Archive for the ‘Censorship’ Category

Censorship In The Biden Era – OpEd – Eurasia Review

The corporate media have joined the incoming administration in deciding what we can and cannot see and hear.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 the country has been warned about the dangers of fascism. It isnt difficult to see why that is the case, as he banned people from mostly Muslim nations from entering the country, separated families seeking asylum, weakened an already frayed safety net, and undid the protections provided by a variety of government regulations.

The racist right wing was certainly ascendant during his administration, but the danger of fascism wont leave Washington with Donald Trump. The obnoxious racist may be the public face of tyranny, but there is another danger coming from sectors of the Democratic Party. Their goal is to censor any points of view that undermine their neoliberal and imperialist narratives.

Bill Russo, deputy communications director for the Joe Biden campaign, publicly demanded that Facebook censor more often than it already does. He and others do so under the guise of preventing Trump from spreading misinformation, using the likes of Steve Bannon as a cover for something more sinister. They may accuse Facebook of shredding the fabric of democracy, but they are more interested in making sure that the small group of people who are actually leftists will have no platform with which to oppose Biden policies.

The corporate media have already made themselves clear by censoring the president himself. On November 5, 2020 Trump claimed to be a victim of election fraud at a White House news conference. Instead of allowing him to make his statement and then analyzing what he said, the television networks pronounced him a liar andcut awayfrom his remarks.

Trumps charges are unfounded, but the public should have heard him for themselves and made their own determination about the veracity of his words. But the corporate media are done with him and have joined the incoming administration in deciding what we can and cannot see and hear. They are declaring themselves the arbiters of what information should be made accessible to the rest of the world.

These open attacks against Facebook do require the left to be discerning. Big technology social media platforms are certainly not our friends. They readily silence individuals and pages that question the establishment narrative. Black people risk being kicked off entirely if they utter any words white people may find offensive. But Facebook already buckled under Democratic Party pressure that was ginned up during the Russiagate hoax. They even accepted blame for a non-existent offense. The tale of Russian government memes throwing the election to Trump was false and a useful way to silence dissent and attack another country all at once. It isnt hard to believe that they will again bend to an establishment that is now back in power.

While keeping Facebooks history in mind, we must also see through the machinations of a new group of thought police who have made clear that they expect social media to bow to their dictates. That is exactly what Twitter did in censoring a recent news story that was unflattering toHunter Biden. After protecting the Democratic candidates son, Twitters CEO showed contrition after the fact and claimed the decision was a mistake.

It isnt just corporate media who are a danger here. There are individuals on the Biden transition team who have publicly stated their support for official propaganda.Richard Stengelis the team leader for the United States Global Agency, which includes Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Middle Eastern Broadcasting Networks. In 2018 Stengel had this to say about official propaganda,My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist. Im not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I dont necessarily think its that awful. It should be noted that Stengel worked for the State Department during the Barack Obama administration and not that of fascist Trump.

It is clear that Biden will be the more effective evil in this regard. There will be no buffoons like Trump or Bannon spewing obvious hatred and nonsense who can be easily dismissed. Instead we will have well spoken operatives like Stengel, who think that propaganda isnt so bad.

The people need their own platforms, like Black Agenda Report, that will dissect the lies and obfuscations of an administration greeted with a sigh of relief by millions of people weary of Trump and his policies. Already fossil fuel companies and Congress members who benefit from their largesse are on the transition team as are chemical industry representatives slated to go to the EPA. All will end up in the White House along with self-confessed propagandists. We must be ready to engage them all.

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Censorship In The Biden Era - OpEd - Eurasia Review

Jeanine Pirro Thinks Big Tech is Censoring Her Text Messages – Mediaite

Fox News hosts MariaBartiromo and Jeanine Pirro both leveled somewhat comical claims over the weekend that they were being censored by big tech companies.

Pirro began the weekend by claiming her private text messages were censored.

I just received 2 texts from friends. At end each read Preceding msg modified, Media objects were removed WHATShouldnt my friends and I decide what we share? #censorship #outrage #BigTech, Pirro tweeted, early on Saturday morning.

Pirro did not specify which company Apple or a cellular provider? carried out the alleged censorship. There is a simpler explanation for what happened to Pirro than the vast conspiracy she is alleging. It is likely that the messages she received exceeded 160 characters, or perhaps included a large image that required a lot of data to be downloaded both instances are said to produce the fairly benign message.

On Fox and Friends Sunday morning, Bartiromo launched a big tech conspiracy theory of her own. Ahead of her interview with President Donald Trump, the Fox anchor claimed that Instagram was censoring her by preventing one of her friends from sharing a promotional post about the interview.

You know what big tech has been doing, Bartiromo said.

Ive got to tell you, last night I posted on Instagram that I was having President Trump on in this exclusive interview this morning. One of my girlfriends tried to forward that, and she was not able to. Instagram would not let her forward the promotion that I was having President Trump on this morning, on Instagram.

It is unclear what prevented Bartiromos friend from forwarding the post.

The phenomenon of claiming censorship isnt a new one for Fox News hosts. Back in October, Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett floated the theory that his Wi-Fi connection cut out because he wrote a negative op-ed about Joe Biden.

Watch above, via Fox News.

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Jeanine Pirro Thinks Big Tech is Censoring Her Text Messages - Mediaite

BBC forced to defend decision to censor The Pogues’ Fairytale Of New York following flood of complaints – Irish Post

THE BBC has launched a staunch defence of its decision to censor The Pogues Christmas favouriteFairytaleof New York following a flood of complaints.

The broadcaster pre-empted the annual controversy surrounding the lyrics to the ShaneMacGowanhit last week by announcing it would play an edited version of the festive hit on its flagship station Radio 1.

It took the decision as part of a concerted effort to avoid offending younger listeners who may have taken umbrage with the use of severalderogatoryterms related to gender and sexuality.

The lyrics would stay in place on Radio 2 while 6 Music presenters would be given the choice between playing the original or a censored version of the song.

However, according to Metro, the BBC has been hit with a deluge of complaints over the decision.

Despite the backlash the UK broadcaster is refusing to back down on the decision.

A spokesperson told the news provider We knowFairytaleof New York is considered a Christmas classic and we will continue to play it this year on BBC Radio, with our stations choosing the version of the song most relevant for their audience.

We are aware that young audiences are particularly sensitive to derogatory terms for gender and sexuality, andafter considering this carefully, Radio 1 has decided to play a version featuring Kirsty MacColl singing alternative lyrics, provided by the record label.

The controversy centres on one particular linesungbythe late great Kirsty MacColl: You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy f****t.

Earlier this weekMacGowan, who co-wrote the song with his former Pogues band mate Jem Finer branded the decision to censor the song ridiculous.

The Irishman previously defended the song in an interview with Ryan Tubridy forThe LateLateShowlast year."There is no political correctness to it," he said."I've been told it's insulting to gays; I don't understand how that works."

The Pogues star also addressed the controversy ina statementto Virgin Media TV'sThe Tonight Showback in 2018.

"The word was used by the character because it fitted with the way she would speak and with her character, he said.

"She is not supposed to be a nice person or even a wholesome person. She is a woman of a certain generation at a certain time in history and she is down on her luck and desperate".

MacGowanadded: "Her dialogue is as accurate as I could make it but she is not intended to offend! She is just supposed to be an authentic character.

"Not all characters in songs and stories are angels or even decent and respectable, sometimes characters in songs and stories have to be evil or nasty in order to tell the story effectively."

MacGowanwent on to say that he does not want to clash with anyone over the song and would understand if it had to be censored on the air.

"If people don't understand that I was trying to accurately portray the character as authentically as possible then I am absolutely fine with them bleeping the word, but I don't want to get into an argument," he concluded.

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BBC forced to defend decision to censor The Pogues' Fairytale Of New York following flood of complaints - Irish Post

Ex-Employee Confesses! Behind-the-Scenes of Google Censorship – The Liberty Web English

An interview with an ex-employee who, after witnessing Googles censorship, submitted nearly 1,000 internal documents to the U.S. Department of Justices Antitrust Division.

Zach Vorhies

Software Engineer. Worked at Google until 2019.

You have released nearly 1,000 of documents describing Googles censorship regime, and this whistle-blowing created a major impact on people in Washington. Especially, there are many republicans who are concerned about Big Techs censorship, like Senator Ted Cruz. Did you get any reaction from those politicians or government officials?

Vorhies: Yes. Senator Ted Cruz is an ally. Weve been working with him to help with the questions that hes trying to ask. Specifically, what Googles page rank is on websites and individuals. And they have been asking Google what the page rank is, and Google refuses to give the page rank for websites. They will ignore this question. They will beat around the bush regarding this question. They will not answer the question. And the reason why is because if people see what the page rank is, thats going to be a very uncomfortable answer for Google. And its going to lead to more questions. And the crux of the entire ranking of the internet is Googles secret page rank score that they have for each website that exists on the internet.

The page rank score on each website reflects what Wikipedia has to say about that website. The score is broken down into three categories: expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. And the way that Google has instructed its employees to rank every website is that they tell them to go and see what Wikipedia has to say about that website or the person or the topic. For example, if you go to The New York Times and you look at the Wikipedia page, you will see that Wikipedia says very nice things about The New York Times. Now for those of us that are the common people, its very clear that The New York Times is the enemy of the United States. But unfortunately, the page rank for this website is very high. And therefore, the articles that are pushed out by The New York Times are ranked highest and are returned in search results. Thats Google Search, Google News, and YouTube. Im sure that there is equivalence in Japan that is being downranked and possibly websites that are pro-globalist, that are against the Japanese people, are being ranked high. The reason why this is happening is because those websites have a high page rank score because of what Wikipedia has to say. And I recommend that the Japanese government use the courts and force Google to answer what the page rank score is for the various news outlets that theyre having problems with.

There are group chats within Google that debate whether certain sites can be censored for hate speech.

In a certain presentation note, an example of scorekeeping was discussed in which the search result ranking of sites with non-mainstream opinions would be lowered.

In 2010, Google withdrew from China by saying it is no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service. Could you tell us what made Google transform from anti-censorship to pro-censorship?

Vorhies: It all happened when Donald Trump won the election in 2016. And within one week of Donald Trump winning the election, they had a company-wide meeting. And they talked about how they were personally offended at the election of Donald Trump, and that they hoped that populism and nationalism would be a blip in history. Towards the end of the conversation, there was a question asked by the audience about what some of the most successful things that Google had done during the election. And the CEO of Google answered that the most effective thing that Google had done during the election was to censor the fake news using machine learning. This is when I decided that I was going to determine what exactly Google meant by fake news. And then I investigated as a full-time employee and found out that the definition of fake news, the examples that they were using, all had to do with Hillary Clinton. And thats when I realized that this may not be about fake news but about controlling the political landscape.

It was stunning to me. And I didnt want to believe that because I had been working at the company for five years at that point and I didnt believe that Google would censor anything. In fact, the mission statement of the company is to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful. And this is still the mission statement of the company to this day. And thats the reason why I started investigating what fake news was and when I found out what they were defining fake news as, I realized that there must be a censorship system that would effectively do this censorship. And I found it. The name of this project was called machine learning fairness and you could think of it as AI censorship. You might have heard of a project called Project Dragonfly. As far as I know, Project Dragonfly is fake. Ive never seen any hint that it even exists within Google. Theres no evidence, but I see a huge body of evidence that exists for machine learning fairness. In fact, it has subcomponents like Project Purple Rain and Twiddler which reranks YouTube and also Google search. And it was being pushed out to the manager class at Google.

Although Ive never found any shred of evidence that project Dragonfly exists, Project Dragonfly may as well be called machine learning fairness because thats the real censorship engine of Google.

Is that AI censorship system a self-learning system?

Vorhies: Yes it is. This AI censorship system is a self-learning system, and the way that it works is that an army of individuals at Google is making special data for this machine-learning algorithm. What they do is that they take a website, or lets say an article, and then they classify it as either fake news or not fake news. Lets say that youve got 50,000 articles. Half of those 50,000 articles are going to be labeled as fake news. The other half are going to be labeled as real news. The AI learning system then goes through and figures out what patterns, what phrases, what words, or what journalists produce fake news. Then its able to take new information and it will classify it as either fake news or real news. These classifiers are what we call machine-learning fairness, and its being run on American websites and also Japanese websites.

The AI system came out of the Stanford University. I think it was used during the 2016 election, but it wasnt at a large scale. It was used just occasionally. But then after the election of Donald Trump, Google went ahead and fast-tracked and made this project very important and pushed it into all of its products. And by 2018, it had made its way into every single product that I knew about.

We found that content which is inconvenient for the Chinese Government is often eliminated or lowered in the rank of the search results on both Google and YouTube. Actually, Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, announced that all content contradicting the WHO on the coronavirus pandemic will be removed from the video platform. It means that YouTube blocks any content accusing the Chinese government. It looks like Google and YouTube are trying not to offend the Chinese government. Could you tell us your view on why these things happen?

Vorhies: Yes, I believe that the reason why Google is censoring on behalf of WHO is because they do not want to offend China and that theyre under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. Thats the only thing that explains all of their behavior and it explains their censorship and what weve seen as the Chinafication of the U.S. internet system with a Chinese-style social credit system thats being secretly inserted into all of American life. You might be seeing this happen in Japan as well. And I dont think its any mistake that this is happening because of Chinese influence. In fact, a Chinese operative by the name of Fay Fay Li was at the highest levels of Googles directorship and she was the head of their cloud AI infrastructure. And what shes said is that when it comes to AI, Google has neither boundaries nor borders. And so if you put this together with the Chinese doctrine that was set forth in 2017 stating all technology that had military applications would be adopted by the Chinese military, then its very clear that China is in bed with Google and theyre AI technology and this impacts their search algorithms and their news algorithms.

Regarding hundreds of queries, our website suddenly disappeared from Google search results. We used to show up in Google News, but recently we dont. We assume that our website is seen as fringe or geo-politically sensitive by Google. What kind of measures would you think Google Japan took?

Vorhies: What happened was that there were hit pieces that happened against your website. And those hit pieces appeared in Wikipedia. An individual working at Google did a page rank on your website. And what they did is they searched for your website on Wikipedia, and they searched for the individuals that run your website, and they see what has been written about them. And then what they do is they try to see what other places outside of Wikipedia are also saying about a thing. And because of that negative publicity your page rank score went down. And when your page rank score went down the Twiddler system, which is the subcomponent of machine-learning fairness, said that we should re-rank your website, so it appears on the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth page. It pushes it down. And if you are caught distributing what they call fake news then they can do an entire site restriction where you dont even appear on the Google search engine at all. Youre completely gone. And this has happened.

Ive seen it happen, and Ive exposed blacklists that showed that this has happened. Ive also released a YouTube controversial query blacklist that you can see at my website http://www.ZachVorhies.com. There you can see this YouTube controversial blacklist also. This was being used to down rank YouTube videos, and this exists for a bunch of different products. My mentor, Dr. Robert Epstein, has identified over nine blacklists before my disclosure showing how they were censoring websites. There is also a blacklist that is shared between Firefox and the Chrome browser that will remove websites and make them inaccessible at the browser level. So even if youre able to find the website, the browser will not show you it because its blacklisted at the client site.

A Japanese popular YouTuber who has been talking about geo-politically sensitive matters complained of a system malfunction with his channel, like being unable to put a Like Button, or suddenly disappearing from the Recommended Videos section. Is there any possibility that these bugs are actually invisible censorship?

Vorhies: I believe that the reason that this Japanese content creator is missing certain buttons and feature is that Google is deliberately sabotaging his channel. And the reason why I say that is because Google has been deliberately sabotaging channels here in the United States. They remove likes, they disable comments, they remove views. The view counter will sometimes freeze, and its not allowed to go up. And the reason why theyre trying to do this is because theyre trying to prevent content that is damaging to the deep state from rising to the top. And this is something that we see in other nations as well. Ive talked to people in Brazil. They say that theyre having similar issues and problems and Im going to guess that this is also happening in Japan. In fact, Id be surprised if its not happening in every country in the world in which YouTube operates.

Every country, every region are having historically controversial issues. For instance, What really happened during a war? Many videos covering that kind of sensitive issue have been removed or received advertising regulations from YouTube, even if they are just providing objective facts. YouTube describes the reason is because those videos advocate hate speech or justify violence. Even if you contact human moderators, nothing changes. Now, we are wondering how those moderators chose inappropriate videos?

Vorhies: The content moderators chosen by Google are extremely biased. Here in the United States, often they use foreigners who are not born in the United States to do this content moderation. They get them in by using a special immigration pass called an H-1B visa. They do not care about American culture and they are given vast control over culture. This is wrong and bad.

I do not know the situation in Japan, but I would assume that they are using foreigners in order to moderate their content. And they do not care about the truth or objective reality. They are interested in preserving the legacy narrative that has probably existed in Japan for quite some time. What youre probably seeing is that some of the historical fake news is being revealed as fake and that the situation is actually much more complex, and talking about it reveals that there is a global crime syndicate that has covertly taken control of Japan and is running it not for the interests of the Japanese people, but for the interests of a European and Chinese global crime syndicate now deploying a lot of pressure to prevent the emergence of this real history from appearing. If this history appears, its going to anger the Japanese people and they are going to start acting in self-interest and for their national interests. And what you see is that Google and YouTube are part of this crime syndicate. And so the suppression of this conspiracy theory is in part due to trying to preserve this globalist narrative and this globalist control over Japan.

You revealed that Google is trying to prevent President Trumps re-election. Does Google affect any other elections in foreign countries such as Japan?

Vorhies: Yes. Google is meddling in the election of every country on the planet, in my opinion. Ive seen evidence for this not only in the United States but also Ireland when they were arguing about abortion with a referendum to legalize abortion in Ireland. YouTube banned all political ads at a certain date in a surprise move. But they didnt just stop the political ads. If you see my YouTube controversial blacklist on my website, what you will see is that YouTube went so far as to ban the phrase, The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland, in order to meddle in the election because they did not want people searching for their own constitutional amendments that were established in the country (the Eighth Amendment had granted an equal right to life to the mother and the unborn child).

Also people probably find that autocomplete doesnt work for certain phrases, but it does work for other phrases that benefit the global deep state.

Ill give you an example. Hillary Clinton has an email problem. If you try to type in Hillary Clintons emails, the autocomplete doesnt work. But it does work for Donald Trumps emails even though hes never had an email scandal. This can only be answered by a concerted abuse of the system by deep state operatives in order to manipulate the search results of millions of Americans and hide the crimes of Hillary Clinton who was the deep state candidate in 2016, and also Joe Biden in 2020.

The censorship has gotten so bad, not just on YouTube but on other platforms as well such as Twitter, that one of the leading publications called The New York Post was completely kicked off of Twitter because they were talking about Hunter Bidens laptop which contained blackmailable material that he had acted sexually inappropriately with underage women in China, as well as information about him smoking crack cocaine and using drugs that were captured in the video. This is a tremendously important aspect to the election right now and the complete blackout of this information across Twitter, across YouTube, across Google, is yet more evidence that Google, YouTube, and Twitter are operating as propaganda outlets for the global crime syndicate that has taken control of the United States and lost power in 2016. And Im sure that the same story exists for Japan as well.

Could you tell us how each user can check the biases of search engines?

Vorhies: The individual users of Japan can check the censorship of Google by using Japanese first search engines and searching for the same search term. And when they see different results, then what they need to do is they need to screenshot both results and share it on their favorite social media sites and wake up your fellow Japanese citizens and show them that the Google system is biased against their country and doesnt want them to be free.

Also, what should the government do to stop the censorship by Big Tech?

Vorhies: I think its going to be really hard for the government. I dont know how the government works in Japan, but I know that the government in America has got corruption problems.

What the Japanese people need to do is they need to turn it into a cultural movement. That cultural movement will then turn into a political movement. This is what Ive done in the United States over the last year and now it looks like Google might be broken up because of that cultural pressure that I created. Japan can do the same thing. Show the Japanese people that Google is corrupt. Show the Japanese people that Google is hiding search results that are pro Japanese. Use this to create a media sensation and then use this media sensation to create pressure on businesses to pressure the corrupt politicians in order for them to act. If they start acting, then what they need to do is they need to tax Google. Google is a data collection apparatus. They are taking the information of Japanese citizens and they are selling it to the Chinese intelligence agencies. And what needs to happen if you want to stop Google, youve got to stop the export of the information of Japanese citizens to these intelligence agencies around the world. And so what needs to happen is that you need to start having taxation on the data collected on Japanese citizens. Thats the way to undo this beast.

Additionally, you need to try to make a cultural movement so that Japanese citizens only use Japanese made social media networks. They only use Japanese versions of YouTube, Japanese versions of Twitter, and start using these in order to organize your resistance towards this globalist crime syndicate.

Thank you so much for accepting our interview and giving powerful words for the Japanese people.

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Ex-Employee Confesses! Behind-the-Scenes of Google Censorship - The Liberty Web English

Ted Nugents Wife Shemane Targets Instagram For The Recent Censor But She Puts It Again On Instagram To Find A Solution For Free Speech – Metalhead…

Rock musician and conservative political activist Ted Nugents wife, Shemane Nugent, posted a screenshot of an Instagram censorship notification she received and reacted to Instagrams attitude towards free speech.

As you may remember, Shemane had actively supported Trump during the presidential election and often ridiculed the severity of COVID-19. Her videos from the live streams in which she was asking her followers who theyre going to vote for and why were banned before the elections.

Similarly, this time Shemane posted visual content considering COVID-19 which was banned from Instagram. After she received the notification that her post was removed as it contained false info, Shemane posted the info-warning on her Instagram and ridiculed their policy.

The message also said that to stay up to date on the latest facts, visit the World Health Organizations website which seems to have been received as a joke by Shemane who often questions the role of the government in newcasting.

Her response to Instagrams ban was to thank them ironically for informing her and sharing her happiness that Instagram is always there to censor peoples thoughts and beliefs. More than 100 people responded to her post and thanked her for trying to raise awareness even though she is being censored.

This is what the Instagram warning said:

A post you shared contained false info: We removed the post because it included harmful false information about COVID-19. To stay up to date on the latest facts, visit the World Health Organizations website.

Heres what Shemane wrote in the caption of her Instagram post:

Thanks, Instagram. I had no idea. Glad youre here to censor us.

You can check out the photo that Shemane Nugent posted below.

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Ted Nugents Wife Shemane Targets Instagram For The Recent Censor But She Puts It Again On Instagram To Find A Solution For Free Speech - Metalhead...