social media de-platform

<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see SOCIAL MEDIA 2 for newer 1019</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div>see social networks for main, this is 3/19 for disambig but also removing ppl/orgs<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see media bias (~ conserv BS)
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">promote primary 519 on caravan escalator effect
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1st was retaliation on wikileaks on cable leaks?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more typical recently is post 2016 trump win, trying to damp down conspiracy theory and hate speech</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=&nbsp;</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-defenders-diamond-and-silk-were-locked-out-of-twitter-for-spreading-misinformation-about-covid-19/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-defenders-diamond-and-silk-were-locked-out-of-twitter-for-spreading-misinformation-about-covid-19/</a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/trolls-conspiracy-theorists-hoaxers-and-trump-have-twisted-facebook-youtube-and-the-news-to-toxic-levels-and-its-only-getting-worse">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/trolls-conspiracy-theorists-hoaxers-and-trump-have-twisted-facebook-youtube-and-the-news-to-toxic-levels-and-its-only-getting-worse</a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gorka sez RW duty to use</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://boingboing.net/2019/10/11/facebook-and-twitter-say-they.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://boingboing.net/2019/10/11/facebook-and-twitter-say-they.html</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump has been buying ads with false content that run on Facebook and Twitter, and the two social media platforms both say they will continue to accept paid ads that contain lies.</b></font></p><div align="center" id="boingboing_728x90_468x60_300x250_LongForm_InContent_1" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From&nbsp;<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614549/twitter-and-facebook-wont-remove-false-trump-campaign-ads-about-biden/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Technology Review</a>:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; border-left: 4px solid rgb(153, 153, 153); padding-left: 1em; margin: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last month, Facebook communications chief Nick Clegg said Facebook will not fact-check politicians’ ads, a stance the company has reiterated. In a letter to Biden’s campaign, Facebook’s head of global elections policy, Katie Harbath, said that “if a claim is made directly by a politician on their Page, in an ad or on their website, it is considered direct speech and ineligible for our third-party fact checking program.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The letter goes on to say: “These policies apply to organic and paid content from politicians—including the ad by President Trump you reference in your letter.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, even if the content is false, the fact that it is being said by a politician, or a campaign on the politician’s behalf, means it is considered newsworthy, making it exempt from certain standards. (Facebook says that things like viral hoaxes that are shared by a politician would be demoted, displayed alongside fact-checking information, and banned from ads.) This disparity in the policy is confusing, to say the least.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, Twitter told The Verge that the ad is “not in violation of our policies,” without clarifying further.</font></p></blockquote></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">919</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><div class="mag-post-box hentry" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px 0px 15px; width: 374.545px; overflow: hidden; display: table; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(236, 236, 236); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="magcat-detail" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/digital-colonialism-why-some-countries-want-to-take-control-of-their-peoples-data-from-big-tech/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">‘Digital colonialism’: Why some countries want to take control of their people’s data from Big Tech</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 12px; text-align: right;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: inherit;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/the-conversation/" title="Posts by The Conversation" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">The Conversation</a></span></div></div></div><div class="mag-post-box hentry" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 374.545px; overflow: hidden; display: table; border-bottom: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="magcat-thumb" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; float: left; position: relative; transition: opacity 0.3s ease 0s;"><a class="penci-image-holder penci-lazy small-fix-size" href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/jim-hightower-explains-whos-behind-the-increasing-suppression-of-your-right-to-protest/" title="Jim Hightower explains who’s behind the increasing suppression of your right to protest" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 191, 165); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; position: relative; width: 120px; background: url(" https="https" www.alternet.org="www.alternet.org" wp-content="wp-content" uploads="uploads" px-philadelphia_tea_party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg="px-Philadelphia_Tea_Party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg" center="center" cover="cover" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" top="top" overflow="overflow" hidden="hidden" /></div></div></div><div><div><a class="penci-image-holder penci-lazy small-fix-size" href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/jim-hightower-explains-whos-behind-the-increasing-suppression-of-your-right-to-protest/" title="Jim Hightower explains who’s behind the increasing suppression of your right to protest" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 191, 165); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; position: relative; width: 120px; background: url(" https="https" www.alternet.org="www.alternet.org" wp-content="wp-content" uploads="uploads" px-philadelphia_tea_party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg="px-Philadelphia_Tea_Party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg" center="center" cover="cover" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" top="top" overflow="overflow" hidden="hidden"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></a></div><div><a class="penci-image-holder penci-lazy small-fix-size" href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/jim-hightower-explains-whos-behind-the-increasing-suppression-of-your-right-to-protest/" title="Jim Hightower explains who’s behind the increasing suppression of your right to protest" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 191, 165); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; position: relative; width: 120px; background: url(" https="https" www.alternet.org="www.alternet.org" wp-content="wp-content" uploads="uploads" px-philadelphia_tea_party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg="px-Philadelphia_Tea_Party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg" center="center" cover="cover" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" top="top" overflow="overflow" hidden="hidden"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">919 rww</font></a></div><div><section style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><div class="mce-content-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><div class="layout-constrain--narrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 47.2222em; padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><a class="penci-image-holder penci-lazy small-fix-size" href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/jim-hightower-explains-whos-behind-the-increasing-suppression-of-your-right-to-protest/" title="Jim Hightower explains who’s behind the increasing suppression of your right to protest" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 191, 165); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; position: relative; width: 120px; background: url(" https="https" www.alternet.org="www.alternet.org" wp-content="wp-content" uploads="uploads" px-philadelphia_tea_party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg="px-Philadelphia_Tea_Party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg" center="center" cover="cover" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" top="top" overflow="overflow" hidden="hidden"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">YouTube has undone actions taken against two far-right YouTube accounts and one white nationalist YouTube account after banning those accounts earlier this week.</font></a></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><a class="penci-image-holder penci-lazy small-fix-size" href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/jim-hightower-explains-whos-behind-the-increasing-suppression-of-your-right-to-protest/" title="Jim Hightower explains who’s behind the increasing suppression of your right to protest" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 191, 165); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; position: relative; width: 120px; background: url(" https="https" www.alternet.org="www.alternet.org" wp-content="wp-content" uploads="uploads" px-philadelphia_tea_party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg="px-Philadelphia_Tea_Party_protestors_4-18-2009-585x390.jpg" center="center" cover="cover" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" display="display" inline-block="inline-block" vertical-align="vertical-align" top="top" overflow="overflow" hidden="hidden"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Right Wing Watch&nbsp;</font></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/youtube-shutters-several-white-nationalist-accounts/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a>&nbsp;on Monday that YouTube had removed at least four YouTube channels that produced white nationalist and racist content from its platform, including channels used by The Right Stuff, American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa), VDARE, and James Allsup. On Tuesday night, VDARE tweeted that its YouTube channel had been reinstated.</font></p><twitter-widget class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" id="twitter-widget-0" data-tweet-id="1166546197647110144" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; position: static; visibility: visible; display: block; transform: rotate(0deg); max-width: 100%; width: 500px; min-width: 220px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><div data-twitter-event-id="0" class="SandboxRoot env-bp-350" style="max-height: 10000px; direction: ltr; background: 0px 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.4; white-space: initial; position: relative;"><div class="EmbeddedTweet EmbeddedTweet--cta js-clickToOpenTarget" data-click-to-open-target="https://twitter.com/jaredlholt/status/1166546197647110144" data-iframe-title="Twitter Tweet" data-scribe="page:tweet" id="twitter-widget-0" lang="en" data-twitter-event-id="1" style="overflow: hidden; cursor: pointer; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 232, 237); border-radius: 5px; max-width: 520px;"><div class="EmbeddedTweet-tweetContainer"><div class="EmbeddedTweet-tweet" style="padding: 20px 20px 10px;"><blockquote class="Tweet h-entry js-tweetIdInfo subject expanded" cite="https://twitter.com/jaredlholt/status/1166546197647110144" data-tweet-id="1166546197647110144" data-scribe="section:subject" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; border: none;"><div class="Tweet-header" style="display: flex;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: initial;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">after banning the white nationalist publication VDARE from YouTube yesterday, YouTube appears to have reversed course.</font></span></div><div class="Tweet-body e-entry-content" data-scribe="component:tweet" style="margin-top: 13px;"><p class="Tweet-text e-entry-title" lang="en" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; border: none; white-space: pre-wrap; cursor: text; overflow-wrap: break-word; direction: ltr;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
VDARE announced that their YouTube channel is back online tonight.</font></p><p class="Tweet-text e-entry-title" lang="en" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; border: none; white-space: pre-wrap; cursor: text; overflow-wrap: break-word; direction: ltr;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">[twt]</font></p><p class="Tweet-text e-entry-title" lang="en" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; border: none; white-space: pre-wrap; cursor: text; overflow-wrap: break-word; direction: ltr;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></p><p class="Tweet-text e-entry-title" lang="en" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; border: none; white-space: pre-wrap; cursor: text; overflow-wrap: break-word; direction: ltr;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">We asked YouTube for comment via email on its reinstatement of VDARE TV on Wednesday, but we did not receive a response.</font></p></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></twitter-widget><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Yesterday, Boing Boing&nbsp;<a href="https://boingboing.net/2019/08/29/youtube-reinstated-these-extre.html" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">noted</a>&nbsp;that YouTube reinstated two other far-right YouTube channels, “The Iconoclast” and a channel used by far-right activist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/16/christchurch-shooters-links-to-austrian-far-right-more-extensive-than-thought" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Martin Sellner</a>, and that YouTube told reporters it made the “<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/youtube-martin-sellner-ban-reinstated" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">wrong call</a>” when it decided to remove those channels but failed to elaborate further. BuzzFeed&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/youtube-martin-sellner-ban-reinstated" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">reports</a>:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(239, 243, 243); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; hyphens: none; padding: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0.75em 2em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">YouTube’s reactivation of Sellner’s channel comes two months after the video platform joined with Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter to make a commitment they called the “Christchurch Call to Action”. YouTube and the other tech companies said they were committed to “fight the hatred and extremism that lead to terrorist violence.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Iconoclast has more than 200,000 subscribers on YouTube. In an interview with Defend Europa last year, the YouTuber spoke extensively about the white nationalist conspiracy theory of “ethnic replacement.” He describes himself as a “British nationalist” who is “anti-mass migration.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The decision comes a few days after YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki posted her quarterly letter to YouTube creators, which talked about how the company sometimes would leave up “controversial or even offensive” videos.</font></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">After Buzzfeed published its story, YouTube spokesperson Farshad Shadloo&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/youtube-martin-sellner-ban-reinstated" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">released</a>&nbsp;a statement, claiming that although “many may find the viewpoints expressed in these channels deeply offensive,“ that YouTube had “determined the videos on their channels do not violate our Community Guidelines and so the channels were reinstated.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Yesterday, Motherboard&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nge8/infowars-returns-to-youtube-after-ceo-said-it-will-allow-offensive-content" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a>&nbsp;that YouTube had briefly reinstated and then re-banned the Infowars show “War Room” from its platform. Infowars was banned across nearly all tech platforms last year after we&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/spotify-hosts-infowars-podcasts-despite-clear-rule-breaking/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">documented</a>&nbsp;the numerous blatant violations of community guidelines committed regularly by Infowars personalities on social media platforms.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">YouTube has shown itself to be particularly susceptible to pressure campaigns organized by the far-right. Last year, the site apologized and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/youtube-retracts-strikes-from-stefan-molyneuxs-account/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">retracted strikes</a>&nbsp;against far-right “philosopher” Stefan Molyneux’s YouTube account after he urged his fans to contact YouTube on his behalf.</font></p><div class="at-below-post addthis_tool" data-url="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/youtube-reverses-course-apologizes-to-far-right-channels-unbans-them/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; 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transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; font-weight: 700;">Tags:</span>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/topics/social-media/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">social media</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/identity-evropa/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Identity Evropa</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/the-right-stuff/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">The Right Stuff</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/vdare/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">VDARE</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/youtube/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">YouTube</a></font></p></div></div></div></div></div></section></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/walmart-asks-gun-owners-not-to-open-carry-and-announces-plan-to-limit-ammunition-sales/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Walmart asks gun owners not to open-carry and announces plan to limit ammunition sales</a></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 12px;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: inherit;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/david-badash/" title="Posts by David Badash" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">David Badash</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/the-new-civil-rights-movement/" title="Posts by The New Civil Rights Movement" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">The New Civil Rights Movement</a></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: inherit;">September 3, 2019</span></div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;">In response to two in-store shootings at its stores and the subsequent strong social media campaigns Walmart has just announced it will cease selling handgun and military assault rifle ammunition.…</p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/exclusive-disinformation-is-catalyzing-the-global-spread-of-authoritarianism/</div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Disinformation is catalyzing the spread of authoritarianism worldwide</div><div>
</div><div>This article was paid for with reader donations to Alternet 2020.</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Joshua Holland August 31, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>There’s a segment of the American left that believes we’re in no position to be outraged over Russia’s multifaceted campaign to swing the 2016 election to Trump because the U.S. has meddled in its share of elections in other countries. Setting aside the fact that this is a prime example of the tu quoque fallacy, it ignores the specific context of that intervention. The Kremlin didn’t help elect a generic Republican who is sympathetic to their interests–they worked on behalf of a clownish and corrupt narcissist who has no clue whatsoever about how to govern and has emboldened an ethno-nationalist movement that’s ripping the country apart.</div><div>
</div><div>But that argument also fails to grasp that this isn’t just about us. As I wrote for The Nation in 2017, long before Trump descended on that gaudy golden escalator to announce his candidacy with a rant about Mexico sending us their rapists, Russia had honed its tactics in Estonia, followed soon after by attempts, with varying degrees of success, to disrupt the domestic politics of Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Finland, Bosnia and Macedonia.</div><div>
</div><div>While those efforts were on behalf of politicians and parties that were seen as advancing the Kremlin’s interests, and weren’t strictly ideological, in most cases they resulted in support for far-right ethno-nationalists.</div><div>
</div><div>More recently, Russia appears to have assisted the Yes campaign leading up to the UK’s Brexit referendum and is alleged to have offered financial and other assistance to a whole string of far-right, anti-immigrant parties across Western Europe.</div><div>
</div><div>But just as this isn’t about the U.S. alone, it also isn’t about Russia. As The New York Times reported earlier this year, researchers have “discovered numerous copycats, particularly on the far right. Those groups often echo Kremlin talking points, making it difficult to discern the lines between Russian propaganda, far-right disinformation and genuine political debate.”</div><div>
</div><div>Last month, The Washington Post reported that,&nbsp; “as reporters, propaganda experts, and government officials ponder where the next plot to manipulate an election using social media will emerge, one country on the map appears to be blinking red: the Philippines.”</div><div>
</div><div>If that comes as a surprise, consider that Filipinos spend on average 10 hours a day online, that almost everyone older than 13 uses social media, and that Facebook is accessible on smartphones without paying data charges. The Philippines is a place where troll armies duke it out across the country and where an increasingly sophisticated web of public relations firms and social media contractors is emerging.</div><div>
</div><div>The disinformation industry in the country got a jump start when President Rodrigo Duterte employed a so-called keyboard army of paid trolls and supportive volunteers to help pave his way to an election victory in 2016.</div><div>
</div><div>In Brazil, another clownish demagogue whom nobody thought would win, Jair Bolsonaro, has given his countrymen tacit permission to torch the Amazon. He, too, can probably thank disinformation campaigns on social media for his unlikely victory.</div><div>
</div><div>As Zack Beauchamp wrote for Vox shortly after Brazil’s election:</div><div>
</div><div>At the inauguration of Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in early January, a crowd of his supporters began a surprising chant. They weren’t cheering for Bolsonaro or his running mate or their party; instead, they were reciting the names of social media platforms.</div><div>
</div><div>“Facebook, Facebook, Facebook!” the crowd yelled. “WhatsApp, WhatsApp, WhatsApp!”</div><div>
</div><div>They were crediting the platforms with their man’s victory, and they aren’t entirely wrong. During the campaign, a conservative pro-business interest groupfunded a massive disinformation campaign on WhatsApp (the popular messaging app owned by Facebook). False and damaging information about Bolsonaro’s left-wing opponent, including fake news mocked up to look like neutral fact-checks, spread like wildfire in the runup to the October 8 vote. This deluge, according to one Brazilian expert, played a role in Bolsonaro’s victory.</div><div>
</div><div>The glee Bolsonaro’s supporters exhibited points to a troubling development, one familiar to many Americans: Social media, once seen as a profoundly democratic technology, is increasingly serving the needs of authoritarians and their allies.</div><div>
</div><div>The reality is that the true agendas of far-right “populists” tend to be quite unpopular. Around the world, they seem to have grasped that in order to claim and then hold onto power, they have to not only demonize their political opponents, but also discredit democratic institutions–especially the independent press–and their best tool for doing so is with coordinated disinformation campaigns disseminated largely through social media.</div><div>
</div><div>In this, they have a structural advantage over those who remain invested in pluralistic democracy. It is anathema to most of them to fight fire with fire–to stoop to using similar tactics–and as we know, a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can put on its boots.</div><div>
</div><div>Unless this asymmetry is addressed in some fashion–and it’s not an easy nut to crack–historians may look back at the early 21st century and conclude that this was the time when it became apparent that liberal democracy is fundamentally incompatible with the internet and it’s free-wheeling information infrastructure.</div><div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/despite-bias-claims-facebook-not-censoring-conservatives">https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/despite-bias-claims-facebook-not-censoring-conservatives</a></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-august-13-2019/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-august-13-2019/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0:08 –<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">&nbsp;Sandra</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">&nbsp;Cuffe&nbsp;</span>(<a href="https://twitter.com/Sandra_Cuffe" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">@Sandra_Cuffe</em></a>)&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">is a freelance journalist based in Central America, contributing to Al Jazeera and the Washington Post. She joins us now from Guatemala, where she’s covering the presidential elections and the immigration.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0:34 –&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Noah Greenwald</span>&nbsp;(<a href="https://twitter.com/Noah_Ark_757" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">@Noah_Ark_757</em></a>)&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">is the Endangered Species Director with the Center for Biological Diversity.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0:48 –&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Chip</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">&nbsp;Gibbons</span>&nbsp;(<a href="https://twitter.com/ChipGibbons89" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">@ChipGibbons89</em></a>)&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">is a journalist whose work has been featured in Jacobin, In These Times, and the Nation. He is also the policy and legislative counsel for Defending Rights and Dissent,&nbsp; an organization founded by victims of the House Un-American Activities Committee that works to protect the right to engage in political expression. His latest piece for In These Times: “Expanding the Powers of the FBI Is Not the Solution to White Supremacist Violence.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1:08 –<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Jen</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">&nbsp;Schradie</span>&nbsp;(<a href="https://twitter.com/schradie" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">@schradie</em></a>)&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">is a sociologist and Assistant Professor of the Observatoire sociologique du changement at Sciences Po in Paris. Her latest book is “The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives.”</span></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></span></p><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="CAIQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjmsPTjv4DkAhUMGs0KHaeiAOUQFSgAMAB6BAgCEAA"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.54;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972339&content=bios" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php%3Fisbn%3D9780674972339%26content%3Dbios&ved=2ahUKEwjmsPTjv4DkAhUMGs0KHaeiAOUQFjAAegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /></font><h3 class="LC20lb" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.33;"><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972339&content=bios" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php%3Fisbn%3D9780674972339%26content%3Dbios&ved=2ahUKEwjmsPTjv4DkAhUMGs0KHaeiAOUQFjAAegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972339&content=bios" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php%3Fisbn%3D9780674972339%26content%3Dbios&ved=2ahUKEwjmsPTjv4DkAhUMGs0KHaeiAOUQFjAAegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">The Revolution That Wasn't — Jen Schradie | Harvard University Press</a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></h3><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="f" style="line-height: 1.54;">May 13, 2019 -&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jen Schradie</span>&nbsp;is a&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">sociologist</span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Assistant Professor</span>&nbsp;at the&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Observatoire sociologique du changement</span>&nbsp;at&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Sciences Po</span>&nbsp;in&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Paris</span>.&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Her</span>&nbsp;work has been featured on CNN and the BBC and in the&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">New</span>&nbsp;Yorker, the Washington Post,&nbsp;...</font></span></a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="CAEQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjmsPTjv4DkAhUMGs0KHaeiAOUQFSgAMAF6BAgBEAA"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; 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The Revolution That Wasn't and millions of other&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">books</span>&nbsp;are available for Amazon Kindle. .....&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Jen Schradie</span>&nbsp;is a&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">sociologist</span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Assistant Professor</span>&nbsp;at the&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Observatoire sociologique du changement</span>&nbsp;at&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Sciences Po</span>in&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Paris</span>.&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Her</span>&nbsp;work&nbsp;...</font></span></a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iEIQtFAGhkcJ:https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-That-Wasnt-Activism-Conservatives/dp/0674972333+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:iEIQtFAGhkcJ:https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-That-Wasnt-Activism-Conservatives/dp/0674972333%2B%26cd%3D2%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjmsPTjv4DkAhUMGs0KHaeiAOUQIDABegQIARAE" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iEIQtFAGhkcJ:https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-That-Wasnt-Activism-Conservatives/dp/0674972333+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:iEIQtFAGhkcJ:https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-That-Wasnt-Activism-Conservatives/dp/0674972333%2B%26cd%3D2%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjmsPTjv4DkAhUMGs0KHaeiAOUQIDABegQIARAE" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/leaked-draft-of-trump-executive-order-to-censor-the-internet-denounced-as-unconstitutional-edict/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/leaked-draft-of-trump-executive-order-to-censor-the-internet-denounced-as-unconstitutional-edict/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</div><div><b>Leaked draft of Trump executive order to ‘censor the internet’ denounced as unconstitutional edict</b></div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jon Queally / Common Dreams<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>August 11, 2019</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Civil liberties groups are warning of a major threat to online freedoms and First Amendment rights if a leaked draft of a Trump administration edict—dubbed by critics as a “Censor the Internet” executive order that would give powerful federal agencies far-reaching powers to pick and choose which kind of Internet material is and is not acceptable—is allowed to go into effect.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to CNN, which obtained a copy of the draft, the new rule “calls for the&nbsp;<b>FCC to develop new regulations clarifying how and when the law protects social media websites when they decide to remove or suppress content on their platforms</b>. Although still in its early stages and subject to change,<b>&nbsp;the Trump administration’s draft order also calls for the Federal Trade Commission to take those new policies into account when it investigates or files lawsuits against misbehaving companies.”</b></span></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While Politico was the first to report how the draft was being circulated by the White House, CNN notes that if put into effect, “the order would reflect a significant escalation by President Trump in his frequent attacks against social media companies over an alleged but unproven systemic bias against conservatives by technology platforms. And it could lead to a significant reinterpretation of a law that, its authors have insisted, was meant to give tech companies broad freedom to handle content as they see fit.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>Following reporting on the leaked draft, free speech and online advocacy groups raised alarm about the troubling and far-reaching implications of the Trump plan if it was put into effect by executive decree.</div><div>
</div><div>The ¦¦¦¦¦¦ White House just ¦¦¦¦¦¦ leaked a draft executive order ¦¦¦¦¦¦ that would ¦¦¦¦¦¦ give the government the power ¦¦¦¦¦¦ to censor the Internet. ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ We have to stop it before it’s ¦¦¦¦¦¦. https://t.co/mQCoL86ifA</div><div>
</div><div>— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) August 11, 2019</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It’s hard to put into words how mind bogglingly absurd this executive order is,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, in a tweet. “<b>In the name of</b>defending free speech it would allow mass government censorship of online content. In practice, it means whichever party is in power can decide what speech is allowed on the internet.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>PEN America, which defends the free expression for writers, journalists, and others, warned that any executive order based on this draft rule would be an unconstitutional “anti-American edict.”</div><div>
</div><div>If this accurately reflects resulting EO, it’s an anti-American edict that would empower FCC & FTC to be viewpoint-based arbiters of online speech. Thankfully, 1st Amendment forbids that. It’s regrettable that this Administration doesn’t seem to know that. https://t.co/uKNqE6UKD4</div><div>
</div><div>— PEN America (@PENamerica) August 9, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>As detailed in an action alert put out by Fight for the Future over the weekend:</div><div>
</div><div>[The] leaked documents show that the Trump administration is drafting an executive order that, if upheld by the courts, could essentially end free speech on the Internet. The draft order would put the FTC and the FCC, headed by its<b>&nbsp;notoriously corrupt chairman Ajit Pai,</b>&nbsp;in charge of monitoring and policing online speech on social media platforms, online forums, and more.</div><div>
</div><div>It would give these bureaucratic government agencies unprecedented control over how Internet platforms moderate speech by allowing them to revoke the essential protections Congress laid out in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). CDA 230 is the basic law that makes it possible for online platforms to let users post our own content, and to make basic decisions about what types of content they as private entities want to host. Every meme, every social media post, every blog and user-created video on the Internet has been made possible by this crucial free speech protection.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>In practice, this executive order would mean that whichever political party is in power could dictate what speech is allowed on the Internet. If the government doesn’t like the way a private company is moderating content, they can shut their entire website down.</b></div><div>
</div><div>“These leaks about a potential Executive Order from the White House are troubling on many levels, from the order’s potential to violate the First Amendment, to its apparent disregard for the independence of agencies like the FCC and the FTC, to its intent to unilaterally limit Section 230 which promotes moderated online communities free of hate speech and misinformation,” said Chris Lewis, president and CEO of Public Knowledge.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“If these reports are a trial balloon from the White House,” Lewis added, “then it’s time to pop it.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>While the Trump administration has tried to argue the new order is a tool to keep web platforms from censoring online speech, Fight for the Future warns “this plan would create terrifying new censorship powers for the government to do just that.”</div><div>
</div><div>While Fight for the Future acknowledged the serious and legitimate concerns about the behavior and outsized power of the major tech giants, it said the draft rule is a simply unacceptable way to address those issues:</div><div>
</div><div>Look, we’re also concerned about the growing power that mega-platforms like Facebook and Twitter have to control online speech.</div><div>
</div><div>But this draft Executive Order would make that situation SO much worse, by opening a pandora’s box of government censorship.https://t.co/mQCoL86ifA</div><div>
</div><div>— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) August 11, 2019</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Despite loud and continued claims from right-wing forces that platforms like Facebook and Twitter are biased against them, Public Knowledge’s Lewis said the new White House proposal is yet another reason to push back against this unfounded mantra that Trump himself has helped proliferate.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Political bias by digital platforms remains unproven. In fact, an independent study by The Economist points towards search platforms having a bias towards virality and attention, not political ideology,” said Lewis. “This matches reports from books like&nbsp;<b>Tim Wu’s “The Attention Merchants”</b>&nbsp;and others that study social media addiction. It is this sort of algorithmic bias towards virality that foreign adversaries use to sow disinformation and mistrust in our country.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>Given how much power the proposed would place in the hands of the FCC and FTC, Lewis said it is crucial for the heads of those agencies—including FCC chair Ajit Pai, a former telecom industry lobbyist and Trump appointee—to come forward and make clear their commitment to First Amendment protections.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It is all the more important to hear from FCC commissioners given Chairman Pai’s strong condemnation of public positions taken by past administrations on net neutrality violating the independence of the FCC,” said Lewis. “If these reports are true, this Executive Order serves as a direct order to the FCC that if left unchallenged, could threaten the independence of these agencies altogether.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>As part of its effort to halt such an executive order in its track, Fight for the Future people urged people—”regardless of your politics”—to oppose the measure.</div><div>
</div><div>“Regardless of how you feel about the president,” the group said, “this is a terrible idea that will have the exact opposite impact of its stated purpose of protecting free speech.”</div><div>
</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><nobr style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</nobr></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><nobr style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</nobr></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><nobr style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>newest version/ incarnation of myth of libral press is social media bias:</b></nobr></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><nobr style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</nobr></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-preps-order-forcing-social-media-sites-to-give-conservatives-special-rights-as-sons-attack-twitter/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-preps-order-forcing-social-media-sites-to-give-conservatives-special-rights-as-sons-attack-twitter/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump preps order forcing social media sites to give conservatives special rights as sons attack Twitter</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>August 8, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One Trump Son Starts Following Alt-Right Social Media Site Popular With Extremists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are attacking the social media site their father says helped put him in the White House, as President Donald Trump appears to be following through on a promise to go after social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. That promise is based on false and debunked claims that “Big Tech,” from Google to social media sites, are biased against conservatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Politico reports the&nbsp;<b>Trump White House is circulating several different drafts of what would become an executive order that would somehow regulate free speech on social media platforms, which are publicly-traded private companies. Trump last month promised conservatives he would explore “all regulatory and legislative solutions” to try to control social media companies and other Silicon Valley “Big Tech” corporations, like Google.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“If the internet is going to be presented as this egalitarian platform and&nbsp;<b>most of Twitter is liberal cesspools of venom,</b>&nbsp;then at least the president wants some fairness in the system,” a White House official told Politico.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What the White House and President Donald Trump are ignoring is conservative extremists are the ones more often engaging in politically motivated and white supremacist domestic terror attacks, like the one in El Paso this weekend that left 22 people dead. Just recently FBI Director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate committee that the “majority of the domestic terrorism cases we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Any claims of anti-conservative bias also are not taking into account the offensive behavior by some conservatives, including violating the social media platforms’ terms of service, which apparently lead to them being suspended or removed from those sites.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for Twitter being a “liberal cesspool,” as the White House called it, the fact is the President has an extremely low approval rating.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Meanwhile, both Trump sons in what appears to be thinly-veiled support for their father’s impending executive order, blasted Twitter this week, while&nbsp;<b>Eric Trump started following the alt-right and far right social media platform Gab</b>. Gab is known to be more friendly to extremists, the alt-right, anti-Semitism, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and white supremacists</span>, as NBC News’ Ben Collins noted Thursday morning:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ben Collins</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Great. https://twitter.com/trumpsalert/status/1159454232082206720 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Alert</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@TrumpsAlert</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">EricTrump appears to be following @getongab. (This bot cannot tell if it was a new follow or the result of the account being reactivated.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ben Collins</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@oneunderscore</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A reminder that Gab is where the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter posted mountains of anti-Semitic screeds, convinced the “migrant caravan” was an “invasion” plotted by a Jewish cabal, before writing “Screw the optics, I’m going in.”https://twitter.com/trumpsalert/status/1159454232082206720?s=21 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Alert</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@TrumpsAlert</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">EricTrump appears to be following @getongab. (This bot cannot tell if it was a new follow or the result of the account being reactivated.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Eric Trump does not appear to have joined Gab, at least not under his name, although there are several parody accounts that appear when searching the site. He did, however take to Twitter to call the popular social media site “an absolute mess.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Days earlier Eric shared an article from Breitbart, which is known as a home to the alt-right, titled “Former Google Engineer: Google Will Try to Prevent Trump from Being Re-elected.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is just one of several tweets Donald Trump Jr. has posted or retweeted in recent days:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump Jr.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@DonaldJTrumpJr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Yea, no bias at all from big tech and the social media masters. Truly sick. https://twitter.com/chuckrossdc/status/1159220292906078209 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chuck Ross</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@ChuckRossDC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NEW: Twitter says it locked @Team_Mitch's account for violating its "violent threats policy" by posting a video of protesters calling for violence against McConnell.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McConnell campaign manager notes that Twitter allowed "Massacre Mitch" to trend. https://<b>dailycaller.com/</b>2019/08/07/twitter-suspends-mitch-mcconnell-account-protest-video/ …</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/qanon-conspiracists-appear-at-trump-rally-only-hours-after-fbi-warning-on-far-right-conspiracy-group/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/qanon-conspiracists-appear-at-trump-rally-only-hours-after-fbi-warning-on-far-right-conspiracy-group/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx ah</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Far-right proponents of the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory — which claims that an alliance of Hollywood actors and Washington, D.C. politicians, among others, have been engaging in an international child sex ring —<b>&nbsp;are not only unhinged; they are also potentially dangerous, according to the FBI. And this week, the Washington Post reports, some QAnon proponents turned up at a rally for President Donald Trump on the same day the FBI issued a bulletin warning that the group could be dangerous.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the bulletin, proponents of QAnon as well as the Pizzagate conspiracy theory have the potential for violence. In 2016, Pizzagate proponents claimed that Democrats were using a Washington, D.C. pizzeria for child sex abuse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The bulletin reads, “The FBI assesses these<b>&nbsp;conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts.&nbsp;</b>And it goes on to say that<b>&nbsp;reports “of a sudden rise in threats and unfounded accusations against a given individual or business may indicate impending conspiracy theory-driven crime or violence.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Thursday at a Trump rally in Cincinnati, according to the Post, a supporter named Brandon Straka used a QAnon slogan: “where we go one, we go all.” And other QAnon proponents were seen at the rally as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the cultish QAnon community, Trump is held in high regard: QAnon theorists believe his presidency is meant to help carry out a worldwide battle against a child sex ring — and Q is an anonymous figure who sends sporadic messages on the battle.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NB RHET: note that we have the same kind of one up escalation as in 4chan gab but on FB in the open, either b/c they are not worried about being public or older demo bit luddite?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/texas-border-militiaman-is-now-a-federal-fugitive-vowing-to-make-himself-a-martyr/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/texas-border-militiaman-is-now-a-federal-fugitive-vowing-to-make-himself-a-martyr/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx vid</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Texas border militiaman is now a federal fugitive vowing to make himself a martyr</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by David Neiwert / Daily Kos<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>July 30, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A Texas militiaman who led a border-watch operation and was later convicted in 2015 on federal weapons charges has announced that he is becoming a fugitive after a warrant was issued for his arrest—and is vowing that he won’t be captured again.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kevin Lyndel “KC” Massey, a 53-year-old from Quinlan, is the subject of a Federal Marshals Service warrant issued last week naming him “Most Wanted,” and warning that he is “armed and dangerous,” and moreover “has reportedly made threats to kill law enforcement that attempt to arrest him.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It appears he intends to make himself a martyr to the “Patriot” cause in the mold of LaVoy Finicum, the Utah man shot in January 2016 by Oregon State Patrol officers after he refused arrest related to the armed standoff at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On his Facebook page, Massey posted a warning:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">KC is done playing the game of&nbsp;<b>unconstitutional courts</b>&nbsp;that already cost him 3+ years in federal prison for not even violating the law as written. The judge said in his statement, that the conviction was based on court precedent not on the written letter of the law. The feds continued to subject KC to their<b>&nbsp;tyranny</b>&nbsp;after release from prison, while serving a double jeopardy sentence of 3 years probation. KC is NOT going to allow himself to be&nbsp;<b>kidnapped again. Death before dishonor!</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Massey was arrested in 2015 by federal agents at the Mexico border, where he had been involved in an ongoing effort by a group of “Patriot” militiamen to prevent crossings by would-be immigrants at the Rio Grande. The group—who called their operation “Camp Lonestar”—was among the first such militias to actually detain border crossers with wrist ties and hold them for detention by Border Patrol.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first arrest at the camp occurred when a participant named John Frederick Forrester, also a convicted felon, had an encounter in the brush with a Border Patrol officer that drew the agent’s gunfire. When more federal agents arrived to pursue a tip that Forrester was not the only armed felon in the camp, they found Massey—who had a 2003 conviction on his record—also in possession of a gun.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Massey had become the chief media spokesman for Camp Lonestar, which had begun operating initially under a veil of secrecy. As is inevitably the case with such operations, rather than actually clamping down on illegal crossings, the group’s presence actually just complicated an already difficult situation. It also fairly dripped with conspiracist paranoia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Camp Lonestar was particularly notable for its harassment and detention of would-be border-crossers. In one video, the militiamen could be seen rounding up a group of immigrants and holding them for Border Patrol. Massey posted an explanation on Facebook afterwards: “Sorry we had to ‘Detain’ them,” he wrote in a comment. “[B]ut they were wore out and just fell down and gave up while the other 7-8 ran like gazelles!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the post explained, the militiamen detained the people—described as Honduran, Guatemalan, and Mexican—after they encountered a group of about 11 border crossers, most of whom took off through the brush. The three men they kept were “ziptied,&nbsp;<b>debriefed,&nbsp;</b>and given water,” and U.S. Border Patrol officers eventually arrived and took them away.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“WE DO NOT AIM TO DETAIN, we would much rather send them back into the river into Mexico and dissuade them and the&nbsp;<b>cartel from crossing on the property we patrol,”</b>&nbsp;the post explained. “All encounters were conducted in a&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">humanitarian, professional fashion.</span>&nbsp;Stay vigilant. Thank you for your support.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But behind the guise of humanitarian treatment was a not-so-subtle smirking contempt. “One of the guys pissed himself!” remarked Massey. Another chimed in, “Dude pissed himself bad.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Massey, the camp’s “<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">commanding officer,” had appeared in numerous videos posted on Facebook and elsewhere that showed the activities involved in Camp Lonestar.</span>They also featured their rationalizations for harassing people at the border: “I’m not anti-immigration,” he told reporters. “I have no problem with immigrants. I have a problem with<b>&nbsp;terrorists.</b>&nbsp;I have a problem with people who are coming to this country to<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;hurt my fellow Americans and to destroy my fellow Americans’ property and livelihood.”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Massey’s arrest, Camp Lonestar largely crumbled apart and ceased operation. The landowner whose property they operated from, Cuban “Rusty” Monsees, later told reporters that the experience “wasn’t that great.” “They jeopardized my safety and some other people’s safety by what they were doing,” Monsees said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Massey pleaded guilty in September 2015 to the federal weapons charges and served three years in prison. After his release, he remained on parole, but continued to claim that he had been unjustly prosecuted. The conditions of that parole appear to have led him eventually to revolt, which in turn brought the most recent warrant for his arrest.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of Massey’s supporters penned a blog post suggesting that Massey was now following Finicum’s example of deliberate martyrdom:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One thing I do know, like LaVoy, he will live to his last day out in the open, not in a cage…I don’t know about anyone else reading this but I don’t want another good patriot killed because the<b>&nbsp;government didn’t want their dirty secrets revealed or the “virus” known as the Constitution spreading</b>.&nbsp; I refuse to lose another good friend.&nbsp; I will do everything in my power to keep that from happening.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Commenters on Facebook not only supported this view, but suggested that Massey’s case might inspire a larger revolt. “10s of thousands doing the same thing only way this stops is if any and all<b>&nbsp;moron parasites and workers for them are removed</b>&nbsp;every attempt they make to&nbsp;<b>steal lifes time or property&nbsp;</b>they should at no time ever be allowed past to do it to another,” one of them wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another suggested that a team armed militiamen should intervene on Massey’s behalf, saying that “a team of solid mother fuckers need to&nbsp;<b>grow a pair&nbsp;</b>and hear his story and decide if they will help if not he will be&nbsp;<b>killed in cold blood&nbsp;</b>or put in prison its that simple&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">a facebook set of balls will do nothing</span>,” he wrote.</font></div></div><div><p style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/facebook-algorithm-changes-suppressed-journalism-and-meddled-with-democracy/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/facebook-algorithm-changes-suppressed-journalism-and-meddled-with-democracy/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many graf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Facebook algorithm changes suppressed journalism and meddled with democracy</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">July 24, 2019 7.07am EDT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Jennifer Grygiel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Assistant Professor of Communications (Social Media) & Magazine, News and Digital Journalism, Syracuse University</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Disclosure statement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jennifer Grygiel owns a small number of shares in the following social media companies: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Alibaba, LinkedIn, YY and Snap. Grygiel also owns nominal amounts of the following cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Facebook’s News Feed algorithm determines what users see on its platform – from funny memes to comments from friends. The company regularly updates this algorithm, which can dramatically change what information people consume.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As the 2020 election approaches, there is much public concern that what was dubbed “Russian meddling” in the 2016 presidential election could happen again. But what’s not getting enough attention is the role Facebook’s algorithm changes play, intentionally or not, in that kind of meddling.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A key counterpoint to the Russian misinformation campaign was factual journalism from reputable sources – which reached many of their readers on Facebook and other social media platforms. As a social media researcher and educator, I see evidence that&nbsp;<b>changes to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm suppressed users’ access to credible journalism in the run-up to Trump’s election.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Political operatives know Facebook serves as a gatekeeper of the information diets of more than 200 million Americans and 2 billion users worldwide. Actions and abuse by others on the platforms have generated much concern and public discussion, including about how much disinformation and propaganda Americans saw before the election. What has not been talked about enough is the effect that Facebook’s algorithmic shifts have had on access to news and democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Changing the system</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In mid-2015, Facebook introduced a major algorithm change that pivoted readers away from journalism and news, to deliver more updates from their friends and family. The change was couched in friendly language suggesting Facebook was trying to make sure users&nbsp; didn’t miss stories from friends. But social media data shows that one effect of the change was to reduce the number of interactions Facebook users had with credible journalism outlets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A few months before the 2016 election, an even bigger algorithm change toward friends and family posts took a second toll on publisher traffic. A wide range of news publishers found that their content was significantly less visible to Facebook users.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Examining the numbers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In my research, I looked at Facebook engagement for mainstream news outlets surrounding the 2016 election. My findings support others’ conclusions that Facebook’s algorithm greatly suppressed public engagement with these publishers.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Data from CrowdTangle, a social media monitoring company, shows that<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Facebook traffic dropped noticeably at CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, The New York Times and The Washington Post after the company updated its algorithms to favor friends and family in June 2016</span>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That proves the algorithm worked the way it was designed to work, but I am concerned that major U.S. publishers were suppressed in this way. Voter interest in the presidential election was higher in 2016 than in the previous two decades, and misinformation was rampant. Facebook’s changes meant that key news organizations across the political spectrum had a harder time getting the word out about credible election news and reporting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alarm bells</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Facebook was aware of concerns about its algorithm even before the election happened. One of Facebook’s own engineers flagged these potential effects of Facebook’s algorithm changes in July 2015. Three months later, Zuckerberg’s mentor, Roger McNamee, also attempted to alert Zuckerberg and Facebook executives that the platform was being used to manipulate information about the election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Just after the election, reporter Craig Silverman’s research at BuzzFeed showed that fake election news had outperformed “real news.” I</b>n late 2018, Facebook’s own company statement revealed issues with how its algorithm rewarded “borderline content” that was sensational and provocative, like much of the hyperpartisan news that trended in advance of the election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">More recent research by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center shows that Facebook traffic continued to decrease significantly for publishers after a further Facebook algorithm change in January 2018.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prof. Grygiel calls for algorithmic transparency on MSNBC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Algorithmic transparency</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>To date, research on how Facebook’s algorithm works has been limited by the lack of access to its proprietary inner workings.</b>&nbsp;It’s not enough to investigate the effects of the changes in Facebook’s News Feed. I believe it’s important to understand why they happened, too, and consider Facebook’s business decisions more directly and how they affect democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Recent insight into the company’s internal processes suggest that Facebook is beginning to understand its power. In July 2019, Bloomberg News revealed that the company had<b>&nbsp;deployed software on its own platform to look out for posts that portrayed Facebook itself in potentially misleading ways, reducing their visibility to safeguard the company’s reputation.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some international legal scholars have begun to call for laws to protect democracies against the possibility that algorithmic manipulation could deliver electoral gain. There’s no proof that Facebook’s changes had political intentions, but it’s not hard to imagine that the company could tweak its algorithms in the future, if it wanted to.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>To guard against that potential, new laws could bar changes to the algorithm in the run-up periods before elections</b>. In the financial industry, for instance, “quiet periods” in advance of major corporate announcements seek to prevent marketing and public-relations efforts from artificially influencing stock prices.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similar protections for algorithms against corporate manipulation could help ensure that politically active, power-seeking Facebook executives – or any other company with significant control over users’ access to information – can’t use their systems to shape public opinion or voting behavior.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tags: Facebook</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Google</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mark Zuckerberg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2016 US Presidential Election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Peter Thiel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2020 US Presidential Election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social media and democracy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Algorithm transparency</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/a-disinformation-hurricane-is-coming-in-2020-as-other-adversaries-emulate-russias-model/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/a-disinformation-hurricane-is-coming-in-2020-as-other-adversaries-emulate-russias-model/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A ‘disinformation hurricane’ is coming in 2020 as other adversaries emulate Russia’s model</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was paid for with reader donations to Alternet 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Matt Osborne<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>July 16, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shortly after the first debate between Democratic presidential contenders, trolls from the message board 4Chan boosted Tulsi Gabbard to the top of some online polls, earning credulous press attention with this sudden surge of support. At the same time, real and fake Andrew Yang supporters complained of supposed unfairness to their candidate, trending #LetYangSpeak on Twitter. While this is unlikely to make either longshot candidate the nominee, anyone looking to disrupt the Democratic Party has two new potential wedges.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>After the 2016 primaries were decided, Russia exploited discontent among Bernie Sanders’ supporters to divide and distract Democrats.</b>&nbsp;In 2020, there are several failing candidates whose supporters can be targeted with memes and fake news promoting conspiracy theories about party apparatchiks secretly conspiring against them. The potential scale of the spoiler problem is therefore much bigger and more fractured this time around.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Gabbard is already a clear Kremlin favorite for this strategy, as her foreign policy leanings are quite friendly to Russia’s interests,</span>&nbsp;but why stop at just one foil to the eventual nominee? Why not turn Joe Biden supporters against Elizabeth Warren, or Warren supporters against Sanders?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the experts predicted months ago, adversaries are already hard at work attacking the 2020 election, and this time it won’t only be Russia that we have to worry about. The early signs of interference are already visible, and as we get deeper into the campaign, these threats are almost certainly going to come from new directions. Having seen Russia intervene in 2016, and win, and then get away with it,<b>&nbsp;everyone from North Korea to China to Saudi Arabia will want to shape American electoral politics to their liking.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">China has clearly ramped up their electioneering capabilities. In Taiwan, celebrity businessman Han Kuo-yu was elected mayor of Kaohsiung last year with help from Facebook groups “created, managed, and nurtured by what looks very much like a professional cybergroup from [mainland] China,” according to reporter Paul Huang at Foreign Policy. Now a favorite to run for Taiwan’s presidency in 2020, Han Kuo-yu is everything that Beijing could want in a Taiwanese politician. Would they hesitate to insert themselves in an American election in the midst of a high-stakes trade-war?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It is likely that these new players will attack from both sides of an issue the way Russia did in 2016 when, for example, Americans saw “separate ads, launched simultaneously, [that] would stoke suspicion about how police treat black people in one ad, while another encouraged support for pro-police groups.”&nbsp;<b>About half of all the Facebook material put out by the Internet Research Agency, the Kremlin-backed “troll farm” in St. Petersburg, in 2016 was aimed at stoking racial animus this way.</b>&nbsp;Then after the election, the IRA tried to organize simultaneous pro- and anti-Trump rallies in New York City. This is a standard element of all information warfare doctrine: always pit both sides against the middle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>We can also expect to see an even higher level of Twitter bot activity than ever before,</b>&nbsp;as every new player will have their own army of fake accounts. They will do this because the evidence shows that these tactics are effective.&nbsp;<b>A new study released earlier this month found that Russian bot activity had a greater impact than Trump’s own tweets in 2016, driving up his support among undecided voters in the last, critical days of the race.&nbsp;It is important to note that these activities did not reduce support for Clinton. Instead, they drove negative partisanship among potential Trump voters, appealing to baser emotions and stirring antagonism towards the Democrat in order to boost his turnout.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>This is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of what Russia’s Internet Research Agency did in 2016.&nbsp;</b>Much of the material uncovered by congressional investigators was<b>&nbsp;not explicitly political; instead of calls to vote, there was a lot of symbolism—eagles and flags and patriotic quotes. Yet there was an insidious program at work in those seemingly non-partisan materials. By promoting memes designed to appeal to right wing voters, the IRA created large echo chambers that amplified their messages on Facebook. Rather than change minds, they wanted people to ‘dig in’ and get whipped into a fury, making them more likely to turn out and vote.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Some have a hard time understanding that individual persuasion, while possible, is rarely an effective communications strategy. It’s much easier to turn out your own voters than convince new ones, and studies show that social media pressure is even more effective at firing up your base than organized canvassing or other traditional, in-person techniques. It is also far cheaper, and because social media incentivizes negative partisanship, such messages are much more “viral” than the positive messaging that Democrats prefer. Psychologists have long observed that people tend to be more responsive to bad news than good — they call it “negativity bias.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Clinton campaign made an error in 2016 by trying to persuade moderate Republicans rather than focusing on turning out her base.</b>&nbsp;We’ve seen other examples of it since then. For example, when Beto O’Rourke challenged Ted Cruz in the 2018 midterm elections, his Facebook ad targeting was simplistic, and designed mainly to maximize views and clicks instead of drawing anyone into a community. Cruz, on the other hand, used Facebook ads to radicalize his base with disinformation and build on a set of shared values contrary to O’Rourke’s liberal message. Whereas O’Rourke disdained the Clinton campaign model of “triangulation and data-driven microtargeting,” he fell into the exact same trap of emphasizing positivity and “going high” in a medium that simply does not reward this type of material. Beto may have captured Democratic hearts but the Cruz campaign, which has always had a sophisticated digital GOTV machine, eked out a narrow victory thanks to high conservative turnout.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Russia has also played a major role in the Texas disinformation game</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. One secessionist Facebook group, Heart of Texas, reportedly received 4.8 million shares by November 2016—the most of any IRA account–through precision targeting and by emphasizing negative partisanship. The IRA is just one of a dozen The Kremlin’s campaign to influence US elections, known as ‘Project Lakhta,’ has been operational since 2014and Texas is a favorite target. Between these foreign and domestic disinformation schemes, there’s little hope for anyone to win a major election with a purely-positive, issues-based campaign on social media.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Unfortunately, we can’t expect Facebook or Twitter to take any effective actions to stop the flow of divisive content. Such measures as they have already taken are unlikely to stop anyone from abusing their platforms in new ways, or with new variations of the same techniques used in 2016.</b>&nbsp;According to Robert Mueller’s indictments, more than a dozen Russian disinformation agents broke the law by purchasing identities to use within the United States. Now that there are Trump supporters who understand what happened and fully approve of the outcome there is nothing to stop the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians, or anyone else from laundering their social media activity through willing, paid accomplices found in the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And as The New York Times reported last year, during the 2018 midterms there was “a shift in the flow of online disinformation [and] falsehoods meant to mislead and inflame,” with more homegrown American groups emulating the model Russia demonstrated in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Neither Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg nor Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will detect or prevent this activity because it is not in their interest to be proactive. The Federal Elections Commission will not get ahead of it either, defanged as they are by decades of Republican regulatory capture. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has systematically quashed all attempts to shore up American cyberdefenses, and Donald Trump is openly hostile toward any mention of beefing up our election security.<b>Because there is no one in Washington tasked with this enforcement job, it simply will not happen.</b>&nbsp;Multiple players will seek new avenues to hit Americans from all sides with the objective of reelecting Trump and keeping the Senate in Republican hands and there will be few cops on the beat to stop them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Democrats are not ready to weather this storm. There are some free counter-disinformation tools available out there, but campaigns are too afraid of potential campaign finance violations to use them. The paid tools available are often unproven, inspiring little confidence that they will work. Vendors who offer to build up counter-disinformation capacities tell me that their proposals are often misconstrued as voter suppression, which of course is anathema to Democrats. So in the face of what is sure to be a disinformation hurricane in 2020, they seem resigned to their fate.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/trump-believes-google-is-trying-to-rig-the-election-project-veritas-video-cb82f03caee3/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://thinkprogress.org/trump-believes-google-is-trying-to-rig-the-election-project-veritas-video-cb82f03caee3/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div class="postcontent" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 2.2rem; margin-bottom: 2em;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>During a 45-minute monologue on Fox Business Wednesday, President Donald Trump&nbsp;<a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/trump-us-should-sue-google-facebook" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">vented his concerns</a>&nbsp;about tech companies like Twitter and Google, going so far as suggesting that he believes they are “trying to rig the election.”</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump complained that Twitter was somehow preventing him from gaining more followers on the platform, including claiming that random people have told him they’re somehow unable to “join” him on Twitter. He made the same claim back in October (even though his follower growth was actually&nbsp;<a href="https://qz.com/1439581/trump-says-twitter-slowed-his-follower-growth-heres-the-fact-check/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">increasing at the time</a>), and this spring, he reportedly voiced his frustration when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey visited the Oval Office. Dorsey&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-gets-gentle-reassurance-from-twitter-chief-jack-dorsey-over-follower-count-in-white-house-meeting" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">tried to reassure the president</a>&nbsp;that the followers he had lost were bots and spam accounts.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump is reportedly preoccupied by the fact former President Barack Obama has more followers on Twitter.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It’s amazing I won the election, because you saw what happened yesterday with Google,” Trump said on Fox. “Google is totally biased to the [Democrats]."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Host Maria Bartiromo tried to clarify that they were talking about a Project Veritas video, released Monday, in which a “Google insider” allegedly made comments about avoiding a similar situation as what happened in 2016.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They’re trying to rig the election! That’s what we should be looking at,” Trump insisted.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>He went on to suggest “they should be sued” because of their alleged bias, suggesting that a Google executive expressed “hatred for the Republicans” this week.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like all Project Veritas videos, the latest undercover video is heavily edited, exaggerates the seniority of the target, and distorts her words to try to fit a conservative conspiracy theory. Specifically, the video claims that Google is trying to affect the 2020 elections to “prevent” the<b>&nbsp;next “Trump situation.” Even with the context left in the edit, it’s clear she is discussing foreign interference in the election.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The target of the video, Jen Gennai, responded to the video&nbsp;<a href="https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-monday-to-go-e92771c7aa82" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">in a Medium post</a>. “Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election,” she wrote. “On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course.” She confirmed that she was discussing Google’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/update-state-sponsored-activity/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">very public work</a>&nbsp;to protect from future election interference.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As U.S. intelligence and special counsel Robert Mueller’s report have made clear, the Russian government interfered in the election to help Trump. 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text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/after-claiming-no-collusion-trump-wants-to-collude-in-2020-b26229d37354/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/after-claiming-no-collusion-trump-wants-to-collude-in-2020-b26229d37354/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/after-claiming-no-collusion-trump-wants-to-collude-in-2020-b26229d37354/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"><figure class="postfigure postfigure--format-thumbnail" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><div class="postthumbnail" style="box-sizing: inherit; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><picture id="picture-1144718" class="wp-image-1144718 size-full " data-id="1144718" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/GettyImages-1147874380.jpg?w=1024&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C636px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 1920px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/GettyImages-1147874380.jpg?w=1024&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C636px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 1024px) and (max-width: 1920px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/GettyImages-1147874380.jpg?w=1024&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C636px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1024px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/GettyImages-1147874380.jpg?w=1024&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C636px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 512px) and (max-width: 1024px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/GettyImages-1147874380.jpg?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C477px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 512px) and (max-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/GettyImages-1147874380.jpg?w=512&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C318px&ssl=1" media="(max-width: 512px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/GettyImages-1147874380.jpg?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C477px&ssl=1" media="(max-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/GettyImages-1147874380.jpg?w=1024&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C636px&ssl=1" media="all" style="box-sizing: inherit;">
</source></source></source></source></source></source></source></source></font></picture></div></figure></a></div><div class="related-contentbody" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 513px;"><h3 class="related-contenttitle" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 2rem; margin: -7px 0px 0.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Trump says he’d collude to win in 2020, after years of claiming ‘no collusion’</font></h3></div></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Google’s “Head of Responsible Innovation,” Gennai explained that she doesn’t even work on any of the products or topics the undercover spy baited her into discussing in a casual conversation held under false pretenses. “I was having a casual chat with someone at a restaurant and used some imprecise language. Project Veritas got me. Well done.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Project Veritas video dropped a day before Maggie Stanphill, Google’s director of user experience,&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/450261-senators-spar-with-google-exec-over-its-influence-on-users" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">testified Tuesday</a>&nbsp;to the Senate Commerce subcommittee on technology. Republicans on the committee grilled her about whether Google uses “persuasive technology” to try to influence users’ political views.<b>&nbsp;Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), in particular, accused Google of censoring conservatives, citing the Project Veritas report. “Do you think it’s Google’s job to ‘prevent the next Trump situation’?” he asked.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stanphill rejected the various claims from the report. “We build for everyone, including every single religious belief, every single demographic, every single region, and certainly every political affiliation,” she responded. Cruz refused to believe the company was unbiased.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Simultaneous with Trump’s rant on Fox Business Wednesday morning, Fox News was interviewing<b>&nbsp;Dennis Prager, founder of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/inside-right-wing-youtube-turning-millennials-conservative-prageru-video-dennis-prager/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">the site PragerU</a></b>.&nbsp;<b>Prager has sued Google,&nbsp;</b>claiming that it has censored its conservative videos on YouTube. Last year,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/youtube-did-not-censor-conservative-videos-judge-rules/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">a federal judge tossed out</a>&nbsp;a nearly identical PragerU suit, noting that as a private company, YouTube can make its own decisions about how to regulate content on its site. Prager insisted that all the major tech platforms simply hate conservative content, taking no responsibility for the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/06/07/prageru%E2%80%99s-influence" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">hateful people and views</a>&nbsp;that have been featured in&nbsp;<b>PragerU videos, including various racist and anti-LGBTQ messages.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2.1875rem; line-height: 2.2rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. The president then repeats these totally unfounded accusations on national television as if they are fact. They are not.</font></p></div><footer class="posttags" style="box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 2rem; margin-bottom: 2em; clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="tags-list" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/tag/big-tech/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">#BIG TECH</a>,</span>&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/tag/donald-trump/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">#DONALD TRUMP</a>,</span>&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/tag/fox-business/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">#FOX BUSINESS</a>,</span>&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/tag/fox-news/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">#FOX NEWS</a>,</span>&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/tag/google/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">#GOOGLE</a>,</span>&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/tag/politics/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">#POLITICS</a>,</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/tag/project-veritas/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">#PROJECT VERITAS</a>,</span>&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/tag/ted-cruz/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">#TED CRUZ</a>,</span>&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/tag/twitter/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">#TWITTER</a></span></font></span></footer></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">bs</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">new</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>OPINION</div><div>I BLEW THE WHISTLE ON PINTEREST CENSORSHIP | OPINION</div><div>ERIC COCHRAN&nbsp;</div><div>ON 6/24/19 AT 9:14 AM EDT Eric Cochran</div><div>00:50</div><div>Melania Trump Praises Twitter, Facebook As 'True Partners'</div><div>OPINION</div><div>ABORTION</div><div>INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY</div><div>I worked as an Android app software developer at Pinterest for nearly two years. I spoke at tech conferences around the world. I worked on open-source code that runs in most major apps. I wanted to do good in the world with my career in technology. I thought Pinterest could be different from its sibling tech giants. I hoped Pinterest might be a tech company that respected its users and was honest with them.</div><div>
</div><div>My illusions vanished when I saw Pinterest fall in line with the other Big Tech companies in its crackdown on content that went against the social agenda of my colleagues in Silicon Valley. I saw the normalization of censorship.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Pinterest's covert censorship of pro-lifers, Christians and conservatives has been exposed</b>. Live Action, one the nation's largest pro-life organizations, has been blocked by Pinterest. Users cannot make posts that link to Live Action and are not given a clear error message when they try. Go ahead and try it yourself on Pinterest. Other conservative sites, like ZeroHedge.com and PJMedia.com, have also been kept off Pinterest.</div><div>
</div><div>When the Project Veritas exposé about my findings was released earlier this month, Pinterest was faced with a choice: Correct the behavior and pledge to be a neutral platform or double-down and declare these pro-life organizations and websites peddlers of bannable misinformation. Pinterest chose the latter.</div><div>
</div><div>Not only are users still unable to link to Live Action, but Live Action's Pinterest account is now permanently suspended. The reason Pinterest gave is that the company does not allow content "that may have immediate and detrimental effects on a Pinner's health or on public safety," according to a screenshot Live Action shared.</div><div>
</div><div>By its treatment of Live Action, Pinterest has drawn a hard line in the sand on what it believes about pro-life content. This comes at a critical time in the abortion debate, as bills tightening or loosening restrictions on abortion are being passed across the country.</div><div>
</div><div>American culture relies on social trust. Americans have assumed that we all agreed on issues like freedom of speech. This trust is now broken, and Big Tech companies have played no small part, as censorship of conservatives becomes normal. Censorship is done in secret, as is the case at Pinterest.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Since the Project Veritas report, the entire Project Veritas exposé video has been removed by YouTube,</b>&nbsp;Tim Pool's video covering the report has been removed by YouTube, and Steven Crowder's video interviewing Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe and myself has been flagged by YouTube for privacy violations. Big Tech is moving in unison to stifle this story and protect its own.</div><div>
</div><div>Until now, YouTube has never removed a Project Veritas video report.</div><div>
</div><div>The leaked Pinterest documents speak to the worldview of the leadership of Big Tech. This worldview is not just leftist; it is one of un-American censorship and belief that users cannot be trusted to hear from any other viewpoints but their own. Censorship behind the dark doors of Silicon Valley is an imminent threat to our democracy. The public must be informed, and we must be able to trust one another to live together in this nation.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Abortion Protest Supreme Court&nbsp;</div><div>A pro-choice supporter, second from left, argues with a pro-life supporter in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 21.</div><div>ANNA GASSOT/AFP/GETTY</div><div>The users of these social media sites have a right to know about this increased censorship. Big Tech companies have advertised themselves as neutral on big ideological issues, like abortion, but it's clear they have chosen a side.</div><div>
</div><div>This is the watershed moment. This story struck a nerve with Big Tech because it forces Pinterest to declare its opinion publicly on pro-life groups like Live Action. The abortion issue is hot. The tech companies are scurrying to protect their Big Tech friends, but they can no longer do it in secret. With Project Veritas' reveal, the public now knows.</div><div>
</div><div>RELATED STORIES</div><div>Why Youtube Censored My Educational Video About the Holocaust</div><div>Alabama Lawmakers Pass Campus Free Speech Bill</div><div>It remains to be seen if the public will demand a fair playing field from social media companies for pro-life and other mainstream American views.</div><div>
</div><div>Eric Cochran is a former Android app software developer for Pinterest.</div><div>
</div><div>The views expressed in this article are the writer's own. Pinterest and YouTube have denied these allegations of censorship in previous reports.</div><div>
</div><div>REQUEST REPRINT, SUBMIT CORRECTION OR VIEW EDITORIAL GUIDELINES</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?460121-1/super-mad-time"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.c-span.org/video/?460121-1/super-mad-time</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span class="time" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-weight: 600; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase; display: block; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><time style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">APRIL 25, 2019</font></time></span><h1 class="video-page-title" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 2px 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Super Mad at Everything All the Time</font></em></h1><div class="initial" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.c-span.org/person/?agnesdagnes" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s ease 0s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Alison Dagnes&nbsp;</a>talked about her book,&nbsp;<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Super Mad at Everything All the Time: Political Media and Our National Anger</i>, in which she looked at the connections between political media and political polarization in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.c-span.org/organization/?1240/United-States" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s ease 0s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">United States</a>.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">THIS IS A VARIANT OF LIBERAL MEDIA MYTH</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Republican humiliates himself at Senate hearing as his attempt to nail Instagram for liberal bias falls flat</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;Republican humiliates himself at Senate hearing as his attempt to nail Instagram for liberal bias falls flat Image via Wikimedia Commons.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">written by Brad Reed / Raw Story<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>June 25, 2019</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">30</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Tuesday fell flat on his face when he tried to get technology experts to admit that major social media platforms were biased against conservatives.</b></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">While talking with assorted experts on artificial intelligence and algorithms, Johnson said that he had his staff members go to Politico’s Instagram account and record what other recommendations the app gave to them after following it.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to Johnson, the vast majority of recommendations that came back were for news websites like the Washington Post or progressive outlets like Huffington Post, and none were for right-wing websites such as Breitbart.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Dr. Stephen Wolfram, the founder and chief executive officer of Wolfram Research, scoffed at Johnson’s claim of bias and said it was more likely that Instagram delivered liberal recommendations to Politico followers because those followers were more likely to follow neutral or progressive political news websites in the first place.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The thing that will happen is, if there’s no other information, it will tend to be just where the most content that people on the platform in general have clicked,” he said. “It may be a statement, in that case — I’m really speculating — that the users of that platform tend to like those things.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Johnson also complained that many conservative news groups were having their articles removed from social media feeds — but Ms. Rashida Richardson, the director of policy research at the AI Now Institute, said that research shows most of those removals came because those articles contained demonstrably false information.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“That’s more of a content moderation issue,” she said.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“OK, anyway,” Johnson replied.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Watch the video below.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">eh fun</font></font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/heres-what-its-like-to-go-on-a-conservative-dating-app/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/heres-what-its-like-to-go-on-a-conservative-dating-app/</a></font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/the-informational-arms-race-why-social-media-disinformation-is-a-threat-to-public-health-and-democracy/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/the-informational-arms-race-why-social-media-disinformation-is-a-threat-to-public-health-and-democracy/</a></font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arms races happen when two sides of a conflict escalate in a series of ever-changing moves intended to outwit the opponent. In biology, a classic&nbsp;<a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.1979.0081" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">example</a>&nbsp;comes from cheetahs and gazelles. Over time, these species have evolved for speed, each responding to the other’s adaptations. A host of weirder examples come from the biology of sex, where males and females evolve bizarre adaptations to control reproduction, ranging from sperm plugs in bats, to cork-screw penises in ducks, to vaginas filled with deceptive dead-ends (also ducks).</font></font></font><div class="p1_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" /></font><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">One hallmark of an arms race is that, at the end, the participants are often just where they started. Sometimes, the cheetah catches its prey, and sometimes the gazelle escapes. Neither wins the race because, as one gets better, so does its opponent. And, along the way, each side expends a great deal of effort. Still, at any point, the only thing that makes sense is to keep escalating.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman">Arms races happen in the human world too. The term arms race, of course, comes from countries at war who literally amass ever-more sophisticated and powerful weapons. But some human arms races are more subtle.</font></p><div class="p3_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman">The philosopher of science Bennett Holman has&nbsp;<a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4kx8g2r1" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">argued</a>&nbsp;that the interactions between pharmaceutical companies and the regulatory bodies that seek to determine if drugs are safe and effective constitute an arms race. Pharmaceutical companies deploy an ever-evolving set of tactics to influence medical knowledge. As regulators identify these tactics, and seek to neutralise them, pharmaceutical companies find new ways to shape research.</font></p><div class="p4_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>We might call this an&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">informational arms race</em>.</b> One side attempts to mislead the public over a key issue – the safety of a drug, whether climate change is real, or whether vaccines are dangerous, for example. At the same time, the other side works to combat this misinformation campaign. (Please note, this would often be referred to as a&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">disinformation&nbsp;</em>campaign, because it is purposefully intended to mislead. I use the term&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">misinformation&nbsp;</em>in this article since it is often tricky to figure out whether something is misinformation or disinformation, and since disinformation often ends up being shared by true believers with no political motives.) Of course, this is precisely the sort of interaction that social-media companies such as Twitter have found themselves engaged in.</font></p><div class="p5_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As detailed in the Mueller&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">report</a>&nbsp;– but widely known before – in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election in the United States, the Russian government (via a group called the Internet Research Agency) engaged in large-scale efforts to influence voters, and to polarise the US public. In the wake of this campaign, social-media sites and research groups have scrambled to protect the US public from misinformation on social media.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Twitter, for example, has employed algorithms aimed at identifying bots and shutting down shady accounts</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By their accounts, they have recently rid Twitter of 1&nbsp;million such accounts per day. But when Twitter gets smarter, so do the bots. A recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.iwr.ai/voterfraud/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">report</a>&nbsp;noted a new bot network on Twitter specially designed to outwit detection algorithms. (Another new trend – pernicious actors&nbsp;<a href="https://www.axios.com/fake-news-propaganda-facebook-2018-midterm-elections-6221ada7-43f0-4187-8f3f-f16090268d67.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">hijacking</a>&nbsp;real accounts.)</span></font></p><div class="p7_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman">What is important to recognise about such a situation is that whatever tactics are working now won’t work for long. The other side will adapt. In particular, we cannot expect to be able to put a set of detection algorithms in place and be done with it. Whatever efforts social-media sites make to root out pernicious actors will regularly become obsolete.</font></p><div class="p8_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="ld-dropcap" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">T</span>he same is true for our individual attempts to identify and avoid misinformation. Since the 2016 US election, ‘fake news’ has been widely discussed and analysed. And many social-media users have become more savvy about identifying sites mimicking traditional news sources. But the same users might not be as savvy, for example, about sleek conspiracy theory videos going viral on YouTube, or about deep fakes – expertly altered images and videos.</font></p><div class="p9_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman">What makes this problem particularly thorny is that internet media changes at dizzying speed. When the radio was first invented, as a new form of media, it was subject to misinformation. But regulators quickly adapted, managing, for the most part, to subdue such attempts. Today, even as Facebook fights Russian meddling, WhatsApp has become host to rampant misinformation in India, leading to the deaths of 31 people in rumour-fuelled mob attacks over two years.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">articipating in an informational arms race is exhausting, but sometimes there are no good alternatives. Public misinformation has serious consequences. For this reason, we should be devoting the same level of resources to fighting misinformation that interest groups are devoting to producing it. All social-media sites need dedicated teams of researchers whose full-time jobs are to hunt down and combat new kinds of misinformation attempts.</p><div class="p11_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Likewise, the US government needs to take social-media misinformation seriously as a threat to public health, and to our democracy. This means devoting significant government resources to combatting it, especially since the character of an informational arms race means that there are no easy patches. It is beyond alarming that the current administration is taking a see-no-evil approach to online misinformation – ignoring pleas from the (now resigned) homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to pay attention to increasingly sophisticated Russian efforts to sway US politics. (The European Union has done much better with its East StratCom taskforce, created in 2015.)</p><div class="p12_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The arms-race character of online misinformation means that we must also think of creative ways for broader social-media usership to get involved in efforts to protect public belief. Twitter, for instance, has added a bot-reporting function. This leverages the full range of abilities that humans can use to detect potential bots – abilities that can adapt as the opposition does.</p><div class="p13_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Could we implement prizes or prestigious contests for independent research teams that identify new attempts at social-media misinformation? Or who come up with the best new ideas for fighting these attempts? Instead of growing victory gardens, the patriots of today can hunt down bots. We shouldn’t expect to win the informational arms race, but if we want to protect our democracy, we have to keep fighting new threats as they emerge.</p><div class="p10_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="proper-ad-unit" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; display: block; min-width: 100px; text-align: center;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_2" data-google-query-id="CNbN7Pvj-OICFVg6TwodtMcKmw" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; min-width: 300px; min-height: 250px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe/5376056/alternet_content_2_0container" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0pt none;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/the-informational-arms-race-why-social-media-disinformation-is-a-threat-to-public-health-and-democracy/#report-ad" data-aid="proper-ad-alternet_content_2" class="call-modal report-ad" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; left: 0px; right: 0px; line-height: 23px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box !important; text-decoration-line: none !important; position: relative !important; display: block !important;">Report Advertisement</a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman">Participating in an informational arms race is exhausting, but sometimes there are no good alternatives. Public misinformation has serious consequences. For this reason, we should be devoting the same level of resources to fighting misinformation that interest groups are devoting to producing it. All social-media sites need dedicated teams of researchers whose full-time jobs are to hunt down and combat new kinds of misinformation attempts.</font></p><div class="p11_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman">Likewise, the US government needs to take social-media misinformation seriously as a threat to public health, and to our democracy. This means devoting significant government resources to combatting it, especially since the character of an informational arms race means that there are no easy patches. It is beyond alarming that the current administration is taking a see-no-evil approach to online misinformation – ignoring pleas from the (now resigned) homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to pay attention to increasingly sophisticated Russian efforts to sway US politics. (The European Union has done much better with its East StratCom taskforce, created in 2015.)</font></p><div class="p12_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman">The arms-race character of online misinformation means that we must also think of creative ways for broader social-media usership to get involved in efforts to protect public belief. Twitter, for instance, has added a bot-reporting function. This leverages the full range of abilities that humans can use to detect potential bots – abilities that can adapt as the opposition does.</font></p><div class="p13_14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font face="Times New Roman">Could we implement prizes or prestigious contests for independent research teams that identify new attempts at social-media misinformation? Or who come up with the best new ideas for fighting these attempts? Instead of growing victory gardens, the patriots of today can hunt down bots. We shouldn’t expect to win the informational arms race, but if we want to protect our democracy, we have to keep fighting new threats as they emerge</font></p></div></div></div></div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/right-wing-groups-are-training-young-conservatives-to-win-the-next-meme-war/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/right-wing-groups-are-training-young-conservatives-to-win-the-next-meme-war/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font face="Times New Roman">april 2019</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">no lnx twit</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">POLITICS</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">APRIL 2, 2019</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“The Left Can’t Meme”: How Right-Wing Groups Are Training the Next Generation of Social Media Warriors</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Memes helped elect Donald Trump. Now well-funded conservative groups are using them to proselytize.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">STORY BY STEPHANIE MENCIMER, VIDEO BY MARK HELENOWSKI</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Benny Johnson took to the stage at the convention center in Palm Beach, Florida, before an audience of cheering young Trump supporters in December to lead a session titled “How to Own the Libs.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“I ask myself every day: How do we own the libs?” said Johnson, at the time a reporter for the right-wing Daily Caller. “How do we do it in a way that makes a difference? Because these people deserved to be wrecked.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to Johnson, the answer to that question is memes. These bits of humor or political propaganda—generally images overlaid with a caption designed to go viral—are best known for littering social media, but some experts think they might have helped elect Donald Trump. Or as notorious internet troll Chuck Johnson has said, “We memed the president into existence.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Following that unexpected meme-driven success, well-funded conservative groups are making a more organized push to train young internet-savvy right-wingers in the art of meme-making</b>,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;enlisting a growing army in what they see as the coming meme war of 2020.<b>&nbsp;Turning Point USA</b>, the conservative campus group that organized the conference, is merely one of these organizations seeking to sway hearts, minds, and elections via meme trainings. And it’s clear that when it comes to political memes, the left—which has never taken them very seriously—is trailing the right badly, and falling even further behind.</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>“Right-wing speaker training has been around for decades,”</b>&nbsp;says Angelo Carusone, president of the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters, which did a study of Facebook memes last summer. “Memes are a new front in the asymmetry. What you’re looking at here with memes is storytelling around the bend, and what you’re seeing is the future.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Memes are best known for littering social media, but some experts think they might have helped elect Donald Trump president.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump’s presidential campaign keyed into the power of memes early on, monitoring obscure meme sites and boosting pro-Trump images and videos onto mainstream platforms like Facebook</span>. Facebook’s algorithms favor images and videos over more nuanced text posts or links to news articles, so pro-Trump memes quickly went viral. During the campaign, memes also helped spread misinformation about Hillary Clinton’s health and the Pizzagate conspiracy theory that prompted an armed North Carolina man to show up at a<b>&nbsp;DC pizza parlor</b>&nbsp;to break up a nonexistent child sex ring supposedly led by Democratic Party operatives.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Perhaps no one understood the effectiveness of memes better than former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon, who had served as executive chairman of the far-right publication Breitbart News. In 2016, only 5 percent of Breitbart‘s posts were of images, but those images accounted for half of the site’s most-shared posts on Facebook.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Jeff Giesea, a consultant who has worked with venture capitalist Peter Thiel and the Koch brothers, is a self-described “memetics” expert.</b>&nbsp;During the 2016 campaign, he joined with men’s rights agitator<b>&nbsp;Mike Cernovich&nbsp;</b>to organize MAGA3X, a grassroots army of online trolls who worked to meme Trump to the White House. The effort produced tens of thousands of social media accounts, all working in concert to promote Trump, with a heavy emphasis on iconography. They even created a flash-mob meme generator to make it easy for Trump supporters to hook up in real life.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Giesea has long argued that memes are such a powerful tool they should be used as cyberwarfare to combat propaganda from ISIS and other foreign threats. In 2015, he wrote in a NATO journal on information warfare that “it seems obvious that more aggressive communication tactics and broader warfare through trolling and memes is a necessary, inexpensive, and easy way to help destroy the appeal and morale of our common enemies…Memetic warfare is about taking control of the dialogue, narrative, and psychological space. It’s about denigrating, disrupting, and subverting the enemy’s effort to do the same.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>The same could be said of memes in politics. Cheap, subversive, and designed to provoke an emotional response, memes are a disruptive form of information guerrilla warfare. Republicans have gotten Giesea’s message, while Democrats have all but ignored it.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“Right-wing speaker training has been around for decades,” says Media Matters president Angelo Carusone. “Memes are a new front in the asymmetry.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Johnson’s skill in this area launched him to Washington media fame for a while, until he was ousted from BuzzFeed and then the Independent Journal Review after being accused of plagiarism. He seems to have found his calling with Turning Point USA, the conservative campus activist group that sponsored the student convention in Palm Beach and is itself something of a meme factory.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Founded in 2012, TPUSA got its startup funding from Foster Friess, a wealthy Republican donor,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;and it has since raked in donations from the oil and gas industry and organizations affiliated with the Koch brothers. With a budget of more than $8 million last year, TPUSA amplifies its campus presence by churning out endless “Big Government Sucks” memes on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Turning Point USA</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like most memes, a few of TPUSA’s are clever and spread far, and many more have been trashed by internet trolls, who have created a whole meme subgenre they call “Toilet Paper USA.” Johnson was on hand in Florida to help TPUSA members up their game.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Johnson started his tutorial with “based Lindsey Graham,” a video montage of the South Carolina senator’s angry performance during the contentious confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in high school. “That is a special moment,” he explained, noting that Kavanaugh was confirmed in spite of the allegations.<b>&nbsp;“In your lifetime, there has never been a culture war that conservatives have won except for this.”</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">He proceeded to walk the audience through the evolution of Graham memes that went viral during the hearing and may have helped change public opinion on Kavanaugh. On the big screen, Johnson showed photos and a video he had taken of Graham coming out of the Capitol after a day of hearings. In the video, Graham is coolly adjusting his tie and smiling, while in the background, a police officer restrains a hysterical-looking woman who’s screaming at him about Kavanaugh. Johnson tweeted that he had just taken “the most thug life @LindseyGrahamSC photos of the entire Kavanaugh saga.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">View image on TwitterView image on Twitter</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Benny</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@bennyjohnson</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;I hate to brag.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">I just took the most thug life @LindseyGrahamSC photos of the entire Kavanaugh saga.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">[Story soon]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">From there, the internet took care of the rest. “Did this sucker meme?” Johnson asked, laughing. The answer was yes. Creative internet users tweaked and photoshopped the image, both still and video, as it spread. Johnson showed one meme of the tie-adjusting Graham superimposed on the burning Twin Towers. Then one featuring Joe Biden planting a kiss on the screaming woman. And finally, one that turned Graham into a “thug life” rap video star.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Embedded video</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Benny</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@bennyjohnson</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????#kavanaugh</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">2,539</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">8:16 PM - Oct 7, 2018</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">818 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">“This is how you know you’ve made it in this profession,” Johnson told his audience. “When memes take life.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>In February, TPUSA hired Johnson to do this sort of thing full time as its chief creative officer, a sign of just how seriously well-funded pro-Trump organizations are taking the business of memes.&nbsp;</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">The TPUSA conference also included a second, more interactive session on memes, hosted by two minor Instagram stars, Rogan O’Handley (Instagram handle DC_Draino) and Grant Godwin (the_typical-liberal), who got into the nuts and bolts of the art form—or, as Godwin explained, how to get your Pepe the Frog memes to go viral.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Two weeks earlier, meme training got top billing at the American Priority Conference, which billed itself as an “America First,” pro-Trump political gathering</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Speakers included&nbsp;<b>Roger Stone,</b>&nbsp;the longtime Trump associate who was indicted the next month for obstruction and false statements in the special counsel investigation, and Anthony<b>&nbsp;Scaramucci,</b>&nbsp;who lasted less than a week as White House communications director. The conference featured a session on memetics by Tom Shadilay, a producer for Mike&nbsp;<b>Cernovich.</b>&nbsp;(Shadilay’s name may itself be a meme: It’s a popular hashtag on Gab, the social media site favored by the far right, and a code word for trolls on 4chan. Shadilay is the name of a 1986 Italian disco song by a band called P.E.P.E., whose album art featured a cartoon frog that resembles Pepe the Frog. Tom Shadilay does not appear to have any internet presence before his Twitter account was created in May 2017. He stopped responding to my emails after I asked whether that’s really his last name.)</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">In January, Liberty Con, a national convention of libertarian students, offered advice from David Gay, a libertarian activist who runs the Facebook group Liberty Memes, which has nearly a half-million followers spreading his political message through memes. (Until late 2016, Giesea, the meme expert, was on the board of Students for Liberty, which sponsored the conference.)* Johnson has four events scheduled this month on college campuses on “winning the meme wars.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Boston University professor Gianluca Stringhini studies memes for a living. When I told him that well-funded right-wing organizations were specifically training activists for the next great meme war, he was surprised. Typically, he says, memes are seen as organic, emerging from the dark corners of the internet, not propaganda directed by people in politics. “Memes are tools for information warfare,” he says. “Probably this is a new way of doing politics. A new weapon that campaigns can use.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">It’s not clear exactly whether memes do, in fact, change public opinion, but conservative groups working to train grassroots troops seem to think so. So do the Russians. In the 2018 report commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that meddled in the 2016 presidential election, researchers discovered that the IRA was especially fond of memes put out by TPUSA. Using accounts that it created to look like ordinary Americans and spread misinformation and propaganda, the IRA gave TPUSA memes a boost across multiple social media platforms. But the researchers couldn’t determine exactly what the impact of all those memes was.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last year, Stringhini and six colleagues published a study on the origins of memes, analyzing more than 2 billion social media posts on Twitter, 4chan, Reddit, and Gab, to<b>figure out where the most popular memes get their start. Stringhini says the most trafficked memes start on right-wing internet forums, places like 4chan’s politically incorrect /pol/ channel and Reddit’s /r/the_Donald/ subreddit. From there, the far right has been extremely successful in getting its stuff to take off on mainstream platforms.&nbsp;</b>Stringhini notes that after the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, tweeted her thanks to 4chan and Reddit users for making it all happen, putting a sharp point on how much people on the right believe that memes are influencing public opinio</span>n.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">As a result, conservative groups seem to be incorporating memes into their training arsenal for grassroots activists in a way that has no parallel on the left. In fact, “the left can’t meme” is itself a subgenre of memes, reflecting an idea accepted on both ends of the political spectrum that progressive activists are really bad at this form of political warfare.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">One potential exception is long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who has recently catapulted to fame thanks to memes. But those memes are coming from the same sources, on Reddit and 4chan, that promoted Trump, not from liberal groups, creating a bizarre movement of Yang fans among white nationalists.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Media Matters’ Carusone says people on the left are more concerned with nuanced facts and gray areas that can’t always be boiled down accurately into a photo with a caption.</b>&nbsp;On the left, he says, “every meme has to have a million qualifiers, so that it’s no longer a meme. It’s a Medium post.” Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to communicate their ideas “in ways that are very reductionist. They’re also much more comfortable lying, and their audiences are much more likely to accept it.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Benny Johnson has his own take on what makes a good political meme. The first step for successful lib ownership, he told the students assembled in Palm Beach, is to “challenge the culture,” as Graham did during the Kavanaugh hearings. Second, “join the conversation” by creating an interaction, but be sure it will “demonstrate the superiority of conservative ideas.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">As an example, he played a goofy video he made with<b>&nbsp;Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai.</b>&nbsp;In the video, Pai is dressed like Santa Claus, wielding a light saber, and he defends his plan for “internet freedom” in response to criticism of the Trump administration’s move to end net neutrality. “We were trolling the internet,” Johnson said. And it worked.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">He flashed through a host of viral memes that took off after the video was posted. In the video, there’s a shot of Pai in front of a screen eating popcorn and watching a movie. Meme-makers have swapped in clips to make it look like Pai is watching Hitler rallies or the burning Twin Towers. Even Luke Skywalker weighed in:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">View image on Twitter</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">View image on Twitter</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Mark Hamill</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">@HamillHimself</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Cute video Ajit "Aren't I Precious?" Pai ??-but you are profoundly unworthy 2 wield a lightsaber-A Jedi acts selflessly for the common man-NOT lie 2 enrich giant corporations. Btw-did you pay John Williams his royalty? @AjitPaiFCCorpShill #AJediYouAreNOT</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The third step in successful lib ownership, Johnson instructed the crowd, was critical: “Have more fun than the left.” He played a video he had made in 2015 of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz cooking bacon on a machine gun. “Can you think of three thing libs hate more?” he exclaimed with a laugh. “Ted Cruz, bacon, guns.” All the ingredients for a good meme.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">Finally, Johnson concluded: “Smile. You’re on the winning side.”</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">david kay? policing speech&nbsp;</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-june-18-2019/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-june-18-2019/</font></a></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style=""><a href="https://www.counterextremism.com/the-extreme-right-on-facebook"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.counterextremism.com/the-extreme-right-on-facebook</font></a></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">download report</font></div><div style=""><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.9; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and far-right groups and online businesses maintain a presence on Facebook. Facebook is the third most visited website on the Internet and is also the world’s largest social media network, with over 2.2 billion regular users as of February 2018.<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span></span>&nbsp;According to the Pew Research Center, 68% of U.S. adults use Facebook, with 81% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 using the platform.<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span></span>&nbsp;Because of its popularity, Facebook has become an important tool for political or community organizations and commercial brands—including, unfortunately, for far-right extremists.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.9; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Even though the company explicitly bans hate speech and hate groups in its Community Standards,<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span></span>&nbsp;Facebook appears to have a reactionary approach to removing neo-Nazi and white supremacist content from its platform. For example, Facebook deactivated a page belonging to the Traditionalist Workers Party, a neo-Nazi group, only after it was revealed that the group participated in the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. The page was reported to the company prior to the event.<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span></span>&nbsp;In another instance, a Huffington Post investigation in summer 2018 found that four neo-Nazi and white supremacist clothing stores were able to operate on Facebook. The tech giant finally removed the pages once it was faced with negative press.<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span></span>&nbsp;Despite seeing astronomical revenues of approximately $40.7 billion in 2017, Facebook is failing to enforce its own Community Standards in a proactive manner.<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.9; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">In September 2018, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) identified and monitored a small selection of 40 Facebook pages belonging to online stores that sell white supremacist clothing, music, or accessories, or white supremacist or neo-Nazi groups. Pages were located through searches for known white supremacist or neo-Nazi keywords. CEP researchers recorded information for each page such as the number of likes, date of creation, and examples of white supremacist or neo-Nazi content. After two months, CEP reported the pages—only 35 of the 40 remained online—to Facebook and found that only four pages were ultimately removed. Clearly, Facebook’s process for reviewing and removing this content-which violates its own Community Standards-is inadequate.</font></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2rem 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; font-weight: 400; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">What Content is Allowed on Facebook?</font></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.9; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Facebook is a private company that is able to restrict certain types of content that does not fit its mission statement, business model, or ethos.<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span></span>&nbsp;The site’s Community Standards state that Facebook prohibits organizations or individuals involved in “organized hate” from maintaining a Facebook presence, as well as content “that expresses support or praise for groups, leaders, or individuals involved in these activities.”<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span></span>&nbsp;Facebook defines a hate organization as:</font></p><p class="erf-slightly-bolder" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.9; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Any association of three or more people that is organized under a name, sign, or symbol and that has an ideology, statements, or physical actions that attack individuals based on characteristics, including race, religious affiliation, nationality, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation, serious disease or disability.<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.9; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">An unidentified Facebook spokesperson further clarified their policies towards hate groups on their platform, telling a journalist, "It doesn’t matter whether these groups are posting hateful messages or whether they’re sharing pictures of friends and family…as organized hate groups, they have no place on our platform."<span class="footnote_wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 3px; position: relative; display: inline-block;"><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;"></span><span class="footnote_count" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; background: rgb(4, 116, 164); height: 10px; width: 10px; border-radius: 50px; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.85rem; float: left; cursor: pointer;">...</span></span></font></p></div><div style=""><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/heres-who-fox-news-considers-prominent-conservative-voices/"><font face="Times New Roman">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/heres-who-fox-news-considers-prominent-conservative-voices/</font></a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Laura Ingraham took to her primetime program on Fox News&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/05/30/laura-ingraham-defends-white-supremacist-paul-nehlen-one-prominent-voices-censored-social-media/223840" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">last night</a>&nbsp;to defend conspiracy theorists, extremists, and an unabashed neo-Nazi as “prominent voices” in the conservative movement that have&nbsp;been&nbsp;supposedly “censored on social media.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">A graphic produced by Fox News featured eight people who have been suspended or claim to have been throttled&nbsp;on social media platforms. The figures featured were dubbed “prominent voices censored on social media."[nice grfx]</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Here’s who Fox News considers a “prominent” conservative figures.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">The graphic featured first Alex Jones, the creator and leading voice of the conspiracy theory outlet Infowars. Jones is currently facing&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-faces-yet-another-lawsuit/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">multiple defamation lawsuits</a>&nbsp;regarding his insistence that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, which resulted in the families of slain children being harassed and traumatized by Jones’ viewers. Jones’ intentional spread of disinformation, harassment, and bullying of victims of tragedies and his regular distribution of offensive content broke enough community guidelines on social media platforms to result in a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/spotify-cancels-the-alex-jones-show-and-apple-facebook-and-youtube-dump-infowars/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">wide-scale deplatforming</a>&nbsp;of his operation online. Infowars has regularly provided a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/infowars-is-working-to-sanitize-a-white-nationalist-group/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">safe space</a>&nbsp;for extremists to recruit to their efforts.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Next on the graphic was Milo Yiannopoulous, a disgraced right-wing hate monger who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/twitter-just-permanently-suspended-conservative-writer-milo" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">stirred</a>harassment and vitriol online and violated the community guidelines of many social media sites, resulting in his accounts being permanently suspended. His comments online after the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, where a white supremacist slaughtered practicing Muslims in two mosques, resulted in him being banned from entering the country of Australia. Yiannopoulous was once a prominent figure in the right-wing movement, thanks in large part to flush funding from the conservative mega-donor Mercer family. The Mercer family funding and Yiannopoulous’ spotlight was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-mercers-wash-their-hands-of-milo/544877/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">dimmed</a>&nbsp;after BuzzFeed News published leaked emails showing Yiannopoulous’&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">collaboration with white supremacists and his attempt bring them into the mainstream.</a>&nbsp;After audio surfaced of Yiannopoulous appearing to endorse pedophilia, Yiannopoulous was effectively designated persona non grata among conservatives.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Beside Yiannopoulous is Laura Loomer,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-anti-muslim-hate-group-backing-laura-loomers-independent-journalism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">an anti-Muslim activist</a></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;whose targeting of Islamic worshipers (and&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/laura-loomer-goes-ballistic-in-anti-muslim-twitter-meltdown/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">any random person</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;whose appearance led her to believe they are Muslim) violated social media rules against hateful content and resulted in her removal from major tech platforms. Loomer has had numerous affiliations with members of the white nationalist movement and&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-media-figures-rally-behind-a-white-nationalist/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">endorsed</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Faith Goldy, who recited the white supremacist&nbsp;“</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cpHTVvnquI" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">14 Words</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">” in her bid to become mayor of Toronto.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Loomer, a former Project Veritas operative, has&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/laura-loomer-is-in-florida-to-help-infowars-sow-disinformation-about-another-mass-shooting/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">collaborated</a>&nbsp;with Infowars on disinformation campaigns surrounding shootings in Florida and Las Vegas.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Candace Owens,&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">who began her career in conservative media using the moniker “Red Pill Black,” joined Ingraham in-studio for the segment and was also featured on the graphic. She was&nbsp;</span><a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/444421-facebook-temporarily-suspended-conservative-commentator-candace-owens" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">briefly suspended</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;by Facebook earlier this month after one of her posts had been flagged for violating community standards, but she currently uses the site freely.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Owens got an early boost in her career from Alex Jones</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;and has continued to advance in conservative circles despite her early affiliations. Owens was recently filmed&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/candace-owens-hitler-was-ok-until-he-tried-to-go-global" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">saying</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;that the problem with Adolf Hitler was that he was too ambitious and took his plans beyond Germany.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Michelle Malkin</b>, who argued in a 2004 book that the United States was right to displace and intern 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in America during World War II, was another “prominent” voice Ingraham featured. Malkin frequently parrots white nationalist rhetoric on immigration; at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, she&nbsp;<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cpac-white-nationalists-extremists-michelle-malkin-peter-brimelow_n_5c7c3834e4b0e1f776530551" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">likened</a>&nbsp;immigration to an “invasion” that “endangers” Americans. She closed that speech by saying, “diversity is not our strength,” and followed her speech by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.adl.org/blog/white-supremacists-and-other-extremists-welcomed-at-cpac-2019" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">giving an interview</a>&nbsp;to the racist website VDARE.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Actor and ardent Trump supporter James Woods, who is&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1124716825852428288?lang=en" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">not banned from Twitter</a>, but rather has refused to delete a post on his Twitter profile with the hashtag “#HangThemAll” that would result in his account being unlocked, was also featured as a “prominent”&nbsp;censored&nbsp;conservative voice.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Before being locked out of Twitter, Woods also shared a meme of the Christchurch shooter&nbsp;</span><a href="https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/1115346306300616709?lang=en" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">depicted as a clown</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, part of a&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/white-nationalists-adopt-clowns-as-their-next-racist-symbol-yes-seriously/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">push</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;by white supremacists to find a new way to launder their voices into relevance.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Fox News deemed Paul Nehlen as another “prominent” conservative voice. Nehlen is a failed state congressional candidate in Wisconsin who pivoted his campaign message to explicitly target Jews and then&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/paul-nehlen-is-paying-out-his-campaign-funds-to-his-wife-next-door-neighbor/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">funneled</a>&nbsp;the money he made to his wife and neighbor.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;He was banned from social media for being an explicit Nazi and is so aggressive that even the white supremacist internet haven Gab decided to boot him. Angry White Men recently&nbsp;</span><a href="https://angrywhitemen.org/2019/04/29/patrick-little-and-paul-nehlen-are-feuding-over-how-to-start-a-race-war/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;that Nehlen and his likewise-failed neo-Nazi counterpart Patrick Little had been debating the best way to start a race war in the United States. And as Right Wing Watch reported earlier this week, Nehlen has promoted the writings of&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/splinters-of-white-nationalist-movement-are-returning-to-neo-nazi-author-who-advocated-violence/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">neo-Nazi James Mason</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, which advocate terrorism to fulfill a white supremacist agenda.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Dan Scavino, White House social media manager,&nbsp;</b>was also featured on this list because he accused Facebook of censoring him for replying to a comment. Platforms are&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/440703-evidence-contradicts-right-wing-narrative-of-tech-censorship-and-bias" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">known</a>&nbsp;to throttle accounts if software suspects an account may be spamming and there is no evidence that Scavino was targeted for restriction otherwise.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">It’s for segments like these that Democrat presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren&nbsp;<a href="https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2019/05/30/elizabeth-warren-the-view-fox-news-town-halls" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">rejected an invitation</a>&nbsp;to appear on Fox News for a town hall interview, calling the network a “hate-for-profit” scam and drawing criticisms from conservatives. Figures like Meghan McCain insisted that Warren’s refusal to subsidize Fox News with her appearance were off-base and cut her off from conservatives.</font></p><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div></div><div style=""><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/28/study-right-wing-sources-dominate-abortion-related-news-facebook/223680"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/28/study-right-wing-sources-dominate-abortion-related-news-facebook/223680</font></a></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>In 2019, right-wing media have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/02/08/fox-news-almost-single-handedly-manufactured-anti-abortion-outrage-trump-s-state-union/222813" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">dominated</a>&nbsp;abortion-related coverage with sensationalized anti-choice rhetoric and harmful misinformation. And on Facebook, anti-abortion misinformation is consistently outperforming all other coverage of abortion-related news.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">A&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Media Matters</em>&nbsp;study of top-engaged U.S. abortion-related coverage on Facebook in the month of April found that 63% of links with the most Facebook interactions came from right-leaning websites, and 72% of the Facebook page posts with the most interactions came from right-leaning pages. Two anti-abortion websites,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/networks-and-outlets/lifenewscom" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">LifeNews.com</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/stories-and-interests/live-action" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">Live Action</a>, made up almost 30% of viral links, and the two main Facebook pages affiliated with these sites made up more than a quarter of the most popular Facebook posts.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Top-engaged content from right-leaning sources often pushed anti-abortion misinformation. Twenty-three percent of links from right-leaning websites reviewed in this study pushed for six-week bans on abortion (also inaccurately referred to as “heartbeat bills”) based on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/heartbeat-bills-get-the-science-of-fetal-heartbeats-all-wrong/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">anti-choice</a>&nbsp;claim that abortion should be banned as soon as fetal cardiac activity is detected, typically by six weeks. Medical&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffpost.com/entry/heartbeat-bills-bad-science_n_587e7435e4b01cdc64c8199b" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">experts</a>, however, say "cardiac activity isn't a credible measure of fetal viability." Right-leaning websites and pages also shared false stories about Democrats supporting&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/01/31/right-wing-media-are-flat-out-lying-about-later-abortions-being-infanticide/222720" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">“infanticide”</a>&nbsp;(<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/10/republicans-are-pushing-another-false-claim-about-abortion-rile-up-voters/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">they don’t</a>) and anti-conservative censorship by social media platforms (<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/04/11/thanks-anti-abortion-media-latest-congressional-tech-censorship-hearing-was-particularly-absurd/223417" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">there is none</a>).</font></p><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px; clear: both; border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0, 153, 255); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Sixty-three percent of the top links related to abortion news on Facebook came from right-leaning websites.</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Media Matters</em>&nbsp;reviewed 278 top links related to abortion news which collectively earned 13.6 million interactions on Facebook. Right-leaning websites had 175 links (63%), which earned over 8.6 million interactions (63.6%). Websites that aren’t politically aligned had 80 links (28.8%), which earned 3.8 million interactions (27.8%). And left-leaning websites had just 23 links (8.3%), which earned 1.2 million interactions (8.6%).</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">...much more, grafs</font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" /><div><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman">Right-wing outlets spread bogus video of Nancy Pelosi on social media to say she’s drunk MSNBC</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>written by Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>May 23, 2019</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Right-wing groups are circulating deceiving videos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s remarks Wednesday at a Center for American Progress event. In the video, posted to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter accounts, Pelosi’s speech has been subtly slurred, suggesting she’s drunk, by slowing down the video to about 75% of its actual speed,</b> according to The Washington Post.</div><div>
</div><div>As with all things on social media, the bogus video is ripping through at lightning speed. A version posted by the right-wing Facebook page Politics WatchDog has already been viewed more than 1.6 million times. Thanks, Facebook. (By the way, be careful out there—so much misinformation.)</div><div>
</div><div>This is clearly intended to be a knock on Pelosi’s competence and credibility. She keeps besting Trump, and since Trump can’t beat her without getting outside help, right-wing forces are swooping in to provide a meme about Pelosi that can run wild on social media. Remember when the National Enquirer continually fanned the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was sickly? This is most likely the beginning of a conspiracy theory that Pelosi drinks. It’s interesting that they’re using slurred speech to go after her when Trump is constantly slurring his words, likely due to some form of mental deterioration.</div><div>
</div><div>If you want to see the real Pelosi at the real speed, below is at least part of the section of that bogus video delivered in real time by CNN. Not drunk—very very very sober in the midst of Trump’s wild emotional outbursts.</div><div>
</div><div>House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says today’s five-minute meeting with President Trump was “very, very, very strange” https://t.co/fUdnQwAaD2 pic.twitter.com/cx2teRVUF6</div><div>
</div><div>— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 22, 2019</div><div>
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</div><div>You can listen to all of Pelosi’s comments at the event below, courtesy of C-SPAN. Also, you can click here and go to the C-SPAN site, where the comments in question start at about 6:00 minutes in. Compare that to the bogus video at the link above: It’s remarkably different.</div></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><b><font face="Times New Roman">nice case study:&nbsp;<span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">escalator effect</span></font></b></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">ref no lnx twit</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2018/10/31/george-soros-and-migrant-caravan-how-lie-multiplied-online/1824633002/"><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2018/10/31/george-soros-and-migrant-caravan-how-lie-multiplied-online/1824633002/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">How a lie about George Soros and the migrant caravan multiplied online</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">USA TODAY followed the rapid spread of a social media conspiracy theory about George Soros and migrants that grew from obscurity to the political mainstream.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">Brad Heath, Matt Wynn and Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">Updated 12:27 p.m. PDT Oct. 31, 2018</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">How a George Soros conspiracy theory spread from online to cable news</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">USA TODAY followed the spread of a social media conspiracy theory about George Soros and migrants that grew from obscurity to the political mainstream.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">This is the life of a lie.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Three weeks ago, a caravan of Hondurans began walking nearly 2,000 miles to the United States. Their ranks grew as they inched north and, along with them, falsehoods grew, too. But one stands out: a<b>&nbsp;conspiracy theory that liberal billionaire George Soros, a Jewish immigrant, is paying the migrants to make the journey – or even orchestrating it.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Members of Congress and the president’s son both repeated it. Conservative celebrities, too.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">It also may have resonated in darker places.&nbsp;<b>Cesar Sayoc, the man charged with mailing pipe bombs to Soros and other prominent critics of President Donald Trump</b>, dwelled at length online about conspiracy theories involving the Hungarian-American philanthropist.&nbsp;</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Robert Bowers, charged with killing 11 people worshiping in a Pittsburgh synagogue</b>&nbsp;on Saturday, used his social media accounts to post extensively about the caravan, including circulating an image of refugees in Guatemala purportedly climbing into a truck with a Star of David on the side.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">But it began with a handful of posts in the caravan’s early days.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of the first was from a North Carolina writer who goes by the screen name “lorettatheprole.” Loretta Malakie has more than&nbsp;<b>6,000 followers on Twitter,&nbsp;</b>to whom she directs frequent posts about “white genocide,” Jews and the “invading force” approaching the border.&nbsp;</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On Oct. 14, Malakie posted a link to an article about the caravan, with a&nbsp;<b>single word of commentary: “Soros.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>That same day, identical posts appeared over the course of 20 minutes in six pro-Trump Facebook groups. Combined, those six groups had 165,000 members.</b>&nbsp;A user who gave the name Philip Balzano, a Trump supporter from Chicago, wrote to the Trump Train group: “Here Comes ANOTHER Group of Paid for New Demoncratic Voters Just in Time for the Primaries... The Financier aka ‘Win at All Costs’ ‘Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste’ the Evil George Soros and His 140+ Orgs, Should Be Classified as Terrorist and Terrorist Orgs.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Malakie declined to comment, though on Twitter she&nbsp;<b>panned the USA TODAY reporter who called her as “evil</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">.” Balzano did not respond to an interview request sent through Facebook.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Soros theory was not new – it had made the rounds during previous caravans in the spring and again in August. In fact, one Facebook user posting in October provided as evidence a&nbsp;<b>video of Glenn Beck discussing the spring caravan’s alleged connections to Soros.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">GEORGE SOROS WEBSITE</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">This time, though, the theory snowballed, gaining political purchase as the caravan became a flashpoint in the final weeks of a contentious midterm campaign.&nbsp;</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It’s really significant how these memes can go from feverswamp-ish places to be amplified by lawmakers, even the president," said David Carroll, associate professor at The New School's Parsons School of Design in New York. “From there, the impact on world events can’t be underestimated.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">Lies, of course, are not new either. But social media can turn a breeze into a hurricane. It carried this falsehood to millions with a few taps on a screen. It also left a distinct trail that makes it possible to follow how lies spread and who told them, a map of their trajectory from the darker corners of the internet to the political mainstream.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">USA TODAY followed that path by examining tens of thousands of social media posts on three major mainstream social media sites: Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Over the next three days, a few louder social media voices weighed in. By Oct. 16 – four days after the caravan departed – the combined following of accounts mentioning both Soros and the caravan had reached&nbsp;<b>2 million, still a pebble in the flood tide of social media.&nbsp;</b>(The total includes some duplicates because people follow more than one account.)</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">On Twitter, someone with the username “LibertyBell1000” warned about 42,000 followers that Soros had “manufactured yet another immigrant caravan ‘crisis.’ ” Another, using the name “WhoWolfe,” asked “Anybody else think Soros and the Dirty Dems are behind this?”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">More posts spread across Facebook</b><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">. Trump supporter Randy Penrod posted in a group called&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The Deplorable's,” with about 186,000 members, “Our stable leader just called out the Soros conspired invasion of new Democrat voters in a tweet just moments ago.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">Tap, tap, tap.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It took just one more day for the theory to reach critical mass, breaking through into widespread public consciousness.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The evening of Oct. 17,<b>&nbsp;a Republican member of Congress posted a video on Twitter of what he said was people in Honduras handing out small sums of money to migrants.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>“Soros? US-backed NGOs? Time to investigate the source!” he wrote.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rep. Matt Gaetz would later concede that he was mistaken about where the video was shot (it was Guatemala). But by then his message had metastasized, spreading far beyond the 153,000 people who follow the north Florida congressman’s tweets.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Conservative commentator Ann Coulter retweeted it to her 2 million followers. So did Sarah Carter, a journalist who’s a frequent guest on Fox News.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jack Posobiec – a correspondent for conservative cable news television channel One America News Network – got more specific, implying Soros was renting RVs for the migrants.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">Posobiec was among the early proponents of “Pizzagate,” a social-media conspiracy that falsely claimed then-candidate Hillary Clinton and other Democrats were running a pedophile sex trafficking ring from the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. It drew a man with a gun to Comet Pizza, where he intended to rescue the children.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">The next day, even more influential voices repeated it.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>One was the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who retweeted Gaetz’s post to his 3.1 million followers</b>. The younger Trump has been actively campaigning for Republicans on television and the campaign trail in the lead up to the midterm elections. A spokesman for Donald Trump Jr. declined to comment.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>On Twitter alone, at least 43,000 accounts with a combined 127 million followers</b>&nbsp;carried some message linking Soros to the caravan over those two days; most fanning the conspiracy, a few seeking to knock it down.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>On Reddit</b>, where users share and comment on news and memes, the lie exploded. Five posts in The_Donald subreddit tied Soros to the caravan. Within a week, there would be 10 times more. The_Donald has 675,000 members.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Ten days after the caravan began in Honduras, police started intercepting what appeared to be pipe bombs</b>&nbsp;– PVC tubes packed with what the FBI later called “energetic material,” wrapped with tape and attached to a clock – that had been sent to Soros and other prominent critics of President Trump.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">By the time police found the first of those bombs in Soros’ mailbox in Westchester County, New York, the lie about his involvement with the caravan had been posted by 20,000 more users on Twitter – to a combined audience of 117 million – and more weighed in on Facebook, Reddit and other sites.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">It was like a runaway train. Unstoppable.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Another member of Congress, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said in a Fox News interview that he couldn't “help but think that Democrats, perhaps Soros and others, may be funding this thinking it will help them.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>By then, the lie also was at an inflection point. Online, the biggest voices were those debunking it.&nbsp;</b>The day before the bomb was found at Soros’ house, the most prominent people mentioning the theory on Twitter had no longer been conservative commentators but instead New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Chelsea Clinton.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>But researchers say repetition is repetition. Even exposing a lie plays a central role in mutating fantasy into fact, or at least a matter of debate. Here, news coverage – including this story – play a significant role.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The choices reporters and editors make about what to cover and how to cover it play a key part in regulating the amount of oxygen supplied to the falsehoods, antagonisms, and manipulations that threaten to overrun the contemporary media ecosystem,” Syracuse University professor Whitney Phillips wrote in a paper this year on disinformation.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Attention alone can lend credence to the very information critics mean to undermine.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By Oct. 22, posts debunking the theory also emerged. One from&nbsp;<b>Arizona Christian conservative Joshua Feuerstein was among Facebook’s most-viewed videos</b>pushing the Soros-caravan connection. Feuerstein is best known for characterizing Starbucks’ shift to generic red holiday cups as a war on Christmas.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">His video purported to show Honduran migrants on a truck. Accompanying text popularized a direct connection not just to Soros, but to the midterms: “They are not coming on foot as CNN #FakeNews says! George Soros is paying for them to show up at the border by mid term elections!”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The video and text drew 137,000 views.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Exactly how far the lie linking Soros to the migrant caravan has traveled is impossible to measure in full. Messages on 4chan and other sites where conspiracies germinate disappear quickly. Gab – a social media site that attracted right-wing figures banished from more mainstream platforms – itself was on the verge of disappearing this week. Even on mainstream sites like Facebook and Instagram, many messages are private.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Still, by the morning of Oct. 27, it had spread to hundreds of millions of users on<b>&nbsp;mainstream social media, and found its way to many more on cable news.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That morning, federal prosecutors allege that trucker Robert Bowers stormed into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and shot 11 worshipers to death. The authorities have offered few details about what might have motivated him to attack, but online Bowers left his own trail of grievance and conspiracy.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Using the handle OneDingo on Twitter, Bowers shared anti-Jewish content and criticized President Trump. Since January, he was a regular on Gab, too, where his bio read: “Jews are the children of Satan.” The image on his Gab account referred to a white supremacist meme. His last message read: “Screw your optics, I'm going in.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And by the next day, he did.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the aftermath, as the&nbsp;<b>news media rushed to cover the killings and to explain the internet conspiracies that might have precipitated such a massacre – the lie spread anew.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">Originally Published 6:54 a.m. PDT Oct. 31, 2018</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">Updated 12:27 p.m. PDT Oct. 31, 2018</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style=""><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Facebook&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c7867dace8e9650e322fa70ebad556b6a0e5df201b305f09340072404c7906e2ca1acdd9f87de71d7097b22dcf1cb8746f" title="announced on Thursday" style="">announced on Thursday</a>&nbsp;that it had removed several extremists from social networks Facebook and Instagram, including neo-Nazi sympathizer&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c7fa6a5c268c2392b0d4902271254961c83c4d8b239b81de5c1dd427a086187d7e74ac80eab2e2c3163721f8c618de2f44" title="Milo Yiannopoulos" style="">Milo Yiannopoulos</a>, anti-Muslim bigot&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c71571b806c2f00f9726e8afe1f1aa6c53cc85a8a7f5dc6e9256ba1fb559876cda508cc7d12b78dc8a934af4d24ee8bd04" title="Laura Loomer" style="">Laura Loomer</a>, far-right YouTuber&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c7f5f659d65b3910c0bca6a0a6a80159572490746394af0bc41e307d189a9ca15e3537f1c36af1ba212f28beae9ce2a629" title="Paul Joseph Watson" style="">Paul Joseph Watson</a>, conspiracy theorist&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c75f4aaefe1711221d0f01801be72ab5b9a00f7cc8ac165962107131e8c61652919796cb1d70b4af3719d153608b4169af" title="Alex Jones" style="">Alex Jones</a>&nbsp;(<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c7ab19e1873b9f2de9b30207c8761cd8dcdeb8761e88da9594e645b3497cf5594541b725a9d22fda6ba9e73b691753f93e" title="again" style="">again</a>), and white supremacist&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c7a02ad8b797f1211d8758c9aaaaf289f3cc8619abf66e9e3203e8fb1f2ca048c3fcd007e5cce4697e64363011ee41d43b" title="Paul Nehlen" style="">Paul Nehlen&nbsp;</a>, while also removing Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan for his record of anti-Semitic rhetoric.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">This is a step in the right direction for Facebook that opens doors to make the platform safer, and inspires some optimism that the tech company might be capable of taking responsibility for the ways its platforms have empowered extremists. But there is more to do.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Taking definitive action against some of the toxicity that's thrived on its platforms is long overdue, especially considering Facebook's&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c76ed5f76a61faef171c1b71c213068bcd8c7d890d0adcda3556bf5ee4a6da1d816e2421d1f1fc7fa0345bfecfa6889b89" title=" record of struggling" style="">record of struggling</a>&nbsp;to enforce policies aimed at curbing the reach and influence of extremists. The company's recent attempt to ban white supremacist content from its platforms proved insufficient, and&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c752ce8812fefe1a8e5cd4c8286752e446462e983c429547e4b61543837f2f76d38ce08077108718df62150cdd72f8aaa3" title="allowed extremists" style="">allowed extremists&nbsp;</a>to continue posting racist content as long as it wasn't too explicit.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman">Some achievable measures that could help curb extremism while protecting users who experience oppression include:</font></p><ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li style="margin-bottom: 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman">Follow through. Facebook's already banned Alex Jones before -- this time it is saying it's for real. A bad sign is that there is still&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c789b60be7589506769b0dcf98e74555ec020426b5cd77fea05589f741d38b8ee4e69991543d6134b48c59d075a046a796" title="a slew of Jones-linked pages on the platform" style="">a slew of Jones-linked pages on the platform</a>.</font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman">Refuse to back down. On Saturday, Trump threw a fit about the bans on Twitter, retweeting Watson multiple times. Trump also retweeted white nationalist Canadian&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c7bc7840d44c4c1bcf00bda928eddee887584813ff220653ac43115c7d5011dc590426157419ea72920afa6369afd51c2c" title="Lauren Southern" style="">Lauren Southern</a>. Trump's goal is obviously to force concessions or even a reversal from Facebook. It's never a bad time to finally grow some backbone.</font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman">Committing to enforcing standards against codified white nationalism by more effectively pairing automated and human reviews to better identify violating content.</font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman">Proactively limiting the visibility of content when its traffic is being directed from toxic sources like anonymous message boards 4chan and 8chan.</font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman">Extending anti-discrimination policies currently applied to ads to include event pages and groups. Event pages and private group pages are often used as tools to help extremists organize and mobilize.</font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman">Reassessing&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=cd63cf57fe82b2c7b0a0878b5addc46a3cb079a6bf371ef949cad36d689733114e61fce2a09a7a6efe191ecba6b6e9d48248445fe3f6418d" title="the fact-checking partnership with Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller website" style="">the fact-checking partnership with Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller website</a>, which has ties to white supremacists and anti-Semites.</font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman">Increasing transparency in metrics for third-party auditors. While it might save Facebook some bad press, some of the company's privacy limitations hinder outside researchers in their efforts to identify security concerns.</font></li></ul></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/2/18527357/facebook-bans-alex-jones-louis-farrakhan-infowars</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
<b>Months after he was kicked off <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/9/6/17829264/alex-jones-info-wars-banned-twitter">Twitter</a>, conspiracy theorist <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/3/31/18289271/alex-jones-psychosis-conspiracies-sandy-hook-hoax">Alex Jones</a>

is off Facebook and Instagram, too. So are a host of other right-wing

extremists and Louis Farrakhan, a Nation of Islam leader who has

espoused anti-Semitic views.

</b></font><p id="vUwFRE"><b><font face="Times New Roman">Facebook on Thursday announced that it was banning Jones,

Farrakhan,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Paul Nehlen,</span> Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura

Loomer, and Infowars, which Jones runs, from both its platform and

Instagram, which it owns. The company says the decision has been made

under its policies against <a href="https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/dangerous_individuals_organizations">dangerous individuals and organizations</a>.</font></b>

<font face="Times New Roman">This is a big move for Facebook, which (like many social

media companies) has been criticized for lax oversight of individuals

and groups that spread hateful messages and vitriol its platforms, but

has thus far attempted to toe an awkward line on the matter. While civil

rights groups and some Democratic lawmakers have been pushing them to

clean up their platform, conservatives have been eager to pounce on the

Menlo Park, California-based company with claims of bias each time they

do so. </font>

<font face="Times New Roman">“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that

promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology,” a

Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “The process for evaluating

potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision

to remove these accounts today.”</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">Nehlen is a white supremacist who <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/12/17224086/paul-nehlen-alt-right-paul-ryan-race">ran an unsuccessful primary challenge</a> for then-House Speaker Paul Ryan’s congressional seat in Wisconsin in 2016 and 2018. <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/5/18125507/milo-yiannopoulos-debt-no-platform">Yiannopoulos</a>

is a far-right provocateur. Watson is a far-right YouTube personality,

and Loomer is an activist who is often considered to be part of the

alt-right but rejects the characterization over anti-Semitism. </font>

<font face="Times New Roman">Being banned from social media isn’t a new development for some of these figures. Jones and Infowars, for example, were <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/9/6/17829264/alex-jones-info-wars-banned-twitter">permanently banned</a> from Twitter in September. Loomer was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/laura-loomer-banned-twitter-after-criticizing-ilhan-omar-n939256">kicked off Twitter</a> for her criticism of newly elected Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and her Muslim faith in November. She subsequently <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/29/18118529/far-right-activist-laura-loomer-twitter-protest-handcuff-nyc-hq">handcuffed herself</a> to the front doors of Twitter’s New York office in protest of the decision. </font>

<font face="Times New Roman">None

of the people listed will be allowed on Facebook or Instagram.

Additionally, Facebook will remove any pages, groups, and accounts set

up to represent them and Facebook events where they’re participating.

Users will still be able to praise them on Facebook and Instagram and

share content related to them.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">As <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/05/instagram-and-facebook-ban-far-right-extremists/588607/">Taylor Lorenz at the Atlantic notes</a>, Infowars has the strictest ban: </font></p>

<blockquote><p id="n6vsvJ"><font face="Times New Roman">Any account that shares Infowars content will

see it removed; unless the post is explicitly condemning Infowars.

Facebook and Instagram will remove any content containing Infowars

videos, radio segments, or articles, (unless the post is explicitly

condemning the content) and Facebook will also remove any groups set up

to share Infowars content and events promoting any of the banned

extremist figures, according to a company spokesperson. (Twitter,

YouTube, and Apple have also banned Jones and Infowars.)</font></p></blockquote>

<p id="332hwP"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This appears to be a sign that Facebook is becoming more

aggressive about enforcing its policies on hate speech and messages that

have the potential to incite violence. Its criteria includes

individuals and organizations that proclaim violent or hateful missions,

that are self-described or followers of hateful ideologies, or that

carry out or call for acts of violence against people based on race,

ethnicity, and nationality</span>.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-bans-paul-joseph-watson-milo-yiannopoulos-laura-loomer-louis-farrakhan">Kelly Weill at the Daily Beast</a>

points out Facebook has in the past been pretty squishy about this,

including when it comes to some of the figures it’s banning now.

Instagram in April admitted a video Loomer posted attacking Rep. Omar

violated its policies but didn’t remove her from the platform. It has

also acknowledged Yiannopoulos had glorified violence on its platform.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">It’s not clear why Facebook is doing this now, but

pressure for it to take action has been mounting for quite some time,

and the decision is probably at least in part an effort to get some

positive PR.</font></p>

<h3 id="9ljhm1"><font face="Times New Roman">This is probably a good step for Facebook — and one that is likely to face blowback</font></h3>

<p id="8mCO0G"><font face="Times New Roman">Facebook’s decision is likely a positive development and a

sign it’s taking the potential real-world consequences of the content

it hosts seriously. But the social media giant still has a long way to

go with reckoning with the ways it’s shaped the world we live in.

Facebook and the platforms it owns, including Instagram and WhatsApp, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/23/18511640/facebook-sri-lanka-bombing-social-media-attack">are often weaponized</a> as forums for spreading misinformation and hate and inciting violence all over the globe. </font>

<font face="Times New Roman">But Facebook will also have to deal with criticism from

conservatives that they’re being unfairly targeted yet again, since most

of the people banned on Thursday are part of the far right. </font>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font face="Times New Roman">Conservatives have for quite some time complained that

they’re being censored by social media, and Facebook has struggled to

respond. Part of that stems from a <b><a href="https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006">2016 Gizmodo story</a>

citing a former Facebook journalist who said workers at the company

routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers.

</b>Since then, Republicans and Silicon Valley have engaged in a

back-and-forth where conservatives accuse platforms of bias and

companies bend over backward to show that’s not the case. After the

Gizmodo story broke, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2016/05/18/media/facebook-conservative-leaders-meeting/index.html">met with conservative leaders</a> to discuss how the social network handles conservative content. </font></span>

<font face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump has seized on the narrative and in

the past has even come to Jones’s defense. After Jones was temporarily

banned on Twitter in 2018 (prior to the permanent ban), <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/18/17749450/trump-twitter-bias-alex-jones-infowars">Trump tweeted</a> that social media was “totally discriminating” against Republican and conservative voices. And just last month Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/24/18514772/twitter-trump-followers-meeting-jack-dorsey">complained about his Twitter followers</a> and got the company’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, to go to the Oval Office to discuss it.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">Each time Facebook and Twitter try to cater to the right,

they face a blowback from more mainstream outlets and observers. Case

in point: the controversy surrounding <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/5/2/18522758/facebook-fact-checking-partnership-daily-caller">Facebook’s decision</a> to partner in fact-checking with a website owned by conservative outlet the Daily Caller.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">Facebook will likely field more complaints with this

latest decision, even though it’s impossible to dispute that Jones,

Loomer, Nehlen, and the others often do spout hateful rhetoric. This ban

doesn’t mean they’ll disappear — they’ll just find other places to go

on the internet. But it does mean their voices will be a little harder

to find.</font></p>

<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="UviHXy" /></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">mma</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><p style="margin: 1em 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font face="Times New Roman">Over the past several years, conservatives and right-wing media have commonly accused tech giants of censoring right-wing content on their platforms. These critics frequently cite anecdotal evidence that can often be explained away by the technical limitations or rules of the platform.&nbsp;<i>Media Matters</i>' Cristina López&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=c178a9092d9e8c21003ede9d24dc4fa015404ecdb870dbe02fb19e1acd37908433a6f95f35e1eb6bd882f9dfedb12f872eb2c316eef22eca" title="compiled">compiled</a>&nbsp;many recent examples of right-wing media criticisms and how they've influenced tech companies decision making.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While the social media companies will often address and provide a reasoning for the occurrences in short order, conservatives and right-wing media use the window of opportunity to push a full-force media blitz, in a larger bad faith effort to </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=c178a9092d9e8c21feb07b3ee7e7c94d2c5e8c17afd139d54aab599a561a98d978072795c82ade139971e5b4f2aa635c73659dc86aaa5af4" title="work the refs">work the refs</a>."</span></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font face="Times New Roman">This strategy has been employed successfully by conservatives for more than half a century. They've used this strategy for decades on mainstream media, and now they're doing it with tech companies. Just this week,<b> Sen. Ted Cruz [R-TX</b>]&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=c178a9092d9e8c21f69cd92ab3ee3af9e6c48dd7db4920335ff3fd661cba5f422c683e00b5a1bca6562ca181422f84c8035c6db3adf4c38f" title="held a hearing">held a hearing</a>&nbsp;in the Senate about the topic.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font face="Times New Roman">The Twitter account for anti-abortion movie&nbsp;<i>Unplanned</i>&nbsp;was briefly suspended and then reinstated. This was because it was linked to an account that had violated Twitter's rules: If accounts are linked and one account violates Twitter's rules, both accounts will face consequences. Fairly straightforward, and all explained in Twitter's FAQ. In fact, the account was reinstated before almost anyone noticed it was suspended -- but it took roughly 24 hours for follower counts to go to where they were before.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font face="Times New Roman">But instead of dealing with this calmly, or even making a reasonable request like asking for more transparency from Twitter, conservatives had a full on meltdown, accusing Twitter of making them unfollow the Twitter account as some sort of ideological vendetta. These complaints went on for a week, and were even brought up during Cruz's hearing.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font face="Times New Roman">Here's a more simple example: a right-wing group complained that it could not run ads on Facebook depicting abortions. Facebook disallowed the ads because they do not allow ads featuring images of any medical procedure. Conservatives again accused Facebook of censorship.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px"><font face="Times New Roman">The thing is, this right-wing pressure campaign is working. Social media companies have made a distinct effort to employ right-wing figures to placate conservative users. In the meantime, hate, harassment, and conspiracy theories have flourished on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. These social media networks are now a hotbed for far-right radicalization and recruitment in America -- and instead of dealing with it, the companies are more concerned about appeasing conservatives who complain that their dumb video didn't get more views.</font></p></div><div style=""><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/03/facebook-just-announced-plans-to-ban-white-nationalists-and-separatists/">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/03/facebook-just-announced-plans-to-ban-white-nationalists-and-separatists/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">meh</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">facebook took down more than 500 pages?</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">copwatch, RT reporter "political spam"</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">In the Now got put back</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/project-censored-march-22-2019/">https://kpfa.org/episode/project-censored-march-22-2019/</a></span></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">cf nyt 8 russian (memes?)</span></font></div><div style=""><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">some small indep sites have lots of ads b/c they need $, but cut as "ad farms?" by FB?</span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://fair.org/home/facebook-wants-you-to-know-if-youre-getting-your-news-from-the-wrong-government/" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">https://fair.org/home/facebook-wants-you-to-know-if-youre-getting-your-news-from-the-wrong-government/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span></font></div><div><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/gofundme-bans-antivax-fundraisers-as-tech-companies-finally-crack-down-on-medical-disinformation/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">GoFundMe bans antivax fundraisers as tech companies finally crack down on medical disinformation</a></font></h3></div><div><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span></font></div></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work">https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work</a></span></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">8/18</span></font></div><div style=""><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">The dust is still settling after Alex Jones’s InfoWars was more-or-less simultaneously banned by YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and Facebook. The move has spawned thousands of takes about whether deplatforming Jones was the right move or a slippery slope toward more censorship. But just as important to consider: Will it work?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">This is called "deplatforming" or "no platform,"—social media companies (sans Twitter, which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/9/17669144/twitter-alex-jones-jack-dorsey-del-harvey" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">says he hasn’t broken its rules</a>) have decided to stop being complicit in spreading Jones’s conspiracy theories and hate. And we’ve seen no indication Jones will stop. But will his business remain viable and will his influence wane?</font></p><div class="ad-unitcontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; max-width: inherit;"><div class="article-iacwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 1080px;"><div class="ad-width odd-not-rendered t-long-form m-b-5-xs" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">The knee-jerk reaction, among Jones and some parts of the conservative movement, is that banning Jones will only make him stronger. InfoWars noted (<a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=infowars" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">correctly</a>) that “<a href="https://www.infowars.com/google-searches-for-infowars-skyrocket-after-tech-purge/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">Google searches for ‘InfoWars’ skyrocket after tech purge</a>,” and added that Silicon Valley’s “censorship campaign backfires as interest in InfoWars goes through the roof.”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/8/7/17659432/alex-jones-infowars-youtube-facebook-twitter-alt-right" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">The Ringer, meanwhile</a>, noted that “the paradox of Alex Jones,&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: inherit;">Infowars</i>, the alt-right, and this whole unfortunate orbit of web-taught, forum-dwelling eugenicists: They are nothing without YouTube, and yet they’re nothing without getting banned, dramatically, from YouTube (or wherever else).”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>It’s true that Silicon Valley’s lethargy on the far-right</b>, aided by endless press coverage, helped amplify their message and turned the far right into a real, powerful political force in the United States. And the <b>“Streisand Effect”</b> is definitely a real thing: Trying to censor something—even if that censorship is warranted—is only going to drive interest in it</span>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">But the belief among people who have studied deplatforming is that, in the long term, it&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: inherit;">does</i>&nbsp;work, though it may have some unintended consequences that have not been fully understood yet.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“We’ve been running a research project over last year, and when someone relatively famous gets no platformed by Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, there's an initial flashpoint, where some of their audience will move with them” Joan Donovan,&nbsp;<a href="https://datasociety.net/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">Data and Society’s</a>&nbsp;platform accountability research lead, told me on the phone, “but generally the falloff is pretty significant and they don’t gain the same amplification power they had prior to the moment they were taken off these bigger platforms.”</font></p><div class="ad-unitcontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; max-width: inherit;"><div class="article-iacwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 1080px;"><div class="ad-width odd-not-rendered scroll-long-form m-b-5-xs" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">There’s not a&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: inherit;">ton&nbsp;</i>of research on this, but the work that has been done so far is promising. A study published by researchers at Georgia Tech last year found that banning the platform's most toxic subreddits&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-controversial-ban-of-its-most-toxic-subreddits-actually-worked/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">resulted in less hate speech</a>&nbsp;elsewhere on the site, and especially from the people who were active on those subreddits.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Early results from Data and Society sent to an academic listserv in 2017 noted that it’s “unclear what the unintended effects of no platforming will be in the near and distant future. Right now, this can be construed as an incredibly positive step that platforms are making in responding to public complaints that their services are being used to spread hate speech and further radicalize individuals. However, there could be other unintended consequences. There has already been pushback on the right about the capacity and ethics of technology companies making these decisions. We’ve also seen an exodus towards sites like Gab.ai and away from the more mainstream social media networks. ”<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">There are lots of examples of people who have been deplatformed and have seen their power wane.<b> After he lost his Fox News show, Glenn Beck couldn’t sustain his influence—The Blaze reaches only a fraction of the people he used to. </b>Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart personality, was permanently banned from Twitter for inciting targeted harassment campaigns against actress Leslie Jones, and he resigned from Breitbart over&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/milo-yiannopoulos-resigns-from-breitbart-news/2017/02/21/0217c128-f7cc-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html?utm_term=.76a54e475853" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">comments he made about pedophilia</a>&nbsp;on a podcast. His general prominence in public discourse has waned ever since.</font></p><div class="ad-unitcontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; max-width: inherit;"><div class="article-iacwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 1080px;"><div class="ad-width odd-not-rendered scroll-long-form m-b-5-xs" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“I think the anecdotes are what makes a difference here—each individual, when you add them up, you get a net effect. You don’t need much data behind it to point out that with Milo, he lost Twitter, and the result was he lost a lot,” Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, which monitors conservative media and is studying deplatforming, told me on the phone. “He lost his ability to be influential or at least to project a veneer of influence.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Deepfakes, the AI-assisted technology&nbsp;<a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/topic/deepfakes" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">used to create fake celebrity porn</a>, grew in popularity after Motherboard reported on it. When Reddit, Pornhub, Gfycat, and others banned it, there were brief cries of “censorship,” and a brief spike in interest. But today, deepfakes are only being made and shared on the margins, in private forums and smaller, 4chan-like image boards.</font></p><p class="articlepull-quote" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 50px auto 30px; line-height: 1.3; position: relative; border-left: 6px solid rgb(121, 116, 189); padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">"Yes, we must take away the kinds of coordinative power they’re able to gain on platforms"</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">One of the most important things to keep in mind when predicting what may happen to InfoWars is to consider how most people consume media these days. These platforms are so powerful for a reason: the vast majority of Americans use them every single day, and many people use&nbsp;<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/02/more-americans-are-turning-to-multiple-social-media-sites-for-news/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">social media as their only source of news</a>. Social media is designed to be habit forming and many thousands of hours of research have been put into making sure these platforms are a daily habit; the question is whether Alex Jones and InfoWars is going to remain a daily habit after the initial Streisand Effect spike.</font></p><div class="ad-unitcontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; max-width: inherit;"><div class="article-iacwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 1080px;"><div class="ad-width odd-not-rendered scroll-long-form m-b-5-xs" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman">“A lot of Jones’s programming is impromptu, where he’s doing emergency broadcasts drunk in his house at 1 AM,” Carusone said. <b>“Without YouTube’s push notifications or algorithms, there’s no way anyone would be watching that.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Of course, getting banned from his major platforms won’t make Jones disappear, just like it hasn’t made Milo or Beck completely disappear. As platforms have begun to ban certain types of content, alternative platforms like Gab.ai and Voat have popped up,</span> where more-or-less anything goes. These platforms, too, were hyped as potentially powerful alternatives to the big social media players, but are&nbsp;<a href="https://voat.co/v/announcements/1866053" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">largely struggling</a>&nbsp;and arguably no more relevant than standard message boards that have been used by the far-right to organize for decades.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless, the concern among academics is that, as hate moves to the darker corners of the internet, that some of their old followers may move with them and become further radicalized.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“The good that comes with deplatforming is, their main goal was to redpill or get people within mainstream communities more in line with their beliefs, so we need to get them off those platforms,” Robyn Caplan, a PhD student at Rutgers University and Data and Society affiliate, told me on the phone. “But now we’ve put them down into their holes where they were before, and they could strengthen their beliefs and become more extreme.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">The question is whether it’s more harmful to society to have many millions of people exposed to kinda hateful content or to have a much smaller number of ultra-radicalized true believers.</font></p><div class="ad-unitcontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; max-width: inherit;"><div class="article-iacwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 1080px;"><div class="ad-width odd-not-rendered scroll-long-form m-b-5-xs" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Donovan believes that, ultimately, it’s important to deplatform people when their rhetoric is resulting in negative, real-world consequences: “The way Jones activates his audiences has implications for people who have already been victimized,” she said. “We have always had groups of white supremacists, misogynists, and violent insurrectionists joining message boards. But social media has made these tools much more powerful. So yes, we must take away the kinds of coordinative power they’re able to gain on platforms.”</font></p><p class="articlepull-quote" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 50px auto 30px; line-height: 1.3; position: relative; border-left: 6px solid rgb(121, 116, 189); padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">"Alex Jones is not the only person being deplatformed or who has been deranked"</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">There are a couple other things worth mentioning. First, Jones has been deplatformed before, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he lost his radio shows. Jones was able to build something of a dedicated, organic audience long before YouTube in part by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/meet-alex-jones-175845/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">executive producing</a>&nbsp;and distributing the 9/11 conspiracy theory documentary&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: inherit;">Loose Change</i>. InfoWars was streaming video on its own website before it was streaming on YouTube. He is nothing if not persistent.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Second, the people who will stay on YouTube but won’t follow Jones are not suddenly going to be earnestly consuming the&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: inherit;">New York Times</i>. Jones became popular on social media because he was vitriolic, and because social media algorithms favor vitriolic, high-velocity content.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“Not only did Jones threaten and pantomime shooting Robert Mueller, the reason he did is because he said Mueller’s a ‘demon,’” Carusone said. “If you’re already plugged into the ‘demon’ algorithm on YouTube, there’s plenty of other people spewing demon stuff for you there.”</font></p><div class="ad-unitcontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; max-width: inherit;"><div class="article-iacwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 1080px;"><div class="ad-width odd-not-rendered scroll-long-form m-b-5-xs" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">Most importantly, we need to remember that Jones’s banning, and to a lesser extent Milo’s, only became major national news because it fits into a false narrative that Silicon Valley censors only conservatives, which has been posited by Ted Cruz, Congressman Jim Jordan, and, recently, Donald Trump.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" face="Times New Roman"><b>Deplatforming works “best” when the people being deplatformed don’t have any power to begin with.</b> Nor are we talking about people from marginalized communities who have&nbsp;<a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezvba7/fark-banned-misogyny-to-facilitate-free-speech" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">self-censored or left social media</a>&nbsp;because of far right harassment and hate campaigns (and could, in theory, come back with more proactive moderation by large platforms.)</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 640px;"><font face="Times New Roman">“Alex Jones is not the only person being deplatformed or who has been deranked,” Caplan said. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We need to puncture this myth that it’s only affecting far-right people.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z0eAOPR9XA&t=2s&index=38&list=PLwSAFlbWv59xPBL3W_bLxaLGvnC4FtkbG" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">Trans rights activists</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6-rWaSRDQY" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">Black Lives Matter</a>&nbsp;organizers,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjgngZ4zTOo&t=3s&index=33&list=PLwSAFlbWv59xPBL3W_bLxaLGvnC4FtkbG" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bold;">LGBTQI people</a>&nbsp;have been demonetized or deranked.</span> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The reason we’re talking about far-right people is that they have coverage on Fox News and representatives in Congress holding hearings. They already have political power.”</span></font></p></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">rationalwiki hmnn</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><div id="mw-content-text" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr" style="direction: ltr;" lang="en"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>No platform</b>&nbsp;is the practice of of preventing someone—either through policy or through protest—from spreading their ideas through a particular event or website. The term is mostly used to refer to rescinding an invitation to someone asked to speak at an event (such as a guest lecture at a college). The concept apparently originates from a policy used by the British National Union of Students to prevent people they disagree with from giving speeches on&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/UK" title="UK" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">UK</a>&nbsp;college campuses. The concept is similar to the political action of&nbsp;<i><b>cordon sanitaire</b></i>, where a politician or political party is either unconditionally excluded from coalitions or other forms or cooperation, or even completely ignored. "No platform" is typically invoked for issues such as racism,&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sexism" title="Sexism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">sexism</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Homophobia" title="Homophobia" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">homophobia</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial" title="Holocaust denial" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Holocaust denial</a>, and so forth. As what is and is not acceptable by society changes with the times, so do the targets of "no platform", with 2015 seeing protests of speakers seen as&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Transphobic" title="Transphobic" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">transphobic</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Islamophobic" title="Islamophobic" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Islamophobic</a>&nbsp;who consider themselves&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Progressive" title="Progressive" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">progressive</a>&nbsp;as they are&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Feminist" title="Feminist" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">feminists</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Atheist" title="Atheist" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">atheists</a>, respectively. No-platforming is, at best, an attempt to prevent a&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Balance_fallacy" title="Balance fallacy" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">balance fallacy</a>, with protesters refusing to allow tacit endorsement of&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Reactionary" title="Reactionary" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">reactionary</a>&nbsp;views.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font style="" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Depending on the circumstances, the tactic can be controversial, and has been compared to&nbsp;</span><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Book_burning" title="Book burning" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">book burning</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Ignoring a person (or group) also means that no one is directly refuting their arguments</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Some have criticized the action as a form of&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Censorship" title="Censorship" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">censorship</a>&nbsp;and a violation of the principles of&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech" title="Freedom of speech" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">freedom of speech</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Critical_thinking" title="Critical thinking" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">critical thinking</a>. The&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Individual_Rights_in_Education" title="Foundation for Individual Rights in Education" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Foundation for Individual Rights in Education</a>&nbsp;maintains a database of hundreds of incidents</span><sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-2" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">[</a><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-2" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">2]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;in which invited speakers have been no-platformed on college campuses, showing that the phenomenon has been "steadily increasing over the past 15 years" and is used more often by left-wingers than right wingers.</span><sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[3]</a></sup></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">Advocates of no-platforming counter that the speaker's message has already been heard by protesters and venue holders, and they have decided not to extend the speakers the&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Right_to_be_heard" title="Freedom of speech" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">right to an audience</a>&nbsp;that has already rejected them. The protests are generally meant to raise awareness of the target's views and not a call to place a blanket ban them; the reaction from many protested is arguably censorial itself, considering they're refusing to acknowledge the right to demonstrate opposition to their views.<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a></sup>&nbsp;Apparently, both sides&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Animal_Farm" title="Animal Farm" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">believe that their speech is more free than others'</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><div id="toc" class="toc" style="background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 7px; display: table; zoom: 1;"><div id="toctitle" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;"><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#Freedom_of_speech_concerns" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Freedom of speech concerns</span></a></font></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#Effectiveness" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Effectiveness</span></a></font></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#National_Union_of_Students" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">National Union of Students</span></a></font></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#See_also" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">4</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">See also</span></a></font></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">5</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">References</span></a></font></li></ul></div><h2 style="background: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Freedom_of_speech_concerns">Freedom of speech concerns</span></font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
In most liberal</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Democracies" title="Democracies" class="mw-redirect" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" none="none" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line">democracies</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">, the right to publish your own newspaper, and the right to speak in a public space where speaking is permitted, are inalienable. However, private venue holders themselves also have the right to free speech and to exercise it by not promoting speech they dislike, something which is continually ignored by the people who complain about not being heard. Further, at public universities, student groups and academic departments are under no obligation to provide a platform for any particular viewpoint. Too many don't understand that their voices</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;</span><i style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">have</i><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">been heard, but that other rights-bearing people have just decided</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;</span><i style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">not to give them the time of day</i><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">.</span>"No platforming" as adopted so far is not a violation of freedom of expression rights; there is no right to have a ready audience. Individuals do not have a right to speak wherever and whenever they want. For instance, newspapers are not obligated to publish every, or any, letter to the editor they receive.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">An unfortunate result of "No platforming" is even more contentious debate over what exactly constitutes&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hate_speech" title="Hate speech" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">hate speech</a>, and whether or not it counts as free speech. There is a contingent of people online (and sometimes even offline!), usually right-wing types and&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/4chan" title="4chan" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4chan</a>-style&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Troll" title="Troll" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">trolls</a>&nbsp;(though some are, indeed,&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law" title="Poe's Law" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">genuine</a>), who are dead set on trying to&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hand-wave" title="Hand-wave" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">hand-wave</a>&nbsp;their racism, homophobia, sexism, Islamophobia,&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Xenophobia" title="Xenophobia" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">xenophobia</a>, etc. as "Not actually hate speech", rallying behind mischaracterizations of "no platforming" as censorship to bolster their arguments.<sup style="line-height: 1;">[<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Help:References" title="Help:References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><i>citation&nbsp;needed</i></a>]</sup></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">Definitions of what constitutes hate speech have expanded in recent years; this has had the effect of making people with&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Transphobic" title="Transphobic" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">transphobic</a>&nbsp;stances (e.g.&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Germaine_Greer" title="Germaine Greer" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Germaine Greer</a><sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a></sup>) or who allegedly express&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Islamophobia" title="Islamophobia" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Islamophobic</a>&nbsp;ideas (e.g.&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Maryam_Namazie" title="Maryam Namazie" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Maryam Namazie</a><sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a></sup>) targets for protests. These experiences ruffle the feathers of those whose approach to liberalism is out of step with the current mood of campus activists, which has led to a proliferation of editorials attacking millennials for being "coddled" in "<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Safe_space" title="Safe space" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">safe spaces</a>" or accusing them of being "anti-democratic" and "censorial".<sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a></sup>&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Observe how&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Milo_Yiannopoulos" title="Milo Yiannopoulos" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Milo Yiannopoulos</a></b>, no stranger to firestorms such as&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate" title="Gamergate" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Gamergate</a>, and having coordinated an online harassment against Leslie Jones,<sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[8]</a></sup>&nbsp;was given a chance to speak at DePaul University as part of his "Dangerous Faggot" tour, but when the event actually went forth, he was driven out by the students and security was forbidden from helping him, as school officials were well aware of his history.<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[9]</a></sup>&nbsp;When he was actually given the opportunity to speak unmolested at the University of Milwaukee, he singled out and harassed a trans student using her name and photo,<sup id="cite_ref-10" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[10]</a></sup>&nbsp;thereby justifying his treatment at DePaul.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">He was later given an opportunity to speak at Berkeley under the dubious name of the "Free Speech Week", but was again shut down by student rioting due to his former abuse of his platform.<sup id="cite_ref-11" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[11]</a></sup>&nbsp;He often characterized such backlashes as not being a chance to be heard and that&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions" title="Just asking questions" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">if someone can change his mind</a>&nbsp;then he'll tone it down, blatantly both ignoring his inflammatory nature, with the added unpleasant caveat that if someone cannot change his mind for whatever reason, then it's his opponents' fault and he'll go on with his hate speech without a care in the world.<sup id="cite_ref-12" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-12" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[12]</a></sup>&nbsp;It wasn't until he was found to have made remarks supporting pedophilia that he was barred from CPAC and resigned from Breitbart in disgrace.<sup id="cite_ref-13" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-13" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[13]</a></sup></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>Ironically enough (or not so unironically) it's not hard to find the same people who create narratives of triggered college kids whining whenever they're called out on their bigotry</b>. Trump's campaign ran on the premise that he was not afraid to tell it like it is whenever he made racist and sexist remarks, yet as soon as Hillary Clinton referred to these same people who ate up his hateful rhetoric as "deplorables", they were quick to jump on her for being intolerant and after she lost the election, suggested she&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sexism" title="Sexism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">take up knitting</a>. All the while 45 was quick to constantly make inflammatory remarks about her on Twitter despite having won the election, and none of his followers batted an eye.</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both;"><h2 style="background: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Effectiveness">Effectiveness</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=No_platform&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Effectiveness" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></font></h2><table class="cquote" style="background-color: transparent; margin: auto; border-collapse: collapse; border-style: none;"><tbody><tr><td><div style="padding: 4px 50px; position: relative;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="position: absolute; left: 10px; top: -6px; z-index: 1; font-weight: bold;">“</span><span style="position: absolute; right: 10px; bottom: -20px; z-index: 1; font-weight: bold;">”</span>What an extremist needs more than anything else is an enemy</font></div></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 4px 10px 8px; line-height: 1.6em; text-align: right;"><font face="Times New Roman"><cite style="font-style: normal; position: relative; z-index: 2;">—Alex Grobman<sup id="cite_ref-14" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[14]</a></sup></cite></font></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">In 1994 some university papers decided to run Bradley Smith's advertisement promoting Holocaust denialism, but printed a refutation on the opposition page.<sup id="cite_ref-15" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-15" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[15]</a></sup>&nbsp;This was somewhat controversial, but is quite probably a more effective way to refute Holocaust denialism than ignoring them and hoping they go away. As mentioned in the free speech section above, these people&nbsp;<i>will</i>&nbsp;get their message out, and people uninformed of the refutations&nbsp;<i>will</i>&nbsp;be convinced by this. There is a caveat to refutations, however: the&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect" title="Backfire effect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">backfire effect</a>, which would strengthen problematic viewpoints if they were challenged, which is among the reasons deplatforming is supported.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">In a similar vein, some have also argued that it can lead to&nbsp;<i>more</i>&nbsp;extremism. For example during the 1980s and 1990s&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Janmaat" class="extiw" title="wp:Hans Janmaat" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span title="Wikipedia: Hans Janmaat" style="">Hans Janmaat</span></a><sup style="line-height: 1;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Janmaat" title="wp:Hans Janmaat" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><img alt="Wikipedia's W.svg" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/12px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/18px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png 1.5x, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/24px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png 2x" style="border: none; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px;" width="12" height="12" /></a></sup>&nbsp;had a seat in the&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dutch" title="Dutch" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Dutch</a>&nbsp;parliament, but was excluded from most public discourse by&nbsp;<i>cordon sanitaire</i>&nbsp;in both parliament and the media due to his views on immigration (which weren't even&nbsp;<i>that</i>&nbsp;extreme, certainly not by today's standards). Parliament members would just get up and leave whenever he spoke. This, in part, led to the rise of&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pim_Fortuyn" class="extiw" title="wp:Pim Fortuyn" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span title="Wikipedia: Pim Fortuyn" style="">Pim Fortuyn</span></a><sup style="line-height: 1;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pim_Fortuyn" title="wp:Pim Fortuyn" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><img alt="Wikipedia's W.svg" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/12px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/18px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png 1.5x, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/24px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png 2x" style="border: none; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px;" width="12" height="12" /></a></sup>&nbsp;in the early 2000s, who was significantly more vocal on these issues than Janmaat was, and later&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders" title="Geert Wilders" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Geert Wilders</a>&nbsp;in the mid 2000s, who was even&nbsp;<i>more</i>&nbsp;extreme.</font></p><h2 style="background: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="National_Union_of_Students">National Union of Students</span></font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">The British&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_of_Students(United_Kingdom)" class="extiw" title="wp:National Union of Students (United Kingdom)" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span title="Wikipedia: National Union of Students (United Kingdom)" style="">National Union of Students</span></a><sup style="line-height: 1;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_of_Students(United_Kingdom)" title="wp:National Union of Students (United Kingdom)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><img alt="Wikipedia's W.svg" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/12px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/18px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png 1.5x, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/24px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png 2x" style="border: none; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px;" width="12" height="12" /></a></sup>&nbsp;has an&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUS_No_Platform_Policy" class="extiw" title="wp:NUS No Platform Policy" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span title="Wikipedia: NUS No Platform Policy" style="">officially drafted policy</span></a><sup style="line-height: 1;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUS_No_Platform_Policy" title="wp:NUS No Platform Policy" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><img alt="Wikipedia's W.svg" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/12px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/18px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png 1.5x, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Wikipedia%27s_W.svg/24px-Wikipedia%27s_W.svg.png 2x" style="border: none; vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px;" width="12" height="12" /></a></sup>&nbsp;on no platforming, which is explicitly meant to prevent far-right speakers (defined as racists,&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fascism" title="Fascism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">fascists</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anti-Semitism" title="Anti-Semitism" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">antisemites</a>) from being allowed an audience at British universities in order to refuse to give their political stances credence and possibly endanger the lives of students. They also detail how this is not a restriction on anyone's freedom of speech, as the student unions are democratically deciding who they want to be allowed to talk on campus, and this in no way impinges on their ability to speak their mind elsewhere.<sup id="cite_ref-16" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-16" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[16]</a></sup></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman">As of September 2014, the NUS had a blanket ban on only 5 organizations:<sup id="cite_ref-17" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_note-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[17]</a></sup>&nbsp;the terrorist group&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Al-Muhajiroun" title="Al-Muhajiroun" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Al-Muhajiroun</a>, the racist&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/British_National_Party" title="British National Party" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">British National Party</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/English_Defence_League" title="English Defence League" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">English Defence League</a>, the Islamist pro-<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Caliphate" title="Caliphate" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Caliphate</a>&nbsp;organization&nbsp;<a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hizb_ut-Tahrir" title="Hizb ut-Tahrir" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Hizb ut-Tahrir</a>, and the anti-Semitic Muslim Public Affairs Committee. The NUS enforces this by not funding speeches by these groups and not allowing their officers to share a stage with members of these groups. Individual colleges' student unions can decide to ban other speakers should they wish with internal votes.</font></p><h2 style="background: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="See_also">See also</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=No_platform&action=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: See also" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></font></h2><ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" f="F" e="E" a="A" csvg="Csvg" http="http" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="cx" cy="cy" r="r" fill="fill" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Streisand_effect" title="Streisand effect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Streisand effect</a></font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sea_lion" title="Sea lion" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Sea lion</a></font></li></ul><h2 style="background: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="References">References</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" /></span></span></font></h2><div class="references-small" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ol class="references" style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 3.2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li id="cite_note-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/02/joan-bakewell-no-platforming-universities" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">Joan Bakewell: no-platforming is a step towards book burning</a></span></font></li><li id="cite_note-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.thefire.org/how-to-use-the-disinvitation-database/" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">User’s Guide to FIRE’s Disinvitation Database By FIRE June 9, 2016</a></span></font></li><li id="cite_note-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">As of 2016-10-15, sorted by "From Right or Left of Speaker", there are 188 "From the left", 102 "From the right", and 29 "N/A"</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">Margaret Barthel,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/the-loudly-protesting-controversy-starting-disillusioned-class-of-2014/372863/" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"If Colleges Can't Handle Protests, Who Can?"</a>,&nbsp;<i>The Atlantic</i>, June 16, 2014</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">Zoe Williams,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/25/germaine-greer-prejudice-trans-people" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"Silencing Germaine Greer will let prejudice against trans people flourish"</a>,&nbsp;<i>The Guardian</i>, October 25, 2015</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">Richard Adams,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/26/student-union-blocks-speech-activist-maryam-namazie-warwick" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"Student union blocks speech by 'inflammatory' anti-sharia activist"</a>&nbsp;<i>The Guardian</i>, September 26, 2015</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">Julia Serano,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://medium.com/@juliaserano/how-to-write-a-political-correctness-run-amok-article-9b828d443018" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"How to Write a “Political Correctness Run Amok” Article"</a>,&nbsp;<i>Medium</i>, November 11, 2015</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">Anna Silman,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.thecut.com/2016/08/a-timeline-of-leslie-joness-horrific-online-abuse.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"A Timeline of Leslie Jones’s Horrific Online Abuse"</a>&nbsp;<i>The Cut</i>, August 24, 2016</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">Kasia Kovacs,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/10/21/several-universities-cancel-appearances-conservative-writer-milo-yiannopoulos" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"Inflammatory and Turned Away"</a>&nbsp;<i>Inside Higher Ed</i>, October 21, 2016</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-10" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">Claire Landsbaum,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.thecut.com/2016/12/milo-yiannopoulos-harassed-a-trans-student-at-uw-milwaukee.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"Alt-Right Troll Milo Yiannopoulos Uses Campus Visit to Openly Mock a Transgender Student"</a>&nbsp;<i>The Cut</i>, December 15, 2016</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-11" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">Susan Svrluga,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/09/23/uc-berkeley-says-free-speech-week-is-canceled-milo-yiannopoulos-says-hes-still-coming-to-campus" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"UC-Berkeley says ‘Free Speech Week’ is canceled. Milo Yiannopoulos says he’s coming anyway."</a>&nbsp;<i>The Washington post</i>&nbsp;September 23, 2017</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-12" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-12" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">German Lopez,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/20/14673036/milo-yiannopoulos-cpac-pedophilia-tape" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"The fall of Milo Yiannopoulos, explained"</a>&nbsp;<i>Vox</i>, February 21, 2017</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-13" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-13" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text">Rebecca Hersher,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/21/516473521/after-comments-on-pedophilia-breitbart-editor-milo-yiannopoulos-resigns" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"After Comments On Pedophilia, Breitbart Editor Milo Yiannopoulos Resigns"</a>&nbsp;<i>NPR</i>, Feburary 21, 2017</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-14" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrMQpeWmDXA" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman: Denying History</a>&nbsp;[YouTube]</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-15" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-15" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRrP7AevKi4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">HOLOCAUST - Gas Chamber Deniers on 'Donahue' Show 1994 (David Cole & Bradley Smith)</a>&nbsp;[YouTube]</span></font></li><li id="cite_note-16" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-16" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/strong-students-unions/faith-and-belief/external-speakers-guidance" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"External Speakers Guidance"</a>,&nbsp;<i>National Union of Students</i></span></font></li><li id="cite_note-17" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-cite-backlink" style="user-select: none;"><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform#cite_ref-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="user-select: none; top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important;">Jump up</span>↑</a></span>&nbsp;<span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/resources/no-platform-policy-last-updated-september-2014" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" standalone="standalone" no="no" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cpath="Cpath" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" m1.5="M1.5" h5.982v10.5h1.5z="h5.982V10.5H1.5z" m5.765="M5.765" h11v5.39l9.427="H11v5.39L9.427" l-1.31-1.31l5.393="l-1.31-1.31L5.393" l-2.69-2.688="l-2.69-2.688" l4.2="L4.2" z="z" m9.995="M9.995" l.022="l.022" l8.2="L8.2" l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z="l2.882-2.88-1.85-1.852z" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">"No Platform Policy Last updated September 2014"</a>,&nbsp;<i>National Union of Students</i></span></font></li></ol></div></div><div id="catlinks" class="catlinks" data-mw="interface" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); 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