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FOX Business' Kennedy discusses Twitter phasing out marks that signal verified accounts, the White House eyeing the ban of incandescent lights, a new survey highlighting couples' financial values and budget-friendly Easter traditions.

Elon Musk is denying accusations of censorship after he took aggressive measures to restrict the use of a competing platform on Twitter.

Twitter throttled the sharing of links to semi-competitor Substack on Friday, restricting users from liking, retweeting or otherwise sharing content from the platform.

Musk, who promised a freedom of speech-focused approach to the management of Twitter after taking over the company, has been accused of going back on his stated commitment to fairness on the platform.

TWITTER'S WILD RIDE UNDER ELON MUSK 1 YEAR LATER

"Of all things: I learned earlier today that Substack links were being blocked on this platform. When I asked why, I was told its a dispute over the new Substack Notes platform," independent journalist Matt Taibbi wrote Friday.

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., departs court in San Francisco, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023. (Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Taibbi previously collaborated with Musk to report on the infamous "Twitter Files" cache of communications between the old Twitter regime and the federal government.

Substack Notes is a new service being rolled out by the company that in many ways seeks to mimic the Twitter format.

SUBSTACK WRITER MATT TAIBBI SAYS IRS VISITED HIS HOME WHILE HE WAS TESTIFYING IN CONGRESS: CRUZ, MUSK WEIGH IN

Matt Taibbi, a journalist, testifies during the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing titled The Twitter Files, in Rayburn Building on Thursday, March 9, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The tech billionaire pushed back against Taibbi's accusations on Saturday, claiming, "Substack links were never blocked. Matts statement is false."

He continued, "Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted."

Musk also claimed Taibbi is an employee of Substack.

TWITTER VERIFICATION CHECKMARK REMOVES DISTINCTION BETWEEN 'LEGACY' VERIFIED ACCOUNTS AND PAID SUBSCRIBERS

The CEO of Substack, Chris Best, responded to Musk's comments, saying, "Substack links have been obviously severely throttled on Twitter. Anyone using the product can see this."

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., center, departs court in San Francisco, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023. (Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Regarding the accusations of Substack illicitly siphoning from Twitter's database, Best wrote, "We have used the Twitter API, for years, to help writers. We believe we're in compliance with the terms, but if they have any specific concerns we would love to know about them! We'd be happy to address any issues."

Best also disputed the claim that Taibbi is an employee of Substack, clarifying that the independent journalist has a publication on the site and makes money directly through his readership.

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It is not clear what is next for Twitter's treatment of Substack content on the platform while most interactions with posts containing Substack content are blocked and aggressively suppressed, users are still able to post links to the site.

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Twitter-Substack feud heats up as Elon Musk is accused of censorship - Fox Business

It all started in January this year, when, out of the blue, a completely new and unrelated clause was added as a postscript to the draft online gaming rules. The clause proposed that the Centres Press Information Bureau can flag and instruct online intermediaries if a piece of information online relating to the government was deemed as fake. Intermediaries would then have to act and take it down.

On Thursday, that proposal was notified by the Ministry of Electronics and IT. Though the reference to the PIB was removed in the final rules, with the government saying it will notify a fact-check unit, the spirit of the legislation remained the same.

As a consequence, online intermediaries social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and internet service providers like Airtel and Jio will be faced to make a key decision: whether to abide by the government fact-check units version of the truth and take down any content the unit labels as fake, or decide not to take the content down and risk facing litigation.

While the government is billing it as an important measure to curb some amount of misinformation on the Internet, critics are calling it a tool to widen the scope of online censorship in the country, asking the Centre to withdraw them.

Experts believe that the rules could potentially impact a range of stakeholders, including opposition political parties and journalists. Unsurprisingly, the Congress and several other Opposition parties, including the TMC, RJD and CPI(M), have come down heavily on the government over its decision. So have digital rights activists and press associations like the Editors Guild of India, which has called the rules draconian.

Studies have shown that misinformation is a big issue on every major social media platform. In many cases, it is the content that most often goes viral on these sites, thanks to their own algorithms, and users with varying motivations who share such information. But, these platforms have also become an important tool for people particularly from marginalised groups to exercise their right to free speech.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar has assured that the government-backed fact check body will work in a credible way, in a bid to address the concerns. When we notify the agency, we will certainly be very clear that any doubts in the mind of people that the power will be misused on behalf of the government will be addressed when we notify the agency. There will be a list of dos and donts that it will have to adhere to, he earlier told The Indian Express.

Unfortunately, there is a high probability that this will be used to suppress free speech and stifle criticism of the Union government, and its policies. This may happen today, tomorrow, or ten years in the future, but once there are rules/laws which can be misused, selectively enforced, they will, Prateek Waghre, policy director at the Internet Freedom Foundation told The Indian Express.

The issue at hand is complex. To break it down, it is first important to understand what these rules are not: these fresh amendments do not give the Centre direct powers to order content takedowns. It already enjoys that authority and exercises it frequently under Section 69 (A) of the IT Act, 2000.

However, what the rules say is that intermediaries will have to make reasonable efforts to not host content that will be marked as fake or false or misleading by the governments to-be-notified fact-check unit if they wish to retain their safe harbour, which is legal immunity from third-party content.

The question that arises then is if social media companies will exercise their agency to decide whether they should let a piece of content labelled fake by the government on their platform. If they do, they could lose safe harbour and attract a lawsuit; and if they dont, they will become party to a censorship exercise.

In plain English, it means that if they choose to continue hosting the content despite it being labelled as misleading, they will lose their safe harbour, which would open an option for the government to take them to court, an option that was previously unavailable. Digital rights experts believe that social media companies will err on the side of caution.

Namrata Maheshwari, Asia Pacific policy counsel for the global rights body Access Now said that if platforms have to make the choice between removing content flagged by the government, and being taken to court, they are most likely to choose the former. Litigation, and potentially several cases in multiple courts, would simply be too resource-intensive and high-risk. For its part, the government has tried to circumvent the concerns by saying that the fact-check body will follow a list of d0s and donts and adhere to standards of fact-checking. The standards, however, are currently not known.

There is also a concern around the government changing course on different provisions in the same law. Earlier this year, it established three committees that would hear appeals filed by users of social media companies if they feel that their grievances have not been satisfactorily dealt with by the companies officials.

The idea here was that not everyone might have the option to go to court to challenge content moderation decisions taken by platforms, and hence there needs to be a forum which can offer an additional avenue of recourse to users. But the new rules point to a dichotomy. For government-branded misleading content that has been taken down by a platform, the entity or person who posted it will have no option but to go to court should she decide to appeal the result. There is no in-between.

If a court challenge is the only recourse available to aggrieved parties, then the net result of this amendment is that it has given the government a shortcut to take content down, while increasing the burden on potentially aggrieved parties, Waghre said.

The overarching question around the new rules is if the government should, and can, be the judge, jury and executioner. The governments argument is that since the rules concern misinformation around businesses of the Centre, it is the most well placed to take a call on content that relates to it, since only it has the right data to prove its case.

Critics have, however, pointed to a potential conflict of interest that might arise when a government-appointed body has the final say in information directly related to the government. The independence of the body had been called into question.

for a fact-checking setup to be credible, it must be independent, possess the necessary capacity (technical, journalistic, etc.) to verify information, have an established track-record, and most importantly, not have a conflict of interest about the accuracy of the content it is supposed to vet, Waghre said.

The claim that only the government has the data to prove whether information about it is true or false reflects the need for it to be more open, transparent, objective in its own assessments about its performance so that these determinations can be made independently, he added.

Read more:
Govt says fact-check body to curb misinformation, critics allege censorship - The Indian Express

Books

Opponents say memoir The Courage to Be Free, published in February, violates law governor signed last year

Democrats in Florida are attempting to use a state law that censors books in public schools against the governor who signed it, Ron DeSantis, by asking schools to review or ban the Republican governors own book, The Courage to Be Free.

The very trap he set for others is the one that he set for himself, Fentrice Driskell, the Democratic minority leader in the Florida statehouse, told the Daily Beast.

DeSantis published The Courage to Be Free in February, in what was widely seen as an opening shot in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. He has said he wrote the book himself.

Seeking to compete with Donald Trump who enjoys convincing leads in polling DeSantis has established himself as a ruthless culture warrior, willing to use government power against opposing interests and viewpoints.

He signed the law regarding books in schools last year. It includes guidelines for content deemed inappropriate on grounds of race, sexuality, gender and depictions of violence.

But the law has run into problems over interpretations of its language, not least when a childrens book about Roberto Clemente, a baseball legend who faced racial discrimination, landed at the centre of national controversy.

Seeking to take advantage of such uncertainties, Florida Democrats are highlighting instances of language in DeSantiss book which they contend could violate his own guidelines.

As reported by the Beast, in The Courage to Be Free, DeSantis use[s] the terms woke and gender ideology 46 times and 10 times respectively, both of which could constitute divisive concepts the governor has argued should stay out of curricula up to the college level.

DeSantis also claims students have been forced to chant to the Aztec god of human sacrifice and, as well as describing violence at Black Lives Matter protests, cites a video showing dead black children, dramatically warning about racist police and state-sanctioned violence.

DeSantis also describes the 2017 mass shooting at congressional baseball practice in which Steve Scalise, a senior Republican, was seriously wounded.

Such passages, Democrats contend (in what the Florida publisher Peter Schorsch called a clever bit of trolling), could fall foul of the governors own rules.

According to the Beast, only one school district initially responded to Democrats complaints. Marion county, near Orlando, said no public school there possessed the governors book.

Driskell told the Beast: Were leaning into one of [DeSantiss] weaknesses.

If America doesnt want Floridas present reality to become Americas future reality, people need to know what its like here. This is our way of fighting back, but also highlighting how ridiculous some of this becomes, right?

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Democrats bid to use censorship law against DeSantis and ban his book - The Guardian

It was intriguing to read the commentary, The governments censorship by proxy appearing as an opinion column by Jacob Sullum in the March 28 edition. Although the column asserted that there is evidence of government collusion in public censorship, I believe that assertion is still unproven, while admittedly compelling.

Apparently I suffered a perplexing example of related censorship described in that commentary. Over the past 90 days on behalf of the Center for a Sustainable Coast I have been posting and attempting to promote articles prioritizing clean energy and reducing carbon emissions as a means to rapidly curb climate change.

When attempting to boost these posts by paying Facebook to push the information out to other FB users, the Meta Ad Center repeatedly refused to allow me to do it, advising that Im not approved to receive ad support for endorsing political (government) policy. How commonly Facebook administrators prohibit ads promoting well-founded public policy reforms remain unknown. In any case, restricting this use of social media unjustifiably handicaps well-meaning. nonprofit advocacy groups that are seeking to serve the common good.

Consider the blatantly biased and repressive contradiction that the 2010 Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision sanctions billions in corporate spending on political and policy campaigns by classifying it as constitutionally protected free speech, while modestly priced Facebook ads promoting policy reforms are being prohibited.

When online platform providers like Meta unfairly impede the responsible use of social media, a gag-order effect results, favoring corporate agendas by thwarting opposing viewpoints thereby hiding and cultivating inconvenient truths.

Center for a Sustainable Coast

Original post:
Censorship by subversive means | Letters to the Editor ... - Brunswick News

India

Canadian politician, poet, an India MP and journalists are among 120 accounts that have been withheld

Yashraj Sharma in Srinagar

Twitter has been accused of bowing to government pressure in India by blocking scores of prominent journalists, politicians and activists from its platform in recent weeks.

The Indian government issued notices to Twitter to remove people in the aftermath of an internet shutdown in Punjab during the search for a fugitive Sikh separatist leader.

Twitter agreed to block more than 120 accounts, including the Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh, the Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, several journalists and an Indian MP. Twitter also blocked the handle of the BBCs Punjabi bureau.

Jaskaran Sandhu, the Toronto-based co-founder of Baaz News, an outlet focused on the Sikh diaspora, received an email from Twitter on 21 March that said his account had been withheld in India. In the email, seen by the Guardian, no specific tweet or activity by Sandhu was cited by Twitter for its action.

The Indian government has made it a norm to take draconian measures and crack down on dissent coming from Sikh or other minority communities, Sandhu said. Twitters actions are just another example [that imply] civil liberties and democratic rights are under attack.

My entire account, not any tweet, has been banned in India. It is blanket censorship. And there is absolute silence from Twitter on this.

Freedom House, a US-based nonprofit organisation, has accused the prime minister Narendra Modis government of driving India toward authoritarianism and in 2021 downgraded Indias status from free to partly free.

India, the third-largest market for Twitter after the US and Japan, is proving to be one of its biggest challenges. Responding to a tweet about censorship in India, Elon Musk, who completed a takeover of Twitter in October and calls himself a free speech absolutist, tweeted: It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things.

Social media platforms including Twitter had been seen as one of the remaining avenues for Indian people to express dissent, after traditional media houses largely caved in to pressure from the government to toe its line.

Twitter sued the government in July over takedown orders, after the government introduced legislation in 2021 aimed at regulating every form of digital content, including online news, social media, and streaming platforms and empowering itself to remove content it deemed objectionable.

Prateek Waghre, the policy director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, said much of the content being withheld was reportage that did not portray the government in a positive light. There is no contention. It is just absurd, he added.

Since his takeover, Musk has reportedly slashed Twitters workforce by 90% in India. There is a question if Twitter still has people to vet these requests, Waghre said. The question is also on the willingness of a pushback, which has certainly reduced [since Musk takeover].

Raqib Hameed Naik, the founder of Hindutva Watch, a US-based site that tracks hate crimes in India, described the situation as very grim.

Big tech has completely surrendered to the authoritarian regime of PM Narendra Modi, he said. Twitters conduct in India sets a worrying trend of silencing media, critics and dissenters worldwide.

Sandhu said he was not optimistic about Indias ability to uphold minimal requirements for a healthy democracy, describing the system as rotten to the core.

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Twitter accused of censorship in India as it blocks Modi critics - The Guardian