Actually, it's information that is censored. The fact that the US supported a
coup in Ukraine is unknown to most people in the US. The fact that the US
supported Nazis in that coup is unknown. The fact that the US supported the
color revolutions in order to surround Russia with hostile states is unknown.
The fact that the US openly disrupted and controlled the economy and elections
in Russia in the 90's is unknown, and that it is that interference which was
the cause of Putin becoming President is unknown. The true history of Zionism
and the Palestinians is unknown. The mass media, and especially the New York
Times, our paper of record, takes facts and then places them in a framework in
order to control how people think about those facts. But of course, everyone
has their own take on each story. I listen and I read, and I pick and choose
what to trust. But it is all basically guesswork. I trust some journalists more
than others. I trust max Blumenthal's reporting and I wonder constantly why Amy
Goodman know longer has him on Democracy Now, if she ever did. She has moved
away from many of the alternative journalists whom she recently featured.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2018 10:03 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Beware the Slippery Slope of Facebook Censorship
Censorship has existed in America from the day the first newspaper hit the door.
The fight has always been over whose censorship will be tolerated.
Most of the sources I rely on for information, are excluded from the Mass
Media. That is called Censorship.
If we taught our children to think and to question, censorship would not be a
problem. Censorship is not a cause, it is a result. It is the result of the
American Empire's control over the minds of its citizens.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/2/18, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I wonder when they are going to shut down my account for inflaming
social and political tensions in the United States. Most of my posts
are political and they are sure not supportive of Republicrat politics.
On 8/2/2018 9:28 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Beware the Slippery Slope of Facebook Censorship By Matt Taibbi,
Rolling Stone
02 August 18
The social network is too big and broken to properly function, and
these "fixes" will only create more problems
You may have seen a story this week detailing how Facebook shut down
a series of accounts. As noted by Politico, Facebook claimed these
accounts "sought to inflame social and political tensions in the
United States, and said their activity was similar - and in some
cases connected - to that of Russian accounts during the 2016
election."
Similar? What does "similar" mean?
The death-pit for civil liberties is usually found in a combination
of fringe/unpopular people or ideas and a national security emergency.
This is where we are with this unsettling new confab of Facebook,
Congress and the Trump administration.
Read this jarring quote from Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) about the
shutting down of the "inauthentic" accounts:
"Today's disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to
exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation.
I
also expect Facebook, along with other platform companies, will
continue to identify Russian troll activity and to work with
Congress."
This was in a story in which Facebook stated that it did not know the
source of all the pages. They might be Russian, or they might just be
Warner's idea of "sowing division." Are we comfortable with that
range of possibilities?
Many of the banned pages look like parodies of some paranoid
bureaucrat's idea of dangerous speech.
A page called "Black Elevation" shows a picture of Huey Newton and
offers readers a job. "Aztlan Warriors" contains a meme celebrating
the likes of Geronimo and Zapata, giving thanks for their service in
the "the 500 year war against colonialism."
And a banned "Mindful Being" page shared this, which seems culled
from Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts bit:
"We must unlearn what we have learned because a conditioned mind
cannot comprehend the infinite."
Facebook also wiped out a "No Unite The Right 2" page, appearing to
advertise a counter-rally on the upcoming anniversary of the violence
in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Facebook was "helped" in its efforts to wipe out these dangerous
memes by the Atlantic Council, on whose board you'll find
confidence-inspiring names like Henry Kissinger, former CIA chief
Michael Hayden, former acting CIA head Michael Morell and former
Bush-era Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. (The latter is the
guy who used to bring you the insane color-coded terror threat level
system.)
These people now have their hands on what is essentially a direct
lever over nationwide news distribution. It's hard to understate the
potential mischief that lurks behind this union of Internet platforms
and would-be government censors.
As noted in Rolling Stone earlier this year, 70 percent of Americans
get their news from just two sources, Facebook and Google. As that
number rises, the power of just a few people to decide what
information does and does not reach the public will amplify
significantly.
In a way, this is the other shoe dropping after last week's
much-publicized brouhaha over Infowars lunatic Alex Jones. Jones had
four videos removed from YouTube and had his Facebook page banned for
30 days, though he seemed to find a way around that more or less
instantly.
These moves were celebrated across social media, because who doesn't
hate Alex Jones?
The complainants in the Jones case included parents of Sandy Hook
victims, who have legitimate beef with Jones and his conspiratorial
coverage. The Infowars reports asserting the grieving parents were
green-screen fakes were not just demonstrably false and rightfully
the subject of a defamation suit, but also seemingly crossed a
separate line when they published maps and addresses of family
members, who experienced threats.
When Jones and his like-minded pals cried censorship and bias, they
came across as more than a little disingenuous. After all,
right-wingers have consistently argued on behalf of the speech rights of big
corporations.
Conservative justices have handed down rulings using the First
Amendment to hold back regulation of big tobacco and the gun
industry, and to justify unlimited campaign spending. Citizens United
was a crucial moment in the degradation of the First Amendment,
essentially defining corporate influence as speech.
As many pointed out last week, the Jones ban was not a legal speech
issue
-
not exactly, anyway. No matter how often Jones yelped about "Hitler
levels of censorship," and no matter how many rambling pages he and
his minions typed up in their "emergency report" on the "deep state
plan to kill the First Amendment," it didn't change the objectively
true fact their ban was not (yet) a First Amendment issue.
The First Amendment, after all, only addresses the government's power
to restrict speech. It doesn't address what Facebook, Google, YouTube
and Twitter can do as private companies, enforcing their terms of service.
So it's true, there was no First Amendment issue with the Jones ban.
But that's the problem.
The pre-Internet system for dealing with defamatory and libelous
speech was litigation, which was pretty effective. The standard for
punishment was also very high. In the 1964 Supreme Court case New
York Times v. Sullivan - the bedrock case for libel law involving a
public figure - the court went out of its way to make sure that
complainants needed to prove reckless or knowing disregard for fact.
Among other things, the court worried that absent such a tough legal
standard, outlets would play it too safe with speech, and "make only
statements which 'steer far wider of the unlawful zone.'"
This mostly worked. Historically there were few analogs to Infowars
that got anything like wide distribution because of the financial
threat, which scared publishers most of all. In order to have power
to distribute widely you needed resources, but you put those
resources at risk if you defamed people.
That all changed with digital media. Way back in 1996, when mastodons
roamed the earth and people used dial-up to connect to the Internet,
Congress passed the Communications Decency Act. It contained the
following landmark
language:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be
treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by
another information content provider."
Essentially this meant that Internet providers wouldn't be treated
like news organizations. In the eyes of the law, they were less like
CBS or Random House than they were bookstores or newsstands.
The rule allowed platforms to grow exponentially without the same
fear of litigation. Companies like Facebook and Google became
all-powerful media distributors, and were able to profit from
InfoWars-style programs without having to be liable for them.
This led to the flowering of so much obnoxious speech that the First
Amendment acquired a reputation as a racist con, and online media
distributors, instead of being sued themselves as publishers, began
to be viewed as potential restorers of order, beneficent censors.
Now, at a moment of crisis and high political tension, the public
seems unable to grasp the gravity of allowing the government or
anyone else to use that power.
It is already a scandal that these de facto private media regulators
have secret algorithmic processes that push down some news
organizations in favor of others. Witness the complaints by outlets
like Alternet, Truthdig and others that big platforms have been
de-emphasizing alternative sites in the name of combating "fake
news."
But this week's revelation is worse. When Facebook works with the
government and wannabe star-chamber organizations like the Atlantic
Council to delete sites on national security grounds, using secret
methodology, it opens the door to nightmare possibilities that you'd
find in dystopian novels.
The sheer market power of these companies over information flow has
always been the real threat. This is why breaking them up should have
long ago become an urgent national priority.
Instead, as was obvious during the Senate hearing with Mark
Zuckerberg earlier this year, politicians are more interested in
using than curtailing the power of these companies. The platforms,
for their part, will cave rather than be regulated. The endgame here
couldn't be clearer. This is how authoritarian marriages begin, and
people should be very worried.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
