How Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Amazon decide what you're going to see [Archive]

TargeT

25th January 2018, 20:12

Lots of great articles RE: this topic...

The New Censorship

How did Google become the internet’s censor and master manipulator, blocking access to millions of websites?

Google, Inc., isn't just the world's biggest purveyor of information; it is also the world's biggest censor.

The company maintains at least nine different blacklists that impact our lives, generally without input or authority from any outside advisory group, industry association or government agency. Google is not the only company suppressing content on the internet. Reddit has frequently been accused of banning postings on specific topics, and a recent report suggests that Facebook has been deleting conservative news stories from its newsfeed, a practice that might have a significant effect on public opinion – even on voting. Google, though, is currently the biggest bully on the block.

When Google's employees or algorithms decide to block our access to information about a news item, political candidate or business, opinions and votes can shift, reputations can be ruined and businesses can crash and burn. Because online censorship is entirely unregulated at the moment, victims have little or no recourse when they have been harmed. Eventually, authorities will almost certainly have to step in, just as they did when credit bureaus were regulated in 1970. The alternative would be to allow a large corporation to wield an especially destructive kind of power that should be exercised with great restraint and should belong only to the public: the power to shame or exclude.

If Google were just another mom-and-pop shop with a sign saying "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone," that would be one thing. But as the golden gateway to all knowledge, Google has rapidly become an essential in people's lives – nearly as essential as air or water. We don't let public utilities make arbitrary and secretive decisions about denying people services; we shouldn't let Google do so either

Let's start with the most trivial blacklist and work our way up. I'll save the biggest and baddest – one the public knows virtually nothing about but that gives Google an almost obscene amount of power over our economic well-being – until last.

1. The autocomplete blacklist. This is a list of words and phrases that are excluded from the autocomplete feature in Google's search bar. The search bar instantly suggests multiple search options when you type words such as "democracy" or "watermelon," but it freezes when you type profanities, and, at times, it has frozen when people typed words like "torrent," "bisexual" and "penis." At this writing, it's freezing when I type "clitoris." The autocomplete blacklist can also be used to protect or discredit political candidates. As recently reported, at the moment autocomplete shows you "Ted" (for former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz) when you type "lying," but it will not show you "Hillary" when you type "crooked" – not even, on my computer, anyway, when you type "crooked hill." (The nicknames for Clinton and Cruz coined by Donald Trump, of course.) If you add the "a," so you've got "crooked hilla," you get the very odd suggestion "crooked Hillary Bernie." When you type "crooked" on Bing, "crooked Hillary" pops up instantly. Google's list of forbidden terms varies by region and individual, so "clitoris" might work for you. (Can you resist checking?)
https://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/ec59ea8/2147483647/resize/970x/quality/85/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.beam.usnews.com%2Fe4%2Fb5%2Ffcdc596f493fbf4a9c90a2ff7561%2F160620-epstein1-submitted.jpg

https://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/d025427/2147483647/resize/970x/quality/85/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.beam.usnews.com%2F44%2F39%2Fa160d7ef45b18ac4e837974f8cd0%2F160620-epstein2-submitted.jpg

2. The Google Maps blacklist. This list is a little more creepy, and if you are concerned about your privacy, it might be a good list to be on. The cameras of Google Earth and Google Maps have photographed your home for all to see. If you don't like that, "just move," Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt said. Google also maintains a list of properties it either blacks out or blurs out in its images. Some are probably military installations, some the residences of wealthy people, and some – well, who knows? Martian pre-invasion enclaves? Google doesn't say.
https://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/6b42638/2147483647/resize/970x/quality/85/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.beam.usnews.com%2F80%2F8d%2Ff5d62e244dc9bc3b78a8bd1068c0%2F160620-epstein3-submitted.jpg

3. The YouTube blacklist. YouTube, which is owned by Google, allows users to flag inappropriate videos, at which point Google censors weigh in and sometimes remove them, but not, according to a recent report by Gizmodo, with any great consistency – except perhaps when it comes to politics. Consistent with the company's strong and open support for liberal political candidates, Google employees seem far more apt to ban politically conservative videos than liberal ones. In December 2015, singer Joyce Bartholomew sued YouTube for removing her openly pro-life music video, but I can find no instances of pro-choice music being removed. YouTube also sometimes acquiesces to the censorship demands of foreign governments. Most recently, in return for overturning a three-year ban on YouTube in Pakistan, it agreed to allow Pakistan's government to determine which videos it can and cannot post.

4. The Google account blacklist. A couple of years ago, Google consolidated a number of its products – Gmail, Google Docs, Google+, YouTube, Google Wallet and others – so you can access all of them through your one Google account. If you somehow violate Google's vague and intimidating terms of service agreement, you will join the ever-growing list of people who are shut out of their accounts, which means you'll lose access to all of these interconnected products. Because virtually no one has ever read this lengthy, legalistic agreement, however, people are shocked when they're shut out, in part because Google reserves the right to "stop providing Services to you … at any time." And because Google, one of the largest and richest companies in the world, has no customer service department, getting reinstated can be difficult. (Given, however, that all of these services gather personal information about you to sell to advertisers, losing one's Google account has been judged by some to be a blessing in disguise.)

5. The Google News blacklist. If a librarian were caught trashing all the liberal newspapers before people could read them, he or she might get in a heap o' trouble. What happens when most of the librarians in the world have been replaced by a single company? Google is now the largest news aggregator in the world, tracking tens of thousands of news sources in more than thirty languages and recently adding thousands of small, local news sources to its inventory. It also selectively bans news sources as it pleases. In 2006, Google was accused of excluding conservative news sources that generated stories critical of Islam, and the company has also been accused of banning individual columnists and competing companies from its news feed. In December 2014, facing a new law in Spain that would have charged Google for scraping content from Spanish news sources (which, after all, have to pay to prepare their news), Google suddenly withdrew its news service from Spain, which led to an immediate drop in traffic to Spanish new stories. That drop in traffic is the problem: When a large aggregator bans you from its service, fewer people find your news stories, which means opinions will shift away from those you support. Selective blacklisting of news sources is a powerful way of promoting a political, religious or moral agenda, with no one the wiser.

6. The Google AdWords blacklist. Now things get creepier. More than 70 percent of Google's $80 billion in annual revenue comes from its AdWords advertising service, which it implemented in 2000 by infringing on a similar system already patented by Overture Services. The way it works is simple: Businesses worldwide bid on the right to use certain keywords in short text ads that link to their websites (those text ads are the AdWords); when people click on the links, those businesses pay Google. These ads appear on Google.com and other Google websites and are also interwoven into the content of more than a million non-Google websites – Google's "Display Network." The problem here is that if a Google executive decides your business or industry doesn't meet its moral standards, it bans you from AdWords; these days, with Google's reach so large, that can quickly put you out of business. In 2011, Google blacklisted an Irish political group that defended sex workers but which did not provide them; after a protest, the company eventually backed down.

In May 2016, Google blacklisted an entire industry – companies providing high-interest "payday" loans. As always, the company billed this dramatic move as an exercise in social responsibility, failing to note that it is a major investor in LendUp.com, which is in the same industry; if Google fails to blacklist LendUp (it's too early to tell), the industry ban might turn out to have been more of an anticompetitive move than one of conscience. That kind of hypocrisy has turned up before in AdWords activities. Whereas Google takes a moral stand, for example, in banning ads from companies promising quick weight loss, in 2011, Google forfeited a whopping $500 million to the U.S. Justice Department for having knowingly allowed Canadian drug companies to sell drugs illegally in the U.S. for years through the AdWords system, and several state attorneys general believe that Google has continued to engage in similar practices since 2011; investigations are ongoing.

7. The Google AdSense blacklist. If your website has been approved by AdWords, you are eligible to sign up for Google AdSense, a system in which Google places ads for various products and services on your website. When people click on those ads, Google pays you. If you are good at driving traffic to your website, you can make millions of dollars a year running AdSense ads – all without having any products or services of your own. Meanwhile, Google makes a net profit by charging the companies behind the ads for bringing them customers; this accounts for about 18 percent of Google's income. Here, too, there is scandal: In April 2014, in two posts on PasteBin.com, someone claiming to be a former Google employee working in their AdSense department alleged the department engaged in a regular practice of dumping AdSense customers just before Google was scheduled to pay them. To this day, no one knows whether the person behind the posts was legit, but one thing is clear: Since that time, real lawsuits filed by real companies have, according to WebProNews, been "piling up" against Google, alleging the companies were unaccountably dumped at the last minute by AdSense just before large payments were due, in some cases payments as high as $500,000.

8. The search engine blacklist. Google's ubiquitous search engine has indeed become the gateway to virtually all information, handling 90 percent of search in most countries. It dominates search because its index is so large: Google indexes more than 45 billion web pages; its next-biggest competitor, Microsoft's Bing, indexes a mere 14 billion, which helps to explain the poor quality of Bing's search results.

Google's dominance in search is why businesses large and small live in constant "fear of Google," as Mathias Dopfner, CEO of Axel Springer, the largest publishing conglomerate in Europe, put it in an open letter to Eric Schmidt in 2014. According to Dopfner, when Google made one of its frequent adjustments to its search algorithm, one of his company's subsidiaries dropped dramatically in the search rankings and lost 70 percent of its traffic within a few days. Even worse than the vagaries of the adjustments, however, are the dire consequences that follow when Google employees somehow conclude you have violated their "guidelines": You either get banished to the rarely visited Netherlands of search pages beyond the first page (90 percent of all clicks go to links on that first page) or completely removed from the index. In 2011, Google took a "manual action" of a "corrective" nature against retailer J.C. Penney – punishment for Penney's alleged use of a legal SEO technique called "link building" that many companies employ to try to boost their rankings in Google's search results. Penney was demoted 60 positions or more in the rankings.

Search ranking manipulations of this sort don't just ruin businesses; they also affect people's opinions, attitudes, beliefs and behavior, as my research on the Search Engine Manipulation Effect has demonstrated. Fortunately, definitive information about Google's punishment programs is likely to turn up over the next year or two thanks to legal challenges the company is facing. In 2014, a Florida company called e-Ventures Worldwide filed a lawsuit against Google for "completely removing almost every website" associated with the company from its search rankings. When the company's lawyers tried to get internal documents relevant to Google's actions though typical litigation discovery procedures, Google refused to comply. In July 2015, a judge ruled that Google had to honor e-Ventures' discovery requests, and that case is now moving forward. More significantly, in April 2016, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the attorney general of Mississippi – supported in his efforts by the attorneys general of 40 other states – has the right to proceed with broad discovery requests in his own investigations into Google's secretive and often arbitrary practices.

This brings me, at last, to the biggest and potentially most dangerous of Google's blacklists – which Google's calls its "quarantine" list.

9. The quarantine list. To get a sense of the scale of this list, I find it helpful to think about an old movie – the classic 1951 film "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which starred a huge metal robot named Gort. He had laser-weapon eyes, zapped terrified humans into oblivion and had the power to destroy the world. Klaatu, Gort's alien master, was trying to deliver an important message to earthlings, but they kept shooting him before he could. Finally, to get the world's attention, Klaatu demonstrated the enormous power of the alien races he represented by shutting down – at noon New York time – all of the electricity on earth for exactly 30 minutes. The earth stood still.

Substitute "ogle" for "rt," and you get "Google," which is every bit as powerful as Gort but with a much better public relations department – so good, in fact, that you are probably unaware that on Jan. 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire internet. And, as if not to be outdone by a 1951 science fiction move, it did so for 40 minutes.

Impossible, you say. Why would do-no-evil Google do such an apocalyptic thing, and, for that matter, how, technically, could a single company block access to more than 100 million websites?

The answer has to do with the dark and murky world of website blacklists – ever-changing lists of websites that contain malicious software that might infect or damage people's computers. There are many such lists – even tools, such as blacklistalert.org, that scan multiple blacklists to see if your IP address is on any of them. Some lists are kind of mickey-mouse – repositories where people submit the names or IP addresses of suspect sites. Others, usually maintained by security companies that help protect other companies, are more high-tech, relying on "crawlers" – computer programs that continuously comb the internet.

But the best and longest list of suspect websites is Google's, launched in May 2007. Because Google is crawling the web more extensively than anyone else, it is also in the best position to find malicious websites. In 2012, Google acknowledged that each and every day it adds about 9,500 new websites to its quarantine list and displays malware warnings on the answers it gives to between 12 and 14 million search queries. It won't reveal the exact number of websites on the list, but it is certainly in the millions on any given day.

In 2011, Google blocked an entire subdomain, co.cc, which alone contained 11 million websites, justifying its action by claiming that most of the websites in that domain appeared to be "spammy." According to Matt Cutts, still the leader of Google's web spam team, the company "reserves the right" to take such action when it deems it necessary. (The right? Who gave Google that right?)

And that's nothing: According to The Guardian, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009, at 2:40 pm GMT, Google blocked the entire internet for those impressive 40 minutes, supposedly, said the company, because of "human error" by its employees. It would have been 6:40 am in Mountain View, California, where Google is headquartered. Was this time chosen because it is one of the few hours of the week when all of the world's stock markets are closed? Could this have been another of the many pranks for which Google employees are so famous? In 2008, Google invited the public to submit applications to join the "first permanent human colony on Mars." Sorry, Marsophiles; it was just a prank.

When Google's search engine shows you a search result for a site it has quarantined, you see warnings such as, "The site ahead contains malware" or "This site may harm your computer" on the search result. That's useful information if that website actually contains malware, either because the website was set up by bad guys or because a legitimate site was infected with malware by hackers. But Google's crawlers often make mistakes, blacklisting websites that have merely been "hijacked," which means the website itself isn't dangerous but merely that accessing it through the search engine will forward you to a malicious site. My own website, http://drrobertepstein.com, was hijacked in this way in early 2012. Accessing the website directly wasn't dangerous, but trying to access it through the Google search engine forwarded users to a malicious website in Nigeria. When this happens, Google not only warns you about the infected website on its search engine (which makes sense), it also blocks you from accessing the website directly through multiple browsers – even non-Google browsers. (Hmm. Now that's odd. I'll get back to that point shortly.)

The mistakes are just one problem. The bigger problem is that even though it takes only a fraction of a second for a crawler to list you, after your site has been cleaned up Google's crawlers sometimes take days or even weeks to delist you – long enough to threaten the existence of some businesses. This is quite bizarre considering how rapidly automated online systems operate these days. Within seconds after you pay for a plane ticket online, your seat is booked, your credit card is charged, your receipt is displayed and a confirmation email shows up in your inbox – a complex series of events involving multiple computers controlled by at least three or four separate companies. But when you inform Google's automated blacklist system that your website is now clean, you are simply advised to check back occasionally to see if any action has been taken. To get delisted after your website has been repaired, you either have to struggle with the company's online Webmaster tools, which are far from friendly, or you have to hire a security expert to do so – typically for a fee ranging between $1,000 and $10,000. No expert, however, can speed up the mysterious delisting process; the best he or she can do is set it in motion.

So far, all I've told you is that Google's crawlers scan the internet, sometimes find what appear to be suspect websites and put those websites on a quarantine list. That information is then conveyed to users through the search engine. So far so good, except of course for the mistakes and the delisting problem; one might even say that Google is performing a public service, which is how some people who are familiar with the quarantine list defend it. But I also mentioned that Google somehow blocks people from accessing websites directly through multiple browsers. How on earth could it do that? How could Google block you when you are trying to access a website using Safari, an Apple product, or Firefox, a browser maintained by Mozilla, the self-proclaimed "nonprofit defender of the free and open internet"?

The key here is browsers. No browser maker wants to send you to a malicious website, and because Google has the best blacklist, major browsers such as Safari and Firefox – and Chrome, of course, Google's own browser, as well as browsers that load through Android, Google's mobile operating system – check Google's quarantine list before they send you to a website. (In November 2014, Mozilla announced it will no longer list Google as its default search engine, but it also disclosed that it will continue to rely on Google's quarantine list to screen users' search requests.)

If the site has been quarantined by Google, you see one of those big, scary images that say things like "Get me out of here!" or "Reported attack site!" At this point, given the default security settings on most browsers, most people will find it impossible to visit the site – but who would want to? If the site is not on Google's quarantine list, you are sent on your way.

OK, that explains how Google blocks you even when you're using a non-Google browser, but why do they block you? In other words, how does blocking you feed the ravenous advertising machine – the sine qua non of Google's existence?

Have you figured it out yet? The scam is as simple as it is brilliant: When a browser queries Google's quarantine list, it has just shared information with Google. With Chrome and Android, you are always giving up information to Google, but you are also doing so even if you are using non-Google browsers. That is where the money is – more information about search activity kindly provided by competing browser companies. How much information is shared will depend on the particular deal the browser company has with Google. In a maximum information deal, Google will learn the identity of the user; in a minimum information deal, Google will still learn which websites people want to visit – valuable data when one is in the business of ranking websites. Google can also charge fees for access to its quarantine list, of course, but that's not where the real gold is.

Chrome, Android, Firefox and Safari currently carry about 92 percent of all browser traffic in the U.S. – 74 percent worldwide – and these numbers are increasing. As of this writing, that means Google is regularly collecting information through its quarantine list from more than 2.5 billion people. Given the recent pact between Microsoft and Google, in coming months we might learn that Microsoft – both to save money and to improve its services – has also started using Google's quarantine list in place of its own much smaller list; this would further increase the volume of information Google is receiving.

To put this another way, Google has grown, and is still growing, on the backs of some of its competitors, with end users oblivious to Google's antics – as usual. It is yet another example of what I have called "Google's Dance" – the remarkable way in which Google puts a false and friendly public face on activities that serve only one purpose for the company: increasing profit. On the surface, Google's quarantine list is yet another way Google helps us, free of charge, breeze through our day safe and well-informed. Beneath the surface, that list is yet another way Google accumulates more information about us to sell to advertisers.

You may disagree, but in my view Google's blacklisting practices put the company into the role of thuggish internet cop – a role that was never authorized by any government, nonprofit organization or industry association. It is as if the biggest bully in town suddenly put on a badge and started patrolling, shuttering businesses as it pleased, while also secretly peeping into windows, taking photos and selling them to the highest bidder.

Consider: Heading into the holiday season in late 2013, an online handbag business suffered a 50 percent drop in business because of blacklisting. In 2009, it took an eco-friendly pest control company 60 days to leap the hurdles required to remove Google's warnings, long enough to nearly go broke. And sometimes the blacklisting process appears to be personal: In May 2013, the highly opinionated PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak wondered "When Did Google Become the Internet Police?" after both his website and podcast site were blacklisted. He also ran into the delisting problem: "It's funny," he wrote, "how the site can be blacklisted in a millisecond by an analysis but I have to wait forever to get cleared by the same analysis doing the same scan. Why is that?"

Could Google really be arrogant enough to mess with a prominent journalist? According to CNN, in 2005 Google "blacklisted all CNET reporters for a year after the popular technology news website published personal information about one of Google's founders" – Eric Schmidt – "in a story about growing privacy concerns." The company declined to comment on CNN's story.

Google's mysterious and self-serving practice of blacklisting is one of many reasons Google should be regulated, just as phone companies and credit bureaus are. The E.U.'s recent antitrust actions against Google, the recently leaked FTC staff report about Google's biased search rankings, President Obama's call for regulating internet service providers – all have merit, but they overlook another danger. No one company, which is accountable to its shareholders but not to the general public, should have the power to instantly put another company out of business or block access to any website in the world. How frequently Google acts irresponsibly is beside the point; it has the ability to do so, which means that in a matter of seconds any of Google's 37,000 employees with the right passwords or skills could laser a business or political candidate into oblivion or even freeze much of the world's economy.

Some degree of censorship and blacklisting is probably necessary; I am not disputing that. But the suppression of information on the internet needs to be managed by, or at least subject to the regulations of, responsible public officials, with every aspect of their operations transparent to all.

Updated on June 23, 2016: Readers have called my attention to a 10th Google blacklist, which the company applies to its shopping service. In 2012, the shopping service banned the sale of weapons-related items, including some items that could still be sold through AdWords. Google's shopping blacklisting policy, while reasonably banning the sale of counterfeit and copyrighted goods, also includes a catch-all category: Google can ban the sale of any product or service its employees deem to be "offensive or inappropriate." No means of recourse is stated.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-censor-and-its-power-must-be-regulated

O Donna

25th January 2018, 20:50

And you have no say... and you'll never know.

Very important subject matter related to the WWW and beyond. Thank you for bringing it to our attention, Bill.

The above I highlighted in the OP what particularly stands out to me.

Will there come a day when future generations will never know what made the WWW a great vehicle for positive social change due to things like 'intelligent' filters and the destruction of net neutrality?

"Our strategy is to destroy the enemy from within, to conquer him through himself." - Adolf Hitler

The Moss Trooper

25th January 2018, 21:29

People are becoming lazy, relying on Google......... You gotta be more specific, for starter's you have to know what it is you want to find. To go forward, you gotta go back, at least for us who remember how it was, pre-internet, to find that info. There are still enough breadcrumbs, just, on the www, but granted, they are becoming less and less. We have become used to 'instant info' and it's gonna be a hard drug to shake if you don't want to be lied to and manipulated by the multi-nationals. The sheer amount of meta-data generated by an average citizen in the West is difficult to comprehend for most, and the collection capabilities and real-time data mining abilities of our parental intelligence agencies should keep any sane minded individual awake at least one night a week. F**k 'Em.

Necessity IS the Mother of Invention, never forget that. There are small groups and networks popping-up to counter the very subject matter of the OP, this will only continue to grow in tandem with the manipulation of the www.

ANALOGUE. It's in the past, but it is our future.

DNA

25th January 2018, 23:48

Look, I have no problem here looking like the naive one asking the dumb question.
So here we go.
What can we use in so far as a search engine is concerned that can replicate the capability of google?
I've tried several, and I simply have the hardest time finding anything with these lesser search engines.

DNA

26th January 2018, 01:40

Just saw this on inforwars.
Google is censoring "Jesus" and "Jesus Christ".
Where as it will refer to Allah and other religious figures and answer based on their religious stature, with Jesus he is simply being referred to as a "Fictional Character".
This is quite damning of Google.

https://www.infowars.com/shock-video-google-home-censors-jesus-christ/
https://hw.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/1-25-18-jesus.jpg

Who is Jesus Christ? Internet users are posting videos of Google products refusing to answer the simple question.
In one video uploaded Wednesday, Google fails to answer but provides an in-depth summary when asked about other religious figures including Allah.
A Facebook user who asked the same question in November 2017 received a different response.
In the older footage, Google answered, “Regardless of what you might think of him personally, Jesus Christ stands as the central figure in the history of Western Civilization.”

ghostrider

26th January 2018, 02:06

All information is sanitized, now apparently it's personalized ... it won't be long before they move to bio-chip everyone ... Thanksfor the thread Bill ...

Spiral

26th January 2018, 11:01

This what the top tier at google do & how they recruit.....

There was a really good vid on this but the search engine won't find it (surprise surprise ) which went on to point out the satanic nature of burning man, but then I shouldn't have to point that aspect out on here ...

NHrMtZCJEmw

christian

26th January 2018, 11:23

What can we use in so far as a search engine is concerned that can replicate the capability of google?
I've tried several, and I simply have the hardest time finding anything with these lesser search engines.

I get the best results usually with Google as well. When looking for "politically sensitive" topics, however, I sometimes use several other search engines as well, in case Google applied a filter there.

In some cases, it might not even be a politically sensitive topic that is censored, but simply a competitor to Google's services. In one case, ProtonMail was censored this way (https://protonmail.com/blog/search-risk-google/), probably to protect GoogleMail. ProtonMail is arguably the biggest secure mail service, and it disappeared completely from Google's search results for a while, until a lot of users complained to Google and they fixed the issue.

TargeT

26th January 2018, 12:23

Hervé

26th January 2018, 13:20

Anyone - beside Paul - tried "Yandex (https://www.yandex.com/)"?

Valerie Villars

26th January 2018, 14:24

An Open Letter to Google

Dear Google,

You suck.

Sincerely,

Valerie

Bassplayer1

26th January 2018, 15:20

Anyone - beside Paul - tried "Yandex (https://www.yandex.com/)"?

Yes Herve - and Yandex is excellent but sadly its too much hassle. I was using Yandex browser, which I really like - its a favorite, and I set up a Yandex email as a result, which is also (potentially) great- slick, efficient and no ads! The same day I got the email address and updated my accounts, my cell phone got blocked with a message from the network provider for me to contact the Fraud department. When I challenged them outright about Yandex they admitted that it was because of a new Russian email address associated with my account and how in their experience, there's a big crime racket in Russia hacking north american cell phone accounts!!! I was pissed at hearing this BS and had to switch back to my outlook account. I mean, I'm sure there IS a racket just like there is in EVERY OTHER country, but I was angry and concerned at the extent of spreading propaganda and the control companies are starting to exert over their customers. That's not ok. I got the vibe that the person I was speaking to was puzzled at why someone in Canada would want a Russian email address - and frankly, its not anyone's business!! Then, on the same day Google blocked it completely when I tried to create a new account - it was a flat out no-go. But when I tried an old Yahoo account it worked right away! So there it is. The browser is great, though I expect users activity to be tracked and logged every which-way .... Personally, Yandex browser and email are very good indeed but sadly the PTB seem like they might be on the case and clamping down with new users in other countries - especially living in Canada - I don't think Yandex has caught on here, people I've mentioned it to have never heard of it. We might get better quality unfiltered searches but at a price of being blocked and tracked.

Hervé

26th January 2018, 15:22

Google Ad-Non-sense from Jim Stone:

Jan 25 2018

GOOGLE AD BLOCK SCAM BUSTED! (http://82.221.129.208/.zj0.html)

A couple weeks ago, Google announced that its chrome browser would start blocking malicious ad types, if a "truth agency" determined them to be malicious.

At that time, I specifically stated that this meant Google was going to start blocking ALL ads to alt media if alt media sites found alternative ad servers after Adsense denied them ads, simply because of what they reported.

I WAS RIGHT.

THE LIE: Google claimed they would only use Chrome to block ads that
1. Locked the screen or mouse,

2. Made you click them before you could see site content, or

3. Started up audio automatically.
GOOGLE LIED (but at least I knew it was a lie RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING)

Fact: It does not matter if the ad is only a static JPEG that does nothing at all, IF IT COMES FROM A COMPETING AD SERVICE, AND A "TRUTH COUNCIL" HATES YOUR WEB SITE, CHROME WILL NOT ALLOW THE ADS TO LOAD. HERE IS PROOF!

http://82.221.129.208/chromeblock.gif

ALL I AM USING IS STRAIGHT GOOGLE CHROME WITH NO PLUGINS AT ALL, AND IT DID THIS.

The "hate" article that had its ads blocked was about a Target security guard who got fired for catching a Sheriff's deputy shoplifting, and reporting it! (http://filmingcops.com/caught-cop-shoplifting-now-hes-fired-reporting/) AND CHROME BLOCKED THE ADS! WHAT A FARCE!

Google needs a G*D* smart bomb.

Ahh yes, but the Google parasite slurps this web site once every five minutes or so, (to see what the AI needs to auto ban elsewhere) so it will see the words "google" and "smart bomb" associated with each other, alert a living troll who will read the associated report, and they'll fix this ONE SINGLE LONE INSTANCE so they can continue to go right on being the scammers they are.

Foxie Loxie

26th January 2018, 15:57

Hervé

26th January 2018, 16:10

Hym

26th January 2018, 16:43

It's on the "Transition into Trump" thread on post #3561:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF0-WbKdDl8

•

Jerome Corsi:
"QAnon is military intelligence at its highest level..."

"Soros was funding Net Neutrality. He desperately wanted Net Neutrality!"

"Trump wants AT&T to buy out & control CNN. Becuz AT&T is more ethical."

"Net Neutrality is a psy-op, where Treason is sold as Patriotism.... black is white & up is down..." (paraphrased)

"Awakening has to happen in stages."

"First person Trump meets in Davos is UK Teresa May. Explains seriousness of British Intelligence used by Obama of spying on Trump. It was a treasonous act!"

"Also talks regarding Julian Assange. He had the right to publish."

"So Few people voted for Clinton that she lost a rigged election."

"Treason will go to Obama."

"The real shoe is going to drop ==> human trafficking, pedogate..."

"This is the Second Revolution."
Relevant Links:
Corsi Decode:https://www.scribd.com/document/36966...
F&F: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_co...
NSA: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2...
InternetBillOfRights:http://www.breitbart.com/big-governme...
#ReleaseTheMemo #InternetBillOfRights TWITTER:https://twitter.com/cbts_stream
SUBREDDIT:https://www.reddit.com/r/CBTS_Stream/
QCodeFag: https://qcodefag.github.io/

TargeT

26th January 2018, 19:26

Does anyone understand what I heard Jerome Corsi say last night about AT&T getting a contract for NSA & how a First Amendment for the Internet will play out? Is this something Congress has to do? :confused:

Jan 24th:
AT&T Calls on Congress to Protect Net Neutrality, Create an ‘Internet Bill of Rights’ (http://www.newsweek.com/att-net-neutrality-congress-legislation-internet-bill-rights-789376)

Jan 25th:
NSA Awards AT&T Classified $2 Billion Tech Contract… Wasn’t ATT proposing an internet bill of rights? (http://investmentwatchblog.com/nsa-awards-att-classified-2-billion-tech-contract-wasnt-att-proposing-an-internet-bill-of-rights/)

Is it just me or is the game getting a bit obvious?

https://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/QANON-post-57-THURS-Jan-25-2018-THANKS-FOX-FRIENDS-RELEASE-THE-MEMO-RUSSIA-BOT-meme-2-380x218.jpg

Do you have a link for that video/interview/podcast? Or where we could find it?
Here ya go:

AT&T Urges Congress to Pass “Internet Bill of Rights”
AT&T CEO insists: Net neutrality should apply to all, including internet censors like Google, Facebook, and Twitter (https://www.infowars.com/att-urges-congress-to-pass-soros-approved-internet-bill-of-rights/)

https://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/QANON-post-57-THURS-Jan-25-2018-THANKS-FOX-FRIENDS-RELEASE-THE-MEMO-RUSSIA-BOT-meme-1-380x218.jpg

onevoice

27th January 2018, 17:37

CurEus

28th January 2018, 04:27

I'm certain that most if not all of us are aware the Google, Facebook, Aplle, Microsoft .....cell phone companies and providers and a myriad of other tech companies are really just "fronts" for alphabet soup agencies and whatever their agendas are.
The "spyware" is built into the hardware. The backdoors cannot be blocked.

At best any measure we take just prevents "hackers" from accessing our data.

Here is an excellent 6 part in depth video series that chases the money.
I find their research high credible and compelling. and very much worth the time to watch. It's like a mini degree in what is behind tech companies of today. Some but not all of the names are familiar.

Trillion Dollar Rip-Off
Social Networking is a Stolen Trade Secret

One of the largest government sponsored industrial espionage thefts of copyrights, trade secrets, and patents in modern times was the theft of scalable social networking inventions. The technology and programming code that underlie Facebook, Gmail, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and most the other large-scale social networking companies runs on Leader Technologies’ intellectual property.

It was stolen by a group of criminal lawyers, judges, spies and bankers working with complete impunity and in total disregard for the law. Under the guise of the IBM Eclipse Foundation, James P. Chandler III (who was a national security advisor and top White House attorney) led the group of criminals who, interestingly enough, are also appearing in the news currently due to their most recently discovered crimes, along with John Podesta, Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, John Breyer, James Breyer, Larry Summers, Yuri Milner, Alisher Usmanov, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and a host of others who are not so well known.

Usually, we see them stealing oil, gold, uranium and other resources, but this time they stole the very software code that is utilized by the largest tech companies in America, Europe, Russia, China, South America, and anywhere else they could market it – making trillions of dollars in the process.

https://aim4truth.org/2017/11/21/facebook-unmasked-how-the-worlds-most-relevant-entrepreneur-was-screwed-by-zuckerberg/

PathWalker

28th January 2018, 15:52

Greetings Reader,

I wish to suggest 2 important things.
1. You have the power to chose your news content. It requires some responsibility as well.
2. Google and facebook are choices your can change (I use DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com/)).

We have the power, if we do not use it someone else will, and they do.
But we are awakening.

Foxie Loxie

28th January 2018, 17:19

Ecosia Search.....a member suggested this one; sorry I don't remember which member! :confused:

edina

7th February 2018, 04:38

"In this extract from his new book When Google Met Wikileaks, WikiLeaks' publisher Julian Assange describes the special relationship between Google, Hillary Clinton and the State Department -- and what that means for the future of the internet."

...

"I was intrigued that the mountain would come to Muhammad. But it was not until well after Schmidt and his companions had been and gone that I came to understand who had really visited me."

I'm not sure if this would fit here, but evidently it doesn't fit in giovanni's old thread anymore.

'When Google Met WikiLeaks' ...

http://cdn.rt.com/files/news/2e/1e/00/00/34.si.jpg

Spying and storing: Assange says 'Google works like NSA' (http://rt.com/news/188896-assange-google-nsa-spying/)

Reading a related article linked in the updated blog post by Roacheforque, Your Facts Are Biased, where Roacheforque talks about the betrayal of technology.

This important update comes from an article, already three years old, by Julian Assange. Just imagine the state of affairs today (https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems).

An interesting aside: The working title of Eric Schmidt's book was "The Empire of the Mind".

And Roacheforque has called his family, "a dynasty of the mind."

Both expressing similar mindsets?

Or perhaps there's a closer relationship?

Valerie Villars

8th February 2018, 15:41

Hervé

19th February 2018, 13:22

Brazil's largest newspaper abandons Facebook for "effectively banning professional journalism" with new algorithm (http://truthinmedia.com/brazils-largest-newspaper-abandons-facebook-banning-professional-journalism/)

Jay Syrmopoulos Truth In Media (http://truthinmedia.com/brazils-largest-newspaper-abandons-facebook-banning-professional-journalism/)
Sat, 17 Feb 2018 13:48 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s22/447533/large/Facebook_Censored.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s22/447533/full/Facebook_Censored.jpg)

The largest newspaper in Brazil, Folha de S Paulo, announced (https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/02/folha-deixa-de-publicar-conteudo-no-facebook.shtml) late last week that due to Facebook's recent changes to their news feed algorithm resulting in what the paper claims is "effectively banning professional journalism," it would cease publishing content on the social media platform.

The Guardian reported (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/08/facebook-brazil-newspaper-folha-de-s-paulo-fake-news) that the popular Brazilian newspaper has an online and print subscription base of nearly 285,000 subscribers and had roughly 204 million page impressions last December, according to the Communication Verification Institute, a non-profit media auditor. The company's Facebook page has nearly (https://www.facebook.com/folhadesp/) 6 million Facebook followers.

The executive editor of Fohla, Sérgio Dávila, told The Guardian that the paper's decision reflected "the declining importance of Facebook to our readers," but added that the recent algorithm changes to Facebook's Newsfeed had precipitated the decision. The paper claimed the new algorithm "privilege[s] personal interaction contents, to the detriment of those distributed by companies, such as those that produce professional journalism."

Only weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder and CEO, announced (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/11/facebook-news-feed-algorithm-overhaul-mark-zuckerberg) that the company would be changing the algorithm used to determine what shows up in an individual's Newsfeed to prioritize "meaningful social interactions" and posts by friends, and "trusted" news sources.

Folha noted that the choice to abandon Facebook was "a reflection of internal discussions about the best ways to get the content of the newspaper to reach its readers. The disadvantages of using Facebook as a path to this distribution became more evident after the social network's decision to reduce the visibility of professional journalism on its users' pages."

A separate report (http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2018/02/1955936-fake-news-gains-momentum-on-facebook-as-professional-journalism-falls-behind.shtml) in Folha noted that the newspaper's own analysis found that "fake news pages received five times the number of engagements that professional journalism received" during the month of January.
"This reinforces the tendency of the user to consume more and more content with which it has affinity, favoring the creation of bubbles of opinions and convictions, and the propagation of fake news," Folha argued.

"These problems have been aggravated in recent years by the mass distribution of deliberately false content...as happened in the U.S. presidential election in 2016."

"In effectively banning professional journalism from its pages in favor of personal content and opening space for 'fake news' to proliferate, Facebook became inhospitable terrain for those who want to offer quality content like ours," Dávila told the Guardian. There has been widespread concern among civil libertarians, and independent media, about the continuing use of algorithms that effectively soft-censors content (https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-can-absolutely-control-its-algorithm/) that includes controversial ideas or dissent.

Brazil is the third biggest market in the world for Facebook, with roughly 130 million users, according (https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-based-on-number-of-facebook-users/) to statistics portal Statista.

Related:
Zuckerberg: Facebook to prioritize news from 'trustworthy' news sources (https://www.sott.net/article/374759-Zuckerberg-Facebook-to-prioritize-news-from-trustworthy-news-sources)

Social media: Can we take back power from the tech giants and their government overlords? (https://www.sott.net/article/372931-Social-media-Can-we-take-back-power-from-the-tech-giants-and-their-government-overlords)

Google and Facebook fund 'fake news war rooms' to 'truthify' Western elections - UK next (https://www.sott.net/article/351415-Google-and-Facebook-fund-fake-news-war-rooms-to-truthify-Western-elections-UK-next)

Google and big business design adblocker to be installed as default on Chrome banning what it deems "most intrusive ads" (https://www.sott.net/article/377589-Google-and-big-business-design-adblocker-to-be-installed-as-default-on-Chrome-banning-what-it-deems-most-intrusive-ads)

Facebook censorship: Here's how to make sure you still see posts by your favorite sites (https://www.sott.net/article/375566-Facebook-censorship-Heres-how-to-make-sure-you-still-see-posts-by-your-favorite-sites)

As Facebook continues to blunder, new social media platform 'Steemit' pays you to participate (https://www.sott.net/article/374426-As-Facebook-continues-to-blunder-new-social-media-platform-Steemit-pays-you-to-participate)

Facebook censorship pushing alt media to new social networking platforms (https://www.sott.net/article/375562-Facebook-censorship-pushing-alt-media-to-new-social-networking-platforms)

Tintin

11th April 2018, 14:13

Some more from Jon Rappoport here fairly hot off the press from his blog.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. . . . I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors." (Thomas Jefferson, June 11, 1807)

Facebook censorship: the grotesque solution
By Jon Rappoport

The problem with Facebook started a long time ago. They used their money to promote their social media operations, and tons of users jumped on board, believing that conventional rules of free speech applied.

That was a mistake.

The mistake was on the level of believing the military-industrial complex is only interested in legitimate defence of the nation; or believing the pharmaceutical industry is only interested in alleviating existing illness with safe drugs.

Some lawyers and scholars are trying to "correct" Facebook. But beware: most of them are arguing that, since the Internet is a new platform, far beyond the ability of the Founding Fathers to have anticipated, we now have to change the meaning of the 1st Amendment, in order to make social media "more responsible" about the content they permit. In other words, Facebook should eliminate "more fake news."

This is the road to disaster, as any sane person can see.

Who decides what is fake? Government appointed fact checkers? The CIA? Either of the two major political parties? A biased hate speech organization?

These scholars and attorneys want social media to be defined as "public square, town hall, news media"---but not so public that all political views are allowed through the door. No. They only want "reasonable" content, to protect "robust debate in a democracy." This is pure baloney.

We're also seeing increasing calls for government regulation of social media. This means more censorship. We're witnessing that in California, where State Senator Richard Pan has introduced a bill (SB 1424), designed to force all Internet activity based in California to use designated fact checkers and issue warnings about fake news.

It may seem like a good move to redefine social media giants as "more than private companies," but that direction is dangerous. In the main, it's not being shaped by true free-speech advocates, it's controlled by mainstream operatives who want their news to dominate the scene.

A 10/11/17 Wired article contains this stunning piece:

"'You cannot run a democratic system unless you have a well-informed public, or a public prepared to defer to well-informed elites,' says Larry Kramer, president of the Hewlett Foundation and an expert in constitutional law.

'And we are now rapidly heading toward neither. Without one or the other, our constitutional system and our liberal democracy will end, perhaps not imminently, but over time'."

Defer to well-informed elites? Really? This is the mainstream argument right out in the open:

The vaunted traditional news outlets speak the truth and we must listen to them. We must censor all the extraneous "noise" on the Internet. The NY Times and the Washington Post and CNN and CBS would never lie. They vet their stories and fact check them. They are objective. They light the lamp of truth and point the way.

They protect democracy.

To mainstream scholars, improving social media means destroying the 1st Amendment under the guise of "adjusting and updating it."

Eliminating hate speech includes censoring material that contradicts the "progressive culture" on issues like immigration, open borders, gun control, vaccination, and gender identity.

"Free speech" is replaced by "better speech."

"I don't like what you say" is replaced by "you have no right to say it."

The very popular pro-Trump Diamond and Silk duo recently reacted to Facebook censorship:

"...giving us the run around, Facebook gave us another bogus reason why Millions of people who have liked and/or followed our page no longer receives notification and why our page, post and video reach was reduced by a very large percentage. Here is the reply from Facebook. Thu, Apr 5, 2018 at 3:40 PM: 'The Policy team has come to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community'."

I guess Diamond and Silk are part of the dangerous noise that distracts the American people from "responsible journalism" so necessary to maintaining a robust democracy.

Yes, that must be it.

As far as I can tell, the following quote about the news was written before the Internet and Facebook existed, and therefore---heaven forbid---was actually aimed at mainstream sources:

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. . . . I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors." (Thomas Jefferson, June 11, 1807)

Censor Jefferson! He's contributing to doubt and disbelief in our most trusted streams of information. Ban him from Facebook! He's unsafe to the community. He's a corrosive influence. He's obstructing democracy. He's a conspiracy lunatic. The new and improved 1st Amendment doesn't protect him. How can we conduct intelligent and proper debate on serious matters in the face of such blanket condemnations which he spews?

Yes, ban him, so we can be safe again.

petra

11th April 2018, 14:22

What bugs me the most is how it's psychoanalyzing me. PS: I've never watched Hello Kitty :P

This one stood out to me recently,

“Hello Kitty” on Facebook suggests that the user is more likely to be a Democrat, of African-American origin, and predominantly Christian, the study says.

Ref: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17138854/cambridge-analytica-facebook-data-trump-campaign-psychographic-microtargeting

Tintin

11th April 2018, 15:11

And here’s J D Heyes writing for Natural News today and citing the ‘Diamond and Silk’ situation to which Jon Rappoport referred in my recent post from his blog, here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?101475-How-Google-Facebook-Yahoo-decide-what-you-re-going-to-see&p=1219231&viewfull=1#post1219231).

And a link to Hervé’s Jon Rappoport blog entry here on that specific thread (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?102390-On-the-Highway-To-Speech-Licensing...-You-Know-Like-AMA-APA-FDA-Etc...&p=1218856&viewfull=1#post1218856) in relation to the SB-1424 bill being pushed by Sen. Richard Pan (California)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Because if you speak in a way the tech overlords don’t like, all of a sudden you are ‘unsafe,’” Adams said. “This is a very dangerous precedent. They’re censoring Diamond and Silk just like they’re censoring me, just like they’re censoring Infowars at every opportunity."

Health Ranger Mike Adams fills in for Alex Jones to warn about the “online ethnic cleansing” happening now
Tuesday, April 10, 2018 by: JD Heyes

Article link here: https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-04-10-health-ranger-mike-adams-fills-in-for-alex-jones-online-ethnic-cleansing.html

Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, filled in for Infowars creator and host Alex Jones on Sunday’s broadcast which he called his “most important” message ever: The tsunami of speech authoritarianism that is already sweeping the country as Left-wing social media giants commit “online ethnic cleansing” against conservatives and supporters of President Donald Trump.

Adams led off by noting that Jack Dorsey, the CEO and co-founder of Twitter, endorsed a rambling, lengthy Medium post last week that calls for the political (and physical?) destruction of all conservatives and Republicans using the “California model.”

The piece, titled, “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War,” (https://medium.com/s/state-of-the-future/the-great-lesson-of-california-in-americas-new-civil-war-e52e2861f30) not only claims Americans are already engaged in a new ideological conflict (we are), but that there is likely no way the two opposing sides will ever compromise or see eye-to-eye anymore (we won’t).

And while those two observations are, in my view, correct, the overall theme of the piece — that the entire country should follow California’s path and relegate Republicans and conservatives to the ash heap of history — is provocative and dangerous.

And yet, as Adams noted, Dorsey endorsed the piece — in a tweet, of course — as a “great read.”

But then Dorsey’s tweets aren’t getting shadow banned, either, like those of conservatives, Republicans, and vocal Trump supporters, which is more to Adams’ point and the basis of his claim that the Left, and in particular Left-wing tech, is engaging in online ethnic cleansing of competing ideological, cultural, social, and political voices.

Adams, in his broadcast, noted further that Facebook has recently labelled ardent Trump supporters Diamond and Silk as putting out “dangerous content” and that they’re “unsafe to the community.” This pair are funny, talented, and entertaining in their defence and support of the president — they are anything but ‘dangerous,’ unless of course, you’re a Marxist.

“Because if you speak in a way the tech overlords don’t like, all of a sudden you are ‘unsafe,’” Adams said. “This is a very dangerous precedent. They’re censoring Diamond and Silk just like they’re censoring me, just like they’re censoring Infowars at every opportunity.

“The war is on to silence all voices that do not comply with the totalitarian, authoritarian narratives of the Left,” Adams noted further. (Related: California state senator who pushed vaccine mandate now seeks to CRIMINALIZE “fake news” about medicine, politics and government (https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-04-09-california-state-senator-who-pushed-vaccine-mandate-now-seeks-to-criminalize-fake-news.html).)

Along these lines, Adams noted as well that The Washington Post at some point over the past two weeks “memory-holed” an Associated Press article noting that one of special counsel Robert Mueller’s witnesses in his never-ending, always expanding probe of all things Team Trump is a convicted paedophile.

According to the article, George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, was a globe-trotting “fixer” who was convicted 15 years ago in Poland for 10 cases of sexually abusing minors and was given a one-year sentence in May 2003. You can draw your own conclusions as to why the Post would delete a widely syndicated article.

Adams noted that the story that Dorsey praised calls for “Left-wing mob” rule, essentially, and that view “is reflected throughout YouTube, Twitter, Google, and Facebook” — all of which are doing the same thing, which is censorship of conservative and pro-Trump voices.

“They are now running the gamut of just deleting every conservative voice and independent media voice, every independent journalist, every libertarian voice that they don’t like,” said Adams.

The Health Ranger shared his recent personal experience of seeing his channel on YouTube, which featured hundreds of videos, taken down — all because he said that the human species comes in two genders, male and female.

“That upset the LGBTQ community,” said Adams, and YouTube used it as an excuse to ban him.

Watch more here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv-3ndxBf9c

Hervé

11th April 2018, 19:18

German historian posts on Facebook that 'Islam is not part of German history', gets banned (https://pjmedia.com/faith/facebook-bans-german-historian-for-saying-islam-is-not-part-of-german-history/)

Tyler O'Neil PJ Media (https://pjmedia.com/faith/facebook-bans-german-historian-for-saying-islam-is-not-part-of-german-history/)
Mon, 09 Apr 2018 00:01 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s23/461522/large/facebook_closeup.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s23/461522/full/facebook_closeup.jpg)
© Shutterstock

Last month, Facebook censored a German historian who posted a message about Islam's historic impact on Germany. Facebook banned the historian for 30 days, even though 76 percent of Germans agree that Islam does not "belong to Germany."

Michael Hesemann, a journalist and Vatican historian with an honorary doctorate for his work in uncovering documents from the Armenian Genocide, posted a message that Facebook said did "not correspond to our community standards." The offensive message was an accurate - if overstated - historical statement.

"Islam always plays only one role in the 1700-year-old history of the Christian Occident: the role of the sword of Damocles which hung above us, the threat of barbarism against which one needed to unite and fight," Hesemann wrote, according to NRW Direkt (http://nrw-direkt.net/facebook-sperrt-duesseldorfer-historiker/). "In this sense, Islam is not part of German history, but the defense against Islam!"

Facebook argued that it would delete any comment that "attacks persons because of their race, ethnicity, national background, religious orientation, sexual orientation, sexual identity, or physical impairment," the Catholic site OnePeterFive reported (https://onepeterfive.com/german-catholic-historian-blocked-by-facebook-for-his-comments-on-islam/).

The historical relationship between Islam and Germany has become a hot topic in the last month, with the rise of the new Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. The former president of Germany, Christian Wulff, declared that "Islam belongs to Germany" -- and Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed.

"No. Islam does not belong to Germany," Seehofer declared (http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/horst-seehofer-islam-gehoert-doch-nicht-zu-deutschland-15496891.html) shortly after taking office. "Germany is characterized by Christianity." Even so, he added, "The Muslims living with us naturally belong to Germany."

In a recent WELT-Trends poll (https://tech2.org/germany/islam-statement-76-percent-of-germans-agree-with-horst-seehofer/), 76 percent of Germans agreed with Seehofer on this issue, with 61 percent saying they "strongly agree." Only 20 percent of Germans disagreed, insisting that Islam is fundamental to Germany. A mere four percent said they were "undecided."

The historian lamented the forced silence of political correctness on this issue. "It says a lot about the deplorable state of our democracy under Chancellor Angela Merkel, when a historian may not utter simple historical facts," Hesemann told NRW Direkt (http://nrw-direkt.net/facebook-sperrt-duesseldorfer-historiker/).

"The question of whether Islam belongs to Germany, as Merkel claims, or not, as Horst Seehofer stated, has a third answer: Yes, it is part of our history, albeit in a way that may be uncomfortable for many," the historian said.

"Islam has contributed significantly to European integration. Without Islam, there would have been no Charlemagne whose grandfather, as hero of Poitiers, grew beyond his role as Hausmeier and laid the foundation for the Carolingian dynasty," Hesemann said. Without Islam, there would be "no crusades and no associated cultural transfer, no Renaissance - the consequence of the fall of Constantinople and the flight of its scholars to the West, no holy league as the first European defense alliance against the Turks, and so much else."

The historian was referring to the Battle of Tours (732 A.D.), when Charles Martel defeated a Muslim army in France after the Muslims had spread north from Spain. That battle united various Frankish tribes, helping to create the nation of France. Charles Martel's grandson, Charles the Great or Charlemagne (742-814), united a vast territory under his rule and fostered a period of learning known as the "Carolingian Renaissance." His "Holy Roman Empire" played a colossal role in European history, and lasted for about 1000 years.

So many pivotal moments in European history, from the Battle of Tours to the Battle of Lepanto (1571) to the Sieges of Vienna (1529 and 1683), resulted from direct conflict with Islamic expansion.

Even the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492 would have been incomprehensible without Islam. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of the united Spanish kingdoms sent Columbus on his voyage after defeating the Muslims in Granada. The Portuguese started European colonialism in response to Muslim control of eastern trade routes, and the Spanish hired Columbus to find another route to the east.

Without the presence of Islam as a perceived "threat of barbarism," Europeans would not have discovered and colonized the Americas, with all the good and ill that came of their expeditions.

In Germany in particular, the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne inspired a separate German identity, eventually uniting disparate kingdoms and city states into the German Empire in 1871. So without Islam, there would be no Germany - but that doesn't mean Germany is Islamic.

Summarizing this tremendous impact, the Vatican historian Hesemann added, "So Islam certainly played an important role in the history of Europe, and especially in Germany, but not as part of our culture, in which it was never integrated - but as a threat against which to unite, and to overcome all borders and disagreements."

"Say: without Islam, a Christian West would never have defined itself in that clarity," Hesemann concluded.

The historian shot back against the idea that he had attacked people because of their religious affiliation. "This analysis of the history of our relationship to Islam in the period between the 7th and 18th centuries does not affect a single living person," Hesemann said.

"It does not attack Islam, even though it states that it was perceived by the Christian West as barbarism, a term that incidentally comes from ancient Greece and means all non-Greek characteristics," he explained. "Islam really does not have Greek roots."

Hesemann explained, "Nobody would resent it when a historian states that the Franks and the Crusaders, in turn, have been understood by many Muslims as 'barbarians' in some ways."

"But here, the historical assessment of Islam is simply censored and unworthy of a free society," the historian quipped. "Obviously, any critical engagement with a religion that has spread through the subjugation of other peoples and still today follows a barbarian 7th-century law that follows Sharia with its brutal corporal and capital punishments, including stoning and crucifixion."

"Apparently, every single critical historian must now shut up," Hesemann said. "I strongly protest and plead for the right of freedom of expression and free discussion of historical facts."

Indeed, recent events in Germany suggest that Islam is becoming something of a state religion. Criticism of the religion is considered unacceptable, and immigrants have gotten away with crimes as horrible as rape because of their cultural heritage.

Last month, a German headmistress reportedly told a Christian girl who had gotten beaten up by Muslim classmates that she should just wear a hijab (https://pjmedia.com/trending/german-headmaster-tells-christian-girl-to-wear-a-hijab-to-avoid-beatings-from-muslim-classmates/) to prevent further bullying. In the same month, a German judge ordered Volkswagen to rehire a man who was suspected of recruiting for the Islamic State (ISIS) (https://pjmedia.com/trending/german-court-orders-volkswagen-rehire-suspected-isis-recruiter-who-told-coworkers-theyd-all-die/). Last year, a Turkish man was acquitted after raping a German woman (https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/04/21/german-judge-acquits-turkish-man-of-rape-after-4-hours-of-forced-violent-sex/) because his forced violent sex was not "culturally" considered rape.

Whether or not Islam is fundamentally barbaric, Michael Hesemann's interpretation of history is correct. Europeans feared Islam and united in order to fight it, forging a Christian identity in contrast to the religion of Mohammed.

Facebook should not ban historians who tell hard truths. If the company would ban Hesemann for this history, would it censor a Muslim who said the Crusaders were "barbaric"? Would Facebook consider it an insult to atheists if a Christian posted that atheist regimes killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century? Historical facts should never be censored, and Facebook should be ashamed of this behavior.

[video at link: https://www.facebook.com/PJMedia/videos/10156548192736159/ ]

amor

12th April 2018, 04:00

Excellent video speech. Internet controllers using just another divide and conquer ploy.

Tintin

13th April 2018, 10:23

For those unused to Jon’s style, will need to be aware that here, he is dripping with delicious irony and just a small dollop of sarcasm, delivered by a dump-truck. And, as ever, the point is eloquently made: he strafes thought complacency and apathy in equal measure, as if he has loaded a gattling gun, and typically quotes some wonderful sources to reinforce the points made.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie---a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days---but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please." (Hannah Arendt, 1974)

Famous figures that should immediately be banned by Facebook

By Jon Rappoport

Don't hesitate. These persons are a danger to the community. Facebook should ban them immediately, before their dangerous word-viruses infect the brains of a billion users.

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." (John F Kennedy, 1962)

Outrageous. Ban him. Everyone knows unpleasant facts and competitive values make people feel unsafe. These are micro-aggressions, and anyone who supports them should have his Facebook page taken down.

"We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks---that's show business." (Edward R. Murrow, CBS news anchor)

Ban Murrow. He is attacking his own profession and making a mockery of it. By extension, he can be seen to prefer some other kind of news. Who knows what that is? Mainstream news is real news. Other news is fake.

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right...to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees." (John Adams, 1765)

Adams is proposing nothing less than the right of the people to remove their rulers. [my emphasis - TQ) In some cases, this would be useful, but as a general proposition, it is incendiary. His statements would trigger many people. Adams is committing hate speech. Ban him.

"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie---a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days---but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please." (Hannah Arendt, 1974)

She is implying that the mainstream press is lying to the people. This is forbidden. Establishment news is our only source of vetted truth. Everything else must be filtered by fact checkers. Take down her Facebook account. Ban her.

"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." (George Orwell, 1972)

We know all about Orwell. He champions the idea that mainstream authority, and the press, are perverting truth on an ongoing basis. He might well represent independent media. He needs psychiatric treatment. Ban him.

"Private property ... has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is." (Oscar Wilde)

This is a borderline case. We're not sure where Wilde stands on the issue of private property. Is he completely against it? If so, leave his Facebook account alone. We're submitting this quote to the fact checkers.

"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." (Thomas Paine, 1776)

A troublemaker. Offending people triggers them. They feel unsafe. They suffer. Has Paine posted photos of family picnics, birthday parties? No. He prefers to disturb the community. Ban him.

"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech." (Noam Chomsky)

"...Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place..." (Mark Zuckerberg)

Do not post this statement on Facebook. It transmits the wrong impression. Facebook censorship is based on true ideals and premises, not left-leaning values. Issue Zuckerberg a warning. If he persists in this language, suspend his account. Keep in mind that Facebook only has 2 billion users. There are 7.5 billion people on Earth. Why is Zuckerberg so far behind in securing the goal of EVERYONE having a Facebook account?

Foxie Loxie

13th April 2018, 17:34

Thanks for posting this, Tintin!! :pound::pound:

onawah

15th September 2018, 19:53

Pinterest removing and censoring anti-vaccine content.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-09-14-pinterest-says-that-questioning-vaccines-is-the-same-as-promoting-drug-abuse.html
"(Natural News) According to the new Pinterest community guidelines, you are no longer allowed to question vaccines. If you post facts about the failures of the flu shot… if you point out the poisons that are in childhood vaccines… if you share any research or personal testimony on vaccine damage… your post can and will be taken down by Pinterest’s Big Pharma-controlled censorship team. If you dare post “anti-vaccination” advice, you will be blamed for putting public safety at risk and encouraging people to commit self-harm.

The latest copy of Pinterest’s community guidelines says that Pinterest will not tolerate anything that promotes drug abuse, suicidal ideation, or “anti-vaccine advice.” Pinterest warns they will remove anything that has “immediate and detrimental effects on a pinner’s health and public safety.” This includes removing pins that promote “false cures for terminal or chronic illnesses and anti-vaccination advice.”

<
In order to keep the internet safe from “disinformation campaigns,” Pinterest no longer allows anyone to post anything that questions vaccines or pharmaceuticals. Pinterest has bought into the lies and propaganda of the vaccine industry and is going to extreme levels to be the vaccine industry’s acolyte. In trying to eliminate “disinformation campaigns” Pinterest has actually fallen for one of the greatest disinformation campaigns in the history of medicine: that vaccines are 100 percent safe and effective. Just as North Koreans are punished for questioning their dictator, anyone who uses Pinterest cannot question holy vaccine science.

Mother Nature's micronutrient secret: Organic Broccoli Sprout Capsules now available, delivering 280mg of high-density nutrition, including the extraordinary "sulforaphane" and "glucosinolate" nutrients found only in cruciferous healing foods. Every lot laboratory tested. See availability here.

What is “anti-vaccination advice?”
Anti-vaccination advice is actually life saving advice that promotes the upward trajectory of a healthy, natural immune system. Vaccination is not synonymous with immunization. Immunization occurs naturally, within the body. The human immune system is constantly immunizing itself through natural exposure to the billions of bacteria, fungi, parasites, and virus cells that exist everywhere, all the time. Vaccination, on the other hand, is an attempt to force an immune response to pathogens. This is often accomplished using an adjuvant such as aluminum. Vaccination burdens the body with filthy poisons like human fetal tissue, diseased cow’s blood, formaldehyde, and toxic aluminum salts in order to introduce a specific pathogen to the person’s immune system. There are no guarantees this process works effectively for every individual. To make matters worse, fully vaccinated populations are some of the sickest because their immune systems are so run down by a consortium of toxic elements.

Pinterest will take down any information that helps parents make an informed decision about vaccines for their children. Any pin that questions a Hep B shot at birth will be taken down.

Any pin that dares mention the immune system boosting properties of probiotics, vitamin C, vitamin D, or human breast milk could be removed for being “anti-vaccine advice.”

Any pin that shows the scientific facts about the failure of flu shots, can be removed for somehow putting public health at risk. Even though viral mutation and virus shedding from the flu shot is putting the public’s health at risk, Pinterest will suppress that information so more people obey flu shot propaganda.

Any post about the deaths, seizures and auto-immune conditions that result from Gardasil vaccinations will be scrubbed from the site.

Any dietary and/or herbal protocol that is used to heal chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or heart disease can now be censored from the site.

By removing life-saving advice on natural immunity and by promoting toxic injections, Pinterest is complicit in promoting self harm and putting the public health at risk."

Valerie Villars

15th September 2018, 22:08

Ah yes, censorship. Coming soon to a private conversation near you.

It gets more disturbing by the day.

petra

28th September 2018, 15:11

I didn't know you could target Facebook ads to phone numbers....

Facebook is becoming a really good example of software that's "TOO POWERFUL" imo

Kashmir Hill, reporting for Gizmodo:
Last week, I ran an ad on Facebook targeted at a computer science professor named Alan Mislove. Mislove studies how privacy works on social networks and had a theory that Facebook is letting advertisers reach users with contact information collected in surprising ways. I was helping him test the theory by targeting him in a way Facebook had previously told me wouldn't work. I directed the ad to display to a Facebook account connected to the landline number for Alan Mislove's office, a number Mislove has never provided to Facebook. He saw the ad within hours.

Ref: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/09/26/2027255/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-shadow-contact-information
And: https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-shadow-co-1828476051

Hervé

8th October 2018, 13:13

For a neat Google slight of hand, see this post (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?100537-Stop-5G-before-it-s-irreversible-&p=1252960&viewfull=1#post1252960) (<---)

Hervé

9th October 2018, 14:20

Google+ shutting down after data breach which was never revealed to users (https://www.rt.com/news/440707-google-social-network-breach/)

RT
Published time: 8 Oct, 2018 20:46
Edited time: 9 Oct, 2018 07:42
Get short URL (https://on.rt.com/9g1v)

https://cdni.rt.com/files/2018.10/article/5bbbbcf0fc7e9387738b4631.JPG
© Omar Marques / Global Look Press

Google is closing the Google+ social network after an error exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users last spring, in an incident which the company never disclosed to those affected.

Google put the “final nail in the coffin” of the Google+ product by shutting down “all consumer functionality,” the Wall Street Journal reported citing an internal memo.

via GIPHY (https://giphy.com/gifs/nails-coffin-billy-idol-YPiRL7UhaMhy)

The project launched in 2011 as an alternative to other social networks ended up being a huge failure for the company. The breach happened after a software glitch in the site gave outside developers potential access to private profile data including names, email addresses, birth dates, genders, occupations and more.

The memo viewed by the Journal said that disclosing the incident publicly would possibly trigger “immediate regulatory interest” and do damage to the company’s reputation. Reporting the incident would result “in us coming into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal,” it warned.

The Journal reported that the Google+ breach exposed Google’s “concerted efforts to avoid public scrutiny of how it handles user information” at a time when regulators and the public are trying to do more to hold tech companies to account.

Google goes “beyond legal requirements” and applies “several criteria focused on our users” when deciding whether to provide notice, a spokesperson said in a statement. The company said it had considered whether or not it could accurately identify which users to inform, whether there was any evidence of misuse and whether there were any actions a developer or user could take in response. “None of these thresholds were met here,” the spokesperson said.

The leaked memo says that while there is no evidence that outside developers misused any data, there is still no way to know for sure.

As part of a slew of new security measures, Google is expected to clamp down on the amount of data it provides to outside developers through application programming interfaces (APIs), sources told the Journal.

As part of an audit of APIs, Google also discovered that Google+ had also been permitting developers to obtain data from users who never wanted it to be shared publicly — but a bug in the API meant they could collect data even if it was explicitly marked non-public through Google’s privacy settings.

New European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules which went into effect in May would have required Google to disclose the information to regulators within 72 hours under threat of penalty, but the Google+ leak was discovered in March, before the GDPR regulations came in and therefore was not covered by the European rules, according to Al Saikali, a lawyer who spoke to the Journal.

Saikali said it was possible that Google could face class action lawsuits over its decision not to disclose the breach. “The story here that the plaintiffs will tell is that Google knew something here and hid it. That by itself is enough to make the lawyers salivate,” he said.

Related:
Mass legal action against Google blocked by UK’s High Court (https://www.rt.com/uk/440650-google-court-personal-data/)

Breaking up Facebook & Google? RT’s Keiser Report looks at the best way to disband the monopolies (https://www.rt.com/business/439651-breaking-up-media-behemoths/)

Trump weighing antitrust probe into Google, Facebook & Twitter. It’s been a long time coming. (https://www.rt.com/usa/439380-trump-antitrust-probe-google/)

Hervé

10th October 2018, 22:00

Google Didn't Just Ignore Its 'Don't Be Evil' Motto - It is Literally Surveillance Central (https://www.sott.net/article/397998-Google-Didnt-Just-Ignore-Its-Dont-Be-Evil-Motto-It-is-Literally-Surveillance-Central#)

Gordon Vick Sott.net (https://www.sott.net/article/397998-Google-Didnt-Just-Ignore-Its-Dont-Be-Evil-Motto-It-is-Literally-Surveillance-Central#)
Wed, 10 Oct 2018 03:15 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s22/459518/medium/google_spying_696x366.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s22/459518/full/google_spying_696x366.jpg)

For the last five years or so, I have been involved with a non-profit called SeniorNet. SeniorNet's mandate is to assist people aged over 55 with understanding how to use their PCs, smartphones and tablets more effectively so that their more effective use of these tools can improve their quality of life.

One of the things I have found quite mind-blowing while working with seniors is how few people are concerned about their privacy and either refuse to consider the risks they face using tools like Google products or Microsoft's latest OS, or else rationalise it with the hoary old chestnut - if you're not doing anything bad, you have nothing to worry about - which is just wrong on so many levels.

Recently I have been reading an enlightening book by Yasha Levine called Surveillance Valley (https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-Internet/dp/B07BFHC532/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539201991&sr=8-1&keywords=Surveillance+Valley%3A+The+Secret+Military+History+of+the+Internet), which is basically a history of the internet that explains how it emerged from a Pentagon ARPA project (now DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to facilitate data-sharing between military/intelligence agencies so they could improve their counterinsurgency programs against targets both inside and outside the USA. Levine also details how every breakthrough in technology that enabled the internet as we know it today was either spun out of ARPA research or was directly (and primarily) funded by such.

https://www.sott.net/image/s24/491970/medium/yasha_levine_surveillance_vall.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/491970/full/yasha_levine_surveillance_vall.jpg)

I highly recommend you acquire a copy of Surveillance Valley and read it. Levine will shatter any illusions you may still hold about how the internet was ever going to be a tool of individual freedom against government.

I want to focus on just one case study Levine explored - Google, whose operations today effectively comprise 25% of the entire internet. Before reading the book, I thought I had an appreciation of what Google was up to, and how incredibly intrusive it is when it comes to personal information, but actually I didn't know the half of it.

Google was started by two students from Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who wanted to create a better search algorithm, an algorithm with predictive elements that could generate meaningful search results, rather than just long lists of largely irrelevant links.

Page grew up around computers; his father was a NASA researcher, and his mother taught computer programming at Michigan State University. He grew up programming and after finding inspiration in the story of Nikola Tesla, he fed a desire to invent things and change the world. As Levine puts it, "Stanford University and a research program funded by DARPA would allow him to achieve his dreams."

After WW2, Stanford was the elite engineering university closely linked to the US military-industrial complex. There was a huge university industrial park which became the hub for computer and microprocessor development. In that park there was also a branch of DARPA. Awash with military cash and cybernetic utopianism, Stanford later became the epicenter of the dot-com boom. And in this environment, Page started a computer science PhD program in 1995. Seeking a project for his dissertation, he finally settled on internet search. Contemporary search algorithms were very primitive but had attracted piles of cash - think Yahoo, AltaVista and Excite - so finding a better way to search would be challenging but financially rewarding.

Page's graduate advisor, Terry Wingrad, came from a background of research with ARPANET and the Digital Libraries project, sponsored by civilian, military and law enforcement agencies. ARPANET was the original 'internet', first tested in 1969 between Stanford and UCLA. The Libraries project had a civilian mandate but the intelligence agencies wanted to be better able to access the digital trail people left on the internet with diaries, blogs, forums, photographs and emails. So this project was a good fit and Terry Wingrad was an appropriate mentor. When Page finally published his first research paper, it was marked "funded by DARPA."

Sergey Brin was the polar opposite to Page. Outgoing and flamboyant, at Stanford he focused on data mining, building computer algorithms to predict what people would do based on their past actions. And indeed, behavioural data mining would prove to be a core Google foundation.

The key factor for Page and Brin was PageRank. They developed a way to rank every page on the internet based on the number of times it was linked to other pages. Some links were worth more - a link from a national newspaper was more powerful than a link from a personal homepage. In the end the rank of any given webpage was the sum total of all the links and their values that pointed to it. As a consequence, Google manifested explosive growth and became the default search engine for the internet - and even had a verb named after it.

One part of the drive behind the Google experience was predictive search - the ability to interpret what you want from a search term, based on what you have done before, websites you have looked at, and search terms you have used. In order to make that work effectively, Google needs data - your data, and the more data the better.

And this is where things start to get spooky. The impetus driving everything Google does, including the products Google offers, is data collection for future data mining. In the beginning, Google collected your searches. Then, by using tracking cookies, a small piece of code placed on your machine, Google was able to see where you went after you left the search engine or the site you found using the search engine. The more data it gathered, the better 'psychographic' picture Google had of you and your online habits.

But search terms and your trail on the internet wasn't enough. And so we saw the launch of the 'free' email service Gmail in 2004. In data gathering terms, this was pure genius. In order to use the service, you gave Google permission to scan all of your emails. Think about that. You gave Google the right to read all the emails you send and receive, all the attachments, all the documents, all the invoices, all the photos etc. Everything in your life that comes by email was suddenly available for Google to mine and that data then became theirs.

What better way to connect browsing data from millions of people, aside from being the default search engine, than to offer people a free browser. And so we saw the birth of Google Chrome, probably the most used browser on earth.

Then came Google Calendar and Contacts. Same story. You gave Google access to everything you do every day and to all the people you know, whether through business or your personal life. And still that wasn't enough. With the purchase of Android, Google extended its reach even further into your life. Through your phone, Google could now track who you called, who you texted, what was in the texts, where you went (via the location feature), the apps you use, the apps you own. And did I mention the Google online apps - their take on Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. (By the way, don't feel virtuous if you use an Apple phone. You are in just as bad a place. When it comes to data harvesting, Apple is as rapacious as Google)

The cherry on the cake for vacuuming up even more of your data comes courtesy of Google Drive. Google will give you 15 Gb of online storage to store all your electronic data and records. It's free, folks. Give us your stuff and we will keep it for you on Google Drive. If it is deleted from your home system, you can get it back from us. We are the good guys and we will look after your data, for free. And you can share it across all your devices. Isn't that so very convenient?

Can you imagine the amount of detailed data that Google has on multiple millions of people worldwide - a virtually complete picture of their likes, dislikes, habits, hobbies, indiscretions, business matters, work history, sexual affairs, sexual orientation, friends, enemies, travel habits, movie and book preferences, political leanings, financial status...

Google has said from the beginning that it is only using this data to better target users with advertising, although they don't boast too loudly that they're selling the data to advertisers and making a fortune from users' personal information. But recall where these people started from, who funded them, and the close and profitable relationship Google has with the US government in general and the military-intelligence 'community' in particular. Then recall the NSA's PRISM program, as revealed by Edward Snowden. Among the Snowden documents was tangible evidence that the largest, most respected internet companies - Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft - had worked secretly to funnel data on hundreds of thousands of users to the NSA. And they were VERY keen that you didn't know about it. And according to the agreements you made when you began using these products, the internet behemoths own that data and can use it in any way they want, including giving it to the NSA and hence the entire shower of sordid spooks running civilization into the ground.

In the end, there's no such thing as online privacy. Not absolute privacy anyway. But what you can - and should, in my opinion - do if you are a consumer of Google products - Gmail, Chrome, Android, Calendar, Contacts, Earth, Maps - and you want to drastically reduce the data siphoning are the following:

Change your browser. Don't use Chrome or a chromium-based browser. Firefox is a viable alternative and the Mozilla foundation at least tries to err on the side of privacy.

Change your search engine. Don't use Google as your default search engine. Duckduckgo and Startpage are two good alternatives which don't copy and store your data.

Don't use the Gmail suite of products - mail, calendar, contacts, tasks. There are many email services - Fastmail, Protonmail, Startmail, Mailfence and many others - who do not pretend to offer a free service and then vacuum your details. You will have to pay a yearly fee to use them but, let's be honest, you are either going to pay money, or sacrifice your privacy - your choice. And don't just change to the Microsoft equivalent; all the same privacy issues exist in that ecosystem as well.

Change your cloud storage provider - avoid cloud offerings from Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon and any of the other internet behemoths.

I'm open to other suggestions readers may have in this direction...

Gordon Vick (https://www.sott.net/article/397998-Google-Didnt-Just-Ignore-Its-Dont-Be-Evil-Motto-It-is-Literally-Surveillance-Central#searching) https://www.sott.net/images/20_user.png (https://www.sott.net/user/205-flashgordonv)

AriG

10th October 2018, 23:33

And it gets even more surreal. As it has been quoted, "Orwell could not have even imagined this".... I thought that I might have recently seen a netflix or movie related to this concept, but I cannot recall which or where (or when and where (insert music here)... This is beyond fricked up.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-facebook%E2%80%99s-new-%E2%80%98reputation-scores%E2%80%99-could-be-freedom-killer-29752

AriG

10th October 2018, 23:46

And I'll tell you what really chaffs me.... People are accepting this. Seeing it as a benefit. I know I recently said that "it doesn't matter" and I meant that on a macro scale, meaning that the hologram won't reverse its path until people stop giving power to negativity and mass manipulation. And I sincerely believe that. But we are watching people literally jump off cliffs here... lemmings... completely unaware that they are sacrificing their freedom to a machine. For what? A discount at flipping Starbucks? I really think its too late. :(

Hervé

11th October 2018, 14:24

Breaking ranks: Facebook engineer quits over company's 'intolerant, political monoculture' (https://sputniknews.com/us/201810111068786067-facebook-engineer-resignation-bias/)

Sputnik (https://sputniknews.com/us/201810111068786067-facebook-engineer-resignation-bias/)
Thu, 11 Oct 2018 12:18 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s24/486842/large/Facebook_manipulira_javnost_94.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/486842/full/Facebook_manipulira_javnost_94.jpg)

US social media firms are often accused by conservatives of deliberately silencing and censoring non-liberal voices on their platforms.

The Facebook engineer who sparked a major controversy at the company with his criticism of what he called a "political monoculture" that is "intolerant" of conservatism, is leaving the company.
"We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack - often in mobs - anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology," Brian Amerige, an engineering manager for product usability wrote in an August 2018 internal memo to his colleagues.
He decried Facebook's policy of balancing offensive and hateful speech with free expression and its acceptance of government regulation.
"We've refused to defend ourselves in the press. Our policy strategy is pragmatism - not clear, implementable long-term principles - and our PR strategy is appeasement - not morally earned pride and self-defense," Amerige emphasized.

"I disagree too strongly with where we're heading on these issues to watch what happens next," he added.

https://www.sott.net/image/s24/492075/medium/4F7EF62700000578_6109821_image.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/492075/full/4F7EF62700000578_6109821_image.jpg)
Facebook engineer Brian Amerige has called out the site's political 'intolerance', claiming staff attack colleagues who do not conform to liberal opinions.

The memo led to the creation of an internal group, on Facebook's Workplace message board, "FB'ers for Political Diversity," where hundreds of conservative employees vented their frustration over the company's practices.

Some Facebook employees are known to have refused to work with or talk to certain colleagues because of their political beliefs.

Democrats and other liberals refute allegations of anti-conservative bias at tech firms using as an example a recent party celebrating conservative Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the US Supreme Court that was hosted by a top Facebook lobbyist.

They also point to the donations made by Google to the conservative group Federalist Society.

Silicon Valley, which is at the heart of America's high-tech industry, has been accused of liberal bias.

Many Republicans are faulting social media firms for deliberately silencing and censoring non-liberal voices on their platforms, which the companies deny.

In September, President Donald Trump said that algorithms developed by the likes of Google and Facebook fail to offer consumers politically-balanced news about American politics and his presidency.

In July 2017, Google found itself at the center of a political scandal after engineer James Damore wrote an internal post slamming what he described as "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber," in which he argued that women are underrepresented in tech not because they face bias and discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women.

The memo and Damore's subsequent dismissal in August 2017 were widely discussed in the media.

Related:

Senior Facebook engineer: Company deserves criticism, suffers from liberal mob-rule (https://www.sott.net/article/394650-Senior-Facebook-engineer-Company-deserves-criticism-suffers-from-liberal-mob-rule)

Facebook employees create closed group opposing company's 'intolerance of different political views' (https://www.sott.net/article/394732-Facebook-employees-create-closed-group-opposing-companys-intolerance-of-different-political-views)

Damore Lawsuit Exposes Extremist Ideology And Social Intolerance at Google (https://www.sott.net/article/374975-Damore-Lawsuit-Exposes-Extremist-Ideology-And-Social-Intolerance-at-Google#)

Hervé

18th October 2018, 14:19

Supreme Court hearing case that could end Internet censorship, expand scope of the First Amendment (https://citizentruth.org/supreme-court-case-internet-censorship-first-amendment/)

Carmine Sabia Citizen Truth (https://citizentruth.org/supreme-court-case-internet-censorship-first-amendment/)
Wed, 17 Oct 2018 06:21 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s24/493125/large/Internet_Companies.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/493125/full/Internet_Companies.jpg)

After the recent purge of over 800 independent media outlets on Facebook, the Supreme Court is now hearing a case that could have ramifications for any future attempts at similar purges.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to take a case that could change free speech on the Internet forever.

Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, the case that it has agreed to take, will decide if the private operator of a public access network is considered a state actor, CNBC reported (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/supreme-court-case-could-decide-fb-twitter-power-to-regulate-speech.html).

The case could affect how companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google and YouTube are governed. If the Court were to issue a far-reaching ruling it could subject such companies to First Amendment lawsuits and force them to allow a much broader scope of free speech from its users.

The Court decided to take the case on Friday and it is the first case that was taken after Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court.

DeeDee Halleck and Jesus Melendez claimed that they were fired from Manhattan Neighborhood Network for speaking critically of the network. And, though the case does not involve the Internet giants, it could create a ruling that expands the First Amendment beyond the government.
"We stand at a moment when the very issue at the heart of this case - the interplay between private entities, nontraditional media, and the First Amendment - has been playing out in the courts, in other branches of government, and in the media itself," the attorneys from MNN wrote in their letter to the Court asking it to take the case.
The Court could either rule in MNN's favor, rule against it in a narrow scope that does not affect other companies, or it could rule in a broad manner that would prevent the abilities of private networks and Internet companies to limit or censor speech on their platforms.

Censorship, Free Speech or Enforcing Company Policy
It comes at a time when Facebook has purged around 800 independent media pages in one day. The media outlets ranged the spectrum from far left to far right and many that either had no political affiliation or were not extreme in their politics. Facebook claimed that the pages were engaged in "inauthentic behavior" and as a private company it does not have to answer to anyone regarding how it enforces its terms of service.

ACLU attorney Vera Eidelman said Facebook, as a private company, can enforce their terms however it sees fit, but that could result in serious free speech consequences.
"Drawing the line between 'real' and 'inauthentic' views is a difficult enterprise that could put everything from important political parody to genuine but outlandish views on the chopping block," Eidelman said (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/16/facebook-political-activism-pages-inauthentic-behavior-censorship).

"It could also chill individuals who only feel safe speaking out anonymously or pseudonymously."
The MNN case could change that and force Facebook, and other companies, to protect users First Amendment rights.

onawah

23rd November 2018, 04:17

Social Media Plot and The Demise of Our Future (Grannon-Vaknin Conversation)
Sam Vaknin
Published on Nov 22, 2018

"Social media were designed with addiction, aggression, and monetizing... in mind. The result is a clear and present danger to the very survival of the human species."

wpvv_ooqJik

Fans of the threads on narcissism will recognize Sam Vaknin, a brilliant researcher and psychologist.

onawah

25th November 2018, 00:38

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody Parody (Opinion Rhapsody)
11/6/18
IABRgZH12YA
Interesting how a song can bring a point home better than so many other mediums.
This one certainly helped make me realize how we've been manipulated and divided by social media.
Hopefully that will be part of the next step in the great awakening.

Hervé

16th January 2019, 14:28

...

About Google's Russian competitor:

US-based investment fund triples its stake in Russia's internet giant Yandex (https://www.rt.com/business/448877-us-fund-triples-yandex-share/)

RT (https://www.rt.com/business/448877-us-fund-triples-yandex-share/)
Wed, 16 Jan 2019 12:31 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s25/506026/large/5c3df808dda4c8be3b8b4609.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s25/506026/full/5c3df808dda4c8be3b8b4609.jpg)
© Sputnik / Valeriy Melnikov

The Oppenheimer family of investment funds has increased its stake in Russian tech corporation Yandex, according to the latest filing submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company that identifies itself as one of the world's most reputable investment firms reportedly boosted its stake from 1.8 percent to 6.41 percent, which represents (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/728889/000072888919000058/yandexnvsc13g.htm) about 18.365 million shares, as of December 31, 2018.

Yandex closed trading in the US at $29.55 per share on Monday so the entire OppenheimerFunds stake in the Russian company is currently worth $542.7 million.

In 2015, the New York-based investment company entirely eliminated its stake in Yandex. Prior to that OppenheimerFunds had been the largest portfolio investors in the Russian corporation holding 36.4 million class A shares (11.48 percent of equity, 4.2 percent of votes) in Yandex.

The fund resumed investment in the Russian firm in the fourth quarter of 2017, having bought 5.1 million shares.

Based in Moscow, Yandex operates an Internet website and a search engine in Russia. The company offers news, shopping information, blogging, photography, music and video services. It also provides online taxi and food delivery services. The company reportedly gets most of its revenues from online advertising.

In August, Yandex announced the test launch of a new autonomous ride-hailing service in the special economic zone of Innopolis. In December, the internet giant released its first smartphone, called Yandex.Phone, and launched its own home assistant smart speaker.

Hervé

14th August 2019, 10:55

Exclusive: Google Insider Turns Over 950 Pages Of Docs And Laptop To DOJ (https://saraacarter.com/exclusive-google-insider-turns-over-950-pages-of-docs-and-laptop-to-doj/)

By Sara Carter (https://saraacarter.com/author/saraacarter/) -
August 13, 2019

https://saraacarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/google-building-headquarter-696x398.jpg

A former Google insider claiming the company created algorithms to hide its political bias within artificial intelligence platforms – in effect targeting particular words, phrases and contexts to promote, alter, reference or manipulate perceptions of Internet content – delivered roughly 950 pages of documents to the Department of Justice’s Antitrust division Friday.

The former Google insider, who has already spoken in to the nonprofit organization Project Veritas, met with SaraACarter.com on several occasions last week. He was interviewed in silhouette, to conceal his identity, in group’s latest film, which they say exposes bias inside the social media platform.

Several weeks prior, the insider mailed a laptop to the DOJ containing the same information delivered on Friday, they said. The former insider is choosing to remain anonymous until Project Verita’s James O’Keefe reveals his identity tomorrow (Wednesday).

He told this reporter on his recent trip to Washington D.C. that the documents he turned over to the Justice Department will provide proof that Google has been manipulating the algorithms and the evidence of how it was done, the insider said.Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the House Judiciary Committee in December, 2018, that the search engine (https://www.wired.com/story/congress-sundar-pichai-google-ceo-hearing/)was not biased against conservatives. Pichai explained what algorithm’s are said Google’s algorithm was not offensive to conservatives because its artificial intelligence does not operate in that manner. He told lawmakers, “things like relevance, freshness, popularity, how other people are using it” are what drives the search results. Pichai said even if his programmers were anti-Republican, the process is so intricate that the artificial intelligence could not be manipulated and it was to complicated to train the algorithm to fit their bias.

Google did not immediately respond for comment on the insider’s claims, however, this story will be updated if comment is provided.

The insider says Google is aware most people are unaware or not knowledgeable about these advanced IT systems and therefore unable to determine who is telling the truth.
“I honestly think that a free market can fix this issue,” he told this reporter at a meeting in Washington D.C.

“The issue is that the free market has been distorted and what’s happened is that the distortion is so grotesque and the engineering is so repulsive, all we need to do is just expose what’s going on. People can hear that it is bad but that can be bias. But when they see what Google has actually written with the documents, this will actually be taught in universities of what totalitarian states can do with this type of capability.”

“It will be so revolting that it doesn’t matter what the solution is, a solution will just form as a reaction to this manipulation they have done,” the Google insider said.
He said he’s asked himself many times if he’s overreacting
“and every time I simply look back at the documents and realize that I am not.”

“It’s that bad,” he said.

“Disclosing Google’s own words to the American public is something I am, must do, if I am to consider myself a good person. The world that google is building is not a place I, or you or our children want to live in.”
Another Google insider, who has come forward already, told O’Keefe and other media outlets recently that it is the programers at Google who use the algorithms to manipulate the information to advance its leftist agenda.

Greg Coppola, a software engineer, told Project Veritas (https://www.lifesitenews.com/tags/tag/project+veritas) that he doesn’t “have a smoking gun.”

However,
“I’ve just been coding since I was ten, I have a Ph.D., I have five years of experience at Google, and I just know how algorithms are. They don’t write themselves. We write them to make them do what we want them to do.”

“I look at Search and I look at Google News, and I see what it’s doing,” he said.

“I see Google executives go to Congress and say … that it’s not political, and I’m just so sure that that’s not true.”
The unnamed Google insider first spoke to O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. O’Keefe has been criticized by the left for outing the political bias of executives and employees of Google and other social media companies.

In the nonprofits most recent video, Project Veritas uses their undercover techniques to get Google employees to talk openly about their disdain for Trump and how their artificial intelligence operates.

Jenn Gennai, who heads Google’s Responsible Innovation Team, did not know she was being filmed by O’Keefe’s group. She told the undercover journalist that
“the reason we launched our AI principals is because we’re not putting our line in the sand. They were not saying what’s fair and what’s equitable so we’re like, well we’re a big company, we’re going to say it.”

petra

14th August 2019, 15:54

Revolting, repulsive... never thought I'd hear those terms used in regards to use of technology, but here we are.
Good Job, Google Insider :)

frankstien

14th August 2019, 17:23

https://i.ibb.co/XxXrZbd/conformity-and-brainwashing-past-and-present-12x9-2019-w.jpg

Hervé

16th August 2019, 12:09

Google whistleblower: Same scheme may have been used for suspending Jordan Peterson, Tulsi Gabbard (https://sputniknews.com/science/201908161076562219-same-scheme-may-have-been-used-for-suspending-jordan-peterson-tulsi-gabbard--google-whistleblower/)

Egor Efimchik Sputnik (https://sputniknews.com/science/201908161076562219-same-scheme-may-have-been-used-for-suspending-jordan-peterson-tulsi-gabbard--google-whistleblower/)
Fri, 16 Aug 2019 10:01 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/534296/large/Tulsi_Gabbard_Des_Moines.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/534296/full/Tulsi_Gabbard_Des_Moines.jpg)
© REUTERS / Scott Morgan

Tulsi Gabbard, a vocal proponent of breaking up the tech monopolies, had her campaign's advertising account suspended by Google after the Democratic debate in late June and is currently seeking $50 million in damages.

Zach Vorhies, a former Google employee who has been leaking documents suggesting political biases within the company, has rendered assistance to the representatives of 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who is suing Google for disabling her search ads account.

In an open letter (https://www.minds.com/perpetualmaniac/blog/open-letter-dear-attorney-representing-tulsi-gabbard-1008629625756160000) on the social media network Minds, Vorhies said that he had investigated the suspension of the Google account of conservative thinker Jordan Peterson in 2017.

He wrote: "What I found was that Google had a technical vulnerability that, when exploited, would take any gmail account down. Certain unknown 3rd party actors are aware of this secret vulnerability and exploit it."

According to the whistle-blower, "malicious actors" would change one letter in a target's email address to create a "spoof" account and repeat this process until there is a network of bogus accounts.

These accounts, not linked with the original one in any way except for their similar name, would then start generating spam emails, triggering an AI system which fixed the problem by taking down the spam accounts and also Jordan Peterson's original account.

"To my knowledge, this bug has never been fixed," Vorhies said. "When Google says an account was deactivated because of 'suspicious' activity, this is how they often do it."

While his revelation does not mean that Google itself was behind the scheme, it indicates that the company had failed to address the vulnerability in a timely manner.

He suggested that this knowledge may be of use to Tulsi Gabbard's attorneys.

Tulsi Vs. Google Suit
The Hawaii congresswoman's 2020 campaign advertising account went offline for six hours shortly after the first Democratic debate on 27 and 28 June, cutting her campaign site off from millions of potential voters.

Gabbard, who is campaigning against online censorship and calls for the breakup of big tech monopolies, accused Google of suppressing her voice and filed a lawsuit against the company in federal court.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1156609119454978049/zAzPmqDT_normal.jpg (https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard)Tulsi Gabbard ✔ @TulsiGabbard
(https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard)
TULSI2020: In the hours following the 1st debate, while millions of Americans searched for info about Tulsi, Google suspended her search ad account w/o explanation. It is vital to our democracy that big tech companies can’t affect the outcome of elections http://tulsi.to/tulsi-vs-google (https://t.co/n7Y7y2dQZ9)

7:33 PM - Jul 25, 2019 (https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1154444505090629633)
In the lawsuit, her campaign team said Google had "not provided a straight answer" as to what happened, and is seeking $50 million in damages and an injunction to stop the company from "further inter-meddling" in the 2020 election.

Google reportedly cited "problems with billing information or violations of our advertising policies," later stating there was "suspicious behaviour in the payment activity in your account" before reinstating it.

Leaked Google Docs
Media watchdog Project Veritas has recently revealed Vorhies as a Google insider, who had leaked internal documents exposing how its decision-makers discussed cracking down (https://sputniknews.com/world/201906261076054256-google-nazi-peterson-shapiro-search-suggestions-report/) on conservative commentators.

He has also leaked what he called a "black list" (https://sputniknews.com/us/201908141076551956-whistleblower-claims-google-created-list-of-sites-to-exclude-from-android-feeds/) of over 400 websites - among them conservative news sites - aiming to exclude them from appearing on news feeds for some Android Google products.

Google maintains that its search algorithms cannot determine the nuances between different agendas and therefore are devoid of a political bias.

Vorhies, however, told Project Veritas that he had been collecting the documents for over a year after he "saw something dark and nefarious going on with the company".

He was eventually unmasked by an anonymous account which he believes was run by a Google employee, and was approached by police for a "wellness check" after a call from his employers.

Vorhies recounted that the cops "got inside the gate... and they started banging on my door... And so the police decided that they were going to call in additional forces. They called in the FBI, they called in the SWAT team. And they called in a bomb squad."

"[T]his is a large way in which [Google tries to] intimidate their employees that go rogue on the company," he was quoted as saying.

Last week, he reportedly (https://saraacarter.com/exclusive-google-insider-turns-over-950-pages-of-docs-and-laptop-to-doj/) turned over 950 pages of documents about Google's alleged political bias to the Department of Justice.

"It will be so revolting that it doesn't matter what the solution is, a solution will just form as a reaction to this manipulation they have done," he said.

Related:

Project Veritas: Google whistleblower goes public on 'machine learning fairness', says 'burden lifted off my soul' (https://www.sott.net/article/418574-Project-Veritas-Google-whistleblower-goes-public-on-machine-learning-fairness-says-burden-lifted-off-my-soul)

Insider hands DOJ 950 docs and laptop exposing Google's AI platform bias operation (https://www.sott.net/article/418571-Insider-hands-DOJ-950-docs-and-laptop-exposing-Googles-AI-platform-bias-operation)

Former engineer: Google plans to meddle in 2020 elections to derail Trump (https://www.sott.net/article/418107-Former-engineer-Google-plans-to-meddle-in-2020-elections-to-derail-Trump)

Tulsi Gabbard is suing Google for post-debate ad suspension (https://www.sott.net/article/417454-Tulsi-Gabbard-is-suing-Google-for-post-debate-ad-suspension)

'Algorithms don't write themselves': Google whistleblower on Big Tech merging with politics (https://www.sott.net/article/417370-Algorithms-dont-write-themselves-Google-whistleblower-on-Big-Tech-merging-with-politics)

petra

16th August 2019, 14:29

"It will be so revolting that it doesn't matter what the solution is, a solution will just form as a reaction to this manipulation they have done" he said.

That part about reaction to manipulation makes me shudder, and almost burst with cynicism, at the same time. If we're not living inside a manipulation already... sounds like we're coming pretty close to it now!!!

Also... solutions don't just form themselves, now do they. That sounds like innuendo.

AI is already smart enough to understand people's porn habits, and that seems to tie in. The article said that Google maintains their algorithms cannot determine particular nuances, but I call bull **** on that one.

AI is getting VERY smart when it comes to people's psychology, and as much as I'm impressed by it, I'm equally scared of it too. I think that could be a lot of why it's so revolting - being impressed by awful stuff is just revolting.

Bill Ryan

18th August 2019, 08:58

Alex Jones and Infowars, 16 August 2019:

Google Engineers Exclusively Expose Big Tech's Plan To Steal 2020 Election - FULL SHOW

https://infowars.com/watch/?video=5d572d0997dd03001234f3ea

Hervé

3rd September 2019, 10:23

YouTube bans Infowars relaunch just days after promising to allow 'controversial' content (https://www.zerohedge.com/political/youtube-bans-infowars-relaunch-days-after-promising-allow-controversial-content)

Tyler Durden Zero Hedge (https://www.zerohedge.com/political/youtube-bans-infowars-relaunch-days-after-promising-allow-controversial-content)
Tue, 03 Sep 2019 08:54 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s24/482759/large/5b6b3a95fc7e933f048b45b3.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/482759/full/5b6b3a95fc7e933f048b45b3.png)

On Tuesday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the platform would invite "offensive" content back onto the site - writing in an open letter to YouTube creators "Without an open system, diverse and authentic voices have trouble breaking through."

"I believe preserving an open platform is more important than ever," she added.

In response, Infowars relaunched its 'War Room' YouTube channel - which boasted 2.4 million followers before being terminated in August 2018 (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-06/alex-jones-and-infowars-podcasts-banned-itunes-content-removed) for "violating YouTube's community guidelines."

The first new video uploaded to the new War Room channel featured host Owen Shroyer celebrating Wojcicki's announcement, and was titled "Breaking! YouTube CEO says 'Alex Jones' and 'Infowars Ban Is Over.'"
Wojcicki didn't mention Infowars in her letter, but this is how Shroyer apparently interpreted it. Since going live, War Room has uploaded 13 videos covering topics typical to Infowars, like "liberal racism," the end of "globalism," and how Lizzo's performance at the VMAs was "disgusting." -VICE (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywkqgk/youtube-is-the-latest-platform-to-delete-alex-jones-channels-for-violating-its-guidelines-apple-facebook-spotify-infowars) That didn't last long

Shortly after VICE published their article noting that Shroyer's video had been up for 17 hours, YouTube deleted Infowars' War Room channel - again.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1164942145687416832/6RShXtPE_normal.png (https://twitter.com/Perpetualmaniac) Zach Vorhies @Perpetualmaniac
(https://twitter.com/Perpetualmaniac)
Remember how @SusanWojcicki (https://twitter.com/SusanWojcicki) stated #YouTube (https://twitter.com/hashtag/YouTube?src=hash) was an open platform the other day?

Yeah turns out she was gaslighting us... once again.@MarkDice (https://twitter.com/MarkDice) you were spot on. https://twitter.com/allidoisowen/status/1167103392080105473 … (https://t.co/zewI48h0Vr)
J Owen Shroyer ✔ @allidoisowen (https://twitter.com/allidoisowen/status/1167103392080105473)

17 hours later and the channel is banned. I guess @YouTube CEO @SusanWojcicki lied... https://twitter.com/allidoisowen/status/1166857912893038593 … (https://twitter.com/allidoisowen/status/1167103392080105473)
6:22 PM - Aug 29, 2019 (https://twitter.com/Perpetualmaniac/status/1167110221749084160)
"We're committed to preserving openness and balancing it with our responsibility to protect our community," said YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi. "This means taking action against channels that continue to violate our policies."

Infowars and its founder Alex Jones suffered coordinated bans across several platforms last year, including Facebook and Apple's iTunes, after online activists Sleeping Giants lobbied tech companies to cut all ties with Jones and his network.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1147711110558171136/krEc0RK6_normal.jpg (https://twitter.com/slpng_giants) Sleeping Giants ✔ @slpng_giants
(https://twitter.com/slpng_giants)
Okay...what is happening here?@iTunes (https://twitter.com/iTunes) @apple (https://twitter.com/Apple), are you really choosing to host Infowars on your platform after Alex Jones’ harassment of Sandy Hook parents and Vegas shooting victims and threats to the Special Counsel? How does this not break your Terms Of Service? https://twitter.com/stanthemanchan/status/1023954634459820034 … (https://t.co/Bfhwf6NXYN)

stan @stanthemanchan (https://twitter.com/stanthemanchan/status/1023954634459820034)

Replying to @slpng_giants @Spotify (https://twitter.com/stanthemanchan/status/1023954634459820034)

@jaredlholt It's also on @itunes (https://twitter.com/stanthemanchan/status/1023954634459820034)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjXROjNX0AAbhIA?format=jpg&name=small (https://twitter.com/stanthemanchan/status/1023954634459820034)

5:51 PM - Jul 30, 2018 (https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1023959397838606336)
So much for "preserving an open platform" so that "diverse and authentic voices" can break through.

Hervé

9th September 2019, 12:46

Google's 'dramatic bias' may have swayed millions of voters to Hillary Clinton in 2016 - US researcher (https://sputniknews.com/us/201909081076754621-googles-dramatic-bias-may-have-swayed-millions-of-voters-to-hillary-clinton-in-2016-us-researcher/)

Egor Efimchik Sputnik (https://sputniknews.com/us/201909081076754621-googles-dramatic-bias-may-have-swayed-millions-of-voters-to-hillary-clinton-in-2016-us-researcher/)
Mon, 09 Sep 2019 21:04 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537408/large/1076754638.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537408/full/1076754638.jpg)
© AP Photo / Mary Altaffer

Hillary Clinton claims the study has been debunked, but its author, a one-time Clinton supporter, insists he has adhered to high standards of integrity.

Psychology researcher Dr. Robert Epstein claims he has found a "dramatic" bias in Google search results that may have shifted millions of undecided voters to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign.

His study focused on election-related searches from a "diverse group of American voters" - a total of 95 people across 24 states.
"I looked at politically-oriented searches that these people were conducting on Google, Bing and Yahoo," he said in an interview with Fox News.

"I was able to preserve more than 13,000 searches and 98,000 web pages, and I found very dramatic bias in Google's search results - not on Bing and Yahoo, just Google's - favoring Hillary Clinton, whom I supported strongly."
Millions of Votes at Stake
He said the level of "bias" was sufficient to covertly sway between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Hillary Clinton.

He said it was manifested in as-you-type suggestions, as well as in subsequent search results.

"We now know that those search suggestions have a very, very powerful effect on people, and that they alone can shift opinions and votes dramatically," Dr. Epstein explained.

"And then search results appear below," he continued.

"The point is if there's a bias in them - which means if a search result that's high up on the list, if that takes you to a web page that makes one candidate look better than another - if you're undecided and you're trying to make up your mind, what we've learned is that information posted high in Google search results will shift opinions among undecided people dramatically because people trust Google and they especially trust high-ranking search results."

"We found a very dramatic pro-Hillary Clinton bias on Google, but not the other search engines, and in all ten search positions on the first page of search results."
Dr. Epstein findings (https://sputniknews.com/us/201609121045214398-google-clinton-manipulation-election/), first presented in 2016, appear to demonstrate that Google's search engine was withholding negative search terms for Mrs. Clinton, suggesting positive ones instead - but worked "a bit less hard to suppress negative search suggestions" for Donald Trump and some other politicians.

Trump and Clinton React to the Study
Trump paid attention to Epstein's findings last month, albeit inflating the number of people that could have been swung to Clinton's side, and suggested that Google should be sued.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/874276197357596672/kUuht00m_normal.jpg (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump) Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
(https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump)
Wow, Report Just Out! Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election! This was put out by a Clinton supporter, not a Trump Supporter! Google should be sued. My victory was even bigger than thought! @JudicialWatch (https://twitter.com/JudicialWatch)

5:52 PM - Aug 19, 2019 (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1163478770587721729)Mrs Clinton was quick to react, claiming that the report has been "debunked" already.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1051914952192057344/xwZDe7zt_normal.jpg (https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton) Hillary Clinton ✔ @HillaryClinton
(https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton)
The debunked study you’re referring to was based on 21 undecided voters. For context that’s about half the number of people associated with your campaign who have been indicted. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1163478770587721729 … (https://t.co/0zHnWvGjSv)

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
(https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1163478770587721729)Wow, Report Just Out! Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election! This was put out by a Clinton supporter, not a Trump Supporter! Google should be sued. My victory was even bigger than thought! @JudicialWatch
(https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1163478770587721729)
9:27 PM - Aug 19, 2019 (https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1163532937377320961)
But Epstein described her comments as "outrageous" and "blatant lies", recalling that Alphabet, the company managing Google, was a top donor of Clinton's campaign, and that her chief technology officer Stephanie Hannon previously was a director of product management at Google.
"She says my work has been 'debunked' - that's blatantly false. My work has always adhered to the very high standards of integrity," he maintained.

"Dr. Epstein's study is reflective of what happens when a political crisis meets big monopoly tech corporations," political analyst and author Danny Haiphong said, suggesting that

the research "shows a coordinated effort among the corporate sector to support whichever political candidate they believe will serve their profit margins."
He added:
"Monopoly tech giants and the National Security State possess a vested interest in manipulating the hearts and minds of working people in the United States."
Google maintains that its products have no political bias, and that its search algorithms are not programmed otherwise.

This is not the first time Google's stated non-bias is put into question. In the summer, internet watchdog group Project Veritas leaked purported internal e-mails (https://sputniknews.com/world/201906261076054256-google-nazi-peterson-shapiro-search-suggestions-report/) of the company's "transparency and ethics" team, in which the employees discussed disabling the search suggestions feature for conservative commentators such as Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager.

Related:

The real collusion story: Ukraine conspired with Hillary Clinton to meddle in US elections (https://www.sott.net/article/356145-The-real-collusion-story-Ukraine-conspired-with-Hillary-Clinton-to-meddle-in-US-elections)

"No evidence" of Russian interference in Brexit referendum YouTube exec tells parliamentary committee (VIDEO) (https://www.sott.net/article/376788-No-evidence-of-Russian-interference-in-Brexit-referendum-YouTube-exec-tells-parliamentary-committee-VIDEO)

Social media: Can we take back power from the tech giants and their government overlords? (https://www.sott.net/article/372931-Social-media-Can-we-take-back-power-from-the-tech-giants-and-their-government-overlords)

Google & Facebook are meddling in Russian elections - watchdog (https://www.sott.net/article/420036-Google-Facebook-are-meddling-in-Russian-elections-watchdog)

Hervé

13th September 2019, 12:20

RT Editor-in-Chief Simonyan blocked on Facebook for unclear reason (https://www.rt.com/news/468703-simonyan-rt-facebook-blocked-censorship/)

RT (https://www.rt.com/news/468703-simonyan-rt-facebook-blocked-censorship/)
Thu, 12 Sep 2019 19:20 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537977/large/5d7b58d385f54074ba14ef71.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537977/full/5d7b58d385f54074ba14ef71.jpg)
© (L) Reuters / Dado Ruvic; (R) Sputnik

Facebook has blocked RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan's account for allegedly "violating community standards." Revealing the ban, Simonyan complained of pervasive censorship practiced on the platform.

The three-day-long ban was not accompanied by a more detailed explanation, Simonyan said in her Telegram channel. She is trying to find out the exact reason, she added.

"Meanwhile I'll be meditating on a free internet, freedom of speech and all that."

Facebook effectively allows Washington to spread its censorship beyond the American borders at will, Simonyan said. "Those who are young and live in social networks, think it's normal, and those who are older and in charge, don't really get what it's all about most of the time. Me, I'm just sad," she told Russia's RIA news agency.

Facebook has recently faced increasing accusations of using vaguely-motivated bans to silence those veering from the US establishment's outlook. Most recently, China complained about the social media giant supposedly censoring mainland Chinese people's views on the Hong Kong protests after Facebook blocked some accounts supporting the Beijing-backed media campaign.

RT-affiliated media have faced this treatment, too. In February, Facebook blocked several RT-linked pages - InTheNow, Soapbox, Back Then and Waste-Ed - without prior notice, demanding their editors post data about their management and funding. The network then said it wanted the pages' administrators to reveal their "ties to Russia" to their audience in the name of greater transparency, even though their relationships to RT and its video agency Ruptly had never been a secret.

It's not just those with links to US adversaries like Russia or China who risk ending up on Facebook's blacklists. Americans challenging the mainstream liberal narrative also risk getting blocked - at least for a brief period of time. This, for example, happened to conservative commentator Candace Owens in May when she said that "liberal" policies were supposedly doing more harm to black communities than white racism.

Related:

Facebook Teams up With Mainstream Media to Directly Censor News Websites (https://www.sott.net/article/410222-Facebook-Teams-up-With-Mainstream-Media-to-Directly-Censor-News-Websites#)

Social media: Can we take back power from the tech giants and their government overlords? (https://www.sott.net/article/372931-Social-media-Can-we-take-back-power-from-the-tech-giants-and-their-government-overlords)

Mike

4th October 2019, 02:01

RoTe0HzfWL0

onawah

12th October 2019, 19:08

Michael Rectenwald: Big Tech Tyranny
https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/the-dangerous-mix-big-tech-and-social-justice-ideology/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Michael+Rectenwald%3A+Big+Tech+Tyranny
10/12/19
zerpDHQikzI
"Dr. Michael Rectenwald was a professor at New York University and he jokingly describes himself as having been a lifelong Communist, "to the Left of the Bolsheviks" before he ran afoul of his wokester peers in academe.

His story is very similar to my own, in that he was basically a professor of cultural criticism, which was my major. The analyses consisted largely of Marxist Deconstructivism. He could have been my professor. Like me, he was a Leftist until very recently, when his slight deviation from the party line revealed the shocking, totalitarian impulses hiding behind a thin veneer of egalitarian rhetoric.

Like me, he's now swinging from the rafters and shouting from the rooftops about the pox of Leftism and his Twitter posts look exactly like mine!

His bestselling book, 'The Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom' is about how Big Tech, influenced by Marxist and Postmodernist thought increasingly enables a toxic mix of censorship, surveillance, social engineering and 'social justice' policies that, in effect create a digital equivalent of the Soviet gulag.

It is this climate that enabled the unprecedented collaboration between Big Tech, with the mass media and the intelligence agencies to saturate the infosphere with their chosen narrative and to ban all others.

As he says here, "We have a soft Cultural Revolution going on in the United States and the West, in general. We need people to stand up to this Cultural Revolution and just speak back to these new Red Guards.

"We're being surveilled upon, our opinions are being monitored and dissidents are being disappeared, just as they were during the Soviet Union. They're being digitally erased or deleted..."

He joins The Epoch Times' Jan Jekielek for what I feel may be the most important interview that I have covered in 9 years of publishing FKTV. I've transcribed some of the highlights below

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: There's this exclusive domination [on college campuses] of a particular ideological Leftism which is called "Social Justice". It's a misnomer, if you ask me but it's a very rigid creed of identity politics and a kind of adherence to sort of inverse hierarchy, in order to debunk the so-called "oppressors" from the top and put them on the bottom. It is instituted at NYU and universities all across the country; 230 universities at least have instituted what they call "bias reporting" hotlines, in which students are encouraged to report the bias infractions of their professors or fellow students.

So – very much like Communist Soviet Union and Communist China – this kind of ideological policing that was going and that I found very disturbing and everybody was going along for the ride. The no-platforming of speakers, the way that the Left shut down any ideological diversity from appearing on campus at all; burning campuses down, like in Berkeley, when speakers were invited that they didn't approve of.

Then, of course other things like trigger warnings on syllabi...it's a slippery slope toward ideological conformity...For example, 'Dante's Inferno' has been stricken from curricula because it has a depiction of Muhammad in one of the circles of Hell. This is one of the greatest books and one of the greatest poems in the Western canon and it's a shame that the Western canon is being eradicated. Also, for example at the University of Pennsylvania, they took down from the [web] portal the picture of Shakespeare, because he's a white male... a university in London struck all white philosophers from the philosophy curriculum...

I thought it was censorship. I thought it was ideological conformity being forced on professors and students, I thought it was a...narrowbanding of our intellectual capacities and as kind of an indoctrination of students, rather than teaching; rather than exposing students to diverse perspectives it was...funneling them into a particular perspective and that really disturbed me.

Jan Jekielek: Fascinating. How did the faculty respond to your complaints?

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: Well, I did an interview for a reporter for the Washington Square News, which is the student newspaper at NYU. Within two days of this interview appearing in their online and print edition, I was denounced by a committee calling themselves the "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Group", which I've since dubbed the "Conformity, Inequity and Exclusion Group" because they demand ideological conformity. They attempt to exclude anyone who doesn't conform and you're certainly not considered a peer, if you have views that differ from theirs and then I was put on an immediate paid leave of absence, as well.

So I was basically banished from the University for a semester and punished with this ideological condemnation by an official committee of the university.

Jan Jekielek: So you were basically an early recipient of Cancel Culture.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: Very much so. Before Cancel Culture existed, I was a victim of Cancel Culture...

The things I want to make clear is that these the Big Digital is not some politically neutral set of principles or companies Big Digital consists of a bunch of left-leaning authoritarians and they're doing so they have the same ideological character in a softer sense of course as the CCP.

Jan Jekielek: OK, so that that's a big thing to say. You're gonna you're gonna have to offer some pretty solid evidence here.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: There's a ton of evidence that shows that the Google stacks their search results in a Left-leaning way. All this has been shown by Dr. Robert Epstein and it was exposed by Project Veritas. Google has a worldview that's reflected both in their algorithms; their outward-facing algorithms and their internal policies. Their internal policies show that they favor almost all kinds of Leftists views about identity. They're very, very strong in encouraging transgenderism, they're very strong in discouraging anything like traditional ideas about gender, they also have extremely Left-leaning views about the political economy. They have monopolistic ambitions, I think and they also have state functions. They are - first of all Google was started by funding from the CIA - and that's not to prove that they have a state function but they also keep they continue to cooperate with the state...

So, they're in violation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996...there's legislation that's being offered up to redress that issue to make them adhere to that standard, so that they will then no longer be discriminatory...Information should not be discriminatory in terms of its delivery and so they're NOT non-discriminatory; they're NOT neutral, they are politically-biased to an extreme...

There's been a tremendous consolidation of course--if media over the last 20 years there's been all kinds of mergers and acquisitions that have reduced...the possibility of more viewpoints. So, we've had ideological sameness perpetrated through the media, as The Epoch Times knows, that the New York Times, The Washington Post – most of the major networks are all Left-leaning. They're all biased and their reporting is almost editorial at this point. I mean, their news can't be considered journalism, in effect. It can be considered Op-Ed but for the most part, it's all been tilted. So, they are basically in the same ideological camp as the digital giants are – and the digital giants sort the news based on their ideological conformity, because they're now the delivery mechanism for most of this, as you know.

Jan Jekielek: So that basically, you're saying that if you want to be successful in the social media sphere, now you have to...

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: You have to conform to the digital giants' proclivities ideologically to get noticed in their search results and also to be let through. For example, Facebook bars certain sources from their platforms entirely.

Jan Jekielek: So, you describe Russiagate as a first of a particular type of phenomenon and I'd like you to explore this, because I thought that was a fascinating perspective.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: Yes, it's the first, in the sense it's the collaboration between Big Digital, the intelligence community and basically what is being referred to as the Deep State, in effect. This was a first-ever collaboration in which Big Digital colluded with with the mass media and also the intelligence agencies to provide a certain narrative and to ban other narratives from from being disseminated as broadly.

And the interesting thing about this is that one of the main companies that was deemed "anti-disinformation", that exposed Russiagate supposedly is called NewKnowledge.com. There was never a greater misnomer than this company's name, because they're New Nescience – that is, non-knowledge. They are the opposite of knowledge. They are creating fabrications.

They were one of the main reporters to the US Intelligence Committee about Russiagate, about the bots, the Russian bots that had supposedly influenced the 2016 election. In the 2017 senatorial election of Roy Moore, where Moore ran for Alabama Senator; they produced Russian bots. They created Russian bots to support Roy Moore's candidacy – to disqualify him – because he was "supported by the Kremlin", supposedly. And then they dished that news out to the newspapers and to the media outlets, saying, "This is happening! There's Russia Russian BOTS are supporting Roy Moore - Russian bots, which they created.

And this is supposedly the biggest anti-disinformation agency in the Internet, that's how they bill themselves! So black is white. Everything is inverted and you know, this is Orwellian. Truth is falsity and falsity is true and so they got exposed by The New York Times and The Washington Post, an unbelievable breakthrough, journalistically, I mean because you would think that they would not cover this, because it is actually Democratic Party organs, those two papers, that's pretty clear. But they did cover this and then Twitter knows about this – but they didn't throw them off. They still have a Twitter account. The owner of the company, the main major funder of this company also has a Twitter account.

Then, when a Trump supporter said that in the 2020 election, he was going to create assets on Facebook and elsewhere to support Trump - false assets. He hadn't done it, yet but he was banned from Twitter, just by virtue of telecasting what he was gonna do. So, it just shows you the disparity, the double standard is extreme. One does it, the other says they're gonna do it. The one who does it doesn't get thrown off the social media platform, the one that hasn't done it yet is thrown off, by virtue of the fact that they're they're supporting Trump.

Jan Jekielek: So, you're talking a lot about the Left in a way that clearly shows me you don't see yourself as part of it. But at one point, you were.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: I was a Left-Communist – Left of the Bolsheviks!

Jan Jekielek: How did that change?

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: When the left turned on me and drove me out, I saw their totalitarian impulses under the surface of this egalitarian rhetoric and that veneer that they cover all their philosophies under and I just saw that and I just saw the true face of this and then I started doing historical research. I read 'The Black Book of Communism' and I learned.

Jan Jekielek: I wish more people read 'The Black Book of Communism'.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: It's just incredible, right? And it shows you that the most pernicious political ideology of the 20th century was not Nazism, it was actually Social Communism, in terms of sheer numbers. They killed 94 million people, counting China and the Soviet Union and Cambodia and so fort.

Jan Jekielek: Right, well you know, just as an aside, we had an article in The Epoch Times recently about how in the European Parliament, there was a motion, I believe that was passed that put Communism in the same realm of you know, egregious ideology as Nazism, National Socialism. It was described as a massive breakthrough, because it's very curious that that everyone is really, really clear on how horrible National Socialism is, right or was and of course it was but there seems to be a much smaller group of people, much smaller and that is aware.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: This is very, very much connected to academia. When I started doing research on the criminality of the political Left, I found a lot of things that were buried under carpets or disappeared. I couldn't find, in academic scholarship the histories. They're just eradicated. It's incredible. I actually had to rely on non-academic sources to find the facts.

Jan Jekielek: Fascinating. I've heard about China, "The People's Republic of Amnesia," the inconvenient realities are are kinda disappeared or removed.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: That's happening in US scholarship and the Left-leaning character of academia is so profound, that they have disappeared the criminality of the political Left from all education. I mean that's huge. So, you don't learn about the crimes of Soviet Union or China. You don't learn about this in the US educational system, for the most part. It's disappeared.

Jan Jekielek: Fascinating and deeply disturbing. So, you know, as as I said, your book shocked me to the core and one of the reasons it did was with this kind of pervasive rise of Big Tech, in injecting itself into literally every aspect of life and even into thought and that's only accelerating. I mean, this is just the beginning, on this curve, right? That could make one feel quite despondent about the future. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: I have a great deal of faith in in in in people's intelligence to see through ideology, because I was able to do so, myself. If I can see it, other people can see it and I know other people who do see it and I think that your Big Digital is going to be constructing very powerful narratives and we have to posit counter-narratives that are truth-based.

Jan Jekielek: Okay, truth. So, truth has been a casualty in all of this, right?

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: It's been a casualty of the Postmodern academy and in the Postmodern intellectual realm, for the last 50 years. You can't use the word "truth" in the university. You're trained, very early on not to even talk about that and there's no such thing. In Postmodernism, everything is local. Truths are only contingent upon the identity of the person who holds the view; everybody's got their own truth, there's no universal truth, there's nothing that can be established as objective. Objectivity is, in fact a masculinist, white supremacist notion.

So, that has been a major casualty in the last 50 years of that intellectual life and it's pervaded the entire culture, so that we have a "post-truth" culture, right?

Jan Jekielek: But yet, people seek it. I mean, that's what you're kind of arguing.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: People have to start to believe in truth again and they have to start establishing a new metaphysics of truth, is what I argue in the book.

And that is going to be more and more necessary, as basically Big Digital sets up a simulation of reality, which they're very capable of doing and then, reporting on that as the reality, right – and we see that going on right now in the political sphere.

Jan Jekielek: So essentially, you argue that this whole Russiagate is, pretty much that it's a simulation. Similarly. very engrossing and you know pervasive.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: It's a simulated reality that becomes the the dominant narrative and that basically supplants truth and basically preempts its discovery and in its enunciation...

right yeah and we're just, you know I just did had an interview earlier today talking about that new newest developments newest iterations of it yes

Jan Jekielek: Given that the education system is so saturated with this post-truth in education, post-truth reality. How is it that that we can get back to the truth?

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: Well, we have to have a tremendous amount of public intellectual criticism of the Academy, that has to continue and people have to defect, like I've done. I'm basically a defector, right?

I'm a dissident and a defector from the the academic union of ideological conformity and we need more of that. We need many more. There are not many in the United States. There's several Canadian professors who have been dissident, who become dissident and I'm friends with all of them: Jordan Peterson and a whole slew of others, Phillip Saltzman and other dissident intellectuals that are speaking out against all this but we need more. We need more people to have the courage to stand up to this mob.

We have a soft Cultural Revolution going on in the United States and the West, in general we need people to stand up to this Cultural Revolution and just speak back to these new Red Guards.

Jan Jekielek: That's very interesting, because of course, if you stood up to the Red Guards in China during the Cultural Revolution, you would be dead. Whereas, here you can be cancelled but you can still find some find friends and people and there's people – I've met an incredible number of people in the most unexpected places, talking about the sorts of things you're talking about.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: Just like there are the islands of the Google archipelago, there are islands, like The Epoch Times, of intellectual and truth-, fact-based reporting and discovery that that exist and we have build on that.

Jan Jekielek: Wonderful. Well, it's such a pleasure to have you here, Michael.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald: My pleasure, thank you."

onawah

15th October 2019, 19:00

HOW ‘SOCIAL JUSTICE’ THREATENS EVERYTHING--Dr. Rectenwald, author of Springtime for Snowflakes
https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/how-social-justice-threatens-everything/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=How+%27Social+Justice%27+Threatens+Everything
2Ys4z_IMCv0

"I have been reeling since my recent discovery of Dr Michael Rectenwald, because I’ve had a similar ideological trajectory and recent, unexpected upheaval. I even studied for a year at NYU, where he was a professor.

Although my college major at Brown University was called Semiotics, it was actually more like Postmodernist, Marxist-Freudian cultural criticism and at the time, I felt like I was majoring in a nervous breakdown!

Dr Rectenwald joins Alex Newman, publisher of The New American magazine to discuss the development of the incredibly nefarious Social Justice movement that has recently exploded onto the scene and which has come to define the Democrat Party, Big Tech, Antifa, transnational corporations and the dread New World Order.

Social Justice sounds nice but it’s not. Dr Rectenwald explains that the contemporary Social Justice movement has nothing to do with the original movement founded in the mid-1800s by Luigi Taparelli, a Jesuit monk. It was not about the redistribution of wealth but it was about charity.

Mid-20th century philosophers, like John Rawls and William James Booth transformed the concept of Social Justice into this Communist ideal of economic and social equality as an absolute and necessary goal. More recently, Stalinist and Maoist tactics have been brought into the movement that mimic those of the Cultural Revolution of Communist China (1966-1976), when Mao instructed his Red Guards to tear down everything in society; all tradition, all historical memory, all cultural legacies.

These sensibilities insinuated themselves into French universities, where I absorbed them while studying for a year at the Sorbonne.

Dr Rectenwald says there is a complete parallel to be made between the Social Justice movement in America today and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. “It’s a softer version but it’s not any less pernicious in a sense, because it’s actually happening more subtly and it’s less catastrophist, if you will, more of a gradualist campaign.

“But this makes it more insidious, almost because it’s not so blatant, so it’s happening sort of surreptitiously under the surface. But it’s very, very, very, very much like they’re ripping, as you said, historical monuments, historical memory, legacies of culture, all being gutted from the curriculum, from statuaries and all forms of museums and road signs and names of schools and names of streets on and on and on. They just want to raze the whole cultural legacy to the ground.

“‘The West is horrible’, despite being that the West is best. And that’s the thing that they have this guilt complex about, is the idea that the West had a belief in itself at some point. Oh my. What a terrible thing.”

Dr Rectenwald suggests that the best way to stand up to this pernicious movement is to have it legally classified as a religion. “Once it’s dubbed a religion in the US at least, where it seems to be birthing most vehemently, we can then say, ‘Look, this doctrine has to be excluded from public schools. It can be taught but it can’t be the basis of the school system,’ which it is now…We have to declare it a religion, get it marked clearly as a religion, then we can use the separation clause to exclude it from the public school system –

“[Social Justice] has rituals…it is a belief system that is based strictly on belief and no data. It is not an evidence-based system…

“For example, if somebody declares their gender to be male, there’s no empirical data that’s necessary. They just merely state it. So, it’s a belief that’s enunciated and that’s the end of it. And we have to believe that and go along with it and everybody must play along. I think Christianity has more data than that, by a longshot…

“So, it’s ritualistic and it’s a belief system with no knowledge base…it’s completely based on the credulity of anyone who buys into it and so therefore, I’d say you know we can dub this a thing of religion. If we have to go into a treatise to do so, I mean I talked about it a bit in the book but I could develop it further…

“If you want to be a Social Justice school, go ahead, be a Social Justice school but like a Christian school, they would say, ‘This is a Christian Academy,’ or something like that…you have the freedom to do that here, in this country but it should…be explicitly stated, rather than implicitly, insidiously undermining everything, without being acknowledged as such…

“Transgenderism should not be understood as anything but a major piece of the Social Justice creed and movement. There’s this huge push for everybody to change their genders for some reason…

“Basically, they want to destabilize all social ontology, because this is the means by which the state becomes all-powerful or the corporate state, if you will…

“The idea is to completely raze the social ontologies to the ground, to upend all – the family has to go…typically, you have a man and a wife or a husband and a spouse or a man and a woman. Well, if you get rid of those, you’re 90% of the way finished with the family, with the a nuclear family and that’s definitely one of the objectives.

“They want to get rid of the family, because the family is a buffer; it’s an ideological and instrumental and educative barrier to the all-powerful statism, that these people want.

“They’re totalitarians at their core. They’re absolutely totalitarian. They want total control and power and they want it vested in the state and they want to be in the state, themselves.

“It’s already happening. I mean, you see it going on, at least digitally, right? You see all these digital disappearances that are taking place. And then you see that the restriction of movement of people that are on the Right or anything but Left whack jobs. For example, like Laura Loomer can’t even go into the UK, Milo Yiannopoulos cannot go into Australia.

So, they’re already putting these digital fences up, which is the next step and I talk about all this in my next book, which is out this month, ‘Google Archipelago’. They’re erecting these digital gulags, if you will and then also digitally deleting people, in effect.

“Because once you have all the public sphere transferred on to the digital realm and then the digital realm is controlled by people that are actually statists, that are also corporatists – I mean, this is just this crazy amalgamation of state and corporate power that’s going on. I’m all for free markets but this is not free markets, at all. This is absolute statist monopolies.

“So these monopolies want global-state-one-nation, you know, they want to get rid of nationalism. Of course, they hate Trump because he’s nationalist. They want to get rid of borders. They want to get rid of everything that stands in the way of One World-ism or Globalism.” "

onawah

19th October 2019, 04:40

IS GOOGLE HIDING SEARCH RESULTS? | ZACH VORHIES – GOOGLE WHISTLEBLOWER
October 17, 2019
1xZLvBev730

"Google whistleblower, Zach Vorhies bravely came forward through Project Veritas last August with documents that strongly suggest special interests are colluding with Big Tech and the corporate media to oust the President and to silence and financially disenfranchise anyone in their way (like me) and over 65 million Americans.

This is a talk given last weekend by former Google Senior Software Engineer, Zach Vorhies at the American Priority Festival in Miami, Florida. Vorhies provided nearly one thousand pages of documents to the Department of Justice, demonstrating the vast scope of the felonies and frauds being perpetrated by his former employer. He gives his insider’s perspective on how Google is actively engaged in a subtle psychological war against the US populace and in the financial destruction of certain targeted sectors.

Google is undertaking to re-program the world according to their disingenuous application of “Social Justice”. Social Justice is the friendly-sounding name for an insidious movement that seeks to raze the entire cultural legacy of the West by gradually destabilizing all norms of rationality and logic, according to academic, Michael Rectenwald, who suggests its ultimate purpose is to implement a global corporate technocratic superstate.

The question remains as to who, exactly is behind Social Justice? Is it a smattering of San Francisco Commie militants drunk on their technocratic power? Is it the CCP? Or is all of this being orchestrated by the éminence grise that controls the world’s money supply?

The statements above may sound overblown if one forgets that the Internet of Things (IoT) will soon be online. The Internet of Things is an AI-driven interactive facsimile of the world, in which all mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals and people will be given unique identifiers (UIDs) and will be constantly transferring data over a global network without human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. Using the 5G network, the IoT will enable self-driving cars and aerial vehicles and it will supposedly save a lot of energy. Such centralization will also make our infrastrucure eminently hackable, especially once quantum computing makes encryption impossible, which is soon.

In financial terms, the Internet of Things may quickly eclipse the power of the physical world and it will enable the Big Data giants, like Google to scale up their de-platforming and de-banking activities of entities large and small into the real world, making China’s social credit system look like a 2 year old’s birthday party by comparison.

The purported ethos guiding Google is “Social Justice”, which rejects objective reality. Google calls objective reality “algorithmically unfair”. They seek to re-shape reality via “product interventions” within their search algorithms.

Check it out for yourselves. Go to Google.com and enter “men can” into the search bar. For me, the auto-completes that I see today are: 1. men can have babies 2. men can get breast cancer 3. men can cook 4. men can have periods 5. men can think about nothing 6. men can have babies now 7. men can get pregnant.

Needless to say, these are not the top-searched results for “men can” in the real world. These auto-completes have been savagely intervened upon with the most ham-fisted transgender-centric ideal of “Social Justice”.

Vorhies says, “I started to ask myself, why is Google doing this? Why are they intervening in your search results by intervening in their Google News and I think I’ve got the answer.”

He then shows a couple of slides that he discovered in Google’s corporate intranet, displaying the flowchart of this particular operation, where it was explicitly stated that the intended outcome of this project was: “People are programmed”.

Vorhies shows a video of YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki at a tech talk, describing her plan to aggressively boost “authoritative news” outlets, such as the thoroughly discredited CNN and to deboost and “push down” on “fake news” through their machine learning programs. He notes that such “product interventions” went into high gear after the election of Donald Trump.

Vorhies then looked into what was being categorized as “fake news” and found that most of the time, these were bonafide news events. He says, “I started to realize that maybe this wasn’t about fake news, maybe this was about controlling the narrative.”

Vorhies shows internal slides from Google about how the staff sought to de-platform Right Wing news outlet, Breitbart from Google’s advertising program and how they aggressively sought to blacklist certain sites and to disassociate search results that showed any relationship between the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock and the DNC, while strengthening suggestions of ties between him and Donald Trump.

He gives a chilling, documented example of another intervention by Google, after President Trump famously tweeted upon his return from Saudi Arabia on May 31, 2017, “Despite the negative press covfefe.” Vorhies says that originally, “cov fe’fe” existed in Google’s translation program as the Arabic term for “I will stand up” but that after a New York Times editorial came out the following day on June 1, 2017 excoriating Trump for his “garbled message”, Google engineers then took that article as the justification to eliminate the word from their Arab dictionary.

So, we see here how the corporate news and Big Tech are in lockstep, constantly working to re-shape “reality” in a death by a thousand cuts.

Vorhies notes the team who took it upon themselves to make this particular change called themselves the “Derrida Team”, after the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida who advocated the destruction of Western culture through the manipulation of language (I read a LOT of Derrida in college).

Then he saw how the media proceeded to cite the “covfefe” incident to advocate the removal of the President by invoking the 25th Amendment, which deals with the succession of the US Presidency if the Commander in Chief becomes disabled, dies, resigns or is removed from office.

“I’m sitting there, looking at this stuff and I’m asking myself, ‘Is this sedition? Is this collusion for a coup attempt? What exactly is going on here, because it seems to me that the media might be colluding with Google to remove the President of the United States. And if I don’t do anything about it, then I myself am complicit.’

“And so, I had a really hard decision to make and ultimately, I realized I had to do the right thing and so I decided that I was going to bring this information and give 950 pages to Project Veritas, so that the American public could know the reality and the truth about the largest tech company in America…

“What I realized through all of this is that if you don’t have a free market of ideas, then you don’t have a free market of commerce. So, what I want to finish off with today is a sector of the economy that’s being absolutely destroyed right now.”

He shows us the analytics for Mercola.com, whose traffic went from over 2 million views per month to less than 1% of that, after Google launched its new pharmaceutical division. Mercola.com was a massively popular website that had similar traffic to InfoWars. While the latter was very publicly de-platformed and de-personed from all major social media sites for their wrong think, Mercola’s targeted demise was more like a sniper hit.

“This is the power of Google. How can any one of us, as entrepreneurs enter into a marketplace if a tech giant, in one day can flip the switch and destroy you and destroy everyone else in that market sector? We can’t have prosperity, we can’t have a free market if a company like this can just destroy entire sections of the economy at will. This is incompatible and the reason why I’m coming here is because I ultimately want you to be happy. I want you to be prosperous and I want your children to inherit the same kind of free America that I was able to inherit.

“It’s a big problem. I’m happy I’m on the other side. I hope that by exposing this, we can start to come and have a discussion about what we’re going to do, now that we know this information because we don’t want to have the Chinafication of America’s marketplace.” "
https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/is-google-hiding-search-results-zach-vorhies-google-whistleblower/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Is+Google+Hiding+Search+Results%3F+%7C+Zach+Vorhies+-+Google+Whistleblower

Hervé

3rd November 2019, 16:05

Whistleblower Zach Vorhies speaks out on why Google snuffed natural health sites (https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/11/02/google-whistleblower-veritas.aspx)

Dr. Joseph Mercola Mercola.com (https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/11/02/google-whistleblower-veritas.aspx)
Sat, 02 Nov 2019 00:01 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s27/543973/large/Zach_Vorhies.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/543973/full/Zach_Vorhies.jpg)

In mid-September 2019, Maryam Henein published a video interview with Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies.1 The interview is broken into four parts, all of which have been included in a playlist further below.

In the featured video above, Vorhies and Maryam Henein, a journalist and functional medicine consultant, discuss Google's suppression of natural health information from holistic health sites such as Mercola.com with Sayer Ji, founder of Greenmedinfo.com — another victim of Google's censorship.

I also recently interviewed Vorhies for nearly two hours and will release that incredibly detailed video in the near future. In it, he discusses the tactics Google used to intimidate him into submission after they learned he had turned into a whistleblower.

In a recent article, Henein, perhaps best known for directing the documentary film, "The Vanishing of the Bees," writes:2
"Google has become the digital Thought Police for health content, tampering and manipulating information, and shadow banning health professionals and independent journalists ...

I had the honor to interview 39-year-old Zach Vorhies, who served as Senior Software Engineer at Google/YouTube for 8.5 years ... He is Google's Snowden. He's a hero in my book.

And if you use Google, YouTube, Gmail, etc you are being impacted. Vorhies turned whistleblower, releasing a cache of internal documents illustrating that Google is NOT a reliable source of information." New President Marked a Turn at Google
According to Vorhies, changes at Google first became noticeable in 2016, after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.
"Before Trump won, Google had this mission statement to organize the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful," Vorhies says.

"After Trump won, they said 'Well, Donald Trump won because of fake news and Russia hacking the election, so what we need to do is ... protect our users from fake news; we need to protect our users from the damaging effects of Russian trolls and bots." It didn't take long before Google got into the business of filtering out what it considered "fake news." However, as pointed out by Vorhies, "What exactly is fake news?"

Perusing the network available to all full-time Google employees, he discovered a PowerPoint presentation describing what Google deemed fake news, and among the examples, he found news reports of events that had, in fact, happened. In other words, they were not made up events, and therefore, logically, could not be classified as fake news stories.

The discovery led Vorhies to wonder, "Are they trying to filter fake news or are they trying to filter actual news by slandering it as fake news?" As he continued digging, he discovered the existence of a then-secret program called "Machine Learning Fairness."3

Machine Learning Fairness — The Alteration of Reality
According to Vorhies, this program was slated to be "unleashed onto the world" without anyone's knowledge. He also claims Google engaged in a deception campaign to make sure people wouldn't find out about it.

"Project Dragonfly" — a completely fake project — was part of this deception campaign, he says. Its sole purpose was to distract the public from Machine Learning Fairness.

The more he learned about Machine Learning Fairness, the more terrified he got. According to Vorhies, "even if the search results reflected actual reality," the program claimed "it can still represent algorithmic unfairness," which would justify "product intervention."

"In other words, what they're saying is that if reality is unfair, then they're going to change the nature of reality in order to make it fair and just," Vorhies says. He draws parallels between the Machine Learning Fairness program and a number of classic books warning about how a totalitarian regime can take over by seizing control of what constitutes "political correctness" and indeed the overall narrative of "reality" itself.

By 2017, Vorhies had collected some 950 pages of Google documents, which paint a comprehensive picture of what's really going on. You can find all of those documents on the Project Veritas' website (https://www.projectveritas.com/google.document.dump),4 under categories such as "censorship," "politics," "fake news" and "psychological research."

"[Google] is literally using magic to manipulate the information landscape of our culture, to remove a president that was elected by a democracy."8 "This was more than bias, this was now a national security issue," Vorhies says.9 That's when he decided to release the documents he'd amassed to law enforcement, the public and media, to give us all "a last chance to course correct."

The Rise of 'Technofascism'

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As noted by Henein, "Google has become a digital thought police" — just as described in chilling detail in George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984."
"Part of technofascism is to confuse people so their sense of memory is altered," Henein says. "They don't know what is real and what is not real. We're now living in confusing times with fake news and alternative facts, and that is all part of it." Vorhies agrees, saying the ultimate plan is to make you doubt your own memory and thus teach you to turn to the established authorities to learn "the facts," which will be whatever is considered best in the moment. As Orwell wrote in "1984," "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth."10 That, in a nutshell, is exactly what Google is doing right at this moment.

So, who's behind this rise of "technofascism"? Henein suspects Big Pharma has a hand in it, considering the fact that drug advertising is a major profit center for Google, and the fact that alternative and holistic news sites have been actively shadow banned, to where you can no longer find them in Google's search results.

Indeed, the traffic to my own site from Google has dropped by 99.9% since its June 3, 2019, broad core update.11 Vorhies agrees, pointing out that the drug industry by and large own the very organizations that are promoting things that are known to be harmful to health, be it fluoride (https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/12/13/fluoride-deception.aspx), mercury amalgam fillings (https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/01/13/mercury-detoxification-protocol.aspx), one-size-fits-all vaccine policies, sugar (https://articles.mercola.com/sugar-side-effects.aspx) or junk food (https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/04/29/junk-food-metabolism.aspx).

Google Is Promoting Illness for Profit
The simple reality is that conventional health care is a for-profit business and as such it depends on repeat customers. There's no money in wellness. The money is in chronic disease.

Promoting disease prevention and low- or no-cost treatments is not part of the drug industry's agenda — it's diametrically opposed to and a direct competitor to it. As noted by Vorhies, what we're seeing is the creation of an artificial demand for products and services that aren't in our best interest.

Meanwhile, there are countless of examples of inexpensive lifestyle-based strategies putting serious diseases into remission, yet you never hear about them because, as Vorhies points out, "Big Pharma is colluding with Google to shut down these counter-narratives." In an October 2, 2019, article12 in The Epoch Times, Henein writes:
"What if I told you that social media platforms are manipulating you, steering you toward health information that they think is right, rather than letting you evaluate content for yourself?

Accredited professionals ... who stand for health freedom ... are losing posting privileges, getting banned or buried, finding themselves deranked, and getting digitally assassinated. Content is literally disappearing from the internet along with our health choices. It sounds conspiratorial because it is." Vorhies goes a step further, saying:13
"The censorship that is being applied to alternative health is nothing less than demonic. That may seem extreme, but I've been following the happenings in the new cures that are being suppressed.

At the same time, establishment, big corporate pharma websites like WebMD are monopolizing the first page of results. What's terrifying is that many of these establishment medical articles landing on the first page do not even have a stated author and make assertions that are contradicted by science." Google Autosuggestions Reveal the Agenda
If you're still confused about which way Google is leaning when it comes to certain topics, all you have to do is check out its auto complete feature. This is a list of "suggested" searches that pops up when you type in one or more keywords.

In her Epoch Times article,14 Henein shows a screen shot of a Google search done on September 1, 2019, starting with the words "supplements are." The list of autosuggestions contained nothing but negative-biased searches, such as:

Supplements are bad
Supplements are useless
Supplements are not regulated
Supplements are dangerous
Supplements are scams

This is a very effective way to spread propaganda and manipulate people, as most believe that these results are what others are typing into the search engine. This way, they're lead to believe all the negative and ludicrous attributes being attached to supplements. Interestingly they have not yet rigged the results for my name as they only display benign terms like:

Articles
Shop
Books
Wife
Products

So, ask yourself, who might benefit from people everywhere believing nutritional supplements are useless at best and dangerous at worst? This auto-completion used to be populated with search terms based on what people were actually searching for, but not anymore.

Now it's just another social engineering device by Google's self-proclaimed "thought police" that has no basis in objective reality. It is in fact part of the Machine Learning Fairness program.

What's worse, hacking of the autocomplete function is also taking place, Vorhies warns in his American Thought Leaders' interview15 (below), and this becomes really insidious, as people still believe these autosuggestions are a reflection of what's being searched for. By essentially faking "public consensus," the fake autosuggestions can have a significant yet hidden influence over people's opinion.

Google Seeks to Control Political Landscape
Health isn't the only reality narrative Google is trying to reshape, however. One of the documents released by Vorhies, "News Blacklist Site for Google Now,"16 lists hundreds of websites that Google has singled out for elimination from its Google Feed (previously Google Now), a majority of which are political and financial investment-type sites.

However, false narratives are pumped out to make you distrust those who point out there's something askew with Google's political meddling. Henein writes:17
"Take, for instance, this quote on ThinkProgress concerning evidence of Google's preferential leanings:

'What appears to be happening is that some conservatives are massively distorting tech companies' attempts to protect against foreign election interference or restrict the distribution of hateful views, stirring up conspiracy theories that the companies are demonstrating blanket bias against conservatives.'

Nonsense. Don't believe that the algorithmic changes are being made only to protect you from another 'rigged' election or to save you from four more years of Trump. And don't believe that tech companies haven't been allowed to cross a line. This is a perfect example of both a red herring and a false narrative." In fact, in June 2019, Project Veritas published an undercover video recording in which Jen Gennai, Google's head of responsible innovation, admits the company is trying to prevent "the next Trump situation."18

Google's Power to Shift Elections

buYS1biprSs

Does Google really have the power to shift an election? Gennai certainly seems to believe they do, as does Vorhies and many others. I suspect there's not a single company in existence that could influence elections as effectively and unobtrusively as Google.

In this American Thought Leaders' video by The Epoch Times, Vorhies is featured along with Greg Coppola, another Google whistleblower, and Robert Epstein, former editor of Psychology Today, introduced as "a leading expert on Google search engine bias."

In this interview, Vorhies explains yet other ways in which Google is complicit in censoring individuals. For example, he explains how third parties can eliminate undesirable players through email account spoofing, resulting in the elimination of the target individual's account.

According to Vorhies, this is a simple "bug" that can be fixed simply by tweaking the artificial intelligence responsible for the monitoring of spam. Yet Google choses to leave the gate open. Vorhies suspects this is exactly what happened to 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.

"It's not just Google censoring. They've got this complicated system of plausible deniability," Vorhies says. How does this ability to take a person offline connect to Google's ability to influence elections? Vorhies explains:
"The elections are all about whether someone has free, open and equal access to the channels of information distribution. So, if Tulsi Gabbard is being knocked offline, and other politicians are being knocked offline, then that's de facto election interference.

And it's being done by these entities that aren't registering as lobbyists. So, we've got these tech monopolies that are acting as unregistered lobbyists that are making decisions and giving insiders information on how to take down targets. That's essentially what's happening. Google is allowing democracy to be hacked." Expert on Google Bias Weighs In
By June 2016, Google bias expert Epstein was already hot on Google's trail, penning an article19 for U.S. News, titled "The New Censorship."

"How did Google become the internet's censor and master manipulator, blocking access to millions of websites?" the article asks, pointing out, "The company maintains at least nine different blacklists that impact our lives, generally without input or authority from any outside advisory group, industry association or government agency."

In the American Thought Leaders' interview, Epstein stresses the importance of documents leaked by Vorheis showing that not only are Google's blacklists real — a now provable fact the company has long denied — but they're also reranking, deranking and fringe-ranking articles, using a so-called "twiddler system" (software that overlays the search engine algorithm) which makes reranking a rather simple affair.

Epstein points out that Google has vehemently denied reranking articles for political purposes, yet Vorhies' document trove proves otherwise. There's even a manual for the twiddler system among Vorhies' documents.

This capability is far beyond what Epstein had thought possible. It didn't surprise him, however. For years, Epstein has warned about Google's power to influence opinion.

Now, he says, we have evidence that Google does in fact have the power to manipulate the flow of information and opinion, and we see more and more evidence that they are in fact wielding this considerable power to shape the worldview according to its own wishes. Epstein also expresses concern over the fact that mainstream media are ignoring Vorhies' and Coppola's leaks and aren't reporting on them.

Google — A Threat to Health, Democracy and Freedom
While it's quite clear that I'm on Google's unacknowledged blacklist, I'm not and will never be willing to change what I believe in and stand for. I will never conform to "consensus reality" just to get my Google ranking back. It's unfortunate, but the way it stands right now, we have to go old-school and encourage everyone to share information through word-of-mouth, by text and email.

We have built in simple sharing tools at the top of each article so you can easily email or text interesting articles to your friends and family. My information is here because all of you support and share it, and we can do this without Big Tech's support. It's time to boycott and share!

Here are a few other suggestions:

- Become a subscriber to my newsletter and encourage your friends and family to do the same. This is the easiest and safest way to make sure you'll stay up to date on important health and environmental issues.

- If you have any friends or relatives that are seriously interested in their health, please share important articles with them and encourage them to subscribe to our newsletter.

- Use the internal Mercola.com search engine (https://search.mercola.com/results.aspx?q=google#stq=google) when searching for articles on my site.

- Boycott Google (http://www.goopocalypse.com/) by avoiding any and all Google products:

- Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com/)20 and Startpage (https://www.startpage.com/en/)21

- Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser (https://www.opera.com/download) instead, available for all computers and mobile devices.22 From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy

- If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service such as ProtonMail (https://protonmail.com/),23 an encrypted email service based in Switzerland

- Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives24

- If you're a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts

- Sign the "Don't be evil" petition (https://citizensagainstmonopoly.org/) created by Citizens Against Monopoly

Sources and References:

1, 2 Namely Liberty, Google Whistleblower Zach Vorhies & Health Freedom Part 1 (https://namelyliberty.com/google-whistleblower-zach-vorhies-health-freedom-part-1/)

3 Developers.google.com Machine Learning Fairness (https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/fairness-overview)

4 Project Veritas, Google Document Dump (https://www.projectveritas.com/google.document.dump)

5 The New York Times May 31, 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/us/politics/covfefe-trump-twitter.html)

6 The New York Times June 1, 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/us/politics/covfefe-trump-arabic.html)

7 The Atlantic October 3, 2019 (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/george-conway-trump-unfit-office/599128/)

8, 9 Youtube, American Thought Leaders, Google's Power to Shift Elections, circa 36 minutes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buYS1biprSs)

10, 12, 13, 14, 17 The Epoch Times October 2, 2019 (https://www.theepochtimes.com/google-censors-shadowbans-and-blacklists-alternative-health-news_3098108.html)

11 Twitter.com Google Search Liason June 3, 2019 (https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1135592634691362816)

15 Youtube, American Thought Leaders, Google's Power to Shift Elections, circa 25 minutes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buYS1biprSs)

16 News Blacklist Site for Google Now (https://www.projectveritas.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/news-black-list-site-for-google-now.txt)

18 Project Veritas June 24, 2019 (https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/?fbclid=IwAR02aq_UykrwV8V0ecCJJSIThOewu844wWDu4SSSJbZ0WVKuEoE6xOOKwRg)

19 US News June 22, 2016 (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-censor-and-its-power-must-be-regulated)

20 Fast Company, Inside DuckDuckGo (https://www.fastcompany.com/3026698/inside-duckduckgo-googles-tiniest-fiercest-competitor)

21 Startpage.com (https://www.startpage.com/en/)

22 Opera Browser (http://www.opera.com/download)

23 ProtonMail (https://protonmail.com)

24 Digital Trends April 28, 2017 (https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-google-docs-alternatives/)

Related:

Google whistleblower: Same scheme may have been used for suspending Jordan Peterson, Tulsi Gabbard (https://www.sott.net/article/418645-Google-whistleblower-Same-scheme-may-have-been-used-for-suspending-Jordan-Peterson-Tulsi-Gabbard)

Australian regulator files privacy suit against Google alleging misleading users and misusing data (https://www.sott.net/article/422870-Australian-regulator-files-privacy-suit-against-Google-alleging-misleading-users-and-misusing-data)

Internal document details Google retaliation against employees who reported abuse (https://www.sott.net/article/420968-Internal-document-details-Google-retaliation-against-employees-who-reported-abuse)

Google/YouTube axed RSBNetwork live-streaming just before Trump election, censored views without cause (https://www.sott.net/article/420563-Google-YouTube-axed-RSBNetwork-live-streaming-just-before-Trump-election-censored-views-without-cause)

Google's 'dramatic bias' may have swayed millions of voters to Hillary Clinton in 2016 - US researcher (https://www.sott.net/article/420045-Googles-dramatic-bias-may-have-swayed-millions-of-voters-to-Hillary-Clinton-in-2016-US-researcher)

Google is burying alternative health sites to protect people from "dangerous" medical advice (https://www.sott.net/article/419358-Google-is-burying-alternative-health-sites-to-protect-people-from-dangerous-medical-advice)

Every minute 70,000 people Google health questions; alternative medicine content now vanishingly rare (https://www.sott.net/article/419197-Every-minute-70000-people-Google-health-questions-alternative-medicine-content-now-vanishingly-rare)

======================================

FWIW: DuckDuckGo and Startpage are both using the Google search engines... and their filters... using Bing or Yahoo might give better results. I personally use Yandex.

Hervé

8th November 2019, 21:24

Trove of explosive secret internal Facebook documents and emails were just leaked online (https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-internal-documents-executive-emails-published-six4three-court-leak-2019-11)

Rob Price Business Insider (https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-internal-documents-executive-emails-published-six4three-court-leak-2019-11)
Wed, 06 Nov 2019 19:56 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s23/461499/large/DacTxFSUMAAwru8.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s23/461499/full/DacTxFSUMAAwru8.jpg)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in October.

An explosive trove of nearly 4,000 pages of confidential internal Facebook documents (https://dataviz.nbcnews.com/projects/20191104-facebook-leaked-documents/assets/facebook-sealed-exhibits.pdf) has been made public, shedding unprecedented light on the inner workings of the Silicon Valley social-networking giant.

On Wednesday, the investigative reporter Duncan Campbell (https://www.duncancampbell.org/facebookleaks) released a vast swathe of internal emails, reports, and other sensitive documents from the early 2010s that detail Facebook's internal approach to privacy and how it worked with app developers and handled their access to user data.

The documents were originally compiled as part of a lawsuit that the startup Six4Three brought against Facebook for cutting off its bikini-photo app's access to the developer platform. The documents were supposed to remain under seal — but they were leaked.

Some of the documents had already been made public before Wednesday. The British Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee published (https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-documents-six4three-case-published-british-parliament-2018-12) hundreds of pages in a report in December; they were seized from Six4Three's founder, Ted Kramer, when he visited the UK.

And in the months before he put the entire trove of documents into the public domain, Campbell shared them with journalists at NBC News and other outlets, who then published several stories about them. (Campbell said that he was sent the documents in February, the same day that the committee published its final report (https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/fake-news-report-published-17-19/), and that the sender was anonymous.)

Facebook has fought vigorously against the release of the documents, arguing that they do not paint a balanced picture of its activities. In an emailed statement, a company representative told Business Insider: "These old documents have been taken out of context by someone with an agenda against Facebook, and have been distributed publicly with a total disregard for US law."

Business Insider is combing through the documents and will update this story with our findings.

Here are some of the key revelations from the document dump, including from reports published from earlier leaks:

Facebook wielded its control over user data to hobble rivals like YouTube, Twitter, and Amazon. (https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-facebook-emails-user-data-api-policies-youtube-twitter-amazon-2019-11) The company benefited its friends even as it took aggressive action to block rival companies' access — while framing its actions as necessary to protect user privacy.

Facebook executives quietly planned a data-policy "switcharoo." (https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-executives-planned-switcharoo-on-data-policy-change-court-filings-2019-11) "Facebook began cutting off access to user data for app developers from 2012 to squash potential rivals while presenting the move to the general public as a boon for user privacy," Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing the leaked documents.

Facebook considered charging companies to access user data. (https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-discussed-emails-charging-companies-for-access-to-user-data-report-2018-11) Documents made public in late 2018 revealed that from 2012 to 2014, Facebook was contemplating forcing companies to pay to access users' data. (It didn't ultimately follow through with the plan.)

Facebook whitelisted certain companies to allow them more extensive access to user data, even after it locked down its developer platform throughout 2014 and 2015. (https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/05/seized-cache-of-facebook-docs-raise-competition-and-consent-questions/) TechCrunch reported in December that it "is not clear that there was any user consent for this, nor how Facebook decided which companies should be whitelisted or not."

Facebook planned to spy on the locations of Android users. (https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252458208/Facebook-planned-to-spy-on-Android-phone-users-internal-emails-reveal) Citing the documents, Computer Weekly reported in February that "Facebook planned to use its Android app to track the location of its customers and to allow advertisers to send political advertising and invites to dating sites to 'single' people."

The leak includes nearly 4,000 pages of internal Facebook documents, nearly 3,000 pages of other exhibits from the case, and hundreds of pages of other pieces of legal documentation.

This story is developing...

Related:

UK MPs seize documents that could expose Facebook's covert data harvesting (https://www.sott.net/article/401401-UK-MPs-seize-documents-that-could-expose-Facebooks-covert-data-harvesting)

Facebook spied on Android users' calls & texts while pretending to care about privacy (https://www.sott.net/article/402310-Facebook-spied-on-Android-users-calls-texts-while-pretending-to-care-about-privacy)

Cara

15th November 2019, 03:45

Also relevant here:

The growth of Fintech continues. Google wants to be a bank. So they aim to control both information and money (which in some ways is a kind of information).

Google wants to be your bank and will soon offer accounts
7 hours ago
News
Silicon Valley continues to invade your wallet.

Google plans to offer checking accounts to customers starting in the US next year, a source familiar with Google's plans told CNN Business.

Google is partnering with Citigroup and a credit union at Stanford University for the initiative.

https://imageresizer.static9.net.au/szn-_Bs2m2YUj_E8mcHO1QRWxV8=/1200x0/https%3A%2F%2Fprod.static9.net.au%2Ffs%2F82d69b9e-6983-4a29-a14f-e251c6d47675
Google is getting into banking (Supplied)

"We're exploring how we can partner with banks and credit unions in the US to offer smart checking accounts through Google Pay, helping their customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting tools, while keeping their money in an FDIC or NCUA-insured account," a company spokesperson said.

But Google doesn't plan to take center stage on the checking accounts.

Instead, the financial institutions' brands will be put on the accounts and banks will be responsible for the financial plumbing and compliance.

Partner banks and credit unions will offer these smart checking accounts through Google Pay.

Google also hasn't decided whether the accounts would charge fees.

The push into checking accounts is the latest instance of a Big Tech company moving into the financial services space.

Amazon also wants to introduce checking accounts for customers.

Facebook announced its Libra cryptocurrency project earlier this year.

And Apple has teamed up with Goldman Sachs to launch a credit card, while its Apple Pay service has become a go-to payment method for many iPhone customers.

Google is attempting to deepen its relationship with consumers by entering into finance, Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told CNN Business.

"The company has an unmatched position within the consumer life cycle and now they're trying to leverage where they are," Ives said.

Facebook hope the currency could drive more e-commerce on its services and boost ads on its platforms. (Supplied)
Google already offers smart home devices like Nest and Google Assistant and just entered into health and wellness world with its planned acquisition of Fitbit.

"The missing piece is banking," said Ives.

Ives said Google's initiative probably won't cause big banks any concern for now, but Big Tech's ongoing expansion of its financial footprint will likely pose a competitive threat in the future -- especially as it shows no signs of letting up

"This is just the tip of the spear in terms of where [tech giants are] going," said Ives.

Politicians in Washington, who are already investigating the dominance of big tech companies, will probably review Google's move closely.

Google's effort could draw scrutiny given Washington's distaste for both Big Tech and big banks, Jaret Seiberg, an analyst at Cowen and Company, said in an analyst note.

"We have trouble seeing how combining the two is going to produce an outcome that either Democrats or Republicans will embrace," Seiberg said.

There's no release date set for Australia at this time.
From: https://amp.9news.com.au/article/9963412d-5e68-49a8-8e34-e15936dabd6c?__twitter_impression=true

onawah

17th November 2019, 20:31

Zach Vorhies--Why the World Needs a Google Detox
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola
November 17, 2019
( Live links in the article)
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/11/17/google-detox.aspx?utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1ReadMore&utm_campaign=20191117Z1&et_cid=DM393400&et_rid=751916983
VbGYbnem_MI
"STORY AT-A-GLANCE
Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies has released 950 pages of Google documents that paint a comprehensive picture of how Google is manipulating public opinion and the political landscape
Changes at Google first became noticeable in 2016, after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. Vorhies later discovered evidence suggesting Google was playing a role in the effort to remove President Trump from office
Machine Learning Fairness is a Google project that replaces “unfair” search results — even when the “unfairness” is accurately reflecting worldly reality — with more “fair and balanced” search results, thereby artificially altering what people perceive as “reality”
Google tools such as autofill search recommendations can be used to sway public opinion on political (and other topics), which can have significant political consequences
Research shows biased search rankings can shift voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, and that people will be completely unaware of having been manipulated
In this interview, Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies, who worked as a senior software engineer at Google and YouTube for over eight years, shares his inside knowledge of this global monopoly, revealing why Google is not a reliable source of information anymore.

Google's monopoly over search is matched by a continued reassurance that it is an unbiased search platform. Google is actively suppressing and censoring information, proving it is anything but unbiased.

While some of the information revealed is related to politics, you can read about my views about the two-party U.S. federal government here.

The point of sharing this information is that Google is manipulating search results to reflect its views, and to influence our social behavior while denying this is happening.

The Wall Street Journal just published a thorough investigation covering these same points.

Vorhies recently released about 950 pages of internal Google documents that paint a comprehensive picture of what's really going on. You can find all of those documents on the Project Veritas website.1

What Happened to 'Don't Be Evil'?
Like NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden before him, Vorhies is a courageous patriot who is trying to do the right thing by warning everyone about how Google is now manipulating and censoring the global storehouse of internet-based information.

"Everything started out with Google really great," Vorhies says. "They had this mission statement of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful. They also had this idea of 'Don't be evil.' It was built right into their initial public offering (IPO) statements.

I thought at the time, 'This is great. This is exactly the kind of company that the world needs. We need to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible. We need to let the algorithms decide what goes to the top and let the users decide what's most useful for them and then make sure that other people are able to find that information.'

Google stayed true to those principles all the way up until 2016, until Donald Trump won the election. For some reason, they decided they were going to throw all these mission statements away and go after the president of the United States, censor the internet and distort the news so that people's searches could be redirected towards antipresidential sentiment.

This eventually morphed into not just censorship of the president, but censorship of information related to health … I realized [that] if this was allowed to continue, then this agenda of Big Pharma would be able to become … 'the truth' …

Once I found out that Google was censoring a lot of information, I started looking at the information it was censoring with a new degree of 'They wouldn't be censoring it unless it was true,' sort of thing.

It's a strange heuristic to use to figure out what's true in the world, but you've just got to figure out what they're censoring. You kind of understand that they're censoring it because it's not Big Tech-friendly. It's not friendly to the established players."

Some 'Fake News' Isn't so Fake After All
Shortly after Trump won the presidential election, you started hearing more and more about the scourge of "fake news." Google, like Facebook and others, decided they had to protect users from fake news. The problem is, who determines what's fake and what's not?

Using Google's internal search engine, Vorhies set out to determine what Google's definition of fake news was. He found several examples in a presentation. However, in it were actual, verifiably real news events. "I went, 'Wait a minute. Is this about fake news or is this about controlling the narrative for like political purposes?'" Vorhies says.

He began collecting these documents because he knew they were explosive enough that Google would remove them if word ever got out about them. In his continued search for real news presented as fake, he started unearthing other disturbing projects.

"The main project responsible for Google censorship is a thing called 'Machine Learning Fairness' (ML Fairness). As you imagine, they're not going to call their censorship regime something bad. They're going to call it something like 'fairness.'

So, if you're against that, you're against fairness. It's a euphemism. I discovered there was this umbrella project, 'ML Fairness,' and there were these subcomponents like 'Project Purple Rain,' which is a 24-hour response team that is monitoring the internet."

How Machine Learning Fairness Twists Perception of Reality
Just what is ML Fairness and how does it work? Vorhies explains:

"Let's say that this circle right here represents the entire spectrum of all possible artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. ML Fairness is a small part of that type of AI. It's a relatively new type of AI. What machine learning does is it simulates brain neurons and how they fire.

If you remember how a brain neuron fires, it takes in as input signals from other neurons and then mixes those signals together and decides whether it wants to fire or not, based on the signals that it receives.

Well, these artificial neurons do something similar. They have a collection of inputs, depending on the internal rule set. It will fire depending on the inputs it gets … And then that output is used as input for further downstream processing.

If you have this collection of millions of simulated neurons … you can start to create very complex behavior that's able to solve problems, like chess or the game Go … It can classify hate speech. That's the part that's interesting to me — how this thing could be used to classify information across the internet.

ML Fairness is a type of AI that takes information on the internet, classifies it and then ranks it. And then the Google engine will figure out whether the information is fair or not. And if it is 'fair,' it goes to the top. If it's not fair, then it gets pushed to the bottom. That's what ML Fairness is in a nutshell."

What this manipulation ultimately ends up doing is presenting a twisted and false view of the world. What you're seeing in your search results is what the AI algorithm decided is most fair — not what's actually happening in the real world.

This is how you now end up getting automated search suggestions such as "men can have periods" and "men can have babies," even though these are biological impossibilities. However, the algorithm deems the idea that only women can menstruate and bear children as "unfair" and basically "sexist," and thus it's pushing these ridiculous search suggestions to the top.

This obnoxious discrepancy is clear when using search terms like "men can …" The manipulation of reality will not be as transparent when using health or political search words, when you cannot be absolutely sure, ahead of time, about what the absolute truth is.

Did Google Conspire to Commit Treason?
Vorhies saw these changes starting to take place in early 2017. Next, Google announced it was going to start assigning an "authoritativeness score" to all news content. "I was able to see this ranking on internal documents," Vorhies says. High rankings were given to outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

"These outlets, in my opinion, have been producing propaganda," Vorhies says. "They led to us into war with Iraq with the weapons of mass destruction hoax. They've lied to us [about] Vietnam. They have a history of supporting every war and military encouragement around the world that has [led to] the destruction of millions of lives."

In June 2017, chief executive officer of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, announced that this was how they were going to filter news content across the YouTube platforms. As Vorhies expected, this led to a clamp down on anything that goes against the mainstream narrative.

"Around that time, I had the fortune of catching [another] seditious activity by Google. What I caught them doing was deleting words out of the translation dictionary from Arabic to English, in order to make a Trump tweet sound crazy.2,3"

President Trump had recently come back from a visit to Saudi Arabia when, on May 31, 2017, he tweeted: "Despite the negative constant press, covfefe." Originally, people were able to translate "covfefe" to "We will stand up." Taken together, you could see President Trump's tweet basically said, "Despite the negative constant press, we will stand up."

"People got really excited about that," Vorhies says. "Well, The New York Times decided that they were going to write an entire article saying, 'Actually, this word is nonsense. And everyone who thinks there's a decode is just wrong.'

The same day that this article came out, I believe it was June 1, 2017, a senior executive person at Google … of one of the AI divisions, wrote up a design document saying, 'We translated this world from Arabic to English. But according to The New York Times, that's not right. That's actually nonsense, so let's get rid of the word.' And so, they got rid of the word.

The team that was responsible for getting rid of this word called themselves the 'Derrida Team.' Why is that significant? Because there was a French philosopher by the name of Jacques Derrida, who advocated for the destruction of Western culture through the manipulation and censorship of language.

What a coincidence that this team responsible for censoring words would have the same name as this very significant philosopher who is considered the father of post-modernism.

About six days later, I saw the newspapers were making a push for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove a sitting president from office due to mental incapacitation. One of the reasons that they cited was how Trump was tweeting nonsense.

Now, wait a minute, that was made nonsense by this manipulation of the dictionary! I realized these people have gone too far. There's obviously a collusion here. I have to bring this to attention no matter what.

This isn't because I'm necessarily a Trump supporter — I didn't vote for him — this is simply because they can't be doing this to a sitting president of the United States. That just can't happen. It's treason.

If this is going to happen, then I've got to let the public [and] law enforcement know about it. Because if I don't, then I'm part of a conspiracy of silence … It was at that point that I decided I could no longer sit in silence. I took my cache of documents and I started to prepare for a disclosure event."

YouTube Censorship Has Had Lethal Consequences
In 2018, the real-world ramifications of censorship hit home when an Iranian YouTube creator who had recently been demonetized marched into YouTube headquarters and opened fire on employees and then shot herself.4

"Her name was Nasim [Najafi Aghdam]. She had a video that went viral in Iran … She was creating really bizarre videos that were just — I don't know — I watched them and I actually strangely loved them. I couldn't stop watching them. They were so weird.

She decided that she was going to quit her job and become a full-time content creator, like millions of others … YouTube was the platform to do that. Everyone was getting a lot of subscribers and were trying to generate money, get monetized on the platform …

They would get a cut of the ads that were running when people interact with the ads or view them … What YouTube did is they made a blanket ban. Anyone under 10,000 subscribers got censored. By censorship, I mean demonetized. They lost all of the funding that they could get for their videos. They can still post videos, they just [cannot] get any money [from Google Ads] for it.

And so, this person had just lost her job. She felt she was being oppressed by YouTube. She drove all the way from San Diego, came to the YouTube headquarters on 901 Cherry Avenue … came into the lunch area patio, took out a handgun and started firing …

She shot a couple of people. Ran out of ammo, reloaded and shot some more and then [shot] herself in the chest and [bled] to death … Obviously, this person was mentally deranged but, also, she was triggered by Google's censorship. Now I've got this very personal story about how censorship has affected my safety.

You would think that maybe YouTube would [rethink] its censorship, but no. They didn't … Every day I would come into work and I would think, 'You know, with this increase in censorship, is someone [else] going to come in with a gun?'"

Google Attempts to Destroy Vorhies by 'Lawfare'
Vorhies resigned from Google June 28, 2019, and was immediately put under investigation, as the company had logs showing the many documents he'd been searching for and reading through. Vorhies tells the story of what happened next:

"When I went to Project Veritas, I went under anonymity. We only released two pages of the 950 that they had [been given]. My hope was that Google would leave me alone … But they decided they weren't going to do that.

They decided they were going to attempt to financially destroy me by engaging in lawfare, which is warfare via the legal system. Within a few weeks of me disclosing ML Fairness to Project Veritas, they sent me threatening letters, demanding access to all my data outside of work …

I wrote them back a letter admitting I had retained files, telling them I had given them to law enforcement ... The NDA, the nondisclosure agreement I signed is nonenforceable in cases where the company is committing criminal activity. Sedition is criminal activity, which means that the NDA is null and void.

I can submit evidence of Google's criminal activity to the government and to the media when the company is engaging in unlawful activity. That's what I did. Also, I signed the NDA in good faith, believing that Google's word of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful and 'Don't be evil,' were truthful statements …

I met an attorney who was representing Kevin Cernekee, another Google engineer who attempted to blow the whistle in the most legitimate way possible, which was to notify the Federal Labor Relations Authority in California. Kevin gave these papers to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Google responded by ambushing him with HR, seizing his laptop, seeing all the documents that he had downloaded, and then firing him and creating a legal theory that he had hacked into Google to get documents so that he could reconstruct Google's legal strategy and maybe even sell it.

They applied criminal charges against him. They made him defend himself in court for his collection of evidence that he had sent to the NLRB. He's [spent] $100,000 dollars of his own money defending himself [against] Google, so I knew what was in store for me.

[Cernekee's] lawyer was like, 'Yeah. This is the first step in a very painful process that's going to drive on for years. They're going to make it very expensive. Their goal is to destroy you.' Well, in that case, I'm not going to fight in the legal law. I'm going to fight in the court of public opinion.

I decided at that point to come out to Project Veritas and disclose who I was so that I could get eyes [on me], and I said, 'If Google's going to take me down, then I'm going to leverage that so that everyone else can see what they do and what they're really about. And then we can make Google's censorship program part of the national discussion.'

I disclosed everything. I released it to the public, all 950 pages … August 17, 2019 … [I've] tried to become a cultural force so that we can hold Google to account of what they're doing, because their censorship is wrong.

It's wrong for America. It's anti-American. Their election meddling is something that needs to be looked at, needs to be watched, because they've meddled with the elections in the past. They're meddling in the elections now.

They were able to deactivate Tulsi Gabbard's ad account directly following the Democratic debates. They've meddled in the Ireland elections. They've meddled in the Brazil elections.

We know this because there was a Supreme Court ruling that released the evidence showing they had a secret agreement with one of the politicians to generate dirt and boost it up on the current president of Brazil."

How Autofill Can Shift Political Opinion
Vorhies goes on to explain and describe how Google tools such as autofill search recommendations can be used to sway public opinion on political (and other topics), which can have significant political consequences.

Autofill is what happens when you start typing a search query into a search engine and algorithms kick in to offer suggestions to complete your search. We've been led to believe that whatever the autofill recommendations are is what most people are in fact searching for — Google has stated that the suggestions given are generated by a collection of user data — but that's not true, at least not anymore.

"This story about the autofill first got disclosed by Dr. Robert Epstein, who is a Harvard-trained psychologist and former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today," Vorhies explains.

"What he said was that Google had flipped a bunch of votes for Hillary using this autosuggest feature. I've investigated this claim. I've verified it to be true … It turns out that a lot of the popular searches were being suppressed.

For example, you typed in 'Clinton body count.' It's a popular search term. This brings up all the people who have died in the decades that were associated with Hillary Clinton.

Well, this search result has been deleted off the search suggestion. What's happened instead is that a bunch of negative search terms have been inserted that went against the current president of the United States, Donald Trump.

So, when you're typing in search queries for Trump, it's autocompleting and suggesting, 'Do you mean that he's a liar? That he's a crook?' … And then you do the same for Hillary Clinton and it has all these positive terms … They were doing this on the political stuff.

The most significant thing about this feature is the fact that you don't expect to have this part of your online experience to be hatched for political reasons. You think that this is legitimately what other people are searching for.

As a result, you don't have your filters on. Your brain puts on these filters when it starts to evaluate politically charged information. When you read a newspaper article, you may be thinking to yourself, 'This may be true, this may not.' You're skeptical.

But when you're typing into a search, you don't think that because you don't think that's rigged, so whatever bias is inherent in that search result slips through and goes directly into your subconscious. This is what Epstein was explaining."

The Search Engine Manipulation Effect
Epstein developed a "black box test" (a method of software testing) to measure just how influential a tool like autofill can be. Remarkably, his test demonstrated that "Google's 'autocomplete' search suggestions can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split"5,6 — all without anyone being aware of the manipulation.

Similarly, when Epstein looked at the power of search engine manipulation to shift preferences and perceptions, he found that:7

"(1) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, (2) the shift can be much higher in some demographic groups, and (3) such rankings can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation."

The good news is, there are ways to lower this manipulation effect, but to do so, people have to be aware that biased ranking is taking place. In his 2017 paper, "Suppressing the Search Engine Manipulation Effect," Epstein writes:8

"A recent series of experiments demonstrated that introducing ranking bias to election-related search engine results can have a strong and undetectable influence on the preferences of undecided voters.

This phenomenon, called the search engine manipulation effect (SEME), exerts influence largely through order effects that are enhanced in a digital context.

We present data from three new experiments involving 3,600 subjects in 39 countries in which we replicate SEME and test design interventions for suppressing the effect. In the replication, voting preferences shifted by 39.0%, a number almost identical to the shift found in a previously published experiment (37.1%).

Alerting users to the ranking bias reduced the shift to 22.1%, and more detailed alerts reduced it to 13.8%. Users' browsing behaviors were also significantly altered by the alerts, with more clicks and time going to lower-ranked search results.

Although bias alerts were effective in suppressing SEME, we found that SEME could be completely eliminated only by alternating search results — in effect, with an equal-time rule.

We propose a browser extension capable of deploying bias alerts in real-time and speculate that SEME might be impacting a wide range of decision-making, not just voting, in which case search engines might need to be strictly regulated."

As pointed out by Vorhies, "We've got to watch out for Google, because … they're going to try to rig the 2020 elections." Based on Epstein's results, Google certainly appears to have the power to do so. The only way to prevent it may be an information campaign that exposes this hidden agenda, thereby helping to suppress this search engine manipulation effect.

Do a Google Detox
How can you prevent getting sucked into the false-reality vortex that is Google? Vorhies offers a number of suggestions for how to minimize Google's influence over your life:

Stop using Google search. Options include DuckDuckGo9 and Startpage10
Stop using Gmail. ProtonMail,11 which provides end-to-end encryption and less spam, is an excellent option
Switch from an android phone (powered by Google) to an iPhone. While not perfect, iPhone is slightly better of the two
There are alternatives for most if not all Google products, and by using these other companies, we can help them grow so that Google becomes less and less relevant.

"Use iPhone, use DuckDuckGo and use Protonmail. Those three things will get most of Google out of your life," Vorhies says. "I've been a lot happier because of that. I know [Google is] able to read everything that I write when I'm on Gmail or I'm using one of their services. I've had people who want to interview me on YouTube, and then their YouTube pages get destroyed."

Also, stop using Google docs (Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives12) and if you're a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts.

Both the Chrome and Firefox browsers have also been compromised by Google, so consider switching if you're on either of those. Brave is my personal favorite, but the Opera browser is another alternative.13 Vorhies is also a fan of Brave.

"The guy who created this browser, Brave … added features to eliminate all the ads. Now my MacBook runs like new. I've got a 2012 MacBook. I thought I had to upgrade it in order to make it run fast.

[Using] Brave instead, my computer operates five times faster when it [has] a lot of browser tabs open. It's phenomenal. Not only do I get to Google detox, but I get a better experience by not using Google. It's a no-brainer. People should just use it. And all of the plug-ins I use, like LastPass, which contains all of my passwords, they all install."

Support Vorhies' 'Disclosure Tour'
In the interview, Vorhies recounts a long harrowing incident in which Google instructed local police to perform a mental wellness check on him, which escalated into a full-blown evacuation of the entire street due to a fake bomb threat, confabulated in an effort to get him out of his apartment. To get the full scoop on that story, please listen to the interview above.

He also discusses how Google's censorship of things like holistic health and clean energy developments is actually evidence that a better future is ahead. The drug and oil industries are starting to lose their grip as safer, less expensive and more effective alternatives are gaining ground. Censorship is a last-ditch effort to hold on to a crumbling paradigm.

As Vorhies mentioned earlier, his primary focus right now is to raise awareness about Google and to create a cultural force for change. You can help by sharing this article and video, and by following Vorhies on Twitter. His handle is PerpetualManiac (Twitter.com/PerpetualManiac).

"If you click the follow button, you'll be part of a collection of patriots who are looking to ensure the survival of the republic, to ensure sovereignty and to bring Google to account for the censorship they're doing. People are helping me raise awareness by retweeting the things I'm saying. Because honestly, I'm fighting giants," Vorhies says.

"If [Google is] going to take me down, then I'm just going to go down fighting. I'm going to leverage everything they do to further the great awakening that's happening right now in the United States and across the world.

I'm doing that because, ultimately, I'm in service to a higher power … I believe this magnificent creative force in the universe wants people to be free. It's up to us to ensure that the freedoms we enjoy are handed down to our children … our grandchildren and our collective future." "
- Sources and References
1 Project Veritas, Google Document Dump
2 The New York Times May 31, 2017
3 The New York Times June 1, 2017
4 CNN April 14, 2018
5 U.S. Senate, Epstein Testimony (PDF), Page 3
6 American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, The Search Suggestion Effect 2018(PDF)
7 Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Aug 18; 112(33): E4512–E4521
8 Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., November 2017; 1(2): Article 42 (PDF)
9 Fast Company, Inside DuckDuckGo
10 Startpage.com
11 ProtonMail
12 Digital Trends April 28, 2017
13 Opera Browser

Cara

20th November 2019, 04:43

This is an articulate, comprehensive interview by Rico Brouwer of the Dutch channel Cafe Weltschmerz with researcher Dr Robert Epstein. It covers how Google manipulates and changes people’s minds and thus behaviours through its biased search results and what Google refers to as “ephemeral experiences”.

Dr Epstein testified before US Congress. This interview includes a brief mention of his research studies conducted in India in 2014, and the US in 2016 and 2018.

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Published on Nov 18, 2019
How Google manipulates your search results and influences elections worldwide.

The Minister of the interior in the Netherlands on Oct. 18th 2019 responded to a motion adopted in parliament last year, that called to investigate the ‘effects of social media and internet search engines on our elections’. But rather than answering the question that was asked in the motion, she responded by informing Dutch Parliament of her intent to ‘preemptively prevent disinformation from spreading’, referring to a report she added that labels some hundred Dutch alternative media outlets as outlets of hyperpartisan junknews.

Over the past seven years dr. Robert Epstein however did investigate this matter by doing two kinds of research. One goes into the ‘Search Engine Manipulation Effect', in which he substantiates to what extent biased search engine result will shift voters opinion. The other is that the actual answers that Google provides voters worldwide with, are in fact biased on a scale that has shifted millions of votes and will do even more in future elections.
In Café Weltschmerz, Robert Epstein explains to Rico Brouwer how this kind of votes manipulation works, how it is a threat to democracies worldwide and how it may be amended by US Congress or the European Union. The solution is simple. Epstein: ‘They would simply declare that Google’s index, the database that they use to generate search results, must be a public commons’.

The database underlying Google’s search engine is the most extensive database in the world, however it contains content that was scraped from other people’s websites. So the content in the database isn’t eve theirs.

For those searching for alternative search platforms or apps, some are listed on:
* https://switching.software/ethical-alternatives-to-google-search/...
* Dr Epstein’s mentions his site mysevensimplesteps.com
Note about how Startpage searches: it anonymously proxies your search engine questions to the Google searchengine, rather than access the database -or index- of Google directly.
Startpage was mentioned by ‪Privacytools.io‬ in this nov. 12th article: https://blog.privacytools.io/delisting-startpage/...
links:
* In between the Trump and Clinton tweets - https://mobile.twitter.com/DrREpstein/status/1163907153989521408...
* Dutch report ‘THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MANIPULATION’ https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/10/18/rapport-politiek-en-sociale-media-manipulatie...
* The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and itspossible impact on the outcomes of elections https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/33/E4512.full.pdf...
* Epstein, R. (2018, ‪May 17‬). Taming Big Tech: The case for monitoring. Hacker Noon. https://hackernoon.com/taming-big-tech-5fef0df0f00d...
* Epstein, R., & Williams, E. (2019, April). Evidence of systematic political bias in online search results in the 10 days leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Paper presented at the 99th annual meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Pasadena, CA. https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_WILLIAMS_2019-WPA-Evidence_of-search_engine_bias_related_to_2018_midterm_elections.pdf...
* testimony before Congress, July 16, 2019, hearing on Google and censorship (7-min. video):https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4807816/user-clip-congressionalhearing-16july2019-testimonybydrrobertepstein...
* article about how Congress, the DOJ, the FTC, or the EU can quickly and permanently end Google's worldwide monopoly on search: Epstein, R. (2019, ‪Jul 15‬). To break Google's monopoly, make its index public. Bloomberg Businessweek. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-15/to-break-google-s-monopoly-on-search-make-its-index-public...
* Epstein, R. (2019, ‪July 16‬). Why Google poses a serious threat to democracy, and how to end that threat. Congressional Record of the United States. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf...
* Epstein in Glenn Beck show (17 sept 2019) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P5nhXrPVW4Q... // (oct 7 2019) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FReM8Bc3I4k...
* ‘How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results’(Wall Street Journal, 15 nov. 2019) https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-search-algorithms-and-changes-your-results-11573823753...

onawah

7th January 2020, 18:46

Google and Big Tech Bought Congress
50 Attorneys General Take on the World's Biggest Monopoly
by Dr. Mercola
1/7/20
QOembB8_E1A
"Many fear this company is getting too large and may have too much control over individuals' personal data. But it's about to get even worse as they branch into banking, in addition to all they're involved with now. This new probe is just the beginning."
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/01/07/google-big-tech-bought-congress.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20200107Z1&et_cid=DM431392&et_rid=785123519

"STORY AT-A-GLANCE
Fifty state attorneys general launched an antitrust investigation into Google’s advertising business in September 2019; they are now expanding their probe to include Google’s search and Android businesses as well
Google is expanding into banking as well. Through a partnership with Citigroup and a San Francisco University credit union, the company is planning to offer checking accounts tied to Google Pay sometime in 2020
So far, the European Union has taken a far stronger stance against Google’s monopoly. In 2018, it fined Google $5 billion for Android antitrust abuse and, in 2017, the company was fined $2.7 billion for unfairly favoring its own shopping service over its competitors
Big Tech is pushing for the inclusion of protection mirroring Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in various free trade agreements, to protect them from foreign regulations. Section 230 provides internet platforms liability protection for user-generated content
While Section 230 makes free speech online possible for everyone, it also allows Google, YouTube and Facebook to filter out and censor whatever they want while still qualifying as a platform rather than a curator of content
Taking on Google, the biggest monopoly the world has ever seen, is no small task, but 50 state attorneys general are making the effort, having launched an antitrust investigation in September 20191 that will reportedly be expanded to include Google’s search and Android businesses as well.2

The probe, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, initially focused on the company’s advertising arm and its use of consumer data, but as noted by Recode editor-at-large Kara Swisher in the November 14, 2019, CNBC interview above, it’s virtually impossible to look at Google’s advertising business without entering into search and Android as well, since everything the company does is interconnected.

“You’re going to see a lot of action everywhere, sort of coalescing around the same things, because some of these problems can be met with regulation, some of them with fines, some of them with antitrust action and some of them with breakup.

But this is the beginning phase of investigation, and you have to look at search and Android if you’re going to look at advertising when it comes to Google and Facebook and other companies,” Swisher says.

The legal sidebar document, “Regulating Big Tech: Legal Implications,”3 issued by the Congressional Research Service in September 2019, lists a number of proposed policy changes and what they would accomplish from a legal standpoint.

Google Moves Into Banking
Who knows, the attorneys’ general investigation may need to expand even further, as Google is branching into banking as well. Through a partnership with Citigroup and a San Francisco University credit union, the company is planning to offer checking accounts tied to Google Pay sometime in 2020. As reported by CBS News November 13, 2019:4

“Google's move into checking comes at a time when other Big Tech companies like Apple and Facebook are looking to dive deeper into consumer banking and financial services.

It's also happening at a time when consumer watchdogs and lawmakers increasingly warn that those same companies are getting too large and may have too much control over Americans' personal data.

‘When competition expands that's a good thing,’ said Mike Moebs, a financial services consultant who specializes in bank accounts … ‘Big question that it raises is will Google share that data, and that is a big privacy concern,’ Moebs said …

Checking accounts could offer Google plenty of new consumer data, including how much people are paid, how much they spend and where and when they spend.”

When asked for a comment on Google’s expansion into checking accounts, Swisher says, “They just keep going. That’s the thing about these companies … they need growth, and the areas that are big are finance and health care, and you see [them] move into both of these areas in a strong way.”

Google Files for Order of Protection
According to CNBC,5 “States can be more aggressive in antitrust investigations than federal regulators, because they are less constrained by the lobbying and political forces that consume Washington, D.C.” That said, Google is also under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department.

Whether any of these probes will lead to significant changes remain to be seen, however. Previous U.S. investigations have fizzled and been dropped.6 The European Union has taken a far stronger stance against the monopoly thus far, issuing a $5 billion fine in July 2018 for Android antitrust abuse.7

Google was ordered to cease favoring its own company by forcing Android manufacturers to exclusively pre-install the devices with a suite of Google apps. In 2017, the EU also fined Google $2.7 billion for unfairly favoring its own shopping service over its competitors.8 According to CNBC:9

“With that track record, the attorneys general investigating Google likely already have a broad vision of the case they wish to pursue against Google.

They will use their CID [civil investigative demand] requests to seek materials like emails and strategy documents to support that view, while looking for evidence of clear anti-competitive behavior. The requests can be a means of filling in holes in evidence, or a tactic to build up pressure on a company in hopes of forcing a settlement.”

Personally, I doubt fines will ever set Google on the right path. It’s so big, even fines in the billions of dollars end up being too small to act as a deterrent. The company can make up for such losses in too short a time.

As reported by CNBC,10,11 Google is also trying to block access to certain information, having filed an order of protection against Texas CIDs requesting information the company deems confidential. In its filing, Google claims two consultants hired by the attorney general have working relationships with competitors, and might misuse the information.
Internet Companies Seek Protection in Trade Agreements
Google and other Big Tech companies are also pursuing legal protection via various free trade agreements. As reported by the Los Angeles Times October 16, 2019:12

“A bipartisan group of lawmakers is stepping up efforts to have U.S. trade officials eliminate a legal liability shield that tech companies are pushing to keep in new agreements, including a deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement awaiting approval by Congress …

The lawmakers … were examining whether tech giants should continue to benefit from Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which provides internet platforms liability protection for user-generated content.

Online platforms such as Google and Facebook Inc. prize the provision of U.S. law, and their trade groups are also pushing for the extension of similar protections internationally that would unify policy among countries in trade deals such as the pact to replace NAFTA and a proposal for a deal with Japan …

But Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, chairwoman of the Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee, told reporters … that language similar to Section 230 has no place in a trade agreement.

‘It is a uniquely American law, and we’re in the midst of a discussion about it, and this is a gift to Big Tech to insert it into trade agreements,’ Schakowsky said …

The hearing comes amid growing skepticism among lawmakers about whether social media companies should keep the legal protection as a part of U.S. law as they struggle to stem drug and gun sales and offensive content on their platforms.

Tech companies value the measure because it saves them from having to review users’ posts before they’re published online and then shields them from lawsuits if that content turns out to be problematic, which critics say allows the companies to avoid taking responsibility for dangerous and illegal content.

Yet the companies emphasized that the law also can protect their moves to remove violence and misinformation, which they say is needed to police their online spaces.”

The Problem With Global Expansion of Section 230
The main reason Big Tech wants to insert privileges mirroring those of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act into all future trade deals is to shield them from foreign regulators, The New York Times says, noting that:13

“Europe has enacted tough policies to curb the behavior of companies like Facebook and Google and passed laws to deal with privacy, hate speech and disinformation. China has largely cordoned itself off from the rest of the internet, allowing Beijing to censor political content and bolster Chinese tech companies like Alibaba and Tencent.

In India, Indonesia, Russia and Vietnam, governments are introducing regulations to ostensibly protect their citizens’ privacy and build domestic internet industries that critics say will stymie the ability of American companies to provide services in those countries. The United States wants its more permissive rules to form the basis for worldwide regulation.”

American legislators have become increasingly critical of Section 230 in light of Google and other internet platforms’ apparent political biases and ability to hinder the free flow of information from both sides of the political aisle.

To be clear, a primary problem with Section 230 — and its expansion globally through trade agreements — is that it allows Google, YouTube and Facebook to filter out and essentially censor whatever they want while still qualifying as a platform rather than a curator of content. As reported by R Street:14

“By clarifying that platforms are not the publisher or speaker of user-generated content, the law allows platforms to moderate user content that serves to harass or stifle the speech of others while giving them the flexibility to leave up potentially controversial but legitimate posts without fear that they will be sued.”

In short, the law facilitates Google’s bias, and its hiding of bias. That said, Section 230 is also in large part what allows for true free speech online, as illustrated in a July 2019 Reason article,15 and its elimination would make online discussions far riskier, from a legal standpoint, for everyone. As noted by Reason:16

“Section 230 stipulates, in essence, that digital services or platforms and their users are not one and the same and thus shouldn't automatically be held legally liable for each other's speech and conduct …

Without it, they would face extraordinary legal liability. A world without Section 230 could sink all but the biggest companies, or force them to severely curtail the speech of their users in order to avoid legal trouble.”

Do a Google Detox
Clearly, these are complex issues with no clear and simple answers. While some view Section 230 as a gift to Big Tech, others argue that its removal would impact smaller platforms to a far greater degree than Google, and would stifle free exchange of opinions for fear of liability for offensive content posted by users.

Whatever happens, if you care about your privacy and unbiased access to information, especially health information, you’d be wise to minimize your Google footprint by ditching its services. Suggestions on how to minimize Google’s influence over your life include:

Stop using Google search — Options include Qwant,17 DuckDuckGo18 and Startpage19
Stop using Chrome — Use Brave as an alternative browser. It is based on the same software, chromium, so it is easy to switch your favorites and bookmarks over, but it preserves your privacy
Stop using Gmail — ProtonMail,20 which provides end-to-end encryption and less spam, is an excellent option
Switch from an Android phone (powered by Google) to an iPhone — While not perfect, iPhone is slightly better of the two in terms of privacy protections
There are alternatives for most if not all Google products, and by using these other companies, we can help them grow so that Google becomes less and less relevant. Also, stop using Google docs (Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives21) and if you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts."
- Sources and References
1 CNET.com September 13, 2019
2, 5, 6, 9, 10 CNBC November 14, 2019
3 Congressional Research Service, Regulating Big Tech: Legal Implications, September 11, 2019 (PDF)
4 CBS News November 13, 2019
7 CNBC July 18, 2018
8 CNBC June 27, 2017
11 CNBC October 31, 2019
12 Los Angeles Times October 16, 2019
13 New York Times October 7, 2017 (Archived)
14 R Street December 17, 2019
15, 16 Reason July 29, 2019
17 Qwant
18 Fast Company, Inside DuckDuckGo
19 Startpage.com
20 ProtonMail
21 Digital Trends April 28, 2017

Bill Ryan

10th September 2020, 10:44

New on Brietbart:

https://breitbart.com/tech/2020/09/06/google-twitter-insider-algorithms-could-censor-entire-trump-movement-simultaneously

Google & Twitter Insider: Algorithms Could Censor Entire Trump Movement Simultaneously

6 Sept, 2020

An upcoming bombshell book (http://deletedbook.com) from Breitbart News investigative reporter Allum Bokhari interviews a source that has worked at both Google and Twitter, who exposes how the AI algorithms used by Big Tech platforms are being trained to target conservatives.

The book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election (http://deletedbook.com/), will be published by Center Street on September 22, and is currently available for preorder. Sources close to Google and other tech giants say the book will “shake the foundations of Silicon Valley (https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/08/31/deleted-big-techs-battle-erase-trump-movement-steal-election/).”

One former Twitter and Google employee, who spent over a decade working in Big Tech companies, spoke to Bokhari about the “quality ranking” that major tech companies assign their users.

This secret score, which has eerie similarities to China’s “social credit” system, is used by tech platforms to determine whether their users are a source of value for the company, or whether they are “abusive,” and a detriment to other users.

The source reveals how the term “abusive,” which previously only applied to non-political behaviors like spamming and the posting of obscene content, has been turned into a tool to train AI algorithms to censor the right.

These algorithms are being taught, by Big Tech’s most anti-Trump employees, that “abusive” behavior includes things like “hate speech,” “misinformation,” the posting of “conspiracy theories,” and other behaviors subject to highly political definitions.

The source also alleges that an account’s “quality” score can be lowered simply by following or sharing material from other accounts considered “abusive,” allowing algorithms to censor entire networks of people at the same time.

The insider goes on to explain how these algorithms are being rolled out across multiple tech platforms, and will result in the wholesale suppression of the Trump movement — just in time for the election.

#DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election (http://deletedbook.com) hits bookshelves on September 22 and is currently available for preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.

Johan (Keyholder)

15th September 2020, 14:54

Interesting thread!

Has anyone watched "The social dilemma"? If so, what do you think about this documentary?

And has anyone here read books by Jaron Lanier? If so, what are your ideas about what he writes?

Bill Ryan

23rd October 2020, 11:18

Interesting thread!

Has anyone watched The Social Dilemma? If so, what do you think about this documentary?

And has anyone here read books by Jaron Lanier? If so, what are your ideas about what he writes?

Here, in the Avalon Library: :thumbsup:

http://avalonlibrary.net/The_Social_Dilemma_(2020).mp4 (838 Mb)

http://avalonlibrary.net/The_Social_Dilemma_(2020).mp4

Also:

Jaron Lanier - Who Owns the Future?
http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Jaron%20Lanier%20-%20Who%20Owns%20the%20Future%3F.pdf

Jaron Lanier - You Are Not a Gadget - A Manifesto
http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Jaron%20Lanier%20-%20You%20Are%20Not%20a%20Gadget%20-%20A%20Manifesto.pdf

Bill Ryan

23rd October 2020, 11:31

Some statistics:

The world's population is 7.8 billion.
4.4 billion are on the internet.
3.9 billion use Google and YouTube.
3 billion use Facebook.
Nearly ALL those 3 billion are using all three at the same time.

TV and radio have little to do with it any more. Google, YouTube and/or Facebook are where half the human race gets almost ALL their information from.

Wind

26th October 2020, 03:05

The ones who control the algorithms control the flow of information and that way echo chambers are created which further division.

People are played one off against another, divide and conquer. It's the oldest trick in the book and still works like a charm.

Ewan

26th October 2020, 08:51

Mike Gorman

26th October 2020, 09:28

This is an extremely "On Point" topic.
We were discussing the monopoly of Google way back at the turn of this Century; I remember it very well!
I have written quite a few articles and pieces where I describe the Silicon Valley's dominance of mass media (because digital media types are today's true Mass Media)
as being very much like The Borg.
Resistance is futile, your culture will be assimilated and contribute to the overall nature of this dominant voice!
I know that sounds flippant, but I think it has more than a ring of truth.
The really interesting feature of the WWW, and one that is not discussed very widely, is the exponential effect of publication.
With the Web we have this enormously powerful medium for publishing: it is the Printing Press amplified many thousands of times. And we all know what effect the Printing Press had on our world:
It enabled our modern world to manifest.
While I am pessimistic about the passing of the torch, the replication of the media gatekeepers from the old Broadcast world, I am also optimistic about the 'net Effect' of independent publication.
The fact that we can come together on this platform is an example of this, Avalon has not been smudged out, or prevented from existing by Silicon Valley.
There are in reality Millions of blogs, and independent publications out there, and the fact that we can discuss - analyse in real time WHAT we consume, is in itself a positive thing.
There is hope and great potential from being able to publish - that gatekeeper has truly been vanquished, and this is why they work so hard to collectivise us all on the social media locations.
But millions are not complying, millions are seeking out alternatives, 10's of thousands are setting up independent projects. And all of this has an exponential effect. Despite Silicon Valley's dominance, they cannot
truly contain the voice of humanity, and they never shall.

Tintin

26th October 2020, 15:39

Not forgetting Amazon either. of course.

From Svetlana's site (https://www.spygate-exposed.com/)

Born in Moscow, British historian and intelligence expert Svetlana Lokhova is a leading authority on Soviet espionage. A scholar at Cambridge University, she is an eyewitness to Spygate. She regularly appears in the media both in the US and UK.

As a Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, Lokhova worked extensively with the “Mitrokhin Archive”—the only publicly-available source of KGB records.

And confirmation of the attempts to continue the burning of the books:

1320664898809069569

It can be purchased here, presumably: https://www.spygate-exposed.com/product-page/spygate-exposed-pdf-1

TargeT

30th November 2020, 23:43

Huge senate query today... and VERY interesting testimony.... they are ALL working together & aren't even denying that..

LfXRy25QkeI

onawah

1st December 2020, 00:39

Was there another inquiry going on today? (That clip isn't from today.)
Huge senate query today... and VERY interesting testimony.... they are ALL working together & aren't even denying that..

Eva2

6th December 2020, 21:37

'Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism Hardcover – November 24, 2020

New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson takes on the media’s misreporting on Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, Joe Biden, Silicon Valley censorship, and more.

When the facts don’t fit their Narrative, the media abandons the facts, not the Narrative. Virtually every piece of information you get through the media has been massaged, shaped, curated, and manipulated before it reaches you. Some of it is censored entirely. The news can no longer be counted on to reflect all the facts. Instead of telling us what happened yesterday, they tell us what’s new in the prepackaged soap opera they’ve been calling the news.

For the past four years, five-time Emmy Award–winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson has been collecting and dissecting alarming incidents tracing the shocking devolution of what used to be the most respected news organizations on the planet. For the first time, top news executives and reporters representing every major national television news outlet—from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN to FOX and MSNBC—speak frankly, confiding in Attkisson about the death of the news as they once knew it. Their concern transcends partisan divides.

Most frightening of all, a broad campaign in the media has convinced many Americans not only to accept but to demand censorship over journalism. It is a stroke of genius on the part of those seeking to influence public opinion: undermine public confidence in the news, then insist upon “curating” information and divining the “truth.” The thinking is done for you. They’ll decide which pesky facts shouldn’t cross your desk by declaring them false, irrelevant, debunked, unsafe, or out-of-bounds.

We have reached a state of utter absurdity, where journalism schools teach students that their own, personal truth or chosen narratives matter more than reality. In Slanted, Attkisson digs into the language of propagandists, the persistence of false media narratives, the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion, the abandonment of journalism ethics, and the new, Orwellian definition of what it means to report the news.'

https://www.amazon.com/Slanted-Media-Taught-Censorship-Journalism/dp/0062974696

pueblo

19th December 2020, 14:23

Credit Scores anyone? This will quickly get "upgraded" to Social Credit Scores including, you guessed it, vaccination status! all in one easy to inject little chip, now if you'll please bend over....

https://twitter.com/flexlibris/status/1340018080601300998?s=20

Gwin Ru

19th December 2020, 16:34

REVEALED: Chinese government got a Zoom executive to spy on video conference users, shut down meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square protests and terminate accounts (http://www.yourdestinationnow.com/2020/12/revealed-chinese-government-got-zoom.html)

December 19, 2020 (http://www.yourdestinationnow.com/2020/12/revealed-chinese-government-got-zoom.html)

A Zoom executive based inChinahas been charged with sabotaging virtual video conferences commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Xinjiang Jin, 39, - also known as 'Julien Jin' - worked for the telecommunications company as a security technical leader in China's Zhejiang Province, according to a complaint and arrest warrant unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn on Friday.

At the direction of Chinese intelligence, Jin allegedly participated in a scheme to disrupt several video meetings, which were organized and hosted by Americans, held in May and June of this year to honor the event.

Federal prosecutors have charged Jin with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer a means of identification.

Jin is currently not in U.S. custody.

'No company with significant business interests in China is immune from the coercive power of the Chinese Communist Party,' John C Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, said in a statement (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/china-based-executive-us-telecommunications-company-charged-disrupting-video-meetings).

'The Chinese Communist Party will use those within its reach to sap the tree of liberty, stifling free speech in China, the United States and elsewhere about the Party's repression of the Chinese people.

'For companies with operations in China, like that here, this reality may mean executives being coopted to further repressive activity at odds with the values that have allowed that company to flourish here.'

Staring in January 2019, Jin was Zoom's primary liaison with law enforcement and intelligence services in China, according to the complaint Jin is responsible for monitoring Zoom for 'illegal' meetings discussing politics and religion on behalf of the Chinese government

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/12/18/20/37020684-9068871-image-a-87_1608322302812.jpg
(file image)

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/12/18/20/37020028-9068871-image-a-95_1608322381339.jpg
Pictured: People hold candles during the 31st Anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, June 2020

He and co-conspirators shut down at least four meetings in May and June commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

He would often provide the government with information about users and meetings, names, email addresses and even IP addresses.

In his role, he was responsible for monitoring Zoom for what China's government considered 'illegal' meetings discussing politics and religion.

At the direction government, Jin and other uncharged individuals shut down at least four meetings commemorating the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.

The protests were student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square calling for democracy between April and June 1989.

On June 4, Chinese troops and security police stormed Tiananmen Square and fired at protesters, killing as many as 300.

Most of the meetings were organized by Chinese individuals living in the U.S. who had either participated in or survived the protests.

Fake email accounts of the political dissidents and Jin claimed the users were violating terms of service agreements by supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/12/18/20/37020026-9068871-image-a-97_1608322418336.jpg
Pictured: Pro-democracy protesters raise their hands during a memorial vigil at Victoria Park in Hong Kong commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, June 2020

Jin fabricated evidence that were violating terms of service agreements by supporting terrorist organizations or distributing child pornography.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/12/18/20/37020038-9068871-image-a-94_1608322354769.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/12/18/20/37020032-9068871-image-m-93_1608322347311.jpg

Jin (left and right) then used this false evidence to convince U.S. Zoom executives to suspend or terminate accounts of users, many political dissidents. He has been charged with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer a means of identification

Evidence was fabricated, such as a fake profile picture of a masked person holding a flag resembling that of the Islamic State terrorist group

Jin then used this purported evidence to convince Zoom executives in the U.S. to terminate meetings and suspend or cancel those users' accounts.

Meanwhile, in China, the government either detained users who were visiting the country or threatened their family members to tell to the users to stop speaking out against the Communist Party.

If convicted of both charges, Jin faces a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.
'The FBI remains committed to protecting the exercise of free speech for all Americans,' said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement.

'As this complaint alleges, that freedom was directly infringed upon by the pernicious activities of Communist China's Intelligence Services, in support of a regime that neither reflects nor upholds our democratic values.

'Americans should understand that the Chinese Government will not hesitate to exploit companies operating in China to further their international agenda, including repression of free speech.'

Tintin

8th January 2021, 15:12

A toss up between here or the Censorship thread for this offering.

I'm with you Calvin, this really is quite something :facepalm:

1347434389337157634

ExomatrixTV

24th February 2021, 00:20

wtf?? New York Times Says: "Critical Thinking Won't Help Against Misinformation":

SBVagDhZXME
source (https://www.bitchute.com/video/SBVagDhZXME/)

Although some might have issues grasping sarcasm on a lighter note ... I truly appreciate the humor side of things ... but that is me ... and I totally get it why some hate sarcasm ... seems like you either love it or you hate it ;)

Brilliant video-rant and worth every minute if you like/get/dig sarcasm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVxFJUqyEkk) the right way.

cheers,
John

Tintin

20th April 2021, 15:19

JAMES O’KEEFE SUES TWITTER in New York Supreme Court for ‘FALSE AND DEFAMATORY’ Statements

James O’Keefe made good on his promise to fight back and “go on offense” against corrupt media platforms today, by filing a lawsuit against Twitter -- citing false and defamatory statements the company made about him last week.

Project Veritas has already sued and won on Motion to Dismiss against The New York Times for defamation and will sue CNN for similar reasons.

O’Keefe, who was permanently banned from Twitter on Thursday, was accused of operating “fake accounts. O’Keefe operates no fake accounts.

Legal Complaint reads: “This is a defamation action arising from the publication of a false and defamatory statement by Twitter on April 15, 2021 concerning its decision that day to ban Plaintiff James O’Keefe, an investigative journalist followed by over 926,000 Twitter users as of the time he was banned.”

The Complaint continues: “Twitter’s false and defamatory claim was that it removed Mr. O’Keefe because he “operated fake accounts.”

The ban came on the heels of Project Veritas’ Bombshell undercover CNN videos, showing Technical Director Charlie Chester admitting the news network is “propaganda,” designed to oust President Trump and control viewers through “fear.”

This most recent lawsuit against Twitter is just one in a string of litigation O’Keefe and Project Veritas have lined up.

[WESTCHESTER, NY – Apr. 19, 2021] Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe sued Twitter in The Supreme Court of New York today, over “false and defamatory” statements made by the Big Tech giant.

Full story here (https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-james-okeefe-sues-twitter-in-new-york-supreme-court-for-false-and/)

-------------------------------
Copy of filing:
Source: https://assets.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/6ynBlA0zwv3U52iUcdEMG3/de2136e36e2eb295bbebbe2e8fa8599b/Final_Twitter_Final_2_-_Complaint-1-.pdf

https://assets.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/6ynBlA0zwv3U52iUcdEMG3/de2136e36e2eb295bbebbe2e8fa8599b/Final_Twitter_Final_2_-_Complaint-1-.pdf

Tintin

6th September 2021, 13:42

GOVERNMENT’S ONLINE SAFETY BILL “POSES GREATEST THREAT TO UK FREE SPEECH IN LIVING MEMORY”, SAY CAMPAIGNERS
BIG BROTHER WATCH TEAM / SEPTEMBER 5, 2021

Source: Big Brother Watch (https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/2021/09/governments-online-safety-bill-poses-greatest-threat-to-free-speech-in-living-memory-say-campaigners/)

________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Big Brother Watch has launched a new report warning against the “censorious” Online Safety Bill, and sounding the alarm on the rise of Big Tech speech police.

The report, titled The State of Free Speech Online (https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/The-State-of-Free-Speech-Online.pdf), explores how:

- Marginalised groups are disproportionately impacted by tech platforms’ rules, which abandon legal speech standards
- Online censorship has resulted in the removal of political parties’ and campaign groups’ online content
- Online platforms’ “misinformation” policies are shutting down online discussions about public health policy
- The Government’s little-known Counter Disinformation Unit pressures social media companies to take down lawful speech

The report documents the growing threat of social media censorship with a catalogue of shocking case studies of account suspensions and bans, particularly in relation to sex and gender, race, politics and health.

Far from “reigning in” social media companies, the campaigners say, the Government is “seeking a share of the extraordinary power to suppress and censor lawful speech on a scale never seen before”.

The report dissects the Government’s Online Safety Bill, which the civil liberties group warns would increase online censorship and pose a serious threat to online free speech in the UK.

Impact on marginalised voices

Over 2 years of research has unearthed scores of examples of online censorship involving marginalised groups – from feminist debates, to comments about sex or race, to erasure of people who have, or have had, mental health problems.

In one case, a gay man was locked out of his Facebook account for saying that being gay “would be so much easier without men, men are the worst”, showing the blunt nature of social media companies’ “hate speech” policies, which operate without contextualisation and often suppress the speech of those they claim to protect.

On Instagram, photos of users who have self-harm scars are routinely hidden and labelled as “sensitive content” that people may find “disturbing”.

On Twitter, scores of users have been suspended or banned in the course of debates about sex and gender, or for allegedly misgendering other users with terms such as “cis” or “dude”.

Political censorship

Big Brother Watch’s research also found a growth in arbitrary political censorship, with the posts of political parties and civil society groups shut down without justification.

Twitter recently removed the grassroots “Kill the Bill” campaign, which opposes the Government’s controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The campaign group was given no explanation for the suspension of the account and set up another account, which was also shut down. The accounts were reinstated after Big Brother Watch complained to Twitter.

Increased shutdown of public health policy discussion

Since early 2020, social media companies’ rules regarding so-called “disinformation” and “misinformation” have become increasingly stringent, with many platforms prohibiting content that diverges from WHO guidance. This has been documented by a number of high-level instances of academics and journalists having their posts about public health policies censored.

However, Big Brother Watch’s research also found this happening at a lower level and restricting the discussions of ordinary users.

Counter Disinformation Cell

The report also examines state-censorship and the work of the little-known Counter Disinformation Cell. The opaque Whitehall unit liaises with social media platforms, flagging posts mainly about coronavirus and the pandemic that it believes breach the platforms’ rules – although not the law.

The civil liberties group warns against the slippery slope of “extrajudicial censorship” and the convergence of power between the tech giants and Government.

QUOTES

Commenting on the publication of the report, Mark Johnson, Legal and Policy Officer at Big Brother Watch said:

"We’ve exposed how, over recent years, social media companies have adopted increasingly censorious speech standards. The Online Safety Bill will only make this worse and poses a greater threat to freedom of speech in the UK than any other law in living memory.

The Bill does absolutely nothing to help police deal with real crime online but rather, focuses the lens on ordinary people’s conversations. The Bill will force social media companies to suppress lawful content which is controversial, counter-cultural or offensive.

These new rules will leave us with two tiers of speech, where speech that’s permitted on the street is not allowed online.

This framework for control of lawful speech will do untold damage to free expression that may be impossible to reverse. The Government should remove powers over lawful speech from the Bill altogether."

ENDS

Notes:

The report is available to download here (https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/The-State-of-Free-Speech-Online.pdf).