American Deplorable ™
10 hours ago
A deep fake outlawing deep fakes.

The irony is almost as thick as the hair gel.

Guest “Make Orwell Fiction Again!” by David Middleton.

David Blackmon is a highly regarded energy and oil industry analyst. His work has often been featured here on WUWT. He is was one of my LinkedIn connections.

Dear LinkedIn: Why Have I Been Suspended? by David Blackmon

https://open.substack.com/pub/blackmon/p/dear-linkedin-why-have-i-been-suspended

While it is possible that someone hacked his account, I think it’s more likely that a ski instructor, pilot/songwriter or some other LinkedIn-recognized energy experts complained about something he posted.

David Blackmon’s Substack is very appropriately titled “Energy Transition Absurdities.”

This is the difference between debate--even aggressive debate--and censorship. It is one thing to attack Kamala Harris for "destroying the country" and quite another to say that President Trump should be "eliminated." It is one thing to criticize overheated rhetoric, and another to say that a former president has invited an assassination on himself. It is one thing to say that Donald J. Trump's arguments about the election of 2020 are wrong; it is another thing to attempt to remove him from the ballot over it.

It is one thing to say that pets are not, in fact being eaten, and another thing to say that anyone who disagrees is trying to murder people. Dissent, even vigorous dissent, is a great tradition of the United States. Censorship is not.

For the next 7 weeks of this campaign, I will vigorously defend your right to speak your mind. I believe you have every right to criticize me and Donald J. Trump, even if you say terrible or untrue things about us. But when I ask you to "tone down the rhetoric" it's not about being nice--our citizens have every right to be mean, even if I don't like it--or empty platitudes.

Instead, I'm asking all of us to reject censorship. Reject the idea that you can control what other people think and say. Embrace persuasion of your fellow citizens over silencing them--either through the powers of Big Tech or through moral blackmail.

I think this will make our public debate much better. But there's something else. Reject censorship and you reject political violence. Embrace censorship, and you will inevitably embrace violence on its behalf.

The reason is simple. The logic of censorship leads directly to one place, for there is only one way to permanently silence a human being: put a bullet in his brain.

For those of us who have criticized Facebook for years for its role in the massive censorship system, Zuckerberg’s belated contrition was more insulting than inspiring. It had all of the genuine regret of a stalker found hiding under the bed of a victim.

Zuckerberg’s sudden regret only came after his company fought for years to conceal the evidence of its work with the government to censor opposing views. Zuckerberg was finally compelled to release the documents by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and the House Judiciary Committee.

Now forced to admit what many of us have long alleged, Zuckerberg is really, really sorry.

In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss Facebook’s record at length as a critical player in the anti-free speech alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media forces.

In prior testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and other congressional committees, I noted that Zuckerberg continued to refuse to release this information after Elon Musk exposed this system in his release of the “Twitter Files.”

Zuckerberg stayed silent as Musk was viciously attacked by anti-free speech figures in Congress and the media. He was fully aware of his own company’s similar conduct but stayed silent.

When the White House and President Joe Biden repeatedly claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, Facebook continued to withhold evidence that they too were pressured to suppress the story before the election.

Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Elon Musk's social media platform X, via a legal representative in the country, to suspend the accounts of political enemies (in other words, supporters of Bolsonaro), who the government is investigating. If the X lawyer disobeyed, he would be arrested--and there would be personal consequences for X owner Elon Musk, too:

Mr Moraes had ordered X accounts he has accused of spreading disinformation - many supporters of the former right-wing president Jair Bolsanaro - must be blocked while they are under investigation.

After X owner Musk criticised Mr Moraes, the judge ordered 100,000 reais ($19,774; £15,670) fines a day for any account that X reactivated, and stressed the possible liability of the company's legal representatives in Brazil if this were to happen.

He also put Mr Musk under investigation for charges including the obstruction of justice.

For those of us who have criticized Facebook for years for its role in the massive censorship system, Zuckerberg's belated contrition was more insulting than inspiring. It had all of the genuine regret as a stalker found hiding under the bed of a victim.

Zuckerberg's sudden regret only came after his company fought for years to conceal the evidence of its work with the government to censor opposing views. Zuckerberg was finally compelled to release the documents by House Judiciary Committee... //

Zuckerberg stayed silent as Musk was viciously attacked by anti-free speech figures in Congress and the media. He was fully aware of his own company's similar conduct but stayed silent.

When the White House and President Joe Biden repeatedly claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, Facebook continued to withhold evidence that they too were pressured to suppress the story before the election.

When the censorship system was recently put before the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri and the justices asked about evidence of coordination and pressure from the government. In Murthy, states successfully showed lower courts that there was coercion from the government in securing an injunction.

The Biden administration denied such pressure and the Court rejected the standing of plaintiffs, blocked an order to stop the censorship, and sent the case back down to the lower court.

Zuckerberg still remained silent. //

Zuckerberg stayed silent as Musk was viciously attacked by anti-free speech figures in Congress and the media. He was fully aware of his own company's similar conduct but stayed silent.

When the White House and President Joe Biden repeatedly claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, Facebook continued to withhold evidence that they too were pressured to suppress the story before the election.

When the censorship system was recently put before the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri and the justices asked about evidence of coordination and pressure from the government. In Murthy, states successfully showed lower courts that there was coercion from the government in securing an injunction.

The Biden administration denied such pressure and the Court rejected the standing of plaintiffs, blocked an order to stop the censorship, and sent the case back down to the lower court.

Zuckerberg still remained silent. //

Facebook was not silent when it came to censorship, or "content moderation" as the company prefers to call it. While Zuckerberg now expresses "regret" at not speaking out sooner, his company previously sought to sell Americans on censorship. //

For years, young people have been taught that free speech is harmful and triggering. We are raising of generation of speech-phobics and Zuckerberg and Facebook wanted to tap into that generation to get people to stop fearing the censor and love "content modification." It was time, as Joshan and his friends told us, to "change" with our computers.

Now, Zuckerberg and Meta want people to know that they were "pressured" to censor and really regret their role in silencing opposing voices.

It is the feigned regret that comes with forced exposure.

The Facebook files now put the lie to past claims of the Biden administration and many Democrats in Congress. For years, members attacked some of us who testified that we had no evidence of coordination or pressure from the government. At the same time, they opposed any effort to investigate and release such evidence.

The evidence is now undeniable. //

Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is an example of the chilling scope of this effort. Her agency was created to work on our critical infrastructure but Easterly declared that the mandate would now include policing "our cognitive infrastructure." That includes combating "malinformation," or information "based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate."

Consider that for a second: true facts are censorable if the government views them as misleading.

As I write in my book, President Joe Biden is arguably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. His administration helped create a censorship system that was described by one federal judge as "Orwellian." Vice President Kamala Harris has been entirely supportive of that effort.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in the only election where free speech was one of the principal campaign issues. It should be so again. Harris should have to take ownership of the censorship system maintained by the administration.

George Washington University Law School professor and Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley agrees. In a Tuesday column for Fox News, Turley tore Zuckerberg's feigned contriteness to shreds.

For those of us who have criticized Facebook for years for its role in the massive censorship system, Zuckerberg's belated contrition was more insulting than inspiring. It had all of the genuine regret as a stalker found hiding under the bed of a victim.

Zuckerberg's sudden regret only came after his company fought for years to conceal the evidence of its work with the government to censor opposing views. Zuckerberg was finally compelled to release the documents by House Judiciary Committee

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the parent company that owns Facebook, sent a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, on Monday acknowledging that Meta censored Americans at the behest of the Biden-Harris administration and throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election. //

House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 @JudiciaryGOP
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Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:

1. Biden-Harris Admin "pressured" Facebook to censor Americans.

2. Facebook censored Americans.

3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Big win for free speech.
6:44 PM · Aug 26, 2024

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty, who previously penned a Fourth of July masterpiece of a decision in the Murthy v. Missouri (f/k/a Missouri v. Biden) First Amendment case, issued a ruling declaring that Kennedy and his charity had standing to pursue a claim against the government for violating their First Amendment rights.

If exposing money behind Arabella-aligned organizations is the price for outing conservative donors, that’s a trade Democrat operatives would gladly make. //

All of this raises a question: If “dark money” is so beneficial to Democrats, why do the party’s leaders consistently push for new and expansive donor disclosure laws?

The answer may be simple: Even when the left outspends the right, the value of silencing conservatives far exceeds the value of spending by left-leaning nonprofits. //

By establishing nonprofit donor databases, the DISCLOSE Act would open the door for Democrats to potentially create target lists of conservative donors and businesses to harass and bully into silence. As Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer infamously put it years ago, the “deterrent effect” of disclosure “should not be underestimated.” //

Even if some left-leaning donors are exposed, leftist ideas would still receive enormous platforms in the media, entertainment industry, academia, and government bodies. Conservatives, despite being outspent by the left in recent election cycles, are uniquely dependent on their donors and nonprofits to support their intellectuals and promote their ideas; disclosure mandates would be akin to declaring open season on these conservative institutions.

Istandforfreedom
2 hours ago
“What Tim Walz says in that clip and the ignorance he shows…”
Tim Walz is NOT ignorant; he knows exactly what he saying. “Hate speech” and “misinformation” is ANYTHING that displeases Walz, Harrisand their Marxists regime and spells the END of Free Speech and Freedom asa whole.

While some might have some points of contention when it comes to whether he is truly fostering free speech, it is clear that X is not the same platform it was before he took over. I have my own criticism of some of the changes. But it seems clear that more right-leaning voices are able to make their views known without the rampant censorship that was happening under prior management.

Moreover, as I stated previously, none of the leftists who are whining about Musk allowing more right-leaning content to flourish on X had trouble with supposed “misinformation” when the left was dominating the platform. Very few of them criticized then-Twitter when it suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story. Almost none took issue with the content moderation team that targeted people with right-wing views.

The author’s criticism of Musk’s conflicts with governments over censorship also reveals the true motivation behind their complaints. These folks have no problem with the United Kingdom, Venezuela, and other countries suppressing content because most of their attacks on free speech go one way: Toward those expressing conservative views.

The notion that Musk is somehow turning X into a haven for right-wingers is silly. But on one level, it is understandable. To those who are accustomed to leftists having supremacy over social media, allowing more speech from both sides might seem like propping up right-wing content. When a playing field is not level, creating more balance might seem as if it is skewed toward the side that was previously suppressed.

The truth is that folks on the left have only themselves to blame for Musk inserting himself into digital media. The left created Musk like the Joker created Batman in the 1989 film starring Michael Keaton. There would have been no need for Musk to take over X if those in charge had not actively suppressed content based on political viewpoints.

The idea that a reporter would think that the White House has any legal means to interfere with any American, particularly a candidate for the presidency in an election year, saying any damn thing they want to demonstrates how thoroughly corrupt and fascist-adjacent the mainstream press has become. The fact that a reporter from a newspaper that shared a Pulitzer prize for pushing a totally discredited hoax thinks he has any moral ground to protest "misinformation" is the official death knell of irony.

To the extent that 'misinformation' is a problem, Ground Zero of that problem is the mainstream press. They are the ones who insisted that an obviously demented and sometimes drugged Joe Biden was completely in control of his faculties. //

Giving the yahoos in the press corps a license to police misinformation is like giving a three-year-old a can of gasoline and a lighter. //

RiverRev
29 minutes ago
I think I trust the three year old more.

Federal agencies used the pretext of foreign interference in the 2020 election to surveil and suppress domestic news. //

America’s speech police are reassembling to once again influence our elections. At the same time the security state is creating potential pretexts for renewed censorship by issuing warnings of cyberattacks that could “hinder public access to election information,” they are also reprising old claims of coming Russian election interference on behalf of Donald Trump.

The little-noticed development comes in a report from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) on the DOJ’s efforts to “Coordinate Information Sharing About Foreign Malign Influence Threats to U.S. Elections” — a euphemism for the chief law enforcement agency’s prior censorship activities.

Huge news on Thursday as the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) announced that it will discontinue operations of its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative in the face of the antitrust suit filed against the entities by Elon Musk. On Tuesday, Musk filed suit in federal court in the Northern District of Texas against GARM and WFA. //

The suit followed a 39-page House report issued in July setting forth the harms caused by GARM. The House Judiciary Committee shared Thursday's announcement on its Twitter/X account.

House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 @JudiciaryGOP
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#BREAKING: The “Global Alliance for Responsible Media” is discontinuing.

Big win for the First Amendment.

Big win for oversight.
12:42 PM · Aug 8, 2024. //

Now, before we get overly excited, let's be mindful that just because "GARM" appears to be folding, that doesn't mean the motivation behind its inception is going anywhere,... //

anon-7lqi
11 hours ago
What GARM was doing was so indefensible that just filing one suite made them shut it down.

Think about that. //

anon-1tw9 11 hours ago edited

It’s my understanding GARM arose from the ashes of a previous organization that folded when the pressure came, only to re-emerge with a new name, GARM. So it is that I believe GARM is forthright being renamed and will continue on.

A recently surfaced recording of a Zoom call between the Biden/Harris team from 2020 reveals disconcerting evidence of the team's intentional targeting and manipulation of voters and relentless bullying of media outlets to control information. //

“One of the smartest things that the party did itself was over the last couple of years, they actually invested in a team that Tim runs… to detect and track misinformation and misinformation narratives in various corners of the internet and then flag them to platforms as a violation of their policy.” //

Matt Orfalea
@0rf
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Replying to @0rf
RINKEVICH: "We targeted folks based on online behavioral cues, building out personas, based on the type of content they were consuming, what they were searching, the kinds of websites they were visiting so that we could target folks in real-time as they were exposed to that… Show more

4:11 PM · Aug 7, 2024 //

Matt Orfalea
@0rf
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Replying to @0rf
But the Biden team didn't just get the media to forward their deception, they changed real votes. According to Rinkevich, "concern around [Biden's] mental acuity in particular went down by 8 points over the course of our campaign," resulting in "about 200K" votes for Biden. /16

4:11 PM · Aug 7, 2024

Now Facebook has been forced to admit that they erroneously censored one of the photos taken immediately after Trump was shot by a 20-year-old sniper at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13. The picture, showing a defiant Trump, depicted the former president rising to his feet and yelling, ”Fight! Fight!” as blood streamed down his face. It instantly became one of the most iconic photos of our times. //

A post on Mark Zuckerberg’s social media site by a user with the handle End Wokeness that showed the Republican presidential candidate defiantly pumping his fist in the air while blood streams down his face had initially been flagged as misinformation.

The user was threatened with being deplatformed.

However, on Monday, Dani Lever, a spokesperson for the social network’s parent company, Meta, admitted the tech giant made a “mistake.”

Jonathan Turley
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7h
@JonathanTurley
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Not long after I ran a column criticizing NewsGuard, the company came knocking to ask about my revenue sources and why I do not notify people that I write from what it views as a conservative or libertarian perspective...
thehill.com
The most chilling words today: I’m from NewsGuard and I am here to rate you
Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
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...Apparently from where NewsGuard reviewers sit, I am a de facto conservative or libertarian who needs to wear a digital bell to warn others...
7:29 AM · Jul 28, 2024

But I pay not to have advertising, and the closest I come to financial support would be my wife, since we live in a community property state. If NewsGuard wants to blacklist me with my wife, it is a bit late. Trust me, she knows. //

NewsGaudians are the new brownshirts. It is well-funded and relentless. What to do about fact-checkers who cannot spell Res ipsa loquitur, let alone understand its meaning, when the meaning is defined for them?

I will follow Professor Turley’s lead:

This is why my book calls for a number of reforms, including barring federal funds for groups engaged in censoring, rating or blacklisting sites.

What do I expect? In about 2 weeks, some guardian goon from NewsGuard will show up at my “online” door:

“Show me your papers. Please tell me why the 'H' in Thompson is silent. What are you trying to hide, sir?"

On Saturday, legal scholar and writer Jonathan Turley laid out the details of a House Judiciary report detailing the efforts of several shadowy organizations to censor right-leaning content on various social media platforms, and those efforts are an affront to anyone who understands the concept of free speech.

Few Americans have ever heard of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, let alone understand how it shapes what they read and hear in news and commentary. That may soon change.

An alarming new report of the House Judiciary Committee details this organization’s work to censor conservative and opposing viewpoints in the media by targeting figures such as Joe Rogan and entire social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter).

It is part of a massive censorship system that a federal court recently described as “Orwellian.” The sophistication of this system makes authoritarian regimes like China’s and Iran’s look like mere amateurs in censorship and blacklisting. //

One of the most insidious efforts has been to strangle the financial life out of conservative or libertarian sites by targeting their donors and advertisers. This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns.

This is dangerous. This is using the weight of government to suppress free speech. This isn't about policies made in a vacuum by these social media companies. This is about government actors, as Mr. Turley notes, including the president down to unnamed members of his administration and, we feel certain, members of Congress in effect using these organizations to lean on the social media companies. They are targeting the platform's income streams - advertising - and they are succeeding at it. //

Dutch Letter
3 hours ago
“To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness, without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical (imaginary) idea.” - James Madison

We are no longer a virtuous people and we no longer elect virtuous representatives. We vote for who is the lesser of two evils in every contest, and we do not protest but on assigned days when voting is allowed. We have become complicit actors in our own doom.
Of course, we commiserate, and complain to each other, yet closer to the abyss we creep.

NetChoice often argued out of both sides of their mouth when Section 230 protections were in play. During back and forth with NetChoice counsel, Justice Gorsuch observed that NetChoice’s argument was, conveniently, both sides of the coin:

“So it’s speech for the purposes of the First Amendment, your speech, your editorial control, but when we get to Section 230, your submission is that that isn’t your speech?

So now, the cases head back to the lower courts, who've been tasked with doing their homework and using the proper framework to analyze the issues. //

anon-7lqi anon-tf71
4 hours ago
i think administratively you can declare any platform with more that 25% market share as a "public square".
Public squares are obliged to allow speech that smaller venues do not have to.
keeps 230 intact. focuses the law on the companies large enough to impact the public in any meaningful way

JustCause_for_Liberty anon-7lqi
3 hours ago edited
I do not even think its that hard. They get to declare if they are publishers or platforms. If you are a publisher you get no protections from 230 and are subject to liability claims for all content. If you are a platform you get liability protections from 230 but lose all rights to moderate content from users or their speech and posts. If laws are broken from users then refer those to law enforcement. Otherwise its not their job.

Just FYI their self identification of publisher or platform is for the entirety of that service. You either have to sell the Company or completely shut down the service and deploy a completely separate service afterwards to redeclare.