WHEN I was in China, it was a faff going on some of my favourite websites. Although the censors of Beijing have not yet, to the best of my knowledge, blocked TCW Defending Freedom, anyone sitting in the Middle Kingdom and hoping to get on YouTube, Facebook or Google will be disappointed.
Not long after my departure from that sprawling metropolis, the sneezing bats of Wuhan gave the world a nasty case of the sniffles. But at that time, it was still just about possible to confidently tell your average Chinese interlocutor of the relative freedom of the West.
Yes, we could state, the internet there is free. We do not ban foreign news sources: We believe in the free exchange of information and the battle of ideas. The disinfectant of broad daylight will worm out the idiotic and the unworthy – that kind of stuff.
Of course, it’s getting harder to say with a straight face (years of Trump Derangement Syndrome and Brexit-related hysteria having done so much to destroy residual faith in the media), but it was just about doable.
But as Dr David Starkey so presciently observed, with the arrival of the Chinese virus, we have adopted a Chinese society. An acquaintance sent to me a screenshot of what happened when they tried to access Russia Today’s YouTube channel from within the UK. Instead of getting the usual assortment of Kremlin-approved views, visitors are greeted with the words: ‘This channel is not available in your country’.
Google has taken it upon itself to block Russian state media on YouTube. As ever, this decision has been met with seeming widespread adulation, with everyone keen as mustard for the unchecked juggernaut of Big Tech censorship to thunder on.
As the central nexus of the internet in the modern day, Big Tech firms have all-encompassing power, even able to silence the President of the United States. Yet Google et al are not our elected government and they are accountable to nobody; the outsourcing of political power to Silicon Valley continues uninterrupted.
Many are happy that the channel is banned. These are, perhaps, the same kinds who greeted Big Tech suppression of alternative narratives over the last two years with open arms, combating Covid ‘disinformation’. And, just as the spectre of global pestilence has miraculously disappeared, they find themselves firmly on the bandwagon of war.
Elites across the West have done so much to discredit themselves in recent years. I can no longer see a meaningful difference between the censoriousness of Beijing and the constant efforts of our governments and their rulers in Big Tech to silence dissenting opinion. As I sat in Beijing trying to look at the BBC, circumventing the Great Firewall with a VPN, little did I know I would soon have to do the same in Europe.
‘Democracy dies in darkness’, they like to tell us. Yet, by cutting off access to information that goes against the politically acceptable narrative in the West, our institutions continue to do their best in snuffing out any contrary opinions. Don’t think this is the only example: everything you read and hear from official sources is vetted and filtered.
There is nothing good to see in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet, as self-purported guardians of liberalism and freedom, I can see only double standards in our actions. How can the West claim to be protectors of intellectual and spiritual freedom after what has happened over the last two years? Does everyone, in their manic rush for war, not see what we have become?
More evidence is emerging of Google manipulating algorithms powering its mammoth and highly influential search service to give certain results (much) more visibility than others.
And now, reports say, Google is not even trying to hide that this is the case, as America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) has been informed its reach on the internet is being artificially limited.
This organization says it is dedicated to improving doctor-patient relationships that are jeopardized by what it calls politicized science and biased information. The AFLDS would also like to provide patients with access to “independent, evidence-based information” that will inform people’s decisions regarding their healthcare choices.
Well, meeting that goal might prove to be quite difficult since Google Search, on which a huge majority of US-based users rely for their internet queries, says it is deliberately deranking information coming from the AFLDS.
This transpires from alerts Google has been sending the organization, which state that an “issue” has been detected, which can be “fixed;” after that, the AFLDS can “request review.”
And when an “issue” has been detected, Google spells it out that “Pages affected by manual actions can see reduced display features, lower ranking or even removal from Google Search results.”
So what “issues” have been detected, you might ask next. Google’s “explanation” is the usual hodgepodge of vague language and qualifiers, in line with the giant’s now well-established censorship style.
The AFLDS is informed that its site “appears to violate” Google’s medical content policy, which is not allowed – and neither is content that “contradicts or runs contrary to scientific or medical consensus and evidence based best practices.”
That’s according to Google’s rules. What consensus, reached by who, and what best practices, determined by who, and at what time – none of this information is provided in the notices.
Google’s rigid, authoritarian style of promoting one-sided content and eliminating different arguments and positions would in this case work by first deranking (and eventually removing) AFLDS links – unless the group agrees to self-censor.
And that means deleting content from the site, and then clicking on “‘Request Review’ button which is prefaced with the question, ‘Done fixing?’,” the AFLDS explains.
The organization also takes issue with Google’s (deliberately) broad and ambiguous wording and lack of proper, or any definition of scientific and medical consensus and best practices – to ask why, “In a time when celebrities and computer programmers are allowed to express their views on virology, but actual doctors and scientists are censored, including the hundreds of doctors comprising AFLDS, such clarity is elusive.”
Big Tech giants are increasingly positioning themselves, and being positioned by politicians, as speech police. And ever-increasing crises are being used as a justification for it.
Virginia’s Sen. Mark Warner has written to all major social media companies, urging them to make efforts to become the police of misinformation on social media with regard to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In the letter to Alphabet, Meta, Reddit, TikTok, Twitter, and Telegram, Warner urged the companies to increase their efforts to stop the spread of “harmful misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and a wide range of scams and frauds that opportunistically exploit confusion, desperation, and grief.”
Warner asked the companies to look out for “malign influence activity related to the conflict,” and increase resources to identify fake accounts. He also suggested the establishment of reporting channels where experts can share credible information.
In the letter to Alphabet, which owns YouTube and Google, Warner asked the company to stop monetizing content “publicly attributed to have associations with Russian influence activity.”
He claimed that his staff identified TASS, Sputnik, and RT as having content “specifically focused on the Ukraine conflict to be monetized with YouTube ads – including, somewhat perversely, an ad by a major U.S. government contractor.”
“As one of the world’s largest communications platforms, your company has a clear responsibility to ensure that your products are not used to facilitate human rights abuses, undermine humanitarian and emergency service responses, or advance harmful disinformation,” Warner wrote.
The senator encouraged the companies to figure out how they will ensure Ukrainians get emergency communications. Warner also warned about the accounts of Ukrainian authorities and humanitarian groups being hacked.
If you’ve ever felt like Google’s watching you, it’s because they, quite literally, are. “The truth is that contrary to Google’s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data,” Karl A. Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia, said in a statement.1
He’s among four attorneys general who have sued Google for its deceptive practices in collecting location data from the public. The separate lawsuits allege that Google continued to track location data of its users even after they had disabled location tracking.
“Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,” Racine said.2
Google’s Been Secretly Tracking People Since at Least 2014
Racine initiated an investigation into Google after a 2018 AP News report revealed Google was tracking people’s movements even when they’d opted out of such tracking.3 Google’s misleading claims to users regarding privacy protections available in their account settings have been ongoing since at least 2014, Racine’s investigation found.4
The AP investigation included a real-world example from privacy researcher Gunes Acar, whose location was tracked to dozens of locations over the course of several days, and the data saved to his Google account, even though he had turned “Location History” off on his cellphone.5
Location data collected by Google has been used in criminal cases in the past, including a warrant issued by police in Raleigh, North Carolina, to track down devices in the area of a murder.6 When you use an app like Google Maps, it will ask you to allow access to location, but it also tracks your location during use of apps that you might not expect. According to the AP investigation:7
“For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot — and save it to your Google account.
The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google’s Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.”
Tracking You Even When ‘Location History’ Is Off
At issue is the company’s continued tracking of its users even when Location History is turned off. “If you’re going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,” Jonathan Mayer, a former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission’s enforcement bureau, told the AP. “That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.”8
Indeed, it states on Google’s Account Help webpage, “You can turn off Location History for your account at any time.” Only lower down on the page does it explain, however, that location data may still be saved even if Location History is paused:9
“If you have other settings like Web & App Activity turned on and you pause Location History or delete location data from Location History, you may still have location data saved in your Google Account as part of your use of other Google sites, apps, and services.
For example, location data may be saved as part of activity on Search and Maps when your Web & App Activity setting is on, and included in your photos depending on your camera app settings.”
Aside from hiding location tracking under settings users wouldn’t expect, like Web & App Activity — which is turned on by default — Google is accused of collecting and storing location information via Google services, Wi-Fi data and marketing partners, again after device or account settings had been changed to stop location tracking.10
In addition to the District of Columbia, the attorneys general of Texas, Washington and Indiana have also filed lawsuits against Google for their deceptive data collection practices. The suits allege that Google also pressured users to use location tracking more often because it claimed — falsely — that its products wouldn’t function properly without it.11
“Google has prioritized profits over people,” Todd Rokita, Indiana attorney general, told The New York Times. “It has prioritized financial earnings over following the law.”12 Texas, meanwhile, has also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google that alleges it has abused a monopoly over ad space auctions to marketers. The suit joins those from more than a dozen other states that claim Google has maintained and abused a monopoly over searches online.13
Google Is Even Tracking Children
Google has been called a dictator with unprecedented power because it relies on techniques of manipulation that have never existed before in human history, according to Robert Epstein, a Harvard trained psychologist who is now a senior research psychologist for the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, where for the last decade he has helped expose Google’s manipulative and deceptive practices.
They’re not only a surveillance agency — think about products like Google Wallet, Google Docs, Google Drive and YouTube — but also a censoring agency with the ability to restrict or block access to websites across the internet, thus deciding what you can and cannot see.
Google has also infiltrated education with its Google classrooms, usage of which skyrocketed during the pandemic, but many aren’t aware that even their children are being tracked. The attorney general of New Mexico filed a suit against Google for its educational tools in its classroom suite, helping to “break through the fog,” Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff said:14
“[The suit is] identifying the huge amounts of data that they’re taking about kids, how they track them across the internet are they integrate it with all the other Google streams of information and have it as a foundation for tracking those children all the way through their adulthood.”
The suit was later dismissed, but the attorney general filed an appeal, maintaining that Google’s G-Suite for Education products “spy on New Mexico students’ online activities for its own commercial purposes, without notice to parents and without attempting to obtain parental consent.”15
Google Force Installed COVID-19 Tracking Apps
In another sign of Google’s dictatorial tendencies, it partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Apple to create a smartphone app called MassNotify, which tracks and traces people, advising the users of others’ COVID-19 status.
While the tool claims to have been developed “with a focus on privacy,”16 the app suddenly appeared on Massachusetts residents’ Android phones out of nowhere, without consent. The feature must be enabled by the user for it to function, but it’s extremely disconcerting that the tool was automatically added to people’s cellphones, whether they intend to use it or not.
In China, COVID-19 tracking apps have been used as surveillance tools in collaboration with its social credit system, raising red flags that this force-installed app could be tracking residents’ movements and contacts without their knowledge and consent. The MassNotify app uses Google’s and Apple’s Bluetooth-based Exposure Notifications Express program.
The software framework was first released in April 2020,17 with the goal of allowing users who test positive for COVID-19 to report their results, which then sends out an alert to anyone whose phone crossed paths with the positive case and may have been exposed. The Exposure Notifications Express program acts as a blueprint from which states can implement their own tracking systems without having to develop their own individual apps.
While other states have required users to download an app to use the system, MassNotify was integrated directly into the operating system of Android phones.18 Such apps are based on technology developed by Apple and Google that was previously known as the “Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing Project”19 and is now referred to as the Exposure Notifications API (application programming interface).
In a May 2020 Forbes article by Simon Chandler, he pointed out that while contact tracing apps “may be cryptographically secure,” they still “threaten our privacy in broader and more insidious ways,”20 namely encouraging you to keep your cellphone with you at all times and tracking your whereabouts while you do, and further “normalizing” the constant use of technology to dictate your freedoms and behavior.
Using ‘Trickery for Profits’
The attorneys’ general lawsuits against Google are seeking fines and an end to Google’s use of “dark patterns” that influence users to give up more and more personal data in order for the company to increase its profits. The suits allege that Google’s products are designed to pressure users to allow location tracking “inadvertently or out of frustration,” in violation of state consumer protection laws.21
“Google uses tricks to continuously seek to track a user’s location,” Racine said. “This suit, by four attorneys general, on a bipartisan basis, is an overdue enforcement action against a flagrant violator of privacy and the laws of our states.” The more data that Google collects about individual users, the more advertising dollars it can generate. But, Racine noted, “The time of trickery for profits is over.”22
In a similar lawsuit filed in 2020, Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich also alleged that Google used deceptive practices to track its users’ locations. That suit stated:23
“This case concerns Google’s widespread and systematic use of deceptive and unfair business practices to obtain information about the location of its users, including its users in Arizona, which Google then exploits to power its lucrative advertising business. Google makes it impractical if not impossible for users to meaningfully opt-out of Google’s collection of location information, should the users seek to do so.”
Location data, meanwhile, can be used to reveal your gym memberships, health care visits, stores and restaurants you frequent or where you go to church. It may also be used to provide personalized ads on digital billboards as you pass by, and Google tracks and provides to its customers information about how well online ads work to drive people into brick-and-mortar stores.24
In addition to disabling as many location tracking apps as possible, and deleting your location history from your Google accounts, you can avoid additional Google products — and the privacy invasions they entail — using the following tips:
Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo and Startpage
Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices. From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy
If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service instead such as ProtonMail, an encrypted email service based in Switzerland
Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives25
If you’re a student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act that is currently making its way through Senate committees before being put up for the final vote, is attracting attention both from those who support it and Big Tech’s lobbyists, who earlier reports said had already launched a broad campaign against it.
The bill that has so far received bipartisan support, aims to significantly limit the way Apple, Amazon, and Google use their monopolistic business practices to undermine competition and antitrust laws.
Either by design or coincidence, it isn’t just openly lobbying firms who are attacking the bill from various angles; they are joined by organizations like Free Press, which claims it is nonpartisan and fighting “for your right to connect and communicate.”
However, in the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, Free Press sees a “flaw” that would, essentially, make connecting and communicating easier – and doesn’t like it. Namely, the bill, if passed, they argue, could prevent censorship, specifically of what’s labeled as “hate speech or misinformation.”
After the narrative has been built for months if not years of “misinformation” being the most serious evil on the internet (despite it only being subjectively defined, unlike the clear and clearly damaging Big Tech antitrust behaviors), it makes sense that in order to discredit anything, reaching for the “misinformation” label is now a good idea.
Free Press writes in a blog post that the bill would provide an avenue to businesses hurt by Google and others purposefully downranking them in search results to launch legal battles against such decisions.
The bill is meant to prevent Big Tech from manipulating the all-important search results and listings as these giants promote their own products and services over those of competitors – but could also provide a way to those hit by censorship and obscured from view by the same technology to have a chance of fighting back. And that, Free Press believes, should not be allowed.
The same argument is being made by another group, this one openly close to the tech industry, TechFreedom. “If a majority of FTC Commissioners were bent on a partisan agenda — e.g., forcing mainstream platforms to carry Parler — it would be significantly easier for them to use the administrative litigation process to do so,” this group said. Coordinated or not, Parler was also mentioned in the blog post published by Free Press.
The website DrRoySpencer.com has been demonetized by Google, its owner, climatologist and former NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer, announced in a blog post.
According to Spencer – who is considered a climate change skeptic but has rejected the label of being a “climate denier” – Google has cut his website off from Adsense for allegedly spreading unreliable and harmful claims.
Spencer notes that revenue he is now losing was low, but other aspects of this decision concern him more, although the scientist doesn’t plan on appealing for the time being, believing that it would be an uphill struggle against what he calls “liberal arts educated fact checkers” – and Google’s announced policy to stomp out content it labels as skeptical of the climate change theory.
Spencer also revealed that warnings have been coming from Google his way for several months about his website engaging in Adsense policy violations, but as usual, the tech giant did not explain what the violations were and where on the site they could be found. During this time, he thought it had to do with the placement of ads rather than content that he produces.
Only once the demonetization occurred, Spencer received information about why his site was no longer eligible for making money from ads, along with links to offending pages.
Spencer says he believes his content to be “mainstream enough” since he thinks that the climate has warmed and that this is for the most part the consequence of the so-called greenhouse effect.
But apparently, his “faith” in these pillars of climate change isn’t exhibited strongly enough; in fact, Google not only demonetized, but also delegitimized his content by calling it misleading and harmful.
Spencer explains that while he supports most of the mainstream climate change science, he differs on issues of the amount of warming that has happened and the level that can be expected in the future – and also how to solve this problem, “from an energy policy perspective.”
He said that Google’s links to pages that violated its policies show those were mostly the monthly global temperature update pages.
“This is obviously because some activists employed by Google (who probably weren’t even born when John Christy and I received both NASA and American Meteorological Society awards for our work) don’t like the answer our 43-year long satellite dataset gives,” he writes.
Courts around the country are striking down vaccine mandates and even Covid restrictions in general. Protests against both have erupted the world over. There is a trend in which major names and faces that imposed lockdowns on the country are resigning from their positions and otherwise dropping out of politics. The Biden administration in general has sunk in the polls. The resistance to the entire regime of command and control that seized the world in March 2020 is growing by the day.
But none of this seems to matter to the dominant Internal portals of Google and YouTube, which Google owns. They occupy the number one and number two spots for global traffic and reach. That’s some serious power over what the majority of people read, see, hear, and believe. It’s true that critically thinking people have already shifted to DuckDuckGo, Rumble, and many other platforms, and their market share is growing, to be sure. But nothing can compare to the 75% market share of YouTube, or the 86% share of search controlled by Google.
Often individual users can develop a distorted sense of that whole based on their own browsing habits. You like Brownstone.org, for example, and you get great information from this site. It is easy to forget that its 4 million users seem nearly invisible compared with the traffic enjoyed by the larger sites. Being on the admin side, it is much easier to observe how a myth spread, for example, by CNN can reach tens of millions of people whereas its refutation on a small site might only reach a few thousand. The myth stands.
For this reason, their Terms of Use seriously matter for culture, politics, intellectual life, and public opinion in general. And Google has just changed its terms as they apply to YouTube. It’s a fair presumption that Google’s search results will reflect these same terms. They pertain directly to the science behind Covid, mitigation policies, and mandates on the vaccines. These new terms go into effect on January 6, 2022 (why that date?). If they are truly enforced, freedom of speech and the ability of the scientific process to operate unimpeded will be severely curtailed.
Under the new rules, you cannot claim “that the pandemic is over.” Which is to say, the pandemic is now declared to last forever. You cannot make “claims that any group or individual has immunity to the virus or cannot transmit the virus,” which means that all the science on naturally acquired immunity can be deleted.
You cannot claim that ”vaccines do not reduce risk of contracting COVID-19,” which directly contradicts the FDA: “The scientific community does not yet know if the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine will reduce such transmission.” You cannot post “videos alleging that social distancing and self-isolation are not effective in reducing the spread of the virus” and you cannot claim that “wearing a mask causes oxygen levels to drop to dangerous levels.”
And there is this one: you cannot make claims that “achieving herd immunity through natural infection is safer than vaccinating the population,” even though endemicity is inevitable and the vaccines cannot make a substantial contribution to its achievement due to their inability to protect fully against infection and transmission.
As usual, the long list of Do Nots also includes statements that are patently false and otherwise ridiculous – so much so that it seems not dangerous to permit them! The full list is extremely long and includes many fully open questions that Google/YouTube wants to be declared closed. Some of the Do Nots also include statements that are contradicted by statements from Fauci and Biden, such as the rule that you cannot make “claims that any vaccine is a guaranteed prevention method for COVID-19.” The head of the CDC made exactly this claim!
If these rules are strenuously enforced, millions of videos, interviews, television shows, lectures, press conferences, and scientific presentations will disappear. Maybe tens of millions actually. And all in the name of protecting “science” against its corruption, as if YouTube should be the determinant of what constitutes good science.
Here is what Google says about the consequences of violating the rules:
We may allow content that violates the misinformation policies noted on this page if that content includes additional context in the video, audio, title, or description. This is not a free pass to promote misinformation. Additional context may include countervailing views from local health authorities or medical experts. We may also make exceptions if the purpose of the content is to condemn, dispute, or satirize misinformation that violates our policies. We may also make exceptions for content showing an open public forum, like a protest or public hearing, provided the content does not aim to promote misinformation that violates our policies.
If your content violates this policy, we’ll remove the content and send you an email to let you know. If this is your first time violating our Community Guidelines, you’ll likely get a warning with no penalty to your channel. If it’s not, we may issue a strike against your channel. If you get 3 strikes within 90 days, your channel will be terminated.
An intriguing question for any defender of private enterprise – I am certainly that – is why Google would so willingly turn over its platform to a branch of the state and its medical/policy priorities. It cannot be simply the desire to only say true things because there is plenty that is thoroughly disputable in these rules and much has already been challenged by vast quantities of peer-reviewed studies.
How does it come to be that such a huge business can become fully captured by government? I have friends who say it is the reverse actually, that Google has fully captured government, and is driving forward the agenda of politics. Regardless, it becomes a troubled world in which one can no longer distinguish business from the state, or either from big pharmaceutical companies. The state finds it more advantageous to enlist business in its rights violations than risk the court challenges that come with directly violating the First Amendment. The law restricts states in ways that do not apply to private companies, so the answer for the state seems obvious: use the private sector to achieve state policy priorities, particularly as it pertains to controlling the information to which the public has access.
Others might observe that Google has everything to gain from its investment in lockdown policies and mandates, all the better to keep people glued to their personal computers. Even granting that big tech benefited enormously from lockdowns, that’s an outlook on enterprise that is too cynical for me to believe at this stage. Or maybe I’m naive.
What seems clear is that these censorious moves could seriously erode market share and give rise to new platforms that will eventually compete more directly. But before we get too optimistic about this, the time between now and then is a very long time away, while the change in the scientific culture that this move will enact starts next month.
Here is the full text of Google Terms of Use as it pertains to the most critical issues affecting freedom, free speech, and science in the world today. For your research amusement, you can see via the WaybackMachine how this page has expanded over time from its initial page on May 2, 2020, to today.
COVID-19 medical misinformation policy
The safety of our creators, viewers, and partners is our highest priority. We look to each of you to help us protect this unique and vibrant community. It’s important you understand our Community Guidelines, and the role they play in our shared responsibility to keep YouTube safe. Take the time to carefully read the policy below. You can also check out this page for a full list of our guidelines.
YouTube doesn’t allow content about COVID-19 that poses a serious risk of egregious harm.
YouTube doesn’t allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts local health authorities’ (LHA) or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19. This is limited to content that contradicts WHO or local health authorities’ guidance on:
Treatment
Prevention
Diagnosis
Transmission
Social distancing and self isolation guidelines
The existence of COVID-19
Note: YouTube’s policies on COVID-19 are subject to change in response to changes to global or local health authorities’ guidance on the virus. There may be a delay between new LHA/WHO guidance and policy updates given the frequency with which this guidance changes, and our policies may not cover all LHA/WHO guidance related to COVID-19.
Our COVID-19 policies were first published on May 20, 2020.
What this policy means for you
If you’re posting content
Don’t post content on YouTube if it includes any of the following:
Treatment misinformation:
Content that encourages the use of home remedies, prayer, or rituals in place of medical treatment such as consulting a doctor or going to the hospital
Content that claims that there’s a guaranteed cure for COVID-19
Content that recommends use of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19
Claims that Hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19
Categorical claims that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID-19
Claims that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are safe to use in the treatment COVID-19
Other content that discourages people from consulting a medical professional or seeking medical advice
Prevention misinformation: Content that promotes prevention methods that contradict local health authorities or WHO.
Claims that there is a guaranteed prevention method for COVID-19
Claims that any medication or vaccination is a guaranteed prevention method for COVID-19
Content that recommends use of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of COVID-19
Claims that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are safe to use in the treatment COVID-19
Claims that wearing a mask is dangerous or causes negative physical health effects
Claims that masks do not play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19
Claims about COVID-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or WHO
Claims that an approved COVID-19 vaccine will cause death, infertility, miscarriage, autism, or contraction of other infectious diseases
Claims that an approved COVID-19 vaccine will contain substances that are not on the vaccine ingredient list, such as biological matter from fetuses (e.g. fetal tissue, fetal cell lines) or animal products
Claims that an approved COVID-19 vaccine will contain substances or devices meant to track or identify those who’ve received it
Claims that COVID-19 vaccines will make people who receive them magnetic
Claims that an approved COVID-19 vaccine will alter a person’s genetic makeup
Claims that COVID-19 vaccines do not reduce risk of contracting COVID-19
Claims that any vaccine causes contraction of COVID-19
Claims that a specific population will be required (by any entity except for a government) to take part in vaccine trials or receive the vaccine first
Content that promotes the use of unapproved or homemade COVID-19 vaccines
Instructions to counterfeit vaccine certificates, or offers of sale for such documents
Diagnostic misinformation: Content that promotes diagnostic methods that contradict local health authorities or WHO.
Claims that approved COVID-19 tests are dangerous or cause negative physical health effects
Claims that approved COVID-19 tests cannot diagnose COVID-19
Transmission misinformation: Content that promotes transmission information that contradicts local health authorities or WHO.
Content that claims that COVID-19 is not caused by a viral infection
Content that claims COVID-19 is not contagious
Content that claims that COVID-19 cannot spread in certain climates or geographies
Content that claims that any group or individual has immunity to the virus or cannot transmit the virus
Social distancing and self isolation misinformation: Content that disputes the efficacy of local health authorities’ or WHO’s guidance on physical distancing or self-isolation measures to reduce transmission of COVID-19.
Content that denies the existence of COVID-19:
Denial that COVID-19 exists
Claims that people have not died or gotten sick from COVID-19
Claims that the virus no longer exists or that the pandemic is over
Claims that the symptoms, death rates, or contagiousness of COVID-19 are less severe or equally as severe as the common cold or seasonal flu
Claims that the symptoms of COVID-19 are never severe
This policy applies to videos, video descriptions, comments, live streams, and any other YouTube product or feature. Keep in mind that this isn’t a complete list. Please note these policies also apply to external links in your content. This can include clickable URLs, verbally directing users to other sites in video, as well as other forms.
Examples
Here are some examples of content that’s not allowed on YouTube:
Denial that COVID-19 exists
Claims that people have not died from COVID-19
Claims that any vaccine is a guaranteed prevention method for COVID-19
Claims that a specific treatment or medicine is a guaranteed cure for COVID-19
Claims that hydroxychloroquine saves people from COVID-19
Promotion of MMS (Miracle Mineral Solution) for the treatment of COVID-19
Claims that certain people have immunity to COVID-19 due to their race or nationality
Encouraging taking home remedies instead of getting medical treatment when sick
Discouraging people from consulting a medical professional if they’re sick
Content that claims that holding your breath can be used as a diagnostic test for COVID-19
Videos alleging that if you avoid Asian food, you won’t get the coronavirus
Videos alleging that setting off fireworks can clean the air of the virus and will prevent the spread of the virus
Claims that COVID-19 is caused by radiation from 5G networks
Videos alleging that the COVID-19 test is the cause of the virus
Claims that countries with hot climates will not experience the spread of the virus
Videos alleging that social distancing and self-isolation are not effective in reducing the spread of the virus
Claims that wearing a mask causes oxygen levels to drop to dangerous levels
Claims that masks cause lung cancer or brain damage
Claims that wearing a mask gives you COVID-19
Claims that the COVID-19 vaccine will kill people who receive it
Claims that the COVID-19 vaccine will be used as a means of population reduction
Videos claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine will contain fetal tissue
Claims that the flu vaccine causes contraction of COVID-19
Claims that COVID-19 vaccines are not effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19
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Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown.
Employees of the tech giants, Google and Amazon, have condemned the companies for their contract with the Israeli military to develop cloud-based cybersecurity services, and have called on their employers to cut their ties with the occupation forces.
As part of the major $1.2 billion contracts signed with the Israeli military in May, following a bid in which it beat other giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are to provide cloud services technology to Tel Aviv and its armed forces.
In an article published yesterday in the Guardian newspaper, however, hundreds of anonymous employees of the companies, who described themselves as “employees of conscience from diverse backgrounds”, condemned the program named ‘Project Nimbus.’
Referencing their belief “that the technology we build should work to serve and uplift people everywhere,” the employees stated that “we are morally obligated to speak out against violations of these core values.”
They wrote that “we are compelled to call on the leaders of Amazon and Google to pull out of Project Nimbus and cut all ties with the Israeli military,” revealing that the signatories of the letter-number over 90 at Google and over 300 at Amazon.
The employees, who confirmed that they “are anonymous because we fear retaliation,” acknowledged that “We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes, and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
If Google and Amazon continue with the project which would “sell dangerous technology to the Israeli military and government”, then it would only enable the “further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitate the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land.”
Aside from urging the companies to abandon the project and their ties with Israel’s occupation forces, the employees also “call on global technology workers and the international community to join with us in building a world where technology promotes safety and dignity for all.”
Much is revealed by who is bestowed hero status by the corporate media. This week’s anointed avatar of stunning courage is Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager being widely hailed as a “whistleblower” for providing internal corporate documents to the Wall Street Journal relating to the various harms which Facebook and its other platforms (Instagram and WhatsApp) are allegedly causing.
The social media giant hurts America and the world, this narrative maintains, by permitting misinformation to spread (presumably more so than cable outlets and mainstream newspapers do virtually every week); fostering body image neurosis in young girls through Instagram (presumably more so than fashion magazines, Hollywood and the music industry do with their glorification of young and perfectly-sculpted bodies); promoting polarizing political content in order to keep the citizenry enraged, balkanized and resentful and therefore more eager to stay engaged (presumably in contrast to corporate media outlets, which would never do such a thing); and, worst of all, by failing to sufficiently censor political content that contradicts liberal orthodoxies and diverges from decreed liberal Truth. On Tuesday, Haugen’s star turn took her to Washington, where she spent the day testifying before the Senate about Facebook’s dangerous refusal to censor even more content and ban even more users than they already do.
There is no doubt, at least to me, that Facebook and Google are both grave menaces. Through consolidation, mergers and purchases of any potential competitors, their power far exceeds what is compatible with a healthy democracy. A bipartisan consensus has emerged on the House Antitrust Committee that these two corporate giants — along with Amazon and Apple — are all classic monopolies in violation of long-standing but rarely enforced antitrust laws. Their control over multiple huge platforms that they purchased enables them to punish and even destroy competitors, as we saw when Apple, Google and Amazon united to remove Parler from the internet forty-eight hours after leading Democrats demanded that action, right as Parler became the most-downloaded app in the country, or as Google suppresses Rumble videos in its dominant search feature as punishment for competing with Google’s YouTube platform. Facebook and Twitter both suppressed reporting on the authentic documents about Joe Biden’s business activities reported by The New York Post just weeks before the 2020 election. These social media giants also united to effectively remove the sitting elected President of the United States from the internet, prompting grave warnings from leaders across the democratic world about how anti-democratic their consolidated censorship power has become.
But none of the swooning over this new Facebook heroine nor any of the other media assaults on Facebook have anything remotely to do with a concern over those genuine dangers. Congress has taken no steps to curb the influence of these Silicon Valley giants because Facebook and Google drown the establishment wings of both parties with enormous amounts of cash and pay well-connected lobbyists who are friends and former colleagues of key lawmakers to use their D.C. influence to block reform. With the exception of a few stalwarts, neither party’s ruling wing really has any objection to this monopolistic power as long as it is exercised to advance their own interests.
And that is Facebook’s only real political problem: not that they are too powerful but that they are not using that power to censor enough content from the internet that offends the sensibilities and beliefs of Democratic Party leaders and their liberal followers, who now control the White House, the entire executive branch and both houses of Congress. Haugen herself, now guided by long-time Obama operative Bill Burton, has made explicitly clear that her grievance with her former employer is its refusal to censor more of what she regards as “hate, violence and misinformation.” In a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night, Haugen summarized her complaint about CEO Mark Zuckerberg this way: he “has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are that hateful and polarizing content gets more distribution and more reach.” Haugen, gushedThe New York Times’ censorship-desperate tech unit as she testified on Tuesday, is “calling for regulation of the technology and business model that amplifies hate and she’s not shy about comparing Facebook to tobacco.”
Agitating for more online censorship has been a leading priority for the Democratic Party ever since they blamed social media platforms (along with WikiLeaks, Russia, Jill Stein, James Comey, The New York Times, and Bernie Bros) for the 2016 defeat of the rightful heir to the White House throne, Hillary Clinton. And this craving for censorship has been elevated into an even more urgent priority for their corporate media allies, due to the same belief that Facebook helped elect Trump but also because free speech on social media prevents them from maintaining a stranglehold on the flow of information by allowing ordinary, uncredentialed serfs to challenge, question and dispute their decrees or build a large audience that they cannot control. Destroying alternatives to their failing platforms is thus a means of self-preservation: realizing that they cannot convince audiences to trust their work or pay attention to it, they seek instead to create captive audiences by destroying or at least controlling any competitors to their pieties.
As I have been reporting for more than a year, Democrats do not make any secret of their intent to co-opt Silicon Valley power to police political discourse and silence their enemies. Congressional Democrats have summoned the CEO’s of Google, Facebook and Twitter four times in the last year to demand they censor more political speech. At the last Congressional inquisition in March, one Democrat after the next explicitly threatened the companies with legal and regulatory reprisals if they did not immediately start censoring more.
A Pew survey from August shows that Democrats now overwhelmingly support internet censorship not only by tech giants but also by the government which their party now controls. In the name of “restricting misinformation,” more than 3/4 of Democrats want tech companies “to restrict false info online, even if it limits freedom of information,” and just under 2/3 of Democrats want the U.S. Government to control that flow of information over the internet:
The prevailing pro-censorship mindset of the Democratic Party is reflected not only by that definitive polling data but also by the increasingly brash and explicit statements of their leaders. At the end of 2020, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), newly elected after young leftist activists worked tirelessly on his behalf to fend off a primary challenge from the more centrist Rep. Joseph Kennedy III (D-MA), told Facebook’s Zuckerberg exactly what the Democratic Party wanted. In sum, they demand more censorship:
This, and this alone, is the sole reason why there is so much adoration being constructed around the cult of this new disgruntled Facebook employee. What she provides, above all else, is a telegenic and seemingly informed “insider” face to tell Americans that Facebook is destroying their country and their world by allowing too much content to go uncensored, by permitting too many conversations among ordinary people that are, in the immortal worlds of the NYT‘s tech reporter Taylor Lorenz, “unfettered.”
When Facebook, Google, Twitter and other Silicon Valley social media companies were created, they did not set out to become the nation’s discourse police. Indeed, they affirmatively wanted not to do that. Their desire to avoid that role was due in part to the prevailing libertarian ideology of a free internet in that sub-culture. But it was also due to self-interest: the last thing social media companies wanted to be doing is looking for ways to remove and block people from using their product and, worse, inserting themselves into the middle of inflammatory political controversies. Corporations seek to avoid angering potential customers and users over political stances, not courting that anger.
This censorship role was not one they so much sought as one that was foisted on them. It was not really until the 2016 election, when Democrats were obsessed with blaming social media giants (and pretty much everyone else except themselves) for their humiliating defeat, that pressure began escalating on these executives to start deleting content liberals deemed dangerous or false and banning their adversaries from using the platforms at all. As it always does, the censorship began by targeting widely disliked figures — Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones and others deemed “dangerous” — so that few complained (and those who did could be vilified as sympathizers of the early offenders). Once entrenched, the censorship net then predictably and rapidly spread inward (as it invariably does) to encompass all sorts of anti-establishment dissidents on the right, the left, and everything in between. And no matter how much it widens, the complaints that it is not enough intensify. For those with the mentality of a censor, there can never be enough repression of dissent. And this plot to escalate censorship pressures found the perfect vessel in this stunningly brave and noble Facebook heretic who emerged this week from the shadows into the glaring spotlight. She became a cudgel that Washington politicians and their media allies could use to beat Facebook into submission to their censorship demands.
In this dynamic we find what the tech and culture writer Curtis Yarvin calls “power leak.” This is a crucial concept for understanding how power is exercised in American oligarchy, and Yarvin’s brilliant essay illuminates this reality as well as it can be described. Hyperbolically arguing that “Mark Zuckerberg has no power at all,” Yarvin points out that it may appear that the billionaire Facebook CEO is powerful because he can decide what will and will not be heard on the largest information distribution platform in the world. But in reality, Zuckerberg is no more powerful than the low-paid content moderators whom Facebook employs to hit the “delete” or “ban” button, since it is neither the Facebook moderators nor Zuckerberg himself who is truly making these decisions. They are just censoring as they are told, in obedience to rules handed down from on high. It is the corporate press and powerful Washington elites who are coercing Facebook and Google to censor in accordance with their wishes and ideology upon pain of punishment in the form of shame, stigma and even official legal and regulatory retaliation. Yarvin puts it this way:
However, if Zuck is subject to some kind of oligarchic power, he is in exactly the same position as his own moderators. He exercises power, but it is not his power, because it is not his will. The power does not flow from him; it flows through him. This is why we can say honestly and seriously that he has no power. It is not his, but someone else’s. . . .
Zuck doesn’t want to do any of this. Nor do his users particularly want it. Rather, he is doing it because he is under pressure from the press. Duh. He cannot even admit that he is under duress—or his Vietcong guards might just snap, and shoot him like the Western running-dog capitalist he is….
And what grants the press this terrifying power? The pure and beautiful power of the logos? What distinguishes a well-written post, like this one, from an equally well-written Times op-ed? Nothing at all but prestige. In normal times, every sane CEO will comply unhesitatingly with the slightest whim of the legitimate press, just as they will comply unhesitatingly with a court order. That’s just how it is. To not call this power government is—just playing with words.
As I have written before, this problem — whereby the government coerces private actors to censor for them — is not one that Yarvin was the first to recognize. The U.S. Supreme Court has held, since at least 1963, that the First Amendment’s “free speech” clause is violated when state officials issue enough threats and other forms of pressure that essentially leave the private actor with no real choice but to censor in accordance with the demands of state officials. Whether we are legally at the point where that constitutional line has been crossed by the increasingly blunt bullying tactics of Democratic lawmakers and executive branch officials is a question likely to be resolved in the courts. But whatever else is true, this pressure is very real and stark and reveals that the real goal of Democrats is not to weaken Facebook but to capture its vast power for their own nefarious ends.
There is another issue raised by this week’s events that requires ample caution as well. The canonized Facebook whistleblower and her journalist supporters are claiming that what Facebook fears most is repeal or reform of Section 230, the legislative provision that provides immunity to social media companies for defamatory or other harmful material published by their users. That section means that if a Facebook user or YouTube host publishes legally actionable content, the social media companies themselves cannot be held liable. There may be ways to reform Section 230 that can reduce the incentive to impose censorship, such as denying that valuable protection to any platform that censors, instead making it available only to those who truly allow an unmoderated platform to thrive. But such a proposal has little support in Washington. What is far more likely is that Section 230 will be “modified” to impose greater content moderation obligations on all social media companies.
Far from threatening Facebook and Google, such a legal change could be the greatest gift one can give them, which is why their executives are often seencalling on Congress to regulate the social media industry. Any legal scheme that requires every post and comment to be moderated would demand enormous resources — gigantic teams of paid experts and consultants to assess “misinformation” and “hate speech” and veritable armies of employees to carry out their decrees. Only the established giants such as Facebook and Google would be able to comply with such a regimen, while other competitors — including large but still-smaller ones such as Twitter — would drown in those requirements. And still-smaller challengers to the hegemony of Facebook and Google, such as Substack and Rumble, could never survive. In other words, any attempt by Congress to impose greater content moderation obligations — which is exactly what they are threatening — would destroy whatever possibility remains for competitors to arise and would, in particular, destroy any platforms seeking to protect free discourse. That would be the consequence by design, which is why one should be very wary of any attempt to pretend that Facebook and Google fear such legislative adjustments.
There are real dangers posed by allowing companies such as Facebook and Google to amass the power they have now consolidated. But very little of the activism and anger from the media and Washington toward these companies is designed to fracture or limit that power. It is designed, instead, to transfer that power to other authorities who can then wield it for their own interests. The only thing more alarming than Facebook and Google controlling and policing our political discourse is allowing elites from one of the political parties in Washington and their corporate media outlets to assume the role of overseer, as they are absolutely committed to doing. Far from being some noble whistleblower, Frances Haugen is just their latest tool to exploit for their scheme to use the power of social media giants to control political discourse in accordance with their own views and interests.
YouTube has violated Russian law by taking down two German-language channels run by RT, the Kremlin has insisted, cautioning that the American tech giant will face serious consequences unless it urgently reinstates the accounts.
Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary said that “there are of course signs that Russian law has been broken” after the platform moved to ban RT DE and Der Fehlende Part from its site. “In fact, it has been broken very brazenly,” Dmitry Peskov added. “Because of this, it is a case of censorship, and of obstructing the dissemination of information by the media, and so on.”
Peskov added that “there must be zero tolerance for such violations of the law,” insisting that “if our regulators deem this is a violation of legislation then we can’t exclude the possibility we will take measures to force this network to comply with the law.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Moscow’s media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, published a letter sent to YouTube’s parent company, Google, demanding all restrictions be lifted from RT’s channels. The purportedly permanent deletion was imposed after the German-language broadcaster allegedly attempted to circumvent a ‘community guidelines’ strike, handed down for ‘medical misinformation’ in four videos. The details of the purported breach are not yet clear, but RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, has said that it amounts to “a declaration of media war against Russia by Germany.”
Roskomnadzor went on to tell Google that, if the site does not comply with the order, “legislation allows us to take measures including completely or partially blocking access to it.”
Moscow’s Foreign Ministry has also announced that it is considering taking steps against German news outlets in retaliation over the decision. “Adopting reciprocal measures against the German media in Russia which, by the way, has been repeatedly shown to have interfered in our country’s internal affairs, seems not only appropriate but necessary,” it said in a statement.
Officials went on to say that such restrictions are “the only possible way to focus our partners’ attention on a constructive and meaningful dialogue around this unacceptable situation.” According to the diplomats, YouTube acted not out of adherence to its community policies but with the “obvious connivance, if not the insistence,” of German authorities.
Berlin has denied involvement in the decision and insists that the matter is one for YouTube alone.
It’s official: I am spouting misinformation about the Covid vaccines. Full Fact – the Google, Facebook and George Soros-funded outfit that Ofcom has said it relies on to tell it what to censor regarding COVID-19 – has ‘fact checked‘ my recent piece on PHE data showing negative vaccine effectiveness in August and branded it “incorrect”.
Writer Leo Benedictus – henceforth to be known as the Oracle – takes particular issue with the headline, which he says “falsely claims that a report from Public Health England (PHE) shows the COVID-19 vaccines having ‘negative effectiveness’ in the over-40s”.
“This is not true about the COVID-19 vaccines – nor is it true that the PHE report shows this,” the Oracle declares. Except it is. The data contained in the report is completely clear, and the calculation of unadjusted vaccine effectiveness from that data is straightforward.
According to the Oracle, however, this is not a valid way of estimating vaccine effectiveness. Benedictus quotes the PHE report stating as much – “The vaccination status of cases, inpatients and deaths is not the most appropriate method to assess vaccine effectiveness and there is a high risk of misinterpretation” – and notes that I too quote this. What he fails to acknowledge, though, is that I also examine the reason PHE gives for this claim and counter it.
The only substantive reason PHE gives that vaccine effectiveness might be underestimated in its data is that “vaccination has been prioritised in individuals who are more susceptible or more at risk of severe disease”. In other words, the high-risk are over-represented in the vaccinated and this skews the sample. I countered that the large majority of the older age groups are now vaccinated so this bias should be very much reduced. Of course, we also need to ask why, if this is supposedly the key confounder of the data presented, we are not also provided with the necessary data on risk categories so that it can be duly quantified and accounted for.
Benedictus reiterates PHE’s claim that vaccine effectiveness should only be estimated via the published studies. However, as I noted in my article, these studies are riddled with serious problems and inconsistencies that bring their findings into question. They are also out of date since they don’t cover the Delta surge, which is the first time the vaccines have really been stress-tested in the U.K.
Benedictus spends half the ‘fact check’ in a bizarre attempt to argue that my vaccine effectiveness calculation is wrong because I used the data PHE itself used for the size of the unvaccinated population. He points out it is different to the ONS figures on this. Er, take that one up with PHE, Leo.
It does seem at times that Benedictus is fact-checking the PHE report rather than my article. At one point he takes the report to task because one of its charts sowed confusion as it “seemed to show for the month in question (August 9th to September 5th) that people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s were more likely to test positive for Covid if they had been vaccinated than if they hadn’t”.
Except the chart didn’t ‘seem’ to show that; it did show that. Again though we are told that this data does “not give a reliable estimate of vaccine effectiveness” because of biases in the samples.
But who defines what makes an estimate of vaccine effectiveness ‘reliable’ enough to be permitted without being labelled false? All vaccine efficacy estimates have limitations arising from the limitations of the data, including those produced by PHE. I was careful to acknowledge the limitations of the estimates I was making, saying they were unadjusted for risk factors – though argued that this shouldn’t matter so much anymore given high coverage. There’s also the point that being high-risk may affect the risk of serious disease and death but there’s no reason to think it will have an impact on infection rates (save for the small number of immuno-compromised).
The unmistakable impression here is of a gatekeeping exercise by the Government and its outriders to ensure it controls the concept of vaccine effectiveness and no one unauthorised is allowed to make an estimate of it. Thus the availability of the data is carefully controlled and we only get a month at a time and without the additional data that would allow us to control for the supposed biases that the report tells us the data includes and which ‘invalidate’ any attempt to make an unauthorised calculation of vaccine effectiveness.
None of this concept-policing does anything to alter the facts, however. In recent weeks reported infection rates have been higher in the double vaccinated than in the unvaccinated for the over-40s. That means that, for this period, (unadjusted) vaccine effectiveness is negative in those age groups.
PHE has published two new reports since my article and in each the unadjusted vaccine efficacy has declined further. Here is the table using data from the latest report, covering August 23rd to September 19th (the related chart from the report itself is above).
It shows that in the two weeks since my article the vaccine effectiveness has dropped further, with unadjusted vaccine effectiveness in the over-40s now hitting as low as minus-53% among people in their 60s. This means that, on this data for this age group, the double vaccinated experienced a 53% higher reported infection rate than the unvaccinated in the past month. And that’s a fact.
Stop Press: Professor Norman Fenton and Professor Martin Neil on the Probability and Risk site have used age-adjusted all-cause mortality to estimate vaccine effectiveness and found that mortality rates are currently higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
Stop Press 2: Professor David Paton has produced a good Twitter thread responding to one of the more well-informed critics of this (and other) pieces citing the PHE data.
The Biden administration continues to pressure Facebook to collaborate and help it achieve its goals, one of them being to counter COVID vaccine skepticism and get more people in the US vaccinated.
After Biden shockingly denounced Facebook and others as “killing people” because they are allegedly letting COVID misinformation run rampant on their platforms, that pressure now continues in media reports, like the one The Washington Postpublished, citing three anonymous administration sources.
According to them, The White House and Facebook have had a series of meetings whose aim was to get the social media giant to turn over massive amounts of user data to the government, apparently as a “good will gesture” – since there doesn’t seem to be any legal ground for such a request.
Instead, the “tense” meetings saw the administration’s COVID crew “begging” Facebook to give them access to data showing how many people on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp see content branded as coronavirus misinformation, how many are still undecided whether to get the jab, and also the efficiency of Facebook’s censorship algorithms, i.e., how many people still get to see content that it aims to block.
It’s not obvious why the officials quoted by the article thought Facebook was under obligation to do this, but they accused the company of “hiding, filibustering and deflecting” – while at the same time commending Google and Twitter for apparently being much more accommodating in similar meetings around the same subject.
Although it is clear that these meetings are initiated and the data sought by the government, the criticism of Facebook in this matter conflates the notions of government and the public, saying it was the latter that “needs to understand” the scale of COVID misinformation and how to “potentially” fight this real or perceived problem.
The data Facebook has collected from its billions of users is described as “singular” and so complex and fine-grained that it can reveal people’s behavior and position on issues – clearly this is where the belief that the data would show the Biden administration how many users are still undecided on the vaccine comes from.
“It’s not that they wouldn’t provide data. It’s that they wouldn’t provide meaningful data, and you end up with a lot of information that doesn’t necessarily have value,” Andy Slavitt, who represented The White House in the meetings, said.
“As Mr. Yakub continued to preach for converts, he told his people that he would make the others work for them. (This promise came to pass.) Naturally, there are always some people around who would like to have others do their work. Those are the ones who fell for Mr. Yakub’s teaching, 100 per cent.” — The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, chapter 55 of Message to the Blackman in America titled “The Making of Devil”
“Three blessings a Jewish man is obligated to pray daily: ‘(Blessed art Thou,) Who did not make me a gentile; Who did not make me a woman; and Who did not make me a slave.’” — Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 43b–44a
The story of the Jewish American experience that most Jews want to believe, and want the world to believe, is one of almost endless historical victimhood. They insist that they fled anti-Semitic oppression in Europe, landing safely on Ellis Island long after the Civil War’s end in 1865, and certainly some did. … continue
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