Missouri v. Biden uncovered a ‘vast censorship enterprise’ throttling Americans’ ideas online at the behest of government officials.

Eric Abbenante
@EricAbbenante
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Elon Musk with Bill Maher tonight:

"You have talked about this Woke mind virus. In really apocalyptic terms. You should explain why you don't think it's hyperbole to say it's pushing civilization towards suicide. First of all what is the woke mind virus?"

10:27 PM · Apr 28, 2023

“I think we need to be very cautious about anything which is anti-meritocratic,” Musk said. “And anything that results in the suppression of free speech.” Those are the things that are dangerous about the woke mind virus, and the fact that “you can’t question things, even the questioning is bad.”

Maher agreed and said he thought that wokeness wasn’t building on liberalism (classical liberalism), that it was the “opposite” of that, including when it comes to free speech.

Eric Abbenante
@EricAbbenante
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Elon Musk on Bill Maher:

"Free speech is extremely important. It's bizarre that we've come to the point where: Free speech used to be a left or liberal value. We've seen from the 'left' a desire to actually censor. That seems crazy."

10:46 PM · Apr 28, 2023 //

But he had a warning for anyone pushing censorship who wants to so damage society, “The thing about censorship is that – for those who would advocate it – Just remember: at some point, that will be turned on you”

Elon Musk @elonmusk
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If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill.

No limit.

Please let us know.
11:00 PM · Aug 5, 2023

Elon Musk @elonmusk

And we won’t just sue, it will be extremely loud and we will go after the boards of directors of the companies too
12:56 AM · Aug 6, 2023

How many other beloved books have been bowdlerized and then reissued without the public’s knowledge? //

“It seems depressing that we are so squeamish that we can’t credit youngsters with seeing the context for texts,” Geoff Barton, head of King Edward’s School in Bury St Edmunds, added.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to start — I want to put aside my written statement, for a moment, and address one of the points that was brought up — I think an important point by the Ranking Member — that this body ought to be concerning itself with issues that impact directly the American people: the rising price of groceries, 76 percent over the past two years for basic food stuff, the war in Ukraine, inflation issues, the border issues, many other issues that concern us all as a nation. We can’t do that without the First Amendment, without debate.

When I gave my speech — my announcement speech — in Boston two months ago…I talked about all those issues. I focused on groceries. I focused on the fact that working class people can no longer afford to live in this country. I talked about inflation — all the issues that deeply concern you, and that you’ve devoted your career to alleviating those issues. Five minutes into my speech, when I was talking about Paul Revere, YouTube deplatformed me. I didn’t talk about vaccines in that speech. I didn’t talk about anything that was a verboten subject. I just was talking about my campaign and things — the conversation that we ought to be having with each other as Americans.

But I was shut down. And that is why the First Amendment’s important. Debate — congenial, respectful debate — is the fertilizer, it’s the water, it’s the sunlight for our Democracy. We need to be talking to each other.

Now, this is a letter that many of you signed — many of my fellow Democrats. I’ve spent my life in this party. I’ve devoted my life to the values of this party. This — 102 people signed this. This itself is evidence of the problem that this hearing was convened to address. This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing.

The charges in this — and by the way, censorship is antithetical to our party. It was appalling to my father, to my uncle, to FDR, to Harry Truman, to Thomas Jefferson, as the Chairman referred to. It is the basis for democracy — it sets us apart from all of the previous forms of government. We need to be able to talk. And the First Amendment was not written for easy speech. It was written for the speech that nobody likes you for.

And I was censored — not just by the Democratic administration — I was censored by the Trump administration. I was the first person censored by the — as the Chairman pointed out — by the Biden administration, two days after it came into office…And by the way, they had to invent a new word, called “malinformation,” to censor people like me. There was no misinformation on my Instagram account. Everything I put on that account was cited and sourced with peer reviewed publications or government databases. Nobody has ever pointed to a single piece of misinformation that I published. I was removed for something they called “malinformation.” Malinformation is information that is true, but is inconvenient to the government, that they don’t want people to hear. And it’s antithetical to the values of our country. //

Now I want to say something, I think, that’s more important, and it goes directly to what you talked about, Ranking Member, which is the need, this toxic polarization, that is destroying our country today. And how do we deal with that? We are more — this kind of division — is more dangerous for our country than anytime since the American Civil War. And how do we deal with that? How are we gonna — every Democrat on this committee believes that we need to end that polarization. Do you think you can do that by censoring people? I’m telling you, you cannot. That only aggravates and amplifies the problem.

We need to start being kind to each other. We need to start being respectful to each other. We need to start restoring the comity — to this chamber and to the rest of America. But it has to start here. //

This is how we need to start treating each other in this country. We have to stop trying to destroy each other, to marginalize, to villify, to gaslight each other. We have to find that place inside of ourselves of light, of empathy, of compassion. And above all, we need to elevate the Constitution of the United States, which was written for hard times. And that has to be the premier compass for all of our activities. Thank you very much.

Thursday brought about another hearing on the weaponization of the federal government on Capitol Hill. In an ongoing affair as of this writing, Robert Kennedy Jr. is testifying before the select committee. //

Citizen Free Press @CitizenFreePres
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The Democrats vote to censor Bobby Kennedy from speaking at a hearing detailing how the Biden administration censored political speech online.

Democrats don't want you speaking online OR in person. It's all too dangerous. You can't make this stuff up.

10:03 AM · Jul 20, 2023

The preliminary injunction prohibits nearly all of the federal government, including DHS, DOJ, and HHS, from coercing and colluding with social media companies to censor free speech, amongst other things: pic.twitter.com/CixBjbT8LN

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 4, 2023

Just as the judge hinted at in our first hearing in May, there is nothing stopping the feds from continuing to censor political speech without this injunction.

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 4, 2023

Using the power of the federal government to pressure Big Tech into censoring “disinformation” is a modern Pandora’s box. Sure, the Biden administration may decrease the influence of its critics—in an astonishing violation of the First Amendment—but it also enables bad actors to weaponize this very tool against the U.S. government itself, in an utterly embarrassing cautionary tale.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released an astonishing report Monday, revealing that the FBI under President Joe Biden urged Meta, Instagram’s parent company, to remove the U.S. State Department’s official Russian-language Instagram account.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the FBI routinely forwarded lists from the Secret Service of Ukraine, or SBU, to Big Tech companies, warning that the social media accounts allegedly “spread Russian disinformation,” according to the report.

The SBU flagged the accounts for Big Tech and the FBI, and the FBI often would follow up to ensure that Big Tech took action against these social media accounts. The lists from Ukraine’s secret police often included U.S.-based accounts, and the House subcommittee faults the FBI for failing “to respect fundamental American civil liberties.”

A tremendous catch affected the scheme to combat “Russian disinformation,” however. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, had infiltrated Ukraine’s SBU. This may not come as a surprise, since both Russia and Ukraine established these agencies as replacements for the old Soviet secret police, known as the KGB.//

That list from Ukraine’s secret service included the Instagram account “usaporusski,” the verified Russian-language account of the U.S. State Department.

So, according to the SBU, the U.S. State Department has been “used in the interests of the aggressor country to distribute content that promotes war, inaccurately reflects events in Ukraine, justifies Russian war crimes in Ukraine in violation of international law,” and more.

Ultimately, it appears the State Department survived this round of social media purging, but other accounts may not have been so lucky.

The House subcommittee report notes that the FBI, on behalf of Ukraine’s secret service, also flagged multiple pro-Ukraine Facebook and Instagram posts from Americans. Some of these posts currently are unavailable, while posts from Russian government officials—to whom the pro-Ukraine posts had been responding—remain on the platforms.

The Biden administration is reportedly gearing up to challenge a federal court ruling that found government collusion with social media companies to censor speech likely violated the First Amendment. The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal on Wednesday in the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the administration disagrees with the judge’s decision but would not elaborate further on the scathing ruling against censorship aimed at conservatives.

On Tuesday, Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, issued a 155-page injunction in response to the lawsuit by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri. The lawsuit alleged that the White House had coerced or “significantly encouraged” tech companies to suppress free speech during the COVID pandemic.

The ruling held that “the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech” but emphasized that the issues raised by the case transcend “beyond party lines.” The Biden administration argued that it took “necessary and responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security.”

Judge Doughty wrote:

… evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’ //

Astonishingly, the administration attempted to absolve itself of responsibility with the claim that social media companies should determine what qualifies as misinformation and how they should combat it without consideration for its role in pressure campaigns. In an ironic argument, they claimed that the lawsuit was an attempt to “suppress the speech of federal government officials under the guise of protecting the speech rights of others.” //

Elon Musk revealed many government communications and requests for censorship in public releases known as the Twitter Files. The government’s backdoor requests for censorship of speech were uncovered after he purchased the Twitter platform in 2022. https://redstate.com/tags/twitter-files

There’s a big difference between having to comply with the laws versus the censorship that existed under Twitter 1.0, suppressing the political positions that liberals didn’t like. Yglesias can keep spinning and getting ratioed, but he can’t argue away what happened before and what Musk has done for free speech.

Sometimes there is a vast conspiracy at play, and the problem isn’t that someone is donning a tinfoil hat but that he’s buried his head in the sand. //

Thursday’s reporting exposed even more government-funded organizations pushing Twitter to censor speech.

But yesterday’s thread, titled “The Censorship-Industrial Complex,” did more than merely expand the knowledge base of the various actors: It revealed that government-funded organizations sought the censorship of truthful speech by ordinary Americans. //

The government funding of these censorship conduits is not the only scandal exposed by the “Twitter Files.” Rather, the internal communications of the social media giant also revealed that several censorship requests rested on bogus research. //

But really, that is nothing compared to what Thursday’s “Twitter Files” revealed: a request for the censorship of truthful information, including news that certain Covid shots had been banned in some countries. And that censorship request came from a group of so-called disinformation experts closely coordinating with the government and with several partners funded with government grants....

Two months before Zeran's suit, Congress had enacted the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a mostly anti-porn law that the Supreme Court would later strike down on First Amendment grounds. The law contained something else, though: a provision now best known as Section 230. //

But just how sweeping was this law?

Before Zeran, it was hard to say. The 26 words of Section 230 that give "interactive computer services" immunity were inscrutable. Debate raged about how broad or narrow the words should be seen.

But when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit issued its opinion in Zeran's case, it strongly favored AOL, expanding and strengthening the law and leaving little doubt about just how powerful this legal shield is.

"Congress recognized the threat that tort-based lawsuits pose to freedom of speech in the new and burgeoning Internet medium," the court wrote. "The imposition of tort liability on service providers for the communications of others represented, [is] for Congress, simply another form of intrusive government regulation of speech."

With that ruling, tech companies no longer had to fear getting sued for something users posted, even if the online service was put on notice about defamatory content. It helped propel tech startups into multi-trillion-dollar global behemoths. Scholars call the Zeran decision "the most important Internet law ruling ever."

But the good news is that Microsoft appears to be backing away from GDI, and its “Xandr” ad system will no longer be using the GDI blacklist to cut off sites.

The Microsoft-owned Xandr, a major advertising company, previously abided by a secret blacklist of conservative news compiled by the Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups. Now, as Microsoft appears to be taking steps to distance itself from GDI , the company has, for the time being, deleted flags such as “false/misleading” and “reprehensible/offensive” for right-leaning websites, data show.

“I just checked in Xandr’s platform again and can confirm that all rejection flags have been removed from domains,” a senior executive in the ad industry, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told the Washington Examiner.

Xandr had labeled 39 conservative domains as, overwhelmingly, “false/misleading,” the Washington Examiner reported on Friday. Townhall, a website under a Christian publisher called Salem Media Group, was flagged as “reprehensible/offensive.”

Jonathan Turley
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Feb 8 @JonathanTurley
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Roth says that it would not surprise him if "visibility filters" were placed on the accounts of elected officials without their knowledge.

Elon Musk @elonmusk
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Since he placed many of them there himself, he would indeed not be “surprised” lmao
11:59 PM · Feb 8, 2023

The Dirty Truth (Josh)
@AKA_RealDirty
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.@DavidSacks explains how the FBI was using a tool called “ teleport” to communicate with Twitter. They were able to send instructions that deleted after 10 days and they weren’t able to take a screenshot of the communication.

5:20 PM · Jan 15, 2023

But they could tell that some messages were sent via the teleport tool when they were looking at the emails and the FBI would tell Twitter Safety head Yoel Roth to look at the messages they just sent him on teleport. “It was a very weird detail,” Sacks said, “And it shows the way our government prefers to operate, which is in secrecy.” “What basis is there for the FBI first of all even to be engaged in censorship on social media to the extent they were,” Sacks said, noting they had an 80-agent team flagging posts for the FBI and other parts of the government. //

“What was the crime that they were investigating here,” Sacks declared. This was all coming under the heading of searching for “foreign interference” in elections, a truly nebulous justification. Add to that the instructions were secret, disappearing, Sacks said, “Why isn’t that a matter of public record?” He said first of all, it was a violation of the First Amendment if they were pushing censorship, but on top of that, they weren’t even being transparent about it. “We have a right as citizens of this country to know what our government is doing, and for them to be engaging in this sort of um, you know, magic trick, where the instructions they are giving are disappearing, it’s almost like the cover-up part of this crime.” //

What that means is that it’s harder to find the evidence of secret instructions that they were giving to Twitter if you were trying to figure out what they were doing. It also raises questions about why they’re erasing the evidence unless they knew that what they were doing was problematic. Yet, we still haven’t gotten any real answers from the FBI on this, just a response that claimed that this was “traditional” contacts they’d had with private companies (that alone is chilling if this is “traditional”) and they called the Twitter files “conspiracy theorists. //

Quiverfull
10 minutes ago
Relevant to the discussion, and hopefully a jury instruction read during the trial of numerous federal employees who participated in this mass violation of Americans' civil rights, here is the Federal Court Jury Instruction:

1.20 SPOLIATION/DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE
[Party] contends that [Other Party] at one time possessed [describe evidence allegedly destroyed]. However, [Other Party] contends that [evidence never existed, evidence was not in its possession, evidence was not destroyed, loss of evidence was accidental, etc.].
You may assume that such evidence would have been unfavorable to [Other Party] only if you find by a preponderance of the evidence that:
(1) [Other Party] intentionally [destroyed the evidence] [caused the evidence to be destroyed]; and
(2) [Other Party] [destroyed the evidence] [caused the evidence to be destroyed] in bad faith. //

anon-8f8k
17 minutes ago
Isn't destruction of official government communications a crime in and of itself?

Just as Durham never delivered genuine justice for the biggest political scandal in modern American history, we should be skeptical that Musk will deliver digital free speech. Musk’s “free speech” marketing campaign has enticed marginalized and desperate right-wingers to get sucked back into Twitter. But it’s false advertising until Musk stops the arbitrary and personal targeting, shuts down the shadowbanning, and embraces freedom of speech and reach.

Until he does that, Musk is no better than the Twitter leaders he replaced. And for conservatives who were hopeful he would deliver a victory, he’s no better than Durham.

As nationwide protests broke out in China over the weekend threatening to undermine the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under President Xi Jinping, Quartz revealed that Apple plugged a crack in the regime’s “Great Firewall” that dissidents exploited to communicate. Apple’s latest iOS update released in November placed new restrictions on “AirDrop,” a file-sharing feature on iPhones that allows users to share files directly from one phone to another (and consequently under the nose of government monitors). The update erased unlimited use for Chinese users only.

“Rather than listing new features, as it often does, the company simply said, ‘This update includes bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all users,'” Quartz reported. “Hidden in the update was a change that only applies to iPhones sold in mainland China: AirDrop can only be set to receive messages from everyone for 10 minutes, before switching off. There’s no longer a way to keep the ‘everyone’ setting on permanently on Chinese iPhones.”

Apple’s new update to benefit the CCP is neither a recent development nor an isolated incident. According to a report from The New York Times last year, Apple routinely compromises privacy and security practices to appease communist leaders.

“Apple’s compromises have made it nearly impossible for the company to stop the Chinese government from gaining access to the emails, photos, documents, contacts and locations of millions of Chinese residents, according to the security experts and Apple engineers,” the Times reported.

The slippery slope is how the left imprints their agenda into our culture. They know many on the right have little stomach for a fight about the ridiculousness of separate marriage beds. They know once they get momentum you’ll one day have to explain to your six-year-old what “dominatrix” means.

The federal income tax was established in 1913. (The government has not always stolen a cut of your paycheck before you get it.) There were warnings then about where that kind of sticky-fingers governing would end. The rates were 1 percent. Today the rates are almost 40 percent. In the 1930s, President Roosevelt was pushing for Social Security and folks on the right were warning of socialism. Social Security was then intended to be a temporary relief program. Today it’s a permanent retirement program for many and it’s also 14 percent of our $21,000,000,000,000 debt. Yesterday conservatives were warning about the left’s takeover of public schools and where it would lead. Today students are taught the evil of Trump’s immigration policies and football coaches lose their jobs if they pray on the field with their teams.

Many on the left and the right gave a loud cheer last week when Alex Jones was banished from Facebook. Twitter later suspended him. While it is not surprising to see the jackals on the left cheer at the burning of books, one would hope folks on the right would look in the mirror and realize their time is coming soon. The leftists will not stop (and did not stop) at nutty Alex Jones, because they do not think you are much different from him. You rightly think your belief in immigration enforcement is much different than his disgusting conspiracy theory about Sandy Hook. But you must understand the left thinks you are both equally vile. They just knew Jones was the weak member of the herd. They could pick him off as a test run. Next they’re coming for you. //

“It’s only Alex Jones” is a comforting blanket. It’s the child who closes his eyes and covers his ears in the naïve hope that the monster disappears if you can’t see or hear him. But the monster does NOT disappear. And it is most definitely NOT just Jones. Yesterday it was Jones. Today, YouTube censored human vanilla Dennis Prager. Tomorrow, there may be a knock on YOUR door.

Freedom is not something you acquire by practicing it. You don’t one day wake up and decide you are free. Freedom is something tangible and it requires the cooperation of others. If others will not give you that cooperation, you have to take it from them. We need to stop whistling past the graveyard and realize the left is seeking total victory. They do not want to compete in a marketplace of ideas. Their goal is to silence dissenting voices.

Driven by the pursuit of profit, Hollywood has a long history of capitulation to Chinese censors. Have producers finally found their backbone?

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson
Elon Musk says he will vote Republican for FIRST time EVER after absolutely SAVAGING Joe Brandon in brutal roast

12:54 PM · May 17, 2022

Musk attacked the “left-wing bias” of Twitter, which Project Veritas confirmed with a damning video they just released. He said that it wasn’t going to be a “right-wing takeover” of Twitter, but a “moderate-wing takeover,” so that all could express themselves in the “digital town square. That’s what the right has been celebrating — just the idea of basic fairness, not being banned for political belief, not having information suppressed because it doesn’t serve the Democratic political narrative. //

But unlike some on the left, Musk even takes people coming back at him and attacking him as a part of the landscape, saying he shouldn’t be able to control everything; he wouldn’t want to be able to stop people from criticizing him. Now, that’s the right attitude to have, and it means he truly gets the concept of free speech that he’s fighting for — that even those who would go after him get to speak. If he can achieve that, then it truly is a “town square.” //

Elon Musk @elonmusk
20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be much higher.

My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.

Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.

This deal cannot move forward until he does.
3:32 AM · May 17, 2022