against glorifying violence.
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After years of warning, President Donald Trump took action Thursday in the form of an Executive Order to remove a key protection companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google enjoy that shields the tech giants from lawsuits by individuals and other entities with claiming bias, censorship, and otherwise unfair treatment.
The Order, titled “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship” comes two days after Twitter added a controversial “fact-check” of two of his tweets about fraud and absentee ballots, NPR reported.
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Facebook is working to set up an AI meme police.
The social media behemoth said it is creating a contest with a $100,000 prize to encourage developers to create artificial intelligence that can “identify multimodal hate speech.”
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If you’re just hearing about the “Intellectual Dark Web,” or if you’ve heard the term but never delved into its meaning, you might think there is an entire parallel internet out there, filled with subversive content that is too politically incorrect to weather the shadowbans and deboosting algorithms in our well lit, mainstream online world.
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In the latest wave of social media censorship, the video-sharing giant YouTube has banned 17,818 channels that it claims were associated with “hateful or abusive” content, according to Newsbusters.
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by Thaddeus G. McCotter Hollywood, the cultural epicenter of the “resistance” to the faux totalitarianism attributed to President Trump, has a vastly different approach to the real totalitarianism of Communist China: capitulation and self-censorship. As noted by Mark MacKinnon, the senior international correspondent for The Globe and Mail, the sequel to 1986’s “Top Gun” – which, after 33 years of intermittent thought, the creative geniuses behind the project have christened with the inspired title “Top Gun: Maverick” – has the rare quality of being a nostalgia trip that performs the deft, duplicitous trick of including a bitter dose of revisionist history. “There’s a new Top Gun movie coming out. And Maverick is wearing the same leather jacket – only this time it’s Communist Party of China-approved, so the Japanese and Taiwanese flag patches are gone . . . ” Why did Hollywood change the patch and stuff the Japanese and Taiwanese flags down the memory hole? “‘Mystery’ solved,” MacKinnon reports. “China’s Tencent Pictures is one of the main producers of Top Gun: Maverick.” In agreement is Alan Tonelson, the founder of RealityChek, which is “a blog covering economics, national security, tech, and their intersections”: “i.e., Hollywood Values . . . the…
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by Robert Romano In the latest round of social media censorship, Reddit has quarantined the largest subreddit in favor of President Donald Trump, r/The_Donald, with over 750,000 followers, restricting access. The move comes amid a crackdown of conservative content on social media platforms, with users on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube being censored, suspended, banned and demonetized and Trump calling for a social media summit to address the censorship. Since 2016, the r/The_Donald subreddit has grown significantly and is a highly trafficked go-to locale for Trump supporters online. It describes itself as “a never-ending rally dedicated to the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.” In a message to the group by one of its moderators on June 26 announcing the quarantine and measures being taken to be reinstated, it stated, “we were quarantined without warning for some users that were upset about the Oregon Governor sending cops to round up Republican lawmakers to come back to vote on bills before their state chambers. None of these comments that violated Reddit’s rules and our Rule 1 [against advocating violence] were ever reported to us moderators to take action on. Those comments were reported on by an arm of…
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by Chris White Facebook’s secretive rulebook regulating how employees censor certain forms of expression contains numerous biases and outright errors, according to internal documents The New York Times obtained Friday. The nearly 1,400-page document shows the Silicon Valley company’s guidebook is riddled with mistakes and is not nimble enough to handle cultural nuance, the report notes. The guidelines censor mainstream speech in one country while allowing extremist language to fester in others. Several dozen Facebook employees gather every other Tuesday to brainstorm rules that flesh out what people can and cannot say while navigating the platform, according to TheNYT. The guidelines that are agreed upon are then sent out to 7,500-plus moderators around the world. The Facebook employees, many of whom are young, attempt to distill complex issues into concrete yes-or-no categories. Much of the post-by-post moderation is outsourced to companies that enlist unskilled workers, the report states, citing documents from an employee who worried the rule book is too intrusive. Moderators often use Google Translator for the mind-numbing work. They must recall countless rules and apply them to the hundreds of posts a day, with the cultural context largely stripped. They suss through emojis, smiley faces and sometimes innocuous…
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by Joshua Gill Chinese authorities reportedly charged an evangelical pastor and his wife with “inciting subversion of state power” Wednesday, for which they face potentially 15 years in prison. Chinese police in the town of Chengdu arrested Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church, his wife Jiang Rong and more than 100 members of his congregation Sunday after Wang published a manifesto accusing President Xi Jinping of instituting “Caesar worship” and calling Christians to civil disobedience. The independent church’s leaders face charges of illegally operating a business and illegally publishing religious material, and Wang and his wife face the harsher charge of subverting the state’s authority, reported The New York Times. Escalated. At least ten are confirmed for criminal detention including pastor Wang Yi and his wife Jiang Rong both of whom are charged for “inciting subversion Of State power.”2 of the criminal detention notice including pastor Wang Yi’s wife Jiang Rong and Deacon Tan Defu. pic.twitter.com/ieNm4a773e — Bob Fu 傅希秋 (@BobFu4China) December 13, 2018 Photos of Jiang’s detention notice surfaced on social media Thursday. The charge against her and Wang carries a maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment and is often used against political dissidents and those criticize…
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by Peter Hasson Twitter took action against more than 285,000 different accounts for “hateful conduct” in the first six months of 2018, according to data the company released Wednesday night. Twitter dinged more accounts for “hateful conduct” — 285,393 to be exact — than for any other violation of Twitter rules during that time. That amounts to roughly 1,900 accounts per day that Twitter found in violation of its “hateful conduct” rules. It’s unclear how Twitter’s policing of “hateful conduct” in the first half of 2018 compares to other years, as Wednesday was the first time the company included those numbers in its biannual transparency report. “We use the term ‘action’ to refer to our range of enforcement actions, which include possible account suspension,” Twitter explained in an accompanying post. The numbers also show how Twitter’s content monitors are flooded with requests for punitive action. Just under 2.7 million individual accounts were reported for hateful conduct from Jan. 1 through June 30. Twitter took action against roughly 11 percent of the reported accounts during that time. The company also took action against 248,629 accounts for violating Twitter rules prohibiting “abuse” on the platform. Twitter stepped up its speech policing…
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by Evie Fordham A Republican lawmaker and lawmaker-elect called for an investigation of Google Friday morning after Thursday’s revelation that the tech giant’s employees debated burying conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election. Republican Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar called on the Department of Justice to investigate Google, and Republican Missouri Sen.-elect Josh Hawley called for Google execs to explain themselves “under oath.” “So what do we have here? Looks like a monopoly scheming to use its market power to silence news [and] viewpoints it doesn’t like. Starting to see a pattern here,” Hawley wrote on Twitter Friday. “Google execs need to explain what is going on here. Under oath.” So what do we have here? Looks like a monopoly scheming to use its market power to silence news & viewpoints it doesn’t like. Starting to see a pattern here. https://t.co/Up1KyJDXeN — Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 30, 2018 The senator-elect linked to an exclusive story about anti-conservative bias at Google by The Daily Caller News Foundation in the tweet. Gosar also linked to The DCNF’s article. “Google has a virtual monopoly as far as search engines go. It’s past time @DOJPH [sic] investigate this and it’s time Congress…
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by Evie Fordham Google CEO Sundar Pichai will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 5 to answer questions about the company’s possible political bias, the committee announced. “Americans put their trust in big tech companies to honor freedom of speech and champion open dialogue, and it is Congress’ responsibility to the American people to make sure these tech giants are transparent and accountable in their practices,” committee chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, said in a committee press release. Republican lawmakers criticized Pichai for skipping a Sept. 5 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on social media and foreign election meddling. Facebook and Twitter executives testified, and an empty chair with a nameplate that said “Google” sat where the company’s representative would have been. The announcement of the social media-focused hearing comes as Google employees are making headlines for a Tuesday open letter protesting the company’s work on a censored Chinese search engine. “Today the company accounts for nearly 90 percent of worldwide search traffic. … Unfortunately, recent reports suggest Google might not be wielding its vast power impartially,” committee member and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in the press release. “Its business practices may have been affected by political bias. Additionally, reports claim the company is…
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by Grace Carr Twitter banned the use of biological pronouns to refer to transgender persons, adding a clause prohibiting the practice to its policy regarding hateful conduct. The social media platform updated its policies on hateful conduct in October, but the move wasn’t largely noticed until Friday and Saturday when users began commenting on the change, Pink News reported. “Targeted harassment or expressing hate towards a person, group, or protected category,” is banned, according to Twitter’s Hateful Conduct Policy. The media platform also writes it is “committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance.” ” … targeted mis-gendering or dead naming of transgender individuals,” is also banned, according to the updated policy rules. Mis-gendering refers to using biological pronouns for a transgender person as opposed to pronouns that accord with their new gender identity. Dead naming refers to using the “dead name,” the name they used before transitioning, to describe or address a transgender person. Conservative speaker Ben Shapiro commented on the change. So Twitter is now banning people for stating the basic scientific fact that men are men and women are women, and that men cannot become women simply by thinking themselves so. Twitter vs. reality. https://t.co/Ur6ap8zNUN — Ben Shapiro…
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UPDATE: Late Thursday, Breitbart News reported that Facebook has changed course and will now allow the Susan B. Anthony list ad supporting Marsha Blackburn. The Susan B. Anthony List announced Thursday morning that Facebook had censored their ad contrasting Senate candidate Phil Bredesen’s pro-abortion views with opponent Marsha Blackburn’s unequivocal support for life. The tweet says, “BREAKING: This morning Facebook banned our 30-second ad exposing pro-abortion @PhilBredesen in Tennessee and supporting #ProLife Marsha Blackburn for Senate.” The tweet contains a link to the ad. BREAKING: This morning Facebook banned our 30-second ad exposing pro-abortion @PhilBredesen in Tennessee and supporting #ProLife Marsha Blackburn for Senate. Watch the ad Facebook censored: pic.twitter.com/BHlklKqD0Q#TNSen @VoteMarsha #IVoteProLife✅ — SBA Pro-Life America (@sbaprolife) November 1, 2018 This comes after the ad had been airing on digital platforms, including Facebook, since Oct. 23. “Facebook’s decision to take down this ad is just another example of the liberal elites of Silicon Valley censoring conservative ideas online,” said U.S. Rep. Blackburn (R-TN-07). “We have repeatedly seen a demonstrated bias against conservatives and it needs to stop. The SBA List has a record of principled leadership on pro-life issues, and it is an honor to have their support in my race…
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by Troy Worden The University of California at Berkeley, regarded as the birthplace of the free speech movement, has done away with one of its historic “free speech zones.”Carol Christ, chancellor of UC Berkeley, last month e-mailed a statement to students, faculty, and staff detailing changes to the university’s policy regarding free speech events on campus.Among the changes is designation of the West Crescent section of campus as a “free speech zone,” meaning it will not be subject to additional restrictions imposed last year on other areas of campus.But Christ also announced that Lower Sproul Plaza, which historically has been considered a free speech zone, along with Upper Sproul Plaza, now will be subject to those restrictions. The restrictions are part of the university’s “Major Events Policy” implemented in the wake of conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos’ aborted “Free Speech Week” event in September 2017. The new policy was proposed by a commission upon review of the Yiannopoulos incident and several other hotly contested events featuring conservative speakers invited in 2017, among them David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, and Ben Shapiro. Christ’s announcement Sept. 10 is in line with the April report of the commission, which recommended the chancellor extend the…
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A senior Google software engineer who oversees a key component of the search engine called U.S. Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn a “violent thug” and a “terrorist,” Breitbart News reported, citing internal emails it obtained. The employee also defended the censorship of her campaign ads on social media. Breitbart’s story is available here. The comments took place in an internal email discussion that began on June 19, Brietbart said. The topic of discussion was a Fox News op-ed by U.S. Representative Blackburn (R-TN), which urged tech companies to address bias against conservatives. Blackburn, who has been the target of social media censorship, has been a vocal critic of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer at Google, said Blackburn was lying to the public. He accused her of “causing the deaths of people she claimed to protect” – referring to her work on two anti-trafficking bills, which has pushed most sex workers off Twitter. “We certainly shouldn’t acquiesce to the theatrical demands of a legislator who makes political hay by intentionally reducing the safety of the people who she claims to protect,” said Lemoine. “I’m not big on negotiation with terrorists.” Lemoine is a technical lead on Google’s…
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by Kyle Perisic Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey began his tour with media networks to explain Twitter’s speech policies after the backlash he faced from not banning Alex Jones like other tech giants. Dorsey is planning on speaking with Lester Holt on NBC’s “Nightly News” later in August and Brian Stelter on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Aug. 12. Stelter’s interview with Dorsey, the last CEO of a major platform not to ban Jones or InfoWars, has reportedly been in the works for several weeks, Axios reported Wednesday. Dorsey began his tour Wednesday with Fox News host Sean Hannity on his radio program, where he clarified the company’s decision not to ban Jones. “This is not easy,” Dorsey said, adding that Twitter hasn’t done a great job explaining the company’s use of the algorithms to enforce its policies. Dorsey also said Twitter hasn’t done a good job communicating what the company’s principles are or why certain accounts are banned to those users or to the media. “We have a lot more work to do there,” he said. Dorsey also insisted on Hannity’s radio show that Twitter does not shadowban users. Shadowbanning is using algorithms to make users or content harder to search for on social…
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