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Billionaire Biden Donor Bankrolled 2020 Election Social Media Censorship Effort

BY LEE FANG | JUNE 8, 2023

The Department of Homeland Security’s controversial social media censorship effort during the 2020 election was propped up by a partisan billionaire.

Newly obtained documents, acquired through a public records request, confirm that Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of eBay, financed a specialized portal maintained by the Center for Internet Security (CIS). This portal was used to facilitate the swift removal of predominantly conservative messages on Twitter and Facebook during the previous presidential election.

Omidyar, previously identified as one of the largest donors to campaign groups supporting Joe Biden’s presidential bid, donated $45 million to the “Sixteen Thirty Fund” in 2020. This dark money group mobilized Democratic voters and financed pro-Biden Super PACs. However, Omidyar’s direct involvement in the DHS partnership, which is now facing increased scrutiny, remained undisclosed until now.

The funding provided by Omidyar to CIS was used to establish a Misinformation Reporting Portal (MiRP). A team from CIS continuously monitored this portal 24/7 from September 28 to November 6, 2020, as revealed in a post-election report, “Election Infrastructure Misinformation Reporting.” The Democracy Fund, Omidyar’s foundation, supported the creation of the MiRP through a direct grant, according to the report.

The misinformation reporting portal served to rapidly identify and remove instances of alleged misinformation. CIS’s report acknowledged that the flagged content ranged from “intentional misinformation to honest mistakes.” Of the content reported by CIS, 61% “resulted in positive action,” which the group defined as content takedowns or labeling.

This MiRP system was used by a coalition of liberal-leaning research groups and overseen by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), a sub-agency of the DHS that has led the government’s push to censor social media. Despite government backing for the project, the effort was partisan – the Democratic National Committee was part of the consortium, but not the Republican National Committee, indicating a partisan bias.

“In addition to sharing all reports with CISA, some reports were shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the CIS report noted. The effort focused on “election narratives” deemed conspiratorial or inaccurate.

Tax records appear to confirm the Omidyar funding. The Democracy Fund’s 990 disclosure shows that it donated $130,000 to CIS in 2020. The grant, however, is listed as support for “election security best practices,” a vague description that belied the true function of the MiRP portal.

CIS did not respond to a request for comment. The Omidyar Network discussed this inquiry with me but stopped responding before publication.

Evidence of this MiRP system first emerged in emails I obtained from a visit to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters in December. In an email thread dated October 1, 2020, Twitter attorney Stacia Cardille mentioned receiving outreach from DHS, forwarding a censorship demand from CISA, CIS official Aaron Wilson, and a representative from the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition monitoring misinformation.

The alleged misinformation mentioned in the October 1 thread revolved around conservative warnings regarding potential risks associated with mail-in voting—a concern voiced by partisans from both sides. Twitter, however, took action against conservative accounts but did not similarly act against Democrats who warned against mail-in ballots, as I’ve previously reported. For instance, former D.N.C. chairman Howard Dean tweeted during the election: “Do not vote by mail. Ok to vote now early and drop your ballot off in person at the proper office. Too late to trust trumps postmaster thug.”

The Dean tweet was noted by Twitter’s content moderation team but no action was taken, while similar messages warning against mail-in voting from conservative accounts were censored.

The CIS report provides a comprehensive explanation of the public-private apparatus employed to influence content on social media. In doing so, the report also debunks recent myths. In April, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan made a false claim that journalist Matt Taibbi deliberately misrepresented his case under oath during his congressional testimony on CISA’s role in shaping social media decisions. Hasan suggested that Taibbi had willfully conflated CISA with CIS during his testimony. This claim led Representative Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I) to accuse Taibbi of perjury in a letter.

The CIS report I obtained contradicts Hasan and Plaskett, clarifying that “CIS and CISA worked together to ensure the reports were sent to the social media platform within an hour of their receipt.” CIS also played a pivotal role in triaging the material while maintaining the government partnership with disinformation research think tanks.

In essence, CIS and CISA worked in close collaboration to exert pressure on platforms like Twitter, aiming to remove conservative political expression deemed untrustworthy. The project was a public-private venture, overseen by government agencies, and supported by a system financed entirely by a Democratic donor.

The report makes recommendations for future elections. It notes that misinformation reporting may require dedicated government funding, with a “transition to the operational side of CIS” under the CISA umbrella, as well as better operational support from social media platforms.

The CIS report is part of a batch of documents recently received from Kate Starbird, an advisory board member of CISA at the University of Washington, via a records request. As I reported on Tuesday, the Justice Department intervened last year to impede the release of records from Starbird’s team. Starbird has also accused journalists seeking these records of “harassment,” likening it to a cyber attack.

Nevertheless, these inquiries are part of a broader public examination of government-backed censorship. As previously reported, Starbird’s advisory panel advocated for an expanded role for CISA, calling for an extension of its monitoring to include various platforms such as social media, mainstream media, cable news, hyper-partisan media, talk radio, and other online resources.

To support their argument for such a broad mandate, CISA advisors highlighted the detrimental effects of alleged misinformation on key democratic institutions like the courts, as well as other sectors such as the financial system and public health measures, suggesting that virtually any major public interest concern may be used as justification for broad censorship.

June 9, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

First COVID Vaccine Injury Lawsuit in U.S. Targets U.S. Government, Social Media Giants

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 23, 2023

Five people injured by COVID-19 vaccines, along with a father whose 16-year-old son died from vaccine-induced cardiac arrest, are suing the Biden administration and top U.S. public health officials.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, the plaintiffs — including Brianne Dressen who suffered severe nerve damage after taking the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine — allege the U.S. government colluded with social media companies to censor them when they posted stories about their personal vaccine injury experiences.

Defendants include President Biden and top-ranking White House officials, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

This is the first lawsuit brought by U.S. citizens injured by the COVID-19 vaccines.

Dressen — a preschool teacher from Saratoga Springs, Utah — volunteered to participate in AstraZeneca’s clinical trial for its COVID-19 shot. Now, she says, she is “collateral damage of the pandemic.”

Dressen co-chairs React19, a “science-based non-profit offering financial, physical, and emotional support for those suffering from longterm COVID-19 vaccine adverse events globally.”

After receiving the AstraZeneca shot, Dressen experienced extensive adverse effects — including doubled and blurry vision, severe sensitivity to sound and light, heart and blood pressure fluctuations and intense brain fog — that worsened over time.

She said Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, GoFundMe, Reddit and Instagram removed content she posted about her injuries.

According to Dressen, the plaintiffs’ experiences of censorship “pale in comparison to the thousands of Americans we know who all have experienced the same thing.”

“There is nothing scarier than reaching out for help only to be silenced,” Dressen told The Defender. “It was as scary as the vaccine reaction itself.

“Our constitutional freedoms must be protected, regardless of whether or not we are in a national emergency,” Dressen added.

Dressen — who now experiences “permanent disability” with “ups and downs” — said she and the other plaintiffs are “not fighting this fight for a select few” but are fighting on behalf of the “tens of thousands who are experiencing the same kind of censorship.”

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed the suit on behalf of Dressen and the other plaintiffs, who include Kristi Dobbs, Nikki Holland, Suzanna Newell and Ernest Ramirez.

All but Ramirez experienced COVID-19 vaccine-related injuries. Ramirez received the Moderna vaccine with no adverse effect  — but his 16-year-old son died of vaccine-induced cardiac arrest five days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.

Newell is a former triathlete from St. Paul, Minnesota, who was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after she got the vaccine and who now relies on a walker or cane to get around.

Case challenges ‘shocking’ government mass-censorship

According to the complaint, the plaintiffs experienced “heavy and ongoing censorship” on social media platforms — including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok and GoFundMe — “when they attempted to share “ their personal experiences after they, or a loved one, were medically harmed after taking the vaccine.”

For instance, TikTok on multiple occasions removed Holland’s video posts in which she shared her personal experiences related to her COVID-19 vaccine-related injuries and recovery process.

TikTok said the videos violated “Community Guidelines” for posting “violent and graphic content” and for “integrity and authenticity” concerns.

According to the complaint:

“This case challenges the government’s mass-censorship program and the shocking role that it has played (and still plays) in ensuring that disfavored viewpoints deemed a threat to its agenda are suppressed.

“This sprawling censorship enterprise has involved the efforts of myriad federal agencies and government actors (including within the White House itself) to direct, coerce, and, ultimately, work in concert with social media platforms to censor, muffle, and flag as ‘misinformation’ speech that conflicts with the government’s preferred narrative — including speech that the government explicitly acknowledges to be true.”

Kim Mack Rosenberg, the Children Health Defense’s (CHD) acting outside general counsel, said the new lawsuit is important because it exists “at the intersection” of COVID-19 vaccine injury and COVID-19 censorship.

“The complaint here alleges — as have other cases — a massive censorship program to control the narrative and promote the government’s COVID-19 propaganda,” Mack Rosenberg told The Defender.

She added:

“Silencing those who have been injured, like the plaintiffs in this case, by the very product promoted — and in some cases mandated — by the government is particularly egregious and causes further, albeit, different injury to those individuals, whose First Amendment rights have also been violated.

“Moreover, censoring these injured individuals injures the public, depriving them of important information and discourse on these issues.”

Missouri and Louisiana in May 2022 filed a landmark lawsuit against top-ranking Biden administration officials for allegedly colluding with social media giants to suppress free speech on topics like COVID-19 and election security.

Former Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt alleges the Biden administration led “the largest speech censorship operation in recent history” by working with social media companies to suppress and censor information later acknowledged as truthful.”

In March, CHD Chairman on Leave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CHD filed a class action lawsuit against Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies, alleging they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech, including facts and opinions about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Commenting on the new lawsuit, Peggy Little, senior litigation counsel for NCLA, said in a statement:

“Americans injured by experimentally approved Covid vaccines are being deplatformed, silenced, suppressed, defamed and cancelled by their own government for reaching out to others simply to share and receive information critical to their physical and mental well-being.

“Government actors have bullied, threatened and coerced social media companies to strip these plaintiffs of their First Amendment rights of association and speech. Suppression of speech critical of the government by the very government actors mandating the vaccine is frightening.

“NCLA’s lawsuit seeks to restore these plaintiffs’ civil liberties and the free flow of information guaranteed by the First Amendment for all Americans. We must never again lose our constitutional bearings in a pandemic.”

Casey Norman, one of the NCLA lawyers representing Dressen and the other plaintiffs, agreed. He said that the government claims it suppresses “so-called misinformation” for the sake of “public safety and welfare.”

“Fortunately,” Norman added, “the First Amendment says otherwise: the government may neither censor our clients nor induce others to do so.”

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

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.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

NBC Host Worries No One Will Be Able to “Police” What Tucker Carlson Says if He Moves Show to Twitter

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | May 10, 2023

NBC host Tom Costello is worried that no one will be able to “police” what Tucker Carlson says if he moves his show to Twitter.

Oh no, the absolute horror.

The former Fox News host posted a video to Twitter yesterday announcing that he would move his content to the platform owned by Elon Musk.

“There aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world is Twitter,” said Carlson, adding, “You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true.”

The legacy media reacted by panicking that Carlson will go uncensored.

NBC host Costello accused Twitter of peddling “misinformation, disinformation, all out lies” (information that doesn’t fortify regime narratives) before expressing his real fear.

“Will anybody be able to police what Carlson says, or is this the point, it’s just a free for all?” he asked former CNN host Brian Stelter.

Stelter responded by claiming that Tucker’s increased presence on Twitter will cement the platform as a “right-wing website.”

Because God forbid someone be allowed to speak freely without having their activity ‘policed’ by censors – we can’t have that!

Yesterday, CNN faced ridicule for describing Carlson, who at his peak enjoyed a viewership of over 5 million people, as a “right wing extremist.”

Carlson moving full time to Twitter might be a way to circumvent the fact that Fox is trying to keep him locked in a contract until 2025, preventing him from being signed up by other broadcasters and freezing him out of the 2024 election.

Elon Musk responded to the announcement by clarifying that Twitter and Carlson have not signed “a deal of any kind whatsoever,” and that the former Fox host will be supported by user subscriptions and advertising revenue.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | 1 Comment

An Open Letter to Ella Irwin, Head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety (and Censorship) Department

By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory, Inc. | May 7, 2023

The following is an open letter to Ella G. Irwin, Head of Twitter Trust and Safety, and Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, and anyone else at Twitter, Inc. who is responsible for censoring political speech and defaming people with fake “advisory” labels, among other such “visibility-filtering” tactics.

I am publishing it as an open letter, not to bore everyone to death with my personal problems, but because the censorship and defamation I have suffered at the hands of Twitter for at least two years is an example of how the decentralized network of global corporations, Intelligence agencies, governments, non-governmental governing entities, “anti-disinformation” outfits, and other parties that together comprise what Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi have dubbed the “Censorship Industrial Complex” are evolving into an Orwellian Ministry-of-Truth-type apparatus “with the power to control the information environment in ways that determine what people believe to be true and what is false.”

Twitter, Inc. has been censoring my political commentary and maliciously defaming me (i.e., damaging my reputation and income as an author) for approximately two years. Twitter has been doing this by concealing the Tweets of my “Consent Factory” account with fake “age-restricted adult content” labels, deceiving Twitter users into believing I have been tweeting content depicting “adult nudity and sexual behavior,” or “excessively gory content, sexual violence and/or assault, bestiality or necrophilia.” Twitter’s actions have damaged both my book sales and my reputation, globally. Defamation is a tort. I could sue the corporation for damages in several jurisdictions.

I have no interest in doing that, currently. What I do want, however, is a real explanation of why and exactly how Twitter, Inc. censored and defamed me for approximately two years. I want this explanation — a real explanation with documentation, not self-serving corporate-speak — not for personal reasons, primarily, but because I believe people need to be able to understand how powerful corporations like Twitter (and Facebook, and Google, and all the other entities and parties I mentioned above) are “visibility filtering” our collective reality.

The fact that these powerful corporations (and other entities) are doing this, not just on the macro level, but also on the micro level, to writers like me, who, let’s face it, are not exactly world-famous “influencers,” and to “non-public persons” who are basically just using social media to talk to their friends, does not bode well for the future of our societies. This kind of micro-perception-manipulation, this “visibility filtering” of our collective reality, goes way beyond traditional censorship. It is a hallmark of all totalitarian systems, which attempt to control, not only what people say, but what they think, how they think, how they perceive events, and facts, and each other.

Totalitarian systems do not spring into being fully formed. They develop slowly, gradually, unrecognized at first, and then ignored, usually until it is too late. We do not recognize the formation of new totalitarian systems because we are forever looking backwards instead of forwards, preparing for the storm that has passed, expecting history to repeat, rather than rhyme. Blinded by hindsight, we do not recognize the monster that is taking shape right in front of us. We glimpse a claw here, a tooth there, the flash of a pitiless blue eye, but fail to assemble the bits into an image of the beast entire, until it is inexorably upon us.

Anyway, here’s my open letter … one more bit, for the record.

To: Ella G. Irwin, Head of Trust and Safety, Twitter, Inc.
cc: Elon Musk

Dear Ms. Irwin,

This open letter is further to our brief correspondence on May 3, 2023 (on Twitter) regarding Twitter’s censorship and defamation of my @consent_factory Twitter account with fake “age-restricted adult content” labels for approximately two years.

First, thank you for taking action to cease and desist from further censorship and defamation. From what I can tell, it appears that Twitter is removing or has removed the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels from the @consent_factory Twitter account’s Tweets (or at least going back to late 2021). I trust that these fake “age-restricted adult content” labels will be removed from all of the account’s Tweets in due course, and I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. Please accept my apology for claiming that you had lied about taking action on this. I admit, after two years of being censored and defamed, and having my complaints ignored by Twitter, I have become rather skeptical regarding your company’s behavior and statements. That said, it is clear now that you were not lying, and that you have taken action to have the fake, defamatory labels in question removed, and I apologize for publicly claiming otherwise.

Assuming the process is eventually completed and all of the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels that Twitter has been censoring the @consent_factory Twitter account with are in fact removed, I would appreciate substantive answers to the following questions:

(1) Why and exactly how did Twitter start censoring and defaming my Consent Factory account with these fake, defamatory “adult content” labels? When I asked you to explain that in our correspondence, you replied:

Clearly, the account did not “post multiple tweets containing sensitive content (nazi imagery) that resulted in the sensitive content label being applied,” because Twitter has now removed the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels from those Tweets, which contain the same “Nazi imagery” they originally contained. As I am sure you have noted, the so-called “Nazi imagery” contained in those Tweets was simply historical photos of the Nazi Germany era, which were used to illustrate critical points I was making in opposition to totalitarianism, and not at all any type of celebration or approval of totalitarianism or fascism. Any rational adult, seeing those Tweets, could not possibly mistake the anti-fascist/totalitarian intent behind them. Also, the fact that the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels are being removed gradually, in stages, rather than all at once, suggests that the application of the fake labels (or “interstitials”) in question was not the result of a blanket algorithm applied to the account. Additionally, not every Tweet (or every Tweet containing an image) by this account was censored with a fake “interstitial,” which suggests that something other than a blanket algorithm was at work.

In any event, having been censored and defamed for two years by Twitter, Inc., I think I am entitled to an actual explanation of how this started, including documentation of any intra-company discussions or “log” notes in connection with the decision to begin censoring and defaming the account. Your substantive response to this request will demonstrate that the “new” Twitter is, in fact, committed to transparency, and free speech, and not just another element of the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” as Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi dubbed it, before Mr. Musk cut off access to the “Twitter Files.”

(2) What, if any, other restrictions/visibility filtering tactics have been applied to my @consent_factory Twitter account from 2020 to the present? Again, I would appreciate documentation of any such “visibility filtering” or other “restrictions” and/or the removal thereof. Having been censored and maliciously defamed by Twitter for years, I believe I am entitled to know how my “visibility” is being and/or has been “filtered.”

(3) What steps is Twitter, Inc. now taking to cease and desist from the type of malicious defamation the company has been engaging in to suppress political speech and damage the reputation and income of writers, like me, and independent media outlets, like, for example, OffGuardian? Twitter blocks links to all OffGuardian articles with a different fake, defamatory “interstitial” warning.

There is nothing “unsafe” about OffGuardian, or any content published on the website that could possibly “lead to real-world harm.” It is a small, independent news and commentary outlet. Twitter, Inc. is using the fake “interstitial” warning above to discourage users from visiting the site, and thus damaging OffGuardian’s reputation and income. This is just one further example (i.e., in addition to my case). Twitter’s continued use of fake, defamatory, “interstitial” labels to suppress political views is relatively widespread, as far as I can tell. Moreover, recent updates to Twitter’s Platform Use Guidelines make it clear that Twitter intends to continue using these “interstitials,” which is worrying, given the fact that the company has been using them to deceive people, and to suppress political speech, and to damage the reputations and incomes of small businesses and sole proprietors.

That’s it for my questions, for now.

Again, thank you for finally putting an end to the defamation that Twitter, Inc. has been subjecting me to, for the last two years. I must say, it is a bit disappointing that it took a happenstance encounter on Twitter to connect with someone with the power to do that. Frankly, given Mr. Musk’s initial and ongoing publicity campaign to portray himself as a champion of free speech, and a stalwart opponent of censorship, and Twitter under his leadership as the antipode of “old, bad, censorship-happy Twitter,” I had expected that immediate steps would be taken to … you know, stop deceiving people, and maliciously defaming people, and manipulating the “visibility” of political views according to some unarticulated ideological schema, but I guess these things take time.

I look forward to your substantive response to the above questions.

Very truly yours,
C. J. Hopkins

P.S. Should you happen to run into Mr. Musk there at Twitter HQ, you might also want to suggest that he resume providing access to the “Twitter Files” to reporters like Matt and Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag (if I can put a word in for her). Doing so would demonstrate that the “Twitter Files” thing was not just a limited hangout, and a PR stunt designed to whitewash the company and kill public interest in the nefarious activities of Twitter, Inc., and other powerful global corporations, and their partners at the FBI, DHS, whatever that CIS or CISA acronym stands for, and … well, you know, “other agencies.”

May 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU’s Věra Jourová says she’s “uncomfortable” on Twitter, wants more censorship

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 27, 2023

Vice President of the European Commission, Věra Jourová, said that she is “more and more uncomfortable on Twitter” because of what she said was the rise in Russian propaganda.

She added that Twitter was likely going to violate the upcoming censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), once enforcement begins later this year, because of the “unregulated Russian aggressive propaganda”

The DSA requires platforms to remove “harmful” content or risk heavy fines.

Jourová said that the employees who were fired when Elon Musk took over last October meant staff responsible for content moderation were fired.

“We were already disappointed by the data they delivered in January and of course, we are also watching what they are doing with the capacities left,” Jourová told reporters on Wednesday.

Earlier, she tweeted that she felt “Twitter is falling short of its commitments to the anti-disinformation code,” a currently voluntary rulebook for online platforms that will become a firm benchmark when the DSA comes into force.

“I would compare the situation with driving on the highway.

“You drive on the highway and overstepping that speed, you get a penalty, and one day you might be deprived of your driving license.”

She insisted that platforms should, “intensify their work against Russian propaganda.”

“There is still space for dialog. And I would really do wish to explain to Mr. Musk our philosophy that we are protectors of freedom of speech, protectors of freedom of expression… But freedom of speech in the EU is not unlimited.”

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

EU demands more online censorship

RT | April 25, 2023

The European Commission has designated 19 online platforms under its Digital Services Act, a move that opens them up to hefty fines if they target advertisements at certain users, publish illegal content, or fail to “address the spread of disinformation.”

In an announcement on Tuesday, the commission named 17 “Very Large Online Platforms” and two “Very Large Online Search Engines,” defined as those reaching at least 45 million monthly active users. Among the platforms cited are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, while Google and Microsoft’s Bing are the two designated search engines.

The decision means that as of August, these platforms must be in compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a wide-ranging piece of legislation that came into force in November.

To avoid fines of up to 6% of their global annual turnover, the commission stated that these platforms must label all advertisements as such and avoid targeting ads at users based on “sensitive data” such as their ethnicity, sexuality, or political orientation.

Targeting ads toward children will no longer be permitted, and platforms will have to “redesign their systems to ensure a high level of privacy, security, and safety of minors,” the commission said.

Regarding content moderation, platforms will be required to restrict the “dissemination of illegal content” and “address the spread of disinformation.” The entire text of the DSA mentions the word “disinformation” 13 times without defining it. Free speech activists have argued that the term is often used by governments to silence factually correct yet politically inconvenient narratives.

The commission also warned that platforms and search engines will need to address “negative effects on freedom of expression,” a requirement that could clash with the demand to tackle “disinformation.”

While the DSA was being drafted last year, EU officials singled out Twitter as a company that would be forced to comply with its requirements. Immediately after billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform and set about rolling back some of its restrictive speech policies, EU industry chief Thierry Breton declared that “in Europe, the bird will fly by our European rules.”

Two months later, EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova warned that Twitter would face “sanctions” if it breached the DSA. Jourova cited Musk’s banning of several prominent journalists – who shared information on his whereabouts – as potential DSA violations.

April 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What about the EU Permanent Task-Force on Disinformation? A Question for Elon Musk

BY ROBERT KOGON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 22, 2023

Elon Musk appears to have convinced the Twitter masses that he is their champion of free speech, with his recent appearance on the BBC providing yet another opportunity to burnish his bona fides in this regard.

“Who’s to say that something is misinformation?” Musk asked the BBC’s befuddled interviewer, “Who’s the arbiter of that?”

Good point and fair enough.

But the problem with this and all of Musk’s critical remarks about the very notions of “misinformation” and “disinformation” is that Elon Musk’s Twitter is itself a signatory of the European Union’s so-called “Code of Practice on Disinformation” and “The Code” requires platforms like Twitter precisely to censor “mis-” and “disinformation.”

And “require” here means require: as discussed in my previous articles here and here, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) renders the commitments undertaken in the Code mandatory on pain of massive fines. As I have likewise documented in those articles, Elon Musk has repeatedly flagged not only his compliance with, but indeed his full-throated approval of the DSA.

How in the world is he able to square that circle?

Furthermore, Twitter is even a member of a Permanent Task-Force on “disinformation” that has been set up under the Code and that meets at least every six months, as well as in sub-groups in between the plenary sessions. (See Section IX of The Code, which is available here.)

The task-force is chaired by none other than the EU’s executive body, the European Commission: the very same European Commission that the DSA invests with the exclusive power to assess compliance with the Code and apply penalties if a platform is found to be wanting.

Who is to say something is misinformation, who is the arbiter of that? Well, there you have it. In the case of Twitter and all the platforms cooperating with the EU, the European Commission is the arbiter of that, since it is the Commission that will decide if Twitter and the other platforms are doing enough to combat it.

So, here is my question for Elon Musk: What exactly are you or your representatives doing in the EU’s Permanent Task-Force on disinformation?

In a much celebrated Twitter bon mot, you said, “People who throw the disinformation word around constantly are almost certainly guilty of engaging in it.” Okay. Well, what are you or your representatives discussing in the Permanent Task-Force then? Wouldn’t it be “disinformation?” Because discussing “disinformation” and how to “combat” it to the EU’s satisfaction is the whole point of the task-force!

Furthermore, what sub-groups on specific issues is Twitter participating in, per Commitment 37.4 of “The Code?”

To what extent has the European Commissiwon or perhaps the European foreign service (the EEAS), which is also present in the Permanent Task-Force, had input into the development of Twitter’s “algorithm,” which regulates the “reach” and visibility of Twitter users?

For, as discussed in my last article on this subject, the European Commission is setting up a “Centre for Algorithmic Transparency” specifically for this purpose. Furthermore, as parts of the algorithm that you have published make clear, suppressing “misinformation” is built right into it. See below, for instance.

Getting flagged for such “violations” will result in restricting of visibility and/or “downranking.” So, yes, who’s to say that something is misinformation, who is the arbiter of that? Because Twitter is saying that right in its code and it must be recognizing someone or something as the arbiter.

Speaking of which, it is surely no coincidence that the general categories of misinformation employed in the algorithm mirror the main areas of concern targeted by the EU in its efforts to “regulate” online speech: “medical misinfo,” of course, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also “civic misinfo” in the context of contested elections – for instance, reports of fraud in recent elections in France or Brazil – or “crisis misinfo” in the context of the war in Ukraine.

Under the new Twitter regime, the stealth censorship of the algorithm has largely replaced the open censorship of the permaban. Shadow-banning has, in effect, become the norm.

Once upon a time, Elon Musk pledged to inform Twitter users if they are being shadow-banned and the reason why. (See here). But like his promise of a “general amnesty” for all banned Twitter accounts, this pledge too has gone unfulfilled.

Perhaps the European Commission prefers the censorship to remain in the shadows and has thus vetoed the idea, as it vetoed the “general amnesty.”

But, in any case, why does Elon Musk never address his platform’s involvement with the European Union’s censorship regime? He talks all the time about incidental contacts with US government agencies. What is going on in the Permanent Task-Force on disinformation, Elon Musk, and how can it possibly be compatible with your ostensible commitment to free speech?

Robert Kogon is a pen name for a widely-published financial journalist, a translator, and researcher working in Europe.Follow him at Twitter here.

April 24, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Twitter drops ‘state-affiliated’ labels

RT | April, 21, 2023

Twitter has removed ‘state-affiliated’ and ‘government-funded’ labels from major media accounts as part of an unannounced update. The move on Friday follows a string of spats between Twitter and several news organizations over the designations.

Twitter had applied the controversial labels to numerous accounts over the last few weeks, including the BBC, Canada’s CBC, and America’s NPR. In response, the outlets threatened to leave Twitter and suspended their activity on the platform, arguing that the tags were an attempt to undermine their legitimacy or suggest a lack of editorial independence.

CEO Elon Musk explained that Twitter was only “trying to be accurate” and even changed some of the labels, switching the BBC’s designation from “government-funded” to “publicly-funded,” while CBC’s tag was reworded as “69% government-funded.”

However, as of Friday, no labels could be seen on any of the accounts mentioned. The tag was also removed from other media outlets, including Russia’s RT and Sputnik, and China’s Global Times and Xinhua. The label was likewise absent from the accounts of journalists associated with the outlets.

Before Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter last year, the “state-affiliated media” tag had primarily been reserved for non-Western outlets, mainly in Russia and China. Twitter’s previous management said in 2020 that the designation was meant to inform the public “when a media account is affiliated directly or indirectly with a state actor.” Twitter also said at the time that it would stop amplifying such accounts or their tweets through its recommendation systems.

The latest update to the platform has also seen the long-anticipated removal of all legacy blue check marks that previously identified the verified accounts of celebrities, journalists, and prominent politicians. Those wishing to have the icon next to their name must now pay an $8-per-month Twitter Blue subscription fee.

Musk announced the dismantling of the legacy blue checkmark shortly after he closed the deal to purchase Twitter, revealing he wanted to monetize the feature to make the company more profitable. In addition to the basic Twitter Blue subscription, the platform now offers businesses a $1,000-per-month gold verification badge, which also allows them to verify their affiliates.

April 21, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

FBI targeting Russians on Facebook

RT | April 9, 2023

The FBI has launched a social media campaign seeking to convince Russian nationals to provide sensitive information about the activities of their home country’s authorities, Fox News reported on Friday. The ad, which was first posted in February, was said to have been appearing on Twitter, Facebook and Google.

“Do you want to change your future?” Alan Kohler, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, says in the video shared online. “The FBI values you. The FBI can help you. But only you have the power to take the first step.”

Fox News cited a source as saying that, although the Bureau has run ads targeting Russians in the past, this year it decided that “a video was more effective.”

The FBI’s website encourages Russians willing to offer information to visit the bureau’s main office in Washington, DC, to call the FBI hotline, or to send a message online.

The US stepped up efforts to recruit informants in recent years as Moscow and Washington have been locked in a diplomatic row over Ukraine. In 2019, the Bureau posted a series of ads on Facebook, urging Russians to come forward, although this message, written in Russian, contained typos.

In 2020, the FBI’s online campaign aimed at potential Russian informants included images of popular Soviet actor and singer Vladimir Vysotsky, known for portraying a police detective on screen. The CIA, meanwhile, has been publishing job postings for people who speak Russian.

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , , , , , | Leave a comment

RFK, Jr. and CHD Sue Biden, Fauci for Alleged Censorship

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 28, 2023

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) on Friday filed a class action lawsuit against President Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies, alleging they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.

Kennedy, CHD and Connie Sampognaro filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Monroe Division, on behalf of all the more than 80% of Americans who access news from online news aggregators and social media companies, principally Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The plaintiffs allege top-ranking government officials, along with an “ever-growing army of federal officers, at every level of the government” from the White House to the FBI, the CIA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lesser-well-known federal agencies of inducing those companies:

“to stifle viewpoints that the government disfavors, to suppress facts that the government does not want the public to hear, and to silence specific speakers — in every case critics of federal policy — whom the government has targeted by name.”

Kennedy, chairman and chief litigation counsel of CHD, said American Democracy itself is at stake in this case:

“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, ‘Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.’ It also violates the Constitution.

“The collaboration between the White House and health and intelligence agency bureaucrats to silence criticism of presidential policies is an assault on the most fundamental foundation stone of American Democracy.”

The lawsuit’s argument rests on the Norwood Principle, an “axiomatic,” or self-evident, principle of constitutional law that says the government “may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

According to the plaintiffs, the U.S. government used the social media companies as a proxy to illegally censor free speech.

The complaint cites the now-weekly, ongoing disclosures of secret communications between social media companies and federal officials — in the “Twitter files,” other lawsuits and news reports — which revealed threats by Biden and other top officials against social media companies if they failed to aggressively censor.

The suit points to examples where the censorship campaign allegedly trampled First Amendment freedoms, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story, the COVID-19 Wuhan lab-leak theory and the suppression of facts and opinions about the COVID-19 vaccines.

The plaintiffs do not seek financial damages. Instead, they seek a declaration that these practices by federal agents violate the First Amendment and a nationwide injunction against the federal government’s effort to censor constitutionally protected online speech.

The complaint points to a Supreme Court decision that said social media platforms are “the modern public square” and argues that all Americans who access news online have a First Amendment right against censorship of protected speech in that public square.

Jed Rubenfeld, one of the attorneys arguing the case filed Friday, explained why the lawsuit was filed as a class action:

“Social media platforms are the modern public square. For years, the government has been pressuring, promoting, and inducing the companies that control that square to impose the same kind of censorship that the First Amendment prohibits.

“This lawsuit challenges that censorship campaign, and we hope to bring it to an end. The real victim is the public, which is why we’ve brought this suit as a class action on behalf of everyone who accesses news from social media.”

According to the complaint, when the administration violates the First Amendment of an entire class of people, the judiciary must step in to protect American’s constitutional rights:

“Apart from the Judiciary, no branch of our Government, and no other institution, can stop the current Administration’s systematic efforts to suppress speech through the conduit of social-media companies.

“Congress can’t, the Executive won’t, and States lack the power to do so. The fate of American free speech, as it has so often before, lies once again in the hands of the courts.”

The lawsuit also names Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Commerce, DHS, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and other individuals and agencies — 106 defendants in total.

‘The largest federally sanctioned censorship operation’ ever seen

According to the lawsuit, efforts by federal officials to induce social media platforms to censor speech began in 2020 with the suppression of the COVID-19 lab leak theory and reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Once President Biden took office in January 2021, senior White House officials reported the Biden team began “direct engagement” with social media companies to “clamp down” on speech the White House disfavored, which officials called “misinformation.”

Revelations would later prove the administration was asking social media companies to suppress not only putatively false speech but also speech it knew to be “wholly accurate” along with expressions of opinion.

This practice, it alleges, spread from the administration and through the entire government, becoming “a government-wide campaign to achieve through the intermediation of social media companies exactly the kind of content-based and viewpoint-based censorship of dissident political speech that the First Amendment prohibits.”

Similar allegations about this massive federal censorship campaign also so were alleged by the plaintiffs in the Missouri. v. Biden case, but this case introduces many new allegations.

Some, but not all, examples of government-coordinated suppression of free speech on social media cited in the complaint include the following:

  • Substantial evidence of coordinated efforts by Fauci and others to suppress the lab-leak theory, which remains plausible and supported by evidence.
  • Extensive email communication between Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, demonstrating Facebook and other social media companies adopted policies that identified any claims about the lab-leak hypothesis to be “false” and “debunked.”
  • Facebook’s admission that its censorship of COVID-19-related speech, on supposed grounds of falsity, is based on what “public health experts have advised us.”
  • Public statements by Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a result of communications from the FBI.
  • Extensive public commentary by FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan about his work with social media companies and CISA to discuss suppression of election-related speech on social media.
  • “Twitter files” documents on Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
  • “Twitter files” documents demonstrating weekly meetings between agents from the FBI’s 80-agent social media task force and Twitter to discuss content suppression along with direct payments from the FBI to Twitter for compliance with requests.
  • CISA’s work with the Center for Internet Security, a third-party group, to flag content, including particular individuals, for censorship on social media.
  • “Twitter files” evidence about the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a vast network of high-level interactions with the federal government and social media platforms — which included proposals, ultimately adopted, for the U.S. government to establish its own “disinformation” board. One free-speech advocate described the EIP as “the largest federally-sanctioned censorship operation” he had ever seen.
  • Documents demonstrating after the election, the EIP was transformed into the “Virality Project,” which was dedicated to “take action even against ‘stories of true vaccine side effects’ and ‘true posts which could fuel hesitancy.’”
  • Threats by congressional representatives, senators and Biden to break up Big Tech if they did not improve censorship practices.
  • Census Bureau documents describing work by its “Trust & Safety” team with social media platforms to “counter false information.”
  • “Twitter files” documents, news reports, and documents received through Freedom of Information Act requests that demonstrated myriad, consistent communications with Facebook, Twitter and Google (YouTube) and numerous Biden administration officials named as defendants in the lawsuit including Murthy, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, officials from the CDC, DHS, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, CISA, the U.S. State Department, the White House — including White House Counsel — and other agencies about how to take action against “misinformation” related to COVID-19.

This last set of communications included action against the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” which includes Kennedy. According to the complaint, “Facebook itself has stated that the infamous ‘disinformation dozen’ claim has no factual support.”

Kennedy tweeted some of the evidence that the White House directly censored him.

The complaint alleges that the collusion between the administration, federal agencies and social media companies to suppress constitutionally protected free speech now also extends beyond the election and COVID-19-related commentary to include suppression of speech on topics such as climate change, “clean energy,” “gendered disinformation,” pro-life pregnancy resource centers and other topics.

It also alleges, based on research from the Media Research Center that identified hundreds of instances of censored critiques of Biden, that social media companies “have achieved astonishing success in muzzling public criticism of Joe Biden.”

It argues that the defendants’ power over social media gives them a “historically unprecedented power over public discourse in America — a power to control what hundreds of millions of people in this county can say, see, and hear.”

CHD President Mary Holland, who also serves as CHD general counsel, told The Defender :

“If Government can censor its critics, there is no atrocity it cannot commit. The public has been deprived of truthful, life-and-death information over the last three years. This lawsuit aims to have government censorship end, as it must, because it is unlawful under our constitution.”

The lawsuit asks the court to permanently enjoin them from, “taking any steps to demand, urge, pressure, or otherwise induce any social-media platform to censor, suppress, de-platform, suspend, shadow-ban, de-boost, restrict access to constitutionally protected speech, or take any other adverse action against any speaker, protected content or viewpoint expressed on social media.”

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

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.

March 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Twitter Files expose ‘censorship-industrial complex’ – journalist

RT | March 9, 2023

Social media platforms colluded with non-governmental organizations and the US government to suppress information they did not like in the name of fighting “disinformation,” journalist Matt Taibbi testified at a congressional hearing on Thursday.

Taibbi appeared alongside Michael Shellenberger, another journalist who has covered the “Twitter Files” for the past several months, before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Congressman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio.

Taibbi described what he called the “censorship-industrial complex,” calling it “a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives,” and the exact opposite of a free press envisioned in the US Constitution.

Right before his testimony, Taibbi also published a lengthy thread on Twitter, laying out the evidence he entered into the congressional record.

According to Taibbi, Twitter acted “more like a partner” to the government, censoring based on requests it received from federal agencies as well as taxpayer-backed NGOs. Intelligence agencies, dubious “disinformation researchers” and corporate executives effectively worked as a team, he argued.

Taibbi’s thread described an “incestuous self-appointed truth squad moving from law enforcement/intelligence to the private sector and back,” with the same agencies inviting the same “experts” funded by the same foundations and covered by the same reporters to every panel and every conference.

He identified the key players in the censorship-industrial complex as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab, and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, authors of the infamous Hamilton 68 dashboard. Many of the NGOs involved received funding from the US government, while legacy media outlets acted as their proxies, demanding censorship.

Taibbi described the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and its “Election Integrity Partnership” – renamed the Virality Project after the 2020 election – as “perhaps the ultimate example of the absolute fusion of state, corporate, and civil society organizations.” By its own admission, it labeled 22 million tweets during the 2020 election campaign, and was then given access to Twitter’s JIRA ticketing system, which is able to tackle 50 million tweets a day.

SIO is run by Renee DiResta, who helped design Hamilton68 and worked at New Knowledge – a group caught creating fake “Russian bots” to help Democrats in the 2017 Alabama special election for the US Senate. That did not stop them from advising the Senate Intelligence Committee on “Russian interference” in US elections, and the US legacy media from not questioning any of their conclusions.

“Packaged as a bulwark against lies and falsehood, [the CIC] is itself often a major source of disinformation, with American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality,” Taibbi wrote. “Without real oversight mechanisms, there is nothing to prevent these super-empowered information vanguards from bending the truth for their own ends.”

During the hearing, multiple Democrats tried to pressure Taibbi into revealing his sources, insinuating Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, was behind the disclosures.

March 9, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Germany pressures Twitter to commit to censorship law

Germany is one of the most censorship-prone in the European Union

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | February 11, 2023

In a Digital Committee hearing of German’s federal parliament (the Bundestag)  was accused of failing to provide answers about the implementation of German’s Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) and efforts to comply with the upcoming censorship law, the  (DSA).

Twitter’s head of Europe Global Government Affairs Ronan Costello said that even before Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, AI identified 65% of all content flagged for removal.

However, he could not say, among other things, the number of Twitter employees still remaining in  and the number of accounts unblocked since Musk took over. Costello said the answers would be provided later, reports stated.

The members of parliament were skeptical about Twitter complying with the requirements of NetzDG, especially because of Musk’s decision to lay off about half of Twitter’s staff. However, Costello insisted that Twitter was committed to complying with the law. He insisted the platform was more transparent, noting that the latest transparency report contained more data required by the NetzDG than in the same period the previous year.

Costello also said that the “Community Notes” tool, which allows other Twitter users to fact-check misleading content by providing more context, will soon launch in Europe. In the US, the tool has over 20,000 users.

February 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | 1 Comment

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