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Sen. Eric Schmitt Urges Exclusion of State Department’s Global Engagement Center from Government Funding

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 21, 2024

Republican Senator Eric Schmitt has addressed the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, asking for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) to be cut off from temporary government funding that’s currently negotiated in Congress.

Schmitt – who was, as Missouri attorney-general, behind the Missouri v. Biden free speech lawsuit (that became Murthy v. Missouri) said in a post on X that GEC “must be excluded from any subsequent piece of legislation for the remainder of the 118th Congress.”

The senator added that Americans “deserve to know their First Amendment rights are being protected.”

The letter to Schumer reveals that the temporary funding measure, known as “continuing resolution (CR)” among its original 1,500 pages provides for GEC as well.

(It has since been removed from the slimmer bill that passed on Friday.)

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

This office has been the subject of scrutiny by legislators and the public for finding a way to flag social media posts for censorship, despite being a part of the government.

Critics say this rendered its activities, conducted with third parties and affecting speech on social media, unconstitutional.

Democrats had hoped to get the CR approved through mid-March (but would extend GEC for another year) – however, President Trump, and consequently Republicans dashed their hopes of reaching a quick, bipartisan deal.

Now Schmitt’s letter shows one of the many objections Republicans have to the proposed CR, slamming it as an example of backroom deals that fly in the face of “transparency, accountability, and responsible government.”

Schmitt notes that GEC was set up to combat foreign propaganda, but then “mutated” into a censorship-facilitating outfit suppressing speech at home on a mass scale.

The senator states that since the target of censorship were narratives which “questioned established thinking” and involved a number of powerful actors (the government, social media), this “risks creating a government-endorsed ‘truth’ immune to public scrutiny.”

And, essentially – there goes true democracy, starting with the First Amendment.

For these reasons, Schmitt urges Schumer to make sure that GEC “under no circumstances” continues to receive public money.

The Republican senator is severely critical of the “giant ‘Christmas tree’ spending bill” itself, not only for undermining trust in government and the country’s institutions but also, due to its size and the rush to adopt it, for “slipping into the text” policies that would have GEC renewed and funded.

Schmitt therefore demands to exclude GEC from any legislation considered by the current Congress.

“I will strongly oppose any end-of-year bills that include reauthorization or funding of the GEC and urge my colleagues to do the same,” Schmitt’s letter concludes.

December 21, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Documents Show CISA Monitored and Influenced Domestic Speech on COVID-19 Through Private Sector Partners

Private entities were enlisted to flag content, even accurate information.

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 20, 2024

America First Legal (AFL) has revealed new information from a document it has been able to obtain through the lawsuit filed against the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

CISA is part of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has a “foreign disinformation” unit, the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF).

However, as early as mid-February 2020, CISA (via CFITF) had already started to monitor domestic speech about Covid – nearly a month before the pandemic was officially declared by the UN’s WHO, and before orders started to be issued to shut down schools and businesses in the US.

Even though several layers deep, CFITF was still a government entity, and in order to circumvent constitutional issues related to censorship of online speech, the document indicates that the unit turned to what AFL brands “the censorship industrial complex” – specifically, its private sector component.

These were “fact checkers,” “bias raters” and similar that keep cropping up in revelations about the Covid-era censorship: Atlantic Council DFR Lab, Media Matters, Stanford Internet Observatory, Alliance for Securing Democracy, Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) (a UK-based group, which now passes as “British-American”), Global Disinformation Index (GDI), and even an openly foreign government project, EU’s “EU vs. Disinfo.”

Among the kinds of speech CFITF would monitor and/or flag was that of President Trump, his comments about Hydroxychloroquine going back to 2020. The document reveals that CFITF (via Atlantic Council, DFR Lab) knowingly chose to give itself the right to flag even accurate information, justifying a thing as serious as censorship by presenting hypothetical scenarios:

“Once-accurate information can become misinformation as it ages, leading to erroneous conclusions and misinterpretation of the current situation,” the document reads. This was put in the context of the rapidly changing “nature” of the pandemic.

However, it took years for the same awareness – that information related to Covid was constantly changing – to start reversing some censorship decisions (e.g., the Covid origin theory).

As for CISA/CFITF early pandemic activities affecting online speech, AFL believes that they may represent “a violation of what’s known as the Supreme Court’s ‘major questions’ doctrine, which holds that government agencies must not stray from the specific legal authorities given to them by Congress.”

December 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | 1 Comment

UK’s Online “Safety” Act Enforced: Ofcom Pushes for Increased Platform Censorship and Encryption Backdoors

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 18, 2024

UK’s Online Safety Act has come into force and the Office of Communications (Ofcom) regulator has quickly set out to start enforcing it, with noncompliance resulting in high fines.

What those opposed to the legislation consider to be a censorship law and a sweeping one at that, is, according to Ofcom, a way to “protect” online users in the UK from illegal harms by legally requiring tech companies to “start taking action to tackle criminal activity on their platforms” as well as “make them safer by design.”

But what the law’s provisions in reality do, say critics, is bring in even more censorship, while at the same time providing for possibilities to undermine encryption via backdoors.

Then there are those who don’t think the Online Safety Act goes far enough, and are in particular upset by the gradual way it has been designed to boil this particular “frog.”

Right now, the deadline of March 15, 2025, has been given to tech companies to come up with risk assessments regarding the consequences that illegal content has on their users, and then starting two days later, they will have to begin putting measures in place to reduce those risks.

But going forward, Ofcom, which says the current requirements are “just the beginning,” plans to introduce more measures, including “crisis response protocols for emergency events (such as last summer’s riots).”

Here, the fear is that newsworthy content about various forms of protests could get censored as well.

Citing crimes like child abuse and terrorism as the reason, Ofcom also reserves the right to force tech firms to build and implement what are effectively encryption backdoors.

Ofcom says the Online Safety Act allows it to, “where we decide it is necessary and proportionate, make a provider use (or in some cases develop) a specific technology to tackle child sexual abuse or terrorism content on their sites and apps.”

Coupled with this, another provision – hash-matching – starts to gain sinister overtones, contrary to what the stated reason for it is, namely, preventing the sharing of “non-consensual intimate imagery and terrorist content.”

Ofcom is for now short on details regarding this, but the two requirements combined could easily be used for encryption backdoors.

Privacy is one victim of weakened encryption that immediately comes to mind, however, harm to online security, and the economy is often overlooked.

“Creating an encryption ‘backdoor’ for law enforcement would effectively be a blackmailer’s charter, allowing criminals and hostile foreign actors to exploit security flaws,” notes the Adam Smith Institute, and adds:

“Such measures would undermine the growth and competitiveness of the UK technology sector, potentially resulting in large companies withdrawing from the market entirely.”

December 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

European Parliament Approves “European Democracy Shield” Committee to Tackle Online “Disinformation”

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | December 20, 2024

The European Parliament has taken another step in its ongoing efforts to control the flow of information online, approving the creation of a new committee tasked with combating what it describes as foreign interference and disinformation.

Dubbed the European Democracy Shield, the initiative is framed as a safeguard for democratic processes but raises significant concerns about censorship and overreach. The committee’s establishment aligns with the European Commission’s policy agenda for 2024-2029 and is expected to begin operations next year.

At a plenary session in Strasbourg, the decision received strong support, with 441 members voting in favor, 178 opposing, and 34 abstaining.

While presented as a measure to protect democracy, critics have long questioned whether such sweeping powers risk stifling dissenting views under the guise of fighting disinformation.

The committee’s mandate extends to scrutinizing online platforms, AI-generated content, and so-called “hybrid” threats—broad categories that could potentially encompass legitimate political speech or alternative narratives.

Comprising 33 members, the Ad Hoc Committee on the European Democracy Shield will serve a 12-month term. Its composition, to be determined by political groups, will be announced in late January. The scope of its responsibilities includes reviewing existing laws for potential weaknesses that could be exploited and recommending reforms. However, skeptics may argue that this approach could lead to increased regulatory burdens on digital platforms, raising questions about freedom of expression and transparency in decision-making.

December 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

US Report Reveals Push to Weaponize AI for Censorship

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 19, 2024

For a while now, emerging AI has been treated by the Biden-Harris administration, but also the EU, the UK, Canada, the UN, etc., as a scourge that powers dangerous forms of “disinformation” – and should be dealt with accordingly.

According to those governments/entities, the only “positive use” for AI as far as social media and online discourse go, would be to power more effective censorship (“moderation”).

A new report from the US House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government puts the emphasis on the push to use this technology for censorship as the explanation for the often disproportionate alarm over its role in “disinformation.”

We obtained a copy of the report for you here.

The interim report’s name spells out its authors’ views on this quite clearly: the document is called, “Censorship’s Next Frontier: The Federal Government’s Attempt to Control Artificial Intelligence to Suppress Free Speech.”

The report’s main premise is well-known – that AI is now being funded, developed, and used by the government and third parties to add speed and scale to their censorship, and that the outgoing administration has been putting pressure on AI developers to build censorship into their models.

What’s new are the proposed steps to remedy this situation and make sure that future federal governments are not using AI for censorship. To this end, the Committee wants to see new legislation passed in Congress, AI development that respects the First Amendment and is open, decentralized, and “pro-freedom.”

The report recommends legislation along four principles, focused on preserving American’s right to free speech. The first is that the government cannot be involved when decisions are made in private algorithms or datasets regarding “misinformation” or “bias.”

The government should also be prohibited from funding censorship-related research or collaboration with foreign entities on AI regulation that leads to censorship.

Lastly, “Avoid needless AI regulation that gives the government coercive leverage,” the document recommends.

The Committee notes the current state of affairs where the Biden-Harris administration made a number of direct moves to regulate the space to its political satisfaction via executive orders, but also by pushing its policy through by giving out grants via the National Science Foundation, once again, aimed at building AI tools that “combat misinformation.”

But – “If allowed to develop in a free and open manner, AI could dramatically expand Americans’ capacity to create knowledge and express themselves,” the report states.

December 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | 1 Comment

UK’s Online Censorship Law Drives Small Websites to Shut Down

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 19, 2024

The UK’s sweeping online censorship law – the Online Safety Act – that will be enforced from March of next year is already claiming its first victims.

The new legislative landscape in the country is now not providing any kind of safety for hundreds of small websites, including non-profit forums, that will have to shut down, unable to comply with the act – specifically, faced with what reports refer to as “disproportionate personal liability.”

The fines go up to the equivalent of USD 25 million, while the law also introduces new criminal offenses.

Earlier in the week, the act’s enforcer, Ofcom, published dozens of measures that online services are supposed to implement by March 16, including naming a person responsible – and accountable – for making sure a site or platform complies.

The law is presented as a new way to efficiently tackle illegal content, and in particular, provide new ways to ensure the safety of children online, including by age verification (“age checking”).

Opponents, however, reject it as “a censor’s charter” designed to force companies to step up monitoring and censorship on their platforms, including by scanning private communications and undermining encryption.

But another way that concrete harm can be done to the online ecosystem, while declaratively seeking to prevent harm, is now emerging with the example of small and community sites, where those running them are unwilling to take on the massive risk related both to the fines, and criminal responsibility in case they fail to “moderate” according to the act’s provisions.

UK press reports about one of the first examples of this, as the non-profit free hosting service Microcosm and its 300 sites – among them community hubs and forums dedicated to topics like cycling and tech – will go down in March, unable to live up to the “disproportionately high personal liability.”

“It’s too vague and too broad and I don’t want to take that personal risk,” Microcosm’s Dee Kitchen is quoted.

Although the general impression has been that only large corporate services will be affected by the law, in reality requirements and penalties for them are higher, but Ofcom made it clear that “very small micro businesses” are also subject to the legislation.

Microcosm’s decision illustrates what that will look like in practice, as sites – big and small – consider finding hosting overseas, or even leaving the UK market.

December 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

How the Captive Media Divides Us

By Thomas Eddlem | The Libertarian Institute | December 19, 2024

Most political differences in America today aren’t a result of moral differences, or even policy opinions. Rather, they are generated by divergent media consumption. There’s a huge difference between those whose news comes primarily from the corporate Big Five (CBS-Viacom, ABC-Disney, NBC-Universal, Fox-NewsCorp, and CNN-TimeWarner) and that handful of midsize legacy publications like PBS, The New York Times and Washington Post, than from those who get their news from independent media.

While the independent media can be inaccurate, it’s often when they contradict themselves. On the other hand, when the Big Five and its satellites are inaccurate, it’s typically in union, as a bloc, and always in defense of the Washington establishment.

I could detail one hundred of these blatant lies spun by the unified, corporate media over the past two decades, but for purposes of brevity let’s take a quick look at just ten widely reported lies in three sentences or less (and I’ll include extra links to news stories with the same false take, to total five sources for each story), refuted by primary sources or recanted by these same establishment media organs.

  • Lie #1: Wearing cloth masks helps prevent COVID. “Public health messages should target audiences not wearing cloth face coverings and reinforce positive attitudes, perceived norms, personal agency, and physical and health benefits of obtaining and wearing cloth face coverings consistently and correctly,” the CDC inveighed on July 17, 2020, even though the same report acknowledged “widespread use of cloth face coverings has not been studied among the U.S. population.” The captive media dutifully lectured the public (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) about the alleged benefits of cloth masks in preventing COVID, even though the CDC had just re-published a meta-study of all nineteen public scientific studies of mass masking in May 2020 which concluded there was no scientific benefit for mass public cloth masking. And a giant study by Yale and Stanford researchers in Bangladesh in 2021 confirmed the earlier research, finding a very small benefit in wearing surgical masks “but see no statistically significant effect for cloth masks.”
  • Lie #2: Donald Trump is a Russian spy. “A New Report Adds Evidence That Trump Was a Russian Asset,” a Slate.com headline blared in 2021, adding in the subtitle, “He helped Putin manipulate the U.S. election in 2020, as he did in 2016” (2, 3, 4, 5). But the reality is that the Durham Report of the special prosecutor concluded on May 12, 2023 that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation” and found the entire affair was devoid of evidence and had been a joint operation between the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and friendly senior FBI officials, spread by a compliant media.
  • Lie #3: COVID vaccines have no serious side effects. “No serious safety concerns were found in the clinical trials of the vaccines that have been authorized for use in the United States,” FactCheck.org claimed on March 4, 2021 (2, 3, 4, 5), but within months the same “fact-checker” site had amended its claim to include deadly reactions in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine (later pulled from the market for these reasons) and several serious side effects including myocarditis from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Likewise, the CDC has now published a long list of side effects, including myocarditis, pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, and anaphylaxis.
  • Lie #4: Russia put bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan. “American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan—including targeting American troops,” New York Times reporter Charlie Savage claimed on June 26, 2020, in the heat of the election campaign, adding that President Trump “has yet to authorize any step” to counter it (2, 3, 4, 5). But, after the election, even NBC News admitted the whole story was fake from the beginning, as did other establishment-controlled outlets that echoed Biden administration admissions of the lack of proof for the highly politicized claim.
  • Lie #5: Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. “More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter,” Politico claimed of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020, “outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation’” (2, 3, 4, 5). But the reality is the FBI testified under oath that the laptop story, which was suppressed on Facebook, Twitter and other social media before the election, was legitimate all along. And a congressional investigation revealed the “Russian disinformation” story was a result of the Joe Biden presidential campaign colluding with senior CIA officials.
  • Lie #6: Donald Trump said there were “good people on both sides” of a white supremacist rally. “Trump Defends White-Nationalist Protesters: ‘Some Very Fine People on Both Sides’” blared the headline in The Atlantic, adding “The president backtracked from his remarks on Charlottesville just a day earlier” (2, 3, 4, 5). Even the fact-checkers observed this claim that Trump’s “both sides” quote was false from the start, and that the “both sides” quote was about a totally different topic, though establishment organs continue to repeat the lie to this day.
  • Lie #7: Donald Trump said Liz Cheney should face a firing squad. “Now he’s talking about a firing squad,” Joe Scarborough ranted on MSNBC, on November 4, 2024, “for a Republican who is long ranked as one of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, DC” (2, 3, 4, 5). But Trump did no such thing. He simply called former Congresswoman Cheney a chicken-hawk, saying she’d have a less bellicose worldview if she were on the front lines. This is why the fact-check sites quickly called out this lie, and even uber chicken-hawk Jonah Goldberg had to recant the same claim as Scarborough.
  • Lie #8: Hamas decapitated dozens of babies on October 7. “Dozens of babies were reportedly found dead, including some that had been beheaded,” NBC reported, “in an Israeli kibbutz Tuesday after the terrorist organization Hamas stormed the community” (2, 3, 4, 5). The reality that emerged from the widely spread story of Israeli propaganda was that no babies were beheaded, according to a France 24 investigation that looked through the names of the victims of the terrorist attack several weeks later, though one ten-month-old baby was killed by gunshot wounds in the combat crossfire.
  • Lie #9: Joe Biden is in the best shape of his life and sharp as a tack. “F you if you can’t handle the truth,” Joe Scarborough lashed out on MSNBC on March 5, 2024, “This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever” (2, 3, 4, 5). Progressive YouTuber Matt Orfalea did a nice compilation of how official Washington dutifully recited the lines from the “sharp as a tack” talking points memos circulated by the DNC. But the reality was admitted almost universally after Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate with Donald Trump, ending talk about “cheap fakes.” CNN and the Associated Press published stories in July admitting the media ran cover for “forgetful” Biden as they tried to ramp up pressure to unceremoniously dump the winner of all the Democratic primaries that year and replace him with Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention in August.
  • Lie #10: Internet censorship was just corporations being responsible. “Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account on Friday,” NBC news reported January 8, 2021, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” and not mentioning that the decision was based on extraordinary pressure from the FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The removal of the sitting president of the United States from social media and many other prominent people was widely reported as entirely a corporate decision across the establishment media spectrum (2, 3, 4, 5). But the #TwitterFiles revealed these decisions were primarily the result of government pressure and not organic corporate decisions, with the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in Missouri v. Biden that the censored plaintiffs “presented extensive evidence of escalating threats—both public and private—by government officials aimed at social-media companies concerning their content-moderation decision.”

These lies help explain why independent media personalities like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, a comedian with a microphone, regularly get more than twenty million viewers for two-hour interviews with few commercials while CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, with their billion-dollar studios and networks, rarely crack one million viewers with their forty-four minutes of content in an hour. The American people no longer trust what I’ve come to label the “captive media,” and consume far more independent media content. The captive media can call Trump a rapist, a fascist, a threat to democracy, and, as the November election revealed, most Americans will simply no longer believe their claims.

And the #TwitterFiles reveal why the media organs pushing official lies are best labeled the “captive media” and not the mainstream media, legacy media or the corporate media. They have been captured by the U.S. intelligence agencies, often with dozens or even hundreds of “former” intelligence officers in place on-air and on staff.

The American national mental health crisis that emerged as a result of Trump’s election in 2024 was entirely one-sided; the people who raged like infants on social media and said Trump voters were horrible people were limited to those who digested nothing but captive Media outlets like CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, Fox, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the censorious Big Tech companies.

Why is it only the Democrats who are saying they can’t have Thanksgiving dinner with their family? Why didn’t Republicans have the same reaction after their loss to Joe Biden in 2020? Although many Republicans who watch Fox News did avoid Thanksgiving as a result of fear-mongering over the COVID vaccine skepticism.

Part of the answer to the question “Why just the Democrats?” is the structure of the media which political partisans consume. Democrats consume media solely within the FBI, CIA, ODNI matrix that the #TwitterFiles revealed to the public and rarely or never encounter media that contradicts the official narrative being sold. Google searches, like Facebook and most other social media, are curated by precisely the same intelligence agencies. So it’s possible for Democrats to live entirely within the captive media echo chamber (even as they earnestly believe they are getting “both sides” by listening to Republican Senator Lindsay Graham talk about Israeli babies being slaughtered on October 7 or former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney talk about Trump as a Putin asset) and assume that anyone with a heterodox opinion gets his information from some sketchy “dark web.” Republicans get a slightly different take with Fox News, and more importantly have trended toward relying progressively less on the captive media.

Republicans and independents hear something other than the captive media narrative.

The captive media echo chamber can occasionally be bipartisan, however. Back in 2020, in the throes of the COVID hysteria, Fox News viewers were also running around like fools with cloth masks on, viewing family members as ambulatory disease vectors, and judging those who took rational risks (or in the case of the experimental vaccine on young people who were getting myocarditis, avoided risks rationally) as bad or selfish persons.

Many Democrats are increasingly engaged in classic cult-like behavior as a result of the captive media drumbeat. “If you are going into a situation where you have family members, where you have close friends who you know have voted in ways that are against you,” Dr. Amanda Calhoun of Yale University told ABC’s The View, “it’s completely fine to not be around those people and to tell them why.” The idea that Democrats should separate themselves from family and friends because they have different political opinions has become widespread in the captive media (2, 3, 4, 5). And it’s part of the very definition of cultish behavior, which includes when “subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends.”

The way to bring your friends and family out of the cult of the captive media matrix is to cut cable television out of your home, and to track the lies of the captive media and discuss them with family and friends as they’re exposed and recanted. Nobody likes being lied to.

Many of these captive media organs are engaging in a campaign against “disinformation” (as a ruse to resume government social media censorship), and this can be used to the advantage of people trying to rescue friends and family from the cult. Explaining in detail how the captive media reliably lies on behalf of the military-industrial-complex, the intelligence community and Big Pharma can bring them out as it has brought hundreds of millions of others out of the captive media matrix already.

December 19, 2024 Posted by | Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook restricting Palestinian news outlets post-October 7: BBC

Al Mayadeen | December 18, 2024

A study conducted by BBC found that Facebook has restricted Palestinian news media outlets, significantly reducing their audience reach throughout the Israeli war on Gaza.

After examining and analyzing Facebook data, BBC found that Palestinian newsrooms operating in Gaza and the West Bank saw drastic drops in online engagement since October 2023, when the war on the Gaza Strip was launched.

Leaks further showed that Instagram, also owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, has increasingly moderated comments by Palestinian accounts during the same period.

Meta, responding to the allegations, claimed that implications that it intentionally restricted “particular voices” were “unequivocally false.”

Given that Israeli authorities prohibited the entry of foreign journalists, only allowing a very limited number accompanied by army escorts, social media transpired as a key medium for those seeking direct information from inside Gaza.

Facebook pages of news outlets like Palestine TV, Wafa News Agency, and Palestinian Al-Watan News—based in the West Bank—have played a key role in providing updates to people around the globe.

BBC News Arabic analyzed engagement data from the Facebook pages of 20 major Palestinian news organizations, comparing data from the year before and the year after the October 7 operation and the subsequent events.

Findings: Palestinian media saw 77% drop in engagement

BBC found that in light of the war on Gaza, audience engagement with the examined Palestinian outliers dropped by 77%.

For example, although Palestine TV has 5.8 million followers on Facebook, journalists from the newsroom shared data showing a 60% decline in the number of people seeing their posts. “Interaction was completely restricted, and our posts stopped reaching people,” said Tariq Ziad, a journalist at the channel.

Over the past year, Palestinian journalists have expressed concerns that their online content is being “shadow-banned” by Meta, meaning its visibility had been significantly reduced.

Comparative studies with Israeli, Arab media

A comparative study with 20 Israeli news outlets, including Yediot Ahronoth, Israel Hayom, and Channel 13, found that they experienced an increase in audience engagement by almost 37%.

Moreover, it is worth noting that Meta has faced accusations from Palestinians and human rights organizations of not moderating online content impartially. A 2021 independent report commissioned by the company claimed that these issues were not intentional but were due to a lack of Arabic-speaking moderators. As a result, some words and phrases were misinterpreted as offensive or violent.

For instance, the Arabic phrase “Alhamdulillah,” meaning “Praise be to God,” was sometimes auto-translated as “Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”

To determine if this could be related to the drop in engagement with Palestinian outlets, the BBC conducted a similar analysis on the Facebook pages of 30 major Arabic-language news sources based elsewhere, such as Sky News Arabia and Al Jazeera. These pages, however, experienced an average engagement increase of nearly 100%.

In response to the research, Meta acknowledged the “temporary product and policy measures” implemented in October 2023. The company explained that it faced challenges in balancing freedom of speech with its responsibility to enforce its policies, particularly given that Hamas is both US-sanctioned and classified as a “dangerous organization” under Meta’s guidelines.

Meta also noted that pages focusing solely on the war were more likely to experience a decline in engagement. “We acknowledge we make mistakes, but any implication that we deliberately suppress a particular voice is unequivocally false,” it noted.

Leaks: Meta imposes anti-Palestine algorithm

The BBC also spoke with five current and former Meta employees about the impact of the company’s policies on Palestinian users. One anonymous source shared internal documents revealing that Instagram’s algorithm was altered after the Hamas operation, making moderation stricter on Palestinian comments.

The employee stated that within a week of the operation, the code was changed to target Palestinians more aggressively. Internal communications showed concerns raised by an engineer about potential bias against Palestinian users.

Meta confirmed the algorithm change but argued it was necessary to address a “spike in hateful content” from the Palestinian territories. The company stated that the policy adjustments made at the start of the war have now been reversed, though it did not specify when this occurred.

“A lot of information can’t be published as it is too graphic – for example if the [Israeli] army commits a massacre and we film it, the video won’t spread,” Omar el-Qataa, one of the few photojournalists who stayed in northern Gaza, revealed, affirming his and his colleagues’ commitment to continue sharing news from the heart of Gaza.

Engineer fixes anti-Palestine bug, gets fired

Meta’s controversial conduct when it comes to spreading Palestinian voices has been a prominent topic of discussion for years, but more so since October 2023. In June 2024, the tech giant fired one of its engineers for fixing a bug causing the block of Instagram posts related to Palestine.

Palestinian-American engineer Ferras Hamad, who has been employed at Meta since 2021, filed a lawsuit in a California state court for discrimination and wrongful termination, accusing the company of bias against Palestinians. He said the company even deleted internal employee communications mentioning the deaths of their relatives in Gaza and conducted investigations into their use of the Palestinian flag emoji.

The lawsuit further states that no similar investigations have been launched before for employees posting Israeli or Ukrainian flag emojis in similar contexts.

Hamad notes that his dismissal was due to an incident in December regarding an emergency procedure to troubleshoot severe problems with the platforms, known within Meta as a SEV or “site event”.

According to the complaints in the lawsuit, Hamad noticed irregularities in the SEV policies related to restricting content posted by Palestinian Instagram accounts, such as posts being prevented from appearing in searches and feeds.

Read more: Al Mayadeen English unpublished by FB, asserting pro-‘Israel’ bias

December 18, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s secret service urges neo-Nazis to target MP

RT | December 18, 2024

The spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence service (HUR), Andrey Yusov, has called on “radicals” to go after opposition MP Yury Boyko for criticizing Kiev’s crackdown on the Russian language and attempts to “de-communize” the country.

Over the weekend, Boyko, who had previously served as the co-chairman of the now-banned Opposition Platform – For Life party, published a video in which he spoke in defense of the Russian language and condemned Kiev’s demolition of monuments, renaming of cities, and the ban on the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The politician currently heads the parliamentary group Platform for Life and Peace in the Ukrainian Rada.

Boyko’s video sparked a backlash from a number of top Ukrainian officials, including the head of the presidential office, Andrey Ermak, who called the criticisms “Russian narratives.”

Meanwhile, writing on Facebook, Yusov claimed that the fact that Boyko was still free was a call for action for radical groups in Ukraine and suggested that the “Derussification, decolonization and decommunization of Ukraine should move so fast that no bastard could even have the time to record a Тiktok.”

Evgeny Karas, a notorious far-right activist and leader of the neo-Nazi S14 group, whose members have a record of harassing minorities and have been accused of high-profile political murders, also called for violence against Boyko.

”Commissioned officers, civilians and demobilized for family reasons, join the squadron of the Holy Inquisition,” Karas wrote on Telegram, calling on them to “roll up their sleeves” and punish Boyko.

On Tuesday, Boyko was summoned for questioning by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), after which he posted another video in which he apologized for his previous comments.

“If any Ukrainians <…> were offended by my words, I want to apologize and say that we must all be united,” the politician said in a video published by the news outlet Strana.

Boyko’s Opposition Platform – For Life party, which was the second largest party in terms of seats in parliament, was banned along with other opposition parties following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. The authorities in Kiev claimed that the opposition had been involved in subversive activities and have prosecuted several MPs linked to the party.

December 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

House Strikes a Blow To Censorship in Landmark Defense Bill Vote

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | December 16, 2024

A new chapter in the fight against censorship unfolded as the US House of Representatives approved the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2025. While 124 Democrats opposed the bill, its passage marked a significant step in addressing concerns over biased media practices and government spending.

Among its provisions, the legislation includes a prohibition on contracts with firms like NewsGuard Technologies, an organization criticized and accused of targeting certain media outlets.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson praised the bill’s contents, highlighting its focus on accountability in government spending and ensuring a level playing field for media voices.

Founded in 2018, NewsGuard claims to serve as a nonpartisan fact-checking organization, rating the reliability of news websites. However, critics argue that its actions reveal a far different agenda. The group has been accused of systematically targeting certain outlets while shielding some publishers from scrutiny.

Its self-proclaimed mission to “promote truth” often directs readers to government-endorsed sources like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a practice that raises questions about impartiality – especially since it has received funding from government sources.

Breitbart, The Drudge Report, and The Daily Mail are among the prominent outlets that have been ranked poorly by NewsGuard.

Reports indicate that the organization allegedly advises advertisers to avoid these sites, effectively stripping them of revenue. Critics see this as financial censorship—a strategy to silence dissenting voices while funneling resources toward establishment-backed media.

In recent years, these concerns have deepened, particularly following revelations that the US Department of Defense (DOD) awarded NewsGuard $749,387 in taxpayer funds in September 2021.

December 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Biden Regime Launches Task Force on Chinese Censorship, Drawing Criticism for Hypocrisy

By Didi Rankovic – Reclaim The Net – December 16, 2024

The Biden-Harris administration has revealed it was setting up an action group to “monitor and address the effects” of any censorship or intimidation of Americans by China.

Signed by President Joe Biden, the memorandum addressed heads of executive departments and agencies, while the task force is to be led by the assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and the director of the National Economic Council.

This move comes after the administration spent the past four years doubling and tripling down on policies encouraging unprecedented censorship at home and being sued and investigated for colluding (through pressure via third parties) with social platforms and other tech companies to do its (unconstitutional) bidding.

Hypocrisy this may be, but that might be the least of the problems with this sudden spurt of activity by an administration that is weeks away from exiting, stage left.

If we choose to forget that many of the censorship and surveillance mechanisms that permeated the soon-to-be former administration’s activities were regularly mentioned by critics as “inspired” by those used by China’s authorities, the question remains: why establish an entirely new “task force” and why now?

The departments and agencies that will be represented at assistant secretary or above level include the departments of state, defense, treasury, commerce, agriculture, education, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, the FBI, the director of National Intelligence, etc. – plus, “other agencies and offices as the President may, from time to time, designate.”

Opponents of the Chinese authorities and their notorious brand of censorship welcome the move and believe it should be endorsed by the incoming Trump administration, but also – somehow – expanded to China itself.

Declarative statements about the purpose of such “monitoring” outfits are one thing, but recent history shows how far those can veer off course.

One cautionary tale is the Department of Homeland Security’s Global Engagement Sector (GEC) which was set up to direct, lead, and coordinate US government efforts countering foreign state propaganda and disinformation.

What that turned out to be, however, is a weapon of censorship pointed at Americans, that used third parties to circumvent legal constraints and push biased, partisan narratives at home.

December 16, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Canadian Doctor Fights for Free Speech at Supreme Court Over Covid Censorship

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 13, 2024

A Canadian doctor who was censored for discussing Covid topics during the pandemic is taking her legal battle to the country’s Supreme Court, in a bid to have free speech restrictions imposed on her finally removed.

Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill made the decision after the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled to uphold three “cautions” she received for tweets opposing what she considered to be harmful Covid lockdowns, published in August 2020.

These cautions were issued by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) in February 2021. The state’s medical regulator in 2020 warned medical professionals that the opinions they express should be in line with whatever the government or public health institutions decide is the correct information.

That included lockdowns, which Gill openly criticized early on, and continues to believe were ineffective in dealing with the pandemic. Besides her opinion, Gill also offered what her legal counsel says is “ample evidence” to CPSO to support her stance on the ineffectiveness of lockdowns.

As for the cautions, the doctor believes CPSO used them to censor her right to free expression, guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Twitter, where she posted her thoughts on the situation developing in 2020, has in the meantime become X, and this social platform is now supporting her by covering the legal costs, as she continues her effort to appeal against CPSO-imposed speech restrictions.

Those costs amounted to $6,000 as the lower court ruled to uphold the regulator’s decisions that targeted Gill in 2021.

Gill expressed her gratitude to X and Elon Musk for the support, and provided links about the details of the case in a post, saying that to “first do no harm” as a physician meant opposing lockdowns – and that this triggered a 5-year “unjust journey” for her.

“The growing overreach of regulators into monitoring the speech of professionals on social media has become a matter of national concern to the public, which loses the benefit of hearing a variety of opinions when professionals’ speech is chilled out of fear of punishment,” Gill’s lawyer Lisa Bildy said in a statement.

According to Bildy, her client spoke against lockdowns and other harmful Covid-era mandates aligning evidence-based concerns and her conscience – rather than obeying CPSO’s “edict” to align with whatever the authorities decided were the right measures.

December 14, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment

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