Archive for the ‘Censorship’ Category

Douglas Murray: Big Tech Censors Are Unqualified To Talk About Free Speech – The Federalist

Douglas Murray, author of The Madness Of Crowds, joined The Federalists Ben Domenech on Fox News Primetime to discuss the dangers of Big Tech censorship Friday night.

These companiesthat assume the right to decide what you and I can know, read and sayare nowhere near up for the job, Murray said. My own view is that actually nobody could be, but they are especially unqualified; they talk about free speech as if nobody thought about it until a seminar they had some time last semester.

We are dealing with kids here, he said, adding these companies got everything about the last year wildly wrong and citing Big Techs censorship of the Wuhan lab leak theory.

Murray and Domenech also discussed Facebooks recent announcement that it will suspend former President Donald Trumps account for the next two years. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook wouldnt be an arbiter for political speech? Domenech asked. Apparently he doesnt remember it either.

Murray noted Facebooks Nick Clegg, who announced today we believe his [Donald Trumps] actions constitute a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available, was a former deputy prime minister in Murrays native Great Britain. He was chucked out by his own constituents, Murray said. But now he gets to say what a former president of the United States can say, where and when. So in some ways I congratulate him for an enormous global upgrade.

It is insulting Mark Zuckerberg occupies a more powerful position than the pope in Rome, Domenech added.

These displays of power and of censorship, Murray concluded, show it is high time we make it clear that we cannot and will not live under the rules of Big Tech. They are not up to the job that they have taken upon their shoulders to perform.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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Douglas Murray: Big Tech Censors Are Unqualified To Talk About Free Speech - The Federalist

Talking About Censorship and Publishing – Publishers Weekly

By Christopher M. Finan |

Can we talk?

In last weeks Publishers Weekly, I summarized the principles of The Freedom to Read, a statement essential to the ethical foundation of the library and publishing community since 1953. The statement did more than expound principles: It committed the signatories to fight for them.

Today this commitment is being questioned by people within the library and publishing communities. Many do not believe that publishers should release books that express dangerous ideas or books that are written by bad people. They reject the idea that the best answer to a bad book is a good one.

How are we to resolve these differences? So far, there have been Twitter debates. Petitions have been circulated. There has been a lot of talk about harmful books, but much less about how demands for suppression conflict with the commitment to publish a broad range of ideas. There has been little dialogue and almost no give-and-take. Yet there is strong evidence that conversation works, if not to fully resolve differences at least to build greater interpersonal understanding and lower the temperature of conflict, opening the way to further communication.

The National Coalition Against Censorship has some experience in this area. In 2017, building on groundwork by the American Booksellers Association, we launched a pilot program, the Open Discussion Project, that sought to bring liberals and conservatives together in independent bookstores to discuss the issues that divide them. This seems even more foolhardy today than it was four years ago, but we did our homework. We learned that political polarization was not new. Researchers had identified the problem in the 1970s, and nonprofits have been trying to find a solution ever since.

There were some encouraging results from experiments with groups that were small enough to let the members get to know one another. They developed empathy, making it possible for them to discuss their differences.

We were surprised by the large turnout at the initial meetings in the six stores participating in the pilot. We had hoped that the groups would be small, but 80 people showed up at the first meeting at Gibsons Bookstore in Concord, N.H. The pilot established that many people are eager to engage with those who hold different viewsnot to punish or convert them but to find a place where they can discuss their differences.

While we were unable to proceed with a national rollout of the program, two of the stores continue to hold meetings and others are considering restarting their groups. The Bipartisan Book Club, which began at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., includes liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Now operated by its members, the club meets every six weeks to discuss books that present different perspectives. The topics include policing, gender identity, social cohesion, capitalism, antifa, and diversity.

More evidence of success is the response to Nadine Strossens book Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship. As the president of the ACLU from 1991 to 2008 and a prominent defender of civil liberties, Strossen has always had a busy speaking schedule. But between the publication of her book in May 2018 and the beginning of the pandemic, she made more than 300 appearances, mostly to talk about hate speech.

Though Strossen often speaks to junior high and high school students, many of her events were on college campuses where activists were organizing against racism. Instead of fearing the wrath of students, she urged those who had invited her to actively reach out to students who disagree with her. Many did attend speeches and rejected her argument that restrictions on hate speech are ineffective, but other students were convinced by her argument that the best way to fight hate is to continue to organize and protest against it.

There is so much that is encouraging about our new age of protest and its promise for eliminating the injustices suffered by people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. Inevitably, this has put pressure on all of our major institutions to change. It is particularly difficult for publishers, who must balance their desire to be more inclusive with a commitment to promote free expression.

To maintain this balance, we must commit ourselves to talking about the problem. NCAC is ready to do whatever it can to help. My email is chris@ncac.org.

Christopher M. Finan is the executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the author of From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America.

A version of this article appeared in the 05/31/2021 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Talking About Censorship and Publishing

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Talking About Censorship and Publishing - Publishers Weekly

Opinion: Russia prepares to test its new censorship tool on Google. Tech giants should not give in – Yahoo News

A woman walks below a Google sign on its campus in Mountain View. (Associated Press)

Russian authorities appear to like the new tool they've developed to pressure foreign tech companies. It made its debut two months ago, when authorities used it to throttle Russian internet users' connections to Twitter after the social media outlet failed to remove content the Kremlin didn't like. Now Russia's internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, is threatening to slow down traffic to Google sites for the same reason.

According to Roskomnadzor, Google wouldn't delete up to 30% of the links to information prohibited by the Russian government that the regulator instructed the company to remove. On Monday Roskomnadzor said that it would give Google 24 hours to comply with Russian laws. The company didn't react, and the next day it was fined $81,600. Two days later, it was fined again, $47,600. These are minuscule fines for Google, which collected more than $44 billion in advertising revenue just in the first three months of the year. And so far, there has been no indication that Google is taking down the links. So the Russian government may be motivated to take more drastic actions against Google.

But why is Google not rushing to remove information the Russian government wants to ban? Roskomnadzor described prohibited content in nefarious terms, such as "sites of terrorist and extremist organizations, sites with pornographic images of minors, and also online stores selling drugs." The implication is that Russian authorities are looking out for their vulnerable constituents and that Google is just an evil, profit-hungry American corporation.

What Roskomnadzor neglected to mention, however, is the government also demanded that Google delete videos on its YouTube subsidiary that called on Russians to participate in peaceful unsanctioned protests in support of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Google evidently is not ready to give up easily. In April, the company filed its first-ever lawsuit against Roskomnadzor over the censorship.

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It's important to understand the context for these fights. The Kremlin started to tighten control over the internet after the anti-government protests of 2011, the biggest ones since the fall of the Soviet Union. Then in 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the "sovereign internet" law, a step toward enabling Russia to disconnect its internet from the rest of the world. The government portrayed the move as a way to protect Russians if the U.S. and other western countries decided to cut the country off from the internet. Technically, however, no country or entity controls access to the sites that make up the internet; that's managed by international organizations and the companies operating domain name servers. And Russian authorities have other reasons for seizing more control over internet use: to increase censorship and silence dissent, the scenario Kremlin critics were afraid of.

The "sovereign internet" law opened the door for Russian authorities to test their new website-throttling technology. Major protests in January and April in support of Navalny might have triggered the government to ramp up pressure on tech companies, including social media networks, the primary place for opposition groups to coordinate rallies.

Roskomnadzor started with Twitter. In March, the internet regulator started to slow the speed for uploading photos and videos to Twitter in response to the company's failure to delete content targeted by the government. At the same time, Russian courts imposed fines on Twitter, including a $117,000 penalty for not deleting posts that contain calls to participate in anti-Kremlin protests. "We are deeply concerned by increased attempts to block and throttle online public conversation," a Twitter spokesperson said to Reuters in March.

Roskomnadzor appears to be winning that battle. After two months of slowing down the platform, the Russian internet regulator declared that Twitter removed 91% of the prohibited information. Roskomnadzor promised to keep slowing down social media until it censors 100% of the material unwanted by the government.

Although these developments are discouraging, Telegram's ability to resist government pressure can serve as an example for other tech companies. Telegram is an anonymous mobile messaging app with plenty of channels used by Russian opposition groups. Roscomnadzor tried in vain to block it for two years before giving up because Telegram kept providing users with tools to circumvent the ban.

Nevertheless, the government's moves against Twitter and Google are a dangerous trend, and they show that the Kremlin is becoming more experienced in eliminating content that doesn't support its goals. It is important for tech giants to stay committed to the open internet and do everything in their power not to allow the manipulation of information.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Opinion: Russia prepares to test its new censorship tool on Google. Tech giants should not give in - Yahoo News

Facebook’s lab-leak censors owe The Post, and America, an apology – New York Post

Is there something in the California water that makes Silicon Valleys censorious dweebs so damned shameless?

On Wednesday, Facebook revised its policy of banning posts suggesting the coronavirus was man-made because the COVID situation is, er, evolving, as a spokesman told Politico.

Gee, thanks. The flip-flop comes more than a year after the social-media giant banned a well-reasoned Post opinion column by China scholar Steven Mosher that speculated about a potential lab leak. Will our columnist receive an apology? Of course not. But its the American people who should be holding the Menlo Park tyrants to account.

Think about it: If you were Xi Jinping, and you wanted to deploy an information-control operation over the origins of COVID-19, you couldnt have done better than to just let Facebook, working in conjunction with Americas bottom-feeding fact-checking industry, do its thing.

The Chi-Coms, after all, were held in odium in the US eye long before the first COVID cases arrived: How much more effective and devious to have a gazillion-dollar US tech firm shut down public inquiry into the virus origins, and that with the help of well-credentialed experts and fact-checkers.

Its worth returning to what Mosher wrote to see how shameful Facebooks censorship was. For starters, note that Mosher didnt definitively claim that COVID-19 had leaked from a lab. What he argued, rather, is that a lab leak should be plausible to anyone familiar with Chinese realities. Among the pieces of evidence he marshaled:

The fact that Xi himself had, in the early days of the crisis, warned about lab safety as a national-security priority.

The fact that, following Xis guidance, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive titled: Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.

Above all, the fact that the Middle Kingdom has only one Level 4 microbiology lab that can handle deadly coronaviruses and that lab just happens to be located at the epicenter of the epidemic.

Set aside any other scientific questions about the virus (many remain unresolved): Didnt it at least merit some thought that the countrys sole coronavirus lab is located at the outbreaks ground zero?

Even if Mosher were wrong and a growing number of US security officials and top scientists are coming around to his side didnt Americans and their policy makers have the right to consider the possibility? The virus true origins, after all, would inform any number of concrete decisions, not least whether Beijing and the curiously Beijing-subservient World Health Organization deserved US cooperation.

But no. Facebook and its experts knew better and moved to suppress a vital column, distorting the US debate when it mattered most.

Oh, about those experts, whose testimony was used to justify the ban: At least one of them Danielle E. Anderson, an assistant professor at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore regularly collaborated with the Wuhan virologists, hardly an unconflicted source.

Another expert insisted that no responsible government would permit such deadly leaks, and the quaint assumption that China ranks among responsible governments was enough to merit banning Moshers column to her mind.

Similarly dubious expert claims, amplified by partisan fact-checking outfits like Politifact, were used to frame as conspiracy nuts anyone who dared warn of a potential lab leak. (Politifact has now quietly taken down its denunciation of Fox News Tucker Carlson as a leading conspiracy theorist on this issue.)

This pattern of Big Tech censorship, enabled by unaccountable fact-checkers, poses a catastrophic danger to Americas ability to govern herself and respond to crises.

The problem isnt just that it leaves ordinary Americans in the dark, but that it insulates elites themselves from uncomfortable realities such as the possibility that their beloved Chinese trading partner might be responsible for a pandemic that cost millions of lives.

Enough is enough. Facebook and the other Big Tech giants are irreformable. Only political action in the form of removing the special status that allows them to act like publishers without any of a traditional publishers liabilities can save us from this private tyranny.

Sohrab Ahmari is The Posts op-ed editor and author of the new book The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos.

Twitter: @SohrabAhmari

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Facebook's lab-leak censors owe The Post, and America, an apology - New York Post

Podcasts – 296. Hollywood Bends a Knee to China, FL Tech Censorship Bill – The Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute's Donald Kendal, Jim Lakely, Nate Myers, and Chris Talgo present episode 296 of the In the Tank Podcast. The ITT crew discusses John Cenas recent embarrassing apology to the Chinese Communist Party and how this illustrates Hollywoods loyalty to China. Later, they discuss Floridas new tech censorship bill as well as Oregon counties recent vote to become part of Idaho

OPENING CHIT CHAT

(Video)John Cena's issues an embarrassing apology to Chinahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zre2p7mg64g

FLORIDA TECH CENSORSHIP BILL

Heartland Institute -Floridas New Tech Censorship Law: A Big Win for Freedom of Speechhttps://spectator.org/florida-tech-censorship-law-desantis/

Reason -Florida Legislators Exempt Their Favorite Companies From Social Media Billhttps://reason.com/2021/05/05/florida-legislators-exempt-their-favorite-companies-from-social-media-bill/

OREGON TO JOIN IDAHO?

OREGON LIVE -More Oregon counties vote to consider joining Idaho, part of rural effort to gain political refuge from blue stateshttps://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-counties-vote-to-move-into-idaho-part-of-rural-effort-to-to-gain-political-refuge-from-blue-states.html

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Podcasts - 296. Hollywood Bends a Knee to China, FL Tech Censorship Bill - The Heartland Institute