Twitter’s board unanimously recommended Tuesday that shareholders approve billionaire Elon Musk’s offer to buy the social media site for $44 billion.
Musk told Twitter employees earlier in June that he still planned to move forward with the purchase, despite shares in the company remaining significantly lower than his offer price, The Associated Press reported. He noted on Tuesday that approval of the purchase by shareholders was one of a number of unresolved matters halting his purchase, the outlet continued.
The Tesla billionaire’s offer would net a profit of $15.22 per share for investors if it closed now, the AP noted. Musk offered to pay $54.20 per share, despite them falling short of this number upon opening bell Tuesday, the outlet reported.
Twitter’s board of directors said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it “unanimously recommends that you vote (for) the adoption of the merger agreement.”
Musk has previously said that Twitter “will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.” He then offered to buy the entirety of the company in order to “unlock” the “extraordinary potential” of the social media platform. Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has praised Musk’s decision to purchase the platform and has also said that he will “never be CEO again.”
Led by former Rep. Devin Nunes, Trump Media & Technology Group has high hopes for the launch, anticipating some big numbers within the first month.
“This week we will begin to roll out on the Apple App Store. That’s going to be awesome, because we’re going to get so many more people that are going to be on the platform,” Nunes said in a Sunday appearance on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.
“Our goal is, I think we’re going to hit it, I think by the end of March we’re going to be fully operational at least within the United States,” he added.
Truth is positioning itself as a champion of free speech with one of the biggest draws being the former President, himself.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
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Living in a world that is so heavily fixated on technology comes with its own consequences. Recent generations have grown up in the digital realm and most children are now immersed in it from a very early age. As it stands right now, children face an ever-increasing risk of being groomed and exploited online as perpetrators use social media platforms—among other digital mediums—to target and groom children. This and other factors have played a significant role in the exponential growth of the amount of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) circulating online.
Common misunderstandings and myths about the EARN IT Act are explained below, but the simplest way to understand the EARN IT Act is to note what it actually does:
The EARN IT Act allows survivors of child sexual abuse material to restore the privacy they have lost because their abuse was uploaded to the Internet.
The EARN IT Act clarifies that there is not now—nor has there ever has been—immunity for digital platforms that knowingly disseminate child sexual abuse material.
The EARN IT Act changes the term “child pornography” in federal statue to “child sexual abuse material” to ensure that it is treated as evidence of a crime.
The EARN IT Act creates a new online child exploitation prevention committee with oversight from Congress.
The EARN IT Act clarifies the right of consumers in regard to holding technology companies accountable for knowingly disseminating child sexual abuse material.
Understanding the Scope of the Problem the EARN IT Act is Addressing
In 2008, there were over 600,000 reports of CSAM made to the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). These numbers were significant enough for the organization to call the problem what it was: an epidemic. Horrifically, the number of reports of CSAM received by NCMEC has multiplied exponentially in the decade since and the organization reported receiving over 70,000,000 reports of CSAM in 2019 alone.
Some of the most popular social media platforms—such as Instagram and Twitter—are furthering the problem by not reporting abuse found on their websites, and technology companies have long attempted to use Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230) to hide from accountability. CDA 230, which was implemented in 1996, was intended to help foster growth in the early stages of the Internet but has since been wrongly interpreted by Interactive Computer Services (ICS) as an excuse to not work proactively to prevent exploitation found on and/or perpetrated via their online products. CDA 230 was never intended to protect sex traffickers or child predators online nor was it meant to allow CSAM (sometimes inaccurately referred to as “child pornography”) to run rampant in online spaces.
The EARN IT Act Means Clarity for Tech Companies and a Path to Justice for Survivors
Since its introduction, lobbyists representing portions of the technology industry have attempted to make misleading claims about the intent and impact of the EARN IT Act with hopes of preserving profit margins for tech behemoths that don’t want to spend money to make their online products safer. The claims they make are alarmist red herrings and do not actually address the structure or contents that make up the EARN IT Act. Below are several of the most common false claims/myths about the EARN IT Act and the reality behind them that show why the EARN IT Act is actually a good thing for consumers and the technology industry itself.
Myth #1: The EARN IT Act is an attack on end-to-end encryption and user privacy
Truth #1: Many tech companies are pushing back on the EARN IT act, claiming that it is an invasion to user privacy and will bring on more trouble involving mass surveillance. However, this is not the case. The EARN IT act would implement new ways to combat CSAM on their platforms as technology continues to advance. Furthermore, tech companies are already capable of acquiring information on what is said and done on their programs, so why not implement the same technology to recognize and report CSAM when detected? Many of the safety features on these platforms would be directed toward helping children without infringing upon any freedoms of adults. It would hold these companies accountable for what is being shared even if the content came from a third-party user. This bill will incentivize tech companies to report and eliminate any CSAM they come across it on their platforms and is not an attack on end-to-end encryption and user privacy.
Myth #2: The EARN IT Act will eradicate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230)
Truth #2: Far from harming CDA 230, the EARN IT Act actually helps clarify its original intent. CDA 230 does not give technology companies immunity from accountability for participating in and/or profiting from crimes such as sex trafficking and CSAM. CDA 230 was created at a time when the internet was still in its developing stages and Congress was attempting to foster its growth, but it never gave technology companies the right to knowingly ignore or facilitate crimes such as sex trafficking and CSAM as they have tried to claim.
Mary Leary, professor of law at the Catholic University of America put it this way in a virtual Congressional Briefing: “The EARN IT act, I would argue, actually restores CDA 230 to the original intent of Congress as a component of an ecosystem that will better protect children.”
Today, there is widespread access to the internet and children are facing the consequences of online spaces which have not been built as adequately secured and protected environments. The EARN IT Act is not a threat towards CDA 230 but is, instead, a measure which will clarify the law and allow CDA 230 to operate as it was originally designed to do.
Myth #3: The EARN IT Act is an undemocratic way for the government to control the technology industry via burdensome regulations
Truth #3: The EARN IT Act is being introduced and vetted—and is built to be implemented—via established Constitutional processes. If passed, it includes the building of an Online Child Exploitation Prevention Commission made up of a diverse group of survivors of CSAM, technology industry representatives, law enforcement officials, privacy experts, and more. Because technology is always growing and morphing, the Commission will help guide and direct businesses and corporations in terms of policy. The Commission’s goal is to develop recommended best practices that interactive computer service providers can use to prevent, reduce, and respond to online child sexual exploitation, such as enticement, grooming, sex-trafficking, and sexual abuse, as well as the proliferation of online child sexual abuse material.
These best practices are recommendations, not mandates, and will be vetted and voted upon using established democratic processes in Congress. Technology companies would have the option to adopt those practices, but there is not punishment prescribed if they choose not to do so. In this regard, the EARN IT Act just clarifies that survivors do in fact have a path to justice available to them.
Myth #4: The EARN IT Act will threaten online speech and privacy rights for LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities
Truth #4: First things first, sex trafficking and child sexual abuse material never have been, are not now, and never should be protected categories of free speech. Secondly, the EARN IT Act does not contain—and is actually designed to prevent—any development of measures that would identify or target or collect data about users or groups of users. As noted previously, the EARN IT Act establishes a diverse commission which will develop recommended (again, not mandated) best practices that will then have to be democratically vetted and voted on before they are made official as recommended best practices. This design is intentional for, among other things, preventing the EARN IT Act from being quietly co-opted to target any person or group. In fact, because they are disproportionately affected by online sexual abuse and exploitation, the EARN IT Act will make the Internet a safer space for LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities.
Myth #5: The court’s decision to allow Doe v MindGeek to progress past the motion to dismiss shows that the EARN IT Act isn’t necessary
Truth #5: The judge’s ruling in Doe v MindGeek was important and precedent-setting, and the fact that it was precedent-setting is a case-in-point for why the EARN IT Act is still necessary. The judge ruled correctly that CDA 230 was never meant to protect technology companies from being held accountable for knowingly possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material, but there have been too many erroneous rulings on that matter in previous cases due to confusion in the courts. The EARN IT Act is designed to, among other things, address that confusion by clarifying the original intent of CDA 230 so that survivors are able to have a path to justice that has been closed on them incorrectly and unfairly in the past. The EARN IT Act is a democratic way that Congress can help ensure accurate and consistent application of existing laws moving forward.
The EARN IT Act Respects People, Incentivizes Technology Companies to Put Customers First, and Prioritizes Justice for Survivors
We believe that technology companies and the tech industry at large should want to support the EARN IT Act if they truly have their customers’ best interests in mind. The EARN IT Act will help prevent the continued proliferation of CSAM, restore the intended protections of CDA 230, clarify the right to justice for survivors of CSAM, and empower consumers. These outcomes are beneficial to U.S. citizens and businesses alike. That is why the EARN IT Act is a bipartisan bill that should be easy to support.
Quote from Professor Hany Farid, University of California, Berkeley
Take Action
If you are moved to create an environment that protects children from sexual exploitation online, you can click here to send a message to your members of Congress to support the EARN IT Act. It only takes a little bit of your time to reach out and make a big difference for children.
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Everyone knows that one Donald J. Trump of Palm Beach, Florida is the source and summit of evil in the modern world, but he has been banned from Twitter for over a year now, so the republic (you know, that thing the Democrats constantly refer to as “our democracy”) is safe. Twitter is nothing if not consistent: Trump is so extremely evil that Twitter is permitting official accounts of the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the world’s premier regimes of color, to threaten to murder Trump and officials from his administration without being banned or even suspended. Death threats are ordinarily not permitted, but when they’re against Trump, they serve wokeness; what could possibly be wrong with that?
On New Year’s Day, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted: “Martyr Soleimani is an eternal reality that will live on forever. His assassins – including Trump & the like – will go down in history’s garbage bin, but of course after receiving retribution in this world for the crime they committed.” That “retribution in this world” bit was a clear threat, but Twitter did nothing to restrict Khamenei’s account.
Nor did Twitter do anything to the account of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps when it tweeted: “The Islamic Republic of Iran considers vengeance against those responsible for the Baghdad crime to be the right of all believers; whether they are drops in the ocean or bits of sand in the desert they’ll seek vengeance next to the criminals’ homes.”
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) commented: “So, the leftist oligarchs at Twitter will allow the [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps] to tweet death threats at President Trump, but will deplatform him for calling for a peaceful protest? Last I checked, making death threats is inciting violence.”
Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), skewered Twitter’s hypocrisy: “In Twitter’s safety rules and polices, they say, ‘You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people.’ If this is the case, why is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, allowed to threaten to kill President Donald Trump? Not only is Twitter exclusively censoring conservatives, but now they are letting Iran’s armed forces issue death threats to a former sitting president. Twitter needs to consider following their own policies and immediately remove this tweet.”
When contacted by the Washington Free Beacon, “Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on why the tweet remains active and whether that tweet violates the company’s guidelines.” That’s not surprising. What could they possibly say? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who was recently banned from Twitter herself, called Twitter “an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth.” When Twitter allows Iranian officials who shout “Death to America” a platform to threaten an American and bans that same American on false pretenses, it’s hard to say that Greene is wrong.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-01-14 03:54:492022-01-14 04:27:19Twitter Is Allowing Iranian Government Officials to Issue Death Threats Against Trump
The mainstream social media platforms are ruthlessly censoring conservatives. As such, President Trump’s social media platform could be a game changer. It will enable conservatives to have the ability to express their views to a large audience. President Trump’s 150 million plus social media supporters must (and will) support his social site. Expect alternative social media platforms to explode in popularity between now and 2024.
(Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump’s new media venture plans to launch its social media app Truth Social on Feb. 21, according to an Apple Inc App Store listing.
TRUTH Social, the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) alternative to Twitter, is available for pre-order before going live on the U.S. Presidents’ Day holiday.
Similar to Twitter, the app offers features to follow other people and trending topics, according to demo photos. Its message equivalent of a tweet will be dubbed “truth”.
The app’s launch would come 13 months after Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook and Twitter banned Trump for encouraging his supporters to participate in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol based on unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Marking the one-year anniversary of the attack, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday that his predecessor’s false claims could unravel the rule of law and subvert future elections.
TMTG and Apple did not respond to requests for comment, but a source familiar with the matter confirmed that Feb. 21 is the planned launch date of the app.
The launch is expected to be the first of three stages in TMTG’s development. The second would be a subscription video-on-demand service called TMTG+ with entertainment, news and podcasts, according to the company website. A November investor presentation indicated that TMTG also wants to launch a podcast network.
TMTG is valued at $5.3 billion based on the stock price of Digital World Acquisition Corp, which rose 20% after Reuters reported the app’s listing on the App Store. TMTG agreed in October to merge with the blank-check firm at a valuation of $875 million.
Trump supporters and retail investors have snapped up Digital World’s stock, betting that Trump’s popularity with his Republican political base will translate into commercial runaway success.
The blank-check acquisition deal faces regulatory risk. Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren asked Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler last month to investigate the planned merger for potential violations of securities laws around disclosure. The SEC has declined to comment on whether it plans any action.
TMTG last month raised an additional $1 billion from private investors.
Trump canceled a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that had been scheduled for Jan. 6, marking the one-year anniversary of the Capitol attack. He said he will instead deliver remarks at a rally in Arizona on Jan. 15.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
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Huge majorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents say the U.S. media is biased and its main goal is to advance its own agenda, according to a Thursday poll from the Trafalgar Group and Convention of States.
More than 76% of poll respondents stated that the media is primarily focused on advancing their own political opinions and agenda, with 62.7% of Democrats, 76.1% of Independents and 90.3% of Republicans agreeing.
The poll surveyed 1,084 likely general election voters between Dec. 4 and Dec. 7. and reported a 3% margin of error. Trafalgar employs a number of methods for conducting its polls, including live phone calls, automated calls, emails, text messages, and two other proprietary methods it does not share publicly.
“Thanks to the decentralization of the news through the internet and social media, the mainstream press outlets no longer have a monopoly on controlling the news,” Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States Action, said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller. “Unfortunately, the mainstream media has been slow to adjust to this reality and don’t seem to realize that the average American can now see in real time the difference between the actual facts of a story versus what the mainstream media says. People are realizing the open bias and partisanship of the press, and it is making them increasingly cynical.”
The Trafalgar Group was one of only two polling firms that accurately predicted Trump’s victory in the presidential election of 2016. The firm was also among the few that predicted Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ win in 2018, as well as Republican victories in Virginia in November.
The poll is only the latest indicator of Americans’ loss of trust in the media. A June survey from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that the U.S. ranked the lowest in trust for the media among 46 nations with developed media industries.
“This is an extraordinary (though unsurprising) finding,” journalist Glenn Greenwald said after the report’s release. “Most amazing is that the corporate sector of the US media is failing in every respect: financially, culturally, collapsing trust.”
The poll also shows a dramatic drop from the “new low” for trust in the media established in January 2021, when just 46% of Americans stated the media was trustworthy. The Trafalgar poll now puts that number at 23.7%.
EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
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In case you hadn’t heard, Twitter recently suspended our account. In an email to us, they claimed we violated their rules against “platform manipulation and spam.” The email included a warning that that if we tried to open another account, that new account would be suspended, too.
We published screenshots of the email and our suspended Twitter page, and called on our followers to make some noise. We started trending almost immediately and Twitter responded by reinstating us, saying we’d been suspended “by mistake.” So we’re back on Twitter, at least for the time being. But we share the concerns of others who’ve rightly observed that these “mistakes” tend to work in one direction.
We’re grateful to have followers who aren’t afraid to speak up and hold these big tech companies accountable. But there are no guarantees. We couldn’t be sure they’d reinstate our account. And we can’t know if they will the next time they make a “mistake.” But we can do our best to prepare for a worst-case scenario. At least we can if we have your help.
When we first launched our subscription service, the primary reason we gave for supporting us was to help us become less dependent on big tech companies. We explained:
We depend on Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic, and Google Ads to monetize it. Without these networks, we’d have no revenue to cover our expenses. And as you’re probably aware, none of these companies are friendly to Christians or conservatives. In fact, that’s a severe understatement. The control these companies exercise—and the outright hostility they display toward those with more traditional views and values—has us deeply concerned about our future as a publisher of Christian satire. But here’s the thing: If just a small fraction of our readers become paid subscribers, we’d have enough funding to survive without running ads, effectively eliminating our dependence on these big tech companies.
The more subscribers we have, the less we have to worry about our dependence on Twitter and the other big tech companies. If you want to see us prevail against Twitter, Snopes, and anyone else who might seek to discredit or deplatform us, please consider becoming a subscriber. Your support will make a difference.
From our whole team, thank you for your consideration and support.
STUART, Florida /PRNewswire/ — KW Miller, the high profile conservative congressional candidate running for office in Florida’s 18th Congressional District Conducted a Massive “Sting Operation” on Leftist Run Media Companies Protecting Pedophiles.
Mr. Miller began experiencing heavy censorship of his congressional campaign accounts when he began exposing the Entertainment and Media Industry’s deep ties to pedophilia on his social platforms.
In June, Mr. Miller’s media team decided to launch a “Sting Operation” on several of these media companies including Twitter, Facebook, Google which had been censoring Mr. Miller’s Congressional Campaign social media accounts. The goal of the “Sting Operation” was to expose and break the censoring of his Campaign’s accounts and to expose Pedophilia and Child Sex Trafficking within the Media and Entertainment Industry.
As part of the “Sting Operation” Mr. Miller utilized his Congressional Campaign’s Twitter account to openly attacked the rampant Pedophilia in the Media and Entertainment industry by calling out numerous suspected offenders within the industry.
Mr. Miller’s account went viral, racking up over one hundred (100) million views/hits on his Congressional Twitter page within a three (3) week time period. Twitter fought back, locked the number of followers of Mr. Miller’s account at 36,000 and “openly shadow banned”.
Mr. Miller’s account was being openly suppressed by Twitter the further his media team dug into the Media and Entertainment industry ties to child sex trafficking and rampant pedophilia. Many of the suspected offenders named included prominent members of Democratic Party led support to the rumors that Twitter is “Leftist Run”.
The deeper Mr. Miller’s media team dug, the more these “leftist run” media companies “openly covered up” for the Pedophilia ravaged Entertainment Industry, Democratic Politicians and other high-profile individuals allegedly involved in the “Cabal”.
Mr. Miller’s media team struck a nerve, a very deep nerve that goes all the way to the top leadership of the “leftist run” media companies, deep into the Democratic Party and to their dark money donors.
Mr. Miller and his media team plan to continue the investigation tying in information made public by Ghislaine Maxwell and the Jeffery Epstein records uncovered by Federal Investigators.
There are thousands of Child Sex Trafficking rings in the U.S. and Internationally. KW Miller is committed to eradicating Child Sex Trafficking in the United States and working with other global authorities to stop these despicable and depraved acts.
The companies that make up the world of Big Tech have some competition coming with the creation and rising popularity of new apps Parler and Triller.
As the push for fairness in Big Tech continues from President Donald Trump and others, companies such as Parler and Triller are looking to topple social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and TikTok from the top.
Parler was launched in 2018 as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook by University of Denver graduates John Matze and Jared Thomson. The point of the app? Free speech.
“There are going to be no fact checkers,” Matze told Forbes in an interview published in June. “You’re not going to be told what to think and what to say. A police officer isn’t going to arrest you if you say the wrong opinion. I think that’s all people want. That’s what they like.”
Parler reportedly has two million users compared to Twitter’s 330 million monthly active users and Facebook’s 2.6 billion monthly active users, according to Statista. The app is free and allows users to share posts containing 1,000 characters.
Triller was created in 2015 and is similar to TikTok, but not quite the same. Triller is marketed as a music-video creator and uses AI technology to edit users’ footage together. On Aug. 2, Triller was ranked as the number one app in all categories in the App store in 50 countries, according to a press release shared by the company.
The app has been downloaded over 250 million times and saw a 20x increase in downloads over the last week of July, the press release stated.
The increase in downloads comes as TikTok has come into President Trump’s focus over the past weeks. National security experts have warned TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, could be a risk to the U.S. due to its ties to China.
“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, CNN Business reported on Aug. 1. “Well, I have that authority.”
A spokesperson claimed U.S. users’ data is not stored in China and TikTok would resist any attempts by Beijing to obtain the data.
“TikTok US user data is stored in the US, with strict controls on employee access,” spokesperson Hilary McQuaide told CNN Business. “TikTok’s biggest investors come from the US. We are committed to protecting our users’ privacy and safety as we continue working to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform.”
Most recently, Trump signed a pair of executive orders banning individuals from communicating with TikTok’s parent company for the next 45 days as of Aug. 6.
As previously reported, Trump’s executive orders bar “any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,” with ByteDance and Tencent Holdings, parent companies of TikTok and WeChat, respectively. The orders ban individuals from communicating with the parent companies for 45 days.
Before Trump set his sights on banning TikTok and the alleged national security threat, he was focused on the issues plaguing the other Big Tech companies including censorship and fairness.
The president signed an executive order in May to roll back Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which protects “interactive computer services” from being treated as a publisher of a third party after two of his tweets were fact-checked by Twitter.
“Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see,” the executive order stated.
“Immunity should not extend beyond its text and purpose to provide protection for those who purport to provide users a forum for free and open speech, but in reality use their power over a vital means of communication to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions stifling free and open debate by censoring certain viewpoints,” it continued.
Trump claimed Twitter has had “unchecked power” to censor and called the fact-checking “political activism.”
President Trump has also gone after Big Tech for reportedly committing antitrust violations. As previously reported, he threatened to sign executive orders that would “bring fairness” to Big Tech in July.
“If Congress doesn’t bring fairness to Big Tech, which they should have done years ago, I will do it myself with Executive Orders,” Trump tweeted before the Big Tech CEOs were set to testify in front of Congress. “In Washington, it has been ALL TALK and NO ACTION for years, and the people of our Country are sick and tired of it!”
Could all of this chaos help apps like Triller and Parler climb to the top?
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The dialectical movement involves two moments that negate each other, something and its other. As a result of the negation of the negation, “something becomes its other; this other is itself something; therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on ad infinitum”.
Tucker Carlson speaks with Donald J. Trump, Jr. on Twitter’s dialectical negation of conservatives no matter what they say.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Vlad Tepes Bloghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngVlad Tepes Blog2020-07-29 05:56:492020-07-29 06:07:03VIDEO: Donald J. Trump. Jr. on Twitter’s Dialectical Negation of Conservatives No Matter What They Say
It is impossible for most people to participate in the modern world without the internet and dominate platforms. It is the town square. Big tech and major social media platforms are banning and discriminating against those on the right. I have a message for Trump.
Send donations to Henrik or Lana:
520 Folly Rd STE 25 PBM 334
Charleston, South Carolina
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EDITORS NOTE: This column with video and images is republished with permission.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/lana-censorship.jpg360640Lana Lokteffhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngLana Lokteff2018-12-13 05:59:182018-12-13 06:00:16Video Message To President Trump: Pass Law Against Censorship & Political Discrimination
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018, at 1:00 pm (ET) at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. thought leaders and prominent voices in alternative media will gather for a panel discussion on social media neutrality and the fight for diversity of voices online. The event will feature several prominent online conservative and moderate voices who have been impacted by social media bias, shadow banning and other methods meant to silence voices and limit readers and viewers access to information. Panelists will discuss political bias by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and by search engines such as Google.
A Harvard University study published on August 16, 2017, analyzed both mainstream and social media coverage of the 2016 election cycle. The study clearly shows that modern conservatives in America today have wholeheartedly rejected the liberal mainstream media.
The 2016 election cycle was the first election cycle where conservatives used alternative media news sources to gather information rather than turning to traditional mainstream outlets.
Conservative Americans abandoned the mainstream media in 2016 and will not be returning anytime soon. This paradigm shift forced left-wing tech-giants to take action. Tech giants today understand they have the ability to influence what information consumers see through their complex, and non-public, algorithms. Often this power is abused. Several conservative outlets, and countless individuals have been targeted, shadow-banned, and silenced by these tech giants.
By silencing these voices, big-tech is limiting information available to the American public and is a direct assault on First Amendment rights. The time for transparency is now! Tuesday’s panelists include Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit, Pamela Geller of The Geller Report, Margaret Howell of Right Side Broadcasting, Oleg Atbashian from The People’s Cube, Tech entrepreneur Marlene Jaeckel and special video remarks by Michelle Malkin and James O’Keefe.
The panel included testimony from Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit, Pamela Geller of The Geller Report, Margaret Howell of Rightside Broadcasting Network, Oleg Atbashian from The People’s Cube, tech entrepreneur Marlene Jaeckel. Topics all involved the current tech climate, social media bias, shadow banning and other methods meant to silence voices and limit readers and viewers access to information.
Watch the full panel discussion:
EDITORS NOTE: Pamela Geller Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. She is also a regular columnist for numerous publications. Geller’s activism on behalf of human rights has won international notice. She is a foremost defender of the freedom of speech. Her First Amendment lawsuits filed nationwide have rolled back attempts to limit Americans’ free speech rights and limit speech to only one political perspective, and exposed attempts to make an end-run around the First Amendment by illegitimately restricting access to public fora.
In Geller’s statements, she discusses how major social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube have created the “new town square”, which they now have a monopoly on, and are using their platforms to erase and hide any viewpoint or person that does not conform to their pushed “progressive” values. Geller tells the audience how Google’s advertising platform went from being 70% of revenue from the Geller Report to them blacklisting her from the platform simply based on her conservatives views. She outlines how they do not just target voices they disagree with, but they make sure that those voices are unable to sustain themselves: “If they kill your ability to make a living, it’s a form of murder.”
Watch Geller’s entire statement below:
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/social-media-giants-e1504351022449.png368640Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2018-02-09 06:15:212018-02-09 06:17:22VIDEO: How Social Media Monopolies Silence Conservatives, How Anti-Trust Laws Could Help
Where are the programs in mosques and Islamic schools in the U.S. to teach young Muslims why they should reject the Islamic State’s understanding of Islam? Nowhere.
“Alabama woman one of 300 Americans using social media to recruit for ISIS,” by Leada Gore, AL.com, December 1, 2015:
ISIS sympathizers using social media to recruit new militants are in Alabama and every state, according to a new report that looks at terrorist infiltration in the U.S.
George Washington University’s Program on Extremism developed the report to determine how militants are using social media – especially Twitter – to foster sympathy and recruit new members. The study identified as many as 300 American or U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers who are using social media to connect and disseminate information.
The ISIS sympathizers are located in every state, the report shows. Their preferred social media is an ever-changing array of Twitter accounts, though they also use Facebook, Google+ and Tumblr, as well as messaging services and the dark web.
“The spectrum of U.S.-based sympathizers actual involvement with ISIS varies significantly, ranging from those who are merely inspired by its message to those few who reached mid-level leadership positions within the group,” the study’s authors, Lorenzo Vidino and Seamus Hughes wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security has active investigations into ISIS activities in Alabama and every other state, according to the Texas representative who chairs the House committee that oversees the agency….
The latest report looks at social media accounts and legal cases against ISIS recruits. Based on the cases currently within the justice system, New York and Minnesota are the states with the most activity; other hot spots are California, Illinois and North Carolina. Texas, Ohio and Mississippi all report an increased level of activity. Alabama is on the low end of the spectrum, with no reported legal cases involving ISIS sympathizers.
That doesn’t mean they don’t exist in states like Alabama, however; it just means they aren’t in the court system.
“The indictments are the tip of the iceberg,” researchers said.
So far this year, U.S. authorities have arrested almost 70 people for supporting or plotting with ISIS. That’s the largest number of terrorism-related arrests in the county in a single year since September 2001. Social media is a big part of that communications, the researchers said.
“While some seek to join the self-declared caliphate in ISIS-controlled territory, others plan attacks within the U.S.,” Vidino said. “It’s a growing and disturbing phenomenon.”
Hoover girl’s ISIS involvement
The report showed the average age of an ISIS sympathizer is 26; 40 percent have converted to Islam; and 10 percent are women.
One of those female ISIS supporters is Hoda Muthana, a Hoover teenager who left America to join ISIS in Syria and remains an active recruiter on Twitter. Muthana’s case is one of the ones detailed in the report.
Muthana, a Yemeni-American, used Twitter to connect with other Islamic militants online before she left the U.S. It was online that she met Aqsa Mahmood, a 19-year old from Scotland who was one the first Western females to travel to Syria, researchers said. The two communicated frequently and Muthana modeled her departure from the U.S. to Syria via Turkey on Mahmood’s.
Muthana later went to Syria where she married an Australian ISIS fighter, Suhan al Rahman, who has since been killed in an airstrike. Muthana, who now lives in Raqqa, Syria, remains active on Twitter, recently posting images of four burning passports with the message “Bonfire soon, no need for these anymore.”…
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/islamic-state-in-america-e1448624178469.png354640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2015-12-03 05:25:292015-12-03 05:25:29Report: 300 U.S. Muslims recruiting for Islamic State using social media
The video below shows some of the incitement that led to this lawsuit. While counter-jihadists are frequently suspended or have their pages taken down altogether from Facebook, this naked incitement to hatred and murder is just fine in Zuckerbergland. No incitement to murder, no calls for violence against innocent civilians, should ever be tolerated against anyone. But when it comes to inciting violence against Israelis, it seems to be fine with almost everyone.
“20,000 Israelis sue Facebook for Palestinian incitement,” by Edna Adato, Israel Hayom, October 27, 2015:
Citing incitement against Israel, Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center on Tuesday submitted a lawsuit against Facebook in a New York court on behalf of 20,000 Israelis. The lawsuit was submitted over claims that Facebook is facilitating incitement against Israelis and encouragement to harm them.
At the onset of the current wave of terror, Shurat Hadin, which works to fight terrorism on the legal front, began a petition to recruit thousands of Israeli under the title: “Suing Facebook — Disconnecting Terror.”
The organization is asking the court in New York to issue an injunction against Facebook to remove the inciting pages, monitor the methods of incitement and block them, and hold the social networking giant responsible for allowing terrorists on its network.
“Facebook has the means to research and monitor every word that appears on its website. It cannot be that entire pages on Facebook are devoted to incitement to murder Jews and that terrorists are permitted to publish posts that become popular among their friends and encourage them to kill. It is absurd that Facebook is being transformed into a tool for supporting incitement and attacks against Jews, and we intend to put an end to it,” said Shurat Hadin.
According to the plaintiffs, “The terrorists do not come on their own. They write posts and encourage their friends to kill Jews. Facebook has been transformed into an anti-Semitic incubator for murder.”
As one example, Shurat Hadin cited the case of 19-year-old terrorist Muhannad Halabi, who wrote on his Facebook page, “I want to become a martyr,” prior to carrying out a stabbing attack the following day. Halabi stabbed Aharon Bennett and Rabbi Nehemia Lavi to death.
Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat Hadin, said that “for every Israeli that is sitting now at home — there is something that can be done against terror. Join us now. This action is important in the same way as actions to increase security on the ground and its goal is to stop the terror. Today, Facebook has become a haven for terrorists: They publish their actions on their Facebook pages, garner support, receive instructions and direction to murder Jews — and all this under the sponsorship of a commercial company that has the power to stop it easily. At the time that Facebook suffices with words and tells us that it intends ‘to remove inciting pages’ — the website is filling up more and more each moment with severe incitement, and it is our task to do everything to stop this.”
A Brookings Institution examination of a complete data set of 20,000 ISIS Twitter accounts ranked Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and US as the top four locations of twitter users, The ISIS Twitter Census: Defining and Describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter.The authors of the ISIS Twitter census are J.M. Berger and Jonathan Morgan. Berger “is a non-resident fellow with the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at Brookings and the author of Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam (Potomac Books, 2011) and ISIS: The State of Terror (Ecco, 2015).” Morgan “is a technologist, data scientist, and startup veteran. He runs technology and product development at CrisisNET, Ushahidi’s streaming crisis data platform, and consults on machine learning and network analysis. Morgan is also co-host of Partially Derivative, a popular data science podcast.” The Brookings ISIS Twitter project was “commissioned by Google Ideas and published by Brookings”.
The Brookings Saban Middle East Center think tank has had a close relationship with the Obama National Security Council. Use of social media by Islamic extremist groups like ISIS figured prominently in President Obama’s recent, Summit to Counter Violent Extremism. See our March 2015 NER article, ‘Did President Obama’s Violent Extremism Conference Fail?‘
Notwithstanding the provenance of the Brookings Twitter Census report, the data and methodology are credible and revealing of how ISIS and supporters use social media. The authors noted three classes of Twitter users as a precaution interpreting the study results:
Covert supporters of ISIS:
Users who took medium to strong steps to conceal their support due to fear of prosecution or suspension by Twitter. Users who took only casual steps to disguise their support were generally detectable.
Pro-ISIS intelligence operatives:
Some users who follow accounts related to the enemies of ISIS, such as rival jihadists, would be coded as non-supporters under the conservative criteria we employed.
Anti-ISIS intelligence operatives:
These are accounts created to appear as ISIS supporters in order to allow ISIS’s enemies to monitor its activities, which would be coded as supporters (if done effectively).
Locations of ISIS Twitter Accounts. Source: The ISIS Twitter Census, Brookings Institution, 2015.
Here is the Twitter Census Data Snapshot drawn from the Brookings study:
Best estimate of total number of overt ISIS supporter accounts on Twitter: 46,000
Maximum estimate of ISIS supporter accounts on Twitter: 90,000
Number of accounts analyzed for demographics information: 20,000
Estimated percentage of overt ISIS supporters in demographics data set: 93.2 percent (+/- 2.54 percent)
Period over which data was collected: October 4 through November 27, 2014, with some seed data collected in late September 2014
Top Locations of Accounts: “Islamic State,” Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, U.S.
Most common year accounts were created: 2014
Most common month accounts were created: September 2014
Number of accounts detected using bots and deceptive spam tactics: 6,216 using bot or spam technology for some tweets; 3,301 accounts were excluded from the Demographics Dataset for primarily sending bot or spam content
Average number of tweets per day per user: 7.3 over lifetime of account, 15.5 over last 200 tweets by user
Average number of tweets per user (Over lifetime of the Account): 2,219
Among the principal findings from the Brookings Twitter Census were:
From September through December 2014, the authors estimate that at least 46,000 Twitter accounts were used by ISIS supporters, although not all of them were active at the same time.
Typical ISIS supporters were located within the organization’s territories in Syria and Iraq, as well as in regions contested by ISIS. Hundreds of ISIS-supporting accounts sent tweets with location metadata embedded.
Almost one in five ISIS supporters selected English as their primary language when using Twitter. Three quarters selected Arabic.
ISIS-supporting accounts had an average of about 1,000 followers each, considerably higher than an ordinary Twitter user. ISIS-supporting accounts were also considerably more active than non-supporting users.
A minimum of 1,000 ISIS-supporting accounts were suspended by Twitter between September and December 2014. Accounts that tweeted most often and had the most followers were most likely to be suspended.
Much of ISIS’s social media success can be attributed to a relatively small group of hyperactive users, numbering between 500 and 2,000 accounts, which tweet in concentrated bursts of high volume.
Based on their analysis, the authors concluded:
Recommend social media companies and the U.S government work together to devise appropriate responses to extremism on social media. Approaches to the problem of extremist use of social media, Berger and Morgan contend, are most likely to succeed when they are mainstreamed into wider dialogues among the broad range of community, private, and public stakeholders.
Our assessment is that given the close Brookings Middle East Center liaison with the Obama National Security Council and Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Richard Stengel, the latter tasked with social media counter messaging, that little follow will occur. That is reflected in Google sponsorship of this Brookings Twitter Census report and overarching concerns of social media like Facebook, Google YouTube, Twitter and Instagram about maintaining Constitutional guarantees of free speech. These social media would prefer to establish their own criteria for suspending terrorists and supporters accounts. Monitoring and development of metadata from ISIS Twitter supporters in the West, especially in the US and the UK, should be left to counter terrorism intelligence echelons or private groups like SITE Intelligence Group and effective individuals like our colleague Joseph Shahda. Congressional Homeland Security and Select Intelligence Committees should hold hearings and investigations into current terrorist social media surveillance, especially for those US ISIS accounts identified in the Brookings ISIS Twitter Census. Shahda commented after reading:
The only way to stop the terrorists propaganda and recruitment is to keep shutting down all their means of communications which means all their social media (Facebook, Twitter) accounts as well as their websites.
EDITORS NOTE: This column with graphics originally appeared in the New English Review.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Forbes-_ISIS_Twitter_-statista-graphic--e1426002437580.jpg456640Jerry Gordonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Gordon2015-03-10 11:54:252015-03-10 13:55:50Brookings Study of ISIS Twitter Accounts Reveals U.S. among Top Targets
