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Tyranny
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An influential member of Meta’s Oversight Board, a group nicknamed the “Supreme Court of Facebook,” Pamela San Martín, has argued that the level of censorship enacted by Meta during the 2020 presidential election was inadequate and that it should be stepped up for 2024. This viewpoint was [criticized](https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/catherine-salgado/2024/02/01/what-meta-board-member-claims-2020-interference-not) by individuals in favor of freedom of expression, who cited a poll conducted by the Media Research Center suggesting that the influence of Big Tech censorship significantly affected the outcome of the election. In a [conversation with WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/meta-disinformation-elections/), San Martín argued vociferously in favor of more stringent censorship measures ahead of future elections, including the 2024 one. San Martín’s ideas for 2024 include “adding labels to posts that are related to elections, directing people to reliable information, prohibiting paid advertisement when it calls into question the legitimacy of elections, and implementing WhatsApp forward limits.” “No election is exactly the same as the previous one,” San Martín said to the outlet. “So even though we’re addressing the problems that arose in prior elections as a starting point, it is not enough.” Her proposal centers on pre-emptive actions, which some observers see as a threat to freedom of speech online. Anti-censorship critics drew attention to San Martín’s suggestion of coordination with election officials, interpreting it as a direct call for collusion between tech giants and government authorities in matters of censorship. They argued that each election is a unique event and that relying on strategies from previous campaigns was insufficient – a sentiment San Martín herself echoed. San Martín referenced the 2020 and 2022 US and Brazilian elections, criticizing Meta for failing to adequately prevent its platforms from being manipulated for campaigning and disinformation.
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Political commentator Megyn Kelly has [reacted](https://yewtu.be/watch?v=VWhBbWGUdzI) to the fact that she was singled out and monitored by the large pharmaceutical corporation, Moderna, after sharing her adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine publicly. Last year, Kelly voiced regret over her decision to get the COVID shot which, in her case, reportedly resulted in autoimmune complications. As a healthy 52-year-old woman, Kelly, in her podcast, expressed doubt over the necessity of getting vaccinated, as she contracted COVID “many times” after. She further shared that her annual medical check-up had revealed a positive result for an autoimmune condition for the first time ever. “And she said ‘yes.’ Yes. I wasn’t the only one she’d seen that with,” Kelly noted, referring to the New York’s finest rheumatologist’s reaction to her querying whether her vaccination and subsequent COVID contraction within three weeks could be linked. Subsequently, a year later, a [separate investigation conducted by Lee Fang](https://reclaimthenet.org/new-documents-provide-more-insights-on-modernas-online-speech-monitoring-efforts) revealed that Moderna had marked Kelly under its controversial “misinformation” reporting system. Moderna utilized artificial intelligence to scrutinize millions of online conversations worldwide, influencing the narrative around vaccines. Internal documents revealed that the company paid special attention to prominent vaccine dissenters. The lobbying group for Pfizer and Moderna, Public Goods Project (PGP) has played a role in identifying supposed vaccine misinformation and aided in the removal of such content from Twitter and other social networks. PGP consistently provided Twitter with Excel spreadsheets listing accounts to promote and others to ban. This was all due to the concern that public statements from those like Kelly may fuel “vaccine hesitancy.” An alert about Kelly’s comments, which the company believe could repel those still undecided about getting vaccinated, was issued by Moderna. They voiced fears that her remarks could exacerbate the growing apprehensions about the potential correlation between autoimmune diseases and COVID-19 vaccines. Interestingly, the information conveyed by Moderna’s alert seemed to validate Kelly’s claims instead of refuting them. Revisiting the issue on her Tuesday show, Kelly recounted how Moderna was concerned she would intensify fears relating to autoimmune disorders and COVID-19 immunization. According to Kelly, Moderna was also deeply perturbed with her statements during one of her shows, in which she admitted that her general doctor had confirmed she had contracted an autoimmune illness after she got her third COVID shot. She noticed they had linked internally a National Institutes of Health report which highlighted a correlation between the COVID vaccines and autoimmune problems. “They’re admitting internally that it’s a problem, but they’re upset that I am talking about it and Alex Berenson, and Russell Brand, and Michael Shellenberger, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya are talking about it because they don’t want it discussed,” Kelly pointed out. “And the mainstream media outlets were only too happy to comply.” In her final remarks, she lamented about the disregard of media outlets for covering all viewpoints. “They just didn’t like it,” Megyn concluded, clearly indicating the censorship she experienced, which in turn, not only underlines the significance of independent media but also reveals the blind support corporate media has per pharma’s ‘experimental shots,’ despite the rising evidence of their dangers and inefficiencies.”
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Concerns are growing over the role of Big Tech companies in moderating “misinformation,” particularly due to the fear that these corporations already wield significant power and influence which could potentially sway political outcomes, including elections. Many worry that the concentrated power in these tech giants allows them to arbitrarily define what constitutes misinformation, leading to a situation where they could suppress certain viewpoints or information. This raises questions about the impartiality and fairness of such moderation, especially in the context of political discourse and the democratic process. The debate is fueled by the concern that these companies, due to their size and reach, could have a disproportionate impact on public opinion and electoral processes. In an AI-focused [interview](https://yewtu.be/watch?v=740yVfgd1oY) with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, it was revealed that Microsoft intends to combat alleged “disinformation” throughout the 2024 elections. During his conversation with NBC’s Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News’ January 30 edition, Nadella was questioned about how AI might either assist or endanger the future election. However, Nadella’s response seemed to imply a willingness to use technology for censoring content in pursuit of fighting what he identified as disinformation. Nadella stated, “This is not the first election where we dealt with disinformation or propaganda campaigns by adversaries and election interference. “We’re doing all the work across the tech industry around watermarking, detecting deep fakes and content IDs. There is going to be enough and more technology quite frankly in order to be able to identify the issues around disinformation and misinformation.”
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A potentially precedent-setting bill has been proposed in the Florida Senate that could redefine defamation language surrounding terms such as “transphobic,” “homophobic,” “racist,” or “sexist.” The bill, labeled SB 1780, suggests these terms could be deemed defamatory, eliminating the need to satisfy the standard of “actual malice,” which has been a significant threshold in defamation lawsuits since the 1964 Supreme Court case, [New York Times v. Sullivan](https://reclaimthenet.org/supreme-court-upholds-actual-malice-requirement-of-defamation-cases). Designated as the “Defamation, False Light, and Unauthorized Publication of Name or Likeness” bill, SB 1780 would ease the path to launch defamation lawsuits and make it easier to suppress speech. We obtained a copy of the bill for you [here](https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/FL-SB-1780.pdf) (PDF). It distinctly makes the claim that any insinuation of the plaintiff being discriminatory against any person or group due to their race, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity inherently constitutes defamation. The bill, introduced by Senator Jason Brodeur, goes a step further, stating that a person facing liability for allegedly defaming someone through accusations of homophobia or transphobia would not be allowed to reference the plaintiff’s religious or scientific beliefs in their defense, potentially leading to a mandatory penalty of no less than $35,000 upon conviction. This bill is part of a twinned legislation with a sister bill – HB 757 – being simultaneously introduced in the Florida House. In terms of how the bill affects the free press, the bill also aims to undermine the dependability of anonymous sources for journalists by categorizing their testimony as “presumptively false,” thereby making those in the profession more susceptible to accusations of defamation. The proposed law sets out specific conditions under which a well-known individual can claim actual malice, clarifying that judges can infer that statements are malicious under several specific contexts such as an unnamed and anonymous source, inherently improbable allegations, reasons to doubt the truth of the report, and deliberate failure to validate or corroborate the claim, among others.
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The [Global Disinformation Index](https://reclaimthenet.org/biden-official-questioned-on-disinformation-blacklist) (GDI), a US government-funded pro-censorship organization, has come under fire for lacking transparency, ironically the same issue it labels non-mainstream websites for. Despite hypocritically casting aspersions on sites that reject the mainstream narrative on many issues, the GDI, as per [a report by the Washington Examiner](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/2820047/state-department-disinformation-tracker-gdi-redacts-tax-forms/), exhibits a conspicuous absence of this very transparency in its operations. Billing itself as nonpartisan and objective while routinely favoring leftist narratives, the GDI has received over $100k from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. Part of the score it assigns to online platforms stems from the possibility of controversial interests emerging from shadowy ownership structures—a principle it doesn’t appear to abide by itself. According to Mike Davis, founder and president of the Internet Accountability Project, the GDI is in breach of the law by keeping its disclosures hidden. The Washington Examiner also mentioned that the GDI is currently under congressional investigation. Adding to the mystery is the GDI’s refusal to disclose its “dynamic exclusion list,” a tool reportedly used by businesses like Microsoft and Oracle to hamstring ad placements on right-leaning outlets, thereby achieving a sort of financial strangulation of these sites. Despite providing heavily concealed tax information for its two US subsidiaries, Disinformation Index Inc. and the AN Foundation, upon request from the Examiner, details from the GDI’s tax filings on ProPublica reveal a closer relationship between the organization, the US Government, and left-wing donors. The report discloses that the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy and the billionaire George Soros together donated a grand total of $465,750 to the GDI in 2022. In 2023, Texas along with media outlets The Daily Wire and The Federalist [started legal proceedings against the State Department’s Global Engagement Center](https://reclaimthenet.org/texas-daily-wire-federalist-sue-state-dept-censorship), alleging governmental attempts to silence the American press through funding the GDI. The action taken was based on GDI’s activities which reportedly included blacklisting conservative media.
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The expression is, “you can’t make that up” – to signal the level of the absurdity of a situation. Meanwhile, groups calling themselves “fact checkers” and those bankrolling them keep making things up. And becoming used to it aside, their work still feels as if – “you can’t make that up.” When names like the Omidyar Network, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and Meta start cropping up in the same sentence, you start believing anything could come out of an “alliance” of the sort. Here we have yet another supposedly “fact-checking” effort that turned into a smear campaign against people engaged in lawful protest regarding economic, social, and political issues. In this instance, in Germany. There the economy, and with it the government, has been in serious trouble ever since Germany, for political reasons, cut itself off from affordable gas. Those with the most to lose, such as farmers, have been hit the hardest. One of the recent consequences, though you may not hear much about it in legacy media, have been mass and ongoing farmer protests. At the same time, efforts are under way to ban one of the country’s most popular parties, AfD. Both have been labeled as right-wing conspiracy theorists, Covid “misinformationists,” and even Russia supporters. And this labeling work is being done by something called “Correctiv” – a group that says it is a news and fact-checking site. Correctiv gets its money from Omidyar, Soros, Meta, but also the current German government. In a report on Public, US-based author Gregor Baszak goes into the weeds of the situation, that shows a beleaguered government resorting to decidedly undemocratic moves and pondering shockingly undemocratic ideas, such as banning political opposition. Baszak talks about a Correctiv article that goes after the farmers as some sort of right wing menace, supposedly spreading not only Russian propaganda and Covid disinformation – just because of expressing anger over their business becoming unsustainable with the government’s fuel and vehicle subsidy cuts. “The (Correctiv) article does not specify what ‘Covid disinformation’ the farmers spread,” Baszak writes. “Nor does it offer any evidence of ties between the farmers and the Russian government, only that ‘some X accounts’ that support the farmers wrote posts that ‘coincided with the methods of a pro-Russian propaganda network.'” However, at least for the time being, what left-leaning German politician Sahra Wagenknecht has described as “the stupidest government in Europe” is succeeding in keeping its opponents divided by throwing damning, even false, accusations their way. Read the full report [here](https://public.substack.com/p/soros-facebook-and-omidyar-money).
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 Popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube, were inaccessible for parts of the weekend in Pakistan, which is gearing up for a general election next month. Pakistan’s telecommunication authority [blamed](https://twitter.com/PTAofficialpk/status/1748752018557305309) the nationwide internet disruptions, which lasted for several hours on Saturday evening, on a “technical failure” and said that the internet was restored as soon as the issue was fixed. Local media, however, [reported](https://www.express.pk/story/2593755/1/) that the issue was more political and supposedly intended to disrupt a virtual rally held by the party of the jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan ahead of the general elections in February. The internet disruptions in Pakistan started before the live stream of the event, so many users were unable to participate. This is not the first time that Pakistan has experienced internet disruptions ahead of online campaign events organized by Khan's party, also known as PTI — similar outages [occurred](https://www.livemint.com/news/world/pakistan-slow-internet-service-virtual-jalsa-organised-by-imran-khan-party-pti-what-social-media-users-say-11702828013847.html) at the beginning of January and in December. PTI [acknowledged](https://twitter.com/PTIofficial/status/1748729357932036597) the latest outage, calling it “desperate tactics” deployed by the sitting government. The party [recommended](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/pakistan-experiences-nationwide-internet-outage-social-media-blackout-ptis-manifesto-launch-disrupted/articleshow/106629330.cms) that Pakistani users use a virtual private network (VPN) to access blocked social media platforms, and managed to host a part of the online event on YouTube with over 7,000 participants. “No amount of oppression can quash the passion and will of the people!” the party said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Alp Toker, the director of the internet monitoring firm NetBlocks, told Agence France Presse that the outage was "remarkably systematic" and "consistent with previous restrictions imposed during PTI events." One of Pakistan’s internet providers, Nayatel, told customers in an audio message that it was acting on the instructions of Pakistani authorities, as reported by Bloomberg. A Pakistani court sentenced Khan in August to three years in jail in a corruption case, accusing him of allegedly selling state gifts. He is the country's seventh former prime minister to be arrested before completing a five-year tenure. Khan has denied any wrongdoing, blaming the country's military elites for forcing him out of office. Khan’s name was banned from the media, while thousands of PTI workers have been arrested in recent months. Khan has been prevented from conducting in-person campaigning — making online appearances essential. Russia, Iran, Belarus, and Cuba have taken social networks offline or shut off communication infrastructure in response to recent protests or opposition. The digital rights organization Access Now called the internet shutdowns in Pakistan “problematic,” especially when they occur just before the polls. “Authorities in Pakistan must uphold the people’s mandate,” the organization said.#
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An ambitious and over-reaching “anti-porn” bill is currently making its way through Oklahoma’s state legislative system, the severity of which threatens to criminalize the act of sexting or sharing intimate photos. The proposed bill, known as Oklahoma Senate Bill 1976, targets not just explicit porn but even erotic expression, and in the process, takes an extreme stance against the First Amendment. We obtained a copy of the bill for you [here](https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/SB1976-INT.pdf). (PDF) The bill bans: “any visual depiction or individual image stored or contained in any format on any medium including, but not limited to, film, motion picture, videotape, photograph, negative, undeveloped film, slide, photographic product, reproduction of a photographic product, play, or performance.” The initiated legislation, described by Reason as being so “extreme that it could even make sexting outside of a marriage a crime,” is part of a more significant push, intent on broadening the definition of what constitutes porn, even at the expense of hard-won civil liberties. Sen. Dusty Deevers (R–District 32) sponsors this proposal. Typically, adult pornography enjoys protection under First Amendment rights, barring a few exceptions, including content featuring individuals who are underage or obscene. This new stringent legislation, however, aims to navigate around the standard protections and introduce a novel classification of banned material under the dubious label of “unlawful pornography.” Sen. Deevers’ proposed legislation is incredibly comprehensive, including both visual depictions and individual images across multiple mediums in its definition of illicit porn. It seeks to forbid not only explicit sexual acts but also anything designed to excite sexual interest, such as nudity or the suggestion of sexual activity. The bill extends beyond conventional pornography, encompassing a wide array of adult content and establishing a high bar for what is considered having serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific value, thereby putting sexting, and even some social media posts and private messages in its scope.
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In February 2022, amid the cross-country truck convoy civil liberties protests in Ottawa against COVID-19 precautions and vaccine mandates, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister, made an overreaching decision. He invoked the Emergencies Act as a response to this challenge to his overarching policies in a widespread attempt to silence and crush his critics. Under the Emergencies Act, Trudeau, and his Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, froze the bank accounts of protesters and their supporters in one of the biggest attacks on free speech and civil liberties that Canada has seen in recent times. However, a Federal Court has now ruled that the Trudeau-led Liberal government overreached its powers. Their act was declared unreasonable, unjustified, and violating the Charter in a verdict published on a recent Tuesday. We obtained a copy of the verdict for you [here](https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/2024.01.23-306-22-T-316-22-T-347-22-T-382-22.pdf). (PDF) Presiding over the case, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley found that whereas these Freedom Convoy protests generated harm, they did not elevate to a threat against national security as per the legal definition. Proclaiming the Emergencies Act in such a scenario, according to Mosley, lacked the attributes of sound decision-making, including justification, transparency, and intelligibility. Tracing the legal and factual constraints that must inform such a resolve illuminated this lack for Mosley. “I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation [of the Emergencies Act’ does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness – justification, transparency and intelligibility – and was not justified,” Mosley wrote. Civil liberty groups, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Canadian Constitutional Foundation (CCF), had challenged this historic precedent. They contended that the Liberal government stretched its power too far while dealing with the Freedom Convoy blockades in Ontario and Alberta in February 2022. The court’s verdict aligned with their argument. Expressing a rare degree of self-reflection, Mosley confessed to initially leaning towards the counter-argument. He perceived the convoy’s actions as crossing the line of legitimate protest, constituting the erosion of public order. Were he present at the government’s decision-making table, he might have supported invoking the act. Over months of mulling over the evidence and different angles of the argument, Mosley swung towards the viewpoint presented by CCLA and CCF. Nonetheless, the government remains convinced that invoking the Emergencies Act was necessary and has promised to appeal the verdict. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland commented on Mosley’s decision by asserting their belief that public safety and national security, which include economic security, were under threat. “The public safety of Canadians was under threat, our national security, which includes our national economic security, was under threat,” Freeland alleged. “I was convinced at the time. It was the right thing to do. It was the necessary thing to do.”
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As part of the growing support for censorship within the EU, the EU Parliament has cast their votes for a resolution, regarding making so-called “hate speech” a crime throughout the Union. The decision, which critics have likened to Orwell’s “Big Brother,” is set to redefine the landscape of freedom of speech within the European Union. The move has garnered substantial attention due to its potential impact on individual liberties. Critics argue that this could lead to overreach and the suppression of free speech. Yet, the EU Parliament remains firm in its stance, asserting that this radical change is a crucial step in combating hate and is plowing ahead. Before the resolution, Maite Pagazaurtundúa (Spain), rapporteur for the report and Member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, said: “The current EU legal framework only covers hate speech and hate crimes on some bases, but there is currently no common, comprehensive legal definition at Union level. With the new social dynamics, the normalization of hate evolves very quickly and we must protect ourselves as a society and protect people who are attacked, persecuted, and harassed. Radical networks and extreme polarization are a favorable environment for increasing these behaviors that violate fundamental rights. With this report we ask the Council to give the green light to legislate against hate crime and hate speeches in European terms, always in accordance with the principle of proportionality and guaranteeing freedom of expression for citizens.” From The [European Conservative](https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/youre-big-brother-eu-parliament-votes-to-make-hate-speech-an-eu-crime/): >“The document lays down two primary goals: including hate speech among the EU crimes specified in Article 83(1) TFEU which lists “particularly serious crime[s] with cross-border dimensions”—such as terrorism, human trafficking, drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime—and are subject to EU-wide minimum rules regarding definitions and penalties. According to the official explanation, hate speech deserves the same label because it’s so serious that not only affects an individual or a community “but also society as a whole, by undermining the foundations of the EU,” while social media instantly gives it a “cross-border dimension” as well. > “The second goal underscored in the resolution is to extend the definition of hate speech and hate crimes to cover several additional victim categories. Currently, EU laws define them as hatred only toward a specific race, skin color, religion, nationality, or ethnicity, which leftist lawmakers argued is not nearly enough in today’s world. >“Therefore, the document calls for extending the definition to ‘sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex characteristics, age, disability and any other fundamental characteristic.’ Absent an objective definition, it’s easy to imagine the last one functioning as a blank check to cover whatever anyone might be offended by.”
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The Dutch Queen Maxima utilized her platform during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos to advocate for the far-reaching benefits of digital ID for various sectors. Queen Maxima highlighted that a digital ID could become a critical instrument, capable of determining vaccination statuses, facilitating school registrations, and simplifying the process of claiming government subsidies. There has been a growing push by various global elites, including governments, tech companies, and international organizations, towards the adoption of digital identity systems. This shift is often presented as a means to increase efficiency and security. But, few talk about the major implications for surveillance and the erosion of civil liberties. The Dutch monarch emphasized the relevance of digital ID for expanding financial systems, during a panel called “Comparing Notes on Financial Inclusion.” She expressed her earlier concern about the rarity of a universal ID system, particularly in regions like Latin America and Africa. “In order to open up an account, you need to have an ID. I have to say that when I started this job, there were actually very little countries in Africa or Latin America that had one ubiquitous type of ID, and certainly that was digital and certainly that was biometric. “We’ve really worked with all our partners to actually help grow this, and the interesting part of it is that yes, it is very necessary for financial services, but not only.” Africa is being used as the testing ground for several digital ID projects. Of course, Queen Maxima also said that digital ID systems would be useful to act as a vaccine passport. “It is also good for school enrollment; it is also good for health – who actually got a vaccination or not; it’s very good actually to get your subsidies from the government,” she said. With her role as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, Queen Maxima has been a key figure in driving the digital ID paradigm shift. This trend also applies to vaccine passports, a form of digital ID that the WEF says are an essential part of our future. They envision that this digital identity could be linked to diverse aspects such as financial services, healthcare records, mobility, travel, and digital governance.
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In a year marked by dwindling public trust in key institutions and heralded by the theme “Rebuilding Trust” at the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos assembly, Emma Tucker, the Wall Street Journal’s Editor in Chief, has called for a reevaluation of how traditional media operates. Recalling a point when the mainstream press was the chief adjudicator of information and facts, she highlighted its demise that came with the rise of alternative media platforms. Tucker, during a Davos panel supposedly dedicated to the preservation of truth, offered a lament for the era when the press held exclusive dominance over news and facts. “If you go back not that long ago, We owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well,” Tucker said. “If it said it in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, then that was a fact. Nowadays, people can go to all sorts of different sources for the news, and they’re much more questioning about what we’re saying.” Not only do her comments reveal a lot about how mainstream media figures see their role in society, her comment painted a clear picture of the power shift that has marked the recent history of the media landscape. “So it’s no longer good enough for us to say this is what happened, or this is the news. We almost have to explain our working. So readers expect to understand how we source stories, they want to know how we go about getting stories,” she continued. “We have to sort of lift the bonnet as it were in a way that newspapers aren’t used to doing, and explain to people what we’re doing. We need to be much more transparent about how we go about collecting the news,” Tucker added.
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Moscow’s parliament is set to contemplate the introduction of a regulation that may grant the authority to seize assets, such as financial resources, valuable goods, and real estate from individuals accused of disseminating “knowingly false narratives” concerning the Russian military operations, according to a prominent legislator’s statement on Saturday. Vyacheslav Volodin, the presiding officer of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, [posted a note on Telegram](https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-consider-law-property-confiscation-fakes-about-army-2024-01-20/) explaining that the proposal would target individuals advocating for “extremist behaviors” or suggesting sanctions against Russia. Reports that undermine the reputation of the Russian military, currently classified as a criminal act under newly implemented stringent regulations post Russia’s deployment of forces in Ukraine in February 2022, will also face the same consequences. “Everyone who tries to destroy Russia, betrays it, must suffer the deserved punishment and compensate for the damage inflicted on the country, at the cost of their property,” Volodin said. He added that under the law, those found guilty of “discrediting” the army also face being stripped of any honorary titles. The legislative proposal was scheduled for review in the State Duma on Monday, according to Volodin’s statement. Narratives slandering the reputation of the Russian military, including those classified as promoting terrorism and spreading fictitious reports about Russian forces, are currently checked under an [existing legal framework](https://reclaimthenet.org/russia-passes-law-banning-criticism-of-voluntary-military-groups).
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Pre-bunking information, pre-crime, etc. etc. – it all could easily spell out post-democracy, observers critical of the trends keep saying. None of their arguments, however, seem to be reaching or affecting top EU bureaucrats, Věra Jourová – vice president of the European Commission for none other than “values and transparency” – being one of them. Vera’s in Davos this week – where else – and has been telling a World Economic Forum (WEF) panel about things like deploying law enforcement to deal with “conspiracy theories,” pre-bunking information considered as disinformation, censorship of that, but also of hate speech” – and then, to top it off, about her alleged love of “freedom of speech.” The moderator cited WEF’s own “global risk report” for this year which allegedly found that “disinformation is actually the top risk which people cited for the next couple of years” – to ask Jourova about the EU strategy in this respect. She quickly launched into branding “this information” – i.e., disinformation as a “security threat” and listed a number of things the EU is doing to mitigate it: strengthen “strong professional media,” and, “work with (online) platforms.” That, Jourová quickly explained, means mainly “fact-checking.” And, she added, “We have all the big tech under the commitment of the Code of Practice against this information.” And then she arrived at “pre-bunking.” According to Jourova, it means forcing the raising of awareness, and at the same time, “lowering of the absorption capacity in the society to believe the lies.” Very interesting wording, especially going from the usual, “lowering absorption” to, lowering the capacity for it. “Pre-bunking” is usually defined as a preemptive measure (Vera used the word, predictive), so as to discredit an account or information, and “refute” information even before it gets disseminated. A fairly convoluted censorship game here, and the EU bureaucrat had more good news for the WEF attendees: the bloc, she assured them, is taking care (by means of censorship) of “hate speech and disinformation.” Then, as if to also reassure everyone hypocrisy is alive and well in the EU, she talked about supporting freedom of speech. Jourová, who is Czech, referred to “living half her life in an authoritarian regime” (a reference to the Cold War). Judging by the policies she is promoting, she is sadly determined to spend the rest of it the same way.
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Controversies originating from those who gained the most from the pandemic – most visibly, Big Pharma – refuses to go away. One of the leading (and among the earliest) producers of Covid vaccines was US-based Moderna. We know for sure that the vaccine worked for Moderna – turning it from the verge of collapse into a $100 billion company, [Defender reports](https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/moderna-surveillance-independent-media-covid-vaccine-narrative/). But in large part due to the unusual speed with which vaccines were put through trials and then to market, many people – from regular citizens to public figures to medical professionals and scientists – felt skepticism about their efficacy and safety. Expressing that openly, though, tended to get those people canceled or at least monitored and/or censored, and now new documents reveal Moderna’s role. Among them were journalists Alex Berenson, Stanford Health Policy professor Jay Bhattacharya, and actor Russell Brand. In one instance, they “flagged a Russell Brand video in which he raised concerns about former British health official Jonathan Van-Tam, who was instrumental in COVID-19 policymaking and then took a high-level job at Moderna,” writes Defender. Despite the billions in revenues raked in by Big Pharma, this obviously wasn’t enough, especially once the Covid panic started to subside and vaccine sales stalled. And so Moderna sought out online media surveillance partners, and found one in the Public Goods Projects non-profit (otherwise receiving funds from Big Pharma), which was then useful in getting Covid vaccine skeptics silenced or censored on Twitter – Moderna and its partner, of course, called this combating “medical information.” The documents, uncovered by [RealClearInvestigations and journalist Lee Fang](https://www.leefang.com/p/moderna-surveillance-operation-targeted), show that independent media and their commentators, especially well-known and influential ones, were of specific interest in a bid to protect Moderna – but health agencies. The goal was to suppress doubt or criticism about any side effects linked to the vaccine, and Twitter was not the only place Moderna was “monitoring:” unsurprisingly, given its critical bent, a site like Zerohedge, but also the New York Times, should a “negative” observation fly under the radar, which is/was indeed a very rare event for that “paper of record.” Plus, no less than about 150 million websites in between, according to the documents, “the Moderna Files.” They paint a picture of mass surveillance carried out by a private company. “The documents seem to show that Moderna is running a corporate public relations effort designed to boost sagging vaccine sales under the veneer of public health,” Fang is quoted as saying.
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Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský is in Davos, for the World Economic Forum (WEF). There, he offered his two-euro-cents about “misinformation” and democracy – albeit referring to the former as “false content.” Davos is just the right place for the minister to try to press home the “mantra” of “global solutions.” In this case – “a global solution (…) and to have a global discussion about the way [sic] how we communicate.” “How we communicate?” There may be a bit of a language barrier here, but is Mr. Lipavský actually talking up the merits of speech control, by any other name? Doesn’t seem unlikely, because some of the other phrases that came out of his mouth included “government accountability” and quite directly, a mention of “control” of technology that is made possible through government intervention, that is, “regulation.” (It’s not inconceivable that somewhere in the WEF corridors, China’s representatives were nodding approvingly…) Meanwhile, let’s see how it should work, according to the government in Prague and its rep. They certainly have a lot on their plate right now, but apparently, elections in various countries around the world seem to be top of agenda, and who better to talk about that, than a foreign minister. But even if they tend to talk about “4 million people across the globe” going to the polls, and how to gently, or not so gently, nudge them to pick “the proper” candidates – it always comes back to the one election that really matters, especially to outfits like the WEF – the US presidential vote. But gatherings like this will go out of their way not to always focus on that election, and will talk in circles, warning that “what is happening in one country today might happen in another country tomorrow” thanks to (or because of) globally available internet platforms. And so, perhaps test “regulation” in one – to then implement it in another. What taxpayers (around the world) should perhaps be even more worried about than the by now customary attacks on speech is just how little original idea or even turn of phrase those they push it have to offer, sounding instead like they’re all reading from the same playbook. Case in point, Lipavský: “We need a really global solution and to have a global discussion about the way how we communicate as people, which content and how are we presented”; (…) And definitely we will see more and more false content being used as something which will disturb the election process, which will disturb the way how the society makes decisions.” “So…the kind of regulation or possession or control of those technologies needs to be developed, (so) that the governments will be sure that it is not going against the interests of the governments,” the minister also said.
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CEO of Center for Democracy and Technology Alexandra Reeve Givens is one of those who have tuned up at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF), apparently well equipped and eager to promote state censorship, and throw a couple of red herrings in there, presumably for the sake of “credibility.” Givens, whose group has made it to Spotify’s “safety advisory council” and was keen to see the Biden administration set up an online “disinformation” task, has spoken at one of WEF panels to lament an injunction that aims to stop the current White House from further pressuring Big Tech on speech issues. Apparently, not only should they continue to work under this pressure, but should also be, figuratively, tarred and feathered, and dragged to, say, Davos – to “talk about the (censorship) work (they’re doing)” – i.e., be “held accountable.” Another complaint heard from Givens is that there is now more scrutiny in the US, specifically from Congress, about what these social media companies and their “misinformation researcher partners” have been doing. While the free-speech world may cautiously welcome such trends, Givens does not – to her mind it just means there is less censorship (“moderation”) on social platforms, whereas the same “thinker” is convinced these companies have a “duty to help surface the trusted sources of information.” It’s pretty clear what we’re hearing here, but Givens decided to confuse things a little – at least on the surface – by expressing her concern that “governments are cracking down on free speech.” Here’s the full section: *“So in the United States, for example, right now we have congressional investigations and lawsuits against people that study misinformation about elections on social media platforms. There is currently an injunction in place stopping the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about interference threats on the topics of elections that’s actually going before the United States Supreme Court this year. So we’re in this bizarre environment where right as the threats are ticking up, the investments in actually doing the day-to-day work of online trust and safety for our information environment is being scaled back and is under attack.”* But not to worry – these would be some other governments, since Givens’ entire stance of “misinformation and moderation” in terms of how the Biden administration is doing it is positive – if anything, she would like to see more of the same and get the courts and a pesky Congress out of that particular way. Givens’ overall performance at WEF was more of what we have been hearing from “misinformation” fearmongers, trying to justify the practice that ends up in censorship, as some sort of (perverted) key democracy issue. She mentions the role played by “authoritative information” coming from no doubt politically and ideologically vetted journalists – and “journalist.” And, peppers in a bit of “AI-generated misinformation” alarmism in there.
github.com
DISARM is a framework designed for describing and understanding disinformation incidents. DISARM is part of work on adapting information security (infosec) practices to help track and counter disinformation and other information harms, and is designed to fit existing infosec practices and tools. DISARM's style is based on the MITRE ATT&CK framework. STIX templates for DISARM objects are available in the DISARM_CTI repo - these make it easy for DISARM data to be passed between ISAOs and similar bodies using standards like TAXII.
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The page has only just been turned on 2023 and already the narrative that much policing of online speech will be vital for 2024, an election year, has already stirred. The legacy media outlet The Guardian, [in its piece about Kate Starbird](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/01/misinformation-trends-2024-election-right-wing), has already complained that there may be less censorship ahead of the 2024 elections, and claimed that [Rep. Jim Jordan’s committee’s reports](https://reclaimthenet.org/revealed-how-the-dhs-stanford-disinformation-group-censored-2020-election-related-online-speech) on Big Tech-government censorship collusion are based on “outlandish claims.” This is ignoring the fact that an [injunction](https://reclaimthenet.org/biden-censorship-injunction) was successfully placed on the Biden administration for its censorship pressure on Big Tech, a case that will be [ruled on by The Supreme Court](https://reclaimthenet.org/biden-administration-urges-supreme-court-to-overturn-injunction-on-federal-agencies-influencing-tech-censorship) this year. In an era where the policing of online speech is increasingly contentious, Kate Starbird’s role in combating what she terms election misinformation has placed her squarely in the midst of a heated debate. As a leading figure at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Starbird has actively engaged in documenting what she and her team perceive as misinformation during the 2020 elections, particularly focusing on claims of voter fraud. However, Starbird’s approach and her team’s actions have not been without controversy. Critics argue that their efforts amount to a form of censorship, infringing upon free speech. This criticism extends beyond Starbird’s team to a broader national trend, where researchers engaged in similar work face accusations of partisanship and censorship, challenging the principles of free expression. Jim Jordan, chair of the House judiciary committee, has emerged as a key figure in opposing what he views as the overreach of these researchers. He has focused on investigating groups and individuals involved in counteracting misinformation, especially in the context of elections and Covid-19. Central to the controversy is the practice of working with government entities and flagging content to social media platforms, which some argue leads to undue censorship and violates First Amendment rights. The debate over the role of anti-misinformation efforts has escalated beyond Congress, evidenced by lawsuits from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and from the state of Texas, along with two rightwing media companies. These legal actions challenge the alleged collaboration between the Biden administration, the Global Engagement Center, and social media companies, showing it as a constitutional breach. Critics of Starbird’s and similar researchers’ work argue that labeling right-wing entities as primary purveyors of election lies is a biased approach that neglects the complexity of online discourse. They contend that such claims of misinformation often serve to silence dissenting voices rather than foster a balanced and open dialogue. According to The Guardian piece, Starbird’s shift in terminology from “misinformation” to “rumors” could be seen by some as a strategic move to distance her work from the increasingly politicized nature of the term but one that could be even more contentions. The idea that rumors should be policed isn’t likely to go over well with those that are already tired of online censorship. In a similar vein to The Guardian piece, in a New Year’s Eve [episode of “Face The Nation](https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2023/12/31/cbs-reporter-laments-protections-free-speech-prevent-censorship),” CBS’s Senior Business and Technology Correspondent Jo-Ling Kent took her time to criticize Elon Musk’s X for allowing free speech. Kent notably highlighted the limitations placed on censorship due to the “arguments and protections of free speech.” Kent criticized X for enabling figures like Alex Jones to regain a platform. “Elon Musk and his team have basically allowed the return of conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, and they’ve also dramatically reduced the size of their Trust and Safety team,” Kent stated. Kent also stated that, on platforms like Meta’s Facebook, “the reality here is that taking down all of this bad information has always been an impossible task on platforms of that size.” Despite describing it as impossible, Kent appears to suggest they should still try. As has always been the case, false information during an election cycle is often rife. But in the online world, where most speech runs through a handful of Big Tech giants, the power and control over online discourse that these companies have is immense. A handful of companies have the power to affect elections and the play of democracy itself. While even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the companies’ online censorship has been heavy-handed, and has resulted in truthful speech being suppressed, tech giants and largely legacy media outlets that once had a monopoly on information, continue to push for online censorship.
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The Associated Press (AP) used to be a reliable wire service – that provided actual news, stripped of opinion or interpretation, for news media to incorporate in their own reporting. But, things have changed. In a [piece](https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-misinformation-ai-social-media-trump-6119ee6f498db10603b3664e9ad3e87e) “warning” that deepfakes have gone “mainstream” the AP also manages to claim, right in the title, that social media “guardrails” are fading. Spoiler: the article’s call to action is basically, “We need (even) more censorship here.” The footnote to the piece is interesting. Usually, these are simply legal warnings, and other factual information – but here, the agency defines itself as one that “receives support from several private foundations.” For what purpose? “To enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy.” (The phrase, “explanatory coverage of democracy” doesn’t sound like not something George Orwell would edit out of his writing.) And now for, how one covers elections, and democracy, in an “explanatory” fashion. First, this is all about the 2024 US presidential ballot, although it starts off by mentioning the previous election. The January 6 riots, then what the authors term to be “false election conspiracy theories” (so – there true ones?) are there to frame the message about what must happen ahead of 2024. And, clearly, in order to help those now in power remain there. AP’s warning: however bad things were for democracy (from the pro-Biden point of view) the last time, they are now going to get worse. After all, hand-picked “experts” say so. There’s also an almost comedic moment in the article, when former President Trump – himself since 2016 the victim of the notion that “elections can’t be trusted” and many Democrats believing he is not a legitimately elected president and free to say so – accompanied by a fierce media campaign – is now accused as the one guilty of the trend. “Many Americans, egged on by former President Donald Trump, have continued to push the unsupported idea that elections throughout the U.S. can’t be trusted. A majority of Republicans (57%) believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president,” writes the AP. Then, there’s that fear of deepfakes as supposedly the be-all-end-all of what’s, in reality, an extremely complex election process – and in reality, that “fear” is there simply as a vehicle to force social media platforms to censor content even more ahead of the 2024 vote. “I expect a tsunami of misinformation. I can’t prove that. I hope to be proven wrong. But the ingredients are there, and I am completely terrified,” said University of Washington’s Oren Etzioni, unwittingly shooting the whole “anti deepfakes conspiracy theory,” right in the foot.
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Mobile communications giant T-Mobile has on the low [updated its terms of service](https://archive.ph/85QSl) to include fines if content runs afoul of its perceived violations of “hate speech and profanities.” For now at least – this applies to marketing texts (application to person, A2P – commercial and enterprise service), rather than individual consumers. For example, businesses and campaigns emailing you will be subjected to this type of scrutiny – not messages you send to friends and family. The changes, however, do come just as the campaign for next year’s election is heating up in the US. And people previously “burned” by this heat, and their opposition stance to the current US administration, are closely looking at development of this kind. The story right now is that starting January 1, T-Mobile has new rules for such users it has decided violate its rules, and therefore, bandwidth. The core of this [policy](https://web.archive.org/web/20231229072011/https://www.t-mobile.com/support/public-files/attachments/T-Mobile%20Code%20of%20Conduct.pdf) is something – somewhat unfortunately, too – dubbed, SHAFT – Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco.  And, the point seems to be to police messages sent via T-Mobile that are seen as being in violation of either legal – or “moral” issues, as the company sees fit. Now, there was originally confusion about what T-Mobile might quietly be up to. (As of right now, and for the time being) it is A2P traffic that might violate the top tier, “severity-0/Sev” = of the company’s violations rules. And that means, different tiers of violations that start if you want to use the operator for phishing, smishing, or social engineering – all of which incur “direct harm to individual users” – that fine would be $2,000. Then there’s tier 2: “$1,000, for illegal content (included content must be legal in all 50 states and federally).” Then we – start – coming to SHAFT. $500, please, if you violate – but not limited to – cannabis, marijuana, CBD, illegal prescriptions, and solicitation. Also profanity and “hate speech.” Apparently, companies such as T-Mobile think they have the right to start issuing fines to people now. One thing to keep in mind about T-Mobile’ SHAFT (rules), though it’s not quite well defined – is that they are in keeping with the nebulous concept of rules that other tech/telecoms companies have been adopting as of late. The question of how exactly that will be enforced (nevermind what it actually means) for the time remains unclear. But there is clearly the intent to live up to a certain political/ideological standard currently in place in the US.
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There are few things as jarring as a sitting US administration evoking the First Amendment (constitutional free speech protections) – while the purpose to all intents and purposes seems to be to actually undermine them. In such cases, the hypocrisy doesn’t simply whisper. Here, it screams. And there have been many such instances over the years. This is a new example: the Biden administration late last week approved the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the upcoming year. One – for an “authoritative democracy,” provisions was that the US Defense Department would not be allowed to contractually work with certain groups, [such as by now-infamous NewsGuard](https://reclaimthenet.org/free-speech-groups-call-on-congress-to-block-newsguard-funding), and the free-speech-trampling [Global Disinformation Index](https://reclaimthenet.org/biden-official-questioned-on-disinformation-blacklist) (GDI) – effectively out there working hard to silence opposition-leaning press in the US. But then, as soon as the 2024 NDAA was signed by Biden late last week, the somewhat erratic president – or whoever is… advising him – pushed a different story to the public. “While I am pleased to support the critical objectives of the NDAA, I note that certain provisions of the Act raise concerns,” reads a subsequent statement, [signed by Biden](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/12/22/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-h-r-2670-national-defense-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2024/). (… Is there a pilot to save this plane?) What is the argument here that the current administration might hope the electorate would be willing to swallow whole. This: the First Amendment allows for NewsGuard and GDI to keep doing their work. Now – you might be confused, and in need of some historical legal reassurance that this is all – alright. This is what the Biden-attributed statement chose: a George Soros case, formally by his Alliance for Open Society International. It, back in the day, ended with the Supreme Court deciding that the government “may not use funding and the threat of the loss of funding as a method for the regulation of speech and policies of non-governmental organizations.” What critics are saying is that this is an “argument” snaking and bending in around itself, for no purpose other than sustaining an unsustainable, vapid policy of (mis)nterpretations-upon-(mis)interpretation, and even lies-upon-lies. Preserve “the right to misinformation” – by invoking the legal prohibition not to misinform? When exactly did the US democracy become – such? That will be for historians to decide, but for the moment, here’s MRC Free Speech America Vice President [Dan Schneider’s verdict](https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/luis-cornelio/2023/12/27/not-so-fast-biden-signs-ndaa-calling-out-newsguard-then): “The US Constitution prohibits the government from censoring political speech; likewise government cannot collude with private companies to violate the First Amendment. Several courts already rebuked and ordered him to stop colluding with Big Tech. Congress has also stepped in to pass a law to force Biden to comply with the Constitution. It appears nothing will deter Biden from using government to silence his political opponents.”
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The dystopian world is teeming with twisted concepts; there’s things like “pre-crime,” and now, thanks to Reddit, there is also “post-guidance.” And even though the phrases use prefixes opposite in meaning, in yet another twist, they are meant to serve a fairly similar purpose. Reddit’s upcoming “post-guidance” feature, now being prototyped, uses a form of AI to censor content by flagging it for violating guidelines before it ever gets published. We learn this, and more about plans to (mis)use AI, from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, who also revealed in an interview that whatever the platform decides to consider bullying and hate speech will be dealt with with the same technology. According to Fast Company, all this is happening as [Reddit is reportedly](https://www.fastcompany.com/90997770/reddit-steve-huffman-interview-ai-ipo-2024) preparing for an IPO, and thus looking for ways to make itself more palatable to investors. It’s also indirectly indicative of a market that appreciates, if not requires, ever more censorship on big social platforms. Currently, Reddit has 70 million active daily users, and 50,000 moderators policing their posts. But going forward, that model will be “reinforced” with AI, specifically, large language models (LLMs). Huffman found an interesting way of putting a positive spin on this: he is essentially criticizing the droves of (overwhelmingly unpaid) moderators currently helping rein in Reddit users by suggesting they make mistakes, including by being “strict” and “esoteric” with their rules and implementation thereof- and claims AI can help with this. “Post guidance” is what Huffman is talking about, and the feature essentially warns a user about “accidentally” breaking the rules before their post is published and a moderator can see it. “The new user gets feedback, and the mod doesn’t have to deal with it,” he is quoted as saying. In reality, instead of supposedly helping those users “join the conversation,” a feature like this creates two levels of censorship. First is automated, and then whatever’s left is handled by moderators, who would be expected to be more efficient if they have less content to look at. But the end result would highly likely just be more censorship. Another thing Reddit is working on is incorporating AI in hunting down those breaking the rules “willfully” with “bullying” and “hate speech.” Regarding this, Huffman “expects progress” in 2024, the reports says.
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TikTok – the globally massively popular Chinese video app – has apparently decided to boost its “democratic” credibility by working with controversial and often proven as harmful to democracies fact-checking industry. And strategically in Taiwan, of all places. The island which broke away from China considers itself independent, but China and most of the world, including the US, does not recognize that, and there have been long-standing tensions between Taipei and Beijing. Now presidential elections are coming up in Taiwan, and TikTok’s “2024 Election Guide” names MyGoPen, which is based in Taiwan, as the “fact-checking partner” there. MyGoPen, in turn, is “certified” by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), founded by Florida-based Poynter Institute. TikTok may not be a Silicon Valley behemoth, but it is learning fast from its US counterparts, down to the corporate jargon: in explaining the decision, the company behind the platform said this is done in order to “protect election integrity” and also, provide “authoritative information” to users. Some [reports assume](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3246313/taiwan-elections-tiktok-teams-fact-checkers-stop-disinformation-site) that the move is supposed to “distance” TikTok from itself – namely, the fact it is a Chinese company – and criticism, particularly in the West, that comes with that. But when the full circle is completed here, TikTok pretty much ends up where it started, that is, with some suspiciously Chinese internet censorship-style solutions and methods – even if the intent seems to be to bolster whatever Taiwan’s Election Commission puts out there as fact. Namely, when TikTok users search for information about this election, or when they watch related videos, they will be “directed to the guide(lines).” Just like when Google and others of its kind direct users searching or viewing Covid-relevant content to the WHO, so TikTok will make sure to send its audience in Taiwan to the Central Election Commission (CEC). And then things get even more of a “mainland China flare” when the company announces that in addition, TikTok now has “a dedicated reporting channel for the CEC and the National Police Agency to flag content they believe may be in breach of any local electoral laws or our community guidelines.” But all this might actually, however objectively “problematic,” give TikTok some grace in the West, since the accusation is that “the island has faced a flood of disinformation reportedly from mainland China targeting mostly the ruling Democratic Progressive Party government,” as the South China Morning Post put it.
web.archive.org
The Canadian government has come up with an update (some observers call it a re-write) of the Online News Act, C-18, but do the “final touches” to this massively controversial law in fact represent improvement? The accompanying regulation adopted late last week – to dissuade Google from blocking search engine links in Canada – means that smaller outlets will be left out as most of the money goes towards big legacy, mainstream media. The twist in this legislative mess occurred late November when Google gave Canada’s government $100 million – to spend on “supporting” news outlets. This was interpreted by those who had supported the bill as a win. But the next development was Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge agreeing to changes to C-18 that the authorities previously for a long time rejected. And, given the losses already incurred by Facebook and Instagram, Google’s own costs, and other expenditure related to C-18 – what news outlets in Canada can realistically hope to benefit from from the $100 million “donation” is closer to $25 million in “new money.” It also seems that rather than just a case of a government that overplayed its hand in a game of poker with Big Tech and “big media” – and is now accepting what amounts to, at industry scale, a handout, this is also about the harm the law continues to represent to other media. Namely – cutting off their revenues from link traffic (and consequently ad money) coming from the likes of Google and Meta’s spawn of giant social media would have been bad. But now the money the government has been able to obtain from Google, in exchange for essentially backing down from its originally proclaimed ideas, is not that much – so the government backed down on another promise, namely, to keep out of how the new revenues (expected from the original C-18) are distributed. The authorities will now be directly involved – and the method means that those with less employees will benefit the least – to the point of some small outfits, including ethnic ones which were supposed to be propped up, not benefiting at all, while corporations take most of the money coming in.
web.archive.org
The new Donald Tusk-led Polish government has been accused of engaging in “a barbaric attack on freedom of speech and journalistic independence” after seizing control of the state broadcaster TVP Info, taking several of its channels off the air, and taking further punitive actions against other state broadcasters. In addition to taking over TVP Info and restricting some of its channels, Poland’s new ruling coalition also fired the heads of TVP Info, the public broadcaster Polskie Radio, and the state-run news agency Polish Press Agency. The TVP Info documentary series “Reset,” which explored Poland’s relations with Russia between 2007 and 2015 and the actions of former Polish governments during this time period, was also removed from TVP’s archive. Poland’s former ruling party, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, responded to the takeover of TVP Info by staging a sit-in protest at the state broadcaster’s headquarters. The new Polish government claimed that its moves against these broadcasters are part of an attempt to “depoliticise” them and accused the broadcasters of “carrying out propaganda tasks” in favor of the former government. However, members of Poland’s previous ruling party argued that the conservative slant of public media was needed to provide an alternative to Poland’s mostly liberal private media. Poland’s former prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, accused the new government of violating its “supposed care for the rule of law… at every step.” Jarosław Kaczyński, the former deputy prime minister of Poland and the leader of the Law and Justice Party, said: “There is no democracy without media pluralism, without strong anti-government media.” Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, also criticized the new government’s actions against these state broadcasters by stressing that “a political objective cannot be an excuse for violating or circumventing constitutional and statutory regulations.” Even critics of the Law and Justice (PiS) party have admitted that the new government’s moves against these state broadcasters are problematic. While the Tusk-led government is exercising control over TVP Info, the broadcaster is fighting back via its social media channels. It has been providing regular updates on the pushback against the government takeover of these media outlets on X. Additionally, TVP Info has uploaded the Reset documentary series to its YouTube channel. TVP World, an English-language news channel owned by TVP Info, condemned the Polish government’s actions on X. “Recent events conducted by the newly elected Polish government to illegally take control of TVP have left us speechless,” TVP World wrote. “Our channel and its website have been shut down with no reason provided, and our work is on hold.” According to TVP World, the Association of Polish Journalists (SDP) has also strongly criticized the government’s actions, describing them as “a barbaric attack on freedom of speech and journalistic independence.”
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The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently affirmed an injunction against federal agencies to stop the current White House from colluding with Big Tech’s social media. And now, the Biden Administration is going to the US Supreme Court in a last-ditch attempt to reverse this decision. The big picture effect – or at least, the intended meaning – of the Fifth Circuit ruling was to stop the government from working with Big Tech in censoring online content. There’s little surprise that this doesn’t sit well with that government, which now hopes that the federal appellate court’s decision can be overturned. The White House says the ruling is banning its “good” work done alongside social media to combat “misinformation”; instead of admitting its actions to amount to collusion with Big Tech – which has been amply documented now, not least by the Twitter Files – the government insists its actions are serving the public, and its “ability” to discuss relevant issues. We obtained a copy of the petition for you [here](https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/20231219192259919-23-411ts-Murthy.pdf) (PDF). US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is back again here – to say that what those now in power in the US (a message amplified by legacy media) did ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as well as subsequently regarding the pandemic “misinformation” – which is now fairly widely accepted to be censorship (“moderation”) – is what Murthy still calls, justified. By what, though? Because the appellate court’s ruling looked into the government’s “persuasive actions” (and no, you’re not reading a line from a gangster movie script, where “coercion” is spelled as, “urging”, etc.). In any case, the appellate court found these actions were in fact coercive and unconstitutional. Well, Murthy believes the court got it all wrong. The Fifth Circuit is accused of “improperly applying new and unprecedented” remedies. (No – he was not talking about the Covid vaccine(s). The reference was to the court’s allegedly flawed “legal theories”). Murthy and other administration representatives are telling the Supreme Court that what the Fifth Circuit found to be unconstitutional, was actually “lawful persuasive governmental actions.” The “grand” argument here is that, historically, US governments have been using free speech as a vehicle to promote their policies. And so – why would this case of “urging” Big Tech be any different? “The Biden administration’s urging of social media platforms to enforce their content moderation policies to combat misinformation and disinformation is no different,” the government said.
web.archive.org
Nothing says, “a great democracy” quite like an extremely controversial free speech-affecting legislative effort by a country’s government, does it? Unfortunately for Australians, and judging by reports, their current cabinet is now trying to convince the world that it is the caretaker of that kind of democracy – and, yet, at the same time, push through a bill of, well, that other kind. The “magic word” rears its ugly head again here – misinformation. That’s the centerpiece of [Australia’s Communications Minister Michelle Rowland‘s](https://reclaimthenet.org/michelle-rowland-tries-to-justify-new-censorship-law) plan for what could end up as her democracy and free speech takeover. Namely, Rowland, nicknamed by some as “minister for misinformation” – and, interpret that turn of phrase as you wish – is on record as saying that it will be her right and power of office to “direct the media watchdog to investigate instances of online misinformation.” And the misinformation we’re talking about here is delineated (to suit those who engineered the “definition” rather than be properly defined without bias) in a draft, referred to by critics as “censorship laws.” The bill in the works for some time now is meant to amend existing regulation so that it tackles misinformation better. In a June [letter](https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/one-of-the-world-s-greatest-democracies-peddles-horror-misinformation-bill/ar-AA1lmSBS) Rowland addressed to current Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese (another documents obtained thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request) she effectively states that the proposal, if eventually adopted, would make her the misinformation “tzar” (or tsarina, really). Writes Rowland: she would be given the power to “direct” the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to “commence investigations,” reports are now saying. ACMA, for its part, would be given the right to fine social media giants “millions of dollars” if their platforms are found guilty of misinformation and harmful content. And we know how it goes when Big Tech has to choose between saving money and just in general currying favor with government(s) – vs protecting free speech. The latter option virtually never wins. Nevertheless, Australia has managed to emerge from its shocking pandemic human rights and speech restrictions as still a democracy – at least as in, some people can speak out against what they consider to be wrong government policies. But even they have to be careful to incorporate “Russia and China” into their message. Thus, Joe de Bruyn, ex head of the largest private sector trade union in Australia, “shoppies union,” had this to say: “The faceless bureaucrats of the ACMA are to be empowered to restrict free speech in accordance with their own judgments on social media platforms.” And, even though this is clearly a problem Australia has with itself – he made sure to stress, “ordinary citizens will be muzzled (… it will) lead the nation down the path of Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China.”
reclaimthenet.org
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has rejected Starlink’s request for an $885 million subsidy, a decision that has sparked controversy, especially among its commissioners. Brendan Carr, an FCC Commissioner, has voiced a strong dissent, suggesting the decision is politically motivated and not based on objective legal, factual, or policy grounds. According to the FCC, “After reviewing all of the information submitted by Starlink, the Bureau ultimately concluded that Starlink had not shown that it was reasonably capable of fulfilling RDOF’s requirements to deploy a network of the scope, scale, and size required to serve the 642,925 model locations in 35 states for which it was the winning bidder.” The FCC also alleged that, “At the time of the Bureau’s decision, Starship had not yet been launched. Indeed, even as of today [i.e. over a year later], Starship has not yet had a successful launch; all of its attempted launches have failed. Based on Starlink’s previous assertions about its plans to launch its second-generation satellites via Starship, and the information that was available at the time, the [Wireline Competition] Bureau necessarily considered Starlink’s continuing inability to successfully launch the Starship rocket when making predictive judgment about its ability to meet its RDOF obligations.”  Carr asserts that the decision is part of a broader pattern of regulatory actions against Elon Musk’s businesses, particularly following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, his unfiltered political expressions, and his commitment to free speech. Carr references a statement by President Biden, suggesting a governmental inclination to scrutinize Musk. In November 2022, soon after Musk took the reins at Twitter (now X), [President Biden said the following](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/11/09/remarks-by-president-biden-in-press-conference-8/): “I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at. Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that it wor- — worth being looked at. And — and — but that’s all I’ll say.” Biden’s response came after being asked if Musk, and his purchase of Twitter, was a threat to national security, framed with the idea of involving money from Saudi Arabia. Carr observes that various federal agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Federal Aviation Administration, have launched investigations into Musk’s ventures. “The Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have all initiated investigations into Elon Musk or his businesses,” Carr wrote in his dissent. Carr argues that the FCC’s revocation of the $885 million award to Starlink, intended to provide high-speed internet service to over 640,000 rural homes and businesses across 35 states, defies any objective application of law, facts, or policy. He criticizes the FCC for creating and applying a new standard of review solely to Starlink, which he deems impossible for any entity to meet. According to Carr, Starlink has demonstrated that it is “reasonably capable” of fulfilling its commitment to provide high-speed internet service to the required locations by the end of 2025. He accuses the FCC of ignoring substantial evidence supporting Starlink’s capability and instead applying an irrelevant current speed test to evaluate Starlink’s future performance. Carr also points out a when he believes is a flaw in the FCC’s methodology, likening it to predicting the outcome of a NASCAR race based on the pace lap. He emphasizes that technological progress, especially in the case of Starlink’s Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite system, cannot be accurately assessed through simplistic measures. Moreover, Carr highlights the negative implications of the FCC’s decision on rural communities, which will remain on the wrong side of the digital divide. He also notes the financial impact on American taxpayers, as alternative solutions to bring high-speed internet to these areas would likely cost significantly more than the amount Starlink was awarded. Despite Carr’s dissent and the contentious nature of the FCC’s decision, the subsidy has been revoked, leaving the future of rural internet connectivity in these areas uncertain. Carr’s perspective frames the decision as a politically influenced move that overlooks the potential benefits of Starlink’s technology for underserved communities and highlights the broader implications of this decision within the context of the Biden administration’s regulatory approach. We obtained a copy of Carr’s dissent for you [here](https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/FCC-23-105A2.pdf) (PDF).
web.archive.org
The US Army has [announced](https://web.archive.org/web/20231206213341/https://ualr.edu/news/2023/11/27/agarwal-army/) a “combat” partnership (effective through 2025) with the publicly-funded University of Arkansas at Little Rock – and what they plan to “combat” together is none other than whatever is deemed to be online disinformation, but also, something defined as “cognitive threats.” And by that, they don’t mean all manner of government and formally or otherwise government-associated entities falling over themselves trying to pass off various forms of speech suppression and censorship as fighting “disinformation.” But there’s no denying that this, too, could fall under the definition of misinformation and cognitive threats offered here – namely, the goal is “to detect and combat bad actors online who are trying to manipulate how and what populations think.” But if an actor is perceived as “good” – does manipulating how and what populations (note the plural) think, then magically become a good thing? Sarcasm aside – the new initiative is backed with a grant worth $5 million. What the deal reveals is that more and more universities in the US are getting “hired” – whether by non-profits, or, again, the government – to work toward this goal via various dedicated research hubs. In UA Little Rock’s case it’s called the Collaboration for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) Research Center. Beside the US Army’s own Research Office, another key player in putting this project together was Senator John Boozman. “War is on the social media platforms,” is one of the comments cited in reports about this development, but curiously, it doesn’t come from a military representative but a budding academic with the COSMOS Research Center, graduate assistant Mano Har. UA Little Rock’s specific task here will be to develop a tool that will detect bots active on social media, and this tool will be web-based – but also based on the school apparently already using “AI” to harvest troves of data from social networks. It’s not exactly explained who’s responsible for the omnipresent algorithms’ biases being there in the first place – but now the new tool’s job will not be to get rid of them, rather, it is to “prevent those who would exploit the biases in algorithms to further narratives and agendas.” (Obviously, if they are classified as “bad” actors. “Good” actors may or may not be given a pass trying to accomplish that same task.)
reclaimthenet.org
Taking a firm stand against what some have called one of the most severe infringements on the US constitution’s First Amendment guarantees for freedom of speech and press freedom in the country’s history, the New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed a lawsuit to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on behalf of media outlets, The Daily Wire and The Federalist. The lawsuit is in association with the State of Texas and its Attorney General Ken Paxton. The group accuses the US State Department of a clear violation of First Amendment rights through the funding and promoting of the development, testing, and marketing of censorship technology used to quash conservative viewpoints. We obtained a copy of the complaint for you [here](https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/TheDailyWirevStateDept.pdf). (PDF) Organizations such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index are part of the web spun by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) to discredit and financially weaken select American media outlets. In an attempt to redirect audiences and advertisers toward favored perspectives, these government-sponsored tools are employed to suppress conservative news outlets including The Daily Wire and The Federalist. The NCLA continues to combat the government’s censorship drive through this case, and others such as Murthy v. Missouri, currently awaiting judgment at the Supreme Court, and Dressen v. Flaherty, which addresses the controversial joint venture between the federal government and Stanford Internet Observatory aiming to suppress online speech posted in non-public groups. These stand as integral milestones in NCLA’s fight against government censorship, asserting that such governmental strategies starkly disregard the Constitution, which firmly establishes Americans’ First Amendment rights. In a statement to Reclaim The Net, Peggy Little, Senior Litigation Counsel of NCLA said the following: “George Orwell, call your office: The Disinformation Governance Board is back! Worse, it was here all along quietly operating out of the State Department through three presidential administrations with the admitted intent of cutting off advertising dollars and viewership from conservative media outlets. Your State Department—which may only address foreign affairs—has been secretly scheming with and funding private companies to create blacklists of conservative media outlets to defund and silence speech with which it disagrees.” A spokesperson for The Daily Wire told Reclaim The Net in a statement; “We sued the Biden administration before over its unconstitutional vaccine mandate, and we won. This time, we’re suing for our rights, all news organizations’ rights, and the constitutional guarantee of a free press that all Americans deserve.” “We will not stop until this entire corrupt edifice has been torn down, brick by brick, and every single person involved has been held accountable,” said Mollie Hemingway, Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. “I am proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government,” said Texas Attorney General Paxton. “The State Department’s mission to obliterate the First Amendment is completely un-American. This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with.”
Around dinner time one night in July, a student in Albuquerque, New Mexico, googled “suicide prevention hotline.” They were automatically blocked. The student tried again, using their Albuquerque Public Schools district–issued laptop to search for "contact methods for suicide." Blocked. They were turned away again a few hours later when attempting to access a webpage on the federally-funded Suicide Prevention Resource Center. More than a dozen times that night, the student tried to access online mental health resources, and the district's web filter blocked their requests for help every time. In the following weeks, students and staff across Albuquerque tried and failed to reach crisis mental health resources on district computers. An eighth grader googled “suicide hotline” on their take-home laptop, a ninth grader looked up “suicide hotline number,” a high school counselor googled “who is a mandated reporter for suicide in New Mexico,” and another counselor at an elementary school tried to download a PDF of the district’s suicide prevention protocol. Blocked, blocked, blocked—all in a state with among the [highest](https://web.archive.org/web/20231205150515/https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/suicide.htm) [suicide rates](https://web.archive.org/web/20231205150515/https://ibis.doh.nm.gov/indicator/summary/SuicDeath.html) in the US. Thanks in large part to a two-decade-old federal anti-porn law, school districts across the US restrict what students see online using a patchwork of commercial web filters that block vast and often random swathes of the internet. Companies like GoGuardian and Blocksi—the two filters used in Albuquerque—govern students’ internet use in thousands of US school districts. As the national debate over school censorship focuses on controversial book-banning laws, a WIRED investigation reveals how these automated web filters can perpetuate dangerous censorship on an even greater scale. WIRED requested internet censorship records from 17 public school districts around the US, painting a picture of the widespread digital censorship taking place across the country. Our investigation focuses on Albuquerque Public Schools (APS), one of the largest school districts in the US, which provided the most complete look at its web-filtering systems. APS shared 36 gigabytes of district network logs covering January 2022 to August 21, 2023, offering an unprecedented look at the kinds of content blocked by US schools on a daily basis. Our analysis of more than 117 million censorship records confirms what students and civil rights advocates have long warned: Web filters are preventing kids from finding critical information about their health, identity, and the subjects they’re studying in class. “It’s just like another form of oppression,” Brooklynn Chavez, a senior at La Cueva High School in northeast Albuquerque, says of the district’s filters. “It’s like an awful kind of feeling.” It’s a problem that’s not going away. This summer, APS installed Blocksi web filters on all student and staff devices. According to our analysis and interviews with APS staff, the results seemed to be disastrous. During the nearly three months APS used the Blocksi filter, it blocked more than a million network requests a day, on average, including searches for mental and physical health services; words related to LGBTQ+, Black, and Hispanic communities; websites for local youth groups; thousands of student searches for harmless information; and tens of thousands of news articles. “It will basically shut down your internet,” Shellmarie Harris, director of educational technology at APS, says of Blocksi’s keyword filtering technology. “Kids, teachers will not be able to get into anything.” APS, which installed Blocksi in May, stopped using the filter on most of its devices in August due to its restrictiveness, Harris says, and returned to the GoGuardian filter it used before the switch. Our investigation raises questions about the appropriateness and implementation of GoGuardian's filter as well. In May, before the district switched to Blocksi, the GoGuardian filter blocked an eighth grader from searching for “suicide prevention.” It prevented a third grader from searching the word “latina” and a sixth grader from searching “black man.” When an 11th grader googled “Obergefell v. Hodges ruling,” instead of a list of websites with information about the landmark United States Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage, the student saw a gray screen with APS’s logo and the message: “Restricted. This website has been blocked by your administrator.” It is difficult to determine who exactly is responsible for a given content restriction. While APS administrators set the network policy for the entire district, individual teachers can also choose what to filter with GoGuardian—including whether to turn off the internet entirely for a particular student or class during a lesson, according to Harris. Outside of school hours, parents can also use the Blocksi and GoGuardian parent apps that APS provides to set their own restrictions on their kids’ school-issued devices. Blocksi did not respond to multiple requests for comment or answer detailed questions about censorship of APS web activity. Jeff Gordon, director of public relations for GoGuardian, tells WIRED, “GoGuardian regularly evaluates our website categorization to ensure, to the best of our ability, that legitimate educational sites are accessible to students by default.” He said more than 7,600 school districts use the company’s web filter and referred all questions about whether the blocked activity in Albuquerque was appropriately censored to the district. Sithara Subramanian, an 11th grader at La Cueva High School, says she began to run into her school’s GoGuardian filter on a regular basis around the time remote learning ended. “It got kind of intense when we went back to school, like educational websites were being blocked,” Subramanian says. The censorship has been particularly frustrating for her biology and anatomy studies. “It felt like they were trying to restrict our education rather than enhance it.” “My son says the filters make the internet useless,” Sarah Hooten, the mother of Henry, a 13-year-old former APS student, tells WIRED. Henry says that he couldn’t use YouTube to look up information for a report he was assigned about rainforests. “I know it’s partly to do with blocking kids from doing what they aren’t supposed to be doing,” Henry says. “But it’s also just the school not understanding what they are blocking.”
reclaimthenet.org
Remember Threads – the app launched by Meta (Instagram) as a Twitter clone, just as the legacy media were ramping up anti-Twitter (X) sentiment and hoping to sway users away from that platform? Some data shows that as many as 80 percent of those who initially signed up for Threads have in the meantime indeed forgotten about it, and new statements coming from the top Instagram exec might be a good reason for those who haven’t done it yet to stop using the app. Namely, Adam Mosseri believes that allowing Threads users to filter search results as they wish is a bad idea. This is seen by critics as effectively introducing yet another nuance of censorship. The logic, if any, behind it, is that the option to have access to search results sorted chronologically would “create a substantial safety loophole.” Not even a [Verge reporter](https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/1/23984884/seems-like-threads-wont-be-getting-chronological-search-results) was clear on what that explanation was even supposed to mean. So they quizzed Mosseri in the comments, and this is the “clarification” the Instagram boss offered: “Having a comprehensive list of *every* post with a specific word in chronological order inevitably means spammers and other bad actors pummel the view with content by simply adding the relevant words or tags.” It looks like a fine example of the need to adhere to certain “censorship standards” – and also, Meta’s inherent urge to do as little work as possible, for the most profit imaginable. In that same response, Mosseri pretty much admitted to that last point (or maybe both points), adding, “And before you ask why we don’t take down that bad content, understand there’s a lot more content that people don’t want to see than we can or should take down.” A bold statement about Meta knowing what “people don’t want to see” – and that even what they “shouldn’t take down” still needs to be removed. What not providing chronological search means is simple: Meta arbitrarily decides what is visible to users, rather than providing them with that’s relevant to their query. Mosseri for his part, in the same thread, manages to make things sound even worse: “You can show results in chronological order, but you then need to omit bad content that does not quote (sic; probably misspelling of, “quite”) cross the line and qualify to get taken down.” Translation: Meta and its major platforms (Facebook and Instagram) and even minor ones, like Threads, continue to censor even the content that their own rules and guidelines can’t quite accuse of crossing any lines that would warrant takedowns. This policy is not new. Mosseri says they do it because they “need to.” Who is making them? Hardly Meta’s own business instincts – and, hardly because people “don’t want to see” what they are actually searching for.
public.substack.com
A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the activities of an “anti-disinformation” group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CTI League documents offer the missing link answers to key questions not addressed in the Twitter Files and Facebook Files. Combined, they offer a comprehensive picture of the birth of the “anti-disinformation” sector, or what we have called the Censorship Industrial Complex. The whistleblower's documents describe everything from the genesis of modern digital censorship programs to the role of the military and intelligence agencies, partnerships with civil society organizations and commercial media, and the use of sock puppet accounts and other offensive techniques. "Lock your shit down," explains one document about creating "your spy disguise.” Another explains that while such activities overseas are "typically" done by "the CIA and NSA and the Department of Defense," censorship efforts "against Americans" have to be done using private partners because the government doesn't have the "legal authority." The whistleblower alleges that a leader of CTI League, a “former” British intelligence analyst, was “in the room” at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a "repeat of 2016."
reclaimthenet.org
Simon Harris, Ireland’s Education Minister, has raised alarms about what he suggests is the rampant spread of “disinformation” on social media, describing it as a significant threat to democracy. His concerns mirror those of Tánaiste Micheál Martin, particularly in light of the recent Dublin riots, where social media has been blamed for spreading “hate,” a notion that the government in Ireland is using as an excuse to call for more censorship online. The riots, characterized by violence and destruction, followed a stabbing by an immigrant citizen outside a north city center school, injuring three children and a woman. Harris, in his statement, specifically criticized Elon Musk’s X for its failure to censor certain speech. On RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Harris expressed his full agreement with the Tánaiste. “I think there is a very serious issue, not just in this country, but in western democracies now in relation to social media platforms, which I use, which I appreciate and which have great value – but also when wrongly used having an ability to spread disinformation and undermine democracy,” Harris said. According to [The Journal](https://www.thejournal.ie/simon-harris-disinformation-social-media-6233780-Nov2023/), he said that by early next year “there will be a ‘legally binding’ statutory online code in relation to the removal of information that is deemed to be disinformation.” As many politicians often do, Harris attempted to suggest that he supports free speech while calling for the censorship of “disinformation.” From the report: “The Minister said he would ‘absolutely defend’ the right to free speech, adding ‘it’s the cornerstone of all democracy.’ “What we’re talking about here is the spread of disinformation and the spread of hatred. And I simply wouldn’t be, nor would I wish to, but I wouldn’t be allowed to in this studio. The social media platform is a form of media, it is a media platform and therefore I think there are real legitimate questions around the rules that apply online,” he said.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has initiated legal action against Pfizer, claiming the pharmaceutical giant made deceptive statements about the effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine and pushed for online censorship of criticism. Paxton’s suit, filed on Thursday, accuses Pfizer of engaging in misleading marketing practices under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The suit contends that Pfizer exaggerated the ability of its vaccine to put an end to the COVID-19 pandemic and asserts that the company’s claims of 95 percent effectiveness were not entirely straightforward. We obtained a copy of the petition for you [here](https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/Pfizer-Vaccine-Petition-Filed.pdf). (PDF) Paxton’s lawsuit takes issue with the way Pfizer presented the results of its vaccine’s efficacy. More than 366 million doses of this vaccine were used in the US and efficacy analysis showed a 95 percent “effectiveness” rate 28 days following the initial dose. However, Paxton argues these results were attained through methods that were more technical and less genuine. Asserting the rights of Texans, Paxton’s statement emphasized seeking justice for those who felt compelled to use what he described as a “defective product,” which was marketed through falsehoods. Paxton sharply criticized the Biden Administration for exploiting the pandemic to impose what he considers illegal health mandates, enriching pharmaceutical companies in the process. He pledged to utilize every available tool to defend citizens who were misled and adversely affected by Pfizer’s conduct. The lawsuit enumerates five alleged infractions of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. It also accuses Pfizer of attempting to suppress dissenting voices on social media, specifically targeting former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member. The suit alleges Gottlieb was [involved in flagging](https://reclaimthenet.org/scott-gottlieb-flagged-alex-berenson-tweet-to-twitter) social media posts and accounts that challenged the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness, knowing these actions would have negative repercussions on those accounts. Paxton is demanding that Pfizer be prohibited from making any further claims about its vaccine’s efficacy and from collaborating with social media platforms to stifle open discussion about the vaccine. He is also seeking $10,000 in civil penalties for each violation and additional restitution.
reclaimthenet.org
Elon Musk has expressed strong disapproval towards major advertisers withdrawing their support from his social media platform, X. He accused these companies of attempting to coerce the platform and even risk its financial stability, bluntly telling them, “Go fuck yourself… Go. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear?” This backlash from advertisers like Disney, IBM, NBCUniversal, and Lionsgate came after activist groups called on giant corporations to pull advertising on X until the platform censors. At the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York, on Wednesday, Elon Musk spoke candidly about his turbulent year and his stance on being liked. Musk, unfazed by criticism, asserted, “Hate away. There’s a real weakness to wanting to be liked.” Musk, undeterred, expressed his indifference to advertisers’ withdrawal, stating boldly, “I don’t want them to advertise. If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money go fuck yourself. Hey, Bob if you’re in the audience,” Musk added, referring directly to Disney CEO Bob Iger. Musk also took criticism for supporting a post on X that many said was antisemitic – something Musk says he regrets. “I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me,” Musk said, calling it “one of the most foolish” things he’s done on the platform. X has taken legal action against Media Matters, accusing them of a malicious campaign against Musk and the platform, an allegation Media Matters dismisses as baseless.
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It has come to light that Moderna, a leading pharmaceutical company, just like it was [revealed of Pfizer earlier this year](https://reclaimthenet.org/pfizer-moderna-lobbyist-campaign-twitter-censorship), has been actively involved in monitoring and influencing vaccine-related narratives on social media and other platforms. This is being carried out through a collaboration with Public Good Projects (PGP), a non-profit organization funded by the drug industry, as well as former law enforcement and public health officials. PGP is intricately linked with social media platforms, government bodies, and news sites to identify and counteract the primary sources of vaccine hesitancy by rapidly targeting and neutralizing misinformation. As reported by [Jack Paulson for Lee Fang’s Substack](https://www.leefang.com/p/moderna-is-spying-on-you), an email from Moderna reveals the engagement of around 45,000 healthcare professionals who receive guidance on addressing misinformation when it becomes widespread. Moderna’s initiative, aimed at controlling public discourse, especially targets narratives that could weaken COVID-19 policies, including lockdowns and mass vaccination drives. This effort provides insight into the ongoing debates over free speech that have been a point of contention for the past three years. Moderna’s surveillance spans a broad spectrum of media outlets, including unconventional ones like Steam and Medium. The company also employs Talkwalker, which leverages its “Blue Silk” AI technology to oversee vaccine discussions on over 150 million websites globally. This surveillance extends to scrutinizing conversations about competitor vaccines and hesitancy towards vaccination. The team overseeing this operation is led by Nikki Rutman, head of Moderna’s global intelligence division and a former FBI analyst with nearly two decades of experience. Rutman’s involvement, along with other ex-law enforcement personnel, reflects a growing trend where government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are increasingly relying on social media platforms to influence content decisions under the guise of national security. Moderna’s relationship with PGP is especially notable. Funded by a significant donation from the Biotechnology and Innovation Organization, representing Pfizer and Moderna lobbyists, PGP maintains strong connections with government and media. PGP’s role in shaping social media content decisions became evident during their collaboration with Moderna on the “Stronger” program in 2021-22, which involved direct access to Twitter’s comprehensive data and influencing the platform’s pandemic-related speech policies. Get the full report by Jack Paulson over on Lee Fang’s Substack [here](https://www.leefang.com/p/moderna-is-spying-on-you).
therecord.media
Running an internet freedom organization in an authoritarian country is never easy, but for Roskomsvoboda, the past two years have been particularly difficult. Until Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Moscow-based nonprofit group experienced some inconveniences from the state but had managed to remain largely intact for nearly a decade. Those days are over. Russia has tightened its grip on the internet and expanded what is punishable by law. Those who oppose Kremlin censorship and dare to speak out can face fines, imprisonment or even jail time if their opinions are deemed too "harmful" to the regime. The “svoboda” portion of Roskomsvoboda’s name translates to “freedom.” The organization chose it as a mockery of Roskomnadzor, the state internet regulator notorious for its censorship initiatives and infringement on digital rights. Roskomsvoboda instead promotes the ideas of privacy and anonymity, access to information, openness of the state and public control over the digital activities of government agencies. Four of the organization's founders first tried to advocate for these ideas through politics, and even formed their own political party in 2009. It was never officially recognized. The founders quickly realized, however, that an important factor for any organization's survival was understanding the delicate balance between public service and activism. “If you don't position yourself as a political force [in Russia], you live longer,” said Stanislav Shakirov, a co-founder and technical director of the organization. Before the invasion, Roskomsvoboda tried to maintain a friendly relationship with the government. Its goal was to influence tech regulation and provide judicial assistance to those affected by censorship laws, rather than to fight the regime directly. All forms of cooperation now have come to an end. The Kremlin designated Roskomsvoboda as a “foreign agent” last December, subjecting it to additional audits, imposing judicial restrictions and prohibiting it from hosting public events, among other things. But the group still tries to exert influence. Nearly half of Roskomsvoboda’s members had to leave the country, and those who stayed are trying to avoid publicity to be safe. Two of the organization’s founders, who moved abroad and remain active online, agreed to tell Recorded Future News about the challenges of their work.
reclaimthenet.org
YouTube (Google) is yet another in a series of tech behemoths that feel the need to declare their stance on content, including its effective algorithmic manipulation, just as US primaries are ushering the country into another year of presidential elections. Beating around that bush – Google representatives now talk about processes, procedures, and tools of censorship of health-related information that, unfortunately, can easily be “repurposed” to serve other, for example, political ends. Much of the conversation rests on what Google wants to portray as its laurels from “the previous epidemic” – which too many people and creators see from a diametrically opposed point of view, as a dark time of nearly unbridled censorship and suppression of free speech. A video now published by Yahoo Finance reveals not only that Google has a “chief clinical officer,” but also how that officer, Michael Howell, sees the role of this super powerful tech corporation in determining what users are likely to see, see first, or see at all on a platform like YouTube. Howell, naturally, sees nothing wrong with this and even, to all intents and purposes, brags that YouTube is working to make sure legacy media have advantage over independent creators, and that the latter may easily face censorship. That’s the takeaway from his words, which he chose to phrase thus: YouTube works to “lift up high quality content, even as we work to lower, and make less prominent content that isn’t accurate or helpful to users.” The whole interview is positioned as an exploration of how “misinformation grows and spreads” supposedly in sync with the amount of content and the number of users. There is even the assertion made by Yahoo that medical sector “misinformation” is not only very present among users but also “in the broader medical community.”