Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Battlefield Social Media: The West’s Growing Censorship

By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 08.10.2020

Censorship in the West flourishes as tech giants turn social media back into traditional programmed media.

The United States, United Kingdom and the European Union are fond of passing judgement on nations around the globe regarding “free speech.”

While it is increasingly clear to a growing number of people that this “concern” is disingenuous and aimed at merely defending agitators funded and directed by Western special interests in these targeted nations, the West still likes to fashion itself as a sort of champion of free speech.

Yet back home the Internet has been taken over by social media and tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Their platforms clearly serve as online public squares where everything is discussed and even election campaigns play out. Yet these companies have, over the years, begun to eliminate voices of dissent against a notion known as “consensus.”

If you are speaking out against “consensus” you are in real danger of disappearing from these platforms. Some of these platforms, like Google-owned YouTube, serve as the livelihood to people who have for years built up their audiences, produced hundreds of videos and when their accounts are deleted for speaking out against the “consensus,” they have their livelihoods destroyed.

In the wake of these incremental “purges” is a chilling effect with content creators self-censoring or even withdrawing entirely from Western social media.

It is the sort of very real censorship the West has crusaded against in fiction around the globe for decades.

Consensus or Else 

A more recent example is Google’s decision to ban ad revenue for those going against the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) “consensus.”

CNBC in their story “Google will ban ads from running on stories spreading debunked coronavirus conspiracy theories,” would claim:

Google next month will ban publishers from using its ad platform to show advertisements next to content that promotes conspiracy theories about COVID-19. It will also ban ads that promote those theories. In cases where a particular site publishes a certain threshold of material that violates these policies, it will ban the entire site from using its ad platforms.

Those “conspiracy theories” might include questioning the official death rates of COVID-19. Yet even the British government itself has been recently forced to investigate its statistics regarding death rates, vindicating the very sort of people who would have been either forced into silence or forced to give up ad revenue.

The London Guardian in its article, “Matt Hancock orders urgent review of PHE Covid-19 death figures,” would admit:

The UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, is ordering an urgent review of the daily COVID-19 death statistics produced by Public Health England, after it emerged that they may include recovered former sufferers who could have died of other causes.

False reporting over deaths to hype COVID-19, induce greater public panic and pave the way for billions in government handouts to pharmaceutical giants is at the very core of many of these so-called “conspiracy theories” Google seeks to silence through its campaign of financial coercion.

Imagine if this chilling effect was achieved sooner. Would the British government have even bothered investigating its faulty statistics if there weren’t people suspicious of them?

The chilling effect this has over openly discussing something as serious as COVID-19 considering its socioeconomic impact is truly alarming and much more so because it is happening in the so-called “free world” overseen by its self-appointed arbitrators in the US, UK and EU.

A similar campaign was carried out to purge Google, Twitter and Facebook of anyone allegedly connected with “Russia” who also so happened to be anti-war and anti-NATO for waging those wars.

Entire lists are compiled by Western government-funded organizations which are then submitted to these tech giants for purging. The Western media writes accompanying articles announcing, justifying and spinning the purges… but also sending a warning to those left about what is and isn’t going to be tolerated on these platforms.

Social Media Transforming Back into Programmed Media 

Content creators are faced with two decisions; to either self-censor themselves to protect their work, their audiences and their livelihood, or to accept the possibility they will eventually be “purged” (censored) and need to rebuild their audiences from scratch on platforms with far fewer potential readers, viewers and patrons.

Social media, of course, is no longer social media in this sort of environment, but more akin to the sort of programmed media giant Western special interests built their power on over the course of the 20th and early 21st century.

Private Public Squares? 

Of course the defense is that Google, Facebook and Twitter are “private companies”and can do as they please with their platforms. In reality, these companies work in tandem with Western governments whether it is fomenting political destabilization abroad or creating “concensus” at home.

The notion that censorship is “OK” because the US, UK and EU governments launder it through private companies ignores the close relationship these companies have with the government and how their platforms have been transformed into de facto public squares and critical channels of public communication and participation.

The West’s growing overt censorship leaves it with a choice; to either accept that it is in reality as guilty of censorship and manipulating the public as it has claimed its opponents are, or continue pretending it isn’t but at the continued cost of its legitimacy upon the global stage.

There is a very good reason the West is in decline around the globe and why its attempts to leverage notions like “human rights” and “free speech” against nations like China or Russia are increasingly impotent. That reason can be found, at least in part, among the growing number of purge lists, censorship campaigns and calls for “consensus” across Western social media.

Finally, the increasingly overt nature of censorship and controlled narratives promoted by tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter should have them facing restrictions and bans around the globe. Why should any nation host a “public square” where discourse is entirely controlled by interests oceans away? Why shouldn’t a local alternative be created instead where the revenue is kept locally and if narratives are to be controlled, controlled in a way that best suits people locally?

It is ironic that, China for example, is condemned for not allowing Google, Facebook and Twitter to operate freely within their information space because it is a violation of “free speech,” even as Google, Facebook and Twitter cudgel free speech on their own respective platforms.

How much longer will the world tolerate these double standards? How long until individuals, organizations and even entire nations begin creating alternatives to Google, Facebook and Twitter to at the very least balance out the lopsided power and influence they have collectively accrued and abused?

October 8, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Twitter is Blocking Access to OffGuardian’s Content

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 3, 2020

Twitter is blocking all links to OffGuardian with an incredibly vague and highly dishonest “warning”, they have been doing it for weeks and we have never received any notice or explanation. It is a blatant attempt at censorship, and it needs to stop.

Any of you who follow us on social media have probably become more than familiar with this screen:

… it appears every time you click on any of our articles on twitter.

Note the vague language – “potentially spammy”, “could fall into”. They don’t even definitely say there is anything wrong, let alone what it actually is.

Since we can obviously rule out malicious software, phishing, spam and “violent content”, the only thing we can concluded is that we supposedly “violated” one of twitter’s rules. Since they don’t see fit to tells us which of their rules we’ve broken, let’s just inspect them all. They are right here in black and white and are fairly predictable:

  1. No child exploitation or child pornography
  2. No promotion of illegal practices
  3. No violence or promotion of violence
  4. No hate speech or threats
  5. No posting private information without consent
  6. No abuse or harassment
  7. No hacking, spam or fraud
  8. No plagiarism or copyright infringement

It’s all very basic stuff, and anyone even passingly familiar with our site could tell you we have never come close to breaking any of those rules. (We would be happy to argue this with anyone who comes forward to accuse us of anything specific).

Of course, none of this is accidental – the vagueness is entirely intentional. They don’t accuse us of anything specific, because then we cannot give a specific refutation (youtube does the same thing all the time, they will say your video “violated our community guidelines”, but they will never say how.)

This is actually even more dishonest than youtube – which is a hell of a thing to say – because twitter is going further, implying we have engaged in borderline illegal behaviour.

The most revealing details here are actually buried deep with the rabbit-warren of “help pages” on twitter.

First, there’s the way they “surface links” (meaning identify URLs which might be “dangerous”). Their methods include [our emphasis]:

Collaborative information sharing with industry peers and trusted NGO partners

They don’t say who their “trusted NGO partners” are, but we can probably guess…and we really don’t need to know the specifics to see how potentially corrupt that is.

Second, there’s this quote from the section headed “about links that have warning notices” [again, our emphasis]:

In some instances, Twitter will introduce a warning that the link may be unsafe. The warning notice can be clicked through if you wish to proceed to the third-party site. When a link has been categorized by Twitter as meeting the criteria for a warning notice, it will also have limited visibility on Twitter.

“Limited visibility” means twitter is actively hiding our content. Specifically – they are concealing it on people’s timelines and suppressing in search results.

To sum up:

  • Twitter is suppressing our content in searches and blocking links to our articles.
  • This decision was informed by unnamed third party “partners” – perhaps including unknown NGOs – and based on unspecified criteria.
  • They have been doing it for months, without ever notifying us, or giving us any option for appeal or review.
  • We don’t know of what we are accused and we have been given no method or avenue for defending ourselves.

This is authoritarian censorship, pure and simple.

But, as the saying goes, “When you’re taking flak you know you’re over the target”

October 3, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 3 Comments

If you can’t beat them, ban them: Twitter no longer showing search results from well-known Russian state news agency RIA Novosti

By Jonny Tickle | RT | September 28, 2020

Twitter has shadow-banned well-known Russian news agency RIA Novosti. In practice, the move means users will no longer see the agency’s tweets in the website’s search results, unless they follow the media organization’s account.

The removal of RIA Novosti’s tweets from the search function has been called “media censorship,” as the social network continues to restrict news outlets it considers to be “Russian state-affiliated.” Last month, both RT and Sputnik also faced the same suppression.

“We consider such restrictions on the part of Twitter to be an act of media censorship, which is expressly prohibited by the Russian Constitution,” the press service of Rossiya Segodnya, the parent company of RIA Novosti, said on Monday. “The social network does not react to our requests and does not explain its decisions.”

This latest move against Russian media has been criticized by independent Russian Senator Alexander Bashkin, who called the decision “open censorship,” accusing Twitter of “double standards.”

“This is a real information war,” he insisted.

In August, Twitter announced that it would be labeling accounts of key government officials of the five UN Security Council members, as well as state-linked media and their senior staff. This caused controversy when the company opted to label RT and Sputnik as ‘state-affiliated,’ but left the likes of BBC and US state-run Voice of America and RFE/RL alone.

Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that Russian correspondents abroad are “openly discriminated against,” highlighting issues in France and the Baltic states.

September 28, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | 1 Comment

Twitter’s public policy director reportedly leaves social media giant to join Biden transition team

RT | September 18, 2020

Twitter’s public policy director has left the massive social media platform for a job on the Joe Biden transition team, which will help the Democratic challenger ease into office in case he defeats Donald Trump in November.

While it’s unclear what role he will play on the team, Carlos Monje has helped to host fundraisers for the Biden campaign and has been hired to assist with his potential transition to the White House, Politico reported on Thursday, citing “a person familiar with the move.” Monje, who is also co-chair on Biden’s infrastructure policy committee, has yet to comment on the report.

Before landing the position at Twitter, Monje worked for a number of high-profile Democratic politicians, serving on Hillary Clinton’s transition team during her failed 2016 presidential bid and as deputy policy director for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. He was hired as a special assistant to Obama after his 2008 victory, working on his Domestic Policy Council, and later in the Transportation Department.

Though Twitter insists it remains politically neutral in the way it manages its platform, the company has been accused of leaning toward the Democratic Party. Federal records cited by the New York Post revealed that the firm’s corporate PAC donations went almost solely to Democrats during the 2018 election cycle, while company executives have also given generously to the party as individuals. Twitter Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, for example, donated the maximum amount allowed by law to the Obama and Clinton campaigns, and in 2016 gave $2,700 to Kamala Harris – who is now Joe Biden’s running mate – for her successful Senate bid. CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey also reportedly donates exclusively to Democrats.

Critics of the social media monolith have accused the company of targeting conservative voices with bans and suspensions, while some have pointed to disclaimers repeatedly appended to President Trump’s tweets as evidence of bias. The notices have included “fact checks” and warnings about “manipulated media,” special measures the platform has not applied to any other presidential candidate.

September 18, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

French progressive outlet says Twitter falsely labeled it ‘RUSSIAN STATE MEDIA’ after Russiagate report

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | September 14, 2020

Right after running a story criticizing the French coverage of ‘Russiagate,’ a progressive Euroskeptic outlet got labeled by Twitter as Russian state-affiliated media. A case of mistaken identity, or content-based censorship?

Ruptures is a French journal that describes itself as progressive and “radically Eurocritical.” It has been around for almost 20 years, changing its name from Bastille-République-Nations to Ruptures in 2015.

Less than an hour after publishing a story about the French media coverage of ‘Russiagate’ – the entirely unsubstantiated claim about US President Donald Trump colluding with Moscow during the 2016 elections – last week, Ruptures found itself labeled “Russian state-affiliated media” by Twitter.

Ruptures immediately reached out to Twitter France and protested that this label was a calumny of their “independent, subscriber-funded monthly,” journalist Lauren Daure told RT in an email.

“No explanations so far from Twitter despite our requests,” Daure added.

Twitter instituted the labeling program on August 6, but only for select outlets – those operated by the US, UK, French or German governments, for example, somehow escaped the designation. Twitter also said that accounts thus designated will not be promoted through its recommendation systems, such as “home timeline, notifications, and search.”

In practice, this severely limits the visibility of the designated accounts, while the label itself serves to “intimidate” the readers – according to none other than the head of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. Admittedly, she was commenting on a proposed Russian rule that would simply label her outlet – part of the US government’s global broadcasting system – as a foreign agent, without any restrictions on visibility.

That’s the jam Ruptures finds itself in, and no one – at Twitter or elsewhere – has offered any reason as to why. The possibilities range from ridiculous to sinister. In what could be a case of mistaken identity, perhaps someone at Twitter France made a category error and conflated Ruptures with Ruptly, the video news agency that’s part of the RT family.

While that is bad enough, the other option is infinitely worse: that someone at Twitter France decided Ruptures amounted to “Russian state-affiliated media” based on the content of their article about ‘Russiagate.’ Then there is the fact that Ruptures’ editor-in-chief Pierre Levy once had an op-ed published on RT Russian – way back in October 2017! – about sanctions as information warfare.

Whatever the reason, the label effectively amounts to “soft” censorship of Ruptures. It also goes far beyond what US laws envisioned as acting “in good faith” when they made platforms like Twitter immune from legal liability (in the controversial Section 230). At the very least, Twitter owes Ruptures an explanation. A week after they were branded, they’re still waiting.

September 14, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Iran rejects claim of meddling in US elections, blasts US’ own intl. election meddling

Press TV – September 11, 2020

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has rejected allegations by US technology company Microsoft that Tehran seeks to meddle in Washington’s 2020 presidential elections, blasting US’ own history of interfering in other countries’ affairs.

“The United States is leading active disinformation campaigns against other countries. The US is not in a position to make such a woeful claim,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement on Friday.

“The US has interfered for decades in the elections of other countries – including Iran – and orchestrated a coup d’état which overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minster Mohammad Mossadeq,” he said.

The remarks come a day after Microsoft claimed that it had detected Russian, Chinese and Iranian efforts to target “people and organizations involved in the upcoming presidential election”.

The statement claimed that the attempts had sought to attack campaigns associated with both US President Donald Trump and his rival Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.

It claimed that most of the attacks had been “detected and stopped by security tools built into our products”.

Speaking on Friday, Khatibzadeh said that Tehran has no interest in the outcome of US elections.

“As we have reiterated over and over, it does not matter who is the president in the White House for Tehran. What matters is that Washington abides by international law, regulations and norms and stops interfering in other countries and honors its commitments,” he said.

Washington, which has sought to impose an overt campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran ever since withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, has also sought to stifle Iranian media operating across different social media platforms in recent years.

Facebook, Twitter and Youtube have consequently cracked down on pages belonging to credible Iranian figures and media outlets, closing them or limiting their access to international audiences.

September 11, 2020 Posted by | Deception | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Twitter’s shadow-banning of RT & other state-linked media proves the US narrative doesn’t measure up

By Helen Buyniski | RT | August 20, 2020

With less than three months before US elections, Twitter has all but memory-holed RT and other state-run media – even searching their handles draws a blank. For a supposedly free-market country, the US sure hates competition.

The official Twitter accounts for RT, Xinhua, and other media outlets owned by certain governments the US doesn’t like are being pushed into the shadows, confirming that Twitter is getting serious about its role as one of the chief enforcers of US informational supremacy. But deploying the memory-hole against Washington’s rivals is tacitly admitting that the same informational supremacy would be doomed without such heavy-handed censorship.

Not only will Twitter refuse to auto-complete searches for the official accounts of RT, Sputnik, Xinhua, Global Times, and a handful of other outlets owned by Russia and China – typing in their handles with the @ symbol yields no results for users who don’t already follow these accounts. The platform has essentially made it impossible for the average Twitter user to accidentally stumble across their posts.

Turning off the “hide sensitive content” function in search settings allows state media accounts to surface under “people” – if their handle is searched exactly, with the @ symbol – tagged with the “state-affiliated media” warning Twitter has casually referred to as an “election label.” But posts from these outlets remain missing everywhere but in their own feeds. Running the accounts through Shadowban.eu confirms they’re subject to a “search suggestion ban.”

While Twitter announced earlier this month that it would remove state-run media accounts from any ‘recommended’ screens, including the home screen, notifications, and search, the new policy’s wording left room for interpretation. Even employees at some of these organizations thought – perhaps naively – that Twitter wouldn’t go so far as to block searches for RT from turning up, well, RT.

Twitter explained its failure to slap a scarlet letter on the BBC, NPR, or Voice of America – all state-run media organizations – by claiming these outfits maintained some degree of editorial independence. While many at the time called this out as the egregious double standard it was, that was before learning how deeply Twitter intended to bury its victims.

While Twitter theoretically has a financial responsibility to its shareholders that would be best served by giving customers what they want, the company appears to have long since decided the only customers who matter are Uncle Sam and his client states. Though its own links with empire are not quite as egregious as, say, Facebook’s “election integrity” partnership with infamous pro-war think tank the Atlantic Council, one of Twitter’s highest-ranking European employees works for the UK’s 77th Brigade propaganda outfit, and another staffer, who worked on Democratic VP candidate Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, is suspected of manipulating trending topics to bolster her chances at the White House. Representatives from the company have repeatedly met with US intelligence agencies to “secure” the 2020 elections.

The suppression of “enemy” state-run media is just one part of a sweeping multi-platform crackdown on information that runs contrary to the US establishment, from medical doctors recommending hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the novel coronavirus to positive or even neutral statements about murdered Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Even the ramblings of QAnon conspiracy theorists who believe Trump is just pretending to wallow in the swamp he promised to drain, playing ‘4D chess’ to psych out his enemies, are now considered too dangerous for Twitter and Facebook, while the mere existence of Chinese-owned TikTok – a super-popular social platform not under US control – has so infuriated the Trump administration that the president is trying to buy it (or, if that fails, ban it).

If Washington can only win the battle for hearts and minds by silencing its competitors, the problem isn’t with Russian or Chinese state media – it’s with the sloppy quality of US propaganda and its growing divergence from reality. Selling a bankrupt nation whose citizens are forever at each other’s throats as a shining city on a hill and glowing example to the world’s democracies is a tall order, but it’s much easier to convince someone the sky is green when they don’t have any windows to look out of.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

August 20, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Twitter ‘accidentally’ suspends satirical site Babylon Bee after it mocked Kamala Harris and USPS conspiracies

RT | August 17, 2020

Twitter suspended the account of parody news site The Babylon Bee after it mocked Democrat VP candidate Kamala Harris and ‘mail vote suppression’ conspiracies. It was shortly restored amid protests about censorship.

The Bee went dark around 6 pm on Monday. Archives showed that their last tweet was a story about President Donald Trump “riding around in an SUV” smashing mailboxes “to make it impossible for people to mail in their ballots.”

The tweet before that one was about Harris proposing a “housing plan” where “everybody gets free 10’x10’ room and three meals a day” – a clear reference to prison, as Harris had been a prosecutor before getting elected to the Senate.

One conservative commentator pointed out that Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio was previously the press secretary for Harris’s abortive presidential campaign.

The publication’s editor in chief Kyle Mann shared a screenshot of the email from Twitter, telling him the account was suspended for “violating rules against platform manipulation and spam.”

According to Twitter’s own rules, behavior that “that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience” is out of bounds. The company defines manipulation as “using Twitter to engage in bulk, aggressive, or deceptive activity that misleads others and/or disrupts their experience.”

Before anyone could figure out if that covers censorship of satire, however, the Bee’s account was back up – only with a greatly diminished follower count. The publication was free to share its latest story, about how the Democrats have reversed their position on the USPS after Trump had his face put on all stamps.

The Bee’s stinging mockery of mainstream media news coverage has made it a lot of enemies over the years, including CNN and the “fact checkers” at Snopes, who argued that Americans are too stupid to realize this kind of content is satire.

Mann and the Bee’s defenders have countered that the site clearly labels stories as satire. If the mainstream media reporting has become so ridiculous that the audience can’t tell it apart from ridicule, that’s not the Bee’s problem but their own, they say.

In a message to another Bee editor, Twitter said the account was “flagged as spam by mistake” by “systems” tasked with doing that, without specifying whether it was a computer algorithm or a person that made the call.

August 18, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 3 Comments

Beijing Blasts ‘Double Standards’ as Twitter Labels Only Russian, Chinese Media ‘State-Affiliated’

By Tim Korso – Sputnik – 13.08.2020

Twitter’s decision to target Russian and Chinese media by limiting their ability to deliver content to the platform’s users comes as part of an apparent broader effort by Western social media to censor points of views that are different from the mainstream agenda.

Media outlets should be treated in an equal manner and not on a case-by-case basis if they comply with the laws and regulations of the countries they operate in, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Russia said regarding the recent actions of Twitter. On 6 August, the social media platform flagged numerous Russian and Chinese media outlets, including Sputnik, as “state-affiliated”, limiting their ability to promote and amplify tweets.

The Chinese Embassy stressed the importance of the media as a crucial link uniting countries around the world and condemned the actions preventing them from properly functioning. It pointed out that Twitter had pledged to mark all media outlets in one way or another controlled by the governments of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, but has in fact so far only targeted those based in Russia and China.

“We hope that the said social networks [sic] will abandon prejudices and ‘double standards’, and will, in a spirit of transparency and tolerance, consider the role of media from various countries in boosting international exchanges and cooperation; [that they] will not selectively create obstacles, and politicize issues”, the embassy said.

Double Standards in Twitter’s ‘Affiliation’ Marks

Twitter claims to have introduced the “state-affiliated” label for the sake of “transparency and practicality”, but has shown little transparency itself in explaining why media outlets from only two of the aforementioned five countries have been slapped with the new status, hindering these outlets’ capabilities compared to others and essentially censoring them.

The social media platform said that some media outlets, such as the UK’s BBC or the US’ National Public Radio (NPR), would be exempt from the rule despite being funded and sometimes even established by these countries’ respective governments. Twitter claimed that only outlets whose agendas are not influenced by their governments would be eligible for the waiver, but somehow all major Western mainstream media were spared from the platform’s censorship, despite often falling in line with their governments’ political stances. The social media platform failed to respond to Sputnik’s inquiry into why only media outlets from two countries have been affected by the feature.

August 13, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 2 Comments

Twitter censoring tweets containing links to BitChute video service, flags posts as ‘potentially harmful’

RT | August 7, 2020

Video hosting service BitChute has accused Twitter of censoring tweets including links to their platform, and numerous users have experienced the apparent ban, though the social media app has yet to officially respond.

“It appears as if Twitter has started blocking all tweets that contain Bitchute videos,” BitChute’s account tweeted on Friday morning. They encouraged users to share their own examples of censorship too.

Numerous users then posted screenshots of them trying to post links to videos on the website, only to be blocked by Twitter and told the material they were about to post was “potentially harmful.”

When you try and post a link to BitChute, Twitter will preview the tweet to the user, and send two messages. One in red says, “something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.”

This message is essentially useless because the “potentially harmful” statement will pop up when the user tries to hit “tweet.”

The Twitter and Twitter Support pages have not officially responded to the seeming censorship, and BitChute has said they received no warning about the content blockage.

The ban appears to go beyond posting new content too. If a user tries to follow an old link to a BitChute video through Twitter, they are brought to a warning page that tells users the link “may be unsafe.” The various reasons it could be “unsafe” include “spammy links that mislead people or disrupt the experience” or even “violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm.”

A user needs to “ignore this warning and continue” in order to make it to the BitChute link originally requested.

Since launching in 2017, BitChute has been accused by liberal activists and mainstream media outlets of being a conspiracy theorist-driven and right-wing hosting site. The platform has found success through giving creators far more freedom than other platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, which have become more aggressive in their moderation and banning of content. Many content creators who have found themselves banned or demonetized on sites like YouTube have found their way over to BitChute.

BitChute was banned by PayPal along with right-wing figures like Alex Jones in 2018. The Southern Poverty Law Center has accused them of hosting “hate-fueled material.”

Despite the accusations of hosting hate videos, much of the content on BitChute is related to technology and not-politically motivated. Even that content, however, seems to have been blocked by Twitter in what appears to be a blanket ban on anything related to the site.

August 7, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Twitter labels RT & Sputnik but NOT BBC, NPR & VOA as it launches blitz on state media staff & govt officials

RT | August 6, 2020

Twitter has declared war on certain state-affiliated media entities, announcing accounts belonging to senior staff will be labeled and their tweets won’t be amplified or recommended. The BBC and US state-funded media are exempt.

The microblogging platform announced it will label accounts belonging to key government officials in countries on the UN Security Council, as well as accounts belonging to state-linked media outlets, their editors-in-chief and senior staff.

In a Thursday blog post, it warned it will no longer show tweets from state-linked media accounts on the home screen, notifications, or search.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Twitter left a sizable loophole for the US and friendly nations, explaining that “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, will not be labeled.”

“We believe this is an important step so that when people see an account discussing geopolitical issues from another country, they have context on its national affiliation and are better informed about who they represent,” Twitter explained in the post, adding that it would not be labeling government officials’ personal accounts – just those associated with their offices.

Betraying a shockingly dim understanding of American media, Twitter explained that “unlike independent media, state-affiliated media frequently use their news coverage as a means to advance a political agenda.”

Perhaps attempting to fend off discrimination lawsuits, they added that the move had come after consultation with “a number of expert groups, including members of the Digital and Human Rights Advisory Group in Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council.”

That group includes notoriously censor-happy entities like the Anti-Defamation League, the Dangerous Speech Project, and Feminist Frequency.

Clicking on the new labels takes the viewer to a page explaining the policy, which hints it “will be expanded to include additional countries in the future.” The page refers to them as “election labels,” suggesting the policy is a response to ongoing baseless claims that Russian social media manipulation was responsible for President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. With the November election less than 100 days away, social media platforms are scrambling to censor non-approved views, especially those they can link to un-American activities.

A Twitter spokesman declined to provide a full list of entities to be censored to Reuters, but mentioned RT, Sputnik, and Xinhua News by name. Facebook recently adopted a similar policy, complete with double standard for US and friendly state-controlled media organizations.

August 6, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | , , | 1 Comment

Twitter Bans “QAnon,” But Still Protects the Most Dangerous Disinfo

By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 23.07.2020

While there are no doubts that the “QAnon” political movement is a purveyor of repeatedly absurd and unfounded claims, “predictions” so inaccurate and consistently wrong that it is difficult to take any of it seriously, Twitter’s move to across-the-board ban not only accounts associated with the movement but any talk of it citing fears of “offline harm” is even more absurd.

CNN in its article, “Twitter cracks down on QAnon accounts,” would claim (my emphasis):

Twitter is cracking down on accounts linked to QAnon, a group known for spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation online.

“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm,” Twitter’s safety team said late Tuesday in a tweet. “In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called ‘QAnon’ activity across the service.”

CNN would also note specific measures Twitter is taking (my emphasis):

“We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension — something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks,” Twitter said.

While deliberate campaigns of disinformation are almost certainly going to lead people who believe it into making poor real-life decisions that could potentially lead to “offline harm,” QAnon is not the only source of such disinformation nor the most dangerous.

The Most Dangerous Liars are Not Only Safe, They Have Blue Check Marks 

Twitter’s concern comes across particularly hollow when considering the US and European corporate media, outlets like CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the BBC, AP, AFP and Reuters.

They and their employees enjoy “blue check marks” handed out by Twitter and proudly displayed next to their names “proving” to others on Twitter that they are verified and “trusted.”

This includes lies and conspiracy theories regarding “weapons of mass destruction” they alleged were hidden in Iraq and required an invasion and subsequent occupation to “find” and “destroy.”Together, these “trusted” media platforms have repeatedly spread lies that have caused very real and catastrophic “offline harm.”

The weapons were never found, but hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be slaughtered in the resulting war, millions more displaced and the nation ravaged by conflict and instability from 2003 to present day with US forces still occupying the country and these “blue check mark” accounts still promoting the US occupation.

Similar, now verified lies, were used to sell US wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria as well as US-led regime change in Ukraine where the US and European corporate media deliberately concealed the central role Neo-Nazi political parties and armed groups played in ousting the elected Ukrainian government.

Corporate Media Repeats Disinfo While Covering QAnon’s Ban for Disinfo…

What’s even more ironic is that this same corporate media, protected and promoted and now with an even larger monopoly over narratives discussed on Twitter, repeated lies even as it discussed QAnon’s ban.

CNN would claim (my emphasis):

Followers make unfounded claims and then amplify them with doctored or out-of-context evidence posted on social media to support the allegations.

The anarchical group’s birth, and its continued seepage into mainstream American life, comes on the coattails of the Russian disinformation campaign that targeted US elections in 2016.

While the Russian campaign had an apparent objective — influence voters to elect Trump — QAnon is decentralized, having no clear objective aside from its popular slogan, “Question everything.”

The “Russian disinformation campaign that targeted US elections in 2016″ was investigated for years with zero evidence ever emerging that it ever occurred.

Not only was no evidence ever found, but those accusing Russia of election interference were themselves caught posing as Russians to swing US elections. This includes the shadowy “New Knowledge” group who even submitted reports to the US Congress regarding “Russian disinformation.”

The Washington Post’s article, “Secret campaign to use Russian-inspired tactics in 2017 Ala. election stirs anxiety for Democrats,” would reveal New Knowledge involved in interference in Alabama elections.

While the misleading headline claims the interference used “Russian-inspired tactics,” in fact, the Post itself admits in its own article the tactics were simply to falsely accuse Russia of supporting a Republican candidate to poison voters against him.

The article explains (my emphasis):

The document, for example, says it “planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet. We then tied that botnet to the Moore campaign digital director, making it appear as if he had purchased the accounts.” Morgan [CEO of New Knowledge] denied any knowledge of the incident involving Russian bots.

During the campaign, journalists wrote stories about Twitter accounts that appeared to be Russian followers of Moore.

Those accounts were later suspended by Twitter. The Post found an archived version of a misleading tweet and also several news reports and tweets by journalists during the Alabama election describing evidence that Russian bots were supporting Moore. The Project Birmingham document cited an article in the New York Post with the headline “Roy Moore flooded with fake Russian Twitter followers.”

Thus, not only was no evidence found that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election, those making those claims and even involved in the investigation were caught openly posing as “Russians” to taint targeted candidates and manipulate voters while simultaneously smearing Russia and adding extra weight to justify sanctions aimed at Russia’s economy.

Here we see the media covering QAnon’s banning, citing their own collection of debunked conspiracy theories, lies that have led to sanctions and conflict that have most certainly created “offline harm” for Russia, its economy and its people.

Should we hold our breath waiting for Twitter to ban them as well?

Twitter Shifting from Social Media to Programed Media 

With QAnon purged from Twitter, the way will be paved for Twitter to blanket ban and purge others, not for specific abuses of their terms of policy, but simply for holding or promoting a certain point of view.

It won’t be long before Twitter is entirely dominated by corporate media accounts and ordinary people who listen rather than speak out of fear of being next in line for Twitter’s growing purges.

Social media is clearly being transformed from a platform where people communicate with each other on equal terms, into something resembling traditional programed media where giant conglomerates pick what the public sees, and the public consumes rather than interacts with or contributes to it.

For individuals, organizations and others seeking a social media platform, it is clear Twitter (and Facebook for that matter) have long since become something else. For nations who do not have their own Twitter and Facebook alternatives, the increasingly controlled and manipulated nature of both platforms pose obvious national security risks.

When a platform is purging ordinary people for “disinformation” but providing “blue check marks” to individuals and organizations that have literally lied nations into war and sent hundreds of thousands of innocent people to their graves, it no longer serves any other purpose but as a vehicle for propaganda and propaganda that will most certainly be aimed at these vulnerable nations to cause “offline harm.”

While more traditional armed forces of the air, land and sea are still crucial for a nation’s defense, it is clear that nations now also need to defend their information space. Nations that take this threat seriously will be prepared and able to weather the storm that is clearly brewing. Those that do not, will suffer the fate of others who have faced US-led conflicts, in part, precipitated by America’s and Europe’s control over social media.

July 23, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | 1 Comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »