Social media misinformation ‘killing people,’ Biden says, as White House doubles down on private censorship
RT | July 16, 2021
US President Joe Biden claimed social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation about Covid-19, as his press secretary Jen Psaki made a case for deplatforming ‘offenders’ across the ostensibly private networks.
“They’re killing people,” Biden told reporters who asked him to send a message to platforms like Facebook. “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people,” he shouted, over the noise of a helicopter outside the White House on Friday.
On Thursday, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory against health “misinformation,” calling it “an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health.” He defined it as information that is “false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence” and claimed 67% of unvaccinated Americans had heard at least one “myth” about Covid-19 vaccines.
At the same press conference, Psaki admitted the government was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook,” causing a stir among some civil libertarians.
Insisting that it was these ostensibly private companies doing the censorship and not the federal government – thereby trying to dodge the thorny issue of the First Amendment – Psaki then doubled down on Friday, saying that platforms should coordinate their rules and terms of service so that a person “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others… for providing misinformation out there.”
Her announcement raised more than a few eyebrows across the political spectrum. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, responsible for publishing NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, called the entire line of White House thinking “pernicious.”
Psaki was “issuing decrees on who should and shouldn’t be allowed to use social media, then smugly scoffing at the notion that this should concern anyone on the ground that we’re going to die if we don’t submit to the White House’s orders,” Greenwald added, summarizing her exchange with Fox News’ Peter Doocy.
In a video making rounds on social media, Psaki tells Doocy that everyone, including journalists, ought to be more concerned about “the number of people who are dying around the country” due to misinformation rather than any Big Brother-like behavior by the government. When he argued the opposite, she replied, “That feels unlikely to me.”
“We don’t take anything down… Facebook makes decisions,” she insisted.
Asked politely by Philip Wegmann of RealClearPolitics to explain how often and how long the White House has been flagging “misinformation,” and if she could define it, Psaki responded with generalizations and claims that all this information is “publicly available” on social networks.
Psaki’s remarks amounted to an admission that the government is coordinating with private corporations to ban people from social media, podcast host Jack Murphy pointed out, calling it “literal fascism before our eyes.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was conspicuously silent about this threat to freedom of expression, Greenwald noted, and was instead tweeting about transgender issues.
Meanwhile, a UK-based nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) claimed the White House relied on their research in identifying the people producing alleged “misinformation,” and promoted their CEO Imran Ahmed’s TV appearance in which he spoke about online “superspreaders.”
CCDH first drew attention in June 2020, when NBC – one of the big three broadcast TV networks in the US – cited their research in a story trying to pressure Google into demonetizing the blog ZeroHedge and the conservative-leaning online magazine Federalist.
US Surgeon General advises “clear consequences” for online “misinformation super-spreaders”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 16, 2021
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released its general Covid advisory on “confronting health misinformation” signed by US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy.
We obtained a copy of the report for you here.
For the purposes of the advisory, health misinformation is defined as information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading “according to the best available evidence at the time.”
And among those who are urged and given suggestions on how to act to suppress this kind of information are technology platforms, who are advised to devise “clear consequences” for users who are branded as “misinformation super-spreaders.”
Technology platforms are told to assess the benefits and harms of their platforms and products, and then “take responsibility for addressing the harms.”
And those who are found to be “super-spreaders” and “repeat offenders” in posting misinformation should be faced with “clear consequences” that tech platforms are supposed to devise and impose on their users.
Tech companies are also expected to commit to long-term investments for the purpose combating misinformation that can include changing their products – such as redesigning recommendation algorithms. The idea here is to tweak these algorithms so that unwanted medical information is down ranked and difficult to discover.
The surgeon general also wants tech platforms to put more “frictions” in place – like labels and warnings that now appear on many social media posts in order to dissuade users from interacting with the content in question, or direct them towards “trusted sources.”
Next, unspecified researchers should be given access to Big Tech’s data so that they can learn “what people see and hear, not just what they engage with.” Another reason is for “researchers” to be sure how platforms are moderating and censoring content – some methods mentioned are labeling, removing, and downranking.
Privacy is also paid lip service in a remark that says user data “can be” anonymized while provided with user consent – but the advisory is not explicit that this “must be” the case.
And not all medical (mis)information is happening in English, so these US platforms are recommended to “increase staffing of multilingual content moderation teams and improve the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms in languages other than English.”
The advisory also wants platforms to amplify, i.e. direct users even more aggressively towards “trusted and credible sources” and those who are accepted as experts.
Then there’s – as the advisory phrased it – the “unintended consequences” of censorship. And that’s not about free speech suppression or anything similar – it’s “migration of users to less-moderated platforms.”
And that is another thing, the US surgeon general writes, that tech platforms should “work to understand.”
Governments are using credit card purchase data as “contact tracing’ COVID surveillance
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 16, 2021
The ongoing “war on cash” that far preceded the pandemic, whose goal is to steer people towards using traceable forms of payment, is coming in very handy in the COVID era precisely for the reason the policy is criticized in the first place – it makes it easy for authorities to keep tabs on individuals who use card transactions.
Reports now mention instances of Australian residents receiving a mandate to quarantine after using their credit card to pay at an establishment, where somebody known to be infected with the virus had stayed.
Credit card receipts led back to the person that was then forced to self-isolate (although they did not have coronavirus) – and apparently led the person to consider what, if anything, is left of their privacy in a world where more and more people leave long “data trails” behind them.
Stop-gap measures like switching to alternative browsers etc (while probably running it on Windows) aside – the takeaway is that the only way to regain some privacy in the world of mass surveillance and tracking is to turn to alternatives – but do it consistently, and be prepared to pay for the privilege of removing oneself from the closed ecosystems like those ruled with an iron fist by Google, Apple, or Microsoft.
As for using card transactions to do COVID contact tracing, Australia is far from being the only country that is doing it. In fact, those lauded as most successful in even getting their contact tracing efforts off the ground, like South Korea, pioneered the practice. Data surveillance, reports said, was used by authorities there to make sure that people who were either unable or unwilling to share their every move are eventually forced into doing it.
Australia has “distinguished” itself for being willing to jeopardize people’s privacy with a series of COVID surveillance and control measures over the past 18 months, and last November, the National Contact Tracing Review, whose chair is Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, recommended using consumer credit card data for track and trace purposes.
But what about privacy? Privacy rules will apply – until they don’t, seems to be the gist of it.
“Privacy rules will apply,” the Review said, but then added, “and in some jurisdictions legislative change may be required.”
North Carolina Henderson County Board of Commissioners look for new platform after YouTube censorship
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 15, 2021
Once again YouTube has decided that it has the right to silence elected officials in the US in a bid to prevent them from making their policies and decisions known, particularly concerning COVID.
When North Carolina’ Henderson County Board of Commissioners met to discuss whether to spend taxpayer money to promote Covid vaccination, and decided against the idea, passing a relevant resolution, YouTube was quick to delete the video taken during the meeting.
The commissioners’ meeting and vote not to spend county dollars to push for people to get the jab was followed by citizens, vaccine skeptics, expressing their opinion on the issue by saying that they believed the inoculation project was put together by the government, the media, and pharmaceutical companies who have a “hidden agenda.”
The Google company also swiftly rejected the appeal filed by the commissioners, stating that the the content had been reviewed “carefully,” but that YouTube censors still found the video in violation of the medical misinformation policy.
Two days after this happened, the County held another vote and decided to remove YouTube as the video platform its officials use, and look for alternatives.
Vice chair Rebecca McCall and other commissioners called YouTube’s decision an act of censorship, and questioned whether such a widely used platform, even if privately owned, should be allowed to do that – or be the judge of what medical information is acceptable.
YouTube has a long list of things its users are not allowed to utter on the platform, often not even as part of a debate among scientists and doctors, as YouTube believes these things pose “a serious risk of egregious harm.”
This includes recommending Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for Covid treatment (even though critics of the use of these drugs speak about their inefficacy rather than potential harm), and making claims that Covid vaccines can make people ill. Contradicting local health authorities or the WHO is also prohibited, where it comes to treatment, prevention, transmission, or orders of restrictive measures such as mask wearing and social distancing.
White House admits ‘flagging problematic posts’ for Facebook, says it’s needed to fight medical ‘misinformation’

RT | July 15, 2021
As the Biden administration called “medical misinformation” a public health threat, the White House said it was working with social media to flag “problematic” posts. Critics called it an end-run around the First Amendment.
“We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday. In addition to directing the company to censor people, the government is also working to “get trusted content out there” by putting medical professionals in touch with social media influencers.
Psaki’s admission came after Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory declaring misinformation “an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health.”
“Misinformation takes away our freedom to make informed decisions about our health and the health of our loved ones,” Murthy said at the White House. During just the Covid-19 pandemic, it has led to Americans refusing to wear masks, “turn down proven treatments” and choosing not to get vaccinated, which, he said, cost lives.
Murthy is a “tyrant” who wants “Big Tech to crack down on what amounts to open inquiry and free exchange of ideas,” commented journalist Jordan Schachtel, one of the notable skeptics when it comes to official pandemic narratives.
Looking at the surgeon general’s recommendations, Grabien’s Tom Elliott pointed out that the government is literally instructing private companies to “abridge the freedom of speech, and of the press, and the rights of people to peaceably assemble and petition the gov’t for redresses of grievances” – in other words, violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who helped publish NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about surveillance abuse in 2013, called this union of corporate and state power “one of the classic hallmarks of fascism.”
“If you don’t find it deeply disturbing that the White House is ‘flagging’ internet content that they deem ‘problematic’ to their Facebook allies for removal, then you are definitionally an authoritarian,” said Greenwald.
“This is ‘Ministry of Truth’ level malfeasance. They’re literally admitting to colluding with [the] media to control the narrative. This is censorship,” tweeted Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), adding that such tactics befit dictatorships and that throttling speech with which the government disagrees crosses a line.
Conservative columnist Stacey Lennox argued that censorship would actually make Americans question the White House’s narrative even more.
“If your ideas are the best, they can stand on their own. Censorship will make people question it more. Every. Single. Time,” she tweeted.
Democrats have clamored for social media to censor “misinformation” ever since the 2016 election, which resulted in the surprise victory of Republican Donald Trump over mainstream media favorite Hillary Clinton. The Trump campaign had bypassed corporate gatekeepers by reaching out to Americans directly via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.
Four years later, under the pretext of fighting misinformation and “Russian interference,” thousands of users had been purged from the platforms, while Twitter and Facebook suppressed a newspaper for publishing a story about Joe Biden’s son Hunter and the information found on his laptop. They also cracked down on any questions about new electoral practices, such as mass mail-in voting, labeling them “misinformation.”
The Biden campaign actually demanded Facebook censor Trump himself for “misinformation,” which the platform initially refused to do.
Eventually, however, Trump was banned from all social media platforms – while he was still the sitting president – as much for allegedly “inciting violence” over the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, as for continuing to argue the 2020 election wasn’t honest.
YouTube censors Dr. Drew (again) for “medical misinformation”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 15, 2021
US physician and media personality Dr. Drew Pinsky is once again in trouble on YouTube, after one of his videos was removed for allegedly containing medical misinformation.
The video was an episode of one of Pinsky’s podcasts that featured Dr. Ram Yogendra, an anesthesiologist, and following this, he announced that YouTube handed his channel a “two week penalty.”
This is similar to what happened in February, when Pinsky told Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report that his YouTube channel had been “deplatformed” for a week, with a threat of permanent deplatforming.
He also shared at the time that he was unable to understand what the reasons behind YouTube’s actions were, but assumed they had to do with a discussion with another doctor of Covid topics such as immunity and controversies around different types of treatments of some complications brought on by the disease.
This time, Pinsky seems to have received a second strike against his channel within 90 days, leading to two weeks suspension, or, as he put it, “penalty.” A third strike within a given period would lead to the doctor’s permanent deplatforming.
This development seemed to have given Pinsky some show topic ideas, so he afterwards took to Twitter to announce an AMA session on Clubhouse, the topic being, “Big Tech vs. Free Speech: Ask Dr. Drew.”
Pinsky has a diversified presence on many platforms, including on Rumble, which he recently joined, and he urged his audience on Twitter to find links on his website to the video on other social media networks.
As for this latest example of YouTube’s censorship of his videos on the platform, Pinsky in one tweet thanked a commenter who said they listened to the whole podcast episode but were unable to determine what might have constituted for medical information – instead, it was “just talk about how discussion is being censored.”

But it would be much easier for YouTube to cite medical misinformation and call it a day, than to for once go into any meaningful detail in explaining why creators are punished and deplatformed.
YouTube censors New Jersey Senate hearing about kids’ mask mandates
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 14, 2021
As YouTube continues to censor a wide array of topics, not least those around the Covid pandemic, so it’s independent competitors like Rumble continue to attract more creators.
The trend was unbroken last week when Google’s video giant censored a video showing a New Jersey Senate hearing on the topic of forcing school children to wear masks, which concluded the policy may be harmful.
New Jersey-based talk show host and former chair of the College Republican National Committee Bill Spadea announced this, accusing the Democratic majority in the state’s capital, Trenton, of shunning the official event, and YouTube of eventually “not liking” the content of the discussion, and for that reason removing the video.
However, as Spadea explained, the video can still be found on his new channel on Rumble.
Scientists, doctors, lawyers and senators who chose to participate were there to debate the validity of one of the more controversial topics relating to Covid mandates in the US – masking children.
Like most other rules around masks and their efficacy in preventing infection, these have been changing over the past 18 months – but the consensus seems to be that children are least at risk of contracting and spreading the virus.
However, YouTube’s pro-masking, pro-distancing censorship algorithms aren’t very sophisticated so it appears that even to this day, even a discussion of the issue, let alone directly opposing the policy of masking children, will get content banned – even if the source is an official gathering of experts and lawmakers.
Spadea himself has little doubt that masks should not be mandated, because after covering the topic for over a year, he sees no proof that masks protect children.
This, however, runs contrary to what the US political and medical establishment thinks, and those doctors and scientists who disagree with official narratives and are willing to speak their mind are also often getting censored by Big Tech – the New Jersey Senate hearing, that concluded forcing children to wear masks could be dangerous, being no different.
Spadea blasted these acts of suppression of information as “the aggressive and immoral efforts of the social media oligarchs,” at the same time referring to Rumble as “a sliver of free speech” left out there.
YouTube censors public Lake Forest School District board meeting where parents opposed mask mandates
By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | July 13, 2021
YouTube has scrubbed a public Lake Forest High School District 115 board meeting from its platform after numerous parents at the meeting spoke out against required masking.
Ben Bradley, a news anchor and investigative reporter for WGN TV News, tweeted: Our understanding is that people reported the content to youtube as a violation of its terms, which triggered the removal while youtube reviews.”
Twitter user Harriet Smith Martin said “numerous parents spoke against required masking” at the meeting and added that the video was removed before she had finished listening to it.
“The video was up as of 10:30 or so last night (I was watching it.),” she tweeted. “When I went back to finish listening this morning, it was gone.”
Under its far-reaching “medical misinformation” policy, YouTube prohibits a wide range of claims about masks including claims that “wearing a mask is dangerous or causes negative physical health effects,” that “wearing a mask causes oxygen levels to drop to dangerous levels,” or that “masks do not play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19.”
As a result of this policy, numerous public debates and meetings on mask mandates have been censored by the tech giant.
In May, a public Shawnee Mission School District board meeting was removed under similar circumstances. The meeting was open to public comment and parents urged the district to remove mask mandates. YouTube flagged these comments as “misinformation” and removed the video.
A few days after this video was removed, YouTube deleted a Georgia mom’s testimony against mask mandates during a school board meeting. YouTube again claimed that the video violated its medical misinformation rules.
Video producer Matt Orfalea censored again for calling out YouTube censorship

By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | July 13, 2021
After he published a video discussing YouTube’s censorship last month, video producer Matt Orfalea was censored and had his channel demonetized. Now, YouTube has targeted Orfalea once again and removed another video where he and his guest, independent journalist Alison Morrow, called out the tech giant’s censorship.
In the video, which is titled “YouTube BANS Reporter Exposing YouTube HYPOCRISY,” Orfalea and Morrow recapped the escalating YouTube censorship they have both faced.
This censorship began in June when Orfalea’s YouTube channel was suspended for uploading what he described as “unpublished rough cuts” of a video highlighting YouTube’s censorship of ivermectin.
Orfalea was then demonetized in July after YouTube flagged a seven year old, 13 second parody video for allegedly violating its “violent criminal organizations” policy. After facing backlash, YouTube admitted “error” but did not re-monetize his videos.
A few days after Orfalea was demonetized, he was a guest on Morrow’s channel in a video where she highlighted how mainstream media outlets are allowed to violate YouTube’s “medical misinformation” policy without facing sanctions. This video was censored and then reinstated after YouTube faced pushback for taking it down.
In the “YouTube BANS Reporter Exposing YouTube HYPOCRISY” video, Morrow suggested that her video may have been removed because of Orfalea’s guest appearance and speculated that YouTube’s artificial intelligence (AI) could be flagging people that have previously been sanctioned by YouTube and then censoring videos from other creators that associate with those that have been flagged.
“This is just a perfect example of what’s happening now,” Orfalea added. “Where we have this caste system, this blatant double standard… so clearly, as you’ve described, this is not about protecting viewers from misinformation, this is about allowing, you know, some privileged class of journalists… corporate media and allow them to say things without being challenged.”
Shortly after Orfalea posted this video where he and Morrow criticized YouTube for its censorship, YouTube took it down for allegedly violating the platform’s “medical misinformation” rules.

Orfalea appealed but YouTube rejected the appeal and told him: “We reviewed your content carefully, and have confirmed that it violates our medical misinformation policy.”

“I’ve been dealing with this insanity for almost a full month now,” Orfalea said after YouTube rejected his appeal. “YT reinstated Alison’s video. So they should reinstate my video, referencing hers, too!”
YouTube’s consistent targeting of Orfalea is reflective of the double standard on YouTube between independent creators and mainstream media outlets that he called out in this now-censored video.
Independent creators are 20x less likely to top coronavirus search results, 14x less likely to be recommended on election related content, and 10x less likely to top search results for some other newsworthy events.
YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki has also admitted that the platform’s recommendation algorithm was changed in response to the media’s radicalization theory and said the platform won’t recommend YouTubers for breaking news.
Related: 🛡 Big Tech’s double standard on “conspiracy theories” when they come from mainstream media
Facebook removes Gaza-based Shehab News Agency from platform
MEMO | July 14, 2021
Facebook yesterday removed the page of the Palestinian Shehab News Agency from its platform.
News Director at Shehab, Hossam Al-Zayegh, described Facebook’s action as a new violation of freedom of opinion and expression guaranteed by international law.
“Deleting our page is a reprehensible and condemned action which aims to fight Palestinian content under the pretext of violating standards and inciting violence,” he added.
“Facebook overlooks incitement and violation of society’s standards by Israelis or Israeli political news sites or associations while preventing the publication of the Palestinian response to these provocations and incitement,” Al-Zayegh said, explaining that the agency had more than 7.5 million followers on Facebook.
The Palestinian Journalist Bloc condemned thew social media platform’s action, described it as “arbitrary and unjust”.
In 2020, the Echo Social Center documented 1,200 violations of Palestinian digital content on social media platforms.
Legal rights centre Adalah revealed in 2018 that social media giants are collaborating with Israeli authorities to censor user content.
In 2018, the Israeli Ministry of Justice said that Facebook has responded to about 85 percent of Israel’s requests to remove, block and provide data on Palestinian content on the site throughout 2017.
Democrat Groups Plan to ‘Fact Check’ Private SMS Messages
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | July 12, 2021
Groups allied with the Biden administration are planning on working directly with cellphone network providers to ‘fact check’ private SMS messages if they contain “misinformation about vaccines.”
The revelation is made in a Politico article which explains how the White House is preparing to characterize “conservative opponents of its Covid-19 vaccine campaign as dangerous and extreme.”
The decision to ramp up the information war against vaccine skeptics was made after conservatives showed resistance to the Biden administration’s plan to go “door-to-door” to increase vaccination rates.
“Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages,” states the report. “The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely.”
The prospect of the DNC and other government-affiliated groups having access to Americans’ private text messages represents a chilling surveillance dystopia.
Interfering with and trying to ‘fact check’ people’s personal conversations is also utterly demented.
Recall that ‘fact-checkers’ infamously declared the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis to be a “debunked conspiracy theory” at the start of the pandemic, only to be forced into a humiliating reversal later on.
In doing so, they may have helped facilitate one of the biggest cover-ups in modern history, so what business such groups have in snooping on people’s private SMS messages is anyone’s guess.


