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Google bans Dr. Vladimir Zelenko from sharing Google Docs

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | June 2, 2021

Google has been expanding censorship around Covid topics and users it disapproves of from the public-facing platforms like YouTube and Search – to Google Docs.

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko – a Westchester, New York-based US physician who became known last year for proposing alternative Covid treatments that was endorsed by then President Donald Trump – is on the receiving end.

After Facebook and YouTube restricted Zelenko’s presence on the social networks and Twitter suspended his account, the doctor is now prevented from sharing documents – six in all – using Google Docs.

The documents once again concern the Covid pandemic, discussing Zelenko’s own approach to the outbreak that included the use of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc, which he says played a significant role in preventing the need to hospitalize patients, Newsbusters reported.

Among the files Google is stopping him from sharing is also a letter he penned to New York Governor Cuomo and an opinion piece on the subject.

But since the same documents can be shared by other users, it is presumed that Google is targeting Zelenko specifically rather than this content per se.

Last year, the Times of Israel wrote that even though President Trump did not name the doctor who had written urging him to support the use of the combination of the three drugs, the description matched that of physician Vladimir Zev Zelenko.

Trump at the time said that he himself was taking this therapy, after “hearing a lot of good stories” about it.

Reacting to the latest round of censorship against him, Zelenko said that he had “called out the globalist elite” for their mishandling of Covid.

June 2, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Make Way for the Snitch State: The All-Seeing Fourth Branch of Government

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | June 1, 2021

We’re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors.

This government of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend.

Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

This far-reaching surveillance has paved the way for an omnipresent, militarized fourth branch of government—the Surveillance State—that came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum.

Indeed, long before the National Security Agency (NSA) became the agency we loved to hate, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were carrying out their own secret mass surveillance on an unsuspecting populace.

Even agencies not traditionally associated with the intelligence community are part of the government’s growing network of snitches and spies.

Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.”

Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine.

It’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.

We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics—our faces, irises, voices, genetics, even our gait—runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.

In this way, we are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall mass surveillance that makes the spy programs spawned by the USA Patriot Act look like child’s play.

Fusion centers. See Something, Say Something. Red flag laws. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps.

These are all part and parcel of the widening surveillance dragnet that the government has used and abused in order to extend its reach and its power.

The COVID-19 pandemic has succeeded in acclimating us even further to being monitored, tracked and reported for so-called deviant or undesirable behavior.

Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.

This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.

Despite the fact that its data snooping has been shown to be ineffective at detecting, let alone stopping, any actual terror attacks, the government continues to operate its domestic spying programs largely in secret, carrying out warrantless mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and the like.

Yet the surveillance sector is merely one small part of a shadowy permanent government comprised of unelected bureaucrats who march in lockstep with profit-driven corporations that actually runs Washington, DC, and works to keep us under close watch and, thus, under control. For example, Google openly works with the NSA, Amazon has built a massive $600 million intelligence database for the CIA, and the telecommunications industry is making a fat profit by spying on us for the government.

Most recently, the Biden Administration indicated it may be open to working with non-governmental firms in order to warrantlessly monitor citizens online.

This would be nothing new, however. Vast quantities of the government’s digital surveillance is already being outsourced to private companies, who are far less restrained in how they harvest and share our personal data.

In this way, Corporate America is making a hefty profit by aiding and abetting the government in its militarized domestic surveillance efforts.

The snitch culture has further empowered the Surveillance State.

As Ezra Marcus writes for the New York Times, “Throughout the past year, American society responded to political upheaval and biological peril by turning to an age-old tactic for keeping rule breakers in check: tattling.”

This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, technologically-wired age.

Marcus continues:

“Technology, and our abiding love of it, is crucial to our current moment of social surveillance. Snitching isn’t just a byproduct of nosiness or fear; it’s a technological feature built into the digital architecture of the pandemic era …. the world’s most powerful technology companies, whose products you are likely using to read this story, already use a business model of mass surveillance, collecting and selling user information to advertisers at an unfathomable scale. Our cellphones track us everywhere, and our locations are bought and sold by data brokers at incredible, intimate detail. Facial recognition software used by law enforcement trawls Instagram selfies. Facebook harvests the biometric data of its users. The whole ecosystem, more or less, runs on snitching.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what we are dealing with today is not just a beast that has outgrown its chains but a beast that will not be restrained.

June 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Australia’s drug regulator considers referring vaccine hesitant Facebook posts to police

The regulator cited potential two-year jail terms in some instances

By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | June 1, 2021

Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), is considering referring Facebook posts containing claims about COVID vaccine deaths to the police after a post showing Labor backbencher Julian Hill getting his vaccine was met with mass pushback from vaccine skeptics.

The post was ratioed with almost twice the number of comments to engagements – a common sign that a post is unpopular.

Many of the comments noted that the vaccine is “experimental,” described Hill’s post as “propaganda,” and voiced their objections to the vaccine.

But The Guardian Australia focused on alleged posts from some Facebook users that purportedly contained an image that cited the TGA and claimed that COVID-19 vaccines have caused more than 200 deaths.

The figure is a reference to the TGA’s disclosure in its May 27 COVID-19 vaccine weekly safety report that it has received “210 reports of deaths following immunisation.” However, the TGA insists that only one of these deaths was caused by the vaccines.

After The Guardian Australia contacted the TGA, it said the alleged posting of claims that the vaccine had caused more than 200 deaths were “particularly concerning” and that it would consider referring these posts to the federal police.

Additionally, the TGA noted that it’s a criminal offense, punishable by two years in prison, to represent oneself as a commonwealth body or claim to act on behalf of one.

The Guardian Australia also contacted Facebook which swiftly removed the posts for violating its far-reaching “COVID-19 misinformation” rules.

Despite the threat of police referrals from the TGA and Facebook removing the posts, Hill demanded that Australia’s health minister, Greg Hunt, take further action to “combat vaccine hesitancy, and the bat shit crazy conspiracy theories circulating online.”

He also warned “Australians will continue to be exposed to restrictions and lockdowns… until enough of the population is vaccinated.”

These developments come months after Australian lawmaker Craig Kelly had one of his Facebook posts about masks removed after complaints from the opposition party. Days after this post removal, his account was temporarily suspended and he was then permanently banned a couple of months later.

Facebook also expanded its crackdown on vaccine skeptic content last month by starting to “fact-check” and suppress individual users that repeatedly share misinformation. This followed whistleblowers exposing the tech giant’s secret algorithm that suppresses negative vaccine experiences.

June 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Canadian doctor removed from hospital duty after speaking out about COVID vaccine side effects

By Anthony Murdoch | LifeSiteNews | May 26, 2021

LYTTON, British Columbia — A Canadian family doctor says he has been punished by his local health authority because he raised concerns about side effects he observed in some of those who had received the Moderna COVID-19 jab within his community.

“I am no longer allowed to work in the ER,” British Columbia Dr. Charles Hoffe said, according to a True North News report.

Hoffe added that his suspension from the ER came at the end of April, after his local health authority “suspended” his clinical privileges “for the crime of causing ‘vaccine hesitancy,’ for speaking out about my vaccine injured patients.”

In an April 5 letter, Hoffe had written to British Columbia Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry that he was “quite alarmed at the high rate of serious side effects from this novel treatment,” in reference to Moderna COVID-19 injections given to 900 mostly Indigenous people in Lytton, British Columbia.

Hoffe said he had observed one patient death, “numerous” allergic reactions, along with three individuals who had “disabling” neurological deficits completed with chronic pain, which persisted “for more than 10 weeks after their first vaccine.”

“So in short, in our small community of Lytton, BC, we have one person dead, and three people who look as though they will be permanently disabled, following their first dose of the Moderna vaccine. The age of those affected ranges from 38 to 82 years of age,” wrote Hoffe.

Following his letter, Hoffe said, he is no longer allowed to work in the ER department of St. Bartholomew’s Health Centre due to his views on the COVID injection. He still can work in his private practice.

“I am still permitted to see patients in my private practice, which is not under the jurisdiction of the Interior Health authority,” Hoffe said. Losing the ability to work in the ER has resulted in his income being slashed by half, which he explained is “the price of advocating for the safety of my patients.”

A community note which was posted on the Lytton Medical clinic door states that Hoffe’s “suspension” by the local health authority will “likely” mean that the “emergency room in Lytton will be closed for at least two weeks out of every month.”

In a recent statement, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia (CPSBC) and the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA) said they were aware of “public statements from physicians that contradict public health orders and guidance [being] confusing and potentially harmful to patients.”

CPSBC registrar and CEO Dr. Heidi Oetter threatened to take action against doctors who speak out against the government narrative, saying in the statement that those who “put the public at risk with misinformation may face an investigation by the College, and if warranted, regulatory action.”

May 31, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , | Leave a comment

Canada: Conservatives’ attempts to protect platform users’ speech online is blocked

By Dan Frieth May | Reclaim the Net | May 31, 2021

Members of the Liberal Party, New Democratic Party (NDP), and Bloc Quebecois rejected a Bill C-10 amendment proposed by the Conservative Party of Canada that would have exempted user-generated content from the bill’s online speech suppression powers. The vote was cast during Monday’s Heritage Committee meeting.

Bloc and NDP legislators have expressed support for the bill, meaning the controversial internet censorship bill is highly likely to pass. Still, Conservative legislators are keen on ensuring the bill does not become law without an exception being created for user-generated content.

Legislators appear to be ignoring all the complaints and criticism of the bill from the public.

Former chairman of the CTRC, the regulator that will oversee online platforms once the bill passes, Peter Menzies has condemned the bill, warning it is “an assault on Canadian’s freedoms.”

Last week, a group of experts in the tech industry, wrote an open letter to Trudeau, urging him to “stop harming the Internet, and the freedoms and aspirations of every individual in this country, and our knowledge economy through overreaching regulatory policies that will have significant, yet unintended consequences for the free and open internet in Canada.”

May 31, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Media outlets try to deflect from lab leak theory and censorship

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 29, 2021

Mainstream media, now embarrassingly forced to follow President Biden’s policy and abruptly reverse course on the Wuhan lab leak theory – after branding and ridiculing it as a conspiracy theory for months – are working to downplay the importance of censorship around the topic that was enforced until just a few days ago.

One would think it would be hard to find a single person who has been through more than a year of lockdowns and myriads of restrictions who would not be interested to learn what the virus is and where it came from – but apparently, such people exist, in media outlets like The Verge.

An article that could easily be described as a distraction in its own right from the topic of why the lab leak theory was suppressed and censored so vigorously, now claims that the origin of coronavirus doesn’t really matter and suggests that it should be swept under the rug as a distraction from truly important topics.

While briefly paying lip service to the importance of discovering the origin of the virus, the article’s real goal is to convince its readers to change the topic. Forced to eat their own words, this class of media are no longer calling the Wuhan theory a fringe conspiracy, but “an extraordinary claim” that is “technically possible.”

But discussing the topic is discouraged as no less than “a distraction from the rest of the urgent work governments and health agencies around the world need to do in order to end this pandemic and prepare for the next one” – while at the same time calling for vaccination efforts to be doubled.

And as scientists who have tried to study the origin of coronavirus, including the possibility that it was artificially created, are finally getting a chance to speak after being censored and ostracized for a long time – mainstream media are scrambling to adjust to the new reality around the topic.

The New York Times has already done its U-turn, reporting on Friday that US intelligence agencies have a large amount of evidence concerning the Wuhan lab – but one of its reporters, Apoorva Mandavilli, didn’t get the memo immediately.

On the same day President Biden announced an investigation, Mandavilli tweeted, “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here” – only to quickly delete the post after receiving backlash for making the claim that it was “racist” to consider the possibility that the virus was engineered by humans.

May 29, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

YouTube deletes video of Georgia mom’s testimony against mask mandates for kids

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 27, 2021

YouTube has once again deleted a video showing Courtney Ann Taylor speaking out against the mask wearing mandate imposed on children in schools in the US state of Georgia.

This time, the viral video recorded during a school board meeting got taken down from the YouTube channel of Grabien, Tom Elliot’s distributed news prep service.

Elliot revealed in a thread on Twitter that YouTube censored the video for a violation of community guidelines and medical misinformation rules.

However, Elliot, who unsuccessfully appealed the decision, believes not only that parents should have the right to voice their opinion on whether their children wear masks – but that Taylor’s comments did not actually violate YouTube’s policy quoted in the removal notice.

YouTube insists that its coronavirus-related moderation and censorship is based on the position of health authorities, most notably the WHO, yet not even this organization recommends that children must wear masks.

Elliot links to the WHO website where the topic of children and masks is discussed, with the UN agency concluding that there is no scientifically-based reason to make children wear masks.

Even though this is the argument Elliot used in his appeal, YouTube remained steadfast in its intention to prevent users from seeing the video, insisting that it does violate the medical misinformation policy, and justifying this as the need to be “a safe place for all.”

For those wondering what Taylor said and how it might be interpreted as spreading Covid misinformation, he provided a link to the Grabien website that has the video, uploaded on another platform, and a transcript.

Taylor is heard urging the school board to end the mandatory wearing of masks by children as unjustified, considering not only the availability of vaccines for adults, but also the fact that the virus does not affect young children. Taylor then shares that her 6-year-old had asked her to tell the school that she doesn’t want to wear a mask any longer.

Previously, YouTube deleted the same video uploaded by journalist Kyle Becker, but left it on large corporate channels like CBS and Fox, once again affirming the trend of catering to this type of users over independent creators.

May 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Facebook says it will stop banning claims Covid-19 is man-made, citing ‘new facts and trends’

RT | May 27, 2021

Having spent months mercilessly removing any claims that the novel coronavirus may not have evolved naturally, Facebook said it will no longer do so. The move comes as Wuhan lab leak theory is gaining mainstream attention.

“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of [Covid-19] and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that [Covid-19] is man-made from our apps,” a Facebook spokesperson told Politico on Wednesday evening, in an emailed statement.

“We’re continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge,” Facebook added.

Back in February, “following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO),” Facebook said it was banning a number of “debunked” and “false” claims – including saying that the virus was “man-made or manufactured.”

So far, it appears Facebook (which also owns Instagram) is the only one to reverse course. Twitter and Google’s YouTube did not respond to Politico’s request for comment about their own policies.

The change of heart comes after the White House announced a 90-day deadline for the US intelligence community to produce a “definitive” assessment of where the novel coronavirus originated, with President Joe Biden claiming the spies were torn between “human contact with an infected animal” and “a laboratory accident.”

Until just a few weeks ago, however, merely suggesting the possibility of a “laboratory accident” – not even claiming that the virus was man-made – was grounds for getting censored on social media.

ZeroHedge, a news blog famously censored for daring to suggest the man-made origin of the virus, reacted to the Facebook volte-face with a meme used to express annoyance.

Twitter banned ZeroHedge for “abuse and harassment” in February 2020, following a hit piece by BuzzFeed. They were allowed to return in June, after Twitter said it had “made an error in our enforcement action.”

The previously heavily-enforced orthodoxy about the origin of the virus was that it naturally evolved in animals and somehow jumped to humans in an incident involving the wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Any mention of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, conducting research into the bat coronavirus family, was off-limits.

US corporate and social media alike have spent the past year insisting that the mere suggestion the virus may have escaped from the WIV – even by accident, as Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed – was a conspiracy theory with zero merit. A State Department inquiry into the origin of the virus, which began under Trump, was ordered shut by Biden in March, CNN reported this week citing a Foggy Bottom spokesman.

May 27, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Facebook exec Nick Clegg says Facebook should spread “free expression” around the world

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim the Net | May 26, 2021

Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, in a tone-deaf opinion piece, encouraged America to spread not only its technologies but also its values, including “free expression.”

While the remarks are commendable, they are also ironic coming from an executive of a giant social media platform with a very poor record of respecting the freedom of speech.

“The US risks becoming a nation that exports incredible technologies, but fails to export its values,” Clegg wrote in the op-ed published on CNBC.

Clegg also offered a recommendation on how the US can regulate Big Tech platforms and spread American values around the world.

“By focusing on the areas where there is agreement on both sides, Congress can break the deadlock and create the most comprehensive internet legislation in a generation. In doing so, it can help to preserve the American values at the heart of the global internet.”

The Facebook exec rightfully condemned China’s massive internet censorship:

“The Chinese internet model — segregated from the wider internet and subject to extensive surveillance.”

He also noted Turkey, Vietnam and Russia, as countries that “have taken steps in a similar direction.”

Clegg continued to suggest that, “The open, accessible and global internet we use today has been shaped by American companies and American values like free expression, transparency, accountability and the encouragement of innovation and entrepreneurship. But these values can’t be taken for granted.”

Clegg’s piece was objectively commendable from a free speech stand point. However, it is hard to ignore the fact that he did not call out Big Tech platforms for their continued disregard for freedom of speech. The company he works at, for example, repeatedly censored the former president and millions of other American, and has refused to reinstate Trump’s accounts.

May 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Facebook to fact-check and suppress individual users

By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | May 26, 2021

Personal Facebook accounts that are flagged by Facebook’s fact-checkers for repeatedly sharing “misinformation” will now have all their posts suppressed in the news feed as part of the tech giant’s latest crackdown on content that challenges the narratives of its fact-checking partners.

Facebook also announced that it will start dissuading its users from liking pages that are flagged by its fact-checkers via a pop-up that forces users to complete an additional step before they can like the page. When users attempt to like flagged pages, this pop up appears, tells users that the page has “repeatedly shared false information,” and asks them to choose whether to “Go Back” or “Follow Page Anyway.”

Additionally, the tech giant will start presenting users with a redesigned notification when their posts are flagged by fact-checkers. This new notification will encourage users to view the fact-check and delete their post.

The targeting of personal accounts is one of the most far-reaching Facebook censorship measures to date with an enforcement measure that previously only affected pages, groups, and domains, now applying to all of Facebook’s 2.8 billion users.

Facebook’s announcement comes days after one of its third-party fact-checkers, Politifact, quietly walked back its Wuhan lab leak fact-check.

For over a year, countless Facebook users have had their posts censored based on this fact-check which branded the idea that COVID-19 was created in a lab as a “debunked conspiracy theory.” But now that the mainstream media and fact-checkers have finally admitted this may not be a conspiracy, they’re allowed to discuss the Wuhan lab leak as a potential coronavirus cause with impunity.

Those who were censored based on this retracted fact-check would have had the reach of their flagged posts slashed by as much as 95%. And under Facebook’s new rule targeting personal account, entire accounts could now be suppressed based on erroneous fact-checks.

May 26, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Google blocks ads from Italian author who suggested coronavirus could have originated in a lab

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 26, 2021

Facebook, YouTube and other major social media platforms have been enforcing extremely strict rules around what their users can and cannot say about coronavirus and the pandemic for over a year now, to make sure only messages and narratives aligned with state authorities and the WHO made it through.

But at this point, it looks like those rules are even more stringent than what officials are saying, to the point that, if applied consistently, Facebook would have to ban Dr Fauci for not ruling out the possibility that the virus was engineered by humans.

This has so far been considered the type of “misinformation” that is sure to get posts deleted and accounts suspended, as Facebook says it prohibits any discussion around coronavirus possibly being man-made.

Facebook is not alone, since YouTube has a similar censorship policy. Only last week, Google prevented Italian journalist Fabrizio Gatti from advertising his book that explores much the same topic that Fauci did in his recent comments. Google said Gatti – whose book also criticizes China’s role – was guilty of creating content with “speculative intent.”

“Once the infection is overcome with vaccines, as I write in my book, we will have to defend our democracies from totalitarianism and the digital monopoly,” Gatti said, reacting to the blacklisting, and urged Google to reverse the decision.

Other contentious rules enforced by YouTube concern any questioning of the usefulness of masks, regardless of the fact official recommendations and guidelines on this topic have been changing throughout the pandemic.

Along the same line, saying that coronavirus vaccines might cause serious harm to people will get content and/or users banned on Facebook – even if medical authorities in Europe and in other places say that at least two of them – AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – can cause blood clots, though rare.

Even though tech giants behind the largest social media sites defend their policies as a way to prevent misinformation and promote official sources, those who have been on the receiving end – everyday users, medical professionals, journalists – see this as unwarranted censorship that stifles any debate.

And as former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson observed, this vigorous suppression of opposing views around Covid is a cause for concern, but is also emblematic of the general direction we’re headed in.

“This isn’t about Covid, it’s about whether or not as a society we’re going to allow people who have views that are sort of outside what the mainstream media want you to believe, to present those views. It’s becoming harder and harder to have honest conversations,” said Berenson, whose book skeptical of lockdowns and masks Amazon had temporarily banned.

May 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook is suppressing ‘facts’ that are flagged as promoting ‘vaccine hesitancy’: whistleblowers

RT | May 25, 2021

Facebook is taking aggressive steps to sideline any content, including factual material, critical of Covid-19 vaccines, two insiders have revealed to Project Veritas. The tech giant claims the policy was publicly announced.

The conservative media watchdog organization published a purported internal Facebook memo concerning “Vaccine Hesitancy Comment Demotion.” The policy aims to “drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy,” the document states.

Another document leaked to Project Veritas discusses how to flag and categorize “non-violating content” that raises questions about vaccination, “thereby contributing to vaccine hesitancy or refusal.”

Comments can be “demoted” if they are flagged as directly or indirectly discouraging people from getting vaccinated. It doesn’t matter if the content is factually accurate, Project Veritas reported, citing the leaked documents.

According to the reported policy, “shocking stories” about side effects linked to the vaccines can be suppressed, even if they are “potentially or actually true events or facts that raise safety concerns.” The company explains that such content should be discouraged because it could “present a barrier to vaccination in certain contexts.”

Facebook is also said to target comments that claim vaccination is not necessary due to low Covid-19 death rates, or argue for natural herd immunity against the virus, as such views are considered “indirect discouragement” that could hurt immunization efforts.

One of the Facebook whistleblowers who reached out to Project Veritas said that anyone who questions the “narrative” of “get the vaccine, the vaccine is good for you” will be “singled out.”

A second company insider, identified as a data center technician, said that Facebook is working to censor all content that can be deemed critical of vaccines.

“They’re trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page before you even see it,” the whistleblower told Project Veritas.

In response to the leaked documents, a Facebook spokesperson told the media watchdog that the company “proactively announced this policy on our company blog and also updated our help center with this information.”

In February, the platform said it was expanding its efforts to combat “false claims” about Covid-19 vaccines. Under the initiative, Facebook said it would remove content that claims “vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against” or that argues the jabs are “dangerous.”

The content crackdown comes amid growing concern about side effects that have been linked to the vaccines. Numerous countries temporarily suspended their rollout of the AstraZeneca jab amid reports of blood clotting in people who received it. The pharmaceutical company has insisted the vaccine is safe, a position that has been echoed by the EU’s drug regulator. However, some have argued that there is insufficient data to show that the vaccines represented on the market are safe and effective long-term, as their rollout was fast-tracked amid the pandemic.

May 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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