Palestinian fired over Gaza censorship sues Meta – Reuters
RT | June 5, 2024
A former engineer has accused Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – of being biased against Palestinians, according to Reuters.
Ferras Hamad filed a lawsuit in California on Tuesday, alleging discrimination and wrongful termination. He had been an engineer on Meta’s machine learning team from 2021 until February.
Meta was deleting internal employee messages by Palestinian-Amerians that mentioned the deaths of their relatives in Gaza and investigated their use of Palestinian flag emojis, Hamad alleged. By contrast, no such investigations were launched into employees using Israeli or Ukrainian flags, he said.
According to Hamad, he was fired after pointing out irregularities with an emergency procedure for handling “site events” (SEV), when it resulted in restrictions on Instagram posts by Palestinian personalities. In one case, he said in the complaint, a short video by photojournalist Motaz Azaiza showed a destroyed building in Gaza, but Meta had labeled it as pornographic.
When Hamad attempted to resolve that case, Meta told him he was violating the policy barring employees from dealing with the accounts of people they knew personally – although Hamad insists he is not personally acquainted with Azaiza.
The former engineer had handled SEV cases related to Gaza, Israel and Ukraine before, and obtained confirmation in writing that this was part of his job description. He filed an internal discrimination complaint in January, but was fired a few days later.
Meta did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Mark Zuckerberg’s social media behemoth has been widely criticized by human rights groups over its censorship of content related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – specifically, suppressing the Palestinian viewpoint. Almost 200 employees have raised concerns about the matter in an open letter to Zuckerberg and other executives, earlier this year.
Scott Ritter Ponders on ‘Real Reason’ Behind US Move to Stop Him From Traveling to Russia
Sputnik – June 5, 2024
On June 3, the former Marine Corps intelligence officer and Sputnik contributor was removed by US Customs and Border Protection officers from a plane bound for Russia, where he was to attend the 2024 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).
The US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) does not have the authority to seize passports without probable cause, former Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik, commenting on Monday’s incident.
Ritter recalled that as he prepared to board the plane, he was pulled out of line by three armed CBP officers who took control of his passport. He said that when he asked them “on what authority,” they cited orders from the US Department of State.
“They provided no warrant, no documentation, nor did they provide a receipt for my passport. They provided no explanation of what they were doing. They just did it,” the Sputnik contributor pointed out.
Ritter stressed that his constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment were violated because the document requires CBP officers to provide a warrant or some other form of authority upon which to conduct the seizure of his passport.
“Under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution and others, I’m free to travel. The US government cannot restrict my travel without specific justification, none of which was articulated to me and none of which I believe exists. So it’s a violation of my Fifth Amendment,” the former Marine Corps intelligence officer added.
He suggested that “the real reason” behind all this “appears to be to prevent” him from participating in the SPIEF 2024 and to prevent the work he planned to do as a journalist with his documentary film crew. According to him, he was planning to make a documentary about “the reality of Russia”.
“This is my First Amendment right under freedom of speech and a free press. And this right was likewise violated by the US government, by the Biden administration,” Ritter noted.
The Sputnik contributor recounted that he had traveled to Russia “two times in the last year using this same passport,” and that on each time, the US government was notified in advance of his intent to travel and of his itinerary.
In an apparent reference to his planned trip to Russia to attend SPIEF 2024, Ritter said he was “not off on a secret mission” and that the US government “knew full well” what he was up to.
“And this is why I believe they acted in the way they did. This has a chilling effect, not just on me and the work I was doing, but on all Americans who choose to speak out against the policies of the United States that they disagree with and to travel abroad at the same time that they are criticizing the US government. And what the US government is saying is that we can control your movement. We can control your life. We can punish you for what you’ve been saying that we disagree with,” the former Marine Corps intelligence officer emphasized.
Persecution against Scott Ritter shows US not democracy anymore
By Lucas Leiroz | June 4, 2024
The persecution of political dissidents in the US is becoming commonplace. People who oppose Washington’s aggressive foreign policy are being seen as enemies and treated as criminals, even when there is no plausible reason to charge them. Recently, military analyst Scott Ritter had his passport confiscated by US authorities without any specific reason, showing the advanced levels of tyranny in the country.
Ritter was on a plane at the New York airport. His plan was to travel to the Russian Federation, as he had a special invitation to participate in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which will begin in the next few days. Ritter was already boarding when three policemen suddenly forcibly removed him and seized his documents. When asked about the reason for this action, the policemen said they were following orders from the US State Department and refused to clarify any details about the case.
“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me (…) They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport,” he told journalists.
Without his passport, Ritter is unable to leave the US territory. In practice, he will begin living under a regime similar to house arrest, not only being monitored by American authorities, but also being prevented from leaving the country. It is curious that this happened precisely during a trip by Ritter to Russia. It seems that Washington is trying to make it clear to all its citizens that there will be no tolerance for citizens who maintain any form of ties with Moscow.
Ritter has long been one of the most vocal critics of military support for Ukraine. In his interviews and articles, he openly advocates for an end to arms supply and for a friendly policy between the US and Russia. Ritter has repeatedly exposed the truth about Ukrainian Nazism and Western collusion with ultranationalism and racism. In addition, his main work as a military analyst consists of providing detailed, technical analyses that show the situation of the sides in the conflict.
While Western media have long claimed that Kiev is “winning the war,” Ritter has emerged as a dissenting voice proving the opposite, saying that military control of the conflict belongs to the Russian Federation. He has refuted fallacious narratives such as the “Ukrainian victory in Kiev” or the “Kherson counteroffensive.” Using impartial and technical military analysis, Ritter has substantiated each of his arguments about Russia winning the war. Today, his work is recognized as one of the best among military experts around the world, with many of his predictions having come true.
This is not the first time that Ritter has suffered persecution in his own country. In the past, he has been criticized, defamed and even detained by American authorities because of his stance against Washington’s war initiatives. Ritter severely criticized the American decision to invade Iraq, stating that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country. At the time, he was a UN weapons inspector and had privileged information about the real situation in the Middle East.
Currently, in addition to providing military analysis on the war in Ukraine, Ritter has also been strongly critical of Israeli violence in the Gaza Strip, which has certainly generated discontent among radical Zionists in American domestic politics. In addition, he has worked to refute fallacies and stereotypes about Russia and the Russian people, making frequent trips to Russia to show the local reality. Recently, Ritter was in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg and spoke to the Western media about what real life is like in Russia today, explaining that the country is in a favorable economic situation, without any effect of Western sanctions.
It is already clear that persecution is the fate of any American dissident. When US citizens disagree with their country’s policies, the authorities attack, arrest and defame them. Unfortunately, this is the reality in the country that claims to be the global guardian of democracy. However, this lie is increasingly discredited. Despite all the propaganda efforts, it is already clear to the world that the US is no longer a democracy.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.
Columbia Law Review website put offline to censor Palestinian scholar
The Cradle | June 4, 2024
The Columbia Law Review (CLR) board of directors has taken down the publication’s website in response to its editors publishing a lengthy article about the Nakba by a Palestinian legal scholar, The Intercept reported on 4 June.
The CLR publishes scholarly articles, essays, and student notes and is edited by Columbia Law School students.
Five months ago, editors of the CLR had reached out to Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, asking him to contribute an article establishing the “Nakba” as a formal legal concept. Palestinians use the word, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, to refer to the expulsion and dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1948.
The Nakba cleansed Palestine of most of its indigenous Muslim and Christian inhabitants, paving the way for the establishment of the state of Israel for Jews from Europe and elsewhere.
Eghbariah is completing his doctoral studies at Harvard Law School and has tried landmark Palestinian civil rights cases before the Israeli Supreme Court. A previous article he prepared about the Nakba for the Harvard Law Review was also censored at the last minute.
He noted that in its current case charging Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice, South Africa’s legal team referred to the Palestinian “ongoing Nakba” as the context for the current genocide case.
Eghbariah’s article for the CLR, which is more than 100 pages long, underwent a rigorous editorial process before publication, with input from 30 CLR members.
“Every single piece that we publish goes through an incredibly, incredibly rigorous publication process. We just have high publication standards,” said Jamie Jenkins, one of the main editors. Jenkins noted the piece was given even more scrutiny because of the controversial nature of the subject matter. “So there was some additional work put into it, but in general, it was the same steps of production.”
However, when the article was scheduled to be published in the May edition, members of the CLR board of directors insisted that publication be delayed and made the unusual request that the article be sent to the rest of the law review for additional scrutiny.
Fearing a draft of the article would be leaked, the editors finally published it on 3 June at 2:30 am.
In response, the board of directors contacted the editors again, requesting the entire May edition to be taken down. When the editorial leadership refused the request, the entire CLR website was taken down and remains offline as of 4 June.
Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, pro-Israel lobby groups and business elites in the US have sought to suppress the speech of Palestinians and those opposing Israel’s war on Gaza, including through police suppression of protests at universities, limiting the scope and reach of pro-Palestinian social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and by banning Tik Tok.
Despite this, the horrific images of Israeli bombs killing Palestinian women and children over the past seven months have made it difficult for pro-Israel interests to control the perception of events. Israel’s war on Gaza is now widely viewed as genocide.
The Intercept adds that both Eghbariah and numerous editors at the CLR remain committed to the importance of the legal scholarship concerning the Nakba.
“What we need to do is to acknowledge the Nakba as its own independent framework that intersects and overlaps with genocide and apartheid,” Eghbariah told The Intercept while adding that the Nakba also “stands as a distinct framework that can be understood as its own crime with a distinctive historical analytical foundation structure and purpose.”
Threat to Arrest Russian Journalists Signals Growing Political Persecution in West
By John Miles – Sputnik – 04.06.2024
Western governments are increasingly turning towards overt methods of repression as they lose their grip on control of the masses.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) has been forced to disavow comments by a legal director with the organization calling for the arrest of Russian journalists after intense backlash.
Anna Neistat, who leads the foundation’s The Docket project, claimed Thursday that her team is urging international authorities to prosecute Russian reporters.
“We want them to travel to other countries and be arrested there,” said Neistat, revealing that she is pressuring the European Union and International Criminal Court to pursue the matter. Neistat made the comments during an interview with the US state-backed propaganda outlet Voice of America.
The organization has since backpedaled on the provocative claim with a statement asserting that “someone in our foundation misspoke,” but observers see the proposal as yet another sign of the West’s growing authoritarianism and intolerance of dissenting voices.
Author and political analyst Caleb Maupin joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Monday to discuss the incident.
“There’s a lot of things to keep in mind in reaction to this news story,” said the author and reporter. “The first of which is that the European Union has basically already outlawed all Russian media within the EU space, right? You can’t watch RT. Websites are suppressed, blocked, and it’s pretty hard to look at Russian media in the EU.”
“RT France has been shut down. You can’t watch RT in Belgium, you can’t watch RT in EU countries,” he continued. “What is a little bit different, though, about this is that this was specifically aimed at journalists who would report in Russian, for Russian audiences, but would do so from EU countries. And the idea was that they would be charged, and what’s interesting also is that the warrants for their arrest would be secret.”
“They would be arrested upon arrival and it would be a way to basically just kidnap these reporters and journalists and hold them hostage. And, if you look at it, it’s a particularly nasty proposal. And that’s probably why I noticed that George Clooney is now backing away from it and saying, ‘oh, people from our foundation misspoke, we didn’t mean this,’ etcetera.”
European countries have made increasingly aggressive attempts in recent years to restrict media and control the flow of information across the continent. The EU has outright banned Russian media outlets from broadcasting within the 27-nation bloc, but measures have been taken against third-party platforms, as well. The video sharing website Rumble was forced to block French users from accessing the platform after refusing to comply with government demands to block Russian content.
Politicians in the UK have also explored blocking the website, and the country recently detained journalist Kit Klarenberg at an airport in London, questioning him for five hours about his political views.
Across the Atlantic, the United States has famously condemned journalist Julian Assange to 12 years of effective confinement after the Wikileaks founder published leaked material revealing US war crimes in Iraq. Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made plans to kidnap and murder the firebrand transparency activist, it was recently revealed.
The uproar over the CFJ’s comments comes as Sputnik contributor Scott Ritter was denied travel to speak at a conference in Russia Monday, having his passport confiscated by authorities on apparent orders from the US State Department. Free speech concerns have also been raised over police crackdowns on campus pro-Palestine encampments, a move demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I will say, though, that the Ukrainians have been saying this from the beginning,” said Maupin of the calls to arrest Russian journalists. “I mean, they have this list of ‘information terrorists’ – which I’m proudly on, by the way, I’m listed by the Ukrainian government as an ‘information terrorist’ – and they have been calling for the assassination and murder of journalists, and they’ve done it since the war has begun.”
“This is not a change for Ukraine. What’s changed here is that the Clooney Foundation made such a statement and wanted to enlist EU governments in carrying it out.”
Western governments are usually more subtle in their attempts to control information, noted Maupin, typically relying more on efforts to influence popular narratives rather than outright censorship. The move towards more overt repression may be seen as a response to the increased transparency allowed by the Internet, or perhaps another sign of the West’s loss of power as a multipolar world order comes into view.
“They like subtly bringing up points they like,” Maupin noted. “Finding people who say things that they agree with and boosting them rather than saying it themselves. This is how the intelligence world works, and a huge amount of what the American intelligence apparatus does is construct media narratives and insert ideas into media discourse.”
“A lot of what the intelligence apparatus does is just boost certain messages and try to control the conversation in a subtle way to advance US foreign policy goals.”
US seizes Scott Ritter’s passport
Scott Ritter. © David McNew/Getty Images
RT | June 3, 2024
The US State Department has seized the passport of former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, he told RT on Monday.
Ritter was on his way to Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) when he was pulled off the plane and had his documents confiscated.
“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me,” Ritter told RT. “They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.”
Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, who later served as the US and UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He is also a RT contributor, writing about international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.
He most recently visited Russia in January, spending time in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg, among other places.
The most recent post on Ritter’s Telegram channel put the Clooney Foundation for Justice on notice for its alleged crusade against “Russian propagandists.”
“Here I am. In your face. If telling the truth about Russia makes me a propagandist in your book, then I accept the title,” he wrote. “Bring it on. I’ll school you on the First Amendment.”
“You have zero concept of what free speech is. Try and arrest me and you’ll find out. In spades. It’s war,” he added.
DOJ: Americans Can’t Hear The Biden-Hur ‘Memory Interview’ Because of ‘Deepfakes’
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 02.06.2024
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to prevent the release of the audio of the infamous “memory interview” between US President Joe Biden and special counsel Robert Hur, arguing that “deepfakes” may appear as a result.
Hur was investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents he obtained as a senator and vice president. While Hur wrote in his report that Biden likely violated the law intentionally, he declined to press charges because he thought Biden would appear to the jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” It also noted that Biden had trouble remembering when he was vice president and which year his son Beau died.
The DOJ issued a filing on Friday that argued “The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files. If the audio recording is released here, it is easy to foresee that it could be improperly altered, and that the altered file could be passed off as an authentic recording and widely distributed.”
While the DOJ admits that there is plenty of “other raw material to create a deepfake of President Biden’s voice” available to unscrupulous actors, it argues that if the public became aware that the legitimate recording was released, they would be more apt to believe a fake recording is legitimate.
The filing was first obtained by Politico.
It is not known how the court will respond to the strange reasoning. If a legitimate copy of the recording were released, it stands to reason it would become easier –not more difficult– to disprove fake versions.
As the DOJ admits in its filing as part of its argument that the release of the audio recording is unnecessary, the full transcript of the interview has already been released. It would be trivial for someone with AI experience to use the “raw material” already available of Biden to create a deepfake version of the interview and say it was leaked. A legitimate version being released would make that much easier for other internet users and the media to definitively debunk.
The filing also comes after Biden used his executive privilege to stop the release of the tape to House Republicans who had sought to obtain it as part of their investigation into the Biden family. The latest filing was in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The DOJ also argues that the release of the audio would be a violation of Biden’s privacy. However, since we already know what he said thanks to the transcript– and we have no reason to believe that the transcript is incorrect, the only thing that would be revealed is everything between those words. How long did Biden pause before answering? How many times did he stumble on his words? Did he sound confused or angry during the interview?
These are the questions that could be revealed through the release of the audio and according to the filing, the DOJ doesn’t think it is in the “public interest” to reveal the answers, so much so that they are willing to resort to absurd fear-mongering over a new technology in hopes that the judge will be cowed into blocking its release.
Google Tightens Influence on UK Elections with New “Moderation” Tactics
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 2, 2024
Google has found itself yet another election to “support.”
After the company made announcements to this effect related to the EU (European Parliament) June ballot, voters in the UK can now also look forward to – or dread, as the case may be – the tech giant’s role in their upcoming general election.
A blog post by Google UK Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy Katie O’Donovan announced even more “moderation” and a flurry of other measures, most of which have become tried-and-tested instruments of Google’s censorship over the past years.
They are divided in three categories – pushing (“surfacing”) content and sources of information picked by Google as authoritative and of high quality, along with YouTube information panels, investing in what it calls Trust & Safety operations, as well as “equipping campaigns with the best-in-class security tools and training.”
Another common point is combating “misinformation” – together with what the blog post refers to as “the wider ecosystem.” That concerns Google News Initiative and PA Media, a private news agency, and their Election Check 24, which is supposed to safeguard the UK election from “mis- and dis-information.”
Searches related to voting are “rigged” to return results manipulated to boost what Google considers authoritative sources – notably, the UK government’s site.
As for AI, the promise is that users of Google platforms will receive “help navigating” that type of content.
This includes the obligation for advertisers to reveal that ads “include synthetic content that inauthentically depicts real or realistic-looking people or events” (this definition can easily be stretched to cover parody, memes, and similar).
“Disclosure” here, however, is still differentiated from Google’s outright ban on manipulated media that it decides “misleads people.” Such content is labeled, and banned if considered as having the ability to maybe pose “a serious risk of egregious harm.”
And then there’s Google’s AI chatbot Gemini, which the giant has restricted in terms of what types of election-related queries it will respond to – once again, as a way to root out “misinformation” while promoting “fairness.”
This falls under what the company considers to be “a responsible approach to generative AI products.”
But as always, AI is also seen as a “tool for good” – for example, when it allows for building “faster and more adaptable enforcement systems.”
Victoria’s Premier unveils new parliamentary role to change men’s behavior, researching internet and social media
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 30, 2024
Australian politics is simply a gift that keeps on giving. Over the last years, several draconian measures have been enacted, from the pandemic to free speech restrictions, and now the time has come to establish a parliamentary role the focus of which will be to change people’s behavior.
Specifically – men’s behavior. This is happening in the state of Victoria, where Premier Jacinta Allan was proud to announce the role has been entrusted to MP Tim Richardson. Richardson’s official title is Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behavior Change.
It’s a first in Australia, and that’s another thing Allan was happy to point out. The result of Richardson’s work should make Victoria safer for women and children, the premier stated.
One of the snarky reactions to the announcement left on Instagram wondered if Richardson will, as part of his efforts to change men’s behavior, work to “teach men they cannot identify as women.”
But that is highly unlikely what Allan has in mind – instead she spoke about stopping “the tragedy of deaths of Victorian women at the hands of men” and building “respectful relationships.”
Yet, how is Richardson supposed to influence such things and do a better job than say, the police, or therapists? Apparently, he will deal with social media and the internet – that Australian authorities at various levels are positively obsessed with, in terms of attempts to control them.
Allan said Richardson will “focus largely on the influence the internet and social media have on boys” and their “attitudes” toward women.
The MP confirmed his appointment, opting for a statement strong on sloganeering that said, “We know that the time to act on men’s violence against women is now and it starts with us men and boys.”
Aside from the fact that “the time” to act against that and other types of violence is surely “always” – it remains largely unclear from these announcements how exactly Richardson’s activities will help with this matter.
What has been revealed is that the Victoria MP will work with the state’s Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Vicki Ward.
Australians must be hoping that Richardson will on one hand be successful – and on the other, that the “focus on the influence the internet and social media have” will not be taken as yet another formalized way for the Australian authorities to further crack down on online speech and communications.
Alternative Media Giants Sue The Censorship Industrial Complex
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 29, 2024
In a new lawsuit, Webseed and Brighteon Media have accused multiple US government agencies and prominent tech companies of orchestrating a vast censorship operation aimed at suppressing dissenting viewpoints, particularly concerning COVID-19. The plaintiffs, Webseed and Brighteon Media, manage websites like NaturalNews.com and Brighteon.com, which have been at the center of controversy for their alternative health information and criticism of government policies.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
The defendants include the Department of State, the Global Engagement Center (GEC), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and tech giants such as Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), Google, and X. Additionally, organizations like NewsGuard Technologies, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) are implicated for their roles in creating and using tools to label and suppress what they consider misinformation.
Allegations of Censorship and Anti-Competitive Practices:
The lawsuit claims that these government entities and tech companies conspired to develop and promote censorship tools to suppress the speech of Webseed and Brighteon Media, among others. “The Government was the primary source of misinformation during the pandemic, and the Government censored dissidents and critics to hide that fact,” states Stanford University Professor J. Bhattacharya in support of the plaintiffs’ claims.
The plaintiffs argue that the government’s efforts were part of a broader strategy to silence voices that did not align with official narratives on COVID-19 and other issues. They assert that these actions were driven by an “anti-competitive animus” aimed at eliminating alternative viewpoints from the digital public square.
According to the complaint, the plaintiffs have suffered substantial economic harm, estimating losses between $25 million and $50 million due to reduced visibility and ad revenue from their platforms. They also claim significant reputational damage as a result of being labeled as purveyors of misinformation.
The complaint details how the GEC and other agencies allegedly funded and promoted tools developed by NewsGuard, ISD, and GDI to blacklist and demonetize websites like NaturalNews.com. These tools, which include blacklists and so-called “nutrition labels,” were then utilized by tech companies to censor content on their platforms. The plaintiffs argue that this collaboration between government agencies and private tech companies constitutes an unconstitutional suppression of free speech.
A Broader Pattern of Censorship:
The lawsuit references other high-profile cases, such as Missouri v. Biden, to illustrate a pattern of government overreach into the digital information space. It highlights how these efforts have extended beyond foreign disinformation to target domestic voices that challenge prevailing government narratives.
Webseed and Brighteon Media are seeking both monetary damages and injunctive relief to prevent further censorship. They contend that the government’s actions violate the First Amendment and call for an end to the use of these censorship tools.
As the case progresses, it promises to shine a light on the complex interplay between government agencies, tech companies, and the tools used to control the flow of information in the digital age. The outcome could have significant implications for the future of free speech and the regulation of online content.
Global Elections Face Growing Censorship Threat: The Rise of “Prebunking”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 28, 2024
The feverish search for the next “disinformation” silver bullet continues as several elections are being held worldwide.
Censorship enthusiasts, who habitually use the terms “dis/misinformation” to go after lawful online speech that happens to not suit their political or ideological agenda, now feel that debunking has failed them.
(That can be yet another euphemism for censorship – when “debunking” political speech means removing information those directly or indirectly in control of platforms don’t like.)
Enter “prebuking” – and regardless of how risky, especially when applied in a democracy, this is, those who support the method are not swayed even by the possibility it may not work.
Prebunking is a distinctly dystopian notion that the audiences and social media users can be “programmed” (proponents use the term, “inoculated”) to reject information as untrustworthy.
To achieve that, speech must be discredited and suppressed as “misinformation” (via warnings from censors) before, not after it is seen by people.
“A radical playbook” is what some legacy media reports call this, at the same time implicitly justifying it as a necessity in a year that has been systematically hyped up as particularly dangerous because of elections taking place around the globe.
The Washington Post disturbingly sums up prebunking as exposing people to “weakened doses of misinformation paired with explanations (…) aimed at helping the public develop ‘mental antibodies’.”
This type of manipulation is supposed to steer the “unwashed masses” toward making the right (aka, desired by the “prebunkers”) conclusions, as they decide who to vote for.
Even as this is seen by opponents as a threat to democracy, it is being adopted widely – “from Arizona to Taiwan (with the EU in between)” – under the pretext of actually protecting democracy.
Where there are governments and censorship these days, there’s inevitably Big Tech, and Google and Meta are mentioned as particularly involved in carrying out prebunking campaigns, notably in the EU.
Apparently Google will not be developing Americans’ “mental antibodies” ahead of the US vote in November – that might prove too controversial, at least at this point in time.
The risk-reward ratio here is also unappealing.
“There aren’t really any actual field experiments showing that it (prebunking) can change people’s behavior in an enduring way,” said Cornell University psychology professor Gordon Pennycook.
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From the Archives
The Dirty Little Secret behind the “Global Terrorism Index”
The Omission of Israeli Terrorism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
By Karin Brothers | Global Research | December 6, 2014
… The Israeli settlements — all of which are illegal – have been identified as a major impediment to peace. The refusal of a major “global” terrorism report to name the Israeli settlers as one of the groups most responsible for terrorism not only misrepresents a major source of regional violence but exposes the Global Terrorism Index as a propaganda tool that supports a U.S. agenda.
In recent years, governments have been attempting to thwart terrorism by blocking supportive fund-raising. When it comes to Israeli settlements, however, the US and Canada actually encourage fund-raising by giving organizations (such as Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) and the Jewish National Fund) financial support in the form of donor tax-deductions.
Charities which provide funds for the Israeli settlements should be regarded as terror-financing organizations. They should not only lose their tax-deductible status, but they should be banned because they support the violation of international humanitarian law. The terror-financing laws that are being strictly enforced for Muslim charities should be applied to Christian and Jewish charities as well. … Read full article
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- No Tricks Zone
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
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