Published on Jun 13, 2019
Google staff keep ‘blacklist’ of conservative and ‘fringe’ sites – report
Google reportedly runs two “blacklists,” one allowing staff to remove “fringe” websites from search results and another for filtering out opinion articles, according to conservative news outlet the Daily Caller.
The lists allow Google employees –who CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress in December never “manually intervene on any particular search result”– to suppress certain addresses in a user’s search results.
The Daily Caller claims to have seen screenshots of the lists in question. Google did not address whether its staff deliberately weed out certain political content, but did say they are working to filter out “inappropriate” search results.
The first list, titled “webanswers_url_blacklist,” lets staff block specific web addresses from popping up in Google’s ‘featured snippets’ when a user asks a question. Many of the pages blocked are op-ed articles, which a user could mistake for straight news reporting. This list appears to target opinion pieces in general, regardless of their political bent.
Another list, which the Daily Caller suggests was compiled by algorithm, blanket blacklists a host of conservative and “fringe” sites from appearing in the ‘featured snippets.’ The American Spectator, Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit and the website of Bring Your Bible to School Day are among those included. Several progressive sites, including Consortium News and a blog called Breitbart Unmasked also reportedly made the list.
That Google would censor conservative or “fringe” content will come as no surprise to some. The company, along with a bevy of other Silicon Valley tech giants, has been accused of harboring a liberal bias for several years now, with new stories of favoritism surfacing regularly.
A recent study found that Google’s search algorithms display a “left-leaning ideological skew,” while video footage of an internal company meeting recorded after the 2016 election showed executives calling Donald Trump’s victory “deeply offensive” and talking about using AI to fight populism in future.
YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, implemented a blanket ban on “hateful” and “supremacist” videos last week. The ban, which came about after Vox journalist Carlos Maza led a campaign against conservative shock-jock Steven Crowder, swept away or demonetized thousands of videos critical of the social justice movement and several video reports on extremist movements by legitimate journalists.
‘This will not go well’: YouTube cracks down on pundits & journalists after policy change
Though the right has made the most noise about big tech’s alleged censorship efforts, a growing number of left-wing voices have been sounding the alarm too. Facebook has been perhaps most overt in clamping down on anti-establishment content across the political spectrum, but Google has also come under fire for changing its algorithms to de-rank left-wing, socialist, and anti-war websites.
Journalist Max Blumenthal called the tech giants’ clampdown part of “a wider war on dissident narratives in online media.”
LA Pride Paraders Can’t Admit That TRUMP IS NOT THAT BAD
Published on Jun 11, 2019
This week we hit the LA Pride Parade in West Hollywood. Some people were able to admit that Trump is not that bad, others, not so much.
THIS WAS WRITTEN IN 1989 . . .
PLEASE READ THE MIDDLE PARAGRAPH
Facebook Bans ‘Dysfunctional Veterans’ Page That Raises Money For Homeless Veterans
Facebook banned the popular veterans page for the second time this week.
By
Dysfunction Veterans, a Facebook page run by Michael Rivers, himself a veteran, was banned from Facebook for allegedly violating its content policies regarding firearms.
Speaking to Big League Politics, Rivers explained that his page was banned for buying ads on Facebook to promote a contest where entries could win an AR-15 rifle, even though according to the letter of Facebook’s community guidelines, his promotion was following Facebook’s rules.
“We do try to stay within Facebook’s guidelines, they just make them up as they go along,” said Rivers. “We ran a contest, a promo to give away an AR-15. It was a licensed firearms company, and we are an online retailer. According to Facebook rules, it’s okay because we are two online retailers that follow all applicable state and federal guidelines.”
He went on to explain that 8 days into the advertisement, which was approved by Facebook, they removed the advertisement and banned the staff member who posted it for 30 days. Rivers immediately ended the advertisement and removed all reference of it from the page, but Facebook proceeded to ban members of his staff two more times for the same, deleted advertisement.
“They banned us again for the same exact thing,” said Rivers. “So again, we appealed it, and then yesterday the page was unpublished and they cited the same thing again.”
“We had ended the promo last month, midway through it. After two or three weeks of not running it, they banned us for the same advertisement.”
Rivers says he appealed the latest ban and supplied Facebook with relevant excerpts from their own community guidelines as evidence his page did nothing wrong. He is currently waiting to hear back from the big tech platform.
In addition to selling merchandise via the Dysfunction Veterans online store, Rivers also runs a non-profit organization focused on providing housing to homeless veterans, DV Farm, that sometimes receives cash injections from the profits made from the Dysfunctional Veterans retail operation. Rivers provides housing and support to up to five homeless veterans at a time, and says his organization focuses on the “problem child” cases that are ignored by the Veterans Administration and other veterans organizations.
While Rivers remained optimistic about DV Farm’s ability to continue, it seems Facebook’s decision to remove the page for a post that seemingly did not violate the big tech platform’s rules may impact the non-profit.
“We are not federally or state funded so we rely solely on donations,” said Rivers. “Every month, of course, the non-profit being brand new, there would be a shortfall. We try to keep it in the black, but it can be an expensive project.”
“No matter what, whatever I make off the Dysfunctional Veterans store, goes to making sure the non-profit keeps running.”
Rivers also revealed that a similar incident happened in the days before the 2016 presidential election. His page was removed by Facebook without an explanation, and after other veterans who are now CEO’s and prominent business individuals reached out to Facebook on Rivers’ behalf, the page was reinstated. Rivers still has no idea why his page was removed, or why it was reinstated.
“In the last few days before the voting started, we were on fire. Every meme we posted was reaching millions,” said Rivers. “And we were shut down, and of course they would not show us what we posted that violated the community guidelines.”
“People reached out to me from other organizations, other CEO’s, and within 24 hours Dysfunctional Veterans was back up.”
He explained that this is a “habit” of Facebook, where they will remove content and ban pages without giving them an explanation of what they did wrong or what behavior they should avoid in the future.
Big League Politics contacted Facebook for comment on why the Dysfunctional Veterans page was removed, and did not receive a response.
Rivers’ other Facebook page, Veteran Humor, is still published on the platform.
COLLUSION: Project Veritas Suspended From Twitter for Revealing Pinterest’s Censorship of Conservatives
The big tech platform suspended Project Veritas for reporting the shady actions taken by another big tech platform.
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe revealed today that his organization was suspended from Twitter for tweets revealing Pinterest’s mass censorship of conservative websites and individuals on its platform.
On June 11, O’Keefe interviewed a whistle blower at Pinterest who revealed that the platform adds conservative news websites, including Big League Politics, to a list of “porn” websites in an attempt to prevent our links from being posted to the platform, and that employees at Pinterest consider Ben Shapiro, a Jewish conservative commentator, to be an anti-Muslim “white supremacist.” Project Veritas was suspended from Twitter for posting screen shots from the company’s Slack chat illustrating this.
“Twitter has decided that investigative journalism is a violation of their terms of service,” wrote O’Keefe on his personal Twitter account. “@Project_Veritas has been temporarily suspended from posting for tweeting internal communications from @Pinterest which show them calling @benshapiro a ‘white supremacist.’”
It would appear Twitter is doing its best to protect their fellow big tech platform in this latest move. Unfortunately, Big League Politics and others have already reported on the Pinterest employees calling Shapiro a “white supremacist”.
Further documents published by Project Veritas show an employee calling right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro a “white supremacist,” and putting listing Candace Owens alongside him as “ones to watch for content.”
“Ben Shapiro is a white supremacist who has regularly spewed anti muslim hate and he and candace owens and few others may be ones to watch content for over the next few days,” a post from an internal Slack chat said.
“I reported all the top instances of his “Myth of the tiny radical muslim” video from youtube that a number of journalists have been calling out,” the post continued. “There will no doubt be people searching for his content across platforms. I’ll start putting together a list of things like this video of his that may be worth creating an advisor for (though not blocking results).
As Big League Politics also reported, the platform considers our website to be “porn” and uses this as an excuse to prevent links to our stories from being posted to its platform.
In Pinterest’s text document, “porn_domain_blacklist”, dozens of conservative media outlets are considered “porn”. Big League Politics, Western Journal, TeaParty.org, PJ Media, and others are all covered in the dragnet, and considered “porn” by the big tech platform.
The whistle blower explained to Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe that the porn blacklist is used to ensure links to conservative and pro-choice websites are not posted to the platform.
It is unclear why Twitter took this action against Project Veritas, considering the leaked Slack chat does not identify a user by name, or identify private information about Slack employees, the rule Twitter claims was broken by the whistle blowing organization.
“THIS IS FOR AFGHANISTAN”: SHOCKING BOTTLE ATTACK BY MIGRANT IN GERMANY CAUGHT ON CAMERA
Viral video showcases disgusting act of random violence
JUNE 12, 2019
A shock video out of Germany shows a migrant smashing a bottle over another young man’s head while saying, “This is for Afghanistan.”
It is not known where the incident took place, but the video began circulating on social media earlier today.
The young migrant is seen talking in German on camera while holding the bottle in his hand.
He then states, “This is for Afghanistan” before smashing the bottle over the head of a white German man, who then screams out in pain as he lay bleeding on the street.
According to the German government’s own statistics, violent crime in Germany rose by 10 per cent between 2015 and 2016, when the country began accepting large numbers of migrants, many of them young men. More than 90 per cent of the rise was attributable to young male “refugees”.
“Young male refugees in Germany got the blame…. for most of a two-year increase in violent crime,” reported Reuters.
We anticipate this story receiving widespread media coverage to the same extent that a similar attack on a migrant would receive.
Or maybe not.
There is a war on free speech. Without your support, my voice will be silenced.
Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here.
Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.
Tom's Blog 