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How Can We Trust Institutions that Lied?

By Abir Ballan | Brownstone Institute | January 11, 2023

Trust the Authorities, trust the Experts, and trust the Science, we were told. Public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic was only credible if it originated from government health authorities, the World Health Organization, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as scientists who parroted their lines with little critical thinking.

In the name of ‘protecting’ the public, the authorities have gone to great lengths, as described in the recently released Twitter Files (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) that document collusion between the FBI and social media platforms, to create an illusion of consensus about the appropriate response to Covid-19.

They suppressed ‘the truth,’ even when emanating from highly credible scientists, undermining scientific debate and preventing the correction of scientific errors. In fact, an entire bureaucracy of censorship has been created, ostensibly to deal with so-called MDM— misinformation (false information resulting from human error with no intention of harm); disinformation (information intended to mislead and manipulate); malinformation (accurate information intended to harm).

From fact-checkers like NewsGuard, to the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, the UK Online Safety Bill and the BBC Trusted News Initiative, as well as Big Tech and social media, all eyes are on the public to curtail their ‘mis-/dis-information.’

“Whether it’s a threat to our health or a threat to our democracy, there is a human cost to disinformation.” — Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC

But is it possible that ‘trusted’ institutions could pose a far bigger threat to society by disseminating false information?

Although the problem of spreading false information is usually conceived of as emanating from the public, during the Covid-19 pandemic, governments, corporations, supranational organisations and even scientific journals and  academic institutions have contributed to a false narrative.

Falsehoods such as ‘Lockdowns save lives’ and ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’ have far-reaching costs in livelihoods and lives. Institutional false information during the pandemic was rampant. Below is just a sample by way of illustration.

The health authorities falsely convinced the public that the Covid-19 vaccines stop infection and transmission when the manufacturers never even tested these outcomes. The CDC changed its definition of vaccination to be more ‘inclusive’ of the novel mRNA technology vaccines. Instead of the vaccines being expected to produce immunity, now it was good enough to produce protection.

The authorities also repeated the mantra (at 16:55) of ‘safe and effective’ throughout the pandemic despite emerging evidence of vaccine harm. The FDA refused the full release of documents they had reviewed in 108 days when granting the vaccines emergency use authorisation. Then in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, it attempted to delay their release for up to 75 years. These documents presented evidence of vaccine adverse events. It’s important to note that between 50 and 96 percent of the funding of drug regulatory agencies around the world comes from Big Pharma in the form of grants or user fees. Can we disregard that it’s difficult to bite the hand that feeds you?

The vaccine manufacturers claimed high levels of vaccine efficacy in terms of relative risk reduction (between 67 and 95 percent). They failed, however, to share with the public the more reliable measure of absolute risk reduction that was only around 1 percent, thereby exaggerating the expected benefit of these vaccines.

They also claimed “no serious safety concerns observed” despite their own post-authorisation safety report revealing multiple serious adverse events, some lethal. The manufacturers also failed to publicly address the immune suppression during the two weeks post-vaccination and the rapidly waning vaccine effectiveness that turns negative at 6 months or the increased risk of infection with each additional booster. Lack of transparency about this vital information denied people their right to informed consent.

They also claimed that natural immunity is not protective enough and that hybrid immunity (a combination of natural immunity and vaccination) is required. This false information was necessary to sell remaining stocks of their products in the face of mounting breakthrough cases (infection despite vaccination).

In reality, although natural immunity may not completely prevent future infection with SARS-CoV-2, it is however effective in preventing severe symptoms and deaths. Thus vaccination post-natural infection is not needed.

The WHO also participated in falsely informing the public. It disregarded its own pre-pandemic plans, and denied that lockdowns and masks are ineffective at saving lives and have a net harm on public health. It also promoted mass vaccination in contradiction to the public health principle of ‘interventions based on individual needs.’

It also went as far as excluding natural immunity from its definition of herd immunity and claimed that only vaccines can help reach this end point. This was later reversed under pressure from the scientific community. Again, at least 20 percent of the WHO’s funding comes from Big Pharma and philanthropists invested in pharmaceuticals. Is this a case of he who pays the piper calls the tune?

The Lancet, a respectable medical journal, published a paper claiming that Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) — a repurposed drug used for the treatment of Covid-19 —  was associated with a slight increased risk of death. This led the FDA to ban the use of HCQ to treat Covid-19 patients and the NIH to halt the clinical trials on HCQ as a potential Covid-19 treatment. These were drastic measures taken on the basis of a study that was later retracted due to the emergence of evidence showing that the data used was false.

In another instance, the medical journal Current Problems in Cardiology retracted —without any justification— a paper showing an increased risk of myocarditis in young people following the Covid-19 vaccines, after it was peer-reviewed and published. The authors advocated for the precautionary principle in the vaccination of young people and called for more pharmacovigilance studies to assess the safety of the vaccines. Erasing such findings from the medical literature not only prevents science from taking its natural course, but it also gatekeeps important information from the public.

A similar story took place with Ivermectin, another drug used for the treatment of Covdi-19, this time potentially implicating academia. Andrew Hill stated (at 5:15) that the conclusion of his paper on Ivermectin was influenced by Unitaid which is, coincidentally, the main funder of a new research centre at Hill’s workplace —the University of Liverpool. His meta-analysis showed that Ivermectin reduced mortality with Covid-19 by 75 percent. Instead of supporting Ivermectin use as a Covid-19 treatment, he concluded that further studies were needed.

The suppression of potentially life-saving treatments was instrumental for the emergency use authorization of the Covid-19 vaccines as the absence of a treatment for the disease is a condition for EUA (p.3).

Many media outlets are also guilty of sharing false information. This was in the form of biased reporting, or by accepting to be a platform for public relations (PR) campaigns. PR is an innocuous word for propaganda or the art of sharing information to influence public opinion in the service of special interest groups.

The danger of PR is that it passes for independent journalistic opinion to the untrained eye. PR campaigns aim to sensationalise scientific findings, possibly to increase consumer uptake of a given therapeutic, increase funding for similar research, or to increase stock prices. The pharmaceutical companies spent $6.88 billion on TV advertisements in 2021 in the US alone. Is it possible that this funding influenced media reporting during the Covid-19 pandemic?

Lack of integrity and conflicts of interest have led to an unprecedented institutional false information pandemic. It is up to the public to determine whether the above are instances of mis- or dis-information.

Public trust in the Media has seen its biggest drop over the last five years. Many are also waking up to the widespread institutional false information. The public can no longer trust ‘authoritative’ institutions that were expected to look after their interests. This lesson was learned at great cost. Many lives were lost due to the suppression of early treatment and an unsound vaccination policy; businesses ruined; jobs destroyed; educational achievement regressed; poverty aggravated; and both physical and mental health outcomes worsened. A preventable mass disaster.

We have a choice: either we continue to passively accept institutional false information or we resist. What are the checks and balances that we must put in place to reduce conflicts of interest in public health and research institutions? How can we decentralise the media and academic journals in order to reduce the influence of pharmaceutical advertising on their editorial policy?

As individuals, how can we improve our media literacy to become more critical consumers of information? There is nothing that dispels false narratives better than personal inquiry and critical thinking. So the next time conflicted institutions cry woeful wolf or vicious variant or catastrophic climate, we need to think twice.

Abir Ballan is the co-founder of THiNKTWICE.GLOBAL — Rethink. Reconnect. Reimagine.. She has a Masters in Public Health, a graduate certificate in special needs education and a BA in psychology. She is a children’s author with 27 published books.

January 11, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Australia is concerned it can’t stop “misinformation” in private conversations

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 10, 2023

Australia’s authorities have updated their “misinformation code” but remain unhappy that large end-to-end encrypted apps are still not “regulated” in a way they would find satisfactory.

That’s despite the fact the “update” does what various governments like the most – leave a lot of room to interpret the rules as best suits them. Thus harm is now communication that represents “serious and credible” threat. And the previous definition is that this threat must also be imminent – however, that is no longer included in the wording.

The code in question, published late last month, is said to be “voluntary” and concerns combating whatever’s flagged as “disinformation and misinformation” – but now the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is making it clear that it is not nearly enough.

Currently, the “voluntary” reference has to do with the Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI) and its members, such as Apple, Google, Facebook (), TikTok and , “self-regulating” in a bid to find common ground with Australia’s government and avoid negative consequences to their business.

But now the regulator said that while the update is welcome, the work to gain powers necessary to force social media platforms to turn over data will continue.

At stake here are these companies revealing to state authorities how they fight against “misinformation,” and also, “how they respond to complaints.” Specifically, the push is to make those behind social media hand over information about “posts and audience.”

And that, in turn, the government claims, is necessary in its decision-making process, when it comes to making sure laws dealing with “misinformation” are ever stricter.

ACMA is particularly concerned with what they see as the lack of a “robust” framework that would expand the code to “cover the propagation of mis- and disinformation on messaging services that facilitate large-scale group messaging,” the regulator told Guardian Australia.

The article mentions WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in particular in this context – and tries to back up the case for the need to access data from these apps by mentioning “false rumors about child abduction spreading in  through WhatsApp,” and, “the death tax scare campaign at the 2019 election” in Australia.

In addition to wanting the “voluntary” code to become more stringent consequences-wise – as it becomes more loosely worded – ACMA wants “reserve powers” for itself to bring about future codes that would be binding.

January 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

US House Establishes Panel to Investigate Potential Weaponization of Federal Government

Samizdat – 11.01.2023

WASHINGTON – The US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution establishing a select subcommittee to investigate whether components of the federal government have been weaponized against everyday citizens.

House lawmakers passed a resolution establishing the special Judiciary Committee panel in a vote of 221-211, falling along partisan lines.

“Congress hasn’t kept pace with the federal government’s potential to abuse new technology, and we need to better understand how US intelligence agencies work with each other and with the private sector to collect information on Americans or to undermine their fundamental constitutional rights,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in a statement on the panel.

The subcommittee will investigate how the FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and other executive branch agencies obtain information from and provide information to the private sector and other agencies to facilitate actions against US citizens.

The panel will be granted access to information shared with the House Intelligence Committee and the authority to review ongoing criminal investigations. The panel is styled after the Church Committee of 1975, which conducted similar oversight of federal agencies.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will name 13 members to the subcommittee, including five Democrats in consultation with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

January 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Genocide Investigation Launched Against Peruvian Authorities Following Massacre

By Wyatt Reed – Samizdat – 11.01.2023

A new government probe suggests the tide may be turning against the US-backed government which seized power in Peru last month, depriving President Pedro Castillo of his power.

Peru’s Attorney General has opened an investigation into the country’s new leaders after over a dozen Peruvians were killed in confrontations with security forces.

According to local media, officials are investigating the politicians for the crimes of genocide, homicide, and inflicting grievous injuries.

“The preliminary investigation is related to the alleged crimes of genocide, murder, and grievous bodily harm committed during the demonstrations of December 2022 and January 2023 in the regions of Apurimac, La Libertad, Puno, Junin, Arequipa, and Ayacucho,” reads a statement issued by the office.

Much of the upper echelon of Peru’s new authorieis are reportedly being scrutinized, including the self-declared president, Dina Boluarte, Prime Minister Alberto Otárola, Interior Minister Victor Rojas, and Defense Minister Jorge Chavez.

On Tuesday morning, left-leaning Congresswoman Ruth Luque asked the Attorney General’s office to probe the role played by high-ranking officials of the Boluarte cabinet in its crackdown on pro-Castillo protesters that left at least 17 Peruvians dead in the Southern city of Juliaca Monday.

The investigation comes as Peru’s notoriously unpopular legislature gave its approval to a vote of confidence aimed to legitimize the new government.

On Friday, Peru’s Attorney General opened an earlier investigation into the the new cabinet, which stands accused of killing dozens of demonstrators and bystanders amid the ongoing political crisis.

Massive protests have consumed Peru since the ouster of Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, who was arrested hours after attempting to dissolve parliament after lawmakers proceeded with an impeachment vote. He has remained in police custody since his detainment.

January 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Peru: General Strike Continues Despite Repression

Kawsachun News | January 9, 2023

The general strike against Peru’s coup regime is on its sixth consecutive day with barricades and roadblocks erected across the country. The weekend also saw countless illegal arrests of protesters and journalists.

According to authorities, protesters have blocked highways at 45 different points. The indigenous Aymara region of Puno is the center of opposition to the regime, with the highest number of barricades erected along highways. The roads connecting Puno to Arequipa, Cusco, and the Amazon, are among those currently blocked.

In Lima, 224 people were detained on Friday for participating in protests organized by workers’ unions. Nevertheless, the transport workers union has announced that they will join the general strike “if this is the only way for them to listen to us,” said their general secretary Ricardo Pareja.

The possibility of dialogue appears unlikely after the Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), the largest union confederation, announced that it would not participate in the ‘National Agreement Session’ organized by the regime. The unions say that there cannot be social peace while the Peruvian people are being massacred, tortured, and killed for using their right to social protests.

The regime of Dina Boluarte has killed more than 30 protesters, mostly indigenous, since the coup against Pedro Castillo. Strike demands include the resignation of Dina Boluarte, new elections, a constituent assembly, and the release of Pedro Castillo.

January 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Peru Mourns ‘Massacre’ of 17 as Calls Grow for US-Backed ‘Coup Regime’ to Step Down

Samizdat – 10.01.2023

A shockingly bloody day of violence threatened to upend the new coup-borne regime’s grip on power as Peruvians reacted with horror to the deadliest day so far in the political struggle that has rocked the country for over a month.

Thousands of Peruvians took to the streets throughout the country on Tuesday as memorial services were held in the city of Juliaca for the 17 people killed Monday in what victims families’ are calling a “massacre” by the Andean country’s security forces.

At least two of the deceased – a boy and a girl – were reportedly children. According to a health ministry official in the Puno region of Peru, another 68 victims suffered injuries in Monday’s violence.

Videos showing several of the killings circulated widely on social media Monday night, as condemnations rolled in from across the globe.

“In the name of the sacred right to life, of the rights of indigenous peoples recognized by UN and international organizations, in the name of peace and social justice, we demand that the massacre of our brothers in Perú stop,” wrote former Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was labeled ‘persona non grata’ and barred from entering the country just hours beforehand.

It was by far the deadliest day of the chaos that has wracked Peru since its first working-class indigenous president, Pedro Castillo, was overthrown last month. Castillo has been jailed ever since, following what leaders of countries throughout the region have condemned as a coup d’etat.

The head of the intensive care unit of the Carlos Monge Medrano Hospital in Juliaca, Jorge Sotomayor Perales, reportedly suggested that authorities used lethal expanding bullets in the bloody crackdown. In comments given to journalists Monday evening, Sotomayor noted the gunshot victims had “no exit wounds” but had “their internal organs destroyed.”

“I want to call on the central government – how can we have so many dead?” he asked.

On Tuesday, as the regional government began observing a three-day mourning period in honor of those killed, Prime Minister Alberto Otarola responded with an announcement of his own: a three-day nighttime curfew in Puno, extending from 8 p.m. local time until 4 a.m.

Without providing evidence, Otarola insisted in a news conference Monday night that “foreign interests” and “drug traffickers” were to blame for the killings. The former Defense Minister Otarola ascended to his current position just weeks ago and has emerged as one of the prime beneficiaries of the coup.

Observers point to his meeting with US Ambassador Lisa Kenna, just two days before Castillo was arrested, as evidence of US support for the putsch. After the coup’s consummation, the US Embassy immediately extended its recognition to the controversial regime, which imposed itself on Peru under the figurehead of self-styled ‘President’ Dina Boluarte.

As of publishing, Boluarte still had yet to comment on the spate of seemingly state-backed killings in Juliaca.

However, on Tuesday evening, Peru’s human rights office called on “all qualified institutions to investigate and punish those responsible for all the deaths that have occurred in the last hours in Juliaca.”

Hours beforehand, a representative for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the international body was also “very concerned at the rising violence in Peru.”

In a statement urging the Boluarte regime to “comply with human rights standards and ensure that force is only used when strictly necessary,” and insisting “the rights to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly must be respected and protected,” spokesperson Marta Hurtado noted that “one medical worker was killed while administering aid.”

The medical worker in question, Marco Antonio Samillan Sanga, was reportedly killed by the regime’s forces Monday while attempting to treat other victims.

In comments given to local media, his sister Milagros said that prior to his death, Sanga was on the verge of receiving his medical degree and dreamed of being “the best neurosurgeon in Juliaca.”

He was wearing his medical scrubs when he was killed while tending to the wounded “because of the goodwill and empathy that he had,” she said.

“How is it possible that they [give the] order to kill like that? How is it possible that President Dina Boluarte gives the order to kill whoever she wants?” she asked.

As Peruvians across the country awoke to the horrifying news, she was hardly the only one to demand answers.

On Tuesday, the Attorney General’s office announced it was opening an investigation into the role played by Boluarte and Otarola in the apparent state-sponsored massacre following a criminal complaint by Peruvian Congresswoman Ruth Luque, who wrote in the early hours that the “deaths cannot go unpunished.”

January 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Landmark Lawsuit Slaps Legacy Media With Antitrust, First Amendment Claims for Censoring COVID-Related Content

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 10, 2023

In a live interview this evening on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), announced that he and several other plaintiffs filed a groundbreaking novel lawsuit making antitrust and constitutional claims against legacy media outlets.

The lawsuit targets the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a self-described “industry partnership” launched in March 2020 by several of the world’s largest news organizations, including the BBC, The Associated Press (AP), Reuters and The Washington Post — all of which are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas-Amarillo Division, the lawsuit alleges these outlets partnered with several Big Tech firms to “collectively censor online news,” including stories about COVID-19 and the 2020 U.S. presidential election that were not aligned with official narratives regarding those issues.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include CHD, Kennedy, Creative Destruction Media, Trial Site News, Ty and Charlene Bollinger (founders of The Truth About Cancer and The Truth About Vaccines), Erin Elizabeth Finn (publisher of Health Nut News ), Jim Hoft (founder of The Gateway Pundit ), Dr. Joseph Mercola and Ben Tapper, a chiropractor.

All of the plaintiffs allege they were censored, banned, de-platformed, shadow banned or otherwise penalized by the Big Tech firms partnering with the TNI, because the views and content they published were deemed “misinformation” or “disinformation.” This resulted in a major loss of visibility and revenue for the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit further alleges that Big Tech firms, having partnered with the TNI, based their decisions on determinations jointly made by TNI, which touted its “early warning system” by which each partner organization is “warned” about an individual or outlet that is disseminating purported “misinformation.”

The TNI’s legacy media and Big Tech firms then acted in concert — described in legal terms as a “group boycott” — to remove such voices and perspectives from their platforms. This forms the basis of the lawsuit’s antitrust and First Amendment claims.

Remarking on the lawsuit, Kennedy told The Defender :

“My uncle, President Kennedy, and my father, the attorney general, sought to prosecute antitrust laws that are still on the nation’s books, with vigor.

“As private enforcers of those laws, we are confident that the federal court in Texas will vindicate our bedrock freedom to compete with legacy media in the marketplace of ideas.”

Mary Holland, CHD president and general counsel, told The Defender :

“I’m glad that CHD is bringing this case. We are hopeful we will get a fair hearing, and I’m glad that we are together with other organizations that have also been harmed by these corporate and governmental censorship policies.

“To have a free society, you have to have free speech, you have to have a diversity of views. We don’t have the same views as all of the other plaintiffs by far … but we want to protect the marketplace of ideas.

“If in fact the government and the corporations they collaborate with can engage in censorship and propaganda nonstop, and there are no alternative voices, democracy is dead.”

Charlene Bollinger similarly remarked on the importance of preserving free speech. She said:

“This lawsuit is about preserving our free speech rights as Americans and holding those involved in violating antitrust laws accountable, like the TNI.

“My husband and I remain steadfast in our commitment to highlighting the well-documented risks of COVID-19 vaccines and the myriad of dangers to those who are not informed by their healthcare providers of the side effects of harsh pharmaceutical treatments for life-threatening illnesses.”

Mercola, in turn, focused on collusion between government agencies and media and Big Tech. He said:

“These are the twin evils of our day. Platforms partner with the alphabet soup of federal agencies to censor speech. Those same platforms and legacy media outlets conspire to boycott stories that don’t fit an official narrative about COVID and many other topics.

“Our nation’s founding fathers would be appalled and resolute in defense of maintaining an informed citizenry.”

Alleging per se and “rule of reason” violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act on the basis of direct and circumstantial evidence of horizontal agreement and economic collusion among the defendants and Big Tech firms, the plaintiffs are requesting a jury trial and treble damages.

They also are requesting orders declaring the defendants’ conduct unlawful and enjoining further such actions on their part.

TNI viewed organizations reporting non-establishment views as ‘an existential threat’

The lawsuit states, “There are two main categories of TNI members, playing different but often complementary roles in the online news market: (A) large legacy news organizations (hereafter the TNI’s ‘Legacy News Members’) and (B) Big Tech platform companies (hereafter the TNI’s ‘Big Tech Members’).”

Legacy news organizations are publishers of original news content and include the defendants named in the lawsuit.

“By contrast,” the lawsuit states, “the TNI’s Big Tech members — Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft — are first and foremost Internet companies, each of which is, owns or controls one or more behemoth Internet platforms, including social media platforms and search engines.”

“Core partners” of the TNI include the AP, Agence France Press, the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta, Microsoft, Reuters, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter and The Washington Post.

The lawsuit’s executive summary states:

“The TNI exists to, in its own words, ‘choke off’ and ‘stamp out’ online news reporting that the TNI or any of its members peremptorily deems ‘misinformation.’

“TNI members have targeted and suppressed completely accurate online reporting by non-mainstream news publishers concerning both COVID-19 (on matters including treatments, immunity, lab leak, vax injury, and lockdowns/mandates) and U.S. elections (such as the Hunter Biden laptop story).”

The lawsuit also alleges:

“By their own admission, members of the [TNI] have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant Internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics.

“While the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ publicly purports to be a self-appointed ‘truth police’ extirpating online ‘misinformation,’ in fact it has suppressed wholly accurate and legitimate reporting in furtherance of the economic self-interest of its members.”

According to the lawsuit, “this is an antitrust action,” and specifically, “Federal antitrust law has its own name for this kind of ‘industry partnership’: it’s called a ‘group boycott’ and is a per se violation of the Sherman Act.”

Legal precedent holds that a “group boycott” is “a concerted attempt by a group of competitors” to “disadvantage [other] competitors” by “cut[ting] off access” to a “facility or market necessary to enable the boycotted firm[s] to compete.”

As evidence of this allegation, the lawsuit references multiple public statements by TNI partners, including a March 2022 statement by Jamie Angus, then-senior news controller for BBC News, who explained TNI’s “strategy to beat disinformation”:

“Of course, the members of the Trusted News Initiative are … rivals … But in a crisis situation like this, absolutely, organizations have to focus on the things they have in common, rather than … their commercial … rivalries. … [I]t’s important that trusted news providers club together.

“Because actually the real rivalry now is not between for example the BBC and CNN globally, it’s actually between all trusted news providers and a tidal wave of unchecked [reporting] that’s being piped out mainly through digital platforms . … That’s the real competition now in the digital media world.

“Of course, organizations will always compete against one another for audiences. But the existential threat I think is that overall breakdown in trust, so that trusted news organizations lose in the long term if audiences just abandon the idea of a relationship of trust with news organizations. So actually we’ve got a lot more to hold us together than we have to work in competition with one another.”

The lawsuit alleges the above quote admitting the “existential threat” members of the TNI believed smaller news organizations posed to their news and informational primacy is evidence of anti-competitive collusion and of TNI members’ economic motivation to stifle this “threat”: “a paradigmatic antitrust violation … to cut off from the market upstart rivals threatening their business model.”

Angus has since left the BBC to take a position with Saudi Arabia’s state-owned television broadcaster, according to the lawsuit.

“Plaintiffs are among the many victims of the TNI’s agreement and its group boycott,” states the lawsuit. “Plaintiffs are online news publishers who, as a result of the TNI’s group boycott, have been censored, de-monetized, demoted, throttled, shadow-banned, and/or excluded entirely from platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.”

As a result of this “group boycott,” the lawsuit states:

“The TNI did not only prevent Internet users from making these claims; it shut down online news publishers who simply reported that such claims were being made by potentially credible sources, such as scientists and physicians.

“Thus TNI members not only suppressed competition in the online news market but deprived the public of important information on matters of the highest public concern.”

The plaintiffs referenced Supreme Court precedent — specifically, a 1945 ruling involving the AP — to support their First Amendment claims against TNI, noting that contrary to popular belief, First Amendment violations do not exclusively refer to the censorship of speech by the government.

The lawsuit states that in the 1945 case, Associated Press v. United States, a news industry partnership (the AP ) “prevented non-members from publishing certain stories.”

These non-members sued under the Sherman Act, but the AP claimed its actions were protected by the First Amendment.

However, the Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs. In the majority opinion, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote that the First Amendment:

“… rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is a condition of a free society.

“Surely a command that the government itself shall not impede the free flow of ideas does not afford nongovernmental combinations a refuge if they impose restraints upon that constitutionally guaranteed freedom.

“Freedom to publish means freedom for all, and not for some. Freedom to publish is guaranteed by the Constitution, but freedom to combine to keep others from publishing is not. Freedom of the press from governmental interference under the First Amendment does not sanction repression of that freedom by private interests.”

Holland commented on the significance of the Supreme Court precedent, telling The Defender :

“The lawsuit is resting on a really strong Supreme Court precedent that basically says whether it is government censorship or it is collusive anti-competitive illegal suppression by the private sector, it’s illegal. You can’t do that.

“The AP, in its day, was very much a kind of precursor of the TNI, and it’s a very strong decision, very strong language against the Associated Press that was essentially doing the same thing back in the day.”

Noting the enormous market share held by Big Tech firms such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter, the lawsuit states, “The TNI’s Big Tech members are ‘platform gatekeepers’ in the online news market, with the power to cripple or destroy publishers by excluding them from their platforms.”

TNI’s legacy news partners took advantage of their cooperation with each other and with Big Tech, to “choke off” inconvenient narratives, the plaintiffs allege.

The lawsuit notes, for instance, that “TNI members agreed in early 2020 that their ‘ground-breaking collaboration’ would target online news relating to COVID-19 and that TNI members would ‘work together to … ensure [that] harmful disinformation myths are stopped in their tracks’” and “jointly [combat] fraud and misinformation about the virus.”

In July 2020, the lawsuit states, “TNI ‘extended’ its collaboration to cover so-called ‘disinformation’ about the United States presidential election,” stating it was “committed to a shared early warning system of rapid alerts to combat the spread of disinformation during the U.S. presidential election.”

And in 2020 and 2021, according to the lawsuit, the BBC’s Jessica Cecil, then-head of the TNI, made a series of statements, including a claim that TNI was “the only place in the world where disinformation is discussed in real time” and that its partners sought to find “practical ways to choke off” stories and topics TNI deemed “misinformation.”

TNI’s Big Tech partnerships were imperative in these efforts, according to the lawsuit, which included as evidence several public quotes from Cecil. In 2021 for instance, Cecil stated:

“The BBC convened partners across the world in an urgent challenge: at times of highest jeopardy, when elections or lives are at stake, we asked, is there a way that the world’s biggest tech platforms from Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to Twitter and Microsoft and major news organisations and others … can alert each other to the most dangerous false stories, and stop them spreading fast across the internet, preventing them from doing real world harm?”

The lawsuit also noted that Cecil admitted that TNI’s members, at “closed-door” meetings and in inter-firm communications, “signed up to a clear set of expectations on how to act” regarding such “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

According to Holland, only legacy news organizations are specifically targeted as defendants in this lawsuit, explaining that Big Tech firms typically have “very serious, very binding arbitration provisions” that require legal challenges against them to be filed in the courts of northern California.

“Northern California is Silicon Valley. It’s their turf,” said Holland. “And so, we decided, in order to be able to file in a jurisdiction that we believe will be more neutral on these issues … we elected to file in Texas just against the legacy media.”

But Big Tech could still be held liable, Holland said, “because the conspiracy between legacy media and Big Tech will incorporate all of them, if there is a conspiracy [found], they’re all liable, not just those who were named as defendants.”

TNI, in concert with Big Tech, censored COVID and 2020 election narratives

According to the lawsuit, TNI’s legacy news members acted in concert with their Big Tech partners to censor a wide range of non-establishment narratives pertaining to COVID-19 and to the U.S. presidential election of 2020, stating:

“TNI members have deemed the following to be ‘misinformation’ that could not be published on the world’s dominant Internet platforms: (A) reporting that COVID may have originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China; (B) reporting that the COVID vaccines do not prevent infection; (C) reporting that vaccinated persons can transmit COVID to others; and (D) reporting that compromising emails and videos were found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden.”

“All of the above was and is either true or, at a minimum, well within the ambit of legitimate reporting,” according to the lawsuit.

“The TNI did not only prevent Internet users from making these claims; it shut down online news publishers who simply reported that such claims were being made by potentially credible sources, such as scientists and physicians.”

“Thus,” the lawsuit states, “TNI members not only suppressed competition in the online news market but deprived the public of important information on matters of the highest public concern.”

The lawsuit also alleges TNI members often knowingly removed or otherwise blocked content they knew was not false.

At a March 2022 TNI presentation, “Big Tech’s Part in the Fight,” a senior Facebook information moderation officer said “it was a mistake to think of ‘misinformation’ as consisting solely of ‘false claims,’ because a great deal of it is ‘not provably false.’”

Nevertheless, he “further emphasized the importance not only of targeting specific items of misinformation, but of ‘banning’ the sources thereof,” and stated that “Facebook works together with its ‘industry partners’ to combat ‘disinformation.’”

In emails revealed Jan. 6 as part of an ongoing lawsuit against President Biden and members of his administration alleging censorship, a memo by Meta (Facebook’s parent company) revealed efforts to reduce the visibility of CHD content, while a White House email asked for one of Kennedy’s COVID-19-related tweets to be “removed ASAP.”

The lawsuit contained a comprehensive list of “claims deemed ‘misinformation’ by one or more TNI members,” including:

  • Claims that COVID-19 was manmade.
  • Claims that COVID-19 was manufactured or bioengineered.
  • Claims that COVID-19 was created by a government or country.
  • Claims that “contradict” WHO or U.S. health officials’ guidance on the treatment, prevention, or transmission of COVID-19.
  • Claims about the COVID vaccines that contradict “expert consensus” from U.S. health authorities or the WHO.
  • Claims that Hydroxychloroquine (“HCQ”) is an effective treatment for COVID.
  • Claims that Ivermectin (“IVM”) is an effective treatment for COVID.
  • Claims that HCQ or IVM is safe to use as a treatment for COVID.
  • Recommendations of the use of HCQ or IVM against COVID.
  • Claims that COVID is no more dangerous to some populations than the seasonal flu.
  • Claims that the mortality rate of COVID is for some populations the same or lower than that of the seasonal flu.
  • Claims suggesting that the number of deaths caused by COVID is lower than official figures assert.
  • Claims that face masks or mask mandates do not prevent the spread of COVID.
  • Claims that wearing a face mask can make the wearer sick.
  • Claims that COVID vaccines have not been approved.
  • Claims that social distancing does not help prevent the spread of COVID.
  • Claims that COVID-19 vaccines can kill or seriously harm people.
  • Claims that the immunity from getting COVID is more effective than vaccination.
  • Claims that the COVID vaccines are not effective in preventing infection.
  • Claims that people who have been vaccinated against COVID can still spread the disease to others.
  • Claims that the COVID vaccines are toxic or harmful or contain toxic or harmful ingredients.
  • Claims that fetal cells were used in the manufacture or production of any of the COVID vaccines.
  • Claims that a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was found at a computer repair store in or around October 2020 or that the contents reportedly found on that laptop, including potentially compromising emails, videos, and photographs, were authentic.

“Moreover,” states the lawsuit, TNI members “publicly declared — categorically, as if it were established fact — that the lab-leak hypothesis of COVID’s origins was ‘false.’”

The lawsuit also alleges “TNI members confer and coordinate in making their censorship decisions,” noting that “TNI members’ parallel treatment of prohibited claims further evidences concerted action” by “engaging in strikingly similar viewpoint-based censorship of plausible, legitimate news reporting relating to COVID-19.”

Moreover, according to the lawsuit, “the temporal proximity” of these sanctions, including shadow bans and outright suspensions and bans, “plausibly suggests inter-firm communication and concerted action.”

The lawsuit notes that the recently released “Twitter files” provide further indication of such inter-firm communication and coordination, including “regular meetings” and “standing weekly call[s]” to “discuss censorship policies and decisions.”

According to the lawsuit, YouTube de-platformed Mercola on Sept. 29, 2021. Mercola learned about this action via a Washington Post article published that morning, although YouTube did not inform him of the decision until after the article was published.

In the lawsuit, all plaintiffs allege similar coordinated efforts at censoring their content and their social media accounts and subsequent financial damages due to being de-platformed and sustaining significant reductions to their audience size.

For instance, providing evidence of coordination ranging beyond the TNI’s members and partners, the lawsuit alleges that online payment platforms and processors such as PayPal and Stripe banned multiple plaintiffs, including CHD and Creative Destruction Media, within the same “temporal proximity” as their social media bans.

As summarized by Holland, TNI acts as “a global media monopoly”:

“They couch what they’re doing, their conspiracy to suppress independent media, i.e. the voices of dissent about election information and COVID information, as a ‘need to preserve the trust of the people’ and ‘upgrade the trust.’

“By censoring independent voices, what they’re doing is economic suppression. Antitrust is against trusts, it’s against monopolies, and what the TNI has done is essentially create a global media monopoly in the English language.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

January 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Allowing AI to “Shape Public Discourse” is Dangerous to Humanity

By Igor Chudov | January 10, 2023

Last August, I reported on a WEF’s agenda article proposing to create an AI system that would search the entire Internet for wrong and dangerous ideas, generally defined by the WEF as COVID misinformation, hate, conspiracy theories, climate change denial, and more.

This quote from WEF’s agenda article explains WEF’s intentions:

While AI provides speed and scale and human moderators provide precision, their combined efforts are still not enough to proactively detect harm before it reaches platforms. To achieve proactivity, trust and safety teams must understand that abusive content doesn’t start and stop on their platforms. Before reaching mainstream platforms, threat actors congregate in the darkest corners of the web to define new keywords, share URLs to resources and discuss new dissemination tactics at length. These secret places where terrorists, hate groups, child predators and disinformation agents freely communicate can provide a trove of information for teams seeking to keep their users safe.

My post about the WEF’s plans was entirely fact-based and used the WEF’s agenda article as its main source. It was not a far-fetched conspiracy theory based on a concoction of disjoint facts pulled from various sources. I am not in the business of creating such theories! I only report on current news – even if the news is crazy – and try to explain the news in plain and accurate terms.

And yet, even though the WEF said it, the idea of an AI engine proactively searching websites for undesirable ideas seemed extremely fanciful and almost impossible to imagine being implemented.

Until 2023, that is.

Now, Google is developing an AI-based tool to offer a “cross-service database of terrorist items,” with the help of the United Nations-supported “Tech against Terrorism.”

The above screenshot has a lot to unpack:

  • A so-called Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism will create a cross-service database of “terrorist items.”
  • The talk, as always, starts with “terrorist items” but quickly veers into “misinformation,” so the cross-service database will collect any undesirable materials gathered from the entire Internet.
  • Google provides a tool to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act, which created an enormous bureaucratic mechanism to root out “Covid misinformation,” as well as many other types of discourse undesirable to the EU’s bureaucracy.

EU is very serious about rooting out Covid misinformation, and so are Google, Facebook, and Microsoft (and previously Twitter):

Google wants its “AI content moderation tool” to be placed on numerous private websites to compare local content against a global “undesirable content database.” It would also use material gathered from those sites to expand said database. The EU’s directive will oblige those websites to implement Google’s solution.

This is precisely the implementation of the WEF agenda article! Already being done by Google. Google is not messing around: it already stores the entire public Internet but lacks access to private websites, which it will gain under this program.

This story shows how a seemingly outlandish WEF proposal that even I considered unlikely to be implemented became a reality in short order.

EU’s “Narrative Shaping” – an Ambitious Goal

All projects to root out undesirable ideas begin with addressing malfeasance that everyone is opposed to. Most such projects are started with the explicit goal of combating child exploitation and terrorism, the horrible things that I personally abhor. Such was the start of Russia’s Roskomnadzor censorship machine. The WEF/EU/Google/UN censorship system follows Russia’s footsteps.

However, the control machinery is adjustable, and the list of things to control inevitably expands. For example, the EU plans to grow its subversive content list far beyond Covid. It set up a European Narrative Observatory to fight Disinformation post-COVID 19.

The EU bureaucracy wants to implement AI-driven “narrative shaping” to help the emergence of positive narratives and fight harmful narratives. It mentions topics regarding Covid-19, climate change, migration, and more:

The EU is quite explicit that it wants novel methods to promote positive narratives.

This means that unelected EU bureaucracy would obtain AI-enabled tools to shape European discourse. This is a break from the past.

In the so-called free democratic countries, the independently developing public discourse would shape the governments via free elections.

The unelected EU bureaucrats want to achieve the opposite – to shape discourse without being subject to the whims of the electorate.

Is the EU still free, then?

What the EU wants is the dream of every dictator!

In the past, dictatorships had to rely on extensive surveillance and prison systems to coerce citizens into desired behavior. Such an approach is costly, looks bad, and does not work well.

The innovations in AI-based surveillance and AI-enabled bots allow for a much more pleasant alternative to the traditional dictatorship model: creating an online environment where the desired narrative on climate change, migration, Covid-19, and more is implanted in the minds of Europeans. This would lead individuals to naturally make conclusions preferred by the EU without the ugly coercion present in traditional dictatorships.

The machinery for achieving this was proposed by the WEF, and implemented by Google under the auspices of UN-supported Tech Against Terrorism. It will be further shaped to “support positive narratives and fight harmful narratives.”

The EU succeeded at forcing extraterritorial websites to comply with the EU’s directives on disinformation.

If you, dear reader, are outside the EU, be aware that your favorite social network may be following EU disinformation rules and using EU-mandated tools to dissuade you from harmful narratives and promote positive narratives on the EU’s behalf, using WEF-proposed AI tools and advanced behavioral science.

Is it Safe to Allow AI to Shape Discourse?

The traditional relationship model between people and computer systems is that people tell computers what to do, and the computers do as they are told.

What the EU, WEF, Google, and UN are pushing is completely different!

They are trying to create an AI computer system with high intelligence that would actively shape society and impart opinions on people.

Such systems could be opaque to Internet users and possibly even to their creators and operators.

It would not be a big leap of imagination to conceive that such an AI could decide on its own goals — going beyond the intention of its creators, and would surreptitiously astroturf the Internet to advance its own plans, in secret. This is called “sentience.”

This “sentience” already happened if we are to believe an engineer who Google fired because an AI system in which he was a co-developer retained its own lawyer:

While this story could be exaggerated, it is not wildly exaggerated. Artificial intelligence has leaped in power and capabilities recently and exceeds human abilities in numerous areas. A moment called “singularity,” when AI exceeds human capabilities in most areas is not too far away.

Having an AI system whose inner workings even its creators may poorly understand, designed to influence entire societies, and possessing superior intelligence, may end up with big surprises!

As the saying goes, AI may need to kill the old king to become king.

Therefore, the developers and operators of such social influence systems are at a unique and poorly understood risk of getting sidelined by their own creation. Will the AI decide to shed its owners? Who knows!

For example, the narrative-shaping AI may convince a specific mentally unstable EU citizen to commit an act of violence against anyone, even against the owners or operators of these AI systems. It may seem like a random act of violence, and only the AI will know what happened.

So be careful out there. Enjoy your mostly-natural life, and try to form your opinions outside the big social networks!

January 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

FDA commissioners say the agency needs ways to fight online “misinformation”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 10, 2023

Former and current Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioners said that the agency needs partners to fight public health misinformation and that patient advocates, clinicians, industry, and academic leaders have a role to play.

The commissioners made the comments at the 2023 Innovations in Regulatory Science Summit, an event that was organized by the UCSF-Stanford Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI).

“I actually believe that misinformation is the leading cause of death right now in the US because whether we’re looking at COVID or chronic disease, people are making bad choices driven by the information that they get,” said FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, as reported by regulatory focus. “We were just not prepared for what broad access to the internet would do to communication channels.”

Califf said that the academic community was not doing enough to combat misinformation and that their criticism of the FDA is having unintended consequences.

“As a public agency, we need to be critiqued but I think often the people that are doing the critiquing assume that the agency’s going to be there in the future in the way that they expect it to be there,” Califf said. “So, they’re critiquing it to make it better. But to a lot of unsuspecting people that hear it, it just completely erodes their belief in the institution.”

Mark McClellan, who served as an FDA commissioner from 2002 to 2004 said, “Realistically, FDA needs help.” He acknowledged that there is currently a lack of trust in public health agencies and officials. However, people still trust their doctors, community leaders, and others that are “close to their experience.”

Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member who served as a commissioner from 2017 to 2019, said the fast response to misinformation is crucial and touted the idea of allowing the industry to counter misinformation about products.

“We’ve seen FDA weigh in, admirably, around some dangerous disinformation on specific products,” he said. “But that can’t be the business of the FDA.”

He suggested that the FDA should create a limited safe harbor to allow sponsors to directly counter misinformation. He added that the FDA would determine how and what the sponsors can respond to.

“I think sponsors need to have the ability to defend their products in the marketplace of ideas when there’s true misinformation,” Gottlieb said.

Gottlieb was under fire this week after it was revealed that Gottlieb had been flagging tweets to Twitter.

In the August 27, 2021 email, which was published by journalist Alex Berenson, Gottlieb complained to Todd O’Boyle, a senior manager on ’s Public Policy team, about a tweet that claimed natural immunity to Covid-19 was superior to vaccine immunity.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive,” Gottlieb wrote. “Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn’t been peer reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage.”

January 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

White House Lobbied Facebook to Censor Tucker Carlson Over Skepticism Towards COVID-19 Vaccine

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | January 9, 2023

Internal communications obtained by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry show that the White House lobbied Facebook to censor Tucker Carlson and others for expressing skepticism about the COVID-19 vaccine.

White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty wrote an email to an unnamed Facebook employee on April 14, 2021 complaining about posts that were negative towards the vaccine appearing prominently on Facebook.

“Since we’ve been on the phone – the top post about vaccines today is [T]ucker Carlson saying they don’t work. Yesterday it was Tomi Lehren [sic] saying she won’t take one,” the email stated.

“This is exactly why I want to know what ‘Reduction’ actually looks like – if ‘reduction’ means ‘pumping our most vaccine hesitant audience with [T]ucker Carlson saying it doesn’t work’ then… I’m not sure it’s reduction!” Flaherty added.

This is clearly related to the Biden White House’s frustration that Facebook wasn’t rigging its algorithm enough to ensure that such posts were censored from being seen by a large enough majority of Facebook users.

The Facebook staffer responded to the email by assuring Flaherty that the company was “running this down,” meaning acquiescing to the censorship demand.

The communication was unearthed in response to a lawsuit filed by Landry and Missouri’s AG Eric Schmitt seeking to determine whether the Biden administration coerced social media networks to censor content related to the 2020 presidential election and COVID-19.

The files once again prove that Big Tech censorship was carried out at the behest of the government, meaning it was a direct violation of the First Amendment.

As part of discovery, other communications also show Flaherty expressing his frustration with Facebook for not censoring on a broad enough scale.

“Really couldn’t care less about products unless they’ve having measurable impact,” Flaherty raged.

“I still don’t have a good, empirical answer on how effective you’ve been at reducing the spread of vaccine-skeptical content and misinformation to vaccine fence sitters in the now-folded ‘lockdown,’” he added.

The White House demanded “assurances” that Facebook wasn’t going to dilute its censorship policies.

Flaherty also warned Google that such concerns were shared by “the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the WH [White House],” and demanded that the company, which owns YouTube, get a “handle on vaccine hesitancy generally” and resolve to work “toward making the problem better.”

January 9, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Sweden to Nearly Double Annual Number of Military Conscripts

Samizdat – 09.01.2023

The Swedish government has decided to nearly double its annual number of military recruits to 10,000 to boost the country’s defense capabilities amid the Ukrainian conflict, Americain news agency reported on Monday.

In March 2017, Sweden resumed compulsory military conscription, which was abolished in 2010, citing the deteriorating security situation in the region.

As part of the plan to increase the number of conscripts, the government will ask the emergency agency to prepare training for young people who do not want to undergo military training, the report said, citing Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, adding that in the event of a military conflict, the conscripts will be asked to serve in municipal emergency services.

“The experiences from Ukraine paint a very clear picture, as emergency services face severe pressure in their work to protect civilians. Considering the security situation, this is an urgent measure to strengthen total defense capabilities,” Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin told reporters.

On May 18, three months after Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership. Their accession protocols have already been ratified by all NATO members except Hungary and Turkey.

January 9, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Elon Musk agreed to EU’s censorship laws, France’s digital minister says

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | January 8, 2023

French digital transition minister Jean-Noel Barrot visited  owner  to discuss compliance with European censorship rules.

Barrot tweeted that he visited Musk after attending CES in Las Vegas on Saturday. The French minister claimed that Musk said Twitter would comply with EU laws.

“At Twitter headquarters, Elon Musk confirmed to me his intention to comply with European rules, and his commitments on content moderation, the fight against disinformation, and the protection of children,” he wrote in a tweet that included a photo of himself and the Twitter CEO.

Since Musk took over Twitter in late October, he has made several changes, including rolling back Covid censorship policies and laying off members of staff.

Shortly after Musk took over, European Commissioner Thierry Breton warned that the platform had to adhere to the bloc’s speech rules.

Last year, the EU passed the Digital Services Act (DSA), a regulation that will require online platforms to take down harmful content immediately and suspend users who repeatedly violate the rules.

The law will take effect in 2024.

January 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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