Tag: Russia

Report: Facebook Sets Up ‘War Room’ for European Elections

Zuckerberg to face pressure on taxes in meeting with Macron

By Lucas Nolan

Politico recently profiled Facebook’s new “European election war room” ahead of upcoming E.U. elections.

A recent report from Politico provides an insight into Facebook’s new “election war room” established ahead of the upcoming European election. Facebook has previously deployed a similar “war room” in the United States ahead of the midterm elections in November 2018. In October, Breitbart News reported on the war room providing an insight into the aim of the project. Facebook’s Product Manager of Civic Engagement, Samidh Chakrabarti, said in an interview that the war room is a physical room which will be used to “take quick and decisive action” against possible cases of foreign interference during the midterm elections.

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“We have many measures that we’ve put in place to try to prevent problems: the political ad transparency, blocking fake accounts, combating foreign interference, and preventing the spread of misinformation. But we know we have to be ready for anything that happens,” stated Chakrabarti. “And so that’s why we’ve been building this war room, a physical war room [with] people across the company, of all different disciplines, who are there. So, as we discover problems that may come up in the hours leading up to the election, we can take quick and decisive action.”

Now, Politico has reported on the company’s efforts to establish a similar project in Dublin, Ireland ahead of the upcoming European elections. Politico described the project writing:

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The group of twentysomething coders, engineers and content specialists sit hunched over multiple screens, scanning the platform for potential illegal behavior. Wall-mounted television monitors keep them up to date on the latest chatter on the world’s largest social network, Instagram and WhatsApp. A single European Union flag hangs on the wall, next to a poster emblazoned with the slogan “New Ways of Seeing.”

Yet despite Facebook’s  40-person European election “operations center,” which got underway on April 29, the tech giant is struggling to keep on top of the threats.
Political groups from Hungary to Spain have been able to circumvent Facebook’s new political transparency tools to quietly buy partisan social media advertising aimed at swaying potential voters, according to an analysis by POLITICO. That includes paid-for messages by Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, Verein Recht und Freiheit (Association for the Conservation of the Rule of Law and Civil Liberties), a support group for right-wing politicians in Germany and Petra De Sutter, a Belgian candidate for the Green Party.

It seems that Facebook is aware, however, of accusations of censorship and bias. The company’s chief lobbyist in Europe told Politico that Facebook is avoiding taking too harsh a line on the content allowed on the platform:

“We recognize that some people think we should remove everything,” said Richard Allan, Facebook’s chief lobbyist in Europe, in reference to the reams of political content now flooding the digital platform. “But we have concerns of removing everything during a political election.”

“We don’t believe it’s the right place to be for us to be the regulator of political campaigns,” he added. Facebook may not want the role, but its global reach puts it at the heart of the democratic process from France to the Philippines.

 

Politico described the new Dublin team tasked with monitoring misinformation, writing:

The team, which includes speakers of all of the EU’s 24 official languages, is split along national boundaries, with specialists — primarily men who would not look out of place in any startup office — monitoring activity on both Facebook’s social media platforms and those of rivals, notably Google and Twitter.

Facebook would not say how much content the group reviews daily, though each Facebook staffer had multiple screens open monitoring news events and other political discussions online.

Once an issue is flagged, Facebook’s engineers can then work with their counterparts across Europe and elsewhere to determine if the activity infringes the company’s standards, and then delete, play down or leave the content on the network, depending on the outcome. Topics for review include possible misinformation, voter suppression and hate speech, and the company said that it had investigated hundreds of incidents within the last week.

“Even though we’re a tech company, speaking face to face is invaluable,” said Sturdy, the Facebook executive.

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SUPPORT PJW IN THE FIGHTBACK AGAINST CENSORSHIP

Support PJW in the Fightback Against Censorship

Here’s how you can help

 | Infowars.com – MAY 6, 2019

Facebook and the mainstream media are trying to silence me by falsely labeling me an “extremist”.

Conservatives and anyone who challenges the leftist orthodoxy are being deplatformed.

People have asked how they can support me.

I have created a SubscribeStar at https://www.subscribestar.com/paul-joseph-watson

The fight back against censorship requires resources.

I appreciate you having my back more than ever.

Please consider giving a small amount here if you wish to protect my voice from being silenced.

Or if you prefer, you can make a one time Paypal donation here.

Also, it’s imperative that you sign up for my free newsletter here so we can stay in touch.

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

CAP

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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Watch out, Islamophobia? America’s ‘first Muslim patrol’ hits streets of Brooklyn (VIDEO)

CAP

They’re not cops or armed vigilantes, but Brooklyn’s new ‘Muslim patrol’ hopes to work with police to help make their neighborhood more Muslim-friendly. RT’s Caleb Maupin joined the patrol on its beat.

Founded by a Yemeni migrant and boasting at least 30 members, the Muslim Community Patrol’s (MCP) main aim is to be the “eyes and ears” of Brooklyn’s Muslim community. With uniforms and marked cars complete with sirens, the group could easily be mistaken for regular police – but don’t be fooled. The patrolmen are unarmed and have no police powers. Instead, the group radios to police if they encounter something that requires police action – or firepower. The volunteer-based organization is believed to be the first Muslim ‘patrol’ of its kind in the United States.

The patrol was founded in response to concerns over an uptick in Islamophobia, but they do much more than just patrol the streets. One volunteer who spoke with Maupin said that the group offers counseling, feeds the homeless, and participates in other community outreach projects.

“We’re here to help bridge the community together,” the volunteer said.

Local residents who spoke to RT seemed supportive of the initiative, although a few said the patrol, which mirrors similar groups created by Hasidic and Asian communities in Brooklyn, was cause for concern.

https://www.rt.com/usa/458379-muslim-patrol-brooklyn-police/

 

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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***

Breitbart TV

View this post on Instagram

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.

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Shock Video: Muslim Children in Philadelphia Perform Anti-Israel School Play: ‘We Will Chop Off Their Heads’ to Liberate Al Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem

by Kristinn Taylor May 3, 2019

Video released Friday by the non-partisan research group MEMRI, which translated the Arabic into English, taken from a Facebook posting by the Muslim American Society Philadelphia chapter last month shows a group of Muslim children in Palestinian scarves performing at a Ummah Day celebration where they sang a pro-Palestine and recited a poem calling for the liberation of Jerusalem and its Al Aqsa mosque that says “We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque… We will subject them to eternal torture.”

(UPDATE: A different video clip mentions “Zionists”) Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, so the heads they would be chopping off would belong to Jews.

Screen images with translations. In one image, children in the back row are seen lifting Korans high over their heads during the song.

MEMRI’s description of the video with translation:

On April 22, 2019, the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia (MAS Philly) uploaded a video of an “Ummah Day” celebration to its Facebook page in which young children wearing Palestinian scarves sang: “Glorious steeds call us and lead us [to] the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The blood of martyrs protects us… Take us, oh ships… until we reach our shores and crush the treacherous ones… Flow, oh rivers of martyrs!” A young girl read a poem praising martyrs who sacrificed their lives for Palestine, and she asked: “Will [Jerusalem] be a hotbed for cowards?” Another young girl read: “We will defend [Palestine] with our bodies… We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque… We will subject them to eternal torture.”

MAS Philly belongs to the Muslim American Society (MAS), which has 42 chapters in the United States and one in the United Kingdom. MAS’ website says that its mission is to “move people to strive for God-consciousness, liberty and justice, and to convey Islam with utmost clarity,” and that its vision is “a virtuous and just American society.”

 

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Hungary will not soften laws to allow Soros college to stay in the country

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By 

Hungary will not relax rules for international universities despite pressure from the EU and offers from Germany to mediate in a row over a college founded by US billionaire George Soros, a government spokesman said.

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Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a nationalist who has often clashed with the European Union, has been accused of restricting academic freedom with his new higher education rules, which the Central European University said forced it out of the country.
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“There is no change in our core view”, government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told Reuters.
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“We will not change the laws and regulations that govern higher education in Hungary. We still operate on that basis.”
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Central European University, set up by Soros, will move part of its operations to Austria from September because of rules forbidding it to issue US degrees.
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The dispute, often seen as a proxy for disagreements between Soros and Orbán on migration, is one of the main issues that caused the European Peoples’ Party to suspend Orbán’s Fidesz before European Parliament elections.
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At the initiative of Manfred Weber, the EPP’s lead candidate to head the EU executive after the May elections, the government of the German state of Bavaria and the Technical University of Munich stepped in to help.
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Offering three new professorships and new courses to augment CEU’s teaching, they said they would open a way for CEU to issue international degrees.
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A Hungarian government official told an opposition member of the Budapest parliament that Hungary considered Bavarian participation in the Hungarian higher education sector “a step that builds trust”.
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And Balazs Orbán, a state secretary on the prime minister’s staff, said the government was “ready to examine the possibility for issuing diplomas recognized in the United States and Germany as well as in Hungary”.
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However, he reiterated that all universities had to comply with Hungarian law, and Zoltan Kovacs also made it clear that Bavarian participation, while welcome, would lead to no legal amendments.
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Italian integration “boot camp” forces migrants to do free community work, sing the national anthem and wear “thank you” printed clothes

By   

At the mayor-founded academy in Bergamo, a group of about 30 uniformed migrants form two neat rows, hands behind their straight backs in a military-style “at ease” position.

In the corridor of a building, they repeat in chorus: “We are the students of the first course of the Accademia dell’Integrazione Grazie Bergamo, Thank you Bergamo”.

Then they break ranks, line up two by two and move to a larger room, where two of the students, wearing white aprons, begin serving lunch.

The “students” are asylum seekers and participating in a boot-camp style one-year programme whose explicit purpose is to integrate migrants.

Participants attend Italian-language classes, get internships at factories in the area and have to follow a strict routine.

They also have to do community service work for free.

The academy’s students can only use their smartphones for a few hours a day. For the best part of the day, their rooms are empty, with perfectly made beds. No language other than Italian is allowed. And they look more like cadets than students.

They must always wear a uniform and have three kinds of outfits.

When they are inside, it is a blue tracksuit with the words “Grazie Bergamo” in large print on the back; the second uniform is orange, similar to waste collectors, and also bears the words “Grazie Bergamo” in large print; the third, worn in free time, is a blue shirt and grey sweater with a small school logo, which also allows them to take the city’s public transportation free of charge.

“This is not a school for everyone”, Giorgio Gori, mayor of Bergamo, a wealthy city in northern Italy, about 50km east of Milan, told Al Jazeera.

It’s no place for slackers, he says, because participants “must respect a series of rules of cohabitation” and professional training is mandatory, “with the aim of getting them to a job”.

To get into the programme, participants must pass three interviews assessing their knowledge of Italian, the level of schooling and their ability to respect the rules.

Christophe Sanchez, the mayor’s chief of staff, who created the academy, believes that Italy’s system of asylum seekers’ management is not working and attributes its failure to the fact that they have rights but few duties: “Asylum seekers can stay in bed all day and there is no legal instrument to force them to do something.”

The underlying message of the academy seems to be that participants must demonstrate that they are hardworking people, that they really like Italy and are not troublemakers – in other words, that they deserve to stay.

The fact that the programme includes free-of-charge community work, not to mention the “Thank you” part in the name, gives the impression that migrants must be grateful.
Stefano Quadri, an activist from the Bergamo migrante antirazzista group, an anti-racist organisation, objects to the idea that migrants need to prove they deserve to be hosted, since asylum is a human right, and says free labour “destroys the local economy”.
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A worker at the Ruah coop, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, is worried that students live in relative isolation, with little contact with locals: “Integration means inserting a person in society,” he said.
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But organisers brush off criticism, saying that the programme is effective.
“We have so far done 380 hours of volunteer work and all our students understand Italian”, says Sanchez.
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As for the free labour, Gori insists it is not really free: “Between food, lodging and classes, we are investing 1,000 euros per months on each of them, so in a way they are getting paid.”
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