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August 9, 2023 — John Hinderaker
We now know that the federal government, led by the FBI, has engaged in a prolonged program of censorship that focused on social media. It began, as far as we know, during the Trump administration, and at that time was directed largely against the President. It has flourished during the Biden administration, in which the FBI and other agencies have acted as enforcers, suppressing dissent from the Biden administration’s line,
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April 21, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I developed a healthy respect for attorney John A. “Jack” Clifford many years ago when we represented adverse parties in an intellectual property dispute. Jack is of counsel with Merchant & Gould. P.C. Jack writes today: I hope you are doing well. I write to advise you that I copied the text of your ”The dirtiest trick” post to my Facebook feed this morning, including a link to the url
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November 6, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Hard on the heels of Elon Musk’s laying off half the staff of Twitter comes news of layoffs at Meta (Facebook): The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people. Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company officials already told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week, the
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August 26, 2022 — John Hinderaker
That’s what Mollie Hemingway says: The FBI rigged the 2020 election. https://t.co/GjRjMVUY8T — Mollie (@MZHemingway) August 25, 2022 She is talking about the interview that Mark Zuckerberg did with Joe Rogan. It has gotten a great deal of attention; the New York Post, for example, features Kevin McCarthy tweeting about the “bombshell interview on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience'”. Much as I admire Mollie, I think she overstates the case, at
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January 3, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The latest news from social media is that both Twitter and Facebook have banned Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal accounts. Twitter permanently suspended the personal account of Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over repeated violations of its COVID-19 misinformation policy, the company confirmed early Sunday. *** “We permanently suspended the account you referenced (@mtgreenee) for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” a Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Caller
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October 24, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The Wall Street Journal has obtained internal Facebook documents that shed light on how politics has affected the social media giant’s behavior in recent years. Some argue that the documents confirm suspicions that Facebook deliberately suppresses conservative views, but to me the story seems more complicated than that: Many Republicans, from Mr. Trump down, say Facebook discriminates against conservatives. The documents reviewed by the Journal didn’t render a verdict on
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July 30, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The dark night of censorship isn’t just threatening, it is already here. The most recent case–one of hundreds, if not thousands–is that of Dave Rubin, a popular conservative commentator with a large following on Twitter. Rubin tweeted this: They want a federal vaccine mandate for vaccines which are clearly not working as promised just weeks ago. People are getting and transmitting Covid despite vax. Plus now they’re prepping us for
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July 22, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The Biden administration has enlisted Facebook to police conversations among Americans. This is because the rest of us are too dumb to be trusted, and may fall for “misinformation.” So how does Facebook carry out its mission of uplifting our discourse? By censoring conversation about hoes in gardening groups: A group called WNY Gardeners has been repeatedly flagged by the social network for “violating community standards,” when its more than
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July 16, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Today saw a follow-up to the revelation that the Biden administration is instructing Facebook as to “misinformation” that Facebook should delete from its platform. Joe Biden was asked about his administration’s relationship with Facebook as he departed for Camp David. His response was striking: President Biden on Friday accused Facebook of “killing people,” just after White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration is “in regular touch” with
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June 18, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Some readers may remember that I was mysteriously booted off Twitter some months ago. Twitter was never my preferred medium, but I had around 14,000 followers. One day Twitter sent me an email saying that my account had been accessed by someone in Australia who had changed my email address. If you didn’t do that, Twitter’s email to my user name said, click here. I clicked there. The first thing
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June 4, 2021 — John Hinderaker
After the mostly-peaceful demonstrations in Washington last January 6, Facebook and Instagram suspended President Trump’s accounts. He appealed to Facebook’s Oversight Board, which upheld the suspension but said it should have a time limit. Today Facebook responded by decreeing that Trump is off its platforms for two years, and after that, they will see. Facebook’s suspension was based on two posts that President Trump did on January 6. Both called
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May 22, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Alpha News is Minnesota’s scrappy alternative news service. Scott serves on Alpha’s board, and my organization both supports and collaborates with Alpha. Today Alpha reported that Facebook has threatened to ban its page for posting a cartoon that Facebook found offensive: Facebook has threatened to ban Alpha News from its platform for publishing an anti-Hamas cartoon. The Alpha News Facebook page now has “reduced distribution and other restrictions” for publishing
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May 10, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Buzzfeed has a story that is perhaps unintentionally revealing. Facebook documents leaked to that outlet indicate that Facebook is trying to assuage Starbucks’ ire at “hate speech” the company is encountering on the social media platform: Facebook is scrambling to prevent Starbucks from leaving its platform after the world’s largest coffee company said it was dismayed by hateful comments left on its posts about racial and social justice issues. In
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February 8, 2021 — John Hinderaker
One of the major issues of our time is the Left’s attempt to ban conservative speech where it now matters most: on social media platforms. The Left monopolizes social media outlets, and if an upstart competitor rears its head–Parler, say–it is crushed by an obviously-illegal combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade. (See Section 1 of the Sherman Act.) Good luck litigating that for the next ten years while you
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February 3, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is an important guy in more ways than one. As John notes in this nearby post, DeSantis seeks to impose statutory constraints on Big Tech/social media in support of neutral free speech principles. Below is the full video of DeSantis’s press conference announcing the initiative. Looking around online for the details, I see that the Miami Herald reports: The proposed bill, which is still being drafted,
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February 2, 2021 — John Hinderaker
A number of people around the country are working on the problem of censorship of conservative speech by the technology behemoths, especially the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. For now, it seems clear that federal action is foreclosed. The Democrats have no intention of doing anything to disrupt a situation that is highly favorable to them. So for the foreseeable future, all the action will be at the
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November 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
That is what my friend Roger Simon says: “Now Is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Get Off Twitter.” Whatever Jack Dorsey and his minions dislike, whatever threatens them, is automatically banned or, at best, temporarily tolerated with some supercilious notation about its supposed wrongheadedness. (And they claim they’re a public facility—like the phone company.) Almost never do they say with any specificity why they are censoring.
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