Are We Watching the DEATH OF FREE SPEECH? – powered by ise.media
Is the goal of the establishment in politics, media and big tech to completely censor all speech and control what is said, thought and believed in all of society?
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Dems Want A War on Domestic Terror – powered by ise.media
Now that the Neo-Liberal order has taken control of all branches of the Federal Government, media, big tech and academia, the new push for is a “war on domestic terror”. Plus, there is now talk of “deprogramming” Trump supporters. I speak with Gad Saad, author of The Parasitic Mind about how to overcome this. Saad explains that 10’s of millions of Americans must now channel their “inner honey badger.”
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Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri grills Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over reports of the “Tasks” Platform reportedly used by FB, Twitter and Google to coordinate censorship of people, ideas and hashtags.
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In this interview for The Last American Vagabond, I had a fantastic discussion with founder Ryan Cristian about how modern censorship is being done today and how we can fight back. This interview is an in-depth look into how the mainstream media seeks to shape minds and it allowed me to present a solution with my new platform, ISE Media. My team recently launched the beta version of the platform and it’s been exciting to talk about how this platform is bringing huge changes to how individuals are able to view content.
Our equity crowdfund for ISE Media also launched recently along with the platform, and with the support of investors in this crowdfund we are aiming to increase content volume, user functions and much more. We have created this crowdfund which not only helps our team continue development and expansion of the platform, but allows investors to actually own a part of ISE Media. Unlike outdated conventional media companies, our investors have the opportunity to have a piece of this platform.
Watch our announcement video by clicking here.
You can register your ISE Media account by clicking here.
Learn more and invest in ISE Media by clicking here.
Content creators such as Ryan and myself are presenting information and there is a critical need for a space where creators can share this information. As Ryan noted, “you should have the right to look at all this information and come to your own conclusion about it.” We need a place to freely exchange facts and ideas and also discuss them rather than be constantly shielded from content that big tech insiders simply don’t like.
Thank you to Ryan and The Last American Vagabond for hosting a robust conversation about the importance of preserving the flow of thoughts and ideas.
In this video I explain how Facebook’s decision to purge thousands of independent voices from its platform actually has a greater impact on the upcoming 2020 election than anything that took place in 2016.
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San Bruno, CA— YouTube has announced that beginning in April, the company will ban how-to videos related to building or refashioning guns, as well as all content that promotes the sale of guns or gun accessories.
According to YouTube’s statement:
Specifically, we don’t allow content that:
— Intends to sell firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales (e.g., private sales by individuals) or links to sites that sell these items. These accessories include but may not be limited to accessories that enable a firearm to simulate automatic fire or convert a firearm to automatic fire (e.g., bump stocks, gatling triggers, drop-in auto sears, conversion kits), and high capacity magazines (i.e., magazines or belts carrying more than 30 rounds).
— Provides instructions on manufacturing a firearm, ammunition, high capacity magazine, homemade silencers/suppressors, or certain firearms accessories such as those listed above. This also includes instructions on how to convert a firearm to automatic or simulated automatic firing capabilities.
— Shows users how to install the above-mentioned accessories or modifications.
“We routinely make updates and adjustments to our enforcement guidelines across all of our policies,” a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement. “While we’ve long prohibited the sale of firearms, we recently notified creators of updates we will be making around content promoting the sale or manufacture of firearms and their accessories.”
The announcement by YouTube marks the latest company to take a stance in the U.S. gun-control debate, following major retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart, which have taken assertive steps to implement 21-plus age limits for gun sales in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. Bloomberg reports that YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, has faced criticism for hosting videos about guns.
According to a report by Bloomberg:
For many gun-rights supporters, YouTube has been a haven. A current search on the site for “how to build a gun” yields 25 million results, though that includes items such as toys. At least one producer of gun videos saw its page suspended on Tuesday. Another channel opted to move its videos to an adult-content site, saying that will offer more freedom than YouTube.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry lobbying group, expressed concern about the “censorship of commercial free speech,” and called YouTube’s new policy “worrisome.”
“We suspect it will be interpreted to block much more content than the stated goal of firearms and certain accessory sales,” read a statement released by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “We see the real potential for the blocking of educational content that serves instructional, skill-building and even safety purposes. Much like Facebook, YouTube now acts as a virtual public square. The exercise of what amounts to censorship, then, can legitimately be viewed as the stifling of commercial free speech.”
[RELATED: Reality Check: The True Meaning of the Second Amendment]
A report from MSN revealed that in the midst of YouTube’s new policy announcement, Spike’s Tactical, a gun manufacturing company in Florida, had claimed that their Facebook and YouTube accounts had been suspended for “violating community guidelines.”
The move to censor pro-gun content comes only days before Saturday’s March For Our Lives, a rally described by the media as an event organized by survivors of the February 14 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that left 17 dead; the highly-publicized March 14 walkout had an early push from “organizers of the Women’s March on Washington — the same group that donned pink ‘pussy’ hats in a Washington, D.C., protest march following President Donald Trump’s inauguration” according to a report by Lifezette.
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/976201267654594562
Although the new policies will reportedly begin being enforced in April, Bloomberg reported that InRange TV, a channel devoted to firearms, posted on Facebook that they would immediately begin uploading videos to PornHub, an adult content website.
“YouTube’s newly released released vague and one-sided firearms policy makes it abundantly clear that YouTube cannot be counted upon to be a safe harbor for a wide variety of views and subject matter,” InRange TV wrote. “PornHub has a history of being a proactive voice in the online community, as well as operating a resilient and robust video streaming platform.”
With the continued and growing censorship on social media/video platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, many of these gun enthusiasts may find comfort in decentralized blockchain-based alternatives like Steemit, DTube and BitChute.
You might be a fan, you might be disgusted by him. But there is no doubt that InfoWars founder and radio host Alex Jones is a lightning rod. His YouTube channel has over 2.2 million subscribers and more than 33,000 videos.
Just days ago, Jones claimed that YouTube had begun a process of taking his channel down.
On March 3, CBS reported, “Jones tweeted that he had ‘set up a new channel’ that the ‘SPLC,’ or the Southern Poverty Law Center, wanted censored. In one of the videos on the channel called ‘InfoWars Censored,’ Jones said, ‘We’re live on Facebook, on Twitter, on Periscope, but we cannot go live on the Alex Jones channel — it’s been frozen for the third time in one week.’”
YouTube confirmed to CBS News that some advertisers had asked that their ads be pulled from Jones’ channel but there was “no plan”…“at present” to remove the channel completely.
But more than flagged, YouTube is outright banning channels. Some YouTube channels recently complained about their accounts being pulled entirely with no advance warning. In this latest case, YouTube seems to have been flagging content that was either deemed as pro-gun or conservative content.
According to The Verge, “YouTube indicated that as the platform ramps up human-powered moderation efforts, new moderators may have mistakenly removed or flagged right-wing videos and channels. Bloomberg reported the news this afternoon, quoting a YouTube spokesperson saying that ‘as we work to hire rapidly and ramp up our policy enforcement teams throughout 2018, newer members may misapply some of our policies resulting in mistaken removals.’ The spokesperson said that YouTube’s policies had not changed, and that ‘we’ll reinstate any videos that were removed in error.’”
There is no question that human moderators were, in fact, pulling down “right wing” or “conservative content.”
But why? What is really happening here? Because YouTube’s push to control video content, just like Facebook is nothing new. In fact, it has been happening for some time.
Mike Cernovich tweeted that a video he has posted of Antifa protesters chanting death threats at a protest in DC was taken down by YouTube because it violated community guidelines.
To be clear, the video was about 30 seconds of an actual protest in DC. And the language of the protesters violated community guidelines? That is called news, YouTube. But it was not allowed.
Mike Adams, the founding editor of NaturalNews.com, announced March 3:
“YouTube has now deleted the entire Health Ranger video channel, wiping out over 1,700 videos covering everything from nutrition, natural medicine, history, science and current events.”
There is, in fact, a very coordinated effort by a number of organizations, like Media Matters for America and the Southern Poverty Law Center to silence voices with which it does not agree.
I know this first hand, as these organizations have attacked me personally trying to silence my voice.
Full disclosure here, I am ideologically a libertarian, neither on the left or the right. But according to these groups, I am “alt-right”—a dog whistle which means white nationalist. I am not, not at all. But that doesn’t stop them from slandering me.
The goal of these organizations is to silence dissent. Not just from the right, but from the left as well.
Facebook is going through a very similar process right now, with increased pressure to control voices on its platform.
Remember in 2016 it was widely reported by several outlets, including Gizmodo:
“Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential ‘trending’ news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users.”
Twitter does the same thing. In December, Twitter announced strict enforcement of new rules on “hateful conduct and abusive behavior.”
According to Politico, “That provoked the first objections from some on the right who called the steps a ‘#twitterpurge.’ The company conceded at the time that ‘we may make some mistakes and are working on a robust appeals process.”
Mainstream media networks and newspapers have routinely pushed narratives in their newsrooms for decades. We all know that.
Yet, for some reason, Facebook and YouTube, which have far more influence than those networks, have chosen to bend to pressure and try to control the narratives on their platforms.
YouTube says its mission is, “to give everyone a voice and show them the world.” But the truth is, they are not.
The problem for any dissenting voice is that if you are using your voice on someone else’s property, i.e., YouTube or Facebook, you will never have control of it. Which is why the next frontier must be decentralized platforms.
Platforms like Dtube and Steemit, built on blockchain, will be future of how content, the good the bad and ugly, will be stored. And the efforts to silence dissenting voices, will actually be the undoing of YouTube and Facebook.
Because if you are silent now, it may soon be the voices you do agree with that will also be silenced. And who then will be left to come to that defense?
Menlo Park, CA – On Tuesday, Facebook announced a new policy banning ads promoting cryptocurrency, as a means of preventing what the company called “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.”
This means that advertisers – including companies that operate fully legal businesses – will be banned from the promotion of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, the most widely accepted crypto. Additionally, the promotion of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and binary options will be eliminated by Facebook, according to a blog post by the company.
Advertisements that violate the new policy will not only be banned from Facebook’s core app, but also from Instagram and the company’s ad network, Audience Network, which places ads on third-party applications.
In the official announcement by Facebook Product Management Director Rob Leathern, he wrote:
“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.”
Leathern added, “This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across our platforms including Facebook, Audience Network and Instagram.”
The move comes on the heels of persistent claims of spam-like and fraudulent cryptocurrency ads on the platform. The decision has been largely welcomed by savvy crypto enthusiasts, who recognize that these types of spammy advertisement often do not promote the actual benefits of cryptocurrency, according to Kai Sedgwick, in a report from Bitcoin.com.
The report by Bitcoin.com went on to explain:
Of the myriad places on the web where a person can learn about cryptocurrencies, Facebook is possibly the worst. Its users tend to be less sophisticated than those who frequent other social networks, and are easy prey for scammers, charlatans, and snake oil salesmen.
The moratorium on crypto ads can only benefit the cryptocurrency community. Scams such as Bitconnect and Arisebank are allowed to ferment on platforms such as Facebook, out of the reach of sharp-tongued Twitter traders who would otherwise call them out. Examples of ads that Facebook cites as being in contravention of its new policy include “New ICO! Buy tokens at a 15% discount NOW!”
Just how effective the crypto ad ban will be remains to be seen, as last year, following a report by ProPublica, which revealed Facebook was allowing advertisers to discriminate based on race, the company announced a ban on discriminatory ads. When ProPublica conducted a follow up over a year later, it was still able to purchase discriminatory advertising that would allow advertisements to not be shown to blacks or Jews.
Interestingly, the move has prompted speculation as to whether Facebook is attempting to position itself to launch its own blockchain product, with the implication being that it is removing all conversation around the competition. Although there is no hard evidence to suggest that is the impetus behind the crypto ban, at the beginning of January, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly described cryptocurrency as something that can “take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands.”
In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg wrote:
For example, one of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people’s hands. (The first four words of Facebook’s mission have always been “give people the power”.) Back in the 1990s and 2000s, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force.
But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.
There are important counter-trends to this –like encryption and cryptocurrency — that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.
These statements by Zuckerberg may be considered ironic, as the centralization of Facebook has led to the soft censoring of material that runs contrary to the corporate-government narrative. This soft-censorship is achieved by continual tweaks to the Facebook algorithm; the latest of which was rolled out last week under the auspices of limiting the reach of “untrustworthy news sources” while boosting local news outlets and posts from friends and family.
In real time, this equates to large swaths of independent media and citizen journalists being squeezed out of existence, as their reach, and subsequent ad revenue, is decimated as large corporate entities are relatively unscathed.
There will likely be pushback from tech investors and entrepreneurs that believe the wholesale ban punishes an entire sector of technological innovation and crypto-related services and products. In fact, two prominent tech investors — Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen — sit on Facebook’s board, both of whose firms are strong supporters of the ongoing crypto revolution. Additionally, David Marcus, the head of Facebook Messenger, sits on the board of the mega-popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.
President Obama unleashed a new series of critical comments regarding the media Monday night, claiming journalists should “maintain certain standards,” and should not be “government-controlled.”
During a speech at the “2015 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting” ceremony at Syracuse University, Obama began by discussing the accomplishments of Robin Toner, the first woman to be the national correspondent for the New York Times, who died in 2008.
The president then took the time to criticize the current state of political journalism, and said he believes “it’s worth asking ourselves what each of us—as politicians or journalists, but most of all, as citizens—may have done to contribute to this atmosphere in our politics.”
[pull_quote_center]The divisive and often vulgar rhetoric that’s aimed at everybody, but often is focused on the vulnerable or women or minorities. The sometimes well-intentioned but I think misguided attempts to shut down that speech. The violent reaction that we see, as well as the deafening silence from too many of our leaders in the coarsening of the debate. The sense that facts don’t matter, that they’re not relevant. That what matters is how much attention you can generate. A sense that this is a game as opposed to the most precious gift our Founders gave us—this collective enterprise of self-government.[/pull_quote_center]
Obama went on to say that the “Fourth Estate” journalist should not be “government-controlled” and should “maintain certain standards” that do not “dumb down the news.”
[pull_quote_center]Part of the independence of the Fourth Estate is that it is not government-controlled, and media companies thereby have an obligation to pursue profits on behalf of their shareholders, their owners, and also has an obligation to invest a good chunk of that profit back into news and back into public affairs, and to maintain certain standards and to not dumb down the news, and to have higher aspirations for what effective news can do. Because a well-informed electorate depends on you. And our democracy depends on a well-informed electorate.[/pull_quote_center]
Obama also said that in the years to come, people will look back at this time and they will look for “the smartest investigative journalism” where journalists “asked the hard questions and forced people to see the truth even when it was uncomfortable.”
[pull_quote_center]But 10, 20, 50 years from now, no one seeking to understand our age is going to be searching the Tweets that got the most retweets, or the post that got the most likes. They’ll look for the kind of reporting, the smartest investigative journalism that told our story and lifted up the contradictions in our societies, and asked the hard questions and forced people to see the truth even when it was uncomfortable.[/pull_quote_center]
While Obama criticized the current climate in journalism, he did not mention the fact that his administration has prosecuted 12 individuals under the Espionage Act—with a case still pending against Edward Snowden—which is more than four times the three whistleblowers who were prosecuted prior to his presidency.
According to ACLU Washington’s Gabe Rottman, “By my count, the Obama administration has secured 526 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution.”
“The last and best source of that accountability is a free press. Tragically, that free press now has a 526-month sentence to serve,” Rottman added.
Obama also did not credit the fact that his administration has set the record for withholding Freedom of Information Act requests, and that in 77 percent of cases, requests are met with empty or redacted files.
The Associated Press noted that, “In some high-profile instances, usually after news organizations filed expensive federal lawsuits, the Obama administration found tens of thousands of pages after it previously said it couldn’t find any.”
In an op-ed for New York Daily News which sought to identify a “bright line beyond which [mass media] censorship takes hold,” Ralph Nader criticized The Huffington Post’s decision to file all news about Donald Trump’s political campaign under its entertainment category rather than covering Trump in its politics section like it does for the rest of the 2016 candidates.
“The Huffington Post, which carries my column, announced that it is excluding Trump from its political coverage and instead filing all stories about the man leading the Republican field, according to the most recent polls, under entertainment,” wrote Nader, who called Trump’s rise in the polls a “teachable moment for the mass media” and theorized that “failing to take Trump seriously could set a dangerous precedent for future candidates with fresh ideas, looking to shake up the controlling status quo.”
“If [The Huffington Post] existed in the 1980s, would they have done this to that B-list actor, Ronald Reagan? … Imagine the stories an outlet would have lost if they’d cut him out of their political coverage.” Nader added, “Moreover, how is HuffPo going to ‘entertain’ its readers when Trump is the only Republican candidate who trashes despotic trade treaties or renews his previous commitment to keep Social Security and Medicare intact, or calls for more military aggression, a giant wall on the Mexican border or more corporate welfare? … Like it or loathe it, it is a political agenda.”
Nader also leveled criticism at Fox News for limiting its prime time debate to only 10 candidates and called the network’s choice to include candidates on the basis of their poll numbers “a serious blow to the other candidates, some of whom started later and haven’t been bankrolled by big money.”
Nader also blasted the Commission on Presidential Debates’ exclusion of independent candidates from general election presidential debates, calling the organization the Republican and Democratic “duopoly’s lovechild.” The five-time independent candidate for president wrote, “Without independent wealth, third party or independent candidates don’t stand a chance of reaching millions of voters unless this system is changed and they are invited, with equal footing, onto the debate stage.”
[RELATED: Commission on Presidential Debates Considers Ditching 15% Rule for Third Party Candidates]
Nader also pointed out how non-viable political candidates have in the past shaped American politics and argued that excluding them from media coverage could prevent anti-establishment political views from taking hold, “Journalists who facilely call it an editorial judgement to exclude such candidates need a history lesson on how pioneering long-shots, who never won national elections, challenged and eventually changed the agendas of the entrenched parties. Have we forgotten the anti-slavery Liberty Party in 1840 or the numerous parties advocating for women’s suffrage, the rights of farmers and workers, and election reforms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?”
Nader concluded his op-ed with a warning for the mainstream media posed as a question: “It is time to end this political bigotry and engage in some modest discussion about what is newsworthy and what is just ditto-heading the political oligarchy? Or is the press waiting for a third-party run by a jilted Trump to teach them these lessons?”
For more 2016 election coverage, click here.
U.S. GOVERNMENT, JUDGES, POLICE DEPTS, CITY COUNCILS ASK GOOGLE TO REMOVE ALMOST 4,000 POLITICAL ARTICLES FROM SEARCH SERVICES
Reports came out yesterday in the UK covering Google’s newest release of their “Transparency Report.” Turkey has been known for it’s total lack of press freedom, and now reports show the U.S. is approaching the same leagues as Turkey.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/transparency-report-more-government.html
The report was presented on the blog of Susan Infantino, the Legal Director of Google. She and her legal team launched the annual Transparency Report three years ago, in hopes it would “shine light on the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe.”
From January to June 2013, the search giant received 3,846 government requests to remove content from its search services, which represents a 68% increase over the second half of 2012.
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government/?hl=en
Google’s Legal Director, Susan Infantino, goes on: “Over the past four years, one worrying trend has remained consistent: governments continue to ask us to remove political content. Judges have asked us to remove information that’s critical of them, police departments ask us to take down videos or blogs that shine a light on their conduct, and local institutions like town councils don’t want people to be able to find information about their decision-making processes.”
“These officials often cite defamation, privacy, and even copyright laws in attempts to remove political speech from our services,” says Infantino.
One example is a request from a UK law firm representing a former member of Parliament to remove a preview from Google Books that allegedly defamed the MP by suggesting he was engaged in illegal activity. The preview was removed.
“We have removed content in response to less than one third of requests,” Infantino adds.
From January to June 2013, the following countries made the most requests to remove content:
