Vigilant News

Eternal Vigilance is the price of liberty.

Censorship

WSJ Editor to Davos: “We No Longer Own the News”
Information and discourse are no longer monopolized by traditional media entities. Decentralized media is the future and the present.

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During a WEF discussion at Davos titled “Defending Truth,” Wall Street Journal EIC Emma Tucker lamented this loss of control over “the facts.”

“I think there’s a very specific challenge for the legacy brands, like the New York Times and like the Wall Street Journal,” Tucker said, adding “If you go back really not that long ago, as I say, we owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well.”

“If it said it in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, then that was a fact,” she continued, adding “Nowadays, people can go to all sorts of different sources for the news and they’re much more questioning about what we’re saying.”

Vice President Věra Jourová of the European Commission also participated in the discourse, characterizing the proliferation of “disinformation” as a “security menace” and stating,  “It was part of the Russian military doctrine that they will start information war, and we are in it now.”

“Disinformation is a very powerful tool,” Jourová continued, adding that “In the EU we are focusing on improving of the system where the people will get the facts right. We don’t speak about opinions. We are not correcting anyone’s opinions or language. This is about the facts.”

Additional commentary:

We are the news now.

New Twitter Files: How Twitter Rigged the COVID Debate

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THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE

– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*
– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*

2. So far the Twitter Files have focused on evidence of Twitter’s secret blacklists; how the company functioned as a kind of subsidiary of the FBI; and how execs rewrote the platform’s rules to accommodate their own political desires. 
3. What we have yet to cover is Covid. This reporting, for The Free Press, @TheFP, is one piece of that important story. 
4. The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19. 
5. Internal files at Twitter that I viewed while on assignment for @TheFP showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes. 
6. At the onset of the pandemic, according to meeting notes, the Trump admin was especially concerned about panic buying. They came looking for “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation” about “runs on grocery stores.” But . . . there were runs on grocery stores.Image
7. It wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.Image
8. When the Biden admin took over, one of their first meeting requests with Twitter executives was on Covid. The focus was on “anti-vaxxer accounts.” Especially Alex Berenson:Image
9. In the summer of 2021, president Biden said social media companies were “killing people” for allowing vaccine misinformation. Berenson was suspended hours after Biden’s comments, and kicked off the platform the following month. 
10. Berenson sued (and then settled with) Twitter. In the legal process Twitter was compelled to release certain internal communications, which showed direct White House pressure on the company to take action on Berenson.

​​alexberenson.substack.com/p/jesse-jackso…Image

11. A December 2022 summary of meetings with the White House by Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, adds new evidence of the White House’s pressure campaign, and cements that it repeatedly attempted to directly influence the platform. 
12. Culbertson wrote that the Biden team was “very angry” that Twitter had not been more aggressive in deplatforming multiple accounts. They wanted Twitter to do more.Image
13. Twitter executives did not fully capitulate to the Biden team’s wishes. An extensive review of internal communications at the company revealed employees often debating moderation cases in great detail, and with more care than was shown by the government toward free speech. 
14. But Twitter did suppress views—many from doctors and scientific experts—that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing. 
15. There were three serious problems with Twitter’s process:

First, much of the content moderation was conducted by bots, trained on machine learning and AI – impressive in their engineering, yet still too crude for such nuanced work. 

16. Second, contractors, in places like the Philippines, also moderated content. They were given decision trees to aid in the process, but tasking non experts to adjudicate tweets on complex topics like myocarditis and mask efficacy data was destined for a significant error rateexample template—deactivate...
17 Third, most importantly, the buck stopped with higher level employees at Twitter who chose the inputs for the bots and decision trees, and subjectively decided escalated cases and suspensions. As it is with all people and institutions, there was individual and collective bias 
18. With Covid, this bias bent heavily toward establishment dogmas. 
19. Inevitably, dissident yet legitimate content was labeled as misinformation, and the accounts of doctors and others were suspended both for tweeting opinions and demonstrably true information. 
20. Exhibit A: Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, tweeted views at odds with US public health authorities and the American left, the political affiliation of nearly the entire staff at Twitter.Image
21. Internal emails show an “intent to action” by a moderator, saying Kulldorff’s tweet violated the company’s Covid-19 misinformation policy and claimed he shared “false information.”Image
22. But Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one which also happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines. 
23. After Twitter took action, Kulldorff’s tweet was slapped with a “Misleading” label and all replies and likes were shut off, throttling the tweet’s ability to be seen and shared by many people, the ostensible core function of the platform:Image
24. In my review of internal files, I found countless instances of tweets labeled as “misleading” or taken down entirely, sometimes triggering account suspensions, simply because they veered from CDC guidance or differed from establishment views. 
25. A tweet by @KelleyKga, a self-proclaimed public health fact checker, with 18K followers, was flagged as “Misleading,” and replies and likes disabled, even though it displayed the CDC’s *own data.*Image
26. Internal records showed that a bot had flagged the tweet, and that it received many “tattles” (what the system amusingly called reports from users). That triggered a manual review by a human who– despite the tweet showing actual CDC data–nevertheless labeled it “Misleading” 
27. Tellingly, the tweet by @KelleyKga that was labeled “Misleading” was a reply to a tweet that contained actual misinformation.

Covid has never been the leading cause of death from disease in children. Yet that tweet remains on the platform, and without a “misleading” label.Image

28. Whether by humans or algorithms, content that was contrarian but true was still subject to getting flagged or suppressed

This tweet was labeled “Misleading,” even though the owner of this account, @_euzebiusz_, a physician, was referring to the results of a published studyImage

29. Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, was permanently suspended from Twitter after receiving multiple strikes for misinformation. One of his strikes was for a tweet referring to the results from a peer reviewed study on mRNA vaccines.Image
30. A review of Twitter log files revealed that an internal audit, conducted after Bostom’s attorney contacted Twitter, found that only 1 of Bostom’s 5 violations were valid.Image
31. The one Bostom tweet found to still be in violation cited data that was legitimate but inconvenient to the public health establishment’s narrative about the risks of flu versus Covid in children.Image
32. That this tweet was not only flagged by a bot, but its violation manually affirmed by a staff member is telling of both the algorithmic and human bias at play. Bostom’s account was suspended for months and was finally restored on Christmas Day. 
33. Another example of human bias run amok was the reaction to this tweet by Trump. Many Trump tweets led to extensive internal debates, and this one was no different.Image
34. In a surreal exchange, Jim Baker, at the time Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, asks why telling people to not be afraid wasn’t a violation of Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation policy.Image
35. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of Trust & Safety, had to explain that optimism wasn’t misinformation.Image
36. Remember @KelleyKga with the CDC data tweet? Twitter’s response to her is clarifying: “we will prioritize review and labeling of content that could lead to increased exposure or transmission.”Image
37. Twitter made a decision, via the political leanings of senior staff, and govt pressure, that the public health authorities’ approach to the pandemic – prioritizing mitigation over other concerns – was “The Science” . . . 
38. Information that challenged that view, such as showing harms of vaccines, or that could be perceived as downplaying the risks of Covid, especially to children, was subject to moderation, and even suppression. No matter whether such views were correct or adopted abroad. 
39. What might this pandemic and its aftermath have looked like if there had been a more open debate on Twitter and other social media platforms—not to mention the mainstream press—about the origins of Covid, about lockdowns, about the true risks of Covid in kids, and much more? 
40. Thanks to @ShellenbergerMD, @lwoodhouse, @lhfang and the team @TheFP for their help reporting this story. 

Twitter, Facebook Routinely Meet with DHS on Censorship According to Report

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Social media giants Twitter and Facebook were reportedly attending regular meetings with the Department of Homeland Security  (DHS) to discuss censorship on a host of sensitive topics, documents leaked to The Intercept revealed.

Investigative journalist Lee Fang posted screenshots of text messages between tech executives discussing such meetings and expressing interest in working more closely with government on censoring “misinformation.”

Citing an Inspector General report, The Intercept noted that big tech executives attended “weekly teleconferences to coordinate Intelligence Community activities to counter election-related disinformation.” Fired Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde was one of the regular attendees of such meetings, the documents revealed. Fang also highlighted one Microsoft executive’s text expressing a desire that the social media platforms “get more comfortable” with government following one such digital gathering.

The outlet further highlighted the apparent normalization of the reporting process to government, pointing to extant domains for submitting takedown requests.

“There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use,” The Intercept noted. “At the time of writing, the ‘content request system’ at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live.”

The report follows revelations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that the FBI had pressured the platform to throttle the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Twitter, meanwhile, may be poised to change its relationship with the government following Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, with the billionaire having vowed to curtail the platform’s censorship practices.

Twitter Engineer: “We’re all Commie as F-ck”, Confirms Twitters Leftist Bias
Project Veritas released new undercover footage Monday night

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Ryan DeLarme,
May 17th, 2022

In a video released Monday night, one of Project Veritas’ undercover reporters captured Siru Murugesan, a senior engineer for Twitter, outright admitting that Twitter’s bias swings drastically to the left. 

Murugesan also claims that many of his colleagues are staunch communists when asked about his opinion of Elon Musk’s takeover bid. The Twitter Engineer says that his fellow employees are “stress eating” and “worried for our jobs”.

 “Our jobs are at stake; he’s a capitalist, and we weren’t really operating as capitalists, more like very socialist,” Murugesan told the undercover reporter, adding, “we’re all like commie as f**k!”

As per Project Veritas:

When asked about the difference between Twitter’s definition of free speech and Musk’s, the Sr. Engineer left no room for interpretation. “Twitter does not believe in free speech,” said Murugesan answering the undercover journalist.

Many of our readers might recall when Musk claimed to be a “free speech absolutist” back in March and clarified his statement further by adding, ““By free speech, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask the government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

According to Murugesan, Twitter believes in the opposite. “Twitter does not believe in free speech.” Watch the full Veritas release below: