Archive for the ‘Censorship’ Category

Prager University and Tulsi Gabbard Lose Censorship Suits Against Google – Reason

"I promise you, one day you will say, first they came after conservatives, and I said nothing," opined Dennis Prager at a Senate hearing in July, invoking the famous Holocaust poem by Martin Niemller. In this case,theyrefers not to Nazis but to YouTube, which Prager contends is censoring his business. The right-leaning radio host runs Prager University, also known as PragerU, a nonprofit that publishes videos to YouTube, a Google subsidiary.

Prager sued the platform in 2019 after YouTube classified some of its videos in a way that hid them from the 1.5 percent of users who had opted into "restricted mode," which screens out content with mature themes.

While it's worth debating whether YouTube should handle political content identically to violent and sexually suggestive content, PragerU's suit argued that YouTube has become so large that it should now be treated as a public utility and thus prohibited from engaging in viewpoint discrimination. In a ruling issued in February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit fundamentally rejected that argument. "PragerU runs headfirst into two insurmountable barriersthe First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent," wrote Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown, reminding the plaintiffs that the Constitution protects individuals only fromgovernmentcensorship.

PragerU found common ground on this issue with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (DHawaii), who sued Google for violating her First Amendment rights after it temporarily suspended her campaign advertising account following an especially compelling Democratic primary debate performance in June. (Google says the suspension was automatically triggered by its anti-fraud provision, which flags accounts with large changes in spending.)

Like PragerU, Gabbard argued that Google is a public utility and, as such, should be required to maintain neutrality. But as Judge Stephen Wilson of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California observed, the First Amendment has no bearing on decisions made by private businesses. "Google is not now, nor (to the Court's knowledge) has it ever been, an arm of the United States government," he wrote.

Gabbard and PragerU may very well be justified in railing against Google's content moderation methods. But they seem not to have considered the deleterious effects they might have had on the open internet if they had prevailed in court. It's possible that companies would start scrubbingmorecontent in an effort to avoid lawsuits alleging preferential treatment for certain viewpoints. Conversely, they might also forfeit their right to moderate content at all, which both Prager and Gabbard might change their mind on once companies lose the ability to remove porn.

Forcing Google to behave like a public utility would not be likely to serve the interests of those demanding that designation, to say nothing of the rest of us.

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Prager University and Tulsi Gabbard Lose Censorship Suits Against Google - Reason

We need to stop the spread of Big Tech censorship – Spiked

It is time to draw a line. In the fight against Covid-19, people across the world have been required to suspend many hard-won freedoms to give up travel, loved ones, places of worship, the pub. They have gone along with it because they understand that some temporary restrictions on liberty are sometimes needed in times of crisis (even though we must ensure they do not become permanent). But one thing we cannot give an inch on is freedom of speech, our right to speak and our right to hear others, which is under serious threat right now.

An unholy alliance of corporate tech giants, government and international agencies is working to narrow the range of acceptable debate about coronavirus. Since the beginning of this crisis, officialdom has talked up the threat posed to containing Covid by an infodemic the World Health Organisations cute phrase for the spread of misinformation online. Social-media firms have been put under renewed pressure to expand their already extensive policies on what is and isnt acceptable content. And theyve been all too happy to oblige.

Take Facebook, home to around 2.6 billion monthly active users. During this crisis it has moved the goalposts dramatically on what can be posted. At first, it said it would continue to remove misinformation that could contribute to imminent physical harm, while deploying its army of fact-checkers to flag certain posts, depress their distribution, and direct sharers of such material to reliable information. Just a few weeks on and it is removing event posts for anti-lockdown protests in various US states, in tandem with state officials.

Last month it was revealed that Facebook had removed event pages for anti-lockdown protests in California, New Jersey and Nebraska. A spokesperson told Politico that Facebook reached out to state officials to understand the scope of their orders and resolved to remove the posts when gatherings do not follow the health parameters established by the government and are therefore unlawful, such as when protests intend to flout social-distancing rules.

Facebook has stressed that state governments did not ask them to remove specific posts. But what seems to have happened is almost worse. Facebook moderators appear to be banning events posts on the basis of what they reckon the laws of a particular state constitute. As David Kaye, UN special rapporteur on free expression, told the Guardian: If people show up to protest and I think the vast majority of public-health officials think thats really dangerous its up to the government to clamp down on them. For Facebook to do it just seems suspect.

Whats more, Kaye continued, this informal arrangement reached between Facebook and state governments will make it harder for citizens to challenge instances of censorship. If a state government were to issue a formal takedown notice to Facebook, asking it to remove a post for an illegal protest, then that government action would at least be subject to a challenge in court. But Facebook, a private company, is allowed to take down whatever it wants and is protected from legal liability.

This is, in effect, government outsourcing censorship to the private sector. Even if straightforward takedown requests arent being made, the increasingly cosy relationship between Big Tech, governments and intergovernmental organisations is leading to elite consensus effectively being enforced on social media. In a recent interview with CNN, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said her platform will remove anything that is medically unsubstantiated, as well as anything that goes against WHO [World Health Organisation] recommendations, essentially asserting this one UN agency as infallible and its critics as heretics.

As many have pointed out, this standard is almost impossible to enforce consistently not least because the WHO has got a fair bit wrong over the course of this pandemic, and in previous crises. But it seems YouTubes guidelines are now sufficiently broad that it can take down any dissident post that sparks outrage. It recently banned a viral video of two doctors, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, who run a group of urgent care centres in Bakersfield, California, discussing the data they have drawn from Covid testing, and arguing that California should lift its lockdown.

Experts and commentators have questioned the doctors claims and conclusions, and even their motivations (apparently one of them is a Trump supporter). But these two are not snarling conspiracy theorists. They are experienced medics giving their opinions on the data as they see it. But this apparently cannot be hosted on YouTube because, in the words of a spokesperson, it disputes the efficacy of local health authority recommended guidance on social distancing. It seems you cannot question the wisdom of the authorities at all.

As for the real snarling conspiracy theorists, theyve also been getting booted off platforms during this crisis. David Icke has been kicked off Facebook and YouTube, where hitherto he was allowed to promote his cobblers about lizard people, vaccines and Bill Gates relatively unmolested. But for spreading the conspiracy theory that 5G causes coronavirus, among other madcap corona ideas, he has been damned by the tech giants for spreading harmful disinformation. Inevitably, Icke and his supporters have taken this as vindication that, in his words, the elite are TERRIFIED.

Mad as these people are, the censorship of conspiracy theorists is a worrying development. For years, while Big Tech firms have expanded censorship in other areas, they have resisted clamping down on Icke and his ilk. As recently as March, Facebook said that claims that dont directly result in physical harm, like conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus would be fact-checked rather than censored. When Facebook banned Infowars Alex Jones in 2018 it was at pains to say that this was for glorifying violence and hate speech, not for spreading 9/11 or Sandy Hook conspiracy theories.

Social-media companies hesitancy in censoring conspiracy theories up to now was not out of any grand principle their policing of hateful speech is just as censorious. But notwithstanding the egotism and self-righteousness of Silicon Valley, you can understand why companies primarily interested in making money would be wary of moving more definitively into the role of pronouncing on what is and isnt true. Until now, it seems. That they hide behind the experts and reliable sources makes this no less problematic for free debate.

Facebook and YouTube now monopolise huge arenas of public discussion. Writers and thinkers unable to promote their work on Facebook, or videomakers unable to upload their work to YouTube, are effectively denied access to a significant portion of what now constitutes the public square. At a time when billions of people are under house arrest, and the literal public square is largely off-limits, this is an even more sinister development. As is the fact that governments and powerful organisations seem to be working hand in glove with tech firms to enforce conformity.

Covid-19 and the policies being pursued to tame it affect everyone. We must be free to question and debate all the issues this crisis raises, insisting that no one person or organisation has a monopoly on truth and that dangerous nonsense can be defeated in free debate. And we need to make sure we have a (relatively) free internet at the end of all this. That some firms are now helping to police offline protests, organised to oppose government policy, is a particularly alarming indication of how far Big Tech censorship has spread during this pandemic. We need to flatten the curve.

Tom Slater is deputy editor at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_

To enquire about republishing spikeds content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

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We need to stop the spread of Big Tech censorship - Spiked

The Darlings are discouraged and disheartened by live stream censorship – The Province

Local nonbinary drag theatre collective The Darlings have had two performances taken down from Facebook.PNG

Vancouver nonbinary drag collective The Darlings has a dedicated audience for its creative and cutting-edge performances. But since the group took its show online, its work is being targeted.

Both the March 29 broadcast debut and the April 26 followup were subject to reports that they contravened Facebooks terms and guidelines and were taken down following being reported.

In a statement posted on The Darlings Facebook page, the members point out that queer artists are being silenced by such actions and that the process to get reinstated on the viewing platform is extremely onerous. The video goes on to point out that the artists were even practicing self-censorship of its content to avoid contravening Facebooks terms and guidelines. This is particularly unsettling for queer artists everywhere being comfortable with using online platforms to deliver their art in the absence of queer spaces.

For now, both performances can be viewed on Vimeo.

I like to assume that it was someone random, and not direct targeting, because in most cases that is the case, said The Darlings Continental Breakfast. There are people out there who dont want to be seeing queer programming being accessible. And if anything you do can be seen as even being PG-13, it can get reported.

The first report was lodged when member PM was showing bare feet while wearing latex. For the second show, Continental Breakfast even had nieces watch it after it aired for extra vetting. The performer admitted to feeling calm and confident going into the event.

We were on the edge of our seats for the first show, because we didnt know how it would go, they said. So we completely adjusted our content to bring forward a family-friendly show that was sensitive, gentle and touched on vulnerability. Its really hard to see someone still report that.

With nearly 10,000 views across both shows, demand clearly exists for The Darlings work. But the group says being shut down the second time cut-off its audience in the first 15 minutes and the numbers were seriously impacted. This has lead The Darlings to take a break and reconsider alternative routes which do not risk the integrity and viability of their work.

Member Rose Butch stated that being silenced on the most accessible platform available to broadcast to viewers was discouraging and disheartening.

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The Darlings are discouraged and disheartened by live stream censorship - The Province

Public college backs off threat to censor professor’s course on Islamist violence after legal warning – The College Fix

Forced apology shows the colleges foremost interest is its public perception

As far as meaningful apologies go, this is one of the best ones Ive seen from a college.

Arizonas Maricopa County Community College District not only apologized for trampling on the academic freedom of a Scottsdale Community College professor, but promised an immediate independent investigation into its handling of the situation.

Its also creating a Committee on Academic Freedom to ensure that the districts longstanding commitment to the value of inclusion does not come at the expense of academic freedom.

The Monday announcement from interim Chancellor Steven Gonzales came four days after the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education warned SCC that its actions were flatly inconsistent with its First Amendment obligations and would chill faculty expression.

Nicholas Damask, chair of the political science department, teaches a world politics class that includes a module called Islamic Terrorism. Three quiz questions in the module asked whom terrorists strive to emulate, which Islamic verses encourage terrorism, and when terrorism is justified in Islam, according to FIREs letter.

A student complained to Damask that the questions were in distaste of Islam and didnt accept his explanation of the legitimacy of the quiz questions. Soon the same complaint had been shared online and SCCs Instagram account started getting bombarded with complaints about the quiz.

In an Instagram post that has since been removed but remains archived, interim SCC President Chris Haines not only agreed that the quiz questions were inaccurate, inappropriate, and not reflective of the inclusive nature of our college, but said Damask will be apologizing to the offended student.

The college was also permanently banning those questions from future quizzes. Haines implied they violated the colleges nondiscrimination policy.

We applaud the student for bringing this to our attention and encourage any student or employee to speak out when offended by quiz questions, Haines said. (Side note: Please use Archive.Today to document online posts you think may be removed. Haines post does not display on the most popular archive service despite being saved more than 200 times in a single day.)

MORE: UCLA censors book on Islamic Totalitarianism at free speech event

Not only did Damasks dean tell him the districts governing board was reviewing the matter, and that a leader in the Islamic faith would now be screening his course content, but the college refused to tell a local newspaper if the professor was facing discipline. (Investigating protected speech by itself can violate the First Amendment, nevermind issuing sanctions at the end of the investigation.)

Damask left these calls [with Dean of Instruction Kathleen Iudicello] feeling that his job security was in jeopardy, FIRE program officer Katlyn Patton wrote to President Haines.

As for that apology that the president promised? Marketing and Public Relations Manager Eric Sells wrote it, sent it to multiple administrators and warned that senior leadership would probably want to review it. The draft apology pledged, in Damasks name, to ensure theres no additional insensitivities in course material. (Sells grammar is incorrect here.)

The college committed the trifecta of censorship with this course of action, violating not only the First Amendment and core tenets of academic freedom but also state law protecting faculty against compelled expression of a particular view,Patton wrote. She reminded Haines that the district already paid a six-figure settlement in the past year to resolve a First Amendment lawsuit brought by faculty.

(The settlements mandated training on freedom of expression and academic freedom apparently didnt work, which is too bad, because those are explicit conditions of its accreditation.)

Patton warned the president that she doesnt want to litigate this, because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (whose rulings are binding on SCC) has already exempted academic freedom from a precedent that lets employers regulate employee speech pursuant to their official duties. That 2014 ruling went even further than Damasks quiz, protecting speech related to scholarship orteaching.

SCCs ludicrous overreaction to the quiz questions sets a dangerous precedent for Damasks entire department, Patton wrote:

Further, the study of political scienceand particularly world politics and terrorismwill almost inevitably venture into sometimes-uncomfortable territory and include topics on which many students will have both varying and deeply-held beliefs. That students may experience discomfort, and even anger, in the course of their studies should have no bearing on a professors right to select relevant materials and test students on their knowledge of those materials as they see fit. The students in Damasks class are adults in a college-level course and should be treated as such.

MORE: Six-figure settlement with student punished for Islamic terrorist spoof

The forced apology is a stark admission that the colleges foremost interest is its public perception, which it has shamefully elevated above the well-established expressive and academic freedom rights of its students and faculty, Patton concluded. (FIREs blog post Monday gives no suggestion the college responded by its May 8 deadline.)

Mondays announcement from Chancellor Gonzales left out names and other details of the dispute, but made clear that the quiz questions were taken out of context and their subject was within the scope of the course. Some people even made threats against the unnamed professor.

Gonzales said he was troubled by what appears to be a rush to judgement in how the college responded to the controversy, including by violating its own policy and procedure:

I apologize, personally, and on behalf of the Maricopa Community Colleges, for the uneven manner in which this was handled and for our lack of full consideration for our professors right of academic freedom.

Perhaps alluding to FIREs warning that an investigation itself can trigger legal liability, the chancellor cleared up misinformation that the districts governing board was investigating the professor or might be planning to. Damask is not in jeopardy of losing his position.

As for the academic freedom committee, its members will be identified by the end of the week, he said. Their task is to champion academic freedom education and training and to resolve academic freedom disputes in the hope of ensuring this fundamental academic value is better understood and realized alongside our longstanding commitment to the value of inclusion.

If theres one thing folks like FIRE can tell you, however, its that promises made in the midst of a PR disaster can go unfulfilled if the public loses interest. The first test of the districts commitment will be whom it appoints to the new committee, and the second will be its transparency with the results of the independent investigation.

MORE: American university punishes prof for refusing to proselytize Islam

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Public college backs off threat to censor professor's course on Islamist violence after legal warning - The College Fix

Immoral, indecent and obscene, or timeless portraits of Ireland? – The Irish Times

The British magazine was extremely popular with readers but not with the Irish censor. Its portraits of ireland are timeless, however

In his memoir thelong-time editor of the Irish Press Tim Pat Coogan recalls a story that the firms controlling director, Vivion de Valera, once told him.

It concerned Vivions schooldays at Blackrock College and how he had once been summoned to the college presidents office. There, the future Catholic archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid instructed Vivion to review a pile of newspaper cuttings of full-page adverts for Clearys department store. The adverts, Coogan recounts, included small line drawings of women modelling underwear of a design which reflected the modest standards of the Ireland of that era. To the somewhat baffled Vivion, McQuaid pointed out the insidious immorality of the drawings. Some of them, if one used a magnifying glass, indicated the outline of a mons veneris.

The hint was duly delivered by Vivion to his father, amon de Valera, then taoiseach and controlling director of the Irish Press. But ecclesiastical policing of the press extended beyond Irish newspapers: the presence of undesirable British newspapers, particularly the hugely popular Picture Post, represented a contagion of immorality, indecency and obscenity.

Published in London as a photojournalismmagazine between 1938 and 1957, it sold more than 1.5 million copies a week, and quickly attracted the ire of Irish clerics because of what the magazines historian David J Marcou has called the vitality, humour, and pathos of its reflections and dreams, as well as the intelligence of its layouts and interests.

The human interest aspect of its photoessays covered everything from swimwear contests to urban life, crime and art and would lead the Picture Post to be the most frequently banned British publication in Ireland. Less than three months after its launch came the first complaint to the censorship of publications board. In February 1939 the Rev JA Twomey protested against the indecent and suggestive pictorial matter contained in several editions of the Picture Post, which has a wide sale in each week in Cork.

The following month brought a letter from the Rev MJ Hennelly of Tuam, who lodged an official complaint with the censorship board on the grounds that the magazine was indecent and obscene. It seems that photographs of art were the source of this objection, with Hennelly declaring that such images may be alright for the art-lover, but for the ordinary boy and girl they are abominably suggestive.

But for a publication to be banned it had to be found to have been indecent or obscene over several sequential issues;isolated instances could not be punished. In an attempt to demonstrate the sequential indecency of the magazine, John Charles McQuaid, while still president of Blackrock College, lodged a lengthy and detailed official complaint with the censorship board. He alleged that obscenity and indecency had occurred 12 times in the issue of January 21st, 1939; eight times in the edition of January 28th; six times in the February 4th edition; 12 times in the February 11th edition; and eight times in the February 25th edition.

Among the items that McQuaid objected to in the latter two editions were a photograph of a woman model in a swimsuit; a photograph showing the lower legs of women roller-skaters; photographs of statues of the female form at Crystal Palace in London; photographs of women mud wrestlers; and a photograph of a painting of a nude woman sleeping on a couch.

Despite McQuaids complaint the magazine was not banned, though Picture Post was obviously informed of Irish sensitivities as it voluntarily removed two pages Painters of Paris from an April 1939 edition. Despite this attempt at sanitising the magazine for Irish readers, complaints continued.

In October 1939, Ellie Kelly, a Dublin newsagent, complained that the magazine had a huge circulation in the city and noted that its terrible to think this awful filth is in a Christian country. She also recorded how she had refused to stock the magazine and had refereed it to the priests of the parish.

Those priests would no doubt have been aghast at the description of Ireland in the November 4th edition. Drawing on his time in Dublin earlier in the decade, Orson Welles declared that censorship of books and controlled education have produced a crop of young men as blankly ignorant of the modern world as if they lived in the thirteenth century, mentally concentrated upon the idea of bringing the Protestant North under Catholic control in the sacred name of national unity.

Referring to the IRAs bombing of Coventry the previous August, Welles asserted that the attack had been carried out by young priest-taught men who purify their souls at mass and confession before they leave a bomb in a London underground station.

Describing the Catholic Church as that clumsy system of frustration, that strange compendium of ancient traditions and habit systems, he declared it as the most formidable single antagonist in the way of human adjustment.

Unsurprisingly, complaints flooded into the censorship board: one letter described it as nothing short of a national scandal that such journals should be allowed to enter Irish homes; another described Welless article as highly blasphemous; yet another described Picture Post as not fit reading for the family in our Catholic state.

The Rev Thomas Burke from Connemara asked: in the name of God and Ireland, why has this indecent, blasphemous production even been allowed to enter this country? He hastened to add that the edition that he had read was given to me recently by a friend.

Official complaints also flowed in, with Francis OReilly, secretary of the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, itemising content from four sequential editions as being indecent or obscene. Similarly, McQuaid lodged an official complaint itemising content from three sequential editions as indecent or obscene. On this occasion, Picture Post was, on the advice of the censorship board, banned by the minister for justice, Gerry Boland, for three months.

The date of the ban was December 16th, 1939, but, at the request of the magazines distributor, Eason and Sons, the justice department held back publishing the official notice in the government gazette, Iris Oifigiuil. This allowed Easons to distribute the edition of December 20th, 1939, which had already arrived in Ireland. However, a request that the December 27th edition 26,000 copies of which were in Liverpool awaiting dispatch to Dublin be allowed to circulate in the State, subject to the justice department clearing its content, was denied.

The ban prompted a rare protest from members of the public. In January 1940 a petition signed by 35 people from Waterford, Kilkenny, Louth and Dublin was sent to the censorship board. Describing Picture Post as one of the most human, impartial, and democratic papers recently circulating in Eire, the petition argued that an occasional representation of nudity or semi-nudity, in a periodical which aims at giving a comprehensive view of modern life, does not constitute a general tendency to indecency. It concluded by noting that any action whose chief effect is to hinder the free circulation of varying opinions is detrimental to the moral and intellectual interests of the country.

The three-month ban expired at the end of March 1940 and in an attempt to mend fences Picture Post decided to do a special issue The Story of Ireland in July 1940. Writing to taoiseach amon de Valera, editor Tom Hopkinson noted that the special issue tried to treat the whole subject in a way that would be at once friendly and impartial.

However, as if to prove the maxim no good deed goes unpunished, the issue was immediately banned under wartime censorship regulations. It had unfortunately referred to a news item that the censorship authorities had prohibited Irish newspapers from revealing:the capture of a boat off the Irish coast containing two Germans and a cargo of explosives.

Subsequent complaints by members of the public to the censorship board centred on adverts that one reader viewed as selling filthy contraceptives. Despite this, Picture Post continued to circulate in Ireland. Writing a profile of the state for New Statesman in 1941, Elizabeth Bowen noted that English newspapers and periodicals can be obtained on order. Picture Post is in constant demand.

In its final years it was banned numerous times: between July 1948 and June 1956 it was banned no fewer than 10 times, with each ban being lifted on appeal or following assurances given the censorship board. But perhaps Picture Post had the last laugh. Its January 1957 edition carried a feature, This is Ireland, in which it noted that the most delightful thing about Ireland is that in many ways it is foreign, but it is still British in quite a few others... You can understand the language unless the peasants talk Gaelic at you; the pubs are open all hours and the churches are crammed full on Sundays.

The visitor also took delight in the native sport of hurley, a dashing form of hockey, and the fact that nobody is really expected to be strictly on time for an appointment.

Five months later Picture Post ceased publication. A row in 1950 between publisher Edward Hulton and long-time editor Tom Hopkinson over Hultons spiking of an article on atrocities committed by the South Korean army had led to Hopkinsons departure. The magazine never recovered.

On its demise one reviewer from this newspaper noted that while Picture Post had begun as a vigorous weekly picture paper with a serious interest in social and economic problems, by the late 1950s it was aiming at a fairly low common denominator which presumably prefers its pictures to be thrown on the television screen.

The loss of advertisers to television and a drop in circulation to below 600,000 saw the Picture Post publish its last edition in June 1957, a move no doubt welcomed by the ever-alert guardians of Irelands morality.

Mark OBrien is an associate professor at Dublin City University and the author of The Fourth Estate: Journalism in Twentieth-Century Ireland (2017)

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Immoral, indecent and obscene, or timeless portraits of Ireland? - The Irish Times