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U.S. Government Sanctions Foreign Companies for Censorship While Encouraging It at Home

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The U.S Department of State has sanctioned Iranian tech company Arvan Cloud, along with its two co-founders and its United Arab Emirates-based affiliate, for “their roles in facilitating the Iranian regime’s censorship of the Internet in Iran.”

Meanwhile, the very same U.S. Department of State has funded efforts to pressure western tech companies to censor Americans. Earlier this year, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) called out the State Department for funding the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), an organization that worked to blacklist conservative media companies for censorship and demonetization.

In its press release announcing the sanctions, the U.S. Treasury condemns Arvan for helping Iranian authorities “control and censor incoming and outgoing traffic,” and blocking websites at the request of the Iranian government.

Arvan is being sanctioned under the provisions of E.O. 13628, a Trump-era executive order that allows for the sanctioning of companies that assist the Iranian regime’s efforts to censor its citizens. (Read more from “U.S. Government Sanctions Foreign Companies for Censorship While Encouraging It at Home” HERE)

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Censorship’s Biggest Cheerleaders Will Always Be Our Corrupt Corporate Media

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Twitter CEO Elon Musk suspended the accounts of more than half a dozen corporate media mouthpieces on Thursday evening for doxxing. But his intervention affecting the press, which has been taken over by the “woke mind virus” Musk has lamented, is only a Band-Aid over a gaping societal wound: an inherently anti-free-speech media establishment.

For years, Big Tech censors did the media’s dirty work without accountability or punishment. When the propaganda press cried wolf over ideologies it disagreed with, Big Tech dredged up new policies to justify nuking anyone who spread them. Together, media and Silicon Valley censors cashed in on the lucrative “fact-checking” machine as an effective way to rid the internet of their political enemies.

It was only when Musk nuked The New York Times’s Ryan Mac, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, leftist writer Aaron Rupar, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Mashable’s Matt Binder, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Keith Olbermann, and other accounts over the very clear issue of doxxing that members of the corporate media finally got a clue. . .

The absurd and unified reaction from the left’s propaganda arm is more than hypocritical considering the media’s unified treatment of Big Tech’s history of censorship.

While legitimate members of the press such as my colleagues at The Federalist are suspended and shadowbanned for speaking the truth, professional doxxers such as Taylor Lorenz run free. Instead of facing punishment like the New York Post did for allegedly sharing “hacked materials” — a designation the “Twitter Files” recently confirmed was a scapegoat to cover up the exposure of Biden family corruption — journos such as Lorenz, who unethically “exposed” a civilian’s private information, are granted tearful features by their accomplices about online bullying. (Read more from “Censorship’s Biggest Cheerleaders Will Always Be Our Corrupt Corporate Media” HERE)

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Shocking New Study Shows Big Tech Censorship Is A Way Bigger Problem Than You Thought

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When people talk about censorship, they typically regard the victim as the particular person or entity whose speech is suppressed by some aggressor — which in recent memory has been predominantly Big Tech. But what about all the people for whom that information is no longer available? These people are victims of secondhand censorship, which massively compounds the issue, as revealed by a shocking new study.

The Media Research Center (MRC), which defines secondhand censorship as “the number of times that users on social media had information kept from them,” found that Big Tech has engaged in direct censorship of individuals and organizations at least 4,000 times. Other users, however, were blocked from seeing these posts or videos at least 144,301,713 times in the first quarter of 2022 alone. That’s more than 36,000 times the instances of direct suppression.

By adding the followers of those censored by Big Tech, MRC calculated how many people were prevented from seeing a post or video that was removed or otherwise suppressed.

“It’s truly mind-boggling that the Silicon Valley speech police have this kind of power,” MRC founder and President Brent Bozell said. “This report gets us one step closer to understanding the real impact anti-conservative discrimination at Facebook, Twitter and others are having on speech in this country.”

Through its own CensorTrack database, MRC found Facebook to be the greatest culprit, with users undergoing secondhand censorship 86,627,526 times. YouTube was second at 23,543,230, and Twitter was close behind at 17,065,054. (Read more from “Shocking New Study Shows Big Tech Censorship Is a Way Bigger Problem Than You Thought” HERE)

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Facebook Reveals How It Decides What Content To Suppress

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Facebook released its updated Content Distribution Guidelines on Thursday, shedding more light on how the tech giant decides what content it suppresses.

While Facebook has previously provided some details on the types of content that receive reduced distribution in Facebook’s News Feed, the updated guidelines are designed to provide clarity and accessibility, Director of Product Management Anna Stepanov announced in a blog post Thursday.

“The Content Distribution Guidelines make it clear what content receives reduced distribution on News Feed because it’s problematic or low quality,” Stepanov wrote.

The guidelines list content Facebook suppresses in its News Feed such as clickbait, unoriginal or low-quality content and articles from news publishers rated as “broadly untrusted” by Facebook users. Content from untrustworthy or suspicious domains also receives reduced distribution, as does sensationalist news and certain types of promoted health content such as claims of products providing “miracle cures.”

(Read more from “Facebook Reveals How It Decides What Content To Suppress” HERE)

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Censorship: 38 Journalism Groups Slam Obama's 'Politically-Driven Suppression of News'

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Photo Credit: APIn unprecedented criticism of the White House, 38 journalism groups have assailed the president’s team for censoring media coverage, limiting access to top officials and overall “politically-driven suppression of the news.”

In a letter to President Obama, the 38, led by the Society of Professional Journalists, said efforts by government officials to stifle or block coverage has grown for years and reached a high-point under his administration despite Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to provide transparency.

Worse, they said: As access for reporters has been cut off, the administration has opened the door to lobbyists, special interests and “people with money.”

And as a result, they wrote, Obama only has himself to blame for the current cynicism of his administration. “You need look no further than your own administration for a major source of that frustration – politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies. We call on you to take a stand to stop the spin and let the sunshine in,” wrote David Cuillier, president of SPJ.

The administration has dismissed similar charges from other journalism groups, notably the White House Correspondents’ Association, but the new letter sent Tuesday provided several examples of censorship and efforts to block reporter access. Among them:

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama CIA Pick Argued for Government Censorship in Graduate Thesis

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In his 1980 graduate thesis at the University of Texas at Austin, John Brennan denied the existence of “absolute human rights” and argued in favor of censorship on the part of the Egyptian dictatorship.

“Since the press can play such an influential role in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some degree of government censorship,” Brennan wrote. “Inflamatory [sic] articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence, especially in developing political systems.”

Brennan serves as President Barack Obama’s national security advisor. Obama has nominated him to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

The thesis, “Human Rights: A Case Study of Egypt,” was a requirement for Brennan’s Master of Arts degree in government with a Middle Eastern studies concentration. It grew out of his time studying at the American University in Cairo . . .

Central to Brennan’s presentation was a relativist view of human rights, which he said include “security, welfare, liberty, and justice.”

Read more from this story HERE.