By Chris Menahan
They tweeted out the same video twice in one day:
That last one was tweeted right after this one celebrating Big Tech’s mass deplatforming:
They want to take away our ability to make a living and force us to eat maggots.
By Sean Moran
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.
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:
During the 2018 midterm elections, Facebook donated:
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:
“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.
By Justin Caruso
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.
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.
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.
By Jerome Hudson
“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.”
Breitbart TV
“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.
May 2, 2019
Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, and all accounts related to Alex Jones or Infowars (including Paul Joseph Watson) were the main targets of Facebook’s latest purge and were labeled ‘dangerous’ by the social media giant.
To draw away from criticism about only banning pro-Trump figures, Facebook also claimed to be taking action against Louis Farrakhan, the Hitler-loving Nation of Islam leader.
The company alleges that all individuals or accounts engaged in the following behaviors, according to a statement given to pro-censorship CNN reporter Oliver Darcy.
The Facebook spokesperson said such factors include whether the person or organization has ever called for violence against individuals based on race, ethnicity, or national origin; whether the person has been identified with a hateful ideology; whether they use hate speech or slurs in their about section on their social media profiles; and whether they have had pages or groups removed from Facebook for violating hate speech rules.
Darcy, who himself has been personally involved in lobbying digital platforms to ban his political enemies, also claims that the company may end up banning accounts that share content related to any of the banned individuals.
Facebook tipped off the liberal media before they notified Paul Joseph Watson of his account being banned. Watson was banned — not because of his content — but because he works for Inforwars.
Paul tweeted out earlier.
Not likely.
Paul Joseph Watson’s YouTube videos and writings at Infowars are exceptional.
He has never come under fire for hate speech.
The Republican Party continues to be AWOL.
APRIL 30, 2019
The context of the conversation was the claim that Trump called Charlottesville neo-nazis “very fine fine,” something which provably didn’t happen.
“You talk about Antifa – I’ve watched them in the streets protesting in different situations – there are certainly aspects of them that are true to a cause – that is a good cause – they want social justice,” said Cuomo.
A good cause? Really?
In just the last 24 hours alone, two stories emerged proving yet again that Antifa is a violent domestic terror group.
A Muslim convert who was radicalized by Antifa-style left-wing rhetoric planned to bomb a right-wing rally and cause “as many casualties as possible” by building a nail bomb which could “penetrate the human body and puncture internal organs”.
26-year-old US Army veteran Mark Domingo also contemplated a Las Vegas massacre-style attack on Santa Monica Pier at the height of summer.
In addition, an FBI report which was released to the San Diego Union-Tribune described how left-wing Antifa activists schemed with a drug cartel associate to stage an “armed rebellion” at the US/Mexican border.
The Department of Homeland Security in New Jersey officially listed Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization last year.
This is not the first time Cuomo has praised Antifa. He seems to be content with dying on the hill of supporting a group of masked thugs which routinely attacks innocent people, including in one instance for the ‘crime’ of carrying an American flag.
Good luck with that, Chris.
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