Social media companies have moved to front and center in controversies over censorship and control of our information. That was the topic of another recent hearing titled: Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression and the 2020 Election.
Twitter drew controversy shortly before the election when it censored The New York Post’s article. It was about controversies surrounding Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, his foreign business deals, and contents alleged to be on his laptop computer.
At a Senate hearing, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said his company blocked the Post’s tweets because of a policy against sharing material “hacked” from someone’s computer, though there was no indication such material was in The Post article.
Jack Dorsey: Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours.
Actually, it caused a two week long stalemate. When Twitter finally unlocked the Post’s account, the newspaper celebrated with a FREE BIRD front page.
From Twitter to Facebook and Google, Internet giants are under fire for their increasingly heavy-hand when flagging and blocking certain views, news and science.
Ted Cruz: Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?
Republican Ted Cruz argues Big Tech censorship tends to be famously one-sided.
Cruz: You didn’t block the distribution of the New York Times story that alleged to talk about President Trump’s tax returns, even though federal statute makes it a crime to distribute someone’s tax returns without their consent. You didn’t block any of that discussion, did you?
Dorsey: In the New York Times case, we interpreted it as reporting about the hacked materials.
Some Democrats, like Dianne Feinstein, cheered on the big tech companies acting as information mediators.
Dianne Feinstein: Does misinformation about the results of an election and voter fraud relate to civic integrity?
Dorsey: Yes. It does. And we label those tweets.
Republican Lindsey Graham questioned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Lindsey Graham: When it comes to fact-checking, would you give us a list of people you use to fact-check?
Mark Zuckerberg: Senator yes. We work with a number of independent organizations that are accredited by the Pointer Institute, and they include Reuters, the Associated Press
Critics say the problem is those very groups are not independent, and have themselves made egregious reporting errors.
By big tech companies injecting themselves into content decisions, they’ve transformed from website publishers or platforms into editorial publishers, according to some.
Graham: The editorial decision by the New York Post to run the story was overridden by Twitter and Facebook in different fashions to prevent its dissemination. Now if that’s not making an editorial decision I don’t know what would be.
That matters because entities that make editorial decisions aren’t entitled to the same legal protection from lawsuits brought by those who have their material banned or censored, under a law called Section 230.
But Zuckerburg argues they do not qualify as a news content publisher.
Zuckerberg: We’re also clearly not like a news publisher, in that we don’t create the content and we don’t choose up front what we publish. We give people a voice to be able to publish things.
Sharyl (on camera): Congress is considering stripping Section 230 protections from the big tech companies but hasn’t voted to do so yet.
https://fullmeasure.news/news/shows/breaking-the-news
https://fullmeasure.news/news/shows/breaking-the-news
Sharyl,
“News” is reflective of brain left-hemishere (( logical )) vs. right-hemisphere (( emotional )).
Leftism in Twitter management is emotional, and hates the “father-figure” in Trump. Well, a deep elaboration on that statement would require too many pages.
Below is an overview of that claim, posted in a different page :
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On Sharyl’s page, in response to “Ellen’s” post—in here :
https://sharylattkisson.com/2020/11/hard-to-find-2020-election-fraud-stories-and-links/#comment-79012
Ellen (( and Sharyl )),
You correctly write :
“ I got it, you don’t like him. Many of you utterly hate and despise him. How special of you. He is serving you and ALL the American people. What are you doing besides calling him names and laughing about him catching the China virus ?????”
Here is why they don’t like Trump—why they HATE him :
In my study of brain hemisphere dichotomies, Trump represents the left-hemisphere LOGICAL side of the brain (( the RULES maker. / the RATIONAL masculine, which can see danger in having too much fun )).
The Trump-haters relate to him from the right-hemisphere EMOTIONAL side of the brain (( the RULES breaker / the EMOTIONAL feminine, which wishes to have “just have fun” )).
From about the time women got the vote, the West became more and more anti-rules and more decadent in social matters—entering an age I have termed : an Age of Emotionalism (( from my 1987 report, “The Donahue Syndrome” )).
Trump is FATHER in the home while Pelosi is MOTHER in the home.
From the beginning of humans’ self-awareness, that line describes an internal male vs, female conflict, projected outward onto the world—to reveal the combatants in all extant politics—and in the HOME
-Rick
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Please, the news is not broken. It does not exist Some years ago we (USA) used to point out how Russia, China, Cuba and others had no free press. It was controlled by the communists parties. Well, our MSM and social media are controlled by the Democratic party. Our media is the same as communist propaganda. These rich kids that founded these social media companies know about their business but have zero “street smarts”. No “street smarts” means the Democratic party “plays” with them under the umbrella of “globalism is good”!
In today’s America, if you receive your news from the MSM and the social media you have no knowledge of what is really going on here or in the world..
As Sharyl points out in “Slanted,” the news media and Big Tech have become our greatest proponents of censorship. “Slanted” was completed late last Spring, but the censorship continued apace, as we saw with suppression of the Hunter Biden story and the dismissal of allegations of election irregularities as “baseless.”
Views of conservatives are increasingly labeled as “disputed” or of having been offered “without evidence,” yet disputed views on the left, or opinions offered without evidence, are rarely – if ever – tagged as such.
A mass of evidence pertaining to election fraud has been collected, ranging from hundreds of notarized affidavits by election workers and poll watchers, video, statistical analysis, and citations of specific violations of state election laws, yet both the media and the courts repeat the mantra that charges of fraud are being made “without evidence.”
Meanwhile, rank speculation about Trump’s business affairs and tax filings is bandied about uncritically, often with the suggestion that Trump is guilty of money laundering, tax fraud, and various other financial crimes. This speculation is never censored or flagged as “disputed,” or as having been submitted “without evidence.”
230 is necessary for free speech platforms, who don’t act as publishers. They exist. 230 should not be a shield to twitter and Facebook though, and YouTube to a smaller degree of censorship, should not be a shield when you decide what content is allowed when it doesn’t break the law. If you don’t allow content like pornography for example, you should know it up front. If you don’t allow legally allowed discussion of religion, state it up front when you sign up… politics, etc….
MSM is completely broken and untrustworthy. Without social media, alternative media would be very difficult to find. You learn who to pay attention to and who to avoid by trial and error and word of mouth, and you look for similar stories on MSM and then you know what the slant is. It takes effort, but it’s necessary on anything important to you.