By Greg Reese
A look at the history of U.S. Antitrust Law and how it applies to Big Tech.
Infowars reporter Greg Reese explains how Trump can stop the tech giants from destroying free speech.
Shaun King Celebrates Vandalism of Confederate Flag on Facebook
By Tom Pappert
Shaun King, the controversial former Black Lives Matter figurehead who has been accused of lying about his ancestry and disavowed by the left wing, anti-police organization, posted a video to Facebook celebrating a man vandalizing and stealing a confederate flag off a vehicle in the middle of traffic.
King posted the video with the caption “Sometimes you have to just step out there and take matters into your own hands” and a fist emoji, heaping praise on the vandalism and theft of the confederate flag.
The video shows a man running in traffic after a semi truck, and repeatedly trying to pry the confederate flag off the vehicle as it started and stopped moving, as a man in the vehicle behind the truck filmed the vandalism.
At press time, the video has over 800,000 views, and nearly 18,000 shares, revealing that RA.
King, who admits he is 75 per cent white and says he does not know the identity of his father, ostensibly meaning he could be 100 per cent white, was disowned by Black Lives Matter in 2016 for his management of funds.
“Senior justice writer” Shaun King, who recently sent this correspondent perhaps the most remarkable email in the history of right of reply after he was caught mysteriously deleting 70,000 tweets, was just thrown under the bus by Deray Mckesson and other prominent BLM activists in a series of tweets drawing attention to alleged mismanagement of funds.
This is just the latest in a series of scandals for race-baiter King, who charges $7,500 for speeches about race and gender. Breitbart was the first media organisation to raise questions about Shaun King’s race that have still not been answered. Although King claimed for years to be biracial, after our report he was forced to admit he had no idea who his father was and that both of the people on his birth certificate are white.
It appears King has fallen far from grace, and is now reduced to praising criminality on Facebook to remain relevant.
‘Christchurch Call’ is a blueprint for more online censorship — and Zuckerberg is a big fan
By Danielle Ryan
There is nothing inherently wrong with the new ‘Christchurch Call’ to curb violent and terrorist content online. No one in their right mind wants mass shootings live-streamed online — but it’s what comes next that should worry us.
Drawn up in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque massacre, which was streamed live online, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s ‘Christchurch Call’ is billed as a “roadmap for action” and calls for the “immediate and permanent” removal of “terrorist and violent extremist content” from social media platforms. It has been signed by 18 governments and eight tech companies.
On the face of it, that sounds fine. It’s difficult to argue against removing terrorist content from the platforms so many of us use on a daily basis. The trouble is, Ardern has already admitted that the pledge is simply a “starting point” — and if you were expecting this to be the moment at which social media companies finally began to push back a little bit, sorry to disappoint you, but they’re all in on it together.
ALSO ON RT.COMFacebook ban on Alex Jones and others is a form of modern-day book burning
Endorsing censorship
Lord of social media, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is afflicted with an obvious and ever-worsening God complex, offered a full-throated endorsement of online censorship a few days ago, saying “…the question of what speech should be acceptable and what is harmful needs to be defined by regulation, by thoughtful governments.”
That’s right, Zuck thinks “thoughtful governments” should be deciding what is “acceptable” for us to say online. There’s no ambiguity there. It’s a simple, straight-forward endorsement of the idea that governments should be allowed to regulate our speech. If that doesn’t worry you, then maybe you’re the kind of person who reads dystopian novels and cheers for the wrong side.
Zuckerberg’s comment isn’t exactly out of the blue. Facebook is already under fire for censoring political speech from both the right and left ends of the political spectrum. The company has banned a slew of right-wing commentators and conservative agitators from its platform and taken worrying steps against leftist and anti-war activists around the world.
Just the beginning
So, if social media companies aren’t going to fight back on our behalf (and they clearly are not), who will? The obvious answer is “journalists” — but they don’t appear to be in too much of a rush to halt this creeping censorship either. Some of them appear to be advocating more censorship, rather than less.
ALSO ON RT.COMNo kissing gays or conservative hunters: Overcautious Facebook blocks political ads in SwedenIn an interview with Le Monde on Monday, Ardern was asked why she decided to focus “uniquely on violent terrorist content, and not more broadly on hate speech, which also contributes to the drift in social media?”
Ardern replied that focusing on terrorist content was just the “point of departure” on which everyone could agree. So this is a journey we are on. We’ve departed at ‘terrorism is bad’ — but where will we end? Ardern said she was wary that going any further right now would “open the way for debate” on potential risks to freedom of expression. But in a joint press conference on Wednesday with French President Emmanuel Macron, she said her hope was that working together, governments and tech companies could “eliminate ideologies of hate.”
That would be lovely — and if only the word were so simple, we could just eliminate all the meanies from the internet and live in an online utopia. Unfortunately, this is completely unrealistic, and when you start talking about eliminating certain ideologies, that’s where things get sketchy. Particularly if we’re going to delegate the task of deciding what is and is not “harmful” (as Zuckerberg said) to “thoughtful governments.”
‘Hate speech’ or ‘free speech’?
Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis is set to sign a bill that would make it a “hate crime” to “demonize” or“delegitimize” Israel. The bill purports to be about “anti-Semitism” but it’s really just a vehicle to censor and even criminalize political speech. You see, that’s the kind of thing that “thoughtful” politicians get up to if left to their own devices. Then again, the Florida bill probably isn’t something that would ring alarm bells at Facebook HQ, either. Zuckerberg already happily complies with orders from the Israeli government to delete Palestinian activist accounts.
As for the US government, it has refused to sign Ardern’s ‘Christchurch Call’ citing first amendment rights — but declining to sign a vague and non-binding agreement doesn’t mean much. Capitol Hill is still swarming with politicians just dying to enforce more restrictions on free speech.
ALSO ON RT.COMFrance wants more govt regulation of Facebook and Zuckerberg calls it ‘model’ approachDemocratic Senator Chris Murphy tweeted in the aftermath of last year’s Infowars ban that the very “survival of [US] democracy” depends on Facebook’s willingness to “take down” more websites that “tear our country apart.” Sure, why don’t they just get rid of any content that could conceivably be categorized as divisive? Sounds like a foolproof plan.
A US government intelligence report last year highlighted a former RT show hosted by Abby Martin as an example of content that sowed “radical discontent” in society for critically covering controversial issues like US regime change wars, fracking, capitalism and police brutality. Be careful out there, you never know what could be defined as “radical” content next.
As journalist Igor Ogorodnev wrote in a recent oped, the aftermath of an atrocity “is a honeypot for short-sighted do-gooders buzzing about looking to do something, but also opportunist politicians to realize their long-harbored ambitions.”
Trying to distract us
Social media is what the public uses to organize en masse in the 21st century.
Is it any wonder that Macron, facing months of Yellow Vest protests against his government, is helping lead the charge toward more online censorship?
A French government report recently called for the eradication of content that damages “social cohesion” and warned that“false information,”“unfounded rumors” and “individuals pursuing political or financial objectives” can have an impact on “the social order.” But who decides what constitutes “false information” and “unfounded rumors”? Is Macron’s government “thoughtful” enough for Zuckerberg?
ALSO ON RT.COMWhite House posts call for social media censorship stories, triggering hope & cynicismOf course, it’s much easier for governments to pass the blame for social discontent onto companies like Facebook, while arguing that censorship is the only solution. If they didn’t do that, they’d have to admit that what really drives mass discontent are the neoliberal policies that have had a detrimental effect on basic standards of living, wiped out people’s life savings and ravaged the planet.
But maybe that’s all something Ardern and Macron can work on some other day — that is, if we’re allowed to talk about it.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
QATAR-RUN AL JAZEERA POSTS VIDEO ATTACKING ALABAMA LAW. THE MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRY JAILS WOMEN FOR ABORTION
Al Jazeera did not portray a person in favor of H.B. 34 in the video
BY MARY MARGARET OLOHAN
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Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Alabama Human Life Protection Act into law Wednesday.
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Al Jazeera posted a Facebook video that shows a woman explaining why the legislation endangers women.
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Al Jazeera is based out of Doha, Qatar, a country where abortions are not permitted in almost all cases.
Middle Eastern news outlet Al Jazeera posted a Facebook video portraying Alabama abortion legislation as dangerous, but Al Jazeera’s home country of Qatar imprisons women for unauthorized abortions.
The Facebook video describes abortion legislation, H.B. 314, the state’s governor signed into law Wednesday. “People are going to die,” Helmi Henkin, an abortion rights activist, said in the video posted Wednesday.
Al Jazeera did not portray a person in favor of H.B. 314 in the video.
Al Jazeera is based out of Doha, Qatar, a country where abortions are not permitted in almost all cases. Qatari law mandates that women who procure abortions “without medical necessity” be sentenced up to three years of prison time, according to the Al Meezan Qatar Legal Portal. Men or doctors who procure abortions for Qatari women can be sentenced to 10 years of prison time.
Qatar is one out of 33 developing countries that ban abortion except in cases where abortions would preserve the health of the mother, according to a 2017 report from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that globally pushes sexual and reproductive health and rights. Guttmacher noted Qatar makes exceptions for abortions when there are fetal anomalies, which are commonly referred to as birth defects that could affect the pregnancy or the child’s quality of life.
“BREAKING,” Al Jazeera tweeted Tuesday. “Alabama’s Senate voted to outlaw abortion. The law: – Makes performing abortion a felony – Does not make exemptions for rape, incest – Only allows abortions to prevent serious health risk to the mother – Would go into law 6 months after the governor signs it.”
A Syria policy adviser for the charity Help Refugees, Oz Katerji, responded in a tweet. “In Qatar, abortions are only legal if the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. Women who receive an ‘unauthorised’ abortion face 5 years in jail,” Katerji said.
“I respect a lot of the work AJ do, and I think it is crucial that people unite in condemnation of this barbarism taking place in US states, but the hypocrisy here is staggering,” Katerji continued.
“Opponents to the law have been very vociferous in their outcry, saying that this would punish rape victims and it would push women to seek abortions underground in unsafe procedures,” Al Jazeera correspondent Heidi Zhou-Castro said, according to an Al Jazeera article. The article includes perspectives of those both for and against H.B. 314.
The Alabama Senate passed H.B. 314 Tuesday, a near-total ban on abortions that makes no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bill into law. The law, which will take effect in six months, is the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. (RELATED: Alabama’s Near-Total Abortion Ban Spares Women, Would Send Abortion Doctors To Prison)
The only exception is for when “abortion is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk,” according to the bill’s text. All other abortion procedures are classified under the new law as Class A felonies, punishable by up to 99 years in prison. The abortion provider would be charged with the felony, but the mother would not be charged.
“Today, I signed into law the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, a bill that was approved by overwhelming majorities in both chambers of the Legislature,” Ivey said in a statement. “To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”
Al Jazeera did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Record number of attacks on gays in France: report
By AFP
Paris (AFP) – Assaults in France on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people hit a new record in 2018, “a dark year” for the LGBT community, French group SOS Homophobie reported Tuesday.
The non-profit association registered 231 physical attacks, up from the previous annual record of 188 anti-LGBT assaults back in 2013 linked to same-sex marriage legislation.
“2018 was a dark year for LGBT people,” said SOS Homophobie co-presidents Véronique Godet and Joël Deumier in the yearly report.
The number of assaults jumped 66 percent over 2017, with a spike towards the end of the year when a case a day was being reported to the group.
SOS Homophobie’s helpline, website and legal services collected 1,905 statements from witnesses of abuse of the gay community, 15 percent more than the previous year.
The breakdown of cases, which could involve multiple categories, showed 62 percent involved rejection, 51 percent insults, 38 percent discrimination and 20 percent harassment. Threats and defamation made up 17 percent each with physical assault on 13 percent.
Some 66 percent of witnesses were men, who were “more inclined to talk about it and turn to SOS Homophobie to denounce what they suffered”.
The association said the 42 percent leap in reporting of violence against lesbians appeared linked to the greater willingness of victims to speak out and the influence of the #MeToo movement.
With 23 percent of reported cases, Internet was the leading place for the expression of LGBT phobia in France.
Facebook and Twitter act like an “echo chamber” of daily cases with the social networks recording more than half of all reported cases, the group said.
Facebook bans Italian populist pages ahead of EU elections
By ARTHUR LYONS
The social media giant Facebook has banned 23 noteworthy Italian populist pages with 2.5 million followers just two weeks ahead of the highly anticipated European elections.
The vast majority of the 23 pages that were banned supported Italy’s currently governing coalition made up right and left wing populist parties La Lega (The League) and the 5-Star Movement (MS5), Italy’s La Stampa reports.
Facebooks cited ‘hate speech’ and ‘divisive content’ regarding vaccines, immigrants, and Jewish people as justification for the drastic move.
Apparently, the tech giant’s decision to ban these pages was informed by a report which was created by a leftist NGO by the name of Avaaz, which claims to focus on environmental campaigns and what they regard as ‘human rights’.
A spokesperson from Facebook commented, saying, “We thank Avaaz for sharing its research so we could investigate…We are committed to protecting the integrity of the EU elections and around the world. We have removed a series of false and duplicate accounts that violated our policies on the subject of authenticity, as well as several pages for violation of the policy on changing the name.”
“We have also taken action against some pages that have repeatedly spread misinformation. We will take further measures if we find other violations,” the spokesperson added.
In Avaaz’s report, which was presented to Facebook earlier this month, the NGO claimed that it had discovered 14 Italian networks operating on social media platform which included 104 pages, 6 groups, with a reach of more than 18.2 million individual users.
Of these networks, actions taken by Facebook this week targeted 23 of its pages – totaling nearly 2.45 million individual users and 2.44 million interactions over the past three months.
On top of this, Facebook has also apparently ‘weakened’ pages that it has arbitrarily deemed to be spreading content containing ‘fake news’ – presumably limiting their visibility to Facebook users.
Facebook asserts that its primary motivation for banning these pages was that the page creators had initially chosen page themes which didn’t cite any involvement with political parties or movements, but which had later switched the themes.
Included among the banned pages are ‘Lega Salvini Premier Santa Teresa of Riva’, ‘We want the 5-Star Movement in government’, which had 129,000 followers and nearly 700,000 interactions in just three months, ‘Lega Salvini Sulmona’ — which had 307,000 followers – ‘We Are 5 Stars’, as well as ‘Beppe Grillo for President’.
Facebook’s most recent efforts in Italy to influence this May’s European elections are only the tip of the iceberg, according to Italian media.
Earlier this month, Facebook opened up a ‘war room’ in Dublin, Ireland with 40 teams of full-time engineers, researchers, threat specialists, scientists, and experts for each country who devote their efforts to the European electoral campaign, according to the Italian La Repubblica.
Apparently, there are 500 individuals working on the elections, with the help of 21 so-called ‘fact checkers’, working in 14 different languages.
Buzzfeed Attacks A 14-Year Old Girl, Tries To Get Her Banned From YouTube For Hurting Their Feelings
By
In just another day for the dumpster fire that is Buzzfeed “News,” activist “journalist” Joe Bernstein wrote up an article targeting a 14-year old girl who makes YouTube videos for the crime of having right-wing political views.
The article, titled “YouTube’s Newest Far-Right, Foul-Mouthed, Red-Pilling Star Is A 14-Year-Old Girl,” desribes a YouTuber going by the name “Soph,” who makes videos with social commentary about current events and culture, often filled with vulgar language one wouldn’t expect to come from a 14-year old girl.
Bernstein quickly makes his reason for publishing the article clear, seeming to make a call for her removal from the platform in his sub-title, writing: “‘Soph’ has nearly a million followers on the giant video platform. The site’s executives only have themselves to blame.”
The majority of his article is targeting one video in particular, where the YouTube star wears an Islamic chador and makes a joking apology for comments she made about Islam.
WATCH BELOW (WARNING, VULGAR LANGUAGE):
In the video, Soph uses absurdist comedy in her commentary about Islam, where she does touch on a lot of issues prevalent in radical Islam.
Starting off the video, she declares that she has “become a devout follower of the Prophet Muhammad,” describing it as mostly being a “f*** ton of fun,” despite having to be raped by her 40-year old husband.
She also discusses Muslim rape gangs, which are a very real thing in the Islamic world.
For doing this, Bernstein believes that YouTube should shut her down.
He claims that the platform is exploiting children by allowing them to have right-wing views on the platform, writing:
“Users — and more importantly to YouTube, advertisers — have over the past year started to hold the platform accountable for enabling the exploitation of children and exposing them to disturbing content. But this video reveals an entirely different way the platform is harming kids: by letting them express extreme views in front of the entire world. This is what indoctrination looks like when it’s reflected back by the indoctrinated.”
Since the release of the article, Soph appears to have begun facing targeting from YouTube, being temporarily blocked from uploading on the platform.
Along with trying to get her shut down, Bernstein called her father to try to get comment for the story, something Sophia Levin, the former New Yorker journalist who was fired after lying about an ICE agent being a Nazi did as well.
The targeting of Soph is almost certainly due to her massive reach online.
She has amassed a massive audience of over 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, along with bringing in over $1,400 a month from monthly donors on Patreon.
Her popularity can likely be credited to a growing resentment for the “social justice warrior” culture among young people growing up in the Internet age. With free access to information, many young people in Generation Z, or what Soph would call “Zoomers,” are finding themselves latching onto more conservative viewpoints in rebellion to the status quo of the previous Millennial generation.
This seems to be a clear attack on Soph for her beliefs, as they have in the past written glowing articles defending young kids who hold left-leaning views.
Just three days before Bernstein’s article, Buzzfeed wrote up an article defending an 11-year old “drag queen” who was reported to child protective services. That same child was spotted dancing on stage at an adult gay club while throngs of adult men showered him with money.
Bernstein, who has long targeted those holding anti-social justice warrior views, by evidence of his similar targeting of former Adult Swim star Sam Hyde, was also exposed by journalist Nick Monroe for holding his own extremist views.
In a Tweet, Bernstein once said “KILL a straight white man on your way to work tomorrow”.
So this is the left in 2019. Targeting 14-year old girl for holding opinions they don’t like.
The CNN search engine? Google favors stories from liberal news sites, study finds
When it comes to political bias online, left-leaning Facebook and Twitter have been the most common punching bags, but a new study confirms that Google’s search algorithms are also skewed in favor of liberal viewpoints.
Researchers from Northwestern University performed an “algorithm audit” of the ‘Google Top Stories’ box, which is a major driver of traffic to news publishers and therefore prime online real estate. They examined results for nearly 200 searches relating to news events for one month in late 2017 and found “a left-leaning ideological skew.”
The researchers did allow some leeway for Google to defend itself, however, saying that while the left-leaning bias was detected, it is possible that the dominance of particular sources is a result of “successful strategic behavior” by those sources to achieve “algorithmic recognizability” — but whatever the reason, liberal sources still far eclipsed conservatives ones.
CNN, perhaps the outlet most-reviled by conservatives, was Google’s overall favorite source. Of the 6,302 articles appearing on Google’s ‘top stories’ during the month in focus, more than 10 percent came from CNN. The New York Times and Washington Post were up next, garnering 6.5 and 5.6 percent of the results, respectively.
Fox News, the most mainstream right-wing outlet, was the source for only 3 percent of stories appearing in the top box. Then it was back to liberal outlets, with the BBC, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Politico and ABC News filling out the rest of the top 10. Overall, 62.4 percent of the most common sources were left-leaning, while only 11.3 perfect were said to be right-leaning.
Ironically, despite the heavy promotion from Google in the online realm, CNN’s overall audience declined by a colossal 26 percent in April compared to a year earlier — and network boss Jeff Zucker admitted last November that CNN’s audience just “goes away” any time the channel switches from its (overwhelmingly negative) coverage of President Donald Trump to other topics. So it seems CNN is stuck in a vicious cycle; criticized for focusing too much on negative Trump stories, yet not being able to stop for fear of losing more viewers.
Perhaps an even more damning indictment than Google’s detected liberal bias, however, is that nearly all (86 percent) of the stories promoted by the search giant came from just 20 sources across the entire internet, which doesn’t exactly display much of a commitment to diversity of information and opinion.
ALSO ON RT.COM‘Poisonous connection’ of big tech: Google staff confer over anti-Trump search tweak
Publishers selected for the top box receive “a significant boost in traffic” which demonstrates Google’s ability to “pick winners and losers” based on where they decide to direct most of our attention. Such power and bias in favor of major sources could also be linked to the decline of local news, which is competing in an unfair online environment, the study suggested.
The detection of Google’s left-leaning preferences will hardly come as a shock to conservatives, who have been complaining in recent years that powerful online platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google have all shown clear bias against conservative perspectives. The grumbling has not been without cause, either.
Most recently, Facebook slapped a number of popular conservative commentators with permanent lifetime bans — and Twitter has been caught out ‘shadowbanning’ Republicans and is accused of being quicker to suspend or ban conservative users over liberals for alleged rule-breaking.
Yet, while Facebook and Twitter have engaged in what many analysts and critics are calling direct political censorship, the story is more complicated when it comes to Google.
The researchers found that it’s not simply whether a source is left or right-leaning that determines whether it goes into the top stories box. Writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, one of the study authors acknowledged that there appears to be more news produced on the left overall, something which also affects the results. Even so, Google’s curation algorithms were still found to be “slightly magnifying” the already left-leaning skew in online news production.
Then there’s the bias toward timeliness; the fresher the story, the more likely it was to be promoted in the top box. The researchers called this Google’s “predilection towards recency” and said that huge news organizations like CNN which have the potential to quickly generate fresh content “may be better positioned” to garner more attention.
If Google really values diversity, the authors suggest it should acknowledge that high-quality journalism can have a longer shelf life and “consider relaxing the timeliness constraint to widen the scope of sources available to its curation algorithm.”
The results put to bed the notion, promoted by many Democrats and liberals that Google algorithm bias is a myth. Rep. Jerry Nadler last year called the notion of liberal bias online a “delusion” and a “right-wing conspiracy theory” — although Nadler, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee is still a chief proponent of the disproven conspiracy theory that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
Google has always denied that it is politically biased or abusing its monopoly position, but it looks like the search engine has plenty of work to do on its curation algorithms before it can convince anyone of its fairness.
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