Seattle Police Ask Journalist to Stop Filming Antifa Because He Might Trigger Them

Seattle Police Tell Journalist Stop Filming Antifa

Antifa shouted anti-police chants as the police asked the journalist to leave.

An independent journalist was recording a Seattle, Washington Antifa protest when local police asked him to stop filming, as his presence may have created an unsafe situation for protesters.

Independent conservative journalist Saleem Juma traveled to Washington University’s campus in Seattle to film an Antifa protest that featured black bloc protesters holding signs reading “Fight Capitalism”, “Blue Lives Murder”, “Bigots Out”, and featuring hammers and sickles.

Eventually, Seattle police asked Juma to leave the area, explaining that his presence as a journalist was creating an unsafe space for the protest.

After first being asked to leave by one officer, Juma responded “See the thing is, officer, we’re actually legally allowed to come to these protests and ask questions,” and noted the several times when protesters crowded his personal space that he recorded on video.

“If I’m standing here and five or six of them come surround me, I think they’re the ones being the aggressors here,” Juma said to the officer, who did not respond.

By this point the protesters were loudly chanting anti-police slogans as the officers attempted to help them by removing a journalist from the scene.

“It’s not illegal to ask questions,” Juma said, “We do have the right to ask questions.”

After noting that he was an accredited journalist with a pres pass, another uniformed officer approached him, and began shaking his head in the negative before saying “Not today.”

“Our job is to come here and ask people what they’re doing here,” the journalist told the officer, noting that he has every right to be there.

The police officer rebutted, telling him that the protesters “don’t want to talk to [him].”

Again, the journalist explained that it is his job to be there and asking questions. The police officer continued denying his right to be there.

“It’s clear that your presence is creating additional anxiety on some of their part,” the officer shot back, “That’s just not smart.”

He then asked Juma again whether or not he had press passes, and suggested he go inside the school and wait for individual protesters to come find him for interviews.

Eventually, realizing the police were not going to allow him to peacefully ask questions and record the far left protesters, Juma asked his camera man if they had enough footage and proceeded to leave the area.

February 27, 2019 0

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February 27, 2019 0

As voice after voice gets purged from social media, still think there’s no censorship?

For a civilization that considers freedom of speech one of its fundamental principles and universal human rights, the West sure does a lot of censorship – and no, farming it out to ‘private companies’ does not change what it is.

It happened again on Tuesday: British activist Tommy Robinson was erased from Facebook and Instagram. The social media behemoth said it has to act “when ideas and opinions cross the line and amount to hate speech that may create an environment of intimidation and exclusion for certain groups in society.”

As online polemicists are fond of saying, “citation needed!” Yet Facebook offers none: no evidence of specific violations, not even a definition of “hate speech,” just an arbitrary standard – and a threat of further bans for people who “support… hate figures.” Whatever that means.

How did journalists – those paladins of free speech, the fabled Fourth Estate, the valiant protectors of values that would die in darkness without their intrepid efforts – greet this news? Did they object to a British citizen being muzzled and wax about the dangers to digital democracy? Oh no, they rejoiced: Finally, what took so long?!

The same process repeated itself later in the day, when Twitter banned Jacob Wohl. The self-described supporter of US President Donald Trump had reportedly boasted about setting up fake accounts to influence the 2020 election. That is regarded as the sin-above-all-sins by social media executives, terrified of Congress blaming them for Hillary Clinton losing the White House to Trump in 2016, even though 99 percent of US media considered it rightfully hers.

Here’s the thing, though: Twitter still hasn’t banned Jonathon Morgan, CEO of New Knowledge, a company that was proven to have set up thousands of fake accounts to swing the Senate race in Alabama to the Democrats, and later paid by the Senate to blame Russia for its tactics.

Let’s also remember the suspension of several Facebook pages belonging to Maffick Media, an outfit that partners with Ruptly, a RT subsidiary. After the “Twitter police” at the German Marshall Fund and CNN raised a fuss about these pages having “Kremlin ties,” Facebook blocked them until they agreed to put up a notice about being “funded by Russia.”So they did, even though there is no such rule that would be universally applied.

Surely it is entirely a coincidence that a CNN reporter went around actively badgering social media outlets to ban Alex Jones, way back in August 2018, and would not stop until they all did?

But wait, there is more! It was confirmed on Tuesday that retired Navy SEAL Don Shipley, known as a crusader against “stolen valor,” got his YouTube channel deleted earlier this month. There were no details as to why, but this was right after Shipley had exposed Nathan Phillips – the Native American activist who claimed he was victimized by Kentucky high school students, in what turned out to be fake news – as falsely claiming he served in Vietnam.

Columbia University researcher Richard Hanania offered an interesting analysis a couple of weeks ago, showing that of the 22 prominent figures suspended by Twitter in recent years, 21 were supporters of President Donald Trump, and only one – Rose McGowan – was a Democrat. McGowan had clearly violated the platform’s rule against doxxing, and was reinstated after she deleted the post. Many of those 21 Trump supporters were not so lucky, getting permanent bans from the platform. So he asked:

What are the odds? Astronomical, actually – Hanania showed that conservatives would have to be four times as likely to violate Twitter rules for even a 5 percent chance of producing the 21-1 ratio. Yet those who routinely cite statistical “disparate impact” to cry racism are perfectly fine claiming there is no bias here? Really?

But [insert social media giant here] is a private company! They can do what they want! So cry the sudden champions of capitalism and deregulation, who in their previous breath claimed Trump abolishing Net Neutrality rules would break the internet. Make up your mind, folks!

In the McCarthyite atmosphere whipped up after the 2016 US presidential election, the social media that once promised unprecedented freedom of expression have turned into the tools of censorship – and not on behalf of a governing party, either, but the bipartisan political establishment united in opposition to an outsider president and anyone who dares support him, or criticize their conduct.

By the way, the “terrible dictator” Trump hasn’t lifted a finger to stop this persecution, let alone sic the IRS or the FBI on his critics.

The idea behind free speech is not that all opinions are valid, but that they ought to be debated rather than imposed by force. Another fundamental principle of western civilization is that the law ought to apply equally to everyone.

One does not have to agree with Robinson, Wohl, Shipley, Maffick, Jones – or Trump, for that matter – to realize that a world in which there is one set of rules for “us” and another for “them,” in which it doesn’t matter what is done but Who is doing it to Whom, is not a land of liberty but something quite different.

February 27, 2019 0

‘Soft child-porn’ or honest political debate? Take a guess which one YouTube failed to censor

By Robert Bridge

Despite employing a small army of ‘anti-extremist’ flaggers, YouTube somehow overlooked an entire prison block of pedophiles on its platform. Is the video-sharing site wasting too many resources censoring political content?

Last week, a regular guy named Matt Watson, working at his home computer, shook the wired world to its very foundations by providing convincing evidence that YouTube supports – either wittingly or unwittingly – a pedophile ring that openly preys on the most vulnerable members of society, children.

As Watson demonstrated, not only are these bottom feeders free to comment on videos that feature minors, but they also provide time stamps, presumably for the benefit of the wider pedophile community, indicating exactly when the children can be seen in their most compromising positions. They also actively promote links to porn sites that cater for these twisted minds.

The discovery prompted some of the most popular corporate brands, including Disney and Nestle, to bolt for the emergency exits after it was discovered their ads were running alongside the work of sexually depraved deviants. Needless to say, not the best business model.

Aside from the lewd comments accompanying the videos, which is not overly surprising considering the planet’s high creep factor, one of the most disturbing revelations is how ‘user friendly’ YouTube has become for pedophiles. Watson showed how Google-owned YouTube, through no more than a couple mouse clicks, navigates users to a frolicking playground where the sidebar is loaded with nothing but children-themed videos, a virtual pedophile paradise. But it gets more disturbing.

Once a user has entered this “wormhole,” as Watson calls it, there are no alternative video options available for escaping from it. A user will not even find ‘awareness’ videos, for example, that discuss the threat of child predators. In other words, once the user makes it to YouTube’s children video section it is game over, so to speak, unless he or she physically activates a new search.

The reason that this scandal makes no sense is that YouTube has known about its pedophile problem for years. Back in 2017, advertisers were fleeing the platform for the very same reason they are today – their ads were being featured next to scantily clad girls, as well as the predictable depraved comments. Today, algorithm technology is so advanced that Google Maps, for example, is able to blur out the faces of every single person’s image that is captured by its Google Street View. Yet somehow YouTube appears to be technologically handicapped when it comes to finding ways to combat online pedophiles. Why is that?

One possible explanation is that Google and YouTube, as well as the majority of other IT companies, have become overly attentive to politics at the expense of everything else – and more so ever since Donald Trump ‘stole’ the White House from the Democratic darling Hillary Clinton.

First, it is important to state the obvious: Silicon Valley is to Liberals what Yankee Stadium is to the New York Yankees. In other words, the holy of the holies. To quote Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, Silicon Valley, the home to hundreds of IT companies, is an “extremely left-leaning place.” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, admitted that his company is so liberal that conservative employees “don’t feel safe to express their opinions” in the workplace.

Given this blatant liberal predilection within the industry, who do you think Google and YouTube teamed up with to police its content from ‘extremist’ (i.e. conservative) content? Certainly not far-right groups.

In 2017, YouTube doubled the size of its so-called ‘Trusted Flaggers’ program, which now partners with over 100 organizations, the full member list of the program remains confidential. Among the few members that have been made public, however, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), No Hate Speech and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), they could best be described as ‘extremist’ in their liberal ideology. Meanwhile, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “less than 10 of the slots are filled by government agencies.”

Ironically, given the nature of this discussion, several of those agencies deal with “child-safety” issues.

Conservatives argue that the glaring lack of transparency with regard to the secretive ‘Trusted Flaggers’ program, combined with the IT industry’s well-known liberal affections, explains why so many right-wing and alternative news sites are being either demonetized, downgraded, or outright banned. And since we are talking about private businesses, these organizations have no legal obligation to uphold the Constitution’s First Amendment that guarantees ‘freedom of speech.’ They just casually shrug their shoulders and blame everything on the almighty algorithms. Yet, as even the most technologically handicapped person knows, algorithms were not magically conjured up out of thin air. Human beings, not robots (at least not yet), work tediously to develop them.

As just one example of the Orwellian atmosphere now pervading Planet Google, Jordan Peterson, a professor with a reputation for opposing political correctness, had one of his YouTube videos blocked in over two dozen countries last year. YouTube duly informed him that it had “received a legal complaint” about the video and decided to block it. Just like that!

Meanwhile, Google can take draconian measures to downgrade RT and Sputnik, for example, over totally unfounded charges related to ‘Russiagate’ hysteria, yet they seem incapable of micromanaging the comments section in kiddie videos.

What this is intended to show is that YouTube does not hesitate to take deliberate steps to intervene in issues that matter most to them, which overwhelmingly seem to be of a political nature. Yet, when the welfare of children is at stake, the mini-surveillance state that the platform has built always goes missing in action, as it has now for many years.

How is it possible that one young man, working alone and without pay, is able to weed out a viper’s den of pedophiles from YouTube’s dungeon? Yet YouTube, with its army of ‘flaggers’ and moderators and government agencies, has failed to filter these miscreants for several years?

The sad reality is that the world of IT is totally consumed with politics, and politics is totally consumed with the world of IT, to the point where society’s most vulnerable are left at risk.

Unfortunately, parents must assume a great deal of vigilance against pedophiles when their children use the video sharing platform because YouTube has obviously dropped the ball on the issue and simply cannot be trusted. Like the rest of the IT kingdom, their heart is in politics, and that is it.

@Robert_Bridge

February 26, 2019 0

YOUTUBE DEMONITIZES ANTI-VAX CHANNELS AFTER BUZZFEED CONTACTS ADVERTISERS

BuzzFeed’s journalistic activism is reminiscent of CNN – which hounded advertisers to ‘unperson’ InfoWars founder Alex Jones last year

Zero Hedge – FEBRUARY 23, 2019

YouTube on Friday demonetized channels which promote anti-vax content, after BuzzFeed notified a spate of advertisers that their ads were being run alongside anti-vax videos, reports BuzzFeed. YouTube said that such videos fall under its policy prohibiting videos with “dangerous and harmful” content to be monetized.

“We have strict policies that govern what videos we allow ads to appear on, and videos that promote anti-vaccination content are a violation of those policies. We enforce these policies vigorously, and if we find a video that violates them, we immediately take action and remove ads,” reads an emailed statement from YouTube to BuzzFeed.

Seven different advertisers said they weren’t aware their ads were appearing on videos like “Mom Researches Vaccines, Discovers Vaccination Horrors and Goes Vaccine Free,” which advocates against vaccinating children, and reached out to YouTube to pull the programmatic placements.

Their ads appeared on videos from channels including VAXXED TV, LarryCook333 (a proponent of StopMandatoryVaccinations.com), and iHealthTube, all of which YouTube has since demonetized, or prevented from running ads. –BuzzFeed

One health tech company, Nomad Health, told BuzzFeed News that it “does not support the anti-vaccination movement,” and was “not aware of our ads running alongside anti-vaccination videos.” The company said it would “take action to prevent it from happening in the future.”

Another such advertiser – discount vitamin company Vitacost, said it pulled all of its advertising on Tuesday after a blogger made a viral video highlighting a “soft-core pedo ring” operating on the platform.

“We pulled all YouTube advertising on Tuesday morning when we noticed content issues. We had strict rules to prevent our ads from serving on sensitive content and they were not effective as promised,” said a VitaCost spokesperson via email, who added. “We will continue to remain off of the platform until those changes are made and are proven to be effective by other advertisers.”

The advertisers contacted by BuzzFeed said they were unaware that their algorithmically dictated “programmic ads” were appearing alongside anti-vax videos.

“When we purchase programmatic media, we specify parameters that restrict the placement of our ads from association with certain content. Even so, however, sometimes ads get served in places that we don’t approve of. This is one of those cases,” said a Retail Me Not spokesperson. “We’re working to exclude this placement now.”

A spokesman for software company Grammarly said the company also took immediate action.

“Upon learning of this, we immediately contacted YouTube to pull our ads from appearing not only on this channel but also to ensure related content that promulgates conspiracy theories is completely excluded,” they said, adding “We have stringent exclusion filters in place with YouTube that we believed would exclude such channels. We’ve asked YouTube to ensure this does not happen again.”

Grammarly was one of several companies which asked YouTube to pull its ads from sexually suggestive children’s videos. AT&T, Hasbro, Kellogg, Epic Games and Nestle were among the other brands who did the same.

“Any content – including comments – that endangers minors is abhorrent, and we have clear policies prohibiting this on YouTube. We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities, and disabling comments on tens of millions of videos that include minors,” YouTube said in a Thursday statement to USA Today. “There’s more to be done, and we continue to work to improve and catch abuse more quickly.”

According to BuzzFeed, “Other companies that asked YouTube to stop their ads from appearing alongside anti-vax content include:

Brilliant Earth, a jewelry company, which said it has “made internal adjustments to our ad settings and will also follow up with our advertising partners to prevent our ads from appearing next to this content.”
CWCBExpo, a marijuana trade show, which said it would be “implementing strict guidelines on content placement and is eliminating hundreds of YouTube channels/videos and negative keywords.”
XTIVIA, which said it was “reviewing the ad placement,” which was “not [its] requested target.”
SolarWinds, a software company, which said the placement was unintentional and that it had “adjusted [its] filters to further refine the targeting of our ads on YouTube to better align with our targeted audience, MSPs and technology professionals.”

YouTube responded earlier this week to another controversy after Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) demanded that Facebook and YouTube parent company Google address anti-vax information on their platforms.

BuzzFeed‘s journalistic activism is reminiscent of CNN – which hounded advertisersto ‘unperson’ InfoWars founder Alex Jones last year. The result? “Many of the brands — including Nike, Moen, Expedia, Acer, ClassPass, Honey, Alibaba and OneFamily — have suspended ads on InfoWars’ channels after being contacted by CNN for comment.”

February 23, 2019 0

Major advertisers jump ship as YouTube hit with ‘softcore child porn’ scandal

CAP

YouTube is in damage-control mode after several large companies, including Disney, Nestlé, McDonalds and Epic Games, pulled ads in response to a report accusing the platform of harboring a pedophile ring hiding in plain sight.

Multiple major corporations have temporarily suspended all YouTube advertising after learning their ads were playing before videos featuring minors as young as five performing sexualized versions of everyday activities. The advertisers were informed by Wired on Wednesday that their ads were playing before videos similar to the clips highlighted in blogger Matt Watson’s video exposé, posted earlier this week. Most responded with shock.

“We’re absolutely horrified and have reached out to YouTube to rectify this immediately,” a spokesperson from advertiser Grammarly told Wired, while a World Business Forum spokesperson declared it “repulsive that pedophiles are using YouTube for their criminal activities.”

Watson’s report, which has been viewed nearly two million times, revealed comment sections packed with hundreds, even thousands of users sharing time-stamps of their favorite moments – usually catching the girls in especially compromising positions – and their contacts on encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, which recently endured its own child porn scandal. Watch one video, Watson claimed, and YouTube’s recommendation algorithm leads you down a pedophilic rabbit-hole. Some of the clips have millions of views.

“We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling violative comments,” YouTube told Bloomberg in an email after several major advertisers had already “paused” their ad campaigns upon learning their videos were associated with the offending content. A YouTube spokesperson claimed less than $8,000 had been spent on the videos in the last 60 days and promised to refund the money.

YouTube also released an updated “Community Guidelines” policy on Tuesday, promising “consistent penalties” for breaking the platform’s rules and a detailed explanation of what kind of content actually breaks those rules.

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February 21, 2019 0

FINANCIAL FASCISM: Chase Bank De-Platforms ANOTHER Conservative

Luke Rohlfing

Chase keeps shutting down conservatives.,..

Conservative commentator, and former burlesque dancer Martina Markota has joined an elite list of Trump supporters who have had their Chase Bank accounts shut down in recent weeks.

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Along with Markota, Proud Boys’ Chairman Enrique Tarrio, and Trump supporting Army veteran Joe Biggs have had their Chase Bank accounts shut down in recent weeks.

“They refused to tell me why,” Markota stated. “They said they have the right to end our relationship and not tell me why.”

She began to believe that her bank account shutdown was was politically motivated after reading Big League Politics‘ story on Tarrio. This suspicion is well warranted considering the fact that her outspoken support for President Trump has exposed her to a torrent of harassment in recent years.

Markota’s former co-workers from her burlesque days have been on a crusade to make her life miserable ever since she came out as a Trump supporter.

Their harassment got so bad that Markota is pursuing legal action against the most vicious tormentor.

As Markota told Pawl Bazile of Dangerous:

“I am currently pursuing criminal charges against a performer who has tried to solicit my information to antifa and other left-wing media groups to defame me and put me and my family’s life in danger. They refuse to leave me alone, every step of the way. These people are relentless and angry. I left their scene, I left NYC, I moved on to another career and they still follow my every step and try to sabotage my life. At this point I think they want me dead.”

It is unclear if Markota’s account shutdown is politically motivated, but considering the series of other shutdowns in recent weeks, it seems very likely.

February 20, 2019 0

FACEBOOK Bans Articles Exposing Hoax…

BY TYLER O’NEIL FEBRUARY 18, 2019

**Over the weekend, Facebook prevented people from sharing two conservative articles on the unraveling case of Empire star Jussie Smollett, which seems to be a hate hoax. Both Rod Dreher, author of** The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, and Daily Caller reporter Jen Kerns saw their articles censored on Facebook.

“You are not allowed to say on Facebook that Jussie Smollett carried out a hate hoax,” Dreher tweeted on Sunday with a screenshot of Facebook blocking his article at The American Conservative.

According to the screenshot, Facebook blocked the article because it appeared to be “spam” and said the post “goes against our Community Standards.”

Facebook lifted the ban later on Sunday.

On Saturday, lawyer Harmeet K. Dillon shared the news that Jen Kerns’s article had been blocked, also allegedly for “violating community standards.”

Rudy Takala also reported that Jen Kerns had been banned on Instagram.

Jen Kerns shared screenshots of the ban with PJ Media. Kerns told PJ Media that Facebook would not allow her to post the article as early as Friday.

Then when she tried to put the article in her Instagram bio, Instagram booted her from the account until she removed the link.

Rod Dreher’s article merely shared the previous reporting on the case, with a few paragraphs of his opinion sprinkled in. Jen Kerns compared the Jussie Smollett apparent hoax with the 1980s hoax perpetrated by Tawana Brawley.

In a follow-up article about the Facebook ban, Rod Dreher attempted to make sense of Facebook’s decision.

I fully support Facebook or any other social medium having a policy of banning certain material (porn, neo-Nazi propaganda, etc.). But when you can’t talk about hate hoaxes in general, or about a celebrated hate hoax in particular? Presumably my blog post violated Facebook’s “hate speech” prohibition (I can’t find any of their other Community Standards that it might have violated). Facebook’s policy on “hate speech” is here.This, I suppose, is what my blog post violated:

But the entire reason for the post is new evidence indicating that Jussie Smollett was NOT a victim of a hate crime, but rather faked a hate crime!

The move indeed seems rather head-scratching.

Facebook also censored a pair of conservative articles last August as news broke surrounding the Paul Manafort conviction and the Michael Cohen guilty plea. Both articles countered the prevailing liberal narrative about these events.

It seems these bouts of censorship are likely caused by liberal Facebook users marking articles as “spam.” The social media company later removed the blocks, but censoring articles in the hours after their publication does a serious disservice in the news industry, where fresh information has the most pertinent impact.

Even if Facebook is not behind the initial decision to block, the company should make sure the posts are “spam” before blocking them, rather than allowing some Social Justice Warrior to silence news on the internet.

February 19, 2019 0