Published on Mar 7, 2019
‘We were way too aggressive’: Twitter CEO admits conservatives were targeted
Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey addressed claims his social media platform had targeted conservatives, admitted they had likely acted too swiftly in banning some right-wing users, and failed to explain their reasons.
In conversation with podcast host Joe Rogan, Dorsey and his chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde fielded questions and criticisms regarding widespread accusations of the company catering to liberal viewpoints.
“Probably our team having a lack of context into actually what’s happening” Dorsey explained. “We would fully admit we probably were way too aggressive when we first saw this as well, and made mistakes.”
The controversy surrounding the social media giant came after conservatives and those expressing conservative viewpoints complained their accounts had been suspended for ideological reasons. Columbia University researcher Richard Hanania recently published an analysis showing that, of the 22 public figures banned by Twitter in the last few years, 21 were Trump supporters.
Conspiracy theory talk show host and Trump supporter Alex Jones (who, ironically, was on Rogan’s show just a few days ago) had his account suspended last year, alongside other figures like right wing activist Laura Loomer and GOP congressional candidate Jesse Kelly. In Kelly’s case, the company failed to explain the ban, even after Kelly’s account was later reinstated.
ALSO ON RT.COMIraq War vet who called out social media censorship booted from Twitter
“A lot of where we have failed is explaining the ‘why’ behind our policy and reasons,” Dorsey admitted, promising to look into alleged excesses.
As a case example of the kind of bias in question, Rogan and his fellow guest journalist Tim Pool brought up the company’s policy against “misgenderding,” a term for referring to or addressing Transgender people as something other than the gender they identify with. Canadian Feminist Megan Murphy was recent booted from Twitter over accusations she had “misgendered” her opponent in a debate.
Gadde explained that the rule in question was only enforced if a specific person is repeatedly targeted in a way that could be considered harassment. Tim Pool was unconvinced.
“You’re biased, and you’re targeting specific individuals because your rules support this perspective,” he argued, suggesting that the rule itself reflected a liberal viewpoint.
“You have essentially created a protected class,” Rogan chimed in, highlighting how the company’s claims to political neutrality are undermined by the one-sided way it has enforced its policy against “targeted harassment.”
TWITTER NOW ENFORCING SHARIA LAW ON AMERICANS?
Michelle Malkin warned of legal repercussions by Twitter over four-year-old tweet of Muhammad cartoons
FEBRUARY 28, 2019
Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin received a notice from Twitter’s legal team Wednesday, warning that she may wish to seek legal counsel over a four-year-old tweet the social media site says “is in violation of Pakistani law.”
“Here’s the notice Twitter’s legal dept sent me last week, warning me to get legal counsel because anti-blasphemy Muslim zealots complained that my Mohammed Cartoons tweet violates Pakistan’s laws,” Malkin wrote.
In defiance of Pakistani law and in support of free speech, see the forbidden images below.
This is only the latest example of blatant hypocrisy from Twitter as conservatives are disproportionately targeted while pornography, death threats and other clear violations of the site’s terms of service are ignored.
Malkin isn’t the only one being targeted as multiple Twitter users have recently been contacted by Twitter’s legal team regarding posts about Islam.
In an interview with Big League Politics, Malkin explained, “Over the past few months, several other prominent critics of Islamic extremism have received similar warning letters from Twitter’s legal department, including Saudi-Canadian activist Ensaf Haidar, the wife of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi; Imam Mohammad Tawhidi, an Iranian-born Muslim scholar and reform advocate from Australia; Jamie Glazov, a Russian-born Canadian columnist who just released a new book called “Jihadist Psychopath”; and Pamela Geller, an anti-jihad blogger and activist.”
In November of 2018, conservative activist Laura Loomer was banned from Twitter for criticizing Muslim Democrat Ilhan Omar’s support of female genital mutilation.
Malkin could be the next conservative to be permanently kicked off the platform as she is refusing to cower to the site’s intimidation tactics.
She writes, “As a US citizen subject to AMERICA’S laws—NOT Pakistan’s or Mohammed’s—I’ll now retweet my Mo cartoons & columns to 2.1 million followers every day & stand with free speech & free thought.”
Share this article to show big tech that Americans won’t be bullied into submission and that the First Amendment is still alive.
As voice after voice gets purged from social media, still think there’s no censorship?
For a civilization that considers freedom of speech one of its fundamental principles and universal human rights, the West sure does a lot of censorship – and no, farming it out to ‘private companies’ does not change what it is.
It happened again on Tuesday: British activist Tommy Robinson was erased from Facebook and Instagram. The social media behemoth said it has to act “when ideas and opinions cross the line and amount to hate speech that may create an environment of intimidation and exclusion for certain groups in society.”
As online polemicists are fond of saying, “citation needed!” Yet Facebook offers none: no evidence of specific violations, not even a definition of “hate speech,” just an arbitrary standard – and a threat of further bans for people who “support… hate figures.” Whatever that means.
How did journalists – those paladins of free speech, the fabled Fourth Estate, the valiant protectors of values that would die in darkness without their intrepid efforts – greet this news? Did they object to a British citizen being muzzled and wax about the dangers to digital democracy? Oh no, they rejoiced: Finally, what took so long?!
The same process repeated itself later in the day, when Twitter banned Jacob Wohl. The self-described supporter of US President Donald Trump had reportedly boasted about setting up fake accounts to influence the 2020 election. That is regarded as the sin-above-all-sins by social media executives, terrified of Congress blaming them for Hillary Clinton losing the White House to Trump in 2016, even though 99 percent of US media considered it rightfully hers.
Here’s the thing, though: Twitter still hasn’t banned Jonathon Morgan, CEO of New Knowledge, a company that was proven to have set up thousands of fake accounts to swing the Senate race in Alabama to the Democrats, and later paid by the Senate to blame Russia for its tactics.
Let’s also remember the suspension of several Facebook pages belonging to Maffick Media, an outfit that partners with Ruptly, a RT subsidiary. After the “Twitter police” at the German Marshall Fund and CNN raised a fuss about these pages having “Kremlin ties,” Facebook blocked them until they agreed to put up a notice about being “funded by Russia.”So they did, even though there is no such rule that would be universally applied.
Surely it is entirely a coincidence that a CNN reporter went around actively badgering social media outlets to ban Alex Jones, way back in August 2018, and would not stop until they all did?
But wait, there is more! It was confirmed on Tuesday that retired Navy SEAL Don Shipley, known as a crusader against “stolen valor,” got his YouTube channel deleted earlier this month. There were no details as to why, but this was right after Shipley had exposed Nathan Phillips – the Native American activist who claimed he was victimized by Kentucky high school students, in what turned out to be fake news – as falsely claiming he served in Vietnam.
Columbia University researcher Richard Hanania offered an interesting analysis a couple of weeks ago, showing that of the 22 prominent figures suspended by Twitter in recent years, 21 were supporters of President Donald Trump, and only one – Rose McGowan – was a Democrat. McGowan had clearly violated the platform’s rule against doxxing, and was reinstated after she deleted the post. Many of those 21 Trump supporters were not so lucky, getting permanent bans from the platform. So he asked:
What are the odds? Astronomical, actually – Hanania showed that conservatives would have to be four times as likely to violate Twitter rules for even a 5 percent chance of producing the 21-1 ratio. Yet those who routinely cite statistical “disparate impact” to cry racism are perfectly fine claiming there is no bias here? Really?
But [insert social media giant here] is a private company! They can do what they want! So cry the sudden champions of capitalism and deregulation, who in their previous breath claimed Trump abolishing Net Neutrality rules would break the internet. Make up your mind, folks!
In the McCarthyite atmosphere whipped up after the 2016 US presidential election, the social media that once promised unprecedented freedom of expression have turned into the tools of censorship – and not on behalf of a governing party, either, but the bipartisan political establishment united in opposition to an outsider president and anyone who dares support him, or criticize their conduct.
By the way, the “terrible dictator” Trump hasn’t lifted a finger to stop this persecution, let alone sic the IRS or the FBI on his critics.
The idea behind free speech is not that all opinions are valid, but that they ought to be debated rather than imposed by force. Another fundamental principle of western civilization is that the law ought to apply equally to everyone.
One does not have to agree with Robinson, Wohl, Shipley, Maffick, Jones – or Trump, for that matter – to realize that a world in which there is one set of rules for “us” and another for “them,” in which it doesn’t matter what is done but Who is doing it to Whom, is not a land of liberty but something quite different.
KNOWLES: ISIS Widows Want ‘Therapy’ After Marrying Terrorists
By Michael J. Knowles
Former American citizens turned ISIS brides want to return to the United States after being captured by Western forces in the Middle East. Michael Knowles explains why this is a bad idea on Thursday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show.” Transcript and video below.
You had this influx of women, these radicalized Islamic women in the United States, in Great Britain, throughout continental Europe who during the rise of the Islamic state actually left to go fight … on behalf of the Islamic State. So now because President Trump promised we would crush ISIS militarily, and we have, now these women don’t have a state. ISIS barely exists anymore, if it exists at all. Now they want to come back and say, “Whoopsie-daisy, let’s pretend that nothing happened.”
Here is a woman named Hoda Muthana, she left at the age of 19, left Alabama, the good ol’ USA, moved to Syria and married an Australian jihadi who died within three months. Then she married another jihadi, had a child with him, That’s now 18 months old. That guy got killed as well — good job, Western forces — and now she wants to come back to Alabama. Here she is:
Muthara: When I was 17 I had an account on Twitter and we were all just normal Muslims speaking together, and we were just learning off of each other, feeding off of each other. We heard the Caliphate was announced and then we interpreted ourselves that it was obligatory upon us to go…[when she went to Syria] we didn’t see much about, what we did see when we did see it, we would see dead bodies in public.
“You know we’d see dead bodies.” But they knew that they were gonna see dead bodies because they were on these Twitter threads and in these internet groups that we’re talking about this, that’s why they left. Who wants to stay in boring, peaceful, free Alabama, when you can move to Syria and help Islamic militants slaughter innocents? Which is what this woman did. By the way, it’s not like she was eight or nine years old here, was captured and brought over there. She was 19 years old when she left the United States, she helped to spread ISIS propaganda on Twitter. She tweeted out “Americans wake up, go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood.”
We have a hard time in the West believing that people can think this way because we live in a basically decadent, secular, liberal society, so we have no conception of anyone truly believing that people should go on drive-bys and spill all of the blood, as this woman said, on Twitter. So we have this vulnerability, we don’t have a natural defense against these people who are vicious, vile terrorists who want to burn down everything that we have, want to spill our blood in the street — her words, not mine — what we want to do is just let them come back and that’s the compassionate thing, that’s the nice thing to do — that’s the imprudent thing to do. What does this woman think her punishment should be for leaving the United States and going to fight for ISIS?
Muthara: Maybe therapy lessons, it may be a process that will insure us that we’ll never do this again. Jail time, I don’t know if that has an effect on people.
Yeah, jail time, let’s not even consider that. How about just some nice therapy, maybe a good day at the spa, kind of let me get some of my troubles out of here, just relax a little bit, de-stress, maybe that would help. Wow, to be able to look an interviewer straight in the face and say, “Yes, I called for the spilling of American blood in the name of the Islamic state, I’d left and renounced my country, I joined a major international terrorist group and helped people slaughter innocents throughout the Middle East. I think I probably just need a little touch of therapy.” She does need some therapy, she also needs some prison.
THE INDEPENDENT MEDIA JUST SAVED AMERICA FROM A BLOODY RACE WAR (THAT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WAS TRYING TO START)
America was just saved by the same independent media that the tech giants are trying to wipe out
FEBRUARY 21, 2019
In reviewing the Jussie Smollett fiasco, it’s important to note that Smollett staged his hate crime hoax in a location where he believed it would be caught and recorded on a surveillance camera. The purpose of this was to have video footage that the media would play up nationwide, fomenting an outbreak of racially-charged violence that would ultimately lead to a full-blown race war across America (which the media, of course, would blame on Trump).
This is the goal of the left-wing media, which now functions as a cabal of enemy combatants in a civil war they started. And I have no doubt that Barack Obama and his “community organizers” are behind the whole thing. Smollett is well known to be a cohort of Obama, and this is exactly the kind of thing Obama continues to direct from his “bunker” command center near the White House. (See photo, below, of Smollett and the Obamas together.)
The independent media blow the hoax wide open (and the Chicago police did a damn fine job, too)
Yet the hoax was revealed thanks to the efforts of the independent media and old school police work by the Chicago PD, not the “mainstream” media news cartels (which pushed endless lies and propaganda to prop up the hoax for as long as possible).
It was indy media that asked the first questions about the flimsy story that Smollett pushed on the world. Too many things didn’t add up, and while the left-wing media swallowed the hoax without asking a single critical question, the independent media pointed out the many holes in Smollett’s story, such as the fact that he refused to hand over his full phone records to the police… or his claim that he was attacked by two men but somehow managed to hold on to his Subway sandwich the entire time, even walking home with it. Other facts highlighted by the independent media also blew holes in the Smollett story, such as the observation that Smollett was spotted on camera walking home with the fake noose still around his neck. Why would a victim of an attempted lynching continue to wear the noose? And why would he wait 40 minutes to call the police? Why didn’t he desperately shout to the doorman of his apartment to call the police, explaining he had just been attacked?
Get more news like this without being censored: Get the Natural News app for your mobile devices. Enjoy uncensored news, lab test results, videos, podcasts and more. Bypass all the unfair censorship by Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Get your daily news and videos directly from the source! Download here.
None of it added up. But the left-wing media didn’t care. The fake hate crime hoax fit their narrative of America as a racist nation filled with homophobic Trump supporters, and the delicious ingredients in that recipe made such an enticing narrative that the media couldn’t resist. So they risked a race war breaking out across America to try to once again demonize Trump supporters and “keep the hate alive” (which is a key job of the left-wing media these days).
America was just saved by the same independent media that the tech giants are trying to wipe out
All this underscores the importance of speech diversity in a free society. Dissenting voices are sometimes the most important voices of all, since they question the official narrative of lies and deception. This is exactly why systematic censorship of the independent media by the dishonest, fascist tech giants is so dangerous to Democracy.
In this case, it was the dissenting voices — the independent media — that exposed the hoax and very likely stopped the outbreak of racial violence from taking place. In other words, while the mainstream media was actively pushing for a race war in America, the independent media threw water on the embers before it become a firestorm. In response, numerous “journalists” in the media are publicly admitting they are disappointed and saddened that the hate crime wasn’t real. They actually wish for hate crime violence in America, and they don’t even try to hide their dark desires anymore.
Yes, we’ve actually reached the point of insanity in America where “mainstream” media journalists actively wish for hate crimes and race wars. And they are willing to lie and deceive the public to try to make that happen.
If anyone should be censored and de-platformed today it’s CNN, the NYT and the Washington Post. Those are the organizations spreading dangerous lies in a deliberate effort to spark a nationwide race war. They are complicit in the plot to destroy America, and they are acting with extreme malice in trying to carry out their intended agendas to see America rip itself apart.
So why do the tech giants selectively censor the independent media while granting the lying left-wing media near-total control over the public narrative? Because the tech giants want to destroy America, too. They’re all in on it. It’s a plot to bring down this nation, blame white people, depose Trump, silence all dissent and sweep in an authoritarian regime run by deranged, fraudulent Leftists.
SWAMPY: OCASIO-CORTEZ REPORTEDLY USED PAC TO FUNNEL CASH TO BOYFRIEND
PAC likely served as pass-through to mitigate campaign’s mounting debt, reporter claims
FEBRUARY 20, 2019
Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) used a political action committee (PAC) to funnel campaign funds back to her boyfriend, according to reports.
Republican strategist Luke Thompson first made known on Twitter last week that Ocasio-Cortez’s boyfriend Riley Roberts had a house.gov email address and was designated as one of her “Staff,” therefore “drawing a salary on the taxpayer’s dime.”
The revelation was met with fierce opposition by Ocasio-Cortez and her Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who accused Thompson of “doxxing” Roberts despite the information being publicly available, and failed to explain why Roberts would need such access.
“Per the House Admin office, a family member can, in special circumstances, get a house.gov email address,” Thompson reported Wednesday.
“But Roberts is not a family member, and although AOC referred to him as her partner in November of last year, she omitted him from her mandatory candidate financial disclosures for 2017 and 2018. Perhaps they’ve gotten married since. If so — if he is her spouse now — we should see his finances disclosed along with hers in her 2019 disclosure form due in May. But to be clear, AOC did not disclose Roberts’s finances as a spouse during her campaign.”
As Chakrabarti noted, Roberts also isn’t an unpaid volunteer and “isn’t doing any government work.”
Additionally, instead of producing the appropriate evidence to refute Thompson’s claims, the mainstream media attempted to provide cover for Ocasio-Cortez using their own talking points.
“Instead of asking if Roberts had been supplied with the badge and pin appropriate to a Congressional spouse, evidence of which her office should have been able to produce easily, AOC’s worshipful stenographers in the press went into overdrive witlessly repeating her talking-points,” Thompson wrote.
Former chairman of the House Oversight Committee Jason Chaffetz said Friday that such an arrangement was “inappropriate.”
“It’s totally naïve and inappropriate – you wouldn’t allow it in most companies, let alone the House of Representatives. There should be real consequences,” he told Fox News.
“When I was in the House, my scheduler would forward my wife my schedule once a week. But you’re not allowed unfettered access. And he isn’t even her spouse…It should be referred to the ethics committee for further investigation,” he added.
It gets deeper: Chakrabarti co-founded a PAC called Brand New Congress LLC in 2017, which Ocasio-Cortez paid for “strategic consulting” for her campaign.
Brand New Congress LLC then hired Roberts as a “marketing consultant” for AOC’s campaign, paying him approximately $6,000.
“Why would Chakrabarti, a founding engineer at Stripe and a wealthy veteran of Silicon Valley, be hiring a no-name ‘UX Experience’ guy with little discernible marketing experience to serve as Brand New Congress PAC’s sole marketing consultant?” Thompson asked.
“The answer seems to be that Chakrabarti was funneling money paid to him by AOC’s campaign back to Roberts and by extension to AOC,” Thompson wrote.
In effect, Chakrabarti likely reimbursed AOC through Brand New Congress LLC to mitigate her campaign’s mounting debt, he says.
“Regardless of whether or not Roberts was officially AOC’s spouse at that time, it seems probable Chakrabarti was reimbursing her for her campaign expenses off-books. Brand New Congress PAC simply served as a pass-through to do so,” Thompson continued.
After Ocasio-Cortez won in the 2018 midterms, she then hired Chakrabarti as her Chief of Staff.
“That’s definitely unethical and potentially illegal,” Thompson wrote. “Chakrabarti may have made an illegal campaign contribution in excess of federal limits. Regardless, it raises questions about Chakrabarti’s hiring as AOC’s Chief of Staff after her election.”
A shocking aspect of this is that the mainstream media failed to uncover (or simply ignored) any of this information despite the fact it was publicly available for scrutiny.
For now, it appears AOC is adjusting to the swamp just fine.
Tom's Blog 