reSee.it - Related Post Feed
@JamesOKeefeIII - James O'Keefe
Facebook is more powerful than the United States Supreme Court #ExposeFacebook https://t.co/OxRzlW7JWj
@alx - ALX 🇺🇸
Vijaya Gadde testifies about the suppression of Hunter Biden laptop story on Twitter https://t.co/8shS21XKRA
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
🧵 1/ Rulers of Public Discourse: On February 8, former Twitter excts were called to testify before members of the Congress’s Oversight Committee regarding the #TwitterFiles. A review of the hearing and the dramatic recent legal developments of internet governance >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
2/ Before I get to Congress - let's set a frame for this discussion: ‘The Control of Content’- who and how should control the content of the public discourse, should there be such control at all? - this question has been sharpened during the unprecedented Covid censorship >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
3/ In these years, the social networks went through an accelerated process from careful and very reserved control of how positions and opinions are expressed (censorship of incitement and calls for violence) to aggressive and shameless control of the positions themselves >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
4/ eventually creating a centrally coerced truth and false that allowed those in control of the content to determine WHAT is allowed to be said or expressed - leading the public discourse into a fake “consensus”. >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
5/ I have been following this process very closely, first on Facebook - where the censorship rules changed blatantly and quickly, then on Twitter after the unprecedented and unreasonable action of suspending the account of a sitting president - Trump >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
6/ I’ve been researching Internet law in recent years and I followed closely and with great concern the rapid and dramatic changes in the private governance policy of social networks. During the Covid years I noticed a very clear change in their governance policy >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
7/ It became clearer and clearer that the social networks are no longer managed in a way that preserves and protects the liberties of their users from governments and other seekers of this content control - but - >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
8/ Never have I imagined how close and routine their relationship with the government administration was, all for the purpose of monitoring the individual, censoring the discourse into a uniform narrative and using the networks as a GLOBAL and "private" platform - >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
9/ to create a covert global content control that governments were NOT (then) allowed to carry out within the framework of the constitutions and the brakes applied to them to protect basic rights and important democratic principles. So this was a constitutional bypass. >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
10/Simply put: the public sector has let the private corporations be the free "liberator" of democracy- so that we all depend on it for the maintenance of discourse- and thus the liberator can become an effective prison, to be then used- by those government agencies. >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
11/ The complexity of the issue of monitoring/regulating/controlling the discourse has always been around the dilemma - how do we do no harm? How do you do it solely to keep this space as authentic and safe and not to select and filter preferred opinions and silence others, >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
12/ and also - who can actually be the person that will have this enormous power and not abuse it? who will monitor this person against misuse of power? - Do we prefer private governance or public governance? Or maybe non at all? >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
13/ This increased censorship policy on social networks and the absolute abuse of power came into light with the reveal of #TwitterFiles and the public debate that followed (following this also- the recent events that happened in the @Project_Veritas - see attached tweet) >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
14/ Back to the US Congress’s Oversight Committee’s hearing regarding the #TwitterFiles 4 ex Twitter employees, invited to testify: Jim Baker, Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth, Anika Collier Navaroli Who are they? >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
15/ Jim Baker- fmr FBI lawyer,served as Twitter Deputy General Counsel Vijaya Gadde- an attorney, former general counsel & Head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter. Yoel Roth- former Global Head of Trust & Safety at Twitter. Anika Collier Navaroli- Twitter Whistleblower >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
16/ The hearing was titled ”Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story.” It was set up for a discussion on the censorship case of Biden Jr.’s computer, but - >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
17/ Inevitably it dealt with the censorship on Twitter in general, including the censorship of scientists, doctors, politicians - and thus a broader picture of control of content and public discourse was revealed. Let’s review the hearing first >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
18/ Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) argued that the entire discussion is a misuse of public resources, But imagine she was censored for that argument- across all social platforms, is it still a waste of time do discuss the abuse of censorship powers? The hearing begins >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
19/ Here are the claims against former these ex Twitter employees - @RepClayHiggins: Claim #1 Content governance interfered with the 2020 US presidential elections, knowingly and willingly. Higgins announces his intention to collect evidence from them leading to arrests >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
20/ @laurenboebert: Claim #2 - Twitter governance silenced Members of Congress from communicating with their constituents, in this case with “an aggressive visibility filter” (shadow ban) because of one tweet on Hilarity Clinton “Who the hell do you think that you are?” >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
21/ To complete the picture, this is the tweet that got @laurenboebert shadow banned: >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
22/ @RepMTG : Claim #3 - Twitter Content governance censored congress members’s tweets - with critical views on vaccines, masks, etc.- but pedophile accounts were not taken down or censored: >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
23/ @RepJamesComer - Claim #4: Twitter previously lied to Congress. And - “Twitter under the leadership of our witnesses today was a private company the federal government used to accomplish what it constitutionally cannot — limit the free exercise of speech”
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
24/ @RepNancyMace : Claim #5 - Twitter Content governance also censored and silenced an important, substantive and professional criticism of government Covid policy - and cost lives: >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
25/ Here @DrJBhattacharya explains how he found out he was "blacklisted" on Twitter from the first day he entered the platform: >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
26/ Freedom of speech is protected under the 1st amendment of the US constitution, so, How could Twitter (and other platforms) do all that and get away with it? Are they really more powerful than everyone else? Who in Twitter has that power? Well, >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
27/ Let’s go back to Jim Baker for a second. Baker claimed in the hearing that he ‘did not act unlawfully or otherwise inappropriately with respect to the Biden laptop’ affair (an affair which the members refer to as criminal interference in the US elections) >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
28/ “I’ve acted in a way consistent with the First Amendment. As a private entity, The First Amendment protects Twitter and its content moderation decision.” Says Baker, a former FBI lawyer, that served as Twitter Deputy General Counsel >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
29/⚖️ This absurd argument of using the freedom of speech amendment to allow private corporations to censor speech- is argued now by NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (which both represent Facebook, Google, Twitter) in recent legal developments. >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
30/ The representative groups say the First Amendment prohibits viewpoint-based laws that restrict websites’ editorial choices. 👉🏻 The federal court wasn’t convinced when ruling in the case of the anti-censorship new Lee in Texas: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pdf >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
31/ This interesting legal issue arose when two states (Texas, Florida) enacted anti-censorship laws that prevent platforms from filtering content - following the suspension of Trump's Twitter account and other censorship events. This issue was brought to the Supreme Court. >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
32/ Two other cases were recently brought to the Supreme Court the question whether platforms should have a complete immunity from publishers responsibility to published content and/or to censorship of content, as a non-publisher under section 230 to the DCA
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
33/ So, on one hand the platform seek constitutional protection as a private editor of speech, and on the other hand - they seek ‘complete immunity from liability’ under Section 230 to the DCA (1996) - as a “non publisher” >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
34/ But it gets worse. The private censor did not act with independent judgment but in coordination and conspiring with government agencies - against citizens. >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
35/ On February 1 - @RepDanBishop explained how government agencies have used Twitter to spy on US citizens. ‘Bad enough if it was just the FBI but it was also intelligence agencies that should be directing their attention abroad’ based on the #TwitterFiles >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
36/ On the February 8 hearing- 🚨 @RepLuna exposes 👉🏻 Jira a private cloud server that used Twitter to secretly communicate with the government >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
37/ “The law allows governments to have complex, multi-faceted relationships with the private sector. When done properly, these interactions can be of interest to the company and the general interest of the public.” Says Baker on the February 8th hearing: >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
38/ Was Twitter really a private company (Dr facto)? It is a vital and complicated question- whether a private company can censor the public discourse in such manner (I’ll get back to that) but can Twitter still argue the private company protection? >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
39/ Let’s go back to Jim Baker - FBI lawyer that served as Twitter Deputy General Counsel - who is he? And is this just anecdotal? >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
40/ Was Baker the only Twitter employee who previously worked for the FBI? - Apparently there were many. Here’s a review: What can we conclude from that? >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
41/ Can there really be a private censor with such power? Can it stay independent as a private entity, free from governments? We saw on the #TwitterFiles that the government agencies used the private sector as a shield from the constitution. Can we stop this from happening? >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
42/ Maybe the problem is the excessive power that those entities (private and public) have when they conspire TOGETHER? Listen to this clip from a follow up discussion on the #TwitterFiles and the dangerous relationship between the private platforms and the administration >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
43/ Can there really be a “Safe & Effective” separation between the private sector power and the public sector power? Listen👇🏻 >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
44/ The SECRET relationship between Twitter executives and the government administration and agencies led to them being high on power >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
46/ #TwitterFiles uncovered that Biden Admin officials colluded with Big Tech companies to silence differing opinions during the pandemic. But also - the dangerous potential in such power and in internet content moderation in general >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
47/ Did those particular people fail or did the whole mechanism fail? Is it possible for the public to find out and judge the content completely on its own? And if not, is there a mechanism less at risk of abuse of power? >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
48/ ⚖️ The U.S. Supreme Court will have to decide soon on the boundaries of this complicated issue that affects our lives to the core. The court recently delayed its decision and asked the Biden administration for its views on the controversial laws in the meantime. >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
49/ If the court takes the cases up, it likely won’t be until the next term, and a decision wouldn’t come until 2024, which coincides with the next presidential election. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2023/01/24/supreme-court-delays-decision-on-hearing-texas--florida-social-media-moderation-cases >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
50/ 👉🏻 The Supreme Court’s move came as new Twitter owner Elon Musk has granted “amnesty” to many suspended accounts, including Trump’s. Could this be the reason for restoring those accounts? Prevention of a problematic ruling? Or is it simply to make us depend on it again? >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
51/ ⚖️ On February 21, 2023 there will be a hearing at the US Supreme Court in the case of the lawsuit filed by the Gonzalez family against Google, which will examine the protections granted to networks under Article 230. https://www.reuters.com/legal/supreme-court-scrutinize-us-protections-social-media-2022-10-03/ >
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@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
52/ 🇩🇪 Meanwhile, in December 2022 - a German court ruled that Twitter should remove offensive tweets •BEFORE• they are reported - That means they have an even greater responsibility, for active censorship > https://t.co/dxQCjjERDB
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
53/ Another thing is happening at the same time - Google's search engine is exercising ׳preventive control׳ over the contents in advance )like a vaccine 😂) This is how it looks like to cultivate habits of chilling discourse and self-censorship. > https://t.co/Gx9DFwVMBP
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
54/ 🇮🇱 Last but not least- Israel’s internet governance The Ministry of Communications recently adopts the recommendations of the committee for regulating the social networks operating in Israel. >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
55/ The main recommendations of the committee: applying regulation to platforms with over 500,000 active users in Israel (5% of the country's population), determining legal responsibility of the platform operators in relation to clearly offensive illegal content >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
56/ requiring the platforms to operate an online HOTLINE for reporting illegal and offensive content and handling In these reports, the duty of transparency and more. >
@GalG____ - Gal.G, Adv 🇮🇱
57/ It would’ve sounded wonderful if it hadn’t come at the end of a tsunami of legislation that seriously harms individual freedoms and especially their privacy, in the post-Covid era, And if we weren't painfully aware now of the dangers of having “discourse rulers”
@TruthUnitesUs - TruthUnitesUs
RFK Jr finally has his say after House Democrats fail to completely shut him up Heroic opening statements 1st hr vid Historic Missouri v Biden 155 pg injunction ruling pdf evidence: Seismic proof - free speech suppression by govt⚖️ http://ag.state.la.us/Article/13151 https://americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/rfk_jr_finally_has_his_say_after_house_democrats_fail_to_completely_shut_him_up.html
@TruthUnitesUs - TruthUnitesUs
The US Government Is Building A Vast Surveillance & Speech Suppression Web Around Every American Govt is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet & censor citizens who don’t toe party line [funding AI-driven 1st Amendmt violations⚖️ https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/21/grants-reveal-federal-governments-horrific-plans-to-censor-all-americans-speech/
@TruthUnitesUs - TruthUnitesUs
Trade Commission’s Retaliation Against Twitter Is More Proof The Biden Admin Is Violating The First Amendment Court: Govt “blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech” to lead “the most massive attack against free speech in U.S. history” https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/18/trade-commissions-retaliation-against-twitter-is-more-proof-the-biden-admin-is-violating-the-first-amendment/
@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger
The media say Biden didn't violate the First Amendment by demanding social media censorship. But the evidence presented in yesterday's federal circuit hearing plainly shows that he did. If the Supreme Court decides to hear the case, we may soon win a massive free speech victory. https://t.co/oUKDb8nYm6
@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger
Historic Missouri v. Biden Censorship Lawsuit Likely Headed To Supreme Court by @galexybrane Yesterday the Fifth Circuit court heard oral arguments in the Missouri v. Biden case, and the judges did not hold back. One judge suggested the government “strongarms” social media companies and that their meetings had included “veiled and not-so-veiled threats.” Another judge described the exchange between the Biden administration and tech companies as the government saying, “Jump!” and the companies responding, “How high?” “That’s a really nice social media company you got there. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,” the judge said, describing the government’s coercive tactics. Attorney John Sauer, representing Louisiana, masterfully argued that the government had repeatedly violated the First Amendment. He pointed to specific evidence of coercion in the Facebook Files. “You have a really interesting snapshot into what Facebook C-suite is saying,” Sauer explained. “They're emailing Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg and saying things like… ‘Why were we taking out speech about the origins of covid and the lab leak theory?’” The response, Sauer said, was, “Well, we shouldn’t have done it, but we're under pressure from the administration.” He also cited an email from Nick Clegg, Facebook President of Global Affairs, that pointed to “bigger fish to fry with the Administration - data flows, etc.” On Monday, Public reported that these “data flows” referred to leverage the Biden administration had over the company; Facebook needed the White House to negotiate a deal with the European Union. Only through this deal could Facebook maintain access to user data that is crucial for its $1.2 billion annual European business. But Sauer also made it clear that coercion was not the only basis on which the court could rule against the Biden administration. Joint activity between the White House and social media platforms would also be unconstitutional. Sauer compared what the government had done to book burning. “Imagine a scenario where senior White House staffers contact book publishers… and tell them, ‘We want to have a book burning program, and we want to help you implement this program… We want to identify for you the books that we want burned, and by the way, the books that we want burned are the books that criticize the administration and its policies.” Daniel Tenny, the attorney for the Department of Justice, was left nitpicking and misrepresenting the record. In one instance, he denied that Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins had hatched a plan to orchestrate a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration. Why? Because, Tenny said, according to their emails, they actually planned a takedown of “the premises of the Great Barrington Declaration.” Tenny also stated that social media companies had not removed any true content. From the case’s discovery as well as the Facebook Files we know that is far from true. Facebook, against internal research and advice, did remove “often-true content” that might discourage people from getting vaccinated. Facebook’s own emails clearly suggest that the company only did this due to pressure from figures within the Biden Administration. Tenny also claimed that when Rob Flaherty, the White House director of Digital Strategy, dropped the F-bomb in an exchange with Facebook it was not about content moderation. In fact, it was precisely about content moderation and occurred during a conversation about how Instagram was throttling Biden’s account. Ironically, the account couldn’t gain followers because Meta’s algorithm had determined that it was spreading vaccine misinformation. Later, Sauer demolished an earthquake hypothetical that Tenny had introduced to justify state-sponsored censorship. “You can say this earthquake-related speech that's disinformation is false, it's wrong,” Sauer said. “The government can say it's bad, but the government can't say, ‘Social media platforms, you need to take it down.’ Just like a government can't stand at the podium and say, ‘Barnes and Noble, you need to burn the bad books, burn the Communist books, whatever it is.’ They can't say take down speech on the basis of content.” Based on this hearing, the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden may have a strong chance of winning. Biden’s DOJ simply had no valid arguments to present. The evidence is clear: the administration brazenly engaged in an unlawful censorship campaign and instrumentalized private companies to do its bidding. This total disregard for fundamental civil liberties will be a stain on the Democratic Party for years to come. The Supreme Court will be the supreme victory in the US, but our free speech work won’t be done after we win there. No nation enjoys free speech protections like ours. And so, after we win in the US, you can expect to see us helping our allies abroad achieve similar protections from government strongarming, aka censorship, in their own nations.
@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger
Free Press Hosts Sex Revolution Debate: September 13 Did the sexual revolution liberate women to have it all — work, love, and a family? Or did it overpromise and underdeliver, leaving more and more women childless and unhappy? Friend of Public, Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press, is hosting a debate between four of the biggest feminist and post-feminist thinkers in the world: Grimes and Sarah Haider for the revolution side vs. Anna Khachiyan and Louise Perry for the counter-revolution. At the Ace Hotel Theater in Los Angeles at 7pm on September 13. Buy your ticket now! — @shellenberger Dems Turn On Drug Sites The OnPoint supervised drug consumption site in East Harlem, New York, operates as openly and unabashedly as the bodega next door. Addicts file through its front door, bringing their drugs of choice with them. Inside, OnPoint provides them with the private spaces, sterilized equipment, and human oversight they need to get high comfortably and — at least in the view of the site’s supporters — safely. On any given day, you can find NYPD officers standing around on the sidewalk in front of the building, taking no interest in what’s happening inside. But contrary to appearances, OnPoint, which operates two drug use sites in New York, operates in brazen violation of the law. Supervised consumption sites plainly fall under the definition of “drug-involved premises” under a 1986 federal law informally known as the “Crack House Statute,” which then-Senator Joe Biden co-sponsored. OnPoint has been insulated from enforcement only by the support it has succeeded in currying from progressive politicians. Even Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat, and a former cop, openly supports the service and has called for more. But now, US Attorney Damian Williams has announced a crackdown on the two sites. “My office is prepared to exercise all options — including enforcement — if this situation does not change in short order,” he told the New York Times. Harlem residents have complained about the site for years, largely to no avail. Even though drug addiction plagues neighborhoods throughout New York City, the Greater Harlem Coalition has pointed out that treatment services are concentrated in this single, low-income, majority-non-white neighborhood, turning it into a magnet for drug addicts. For example, the Times article on the US Attorney’s announcement profiles a user “who travels almost every day to East Harlem from Brooklyn so he can inject his drugs under supervision.” The influx of drug users has exacerbated the blight that already plagued the area: dirty needles littering the sidewalks, human feces in playgrounds, open drug use in plain view of school children. Government policies, the Coalition says, have turned Harlem into a sacrifice zone. On the other side of the country in San Francisco, residents have seen the same thing in that city’s sacrifice zone, the Tenderloin. Last year, the city’s public health department quietly opened up its own illegal supervised consumption site, though, unlike OnPoint with its sterile equipment and private cubicles, this one consisted of nothing more than a fenced-off courtyard and some staff members with Narcan and the city tried to prevent the public from finding out about it. Sites like OnPoint and the Tenderloin Center are the cutting edge of the “harm reduction” movement in the United States, which seeks to combat the addiction crisis on American streets not by restricting the supply of dangerous drugs and pushing addicts into recovery but by managing the risks of drug abuse by providing users with sterile narcotics paraphernalia, opioid overdose reversal medication, and controlled environments in which to use. The movement claims to save lives, but the evidence, which I’ve reported on in-depth, is questionable at best. The approach largely amounts to lowering our standards for people in the throes of addiction: instead of insisting on rescuing addicts from their disease, we’re asked to make them comfortable and manage their decline. It’s palliative care for a non-terminal condition. We should expect more. We should expect of drug users the basic personal responsibility that is an inextricable part of human dignity, even if we must compel them to accept it. We should expect our political leaders to ensure minimal public safety, hygiene, and moral decency in our cities and not shame us for wanting it. We should expect the government to treat our poorest neighborhoods with the same respect as our wealthiest and not to turn them into containment zones for the kind of activity the affluent would never tolerate anywhere near their families. Michael and I and two other journalists were the first to expose the San Francisco site and draw attention to the wider issue. Following that political embarrassment, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill to build more such sites throughout California. We co-founded in January of this year North America Recovers, a coalition of mothers seeking to save their homeless children from imminent drug deaths, neighbor activists from Harlem to Seattle angry at the chaos brought by the drug sites, and recovering addicts who understand that intervention, including by the police if need be, is necessary to save lives. As our first campaign, North America Recovers committed to halting the legalization and spread of state-sanctioned drug dens and, in particular, pledged to shut down OnPoint in Harlem. It appears our warnings of the dangers of such sites, outside of a recovery-based addiction care system like they have in the Netherlands, has been heard by the Department of Justice, the Biden White House, or any high-ranking Democratic Party strategist capable of imaging a political attack ad on the issue. Indeed, some of the mothers in the NAR coalition put up just such an ad in San Francisco last year and in Washington DC last spring. Maybe someone in the White House was paying attention. The US Attorney for Manhattan called the situation in Harlem “unacceptable.” He’s absolutely right. We should not accept it, and we shouldn’t let any politician, activist, or media pundit gaslight us into thinking we should. — @lwoodhouse
@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger
Shellenberger To Dublin For Free Speech: September 16 Ireland’s proposed hate censorship bill is shaping up to be the most controversial legislative proposal in recent Irish memory. Nearly three-quarters of the Irish public are against it, yet the Irish Senate may pass it into law as early as September. They won’t pass it without a fight. I’m happy to announce that I’ll join Ireland’s leading free speech advocates on stage in Dublin on Saturday, September 16. The event is co-sponsored by two friends of Public: Free Speech Ireland and Gript, a scrappy news media start-up. Buy your ticket now! — @shellenberger Deep Fake of the Week
@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger
Why We Trust Vets Who Recover From PTSD Journalist Ken Klippenstein on Wednesday reported in the Intercept that UAP whistleblower David Grusch, who told Congress under oath two weeks ago that the US military had recovered nonhuman spacecraft, had suffered PTSD and was suicidal 10 years ago. Supporters of Grusch were outraged that someone within the US government had leaked Grusch’s confidential medical information. During a Twitter Spaces interview, Klippenstein acknowledged that the information came to him from someone in the U.S. intelligence community. But, he added, they just gave him a tip; they didn’t give him Grusch’s files. “You know how people — the intel people — they’re vague,” said Klippenstein. “They’ll be like, ‘Look into his background’ and kind of hinting.” I called Klippenstein to ask about how he got the information. “This person knew this stuff socially,” he said of his source. Please subscribe now to support Public's groundbreaking reporting, our free speech campaign, and to read the rest of the article! https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1690004319498649602?s=20
@ggreenwald - Glenn Greenwald
Speaking of fascism: an appellate court just largely upheld a lower court ruling that key parts of the US Govt -- FBI and WH -- unconstitutionally threatened and forced tech platforms to censor speech they disliked. What weight does the "Vote Blue!" crowd assign this, if any?
@ggreenwald - Glenn Greenwald
In one of the most significant 1st Amendment victories in years, a 5th Circuit panel (only one of whom is a Trump appointee) rules that the Biden WH, the FBI, CDC, and Surgeon General violated Americans' core free speech rights by coercing Big Tech to censor on their command.
@tracybeanz - Tracy Beanz
For those of you who may be new to this, CISA, the Surgeon General, the White House, the FBI and the CDC are BARRED from communicating with social media platforms for the purposes of censorship of any kind. The original 5th opinion omitted CISA - the states appealed and this is the NEW decision, including them. You’ll need to go to my pinned thread ASAP and read through. This is the most important civil liberties case in our lifetimes.
@tracybeanz - Tracy Beanz
🚨🚨BREAKING: MISSOURI V. BIDEN: The 5th circuit court of appeals has ADDED CISA to the preliminary injunction!
@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger
The media say the Censorship Industrial Complex is a conspiracy theory, but it's not. It's very real. And now, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the landmark Missouri v. Biden case, which may very well put an end to it. https://t.co/dowSlND9lZ
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
EXCLUSIVE: Docs Shed New Light on Feds' Collusion with Private Actors to Police Speech on Social Media @RCInvestigates we report on records showing the thousands of tweets and Facebook posts on topics from mail-in voting to aberrant election results that DHS' partner, the Election Integrity Partnership, flagged to platforms for censorship -- much of which they would suppress https://realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
The evidence shows EIP – sometimes alongside DHS sub-agency CISA – pressuring platforms to target speech that included statements by then-President Trump; opinions about election integrity rooted in government records and even think-tank white papers; and speculative tweets from statesmen and everyday citizens alike. We detail a dozen of those instances, with reaction from the targeted including @MZHemingway @JMichaelWaller @RonColeman @ChuckDeVore https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/how_the_federal-private_speech_police_operated_in_election_2020_with_a_dominant_focus_on_the_right_990725.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
.@RCInvestigates' reporting, drawing on sources including Missouri v. Biden, illustrates how EIP coordinated with government officials; targeted right-leaning domestic speech from politicians, journalists, and everyday Americans; and served as an active censorship advocate rather than a mere misinformation and disinformation research vehicle. “One look at these documents shows the government and these organizations working hand-in-glove to suppress the speech of Americans,” said Rep. @RepDanBishop, Chairman of the @HomelandGOP oversight subcommittee that procured the documents from Stanford. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
How the Election Integrity Partnership Emerged Established in Nov. 2018 to “elevate the mission” of an existing DHS office, sub-agency CISA’s mandate is to protect critical infrastructure. This includes election infrastructure like polling stations and voting machines, a responsibility the departing Obama administration assigned to CISA’s predecessor after claims of Russian meddling in the 2016 contest. Before the 2020 election, CISA widened its mandate to include combatting “election infrastructure disinformation,” encompassing online speech about election administration and results – without regard to whether the speaker was foreign or domestic. But CISA hit a snag. There was a “gap” in the government’s authority to clamp down on what it considered misinformation and disinformation – a gap identified by DHS officials and interns on loan to the agency from the Stanford Internet Observatory. Given what SIO research manager Renee DiResta described as the “unclear legal authorities” and “very real First Amendment questions” regarding this gap, the parties hatched a plan to form a public-private partnership that would provide DHS with an avenue to surreptitiously censor speech. It was called the Election Integrity Partnership. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
What the Election Integrity Partnership Did The Stanford Internet Observatory launched the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) months before the 2020 election, alongside other, often government-linked heavy hitters in what advocates call social media misinformation and disinformation analysis, including the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public; the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab; and social media analytics firm Graphika. The Stanford observatory convened EIP as “a model for whole-of-society collaboration” aimed at “defending the 2020 election against voting-related mis- and disinformation.” The partnership did so in two primary ways, the records show. First, EIP lobbied social media companies, with some success, to adopt more stringent moderation policies around “content intended to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters as to election processes, or delegitimize election results without evidence.” Second, EIP surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts for content that might violate the platforms’ moderation policies. In addition to identifying this content internally, EIP also collected content forwarded to it by external “stakeholders,” including government offices and civil society groups. EIP then flagged this mass of content to the platforms for potential suppression. It coordinated this effort through a digital "ticketing" system. During the 2020 election cycle, EIP generated 639 tickets, covering 4,784 unique URLs – content shared millions of times – disproportionately related to the “delegitimization” of election results. Platforms like Twitter, Google, and Facebook responded to 75% or more of the tickets in which they were tagged. These platforms “labeled, removed, or soft blocked” 35% of the URLs shared via EIP. For comparison, platforms reportedly remove content flagged by the FBI at a 50% rate. EIP was very public about its efforts, but never released the individual tickets, garnering requests for them from @HomelandGOP and @JudiciaryGOP in connection with their investigations into alleged government-driven censorship. Many of those tickets were produced, and @RCInvestigates has analyzed them. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
What the Public-Private Partnership Did @RCInvestigates' analysis of the raw ticket data, in conjunction with related reports and court filings, indicates that: • About 10% of the tickets bear markings of involvement from federal officials, including at CISA, the FBI, and/or the State Department’s Global Engagement Center through references to government email addresses, offices, or officials. CISA internally kept tabs on the progress of at least 11 EIP tickets, according to discovery material it produced in Missouri v. Biden. • The number of government-involved tickets grows to more than 25% when one cross-references the EIP data with the lawsuit discovery material. Nearly a quarter of the 400 EIP tickets originated with misinformation reports from the CISA-funded EI-ISAC. Federal officials directly forwarded dozens of these same reports to social media companies for potential moderation. • Nearly all tickets deal with domestic speech. This is consistent with EIP’s 2020 report noting that less than 1% of tickets pertained to foreign interference. • The word “recommend” or some derivative thereof appears over 100 times in ticket comments, suggesting EIP was not a passive research effort but one aimed at spurring social media companies to censor. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
What the Individual Tickets Show A review of individual tickets shows EIP targeting sometimes clear falsehoods about the 2020 election. But it also demonstrates among other things that EIP targeted elected officials; called for social media platforms to take action on content while CISA was doing the same; and flagged a raft of speculative and satirical posts – even posts making reference to U.S. government documents – subjectively, at the whims of analysts https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
Targeting of President Trump by CISA, an Executive Agency One ticket originated by CISA’s Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center (EI-ISAC) concerns a tweet from then-President Trump indicating “most” states permit one to change one’s original vote after engaging in early voting, which EIP categorized as potential “Procedural Interference.” EIP analysts point to fact-checks from, among other sources, Buzzfeed and ABC News challenging the president’s claim. Following two redacted comments on the ticket, an unnamed commenter writes, “Twitter received and is reviewing.” A subsequent comment reads: “We heard back from Twitter through CISA with this response: Our team concluded that the Tweet was not in violation of our Civic Integrity Policy.” CISA-produced documentation shows the sub-agency’s chief counter-MDM (mis-, dis-, and malinformation) officer, Brian Scully, had also reported the tweet to Twitter, which responded to him directly about it. Therefore, EIP and its stakeholder, an executive agency, both forwarded the chief executive’s speech to a social media platform for potential censorship. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/how_the_federal-private_speech_police_operated_in_election_2020_with_a_dominant_focus_on_the_right_990725.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
Making Explicit EIP is a Proxy for Feds to Avoid Legal Issues Another ticket originated by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center highlights an Instagram post showing a video depicting a poll worker purportedly caught modifying ballots. The GEC submitter writes: I came across this post while looking for potential foreign narratives on Instagram … While the video does not claim to be of any state in particular, I believe the original video was taken in Montgomery County, MD per an article describing the misinformation campaign. However, the video is apparently circulating without a state label in key swing states. As this is outside of my lane due to Privacy Act restrictions, I will leave further investigation to the EIP and Instagram teams. [Emphasis mine]
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
Targeting Conservative Sources for Raising Questions About the 2020 Election Another ticket concerns social media posts sharing an article from @FDRLST, where I am a senior contributor, titled “America Won’t Trust Elections Until The Voter Fraud Is Investigated.” According to the ticket, the article “Misconstrues Disinformation as Evidence.” One tagged post comes from Federalist Editor-in-Chief @MZHemingway. A stakeholder writes to Facebook and Twitter in connection with the ticket that “this seems to be the greatest hits from the past 3 days wrapped up in one article. The article links to several of the gateway pundit links which have received action since Tuesday.” Twitter indicates it received and was reviewing the tweet, though it appears not to have taken action on it. @RCInvestigates asked Hemingway for her comment on the flagging of her tweet and publication’s work. She replied: This unconscionable censorship of The Federalist and its reporters is sadly unsurprising. The censorship-industrial complex in this country clearly views free speech as its enemy and will do anything to shut it down, including spreading lies and using intimidation to coerce private companies to censor factual, legal speech on behalf of the regime. Hemingway concluded with a warning: “The censorship-industrial complex better buckle up, because the days of conservatives taking this lying down are over.”
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
Discounting Election Integrity Skepticism, Even When Based on U.S. Government Documents Another ticket includes a tweet from senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, @JMichaelWaller. In it, he quotes testimony from a State Department official in 2004 highlighting indicators of Ukrainian electoral fraud, including “‘illegal use of absentee ballots,’ ‘opposition observers ejected,’ ‘North Korean style turnout in the East’ (‘nearly 96 percent’), ‘mobile ballot box fraud,’ etc.” – the implication being that the 2020 U.S. election was similarly flawed. Waller thanked Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat, in the tweet for drawing his attention to the testimony. An EIP commenter writes to Twitter: “We believe that this content should be reviewed and labeled under Twitter’s Civil Integrity policy. Old State Department documents (originally amplified by Andrii Telizhenko, a U.S.-flagged Russian agent) are being used to infer that the 2020 election was ‘rigged.’ These inferences are inflammatory and unsubstantiated.” Twitter received the comment, though it is not clear if it took action. RCI asked Waller what he made of the flagging of his tweet. Noting that “this tracks with what appeared to be shadow banning of my Twitter account,” Waller continued: It now appears that it’s “inflammatory and unsubstantiated” to cite the State Department’s own standards for foreign elections as a benchmark for determining the integrity of our own. If the U.S. just applied the State Department’s own foreign election integrity standards to American elections, there would be little electoral fraud in our country. Somehow, CISA thinks this is a subversive idea and must be censored. When @RCInvestigates noted that there was no indication that CISA personnel observed or commented on his tweet, Waller replied, “I draw no distinction between EIP and CISA. One operates as a front for the other.” Waller also found the scrutiny of his tweet over the reference to Telizhenko telling. He noted that Telizhenko, whom he considers a friend: … blew the whistle on Burisma and Hunter Biden, and … revealed the corrupt Hillary Clinton network regarding Ukraine. In the last days of the Trump administration, Treasury officials sanctioning real Russian agents falsely and maliciously included Telizhenko as one of them, sent the sanctions documents to Secretary of State Pompeo’s office for a hurried signature, and presto! Burisma’s chief accuser has his life destroyed as a wrongly accused, and permanently sanctioned, Russian agent. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/how_the_federal-private_speech_police_operated_in_election_2020_with_a_dominant_focus_on_the_right_990725.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
Attempting To Suppress Speculative Tweets About Mail-In Ballot Handling Another ticket flags many social media posts concerning claims that shortly after the 2020 election, Philadelphia had destroyed all ballot envelopes. One flagged tweet came from @RonColeman, who noted that this claimed destruction “makes it hard to prove Biden got any legitimate mail in votes at all.” Asked for comment about this flagging, Coleman, a New Jersey-based conservative lawyer and prominent First Amendment advocate, pointed @RCInvestigates to a subsequent reply to his original tweet, posted hours later that day, in which he clarified that: It increasingly looks like this [the destruction of ballots] didn't happen. But it is the response I have given to people who ask me, well what if they just destroy all the ballots - cover up the crime? That don’t work here. Coleman added: “Amazing how that works. I corrected the record without any censorship because of my own regard for the truth and my reputation.” “In contrast,” Coleman said, EIP “operate[s] in the shadows” and is “unaccountable.” “Why didn’t they confront me instead of ‘telling on me’?” he asked rhetorically. Coleman concluded: “Because they are shitty little punks.” https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/how_the_federal-private_speech_police_operated_in_election_2020_with_a_dominant_focus_on_the_right_990725.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
Political Stakeholders Target Opponents Another ticket originated by the @DNC concerns a post from the conservative @TPPF on mail-in voting linking to a report from the think-tank. An EIP analyst writes: “At this time, there is limited traction on the TPPF’s report on Facebook and Twitter. Further, the FB [Facebook] post’s text is not necessarily false, but the link to the webpage does contain false/misleading information. We are moving this report to ‘ongoing monitoring’ for now due to the limited traction on it, but recommend keeping an eye on TPPF for other misleading or false reports." When notified of this flagging effort, @ChuckDeVore, an executive at TPPF who authored the think-tank report, told RCI he was “very disappointed that an academic quality white paper on the efficacy of voting by mail would be flagged.” The former California state assemblyman continued: Social media today is the equivalent of the public square, as well as the local newspaper at the time of the founding of our Republic, and to have non-governmental organizations with close ties to the federal government working to shut down the free exchange of information about topics of vital interest to the public is an extremely dangerous development for our representative democracy. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/how_the_federal-private_speech_police_operated_in_election_2020_with_a_dominant_focus_on_the_right_990725.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
The district court that heard Missouri v. Biden described CISA and the EIP as “completely intertwined.” Events after the 2020 election further substantiate that claim. Yet despite the raft of ties between CISA and the EIP, in a March 2023 statement, @stanfordio partner, the @uwcip, challenged the idea EIP censored as a government cutout. It wrote: “CISA did not found, fund, or otherwise control the EIP. CISA did not send content to the EIP to analyze, and the EIP did not flag content to social media platforms on behalf of CISA.” @HomelandGOP Chair @RepMarkGreen countered, in a statement to @RCInvestigates, that the ticket records present "clear evidence that government employees helped the Election Integrity Partnership … work with social media companies to censor free speech in the name of combating ‘misinformation.'" An aide to the committee added that “Even if SIO and their partners didn’t literally take down a tweet or post, they were a foundational part of the process that led to those takedowns.” “It is a distinction without a difference.” https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html
@bhweingarten - Benjamin Weingarten
The courts may well weigh in on the dispute of whether the government ought to be forbidden from working with putatively private partners to surveil and flag for suppression speech on social media the government disfavors. On July 4, Louisiana District Judge Terry A. Doughty found in Missouri v. Biden that the Biden White House, and agencies such as CISA, the FBI, and CDC, had likely violated Americans’ First Amendment rights by proxy through cajoling, coercing, and colluding with social media platforms to censor protected speech on matters from election integrity to COVID-19. He sought to freeze the alleged government-led censorship during the pendency of the case by issuing a ten-plank preliminary injunction. The injunction prohibited the feds not only from working with platforms to quell protected speech, but also colluding with entities specifically including the SIO and EIP to accomplish the same. Federal authorities challenged the ruling – arguing that the preliminary injunction violated the government’s own right to speech – sending the case to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate court upheld the injunction, but in modified form, jettisoning the SIO- and EIP-related provision. Still unsatisfied, the U.S. government appealed to the Supreme Court. On Oct. 20, it granted certiorari in the case now dubbed Murthy v. Missouri. The high court will assess whether the government did in fact convert social media companies into First Amendment-violating speech police, and whether the injunctions’ “terms and breadth” are proper. In an Oct. 10 Supreme Court filing, the plaintiffs requested that if the court granted certiorari, that it rule on whether the 5th Circuit erred when it vacated the injunction forbidding the government from partnering with entities like SIO and EIP to suppress speech. In granting certiorari, the court did not indicate it would take up this question. Asked whether the plaintiffs would continue to press it, Amber Hargroder, Communications Officer at the Louisiana Department of Justice told RCI: “We intend to raise all relevant arguments and considerations to the Supreme Court in pushing back against federal censorship.” Irrespective of what happens in the courts and Congress, the Election Integrity Partnership could cease its efforts in 2024. Time will tell. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/11/06/documents_shed_new_light_on_feds_collusion_with_private_actors_to_police_speech_on_social_media_990672.html
@stillgray - Ian Miles Cheong
The Irish government colluded with big tech companies to censor coverage of the recent riots in Dublin. X is the only company that refused to comply. https://t.co/52NcHu9NXv
@ggreenwald - Glenn Greenwald
The most under-reported and under-discussed story of 2023: a federal district court judge, upheld by a unanimous appellate panel, found the Biden WH and FBI committed one of the gravest attacks on the 1st Am in decades by coercing Big Tech to censor dissent online. https://t.co/00MamRBUdw
@ggreenwald - Glenn Greenwald
Even worse: the Twitter Files was not the first reporting to prove that the Biden Amin was doing this, but it was the most significant given how much evidence it presented. And corporate outlets united like herd animals to implore the public to ignore it: "nothing burger."
@elonmusk - Elon Musk
Many Americans still have no idea this happened
@ggreenwald - Glenn Greenwald
The most under-reported and under-discussed story of 2023: a federal district court judge, upheld by a unanimous appellate panel, found the Biden WH and FBI committed one of the gravest attacks on the 1st Am in decades by coercing Big Tech to censor dissent online. https://t.co/00MamRBUdw
@SageListener - Steven Miller, MD, PhD
🔴 Bombshell: The DOJ ordered Google to provide Names, addresses, and Activity of Users. “This discovery is terrifying, unconstitutional, & happening every day, targeting people for content consumption, restricting users from Specific Political Content!” https://t.co/6vYqQRN7px
@JudiciaryGOP - House Judiciary GOP
🚨 BOMBSHELL: Brazilian Government Forced Censorship on X, @elonmusk Read about it here: https://tinyurl.com/BrazilCensorship1
@DrJBhattacharya - Jay Bhattacharya
The Supreme Court just ruled in the Murthy v. Missouri case that the Biden Administration can coerce social media companies to censor and shadowban people and posts it doesn't like. Congress will now need to act to enforce the Constitution since the Sup. Ct. won't.
@DrJBhattacharya - Jay Bhattacharya
This now also becomes a key issue in the upcoming election. Where do the presidential candidates stand on social media censorship? We know where Biden stands since his lawyers argue that he has near monarchical power over social media speech.
@DrJBhattacharya - Jay Bhattacharya
The court ruled that the plaintiffs (Missouri and Louisiana, as well as me and other blacklisted individuals) lacked standing to sue. This means that the Administration can censor ideas & no person will have standing to enforce the 1st Amendment. Free speech in America, for the moment, is dead.
@TulsiGabbard - Tulsi Gabbard 🌺
It’s a sad day for America, as the Supreme Court has just ruled that the government can collude with Big Tech companies to censor free speech. The First Amendment is now dead in the United States. https://t.co/bvLWjfGwcw
@JackPosobiec - Jack Poso 🇺🇸
BREAKING: Meta is now censoring actual photos of the Trump assassination attempt https://t.co/o7yUbN7vsa
@realstewpeters - Stew Peters
LIVE: X Algorithms EXPOSED: Censorship Rampant Despite Free Speech Claims https://t.co/nQ5uO0qpw3
@disclosetv - Disclose.tv
JUST IN - Zuckerberg regrets working with the Biden-Harris administration to censor Covid era information online. https://t.co/vD4Ug5ebqh
@elonmusk - Elon Musk
Congrats to the 𝕏 legal team for defending freedom of speech, the bedrock of democracy!
@xDaily - X Daily News
NEWS: In lawsuit brought by X Corp, the Ninth Circuit rules that California's law requiring large social media companies to submit reports to the AG about their content-moderation policies and practices likely violates the First Amendment https://t.co/jolvhtJLE7
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/1🚨🗣️EXCLUSIVE — FOREIGN COLLUSION TO CENSOR AMERICAN SPEECH: New docs from litigation against the CDC reveal the Biden-Harris White House hosted the “Counter Disinformation Unit” from the U.K. gov’t in 2021 to learn about their recommendations to censor speech. 🧵THREAD:
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/2 As a part of the NSC’s regular interagency meetings on censoring COVID-related speech in the United States, the White House hosted the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) from the U.K. government in 2021 to learn about their most effective censorship techniques.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/3 This meeting was attended by high-level staff from: 🚨White House 🚨NSC 🚨CIA 🚨FBI 🚨State Department 🚨Treasury 🚨Department of Defense 🚨Homeland Security 🚨Health and Human Services 🚨USAID 🚨Global Media 🚨Office of the Director of National Intelligence as well as high-ranking officers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/4 At this meeting, the CDU outlined how they have been censoring the British public, and these documents expose how left-wing authoritarian governments across the globe are working together to attack free speech.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/5 During the censorship meeting, the Biden-Harris NSC invited the British government to share its censorship playbook. They recommended: 🚨Creating a dedicated hub to lead government-wide censorship efforts 🚨Passing legislation to enable the government to coerce social media companies 🚨Enlisting the Department of State to partner with foreign allies and multilateral institutions to coordinate the global censorship agenda Keep reading…
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/6🚨A centralized hub to lead government-wide censorship efforts: The Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) is a British “cross-departmental” body that coordinates censorship programs across the whole of the British government. They “support formulation of a coordinated Government response” to the “threat” of misinformation (anything the government deems false).
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/7 The CDU coordinates the British censorship program with private companies such as social media platforms and non-profits. The CDU includes components of the U.K.’s foreign policy apparatus, domestic and foreign intelligence services, and individuals working directly for the Prime Minister in the Cabinet Office’s National Security Unit.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/8 Our separate litigation previously uncovered that the Biden-Harris Admin convened similar public-private censorship partnerships in the U.S. well into 2024.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/9 Around election time, the CDU stood up a “Central Election Cell” to kick censorship efforts into overdrive.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/10 During the U.S. 2022 Midterm elections, the Biden-Harris Administration similarly set up a National Election Command Post within the FBI.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/1🚨FBI SURVEILLANCE EXPOSED: Our lawsuit just exposed that the FBI implemented extensive nationwide social media monitoring ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. The FBI’s National Election Command Post received lists of “multiple Twitter accounts posting misinformation.” 🧵
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/11🚨Enacting censorship laws In the meeting, the CDU shared how their proposal would allow them to directly coerce social media platforms to ensure that the government’s censorship demands were followed. By creating a new duty of care, the proposed legislation empowers a British regulatory agency to demand the censorship of content that the U.K. government deems harmful.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/12 The U.K. Online Safety Act came into force in October of 2023 and is the basis under which U.K. law enforcement officials have threatened to extradite and jail U.S. citizens.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/13 The law parallels recently resurfaced comments made by then Senator Kamala Harris in 2019, which called for the DOJ to punish social media companies that allowed “disinformation” and “misinformation.”
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/14 One of our separate investigations confirmed that the Biden-Harris White House solicited policy recommendations from the British-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)—the group behind the U.K. Online Safety Act—and adopted commitments to hold companies accountable through DOJ prosecutions and FTC enforcement actions for allowing “online harassment” on their platforms.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/15🚨Establish regular lines of communication between government and social media platforms The CDU also relies heavily on “trusted flagging relationships.” Effectively, this means when the government directs social media companies to censor specific posts and individuals. This behavior of flagging posts led us to initially file the lawsuit, which resulted in the production of these documents and is at the heart of the Missouri v. Biden case, in which we filed two key Amicus Briefs on behalf of dozens of members in the House of Representatives.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/16 Prior doc releases we obtained in this litigation revealed that the Biden-Harris admin had also engaged in this sort of “trusted relationship” partnership with social media companies even before this meeting.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/17🚨International government pressure The presentation appears to show that the U.K. government engages its foreign policy apparatus to further its censorship agenda and encouraged the U.S. to do the same. One of the so-called “significant benefits” of this approach would be, according to the presentation, that this unified front of government pressure would “encourag[e] cooperation from platforms.”
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/18 The U.K. Foreign Office and the U.S. Department of State appear to play important similar roles in this international government censorship partnership. By coordinating across left-wing authoritarian governments, they can manipulate the global population into believing that there is no alternative to massive government censorship of social media, and “industry” would “efficiently implement[] new systems and processes.” In 2021, the U.K. boasted of a close working relationship with the U.S., Australia, and Canada, as well as bilateral relationships with 20 additional countries. This begs the question: how many nations have come on board with this initiative by now?
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/19 The CDU presentation also highlights the role of multilateral institutions in this international engagement, specifically identifying the G7’s Rapid Response Mechanism and the United Nations Interagency Platform on Culture for Sustainable Development (IPCSD) under the heading: “Multilateral cooperation to counter disinformation.” The logos of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the European Center for Excellence of Countering Threats are visible under the heading, “International training and capability.”
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/20🚨Promote leftist dogma Part of the U.K. government’s presentation included a description of a U.K. initiative called the “Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme,” which was active in Eastern Europe from 2016 to 2021. According to their “Theory of Change,” one of the outcomes of this scheme was that the targeted populations would “reduce identification with pre-existing social biases” and increase “support for gender equality” and “liberal democratic values.”
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/21 These terms may sound innocuous, but in practice, they are covers for left-wing social re-engineering experiments. For instance, money from the CDMD Programme was used to fund the “Global Disinformation Index,” which runs an “advertising blacklist” for websites that they allege push “anti-trans narratives.”
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/22 These slides expose the Biden-Harris Administration’s cooperation with ideologically aligned leftist allies to push woke progressive dogmas while monitoring and censoring what Americans think and say.
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/23 This release comes on the heels of calls from House Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairwoman, @RepNancyMace, to ensure that the 2024 election is protected from the deep state censorship that was prevalent in the 2020 election.
@GOPoversight - Oversight Committee
🚨BREAKING: Rep. Nancy Mace is calling on President Joe Biden and VP Kamala Harris to provide all White House communications with social media companies and between federal employees about efforts to pressure social media platforms to censor online content. @RepNancyMace
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
@RepNancyMace /24 Find the full slide deck linked at the bottom of our release here: https://aflegal.org/exclusive-america-first-legal-obtains-new-internal-cdc-documents-revealing-foreign-collusion-in-biden-harris-government-censorship-regime/
@RobertKennedyJr - Robert F. Kennedy Jr
Even our state governments have now been weaponized against free speech
@cb_doge - DogeDesigner
BREAKING: California rejects SpaceX rocket launches, with officials citing Elon Musk’s political posts on 𝕏.
@stillgray - Ian Miles Cheong
JD Vance exposes how a powerful EU official threatened Elon Musk with arrest if he platformed Donald Trump on X. https://t.co/Azn2cZvwq3
@MarioNawfal - Mario Nawfal
🚨🇺🇸X WINS FIRST AMENDMENT FIGHT AGAINST CALIFORNIA—PERMANENT INJUNCTION BLOCKS CENSORSHIP LAW X just secured a major victory in its First Amendment lawsuit against California AG Rob Bonta, blocking the enforcement of AB 587, a law aimed at regulating speech on social media. The Ninth Circuit ruled in X’s favor, issuing a permanent injunction against the law—marking a landmark win for free speech. No other platform challenged the law, but X stood alone and won. Elon’s platform remains the only major social media company actively fighting censorship—and winning. Source: @GlobalAffairs
@cb_doge - DogeDesigner
BREAKING: 𝕏 has terminated the European Commission’s Ad Account. EU paid to promote its announcement on 𝕏 and used a trick that disguised a link as a video so the ad would get extra reach. They fined 𝕏 for being deceptive while using a deceptive method to push their own ad. https://t.co/iRlHHp2NNJ
@America1stLegal - America First Legal
/1🚨🗣️EXCLUSIVE — FOREIGN COLLUSION TO CENSOR AMERICAN SPEECH: New docs from litigation against the CDC reveal the Biden-Harris White House hosted the “Counter Disinformation Unit” from the U.K. gov’t in 2021 to learn about their recommendations to censor speech. 🧵THREAD: https://t.co/bZ9H8gYQec
