Facebook, Google Pour Big Money into Lobbying Congress While Blacklisting Conservatives

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By Sean Moran

Facebook and Google increasingly influence Congress as the social media giants censor conservative and alternative voices, dominate the Internet, and violate Americans’ privacy.

Facebook announced on Thursday that they have banned several conservative personalities such as Infowars host Alex Jones, Infowars contributor and YouTube personality Paul Joseph Watson, journalist and activist Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulus. The social media giant also banned Louis Farrakhan from its platforms.

Facebook said that they banned these personalities because they were “dangerous.”

Amid calls for greater regulation of social media companies’ potential anticompetitive behavior, censorship of conservative and alternative voices, and privacy violations, Facebook and Google have remained at the top of Open Secret’s database of top spenders lobbying Congress.

So far in 2019, Facebook spent $3,400,000 and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, $3,530,00 in lobbying Congress. Alphabet also ranked as the eighth total highest spender in lobbying in 2018, spending $21,740,000, while Facebook spent $12,620,000.

Facebook’s influence has continued to rise over the years. In the early years of President Barack Obama, Facebook spent below one million dollars in 2008 and 2009. From 2011 to 2018, Facebook’s lobbying spending skyrocketed and reached historic highs in 2018, when they spent $12.6 million.

In 2019, Facebook lobbied heavily on H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act, a Democrat bill which would restore the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission (FCC) net neutrality regulations, which arose as the result of Google’s heavy lobbying of the Obama administration. In 2019, Google also lobbied on the Save the Internet Act.

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In 2018, one of Facebook’s bills on which they lobbied Congress was H.R. 2520, the Browser Act, sponsored by then Rep. and now Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), which would require social media companies such as Facebook and Google to obtain explicit permission from users for collecting their private data. The Browser Act would also stipulate that these social media companies cannot deny services to users who do not opt-in to these companies’ collection of their private data. In 2017, the Browser Act was the most important issue on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Blackburn said that her legislation would establish one set of rules that would balance the relationship between ISPs and Facebook and Google. The legislation would also prevent the social media giants from unfairly profiting off of Americans’ private data without their explicit consent.

“We need one set of rules for the entire internet ecosystem with the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] as the cop on the beat,” said Senator Blackburn. “The FTC has the flexibility to keep up with changes in technology and its principal mission is consumer protection. The BROWSER Act will enable consumers to make more educated decisions regarding the nature of their relationship with tech companies.”

In contrast, Alphabet’s most prominent issues in Congress in 2019 and 2018 related to labor and antitrust, as well as telecommunications and technology.

Facebook and Google’s dominance on the Internet has become increasingly apparent as Google has approximately 90 percent of web search traffic, whereas in digital advertising, Google and Facebook amount to nearly two-thirds of American digital ad spending, with Amazon at a “distant third” at under nine percent.

In 2018, Google lobbied Congress fourteen separate times on multiple pieces of legislation that would have increased liability for companies that enabled sex trafficking.

Facebook and Google’s influence in Congress extends to its trade group, the Internet Association. In the fourth quarter of 2018, the Internet Association spent $840,000. In total, the social media giants spent $2.6 million in 2018 for lobbying. In 2019, the association has spent $690,000 so far. Over the last two years, the Internet Association has focused on the Save the Internet Act as well as on legislation that would increase edge providers’ liability for hosting content that enables sex trafficking.

Facebook and Google influence political elections as well. During the 2018 election cycle, Alphabet donated:

  1. $223,269 to former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s (D-TX) Senate campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a prominent critic of Silicon Valley censorship.

  2. $149,741 to Rep. Jacky Rosen’s Senate campaign (D-NV) to unseat Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV).

  3. $135,625 to Rep. Josh Harder’s congressional campaign.

  4. $124,508 to former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s unsuccessful re-election campaign.

  5. $97, 364 to former Sen. Claire McCaskill’s failed re-election campaign.

During the 2018 midterm elections, Facebook donated:

  1. $75,005 to O’Rourke’s Senate campaign.

  2. $37,954 to Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) 2017 special Senate election against former Alabama judge Roy Moore.

  3. $34,534 to Heitkamp’s Senate election.

  4. $31,326 to McCaskill’s Senate campaign.

  5. $29,387 to Rosen’s successful campaign to unseat Heller.

As Facebook and Google and other social media giants continue to increasingly censor and blacklist conservative and alternative voices, more and more conservative voices have called for addressing the social media giants’ dominance of the Internet. Facebook and Google’s influence in Congress also relates to political confrontations; during a hearing in December 2018, the then-ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee delivered a sharp rebuke of Republican accusations of Google’s political bias affecting its search engines, even though Google was his top donor.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in April, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said  he envisions three potential remedies for big tech’s violation of free speech and dominance on the Internet.

Cruz’s three solutions include:

  1. Amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
  2. Antitrust measures to address big tech’s dominant status on the Internet.
  3. Addressing potential cases of fraud and deception.

“No one wants to see the federal government regulating what is allowed to be said, but there are at least three potential remedies that can be considered by Congress or the administration or both,” Cruz said.

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JAMES WOODS BANNED FROM TWITTER AMID SILICON VALLEY’S CONSERVATIVE BLACKLISTING CAMPAIGN

James Woods Banned from Twitter Amid Silicon Valley’s Conservative Blacklisting Campaign

Twitter suspended Woods for a tweet that read, “‘If you try to kill the King, you best not miss’ #HangThemAll.”

By Justin Caruso

James Woods, one of the few conservative stars in Hollywood, has been locked out of his Twitter account for over a week now for “abusive behavior,” once again demonstrating the double standard the tech giant holds when it comes to enforcing rules.

Twitter suspended Woods for a tweet that read, “‘If you try to kill the King, you best not miss’ #HangThemAll,” according to his girlfriend Sara Miller.

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The tweet was apparently in reference to the Mueller report, which found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson and has been used in various forms in movies and TV shows like The Wire.

Nevertheless, this post apparently met the threshold on Twitter for “abusive behavior.”

Twitter does not appear to have the same standard for leftists. As Breitbart News has reported, there are several examples of actual violent threats going unchecked by the social media company.

  • Twitter allowed a number of verified accounts to participate in doxxing and violent threats against teenagers from Covington Catholic high school in January.
  • Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) was on the receiving end of vicious sexist Twitter abuse after she defended Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
  • Actor Peter Fonda said that Barron Trump should be taken away from his Melania and put in a cage with pedophiles. Fonda also called for Kirstjen Nielsen to be whipped. He later apologized.
  • Hollywood star Jim Carrey posted a drawing of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. getting bludgeoned to death by an elephant last year. The tweet is still up.
  • In 2016, various accounts called for and cheered on the shooting of police officers.

Woods has been locked out of his account before for posting a meme.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has previously claimed that while he is “more left-leaning,” his company does not target users over political views.

“I think the real question behind the question is, are we doing something according to political ideology or viewpoints? We are not. Period. We do not look at content with regards to political viewpoint or ideology. We look at behavior,” he said last year.

Snoop Dogg Encourages Everyone to Post Louis Farrakhan Footage on Facebook and Instagram

Credit: Daniel Boczarski / Stringer Editorial #: 467066492 Collection: Getty Images Entertainment Date created: March 20, 2015

By Jerome Hudson

Rapper and game show host Snoop Dogg took to Instagram late Thursday and urged his 31 million followers to post and share videos of Louis Farrakhan to Facebook and Instagram. The antisemitic Nation of Islam leader was banned from both platforms for what the social media giant said was Farrahkahn’s decision to “promote or engage in violence and hate.”

“If you’re down with it like I’m down with it, post your favorite Mr. Farrakhan videos on your Instagram and Facebook page,” Snoop Dogg said in an Instagram video posted Thursday. “Show some love to a real brother.”

***Graphic Langauge***

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P. S. A. 👊🏿🎥

A post shared by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg) on

“How the fuck y’all gonna ban Minister Louis Farrakhan for putting the truth out there?” Snoop asked in a separate video. “I stand with him. I’m with him. Ban me, motherfucker.”

Snoop Dogg encouraging his followers to post videos of Farrakahn on Facebook and Instagram appears to be in clear violation of the platform’s rules, which do not allow the promotion of “hate speech […] because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion and in some cases may promote real-world violence.”

As recently as October Farrakhan posted a video to Twitter in which he called Jews “termites.” Twitter removed Farrakhan’s “verified” blue checkmark for hate speech.

Facebook and Instagram’s purge of conservative personalities also included Infowars host Alex Jones, Infowars contributor Paul Joseph Watson, and journalist and activist Laura Loomer.

CBS News, NYT Reporter Suggest U.S. Scrap Free Speech In Favor Of New Zealand-Style Censorship

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Apr. 30, 2019
https://twitter.com/zyntrax/status/1122955568921100288

Both the CBS News host and NYT reporter Cecilia Kang said the US should look to countries like Australia, New Zealand, Germany and India — which do not have free speech — as models for suppressing free speech on the internet.

Here’s the full segment:
As I reported in November 2018, the New York Times editorial board wrote a propaganda piece comparing right-wingers to jihadists and demanded authoritarian censorship of the internet to stop the spread of “toxic ideas.”

The New York Times last year hired virulent anti-white racist Sarah Jeong in August 2018 as their lead technology writer and made her a member of their editorial board.

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Jeong’s Twitter feed featured her attacking “dumbass f**king white people” for “marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”

She also said she gets a sick “joy” out of “being cruel to old white men” and wondered if white people’s light skin is a sign they’re “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.”

The New York Times said they were aware of her anti-white tweets when they hired her and argued her tweets were justified because some trolls called her mean names on the internet.

While journos love to act as though they’re crusaders for free speech and a free press, as we saw over the weekend during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, they’re actually the biggest crusaders against free speech and the free press in America and throughout the West.

‘How is this not meddling?’ Twitter bans Tommy Robinson, Sargon of Akkad campaign accounts

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Campaign accounts of two British candidates for the European Parliament, Tommy Robinson and Carl Benjamin, have been deleted by Twitter, prompting outcries of election meddling with less than a month before the vote.

Robinson and Benjamin – better known under his YouTube handle ‘Sargon of Akkad’ – are running in the May 23 election, which the UK will have to participate in due to the ongoing Brexit delays. Benjamin is a member of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), while Robinson announced his independent candidacy on Thursday.

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Both of them have had personal accounts purged from Twitter a while ago, but the accounts terminated on Friday were run by their campaign staff, and not them personally.

“We are investigating why, but strongly suspect this is a deliberate act of political censorship to deny a candidate his voice in a crucial election,” Benjamin’s campaign staffer Michael De La Broc said, adding the campaign will complain to the election authorities and maybe even seek restitution in court for “political interference by a foreign entity in our elections.”

UKIP has also declared the ban “election interference” and vowed to “get to the bottom” of the issue.

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Benjamin has come under attack by the media and establishment politicians, who have accused him of “racist” speech. The YouTuber maintains he fights for free speech and against political correctness.

Mainstream media have described Robinson as a “far-right activist” and accused him of “Islamophobia.” He was banned from Facebook and Instagram in February over alleged “hate speech.”

British Muslim organization Tell MAMA has claimed credit for reporting Robinson’s campaign account to Twitter, saying it’s using the candidacy to circumvent his personal ban.

The purge of MEP candidates comes just three days after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey went to the White House and met with US President Donald Trump to address complaints about “shadowbanning” and suspensions disproportionately targeting conservative voices on the social media platform.

While Twitter and other social media platforms have defended censorship on grounds that they are companies and not the government, last year a federal judge in the US ruled that Twitter is a “designated public forum,” and that Trump is not allowed to block people from his personal account on grounds of political speech.

Jack Dorsey Shuts Down Rep. Omar; Won’t Remove Trump 9/11 Tweet

Profile picture for user Tyler Durden

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) didn’t get her way after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey called her to let her know that the company would not remove a tweet from President Trump featuring a video of her casually dismissing the 9/11 terrorist attack as “some people did something.”

Dorsey called Omar on Tuesday to discuss the tweet after Omar claimed she received a flood of death threats in response.

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When the Somali-born Muslim Rep. pressed Dorsey on why the tweet wasn’t removed, Dorsey said that Trump’s tweet didn’t violate the company rules, according to the Washington Post.

Dorsey also pointed to the fact that the tweet and video already had been viewed and shared far beyond the site, one of the sources said. But the Twitter executive did tell Omar that the tech giant needed to do a better job generally in removing hate and harassment from the site, according to the two people familiar with the call. –Washington Post

Two days after Trump’s tweet, Omar said she had experienced an “increase in direct threats on my life — many directly referencing or replying to the president’s video.”

Twitter confirmed that the Tuesday call too place, telling the Post “During their conversation, [Dorsey] emphasized that death threats, incitement to violence, and hateful conduct are not allowed on Twitter,” adding “We’ve significantly invested in technology to proactively surface this type of content and will continue to focus on reducing the burden on the individual being targeted. Our team has also consistently been in touch with Rep. Omar’s office.”

Dorsey reached out to Omar the same day that he met with Trump in the Oval Office, after he accepted the president’s invitation. Trump is said to have spent much of the meeting discussing his concerns that Twitter is deliberately targeting and removing his followers, according to the Post.

TWITTER SHADOW BANS MICHAEL SAVAGE FOR QUESTIONING NOTRE DAME FIRE NARRATIVE

Twitter Shadow Bans Michael Savage For Questioning Notre Dame Fire Narrative

Conservative host “may join the rebels in the shadows”.

Steve Watson | Infowars.com – APRIL 25, 2019

Michael Savage believes that Islamist terrorists may have been behind the Notre Dame blaze, and he is being vocal about it. In response, Twitter has reportedly moved to shadow ban Savage to stop his opinion spreading.

Savage’s reasoning is that terrorists attempted to set the cathedral on fire as recently as 2016, in addition to the fact that hundreds of churches in France have been desecrated over the past year.

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Savage found that after he expressed that opinion, Twitter stopped a lot of other users from seeing his posts.

“It became apparent Sunday after being temporarily blocked last week following the burning of Notre Dame, that now he may join the rebels in the shadows,” wrote Amanda Metzger, who works for Savage on his website.

“Some followers who used to receive notifications of his tweets on their smartphones no longer received them,” she added.

Metzger also noted that Savage “suddenly found his Periscope live broadcast was limited in the number of viewers.” (Periscope is owned by Twitter).

Infowars’ Alex Jones is still permanently banned from Twitter. No explanation was ever given, other than the vague suggestion that Jones ‘violated’ T&C’s.

It appears Savage now finds himself in the Twitter sin bin along with Jones and many others.

“Who is in the shadows deciding who is heard and who is silenced? Someone in a dark room behind a bright screen in a foreign country with no First Amendment?” Metzger asked, adding “maybe it’s an American trying to create a safe space online.”

“I can’t think of anything less safe – anything more damaging – than limiting the exchange of ideas,” she continued. “We’re in a dangerous place when we’ve forgotten the phrase, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”

“We are getting closer to the point where federal regulation of social media is inevitable. The airwaves are regulated. In this case, my plea is that there is some transparency in who is banned, blocked or deplatformed and why,” Metzger urged, adding “I would prefer no one find themselves silenced by another.”

“Maybe you don’t care who was deplatformed last year. You didn’t agree with them anyway and seeing their tweets and posts ruined your day,” Metzger concluded. “But if you don’t stand up for them now, they won’t have a voice to come to your defense when you are silenced.”

In related news, it appears that Twitter is planning to allow users to report tweets that they believe are an attempt to ‘mislead’ people at election time.

What could go wrong there?

In a blog post regarding the change, Twitter declared that “Any attempts to undermine the process of registering to vote or engaging in the electoral process is contrary to our company’s core values.”

The move appears to be an effort on behalf of Twitter to adhere to the EU ‘Code of Practice against disinformation’ which Facebook and Google have also signed up to.

CENSORSHIP WAR: The Koch Brothers Fight To Silence Independent Voices

By Patrick Howley

The globalist Koch political network headed by billionaire Charles Koch is waging a war to silence independent journalists on the Internet.

The nonsense Koch group Americans For Prosperity is lobbying Judiciary Committee members to “oppose any effort to use antitrust laws to break up America’s innovative tech companies,” circulating a petition under the disingenuous header “Government Shouldn’t Pick Winners and Losers on the Internet.”

Government already picks winners and losers on the Internet by allowing Silicon Valley to ban independent truth-tellers like Alex Jones, Milo, Laura Loomer, and Roger Stone and shadowban many good American patriots who simply want to share information about Deep State corruption that won’t get picked up by the mainstream media. Just ask Gab about how hard it is to build a competitor social media platform in this current monopolized landscape.

Big League Politics links were banned from Reddit after my investigative reporting series exposing how a recent employee of the George Soros-funded Atlantic Council, now a top Reddit executive, was leading a “Ban Out” effort to suppress the free speech of President Donald Trump’s supporters. In protest, some Reddit users now post screenshots of Big League Politics articles onto the Reddit platform.

Now, the Koch-funded Daily Caller is actually partnering with Facebook to censor its competitors on Mark Zuckerberg’s platform. The outlet, which received nearly a million dollars from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2017 through their “Daily Caller News Foundation” content machine, is one of the “fact checker” organs for Zuckerberg to determine whether news sites get their reach throttled down. That gives the Caller an opportunity to shadowban their competitor sites on the Right and wage censorship war against the America First writers who are openly despised by Caller management (Tucker Carlson is no longer affiliated with the Daily Caller in any way).

To give you a sense of the kind of people who are tasked with “fact checking” competitors, look at Daily Caller editor-in-chief Geoff Ingersoll’s disgusting rant against populist nationalist reporter Cassandra Fairbanks, whom Ingersoll accused of being a Russian puppet.

“Still better than eating Putin’s cock bacon for breakfast, you hapless harlot,” Ingersoll ranted at Fairbanks. “By the way, maybe cut down. You’re blowing up.”

With many of the New Right accounts from the 2016 election — including the loud and proud Pepe the Frog shitposters — now virtually banned from the Internet, the Kochs are clearly hoping that they can suppress anyone who strays from the 2-D Narrative and control the conservative movement with their establishment “Blue Check” aggregators, many of whom sprang to force-fed prominence after Trump’s election to disparage America First people and constantly virtue-signal to the mainstream media mob.

Fortunately, independent journalists are not taking this laying down.

I broke the news:

Investigative journalist Laura Loomer filed a lawsuit Thursday against Twitter following her ban from the platform for comments about Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Loomer is also suing the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which reportedly“complained to Twitter” about Loomer’s work on the platform prior to her ban. Loomer, renowned for ambush video interviews of Democrat politicians, amassed more than 250,000 followers on Twitter. She was first suspended without clear explanation in the days leading up to the 2018 midterm election, and later banned outright from the social media platform after the election in November during her efforts to expose voter fraud in Florida.

“Ilhan is pro Sharia Ilhan is pro- FGM Under Sharia homosexuals are oppressed & killed. Women are abused & forced to wear the hijab. Ilhan is anti Jewish,” Loomer tweeted, referring to forced genital mutilation (FGM). That tweet was cited as the reason for her ban.

Loomer and her company Illoominate Media are being represented by attorney Ronald Coleman of the New Jersey-based law firm Mandelbaum Salsburg. Loomer’s legal defense fund can be found at FreeLoomer.com.

Loomer’s lawsuit can be READ HERE.

  1. This is an action for breach of contract, tortious interference with an advantageous business relationship, restraint of trade in violation of Fla. Stat. § 542.18, civil conspiracy and violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, Fla. Stat. § 501.201, et seq. for which plaintiff seeks and is entitled to damages in excess of Fifteen Thousand Dollars ($15,000) exclusive of interest, special damages, costs or attorney fees.
  2. Plaintiff is a journalist and activist. In order to suppress plaintiff’s views regarding certain controversial political topics – in particular, the role of radical Islam and its proponents American public life and policy – defendants CAIR Florida, Inc. and CAIR Foundation, which have been established by the U.S. government and adjudicated as essentially American branches of the Mideast terrorist group Hamas, have acted in concert and conspired with defendant Twitter, Inc. (“Twitter”) to cause her to be banned, and prevented her from making a living through the use of, the majority of social media platforms.
  3. These include not only Twitter and the blog platform Medium.com, but also major payment processors PayPal.com and Venmo, ride-sharing systems Uber (including Uber Eats) and Lyft, crowdfunding website GoFundMe, online custom merchandise platform Teespring.
  4. Twitter claims that Ms. Loomer was banned because she violated Twitter’s Terms of Service (“TOS”). But, as set forth below, this claim is implausible, because the TOS provide essentially no substantive guidance to all but the most extreme users regarding whether they will or will not be censored on Twitter.
  5. The reason for this is that the TOS are not only vague but are applied with so selectively and in such bad faith that they are meaningless except for purposes of providing Twitter with a pretext for wrongful, bad faith conduct such as is alleged here.
  6. Moreover, innumerable Twitter users, ranging from little-known or anonymous users with a handful of followers to major media organizations, non-governmental human rights and social activist organizations and popular commentators and celebrities, have made the same statements as Ms. Loomer at various times – and in many cases, repeatedly – without adverse action by Twitter.
  7. This conduct by Twitter demonstrates that its pretext for banning Ms. Loomer – because her tweets violated the TOS – is false, and that Twitter’s ban on her as well as Twitter’s explanation of it were made in bad faith.
  8. In fact, there is little serious debate that the Twitter TOS are mere window-dressing, pretexts for employing censorship policies that are either arbitrary and capricious or, far more frequently, and in the facts set forth here, driven by ideology or in coordination with favored or commercially influential advocacy groups, or both.
  9. Rather than being the result of a TOS violation, Ms. Loomer’s ban from Twitter was, upon information and belief, proximately caused by defendants CAIR Florida, organization the Federal Bureau of Investigation has identified as the U.S. “face” of the Mideast terrorist group Hamas, and CAIR National (collectively, “CAIR” or “CAIR / Hamas”), which on information and belief acted in concert with Twitter to procure her elimination as a voice in opposition to them and their favored politicians and causes.
  10. As alleged further herein, the TOS are merely a pretext to place a “progressive” and positive gloss on Twitter’s bad faith, unjustified and unprivileged elimination of plaintiffs’ predominant publishing and fundraising platform, in concert with and at the behest of CAIR Florida and CAIR National, acting with or on behalf of their affiliate Hamas and their financial sponsor the Kingdom of Qatar and, on information, other parties not presently known to plaintiff, thereby effectively silencing Ms. Loomer, eliminating a vigorous and courageous journalistic and investigatory adversary from the public square, enabling defendants to benefit unfairly thereby and causing Ms. Loomer and Illoominate the harm set forth herein”….

Loomer’s February protest at Twitter’s New York City headquarters, where she handcuffed herself to the front door, resulted in Loomer trending #1 on Twitter despite being banned.

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