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Journalism under attack:
When
Alex Jones’ InfoWars was taken down and all the unthinking
automatons on Facebook celebrated because they don’t ‘like’
Alex Jones.
I
warned at the time that it wouldn’s stop there. ‘Be careful what
you wish for’
The
real targets (along with Jones who partially fits into the category)
are the anti-war voices of Left and Right as well as credible voices
who oppose the machinations of the Deep State.
When
people refuse to oppose the real fascism and are manipulated into
rushing off into a quagmire we know we are in trouble.
Even
the majority of people who think they oppose these things are
pretty-much mind-controlled.
Five
examples that show internet censorship is as much a threat to the
left as the right
RT,
17
August, 20148
The
banning of right wing controversialist Alex Jones from multiple
social media platforms last week was a cause of celebration for many
liberals, but should those on the left really be so complacent about
creeping censorship?
So
far, the evidence suggest that there is indeed plenty for the left to
worry about when it comes to corporations like Facebook and Twitter
and their alliances with government censors.
Telesur page takedown: Facebook becoming ‘US govt’s censorship vehicle’
1.
Facebook censorship of Venezuelan news
In
May, Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council in an effort to
weed out “inauthentic
content” on
the platform. This organization is funded
by various
NATO governments and a slew of arms manufacturers like Raytheon,
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Its board includes names like
Henry Kissinger and former CIA director Michael Hayden — and it has
consistently lobbied for regime change in Syria and, you guessed it,
Venezuela, where it has funnelled large amounts of money
into pro-opposition
groups for
years.
So,
it’s no surprise that weeks after Facebook partnered up with this
less-than-objective group, it deleted from its platform the page
belonging to top English-language, left-leaning Latin American news
outlet Telesur without any explanation at all. The page was restored
two days later, with Facebook citing vague “instability
on the platform” as
the cause of the block.
Telesur
just so happens to be one of the only major outlets reporting on
events in Venezuela in a manner that goes against the US government
position and US mainstream media perspective — so obviously, out
with Alex Jones it must go.
It wasn’t just Telesur, though. Facebook deleted the pages belonging to independent grassroots Venezuela Analysis and Haiti Analysis, which are also leftist websites highly critical of US foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean region.
Facebook's shuttering of @telesurenglish 's page comes days after it did the same to @venanalysis page w/o explanation. The latest outgrowth of FB's Orwellian partnership w/ the Atlantic Council. ICMYI, @MaxBlumenthal discussed it w/ me on @TheRealNews : therealnews.com/series/max-blu…
2.
Facebook complying with Israeli deletion orders
Last
year, journalist Glenn Greenwald reported that
Facebook met with Israeli government officials to determine which
Palestinian activists should have their accounts deleted. The Israeli
government threatened to enact laws forcing Facebook to comply with
its deletion orders if it did not do so voluntarily.
Of course, Facebook capitulated immediately and set about deleting accounts owned by Palestinian activists. Of some 158 requests submitted (over just four months) by Tel Aviv to Facebook asking for the removal of Palestinian content, 95 percent of them were granted. According to the same Intercept report, Facebook hasn’t been overly concerned about what Israelis themselves are saying on Facebook and even calls for murder can be ignored by the social media giant.
3.
Google and Facebook censorship of left/socialist websites
The
World Socialist Web Site reported last year that changes to Google’s
algorithms had seriously negatively impacted left-wing socialist and
anti-war websites. An analysis by WSWS found that 13 such websites
had seen their traffic plunge by a whopping 55 percent in the six
months since Google had changed its algorithms. WSWS itself
experienced a 74 percent drop in traffic between April and July last
year. The changes also affected sites like Alternet, which saw its
traffic plunge by 71 percent between April and September, Democracy
Now (50 percent drop) and Truth-out.org (49 percent drop).
Similarly, Police the Police (a page dedicated to exposing US police brutality) and the Free Thought Project (which focuses on government transparency) also saw their Facebook page traffic tank in 2018 after Facebook made changes to its newsfeed and search algorithms in an effort to combat “fake news”. PTP traffic dropped from between 12-15 million people per week to about 4 million — and the website had to fire its writing staff as a result. “The left is cheering this on, when historically the left is usually the side cheering for free speech,” PTP founder Jason Bassler told Mic.
Amidst
all of the celebration over the banning of Jones, some on the left
cautioned that in fact, the left may indeed be the“real
target” in
all of this — and that those celebrating while people like Jones
are banned are in fact being “conditioned”into
accepting further censorship down the road.
As we have been trying to tell you the real target for neoliberal corporate censorship was always the left. Now that they have conditioned public to accept it as a result of Russiagate, the left is in their crosshairs. goo.gl/6sj6tU
As we have been trying to tell you the real target for neoliberal corporate censorship was always the left. Now that they have conditioned public to accept it as a result of Russiagate, the left is in their crosshairs.
4.
Legitimate left-wing protests targeted?
A
particularly strange example of Facebook’s commitment to
banning “fake
news” and
promoting a nice, cozy atmosphere for everyone online is its decision
to delete event pages for anti-racist and anti-fascist protests
happening in Washington D.C.
The “No
Unite the Right 2-DC” event
(a counter-rally against a previous white nationalist event in the
city) was taken down after Facebook decided it displayed
some “coordinated
inauthentic behavior” (the
kind of random phrase that can no doubt be arbitrarily applied to
anything without explanation).
The
event organizer said in a statement: “This
is a real protest in Washington, D.C. It is not George Soros. It is
not Russia. It is just us.”
5.
Twitter suspending and banning anti-war activists
Twitter
has come under fire recently for “shadowbanning” conservative
accounts, making them harder to find on the platform and having their
tweets appear less prominently in people’s feeds in an effort to
limit their audience. But again, it’s not just the right.
Twitter
recently suspended the accounts of Daniel McAdams, the executive
director of the libertarian and antiwar Ron Paul Institute and Scott
Horton, the editor of the AntiWar.com website. Explaining what
happened, McAdams said that
he and Horton were suspended after defending former US diplomat Peter
Van Buren who had just been banned permanently
from Twitter after heated exchanges with journalist Jonathan M. Katz
over what Van Buren said was his “unwillingness
to challenge government lies”.
In one of his tweets to Katz, Buren sarcastically commented: "I
hope a MAGA guy eats your face".
Katz reported him for "promoting
violence" and
Twitter later caved and removed Buren's account.
A note from Peter Van Buren @wemeantwell and a screenshot of the boo hoo little bitch who tattled on him.
In
explaining his suspension, Twitter told McAdams that he could
not “promote
violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of
race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender
identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious
disease” —
none of which he accepts that he did.
Perhaps
the really amazing thing about all of this is that it is happening in
front of our eyes and the powers that be are not even bothering to
lie about it. Elected US officials are openly promoting this kind of
censorship as a way to prevent the"sowing
of discord" among
populations. At a Senate Judiciary Committee last year
about “Extremist
Content and Russian Disinformation Online,” Democratic
Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono called on social media platforms to prove
their commitment to preventing “the
fomenting of discord” online.
Working
hand-in-glove with governments, corporations like Facebook have been
handed enormous power to decide what constitutes free speech and
which opinions are worthy of being heard. How long will it be before
people realize banning Alex Jones wasn’t really a victory at all?
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