Tech guru Durov warns Apple & Google pose threat to freedom, as Russian Senator says Trump Twitter ban a challenge to sovereignty
RT | January 11, 2021
The move by US Tech companies to censor US President Donald Trump has raised concern in Russia, with politicians and IT industry figures expressing concerns about it, and about its potential implications for political freedoms.
Alexey Pushkov, a prominent Senator and Chairman of the Federation Council on Information Policy and Media Relations warned on Sunday that the “diktat of internet giants” set a dangerous precedent. In a message posted to his official Telegram channel, the politician added that Moscow would “draw serious conclusions from the blocking of Trump by US social network conglomerates. Almost totally depending on foreign internet platforms is incompatible with the sovereignty of the country,” he argued.
However, the founder of the Russian-created Telegram messaging service, Pavel Durov, has now warned that “the Apple-Google duopoly poses a much bigger problem for freedoms than Twitter.” Of the two, he said, Silicon Valley stalwart Apple, worth more than $1.3 trillion, was the most worrying.
This, he suggests, is “because it can completely restrict which apps you use.” Over the weekend, the tech giant announced it would ban social media service Parler from its iOS store over apparent breaches to its guidelines. Telegram, which says it prioritizes the right to free speech more than its rivals, has become popular with Trump and his supporters since the president was indefinitely suspended from Twitter and Facebook. Telegram’s Durov added that his company was working on a web-based app as a contingency, should it become the next target of an App Store ban.
The Telegram founder, who first made his name with Russia’s top social network VK, also urged smartphone users to make the switch to the Android operating system, where users have more control over what they can install and use. This, he said, is “the least they can do to retain access to a free flow of information.”
In November, Russia’s media watchdog warned Google, and its subsidiary YouTube, over perceived censorship of content from the country’s media organizations. The row was sparked by the California-based streaming service’s decision to label an RT documentary on American right-wing militias as “extremist.” Roskomnadzor, the federal communications agency, warned that “cases of the administration of the YouTube video hosting service blocking, labelling, warning, consent and other restrictions with respect to materials of Russian media and journalists have become more frequent.”
Parler goes offline as Amazon pulls the plug on the conservative social network
Donald Trump has faced a near-total removal from social media sites since facing accusations that he’d encouraged his supporters to storm Washington’s Capitol building last Wednesday. Four protesters and one police officer are said to have lost their lives in the violent scenes. While he urged the activists to “go home,” the president reiterated claims that November’s election had been rigged, and told demonstrators that “we love you. You’re very special.”
As well as his removal from Twitter and Facebook, Trump has since faced action from platforms including Instagram, Google, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat and Pinterest.
Big Tech giants want to prove they are ‘American gods’. Anyone watching the watchers?
By Frank Furedi | RT | January 9, 2021
Big Tech has just taken a gigantic step toward its objective of gaining total control over what can and what cannot be said on the internet.
Apple and Google have commanded Parler, a social network used by conservatives, to police its users. In effect, what their warning issued to Parler means, ‘do as you are told or face digital annihilation!’.
Google suspended Parler from its Play Store, declaring that it will shut the network until it rigorously polices its app. Apple was reported to have followed suit giving Parler 24 hours to fall in line; otherwise it would be removed from Apple’s App Store.
Apple and Google’s declaration of war on Parler has serious implications. These two giant companies make operating systems that support nearly every smartphone in the world. That means that if Apple shuts Parler out of its App Store, people would not be able to download the app on their iPhones or iPads.
The timing of the edict issued by the masters of Silicon Valley is not a coincidence. Parler is one of the fastest growing apps on the internet. Millions of conservatives fed up with the censorious behavior of Twitter and Facebook have been attracted to this social network. In the aftermath of President Trump being forced off Facebook and Twitter, it was expected that millions of his supporters would turn to Parler to freely express their convictions.
Big Tech censorship is nothing new. In recent years, social-media companies – once reluctant to be drawn into becoming official censors and arbiters of truth – have increasingly clamped down on what they deem to be hate speech or misinformation.
Since the beginning of the pandemic Big Tech companies have behaved as if they are digital gods. These powerful unaccountable billionaires have issued one Papal Bull after another. Facebook has used the pandemic to expand its policing of what can be posted. Initially it stated that it would continue to remove “misinformation that could contribute to imminent physical harm,” while deploying its army of fact-checkers to flag certain posts, depress their distribution, and direct sharers of such material to ‘reliable’ information. A few weeks later in April, 2020 it was reported that it was removing event posts for anti-lockdown gatherings.
Early on in the pandemic Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, declared that she saw their role as the arbiter of truth on the coronavirus. She stated that anything that contradicted the recommendations of the WHO would be removed from her platform.
That Big Tech sees itself as a veritable global power that stands above elected governments was strikingly illustrated by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, when he announced that Trump’s page would be closed down, at the very least, for the rest of his presidency. A day later, Twitter followed suit and suspended Trump’s account permanently. This humiliation of the American president indicates that a handful of billionaire capitalists now get to decide who can have a voice in the digital public square.
Big Tech companies censoring their own platforms is bad enough. However, when they take it upon themselves to determine how another independent social network must police itself, they have in effect assumed a tyrannical role over the entire internet. Their declaration of war on Parler, indicates that they see themselves as not simply private companies but as global institutions that can wield political and policing power over the digital world.
It is likely that Parler will be forced to cave in and accept the terms imposed on it by Apple and Google. John Matze, Parler’s CEO, has gone on record to state that he believes that “we can retain our values and make Apple happy quickly.” If Parler is forced to fall in line with the edict issued by Big Tech then it will constitute the greatest blow struck against internet freedom so far.
Despite its rhetoric of supporting diversity, Big Tech is distinctly opposed to the diversity of opinion. As recent events show they intend to turn the digital world into an entirely homogeneous system, where the only values that can be freely expressed are those of Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
Restoring the freedom to express whatever view you want to put forward on the internet is one of the most important challenges confronting genuine democrats.
Frank Furedi is an author and social commentator. He is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Author of How Fear Works: The Culture of Fear in the 21st Century.
YouTube removes lockdown-sceptical interview with renowned immunologist Dr Mike Yeadon for ‘violating terms of service’
RT | November 20, 2020
Dr Mike Yeadon has argued that the British government is using “lethally incompetent” scientific advice in its Covid-19 response. YouTube has mysteriously taken down a video in which the immunologist explains his point.
The UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has got many things about the Covid-19 pandemic wrong, says Dr Mike Yeadon. He is an expert in allergy, immunology, and respiratory diseases, with over three decades of experience, including working as Pfizer’s vice president and chief scientific officer. Apparently his credentials amounted to nothing, though, when digital ‘censors’ at YouTube noticed that he was criticizing the prevailing narrative on the necessity of lockdowns.
For its modelling, SAGE assumed that the entire population was susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 when it first emerged in China last year. And it now considers that only a fraction of the public has been infected so far, based on the detectable presence of antibodies in their blood. These premises are behind the harsh restrictions currently in place in the UK, which are designed to prevent a massive and deadly outbreak of Covid-19.
According to Dr Yeadon, the assumptions are totally wrong, and the worst of the disease is over, with Covid-19 falling into the background as a relatively nasty but otherwise ordinary seasonal respiratory disease. A significant part of the population was actually not susceptible to the virus, thanks in large part to cross-immunity from previously being exposed to other kinds of coronaviruses. Those range from the relatively exotic but closely related SARS-CoV-1, the pathogen behind the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak, to human coronaviruses causing the common cold.
The large number of positive Covid-19 tests is not indicative of the number of active cases, Dr Yeadon believes. The common PCR test detects RNA remnants of the coronavirus, but it cannot tell if they came from live viruses or those long conquered by the immune system. There are also false positives. Mass testing causes an increase in those, he says, as people less experienced in how to properly conduct tests are recruited to run them.
On the other hand, the percentage of people currently immune to Covid-19 is seriously underestimated because it is measured by the presence of antibodies in people’s blood, Dr Yeadon argues. Antibody levels rise when an organism reacts to an active infection, but immune response memory – which determines whether the immune system is trained to beat a disease – is stored in T-cells. So, a person perfectly capable of standing up to Covid-19 may test negative for antibodies, he concludes.
Dr Yeadon has made his case and explained why he believes SAGE’s advice to be “lethally incompetent” in a number of interviews, including a 30-minute sit in with Unlock UK, a lockdown-sceptical media outlet. The video was published on Friday and is available on Facebook, but for some reason it was banned by YouTube, which says it violated its terms of service.
Western tech giants have been relentlessly pressured by politicians and legacy media to fight against misinformation on their platforms. Their idea of what constitutes misinformation seems to be closely aligned with prevailing narratives, while complaints about censorship mount from those challenging the mainstream narrative.
This seems especially true for Covid-19 response coverage, as many people find restrictions at best controversial and at worst a government assault on liberties. Just this week, the UK’s top counter-terrorism police officer, Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, advocated punishing those who spread “misinformation that could cost people’s lives,” like anti-vaccination conspiracy theories.
Dr Yeadon, incidentally, argues that mass vaccination against Covid-19 would be unnecessary, because the outbreak has almost run its natural course before an efficient vaccine was even available.
View the video.
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter Limit Access to 20 Russian Media Sources, Internet Watchdog Says
Sputnik – 27.10.2020
In late-September, Facebook said in a statement that it had removed a total of 242 users, 41 Pages, 19 Groups and 45 Instagram accounts allegedly originating from Russia.
Censorship of Russian media outlets by foreign Internet companies has become systematic, with Google, Facebook and Twitter restricting access to materials of around 20 Russian outlets, the Russian communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, said on Tuesday.
“Foreign Internet companies’ censorship of Russian media has become systemic, Google (YouTube), Facebook and Twitter restrict access to materials of around 20 Russian media outlets, including RIA Novosti, Russia Today, Sputnik and Russia-1,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement.
As a result of these foreign attempts to control the Russian media, Russians may fail to receive objective information, the watchdog specified.
“Multiple requests to stop the censorship of Russian media outlets are being ignored,” Roskomnadzor went on to say.
The communications watchdog added it had submitted to both chambers of the Russian parliament proposals on enshrining in the national legislation measures that may be implemented to retaliate to the facts of censorship.
Roskomnadzor also reported an increase in the spread of fake news by foreign platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
YouTube mysteriously bans Russia-friendly opposition politician just before crucial elections in Ukraine
RT | October 24, 2020
The YouTube channel of Viktor Medvedchuk, the co-chair of Ukraine’s main opposition party, has been suspended just as the country holds crucial municipal elections.
Medvedchuk is a controversial figure in Ukraine, going defiantly against the anti-Russian line to which most other political forces adhere. For example, earlier this month he called on Kiev to purchase the Russian-developed vaccine against Covid-19, which he claimed he had tested on himself.
The suspension of Medvedchuk’s YouTube channel came out of the blue with no explanation from the video service, which now labels it with a generic message that it had violated terms of service. His party, Opposition platform – For Life, called it an act of political retaliation by the US government for his Russia-friendly, West-skeptical position. It didn’t explain why they believe Washington was behind the move.
Before being banned, the channel had more than 70,000 subscribers, with some videos scoring over a million views. The party bragged that its co-chair was more popular on YouTube than other major Ukrainian politician, including President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The ban was reported on Saturday, a day before Ukraine holds municipal elections throughout the country. Zelensky’s Servant of the People party is fighting an uphill battle to produce a result even remotely comparable to the landslide victory it won last year.
During the July 2019 general election, the president’s party secured a huge majority in the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament, taking 254 seats. Medvedchuk’s party came a distant second with 43 seats. Recent opinion polls ahead of Sunday’s vote suggest that the Servant of the People party could end up behind both the pro-Russian politician’s grouping, and that of his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko.
YouTube to remove videos containing Covid-19 vaccine ‘misinformation’
RT | October 14, 2020
Video sharing platform YouTube has said it is banning videos containing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines, in an expansion of the service’s current rules regarding falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the pandemic.
“A Covid-19 vaccine may be imminent, therefore we’re ensuring we have the right policies in place to be able to remove [related] misinformation,” YouTube said in a statement on Wednesday.
Any content featuring claims about Covid-19 vaccines that contradict the consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization will now be banned on the Google-owned video platform.
This includes any suggestions that the vaccine “would kill people, cause infertility or involve microchips being implanted in people,” YouTube said.
General discussions in YouTube videos about “broad concerns” over the vaccine would remain on the platform, a spokesman told Reuters.
In February this year, YouTube removed ads on channels that promoted anti-vaccine content, warning that it would prevent future advertising on any videos that endorse those views.
Then in April, YouTube banned conspiracy theories falsely linking Covid-19 to 5G networks. That move was in turn followed by the ban on any coronavirus-related content that “directly contradicts” World Health Organization (WHO) advice and is “medically unsubstantiated.”
Wednesday’s decision to prevent “misinformation” about Covid-19 vaccines came after another social media giant, Facebook, banned anti-vaccine ads and said it would encourage users of the platform to get the flu jab.
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:
- No child exploitation or child pornography
- No promotion of illegal practices
- No violence or promotion of violence
- No hate speech or threats
- No posting private information without consent
- No abuse or harassment
- No hacking, spam or fraud
- 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”
Question ‘The Science’? Go To Gulag!
By Dr Ron Paul | September 28, 2020
In the Soviet Union it was forbidden to dispute the wisdom of the “party line.” That’s because Marxian communism was viewed as the scientifically inevitable progression of mankind. For Marx and Lenin, the “science was settled.” Therefore anyone speaking out against “the science” of the Soviet system must be acting with malice; must actually want destruction; must want people to die.
Anyone voicing opposition to the “settled science” of Marxism-Leninism soon found their voice silenced. Oftentimes permanently.
Ironically, just 30 years after the “science” of Marxism-Leninism imploded for all the world to see, we are witnessing a resurgence here in the US of the idea that to question “the science” is not to seek truth or refine understanding of what appears to be conflicting evidence. No, it is to actually wish harm on one’s fellow Americans.
And while we who question “the science” are not being physically carried off to the gulags for disputing the wisdom of our “betters” in the CDC or the World Health Organization, for example, we are finding that the outcome is the same. We are being silenced and accused of malicious intent. The Soviet Communists called dissidents like us “wreckers.”
Last week on my daily news broadcast, the Ron Paul Liberty Report, we reported on two whistleblowers from inside the CDC and Big Pharma who raised serious and legitimate questions about the prevailing coronavirus narrative. The former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Dr. Mike Yeadon, has stated that from his experience he believes that nearly 90 percent of positive results from the current tests for Covid are false positives. That means that this massive expansion in “cases,” used to justify continued attacks on our civil liberties, is simply phony.
As Dr. Yeadon said in a recent interview about the Orwellian UK coronavirus lockdown, “we are basing a government policy, an economic policy, a civil liberties policy, in terms of limiting people to six people in a meeting… all based on, what may well be, completely fake data on this coronavirus?”
Is Dr. Yeadon correct in claiming that based on his scientific observation there is no “second wave”? We don’t know. But we do know that his claims that the massive increase in “cases” in Europe used to justify new lockdowns are not in any way being matched with a similar increase in deaths. The EU’s own charts prove this. Deaths remain a flat line near zero while “cases” skyrocket to match the massive increase in testing.
Yet when we reported on Dr. Yeadon’s findings on the Liberty Report last week we found that for the first time ever, our program was removed by YouTube.
YouTube, owned by Google, which is firmly embedded into the deep state, was vague in explaining just where we violated their “community standards” by simply reporting on qualified scientists who happen to disagree with the mainstream coronavirus narrative.
But they did offer this shocking explanation in an email sent to us at the Ron Paul Liberty Report: “YouTube does not allow content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of the World Health Organization.”
Incredible!
It’s not the science that is settled. What appears to be “settled is the impulse to silence anyone who asks “why”?
Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute.
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Neocon Max Boot: Legal and illegal aliens need to enlist in the US army and die for Israel
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | October 16, 2107
In 1973 Irving Kristol, the godfather of the Neoconservative movement, made a stunning statement which is still relevant to understanding the Israeli influence in US foreign policy. Kristol said:
“Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States…
“American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”
Read the statement again very carefully. A big military budget, said Kristol, is only good for Israel, not America or much of the Western World. In other words, precious American soldiers who go to the Middle East to fight so-called terrorism are just working for Israel, not for America.
So, whenever the Neocons use words such as “democracy” or “freedom,” they are essentially conning decent Americans to support Israel’s perpetual wars. … continue
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