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Ron Moore| St. John News

My cousin Robin shared a video from Nurse Nicole Whitley on Facebook. I thought it had some good information so I shared it. Soon after that, Facebook shut down the video and wrote on the post, "False information. Check by independent fact-checkers". I decided to read what the fact-checkers had to say.

First they said that Nurse Whitley didn't show any proof that she was a nurse. What proof do we have that says that these fact-checkers are who they say they are? We are to take their word that they have a degree in fact-checking.

The fact-checker next wrote that Nurse Whitley video was first released on Dr. Sebastian Gorka Facebook page. What does this have to do with the video? Dr. Gorda was a military and intelligence analyst who served as Deputy Assistant to President Trump. Those independent fact-checkers have a bias and hate for President Trump and anyone who worked with and for him. Now you can see where this is heading.

Nurse Whitley said that Ivermetcin, a drug that is safe and highly effective, can not be found in the US. This is a preventive drug and my daughter asked her doctor about it and was told that if they could get it, it would be months away. Maybe Nurse Whitley knows something.

She showed charts and graphs where the drug was administered in areas of Peru. The number of cases were reduced drastically from other areas that didn't use the drug. The fact-checkers said this was a purely correlation observation, and correlation alone doesn't mean that there is a casual relationship between the two.

They went on to say that Nurse Whitley failed to account for other factors, such as lock downs, mask wearing, and physical distancing. Where are the facts that this had happened? This is a correlation on their part that they believe is right.

Nurse Whitley went on to say that the PCR test is unreliable. It is a sensitivity test where they can set cycle thresholds in order to detect the presence or absence of a virus. The creator of the PCR test said that this is not a diagnostic and not to be used for that and yet, they are.

The fact-checkers said that this test doesn't have a false positive and if it is, it's possible that it was contaminated by other samples with the virus during the handling. I wonder if Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh thinks the test is accurate? He tested positive and isn't showing any signs of illness. His family tested negative. Have you seen the Cologuard commercial? They always mention there could be a false positive result. You don't think that the scientists didn't try to make a perfect test?

Nurse Whitley then said on January 20th, inauguration day this year, the World Health Organization reduced the testing cycle. I remember hearing that it went from 50 cycles to 30 cycles. According to my own research offact-checkers, this did not happen. It was in a blog by virologist Ian Mackay. He reminded the laboratory staff to read the instructions and understand the purpose of testing. Do you remember hearing this last January?

I could go on with more about fact-checking but this isn't about the facts. It's about censorship. They are nothing but a very biased group of people that will censor you if you don't believe what they do. It's not happening only on Facebook but innewspapers as well. Many of the large conglomerate holdingswill use the fact-checker or sensitivity groupsto keep articles out of print that don't agree with their perspective. It has happened and it will continue.

I wonder if this article will make it out to the public. Let me know if you see it!

* Ron Moore is an over-the-road truck driver based in Stafford County, Kansas. He is a grandfather, husband, rural community supporter and writer.

Read more:
One from the road: Fact-checking on Facebook - who is the authority and why? - Pratt Tribune

A house bill that passed this spring is now coming under fire by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over concerns it censors some topics in public schools.

When House Bill 1775 went into emergency effect this summer, it was unclear what impact the legislation would have on Oklahoma classrooms.

The bill was passed along party lines by Republican lawmakers who sought to limit conversations about race or gender at public schools.

Now the ACLU cites specific examples in its lawsuit against the state saying the broad language in the law chills free speech and violates the states education standards.

The harm is coming from how broadly the bill is written, how confusing the language is, and how steep some of the consequences are for violating that very broad language, said Megan Lambert, ACLU of Oklahoma Legal Director.

Lambert said educators are removing content on race and gender out of an abundance of caution, because community members can have their credentials pulled for violating the law, through a complaint process thats open to the public.

Edmond Public Schools is named in the suit for cancelling diversity trainings and changing its booklist to follow guidance from the bill.

The district removed books by women and Black authors, like To Kill A Mockingbird, A Raisin In The Sun, Their Eyes Are Watching God, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas.

Anthony Crawford, an English teacher at Millwood Public Schools,is one of the plaintiffs. He said the law is unclear to teachers and contradicts the Oklahoma Education Standards.

Everything they are telling us we cannot teach is in the Oklahoma Standards, he said.

Crawford said he is concerned about the harsh penalties to teachers.

I was scared. Im not going to lie to you. I was petrified, I got a daughter on the way, so I was really scared, he said.

But, without being able to teach about themes like systemic racism or diversity, he said students will be unprepared as adults.

Without that piece of information, without that history, then they will go into the real world blindsided, Crawford said.

At the Capitol, some are standing by the law.

Secretary of Education Ryan Walters said in a statement the bill ensures students are taught an honest depiction of the past and knows teachers can teach that without prejudging those who are responsible for our future.

There were several other states that passed similar bills during spring of 2021 seeking to ban a concept called critical race theory, even though the concept isn't taught in K-12 schools or well-defined in K-12 settings.

The ACLU said Oklahoma's restrictions are the most severe.

Read the complaint in full below.

Read the rest here:
Oklahoma Sued By ACLU Over Concerns Of Censorship On Critical Race Theory Topics - news9.com KWTV

Amnesty International has released a report documenting how the pandemic affected freedom of expression and the impact of misinformation.

According to its findings, some countries have used censorship and punishment to reduce the quality and quantity of information reaching the public domain, thus damaging people's ability to understand how to deal with COVID-19.

Speaking to Euronews, Amnesty International researcher on human rights defenders Lisa Maracani said COVID-19 only aggravated a problem that had existed for years.

"We know that there is a shrinking civic space all around the world. This has been going on for years. But I think the pandemic precipitated this process," Maracani said.

She urged lawmakers to do more to regulate social media, pointing to their responsibility in spreading misinformation.

"We need digital regulations on them, and this can be done by looking at how they operate and their business model and how that algorithm functions because they are driving a certain type of information that is damaging," she told Euronews.

Maracani believes governments have enacted free speech restrictions that were unnecessary.

"We want states to stop going after people sharing information, going after journalists, going after human rights defenders. They really need to step back from that sort of censorship," the researcher said.

Watch the full interview in the video player above

Read the original here:
Amnesty report reveals use of censorship to reduce quality of public information - Euronews

Viktor Tron is the founder and team lead of the Ethereum Swarm project. The Swarm project aims to provide an infrastructure for a global digital society. Tron: Decentralized storage is needed for the future of the internet. He also shared insights about the inner workings of Swarm, its strong points, and how the project is crucial for the future of decentralization. Swarm requires payment for the retrieval, upload and storage of content, and allows users to share their data with advertisers in the process of earning income.

Under the guise of "stopping health misinformation," online censorship has increased throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

Big tech companies like Facebook and Google are censoring a wide range of information from being published and shared on social media channels like Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook.

Social media companies have accumulated unprecedented power, and their lack of transparency and integrity as gatekeepers of information is worrying.

As we continue to spend more of our time online, either working remotely or consuming content, the need for freedom of expression on the internet is crucial.

At the forefront of the shift from digital supremacy to a more democratized landscape stands Blockchain technology, a crucial element that has impacted countless industries. Cryptocurrencies are not only changing finance, they are also allowing decentralized incentive models to surge, leveling the playing field between large corporations and common people.

I spoke with Viktor Tron, founder and team lead of the Ethereum Swarm project. Having been involved with the Ethereum foundation at its early stages, Viktor kick-started his career early on and is recognized by his peers as a computer programming expert. During the interview, Viktor walks us through his personal journey and professional career. He also shared insights about the inner workings of Swarm, its strong points, and how the project is crucial for the future of the decentralized internet.

Decentralized storage is needed to provide an infrastructure for a global digital society. Lets start from the viewpoint of a future social ideal.

More and more these days, economic activity is based on data. The impact of this economic shift into digitized data and data transmission will increase the demand and prevalence of infrastructure solutions.

In a global digital society, data and content will be persistent and readily available for anyone and at any point in time. Blockchain and other decentralized solutions will ensure data will remain constant.

Another upside of decentralized storage is that data becomes permissionless, accessible to anyone, and uncensorable, meaning no gatekeepers decide which content can or cannot be uploaded to the network.

Infrastructure that tracks the origins and aggregation of data is also crucial for the future of a global digital society. Decentralized systems, like the one Swarm is building, are ideal and provide all the necessary requirements for this kind of society. But in order to understand a little better, lets take a step back.

Since the early rise of the internet, it became clear that there was a huge demand for the democratization of content and free flow of information. Before that, publishing content was a huge bottleneck, as there were several intermediaries and restrictions one would have to go through.

The same that happened with content and data is now happening in the world of finance.

Thanks to the blockchain, the bottleneck for transacting value has been severely diminished by cutting out banking institutions and other middlemen.

The problem was, as access to publishing was open to anyone, the prevalent server-client infrastructure made it impossible for content creators to scale. Nowadays, big corporations have made scaling possible through solutions like cloud storage.

Also, the content publication is somehow left void if the publisher does not provide easy access to consumers. In order to be discovered, data must be searchable and present in diverse platforms, including search engines, social media channels, and content aggregators.

Unified service companies like Google provide both the infrastructure and platform services, handling both the storage and distribution of data all in one place. However, a big problem arose when these large unified companies, like Facebook, started to own users' data.

In the Web 2.0 phase, several big tech companies realized that user profiling, together with tracking online behavior, provided a way more lucrative value proposition than selling the platform features.

One of Swarms strongest propositions and selling points is that it puts the settlement and accounting of data back in the base layer infrastructure, where it belongs originally. To put in less technical terms, Swarm requires payment for the retrieval, upload, and storage of content.

Swarm will also allow users to share their data with advertisers directly, earning income in the process. The cost of these services is settled in a transparent way.

It is also important to mention that decentralization systems are superior in many ways. It makes the components of the system homogenous and thus easily replaceable. In turn, centralized systems have several bottleneck issues and are vulnerable to censorship, server downtimes, and single points of failure.

I would have to say that if there is mass adoption of Swarm, it's a great indicator that there arent any major problems. Instead, I believe Swarms toughest challenges will be faced on the way towards reaching mass adoption.

The largest hurdle will be educating people on why they should pay for content they are currently getting for free. Users will first need to be convinced about the advantages of Swarm. Alternatively, decentralized systems which are advertisement-based can help users have access to content for free as long as they share their data.

Of course, there are other challenges as well. The project is still in its infancy, and we are currently faced with scalability issues, which, until solved, will prevent the mass adoption of Swarm. We must make gradual progress, reaching new developers and creating new tools for users.

A: I usually say what sets Swarm apart from Filecoin, for example, is twofold. The first is that, in Swam, the storage model is directly distributed.

In systems like BitTorrent and IPFS, users become part of the network by sharing whatever content is on their hard drives, which will be made available for anyone to download.

In Swarm, however, users store only the data that the network tells them to. When you open your storage, specific tasks are assigned to you and you must serve chunks of data belonging to your neighborhood. In other words, you become a node operator and take responsibility for a partition of the network.

Users can also contribute to the network by sharing hard drive space for forwarding messages or sharing bandwidth. Users are always compensated for any contribution they make to the network, receiving tokens in the process.

The financial incentive is designed to convince more people to join the network. And once more and more people join a decentralized network as contributors, it becomes more resilient and cheaper to use.

The second reason Swarm is different is that it is a much stronger affiliation towards confidentiality, which allows for anonymous browsing and very strong messaging and privacy features.

They will only get paid for uploading content that users want to see and access. The incentive system also provides a fair distribution of storage revenue for contributors, balancing itself through automatic price setting and careful incentivization. Prices change according to supply and demand.

Swarms vision is to provide a comprehensive backend for the decentralized web. To give all the tools from the server-side, thus giving programmers all the components necessary to create interactive applications, such as decentralized database banking and data aggregation.

Thats a funny question because I was initially involved in the early-stage development of Ethereum. Swarm is at the forefront right now, but it started quite a while ago, just like Ethereum.

The choice to use Ethereum was due to the fact that there were no other viable options back when Swarm started. However, I still consider Ethereum my blockchain of choice and the most complete smart contract ecosystem.

Swarm actually started as a subproject of the Ethereum foundation, but we have become independent since then. In its conceptual structure, Swarm is blockchain agnostic. This means that Swarm can be implemented into any network, and our development team has plans to integrate cross-chain compatibility into our incentivization structure.

However, at this current stage, Swarm can not function without Ethereum. The code was written to be compatible with Ethereum, and significant changes would be needed in order to function without it.

There is definitely long-term viability of adopting other networks. Especially if these other networks support similar language or EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), which makes the process of translating code much easier.

An important thing to note is that having long-term storage is, most of the time, a real pain in the ass for token volatility. Storage services are negotiated and placed into contracts, meaning that both parties commit to a specific price beforehand.

The contracts then require users and operators to have a good model that carefully calculates the price of storage years into the future. If you mispredict the future, it can cost you.

However, Swarm has an automatic price mechanism so users wont need to worry so much about the volatility of BZZ. In other words, the network is responsive to price changes and the price of storage services is kept low due to the competitive landscape.

The two can co-exist and complement each other. Some services are better suited for centralized systems while others are a perfect fit for decentralized infrastructures like the blockchain.

Certain server base solutions will remain in use due to being technologically superior in certain aspects. But in the future, storage will no longer be dependent on any companies, but rather on the incentive system that keeps decentralized networks running.

Lets look at the example of flight aggregators like Momondo and Skyscanner. This type of business model can actually benefit from leveraging both centralized and decentralized systems.

By having flight aggregators on Swarm, users will be able to transparently verify the authenticity of any flight offer. The system will be trustless, meaning users wont have to worry about the reputation of the traveling agencies.

However, some of these services may suffer from latency challenges due to the nature of redundant storage. Therefore, in order to not compromise the speed of the services, flight aggregators might still elect to use centralized solutions in conjunction with blockchain technology.

Generally say that its not worth making distinctions between these solutions. Usually, the perceived stability and resilience of the individual projects are what count the most. However, long-term aspirations are also important.

Our modular solution is meant to make Swarm viable in the long term. It also makes work easier to coordinate, facilitating the creation of much more complex features.

Its also worth mentioning that web 3.0 is a paradigm. Its currently in a position equal to most 2.0 solutions, which will assist Swarm and promote decentralization.

As for the features that set Swarm aside, these include being a full cloud solution, having strong privacy features and a solid incentive system, which takes care of prices automatically through supply and demand.

In a way, companies are also people. So, Im not sure I agree with this distinction, especially since the premise behind decentralized systems is to break down barriers of entry and any type of discrepancy between network participants.

Of course, Swarm is built with end-users in mind, be it companies or individuals. However, since Swarm is a base layer infrastructure, built with a large focus on fair and incentivized data distribution, its main target group is developers.

Its hard to say when my professional career started. I believe in personal integrity, in my life, there isnt much separation between work and non-work activities.

In other words, the lines between the personal and professional have become blurred. I also share the opinion that its inefficient to make strong distinctions between work and life, and people who do that usually do not enjoy their work.

Years later I started to get heavily involved with the study of mathematics and linguistics, which led to aspirations of becoming a teacher. I then started a career in linguistics research and moved more and more to natural language processing and speech technology. I had the privilege of making contributions to Siri and Swipe.

Afterward, I gradually shifted towards being more of a computer guy. I started working as a programmer for several projects, including a semantic web-based portal for the BBC.

I then got involved in crypto, and it didnt take for me to get fully immersed. When I discovered Ethereum I was completely blown away, which ultimately led me to drop everything else to become the first paid employee of the Ethereum foundation.

Within the foundation, Swarm emerged as a promising project, part of the holy trinity that aimed to completely decentralize the internet. The holy trinity included Ethereum, as the CPU, Swarm, as the hard drive for storing data, and Whisper, as the decentralized messaging protocol.

As time passed, Whisper started to lose relevance and Swarm took its place. Expanding its mission to offer a complete blockchain-based solution, Swarm allows interactive global applications to run in the decentralized web.

Since Swarm parted ways from the Ethereum foundation, it has grown immensely. We now have between 40 to 50 paid employees and contributors. Its worth mentioning that Swarm is not just my idea. Its father is Daniel Nagy, who is a long time friend of mine and colleague since the beginnings of my career in the Ethereum foundation.

I have been working on Swarm 24/7 for the last 7 years. I am extremely pleased with the release of mainnet 1.2, as it represents one of the greatest achievements in my career.

If we take the whole decentralized paradigm into account, Swarm can be a major social impactor.

Todays trend is basically to achieve global free data. A global planetary consciousness where there is unimpeded and uncensorable interaction between people. I trust that any voluntary and informed transaction between individuals will lead to value creation. Thus, by maximizing interaction between people we are, in fact, contributing to a better world.

Therefore, any infrastructure solution that prevents obstacles to interaction, be it impeding regulation, intermediaries, or monopolistic corporations, will be highly beneficial for humanity. I believe platforms like Swarm, which breaks down the barriers for social interaction and value creation, are the next evolutionary step after the internet provided free access to information.

Now it's the time to have coordination, free economic interaction, and consensual standards to emerge. I believe decentralized solutions can help bring a new era of prosperity, and thats why I am optimistic about the future.

The author does not have any vested interest in the projects mentioned above.

The opinions in this article belong to the author alone. Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before making any investment decisions.

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The Future of the Internet: Privacy, Censorship, and Equality - hackernoon.com

(Thumbnail photo credit: The Philippine Daily Inquirer)

National Artist Francisco Sionil Jose disses Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa and says there is no censorship in the time of Duterte. Jose has been making loquacious claims lately without basis (like when he said no media station was closed by Duterte). But I have a story to tell from the first-person perspective. The Philippine Daily Inquirer had censored me.

Ten opinion columns of mine never saw print in the Inquirer online edition, even though they were published in the broadsheet edition. When one is published in print but not online, it means the article cannot be shared digitally in social media, which had become the most common way of ensuring the widest-possible readership.

One can only understand the reason behind the censorship: political umbrage. It was used as a tool to prevent criticism against influential political figures.

For sure, there were alternative platforms to share the censored article online. To the consternation perhaps of Inquirer.net, friends and colleagues in the Inquirer Opinion page made sure I had the printed article shared in social media.

Even as the censorship was effectively challenged by the articles posting in in social media, Inquirer.net never cared. Two weeks later, another article was censored, and so forth and so on. The pattern was predictable. It was designed for one to break down and stop writing.

In the beginning, one would think it was simply clerical error. One, of course, seeks recourse from the opinion editor. The opinion editor was new and had accepted that position despite not having a personality of approachability (Dont ask me because that's beyond my pay grade).

Before the chairman of the board could compose a coherent answer for the opinion editor to relay to me, the papers insiders had already given me, albeit secretly, the reason: Inquirer.net had a standing editorial policy not to publish anything unfavorable to Bongbong Marcos and Bong Go. The policy apparently affected even news stories which had to show a favorable slant. In fact, demoralization was brewing among the online news staff. The Inquirer has more than a dozen opinion writers. Of all writers, why was I singled out? You do not censor big-time names; otherwise, hell will be raised. How do you serially censor Ambeth Ocampo or former Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio or former cabinet secretary Winnie Monsod?

Recall that Duterte was angry at the Prietos of the Inquirer. This was his way of threatening the Inquirer that, under its revered slogan of balanced news, fearless views, was a known administration critic. Many in the paper had rude awakenings.

So what was the official line of the Inquirer management about the censorship? It was fake news at its worst. It said Inquirer.net was a separate company (yet was using the same brand and the same livery) that had its own set of editorial policies. Prior to Duterte, there were no such things as separate companies (Inquirer the paper, Inquirer.net, Radyo Inquirer, etc.).

The Inquirer had joined the era of fake news by making a convenient lie about why it was censoring opinion articles. If the paper and the online edition were two separate companies, then that means one can criticize the other. And that is exactly the experiment I chose to do: say outright that the Inquirer had censored my articles. The next day, the opinion editor who once said his pay grade was low gave me my ouster notice. I had expected it. I can answer for myself. But Inquirer, until today, cannot answer for itself.

For many of us who lived through the Marcos regime, the Inquirer was a gilded pillar of strength. We have lost touch with reality when we continue to think of it in the same way.

It was only important for it to survive the business onslaught of Duterte. As to press freedom, the Inquirer is no longer the vanguard it used to be.

The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.

See original here:
Censorship in the time of Duterte - Vera Files - Vera Files