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Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, made a keynote speech today at ADLs 2019 Never is Now summit, in which he viciously chided the Silicon Valley tech giants for their irresponsible approach to censorship (or rather the lack of it thereof) on their terrifyingly influential social media platforms.

Cohen was at the summit to receive the ADL International Leadership Award, and began by making it clear that throughout his career, the aim of his comedy has been to uncover the insidiously passive acceptance of racism and bigotry that lurks within our society. I have to confess that up until now, I had found his characters Borat and Ali G completely unacceptable because they fall into the socially problematic category of cultural appropriation, but now I know that Cohen is woke as fuck, I shall endeavor to watch his work and make damn well sure I laugh my socks off.

During his 25-minute long speech, Cohen told his enthusiastic audience that he found Mark Zuckerbergs excuse of defending of free expression when refusing to censor his platform utter nonsense. Finally, a mainstream comedian who understands that social media must be regulated. Many people, or as I like to call them bigots, argue that the internet is the primary form of communication for many people these days and that to censor it would be morally wrong. Like a doll with a pull-string, Mark Zuckerberg often spouts shallow platitudes in defense of his multi-billion dollar corporation like: giving more people a voice, and: bringing people together. Incredibly naive and perhaps even sinister phrases considering that a lot of people out there harbor fascistic tendencies and should not be allowed a voice.

Well, on that matter Sacha Baron Cohen had this to say:

The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, however, this does not apply to private businesses like Facebook.

Haha! Take THAT, Nazis! Thanks to a loophole in the Bill or Rights due to James Madisons careless disregard of social media platforms when it was written in 1787, we totally CAN regulate and censor Facebook and Twitter.

After watching Cohens speech I watched a couple of his movies and instead of sitting there with my arms folded, getting ready to jab the off button on my remote the moment anything remotely offensive occurred, I found myself actually enjoying them. Knowing that the man who made them shares my views on free speech and how dangerous it is gave me a new found appreciation of his work. I cannot say that I found his films particularly amusing because humor tends to be something that happens to other people. I did however find myself chuckling at the delicious absurdity of a man who recently called for censorship now appearing on my television screen as a Kazakh journalist encouraging his audience to laugh at the idea that people in Kazakhstan have sex their sisters.

Watching Cohen mercilessly stereotype a character from a little-known country with the knowledge that his entire reason for portraying his most well-known character in this way was to draw attention to the fact that people often stereotype people from little-known countries completely blew my mind. This is Inception-level satire, and his dedication to keeping up this ruse for the best part of two decades has to be admired.

Anyway, now that the man who played Borat has endorsed online regulation and censorship, hopefully more people will get on board with this idea and maybe one day, hate speech on the internet will be a thing of the past. I have to say, his throw the Jew down the well song was delightfully entertaining, Ive been humming it to myself all day!

Read the rest here:
When a comedian is pro-censorship, I start finding them funny - The Spectator USA

Female pole dancers, fitness instructors and sex workers who use Instagram have started changing their gender to male on the app. The widespread deception is in response to a sexist policy the tech giant introduced earlier this year.

In April, Instagram began hiding photos and videos that it considers to be vaguely inappropriate without explaining what specific kind of content that includes or alerting affected users. Such posts are algorithmically blocked from being featured in the Facebook-owned websites public Explore and hashtag pages, which help grow peoples accounts by giving them broader exposure.

This kind of covert censorship, known as shadow banning, has disproportionately affected women and members of marginalized communities, including those whose livelihoods depend on Instagram leaving many urgently seeking ways to restore their visibility on the platform.

Many of us within the pole dancing community rely on Instagram to thrive, said Michelle, an Australian pole dance performer, teacher and studio owner who, like other women quoted in this story, asked to be identified by her first name only for privacy reasons. We use [Instagram] to share training videos, connect with new people and, for lots of us, to grow our businesses.

In late October, having already watched her contents engagement steadily decline for months, Michelle decided to change her profile to male. Shed seen research suggesting Instagrams algorithm is biased against women, and felt like she had nothing to lose.

Within three days of switching, she said, things went back to normal: Through Instagrams analytics tool, she found that her posts have been getting far more likes and views, indicating that Instagram has been displaying them to a wider audience again.

Its ridiculous that we have to resort to trying this kind of thing, she said.

Instagram/everybodyvisible

Though strictly experimental, the gender-swapping tactic has started to take off among shadow-banned women due to recent promotion from anti-censorship activism pages such as @everybodyvisible. Like Michelle, several other women have reported positive changes to their contents performance since pretending to be men a change many have made reluctantly.

Its really upsetting and ridiculous that women are having to change their gender [on Instagram] to avoid being censored, said Carolina, a founding member of @everybodyvisible who researches online content moderation as part of her doctoral studies in London.

The supportive community I found through Instagram is what gives me and so many others confidence, added Carolina, who is also a pole dancer. But now, with Instagram choosing whos appropriate and whos not, its hard to feel welcome there.

In a statement to HuffPost, a Facebook spokesperson denied that Instagram is biased against women.

Gender information from profiles has no impact on content we filter from hashtags or the Explore page, the spokesperson said. We want to make sure the content we recommend to people on Instagram is safe and appropriate for everyone. Ensuring women feel heard is an essential part of that effort.

But the platform has previously admitted to restricting content from pole dancers in particular.

Over the summer, pole dancers around the world noticed that posts containing popular hashtags such as #PoleFitness, #PoleTrick and #FemaleFitness (but notably, not #MaleFitness) seemed to be shadow banned on Instagram. At first, Instagram reportedly denied that this was happening, but after a petition addressing the matter went viral, the company acknowledged that it had in fact been hiding pole dancers content and apologized for doing so.

Instagram/eizabeth_bfit

Instagram users attempting to play by the rules and simply understand what theyre allowed to post on the platform without being shadow banned wont find many answers so perhaps its not surprising that theyre are trying to game the system.

Unlike Instagrams policy for posts containing nudity that are subject to removal which include depictions of sexual intercourse, genitals, close-ups of fully-nude buttocks and female nipples the platforms policy for borderline content that is subject to demotion is nebulous and obscurely worded. Instagram has refused to define what it means by inappropriate imagery; the sole example included in its guidelines is sexually suggestive material.

The only public indication of what Instagram might consider to be sexually suggestive is tucked into its parent companys advertising policy pages, which prohibit adult content but go into greater detail about what that covers. There, Facebook features several photos to illustrate to advertisers what it means by the terms sexually suggestive, sexually provocative, implied nudity and sexual in nature.

FacebookFacebook's ad policies may offer some insight into what Instagram considers to be "sexually suggestive" content.

Nearly all of the photos feature women, including one model whos leaning forward in a low-cut shirt and another whos eating a banana.

Instagram also offers a bit more detail when rejecting advertisers. Upon turning down an ad from Michelles company featuring pole dancing students in shorts and crop tops, it sent her a notification explaining the ad was unacceptable because it showed excessive skin despite the fact that the sport requires skin-on-pole contact for grip.

That Instagram has the power to arbitrarily decide whose content can be visible on its massive platform should be concerning to everyone not just the women who are currently being shadow banned, said Carolina from @everybodyvisible.

Social media giants including Instagram have a monopoly over our data and online interactions, she said. Freedom of expression is at stake here. Users really do not have a voice we have to cope with their policies, and unfortunately for us, everything that even slightly involves sex scares the shit out of Instagram.

Sex workers who spoke to HuffPost described a crackdown on their Instagram posts following the passage of FOSTA-SESTA in 2018. The law makes it illegal to assist, facilitate or support sex trafficking, and removes platforms immunity from liability under the Communications Decency Act for user content that does any of those things. In its wake, big tech has made sweeping changes to how it polices sexual content including changes to algorithms.

Last November, months after FOSTA-SESTA had been signed into law, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that his companys artificial intelligence systems proactively flag 96% of posts containing nudity that get removed. He was applauding the systems efficiency, but experts have concerns about over-reliance on algorithms for content moderation due to the human bias thats often coded into them.

Earlier this year, feminist publication Salty crowd-sourced data from Instagram users to understand how different groups are policed on the platform. Among Saltys findings, which represent some of the limited research into this issue, the data suggested that Instagram is more likely to reject ads from women than men.

The patriarchy is written into the algorithms, a Salty spokesperson said. Instagram needs to be actively working to see and hear [women and marginalized groups]. ... Unless theyre inviting us to have a seat at the table, then were going to be written out of the code.

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Women Are Pretending To Be Men On Instagram To Avoid Sexist Censorship - HuffPost

On Friday, Donald Trump, with his usual sociopathic levels of impulsiveness,thought it wise to commit another likely impeachable offense in the middle of a hearing in the ongoing impeachment inquiry. As former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified to Trump's bizarre, unethical and abusive behavior, he took to Twitter to lambast her in real time, claiming that everywhere she had been posted "turned bad" and personally blaming her for the civil war in Somalia, which is the epitome of a baseless accusation. House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called the act "witness intimidation".

When asked about it by reporters later that day, during a press conference that was ostensibly about health care pricing, Trump, as is his habit, declared that he's the real victim.

"You know what? I have the right to speak," Trump said, in response to a question that was, by being a question, an invitation to speak.

"I have freedom of speech just as other people do, but theyve taken away the Republicans rights," he continued, as exactly zero people tried to turn off his microphones or shut him up in any other way.

Trump knows his followers love these victim trips so much that they'll simply ignore the fact that Democrats couldn't shut him up if they wanted to. In reality, Democrats don't want to shut Trump up at all. If anything, the opposite is true. Democrats clearly want Trump to keep that motormouth running and those rage-fingers tweeting: The more Trump uses that freedom of speech, the stronger their case for impeachment gets.

"Trump could come right before the committee and talk, speak all the truth that he wants if he wants," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told Margaret Brennan of "Face the Nation" in an interview that aired Sunday. The speaker also defined what the word "exculpatory" means for Trump, safely guessing it's not a word he has much experience with.

"He should come to the committee and testify under oath and he should allow all those around him to come to the committee and testify under oath," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumersaid at a news conference on Sunday, adding that Trump's failure to appear and his insistence that his staff also refuse to testify suggests that he is "afraid" and "hiding."

Indeed, the only people who appear interested in silencing the president are his own staff members. As Axios reported Sunday, "President Trump's public schedule next week is designed to keep him distracted from the televised hearings and to counterprogram Week 2 of those hearings."

Considering that the events on his schedule a Cabinet meeting, a visit to a factory in Texas, an arts awards ceremony are humdrum presidential activities that would barely make the news even in boring times, it's safe to say that the White House staff doesn't really see any of this stuff as "counterprogramming" that will actually distract anybody's attention from the impeachment hearings.

Except for maybe one person's attention. The obvious purpose is to keep Trump busy so he doesn't get into trouble, a management style familiar to any parent of toddlers. Frankly, it's a smart move, as Trump's behavior last Friday showed. Even on Fox Business, which has been fiercely pro-Trump, a host cracked and saidthat his Twitter behavior "makes him look like a big dumb baby" and draws more attention to the hearings than if he could just sit still with his coloring book like a big boy.

Odds that White House staff can use Trump's busy schedule to keep him off the internet completely, however, aren't looking good. Even though tweeting invective at Yovanovitch backfired on Trump Friday, he kept it up over the weekend, lashing out at Jennifer Williams, who is an aide to Vice President Mike Pence and a foreign service officer. Williams will reportedly give testimony about Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that is expected to make the already clear extortion scheme even clearer.

Trump's tendency to get even more riled up whenever women criticize him is no doubt a major concern for his staff going into this week. Multiple women not just Williams, but also Laura Cooper,a deputy assistant secretary at the Defense Department, and Fiona Hill, a former Russia specialist at the National Security Council are expected to testify before the Intelligence Committee. That's a lot of women saying stuff about Trump that happens to be both true and damning. Everyone knows that's an especially potent trigger for his ill-advised outbursts.

The big-mouth problem isn't limited to Trump, either. His lawyer, co-conspirator and all-around odious lackey Rudy Giuliani seems not to understand, even though he used to be a federal prosecutor, why suspected criminals invoke their Fifth Amendment rights. Instead, Giuliani's addiction to Twitter and TV cameras means thathe constantly says things that incriminate himself or the president or whoever else is in the line of fire.

SIt's not just Trump who is playing the victim of censorship by Democrats when the real issue is censorship from the White House itself. House Republicans are also getting in on this victimology trip, complaining that the witnesses called so far aren't close enough to the White House to be authoritative about what actually happened, and implying that Democrats are silencing such witnesses.

This is a lie, of course. There's plenty ofdocumentation showing Trump at the center of the extortion plot against Ukraine. But it's a lie wrapped in an even bigger lie, because there are several high-ranking administration officials who were directly involved in the Ukrainian extortion scheme, such as acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney (who has already confessed on TV) and outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry,whose centrality to the scheme was once again confirmed in a recent batch of leaked emails.

These people are right in the middle of things and could speak directly to what the president said and did. Trump has instructed them not to testify. In fact, Trump has tried to preventanyone who has information from testifying, reportedly lambasting Secretary of State Mike Pompeofor failing to do more to block State Department employees from showing up under subpoena.

The censorship isn't coming from the Democrats, who have a red carpet rolled out for anyone and everyone in the Trump administration who wants to talk. It's coming strictly from Trump, his staff and fellow Republicans, all of whom know that the last thing Trump needs is more information reaching the public. Republicans' big problem is that the man they've self-tasked with defending has an irrepressible need to incriminate himself and commit more crimes. So while they're whining about "freedom of speech," Donald Trump refuses to exercise his constitutional right to remain silent.

Read more here:
Democrats are not "censoring" Donald Trump his increasingly desperate staff is doing that - Salon

Seventy years ago, before the War of Independence was officially over, the state found a no less important issue to deal with. The Council for Oversight of Films and Plays, known by its less formal name the censor held a special meeting. On the agenda: a sharp reprimand of the Cameri Theater for using the word urinate in a play, without permission from the state. Looking at this issue years later, this seems like a parodic comedy suitable for the stage, but documents from the State Archive revealed now in honor of the Cameris 75th anniversary show that the issue was discussed with extreme seriousness.

The council decided in its meeting to reprimand you for changes in the original text of the play Nights of Rage, which you had presented to it for critique, against clause 3(4) of the Public Plays Order (Critique) 1927, the letter of reprimand, dated July 1, 1949, opened.

It turned out that after the theater received a permit for the play, it added without authorization the word urinate to one of the dialogues. You must immediately remove this word from the above play, the council demanded.

The stinging response was written by the actor Yossi Yadin, brother of Yigael Yadin, who was to be the Israel Defense Forces second chief of staff a few months later. Yadin wrote, in the name of the theater management, that the word urinate appears in the Bible (Samuel and Kings). Therefore, he concluded: We see no reason not to use this word on stage. Yadin went even further: We see in this word an expression of a biological need that every mortal feels, and the laws of nature should not be ignored or denied. We think that this word reveals no military secret nor could it compromise the security of the state or the public.

At the end of that same month, the council revisited the matter. According to the minutes of the meeting of July 28, one of the council members reread the dialogues in the play and came to the conclusion that the expression urinate is not essential and is harmful to literary good taste. And yet, it does not constitute cursing, and on this basis its use cannot be banned. The council also turned for an outside opinion to the poet and playwright Aharon Ashman. Please be so good as to express your opinion on the play. In your opinion should the word urinate be left in or not? he was asked.

Ashman replied: As for the fatal word, I do not know whether a storm should be raised because of it. Quoting from Proverbs, he added: Apparently a righteous man knows the life of his beast. They know their audience and serve up the concoction that tastes best to it let them enjoy it.

Eventually the state allowed the Cameri to use the word urinate, but it had the last word. No changes may be made to the play that was approved by the council without special permission, it said in a letter signed by the council chairman Yaakov Kisilov. The councils authority to approve or withhold approval for plays was taken away from it 30 years ago.

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Documents on the affair are to be released together with a group of documents about the first years of the theater, to be published by the State Archive next week on its website, that afford a fascinating look at the history of the state through the theater. After the state was established, the theater requested government funding, explaining: The standard of living of the actor does not allow the theater to reach the artistic level to which it aspires. A decade later, the relationship between the theater and the government was on the edge of a blowup when income tax authorities threatened it with criminal action. I believe this step could lead their artistic thoughts into prosaic problems of life in Israel, which now also includes income tax, the tax commissioner wrote at the time.

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The 'harmful' word that pitted Cameri theater against the national censor in 1949 - Haaretz

As the launch of Disney+ drew near, there was both a fear and expectation that a PC filter would be put on classic Disney movies, censoring several scenes now deemed too controversial and outright racist. Now that Disney+ is live, it is now clear that Disney had no intention of censoring its content and instead opted for a disclaimer written in each films description. This news came at both the horror and relief of many Disniacs seeking their idea of purity.

But there is a major problem The Walt Disney Company is faced with: They CANT take those scenes out because we find them at what are objectively extremely crucial plot points. Here are three of the most controversial scenes to prove this point:

Please note: This piece does NOT deny the views of the majority today. Instead, this piece stands to prove unfortunately objective points of storytelling and to show a need for us to be able to view stories through a lens beyond our own.

Yes, the lead crow in Dumbois named Jim Crow. Yes, a murder is what you call a group of crows, and yes, together, they are portrayed in ways that would make the Twittersphere cry racist! But these wise-cracking birds appear in one of the most important scenes in the film.

Why are they so important? THEY TEACH DUMBO TO FLY. They give him the magic feather, and they sing the most iconic song to come out of that movie after Baby Mine: When I see a elephant fly(which includes an ingenious level of puns). In all the racist ebonics-shouting hokiness, these crows are intended to be seen as heroes in what was written at the time to be a scene that starts with heckling banter and turns into one thats fun, and literally uplifting.

Okay, outside of the obviously racist cartoony Asian voices, this is still just a creepy, annoying, and uncomfortable song that should make everybody cringe. But it is a crucial scene for this telling.

Why are they so important? Because the cats sing their song as they trash the house, and they represent an invasion on Ladys home on an animal front as well as Aunt Saras human front. It is after this that the cats frame Lady for the crimes, and it drives their owner, Aunt Sara, to put Lady in a muzzle. The muzzle was the last straw, and Lady ran away. That scene is supposed to be disturbing and uncomfortable and distasteful from every angle and be a driving force to get Lady out of the house and on her adventure with Tramp.

I was just going to mention the Powwow scene, but lets talk about their role in the movie in general. Disney has a horrid track record of portraying Amerindians in a way that that would be favored in todays society, and the straight-up red-faced, raspy-voiced portrayal of the Indians in Peter Panis no exception (especially when the beautiful women like Tiger Lily are shown to have the most caucasian features, but thats a-whole-nother can of worms). But they are still crucial to the story.

Why are they so important? Well, for those of you who know Peter Pan,you know J.M. Barrie made them a rather crucial part of the story, and the same is true for Disneys version. When John, Michael, and the Lost Boys get captured by the Indians, we learn that Tiger Lily was captured by Captain Hook, which sends Peter and Wendy on their quest. The Powwow scenewhich is meant to serve as comic relief after the intense encounter with Captain Hookis what finally disillusions Wendy to Neverland and makes her ready to go home.

In short, there is no clean way to sufficiently clean up these stories other than investing in remakes to re-write movies and Disney canon to fit our time. Adding disclaimers and keeping the movies pure is the best way to go. But this writer wants to challenge every Disniac out there to try to view these movies from the world for which they were released and understand that none of the above scenes were produced to be maliciously racist and degrading. Society has a way of making things once okay be not okay anymore.

We should teach the next generation of Disniacs to see that dissonance between the moviegoing world of the past and today so that they can still appreciate these films for what they are, and still see what is good and funny today while understanding what is not OK anymore. Believe it or not, it is possible. Getting hung up on every PR blemishwith Disney or otherwiseis just as bad as agreeing with or blatantly ignoring them.

Continue reading here:
OpEd: The problem with censoring classic Disney movies on Disney+ - Inside the Magic