Twitter Files Result in Conspiracy of Silence by Legacy Media Outlets

I just finished reading "The Most Terrifying Conclusion From the Twitter Files That Everyone's Ignoring," by J.D. Rucker.  He makes these observations, with which I agree.

Government and their proxies have been censoring American citizens by ordering Big Tech companies to do it for them. This is a clear betrayal of the spirit of the 1st Amendment at the very least and is likely worthy of legal action. . . .

But while conservative media is busy discussing the ramifications of censorship and the near certainty that both the last two elections as well as the Covid "vaccine" rollout were dramatically impacted by illegal actions taken by members of our government, there's actually a far more troubling takeaway from all of this. For the various misinformation operations to have gone unreported by anyone in or out of government and media, that means an unfathomable number of people have been aware at the least. Many have been directly involved and we're just getting confirmation of it now.

Halfway through Rucker's article I did a search for the word "Twitter" at the websites of the NYT, Washington Post, MSNBC and NPR.  There is almost zero coverage of the Twitter Files at any of these outlets, with the exception of one article by the NYT. It's as if the Twitter Files were never released. This non-coverage is predictable based on the "news" covered by these outlets over the past several years, during which they have been selectively embellishing and stuffing stories mostly in unison, to push their Woke agenda and to elect democrats. These outlets want to claim that nothing interesting is going on because the Twitter Files revelations reflect so poorly on the "journalism" being produced by these media corporations. They want to act as though nothing is happening, but Rucker's article accurately describes that these things have been going on--there is enough here to convince any legitimate journalist with even low-level curiosity to write hundreds of articles:

  1. The FBI set up a command center in San Francisco in fall 2020 that forwarded censorship requests from bureau headquarters to social media platforms.

  2. The FBI succeeded frequently with social media firms when it forwarded censorship requests, including content posted by Americans.

  3. Federal agencies also partnered with contractors to ensure certain content was policed and censorship, creating a degree of separation.

  4. Homeland Security officials took part in weekly meetings with Twitter executives as the 2020 election approached.

  5. Homeland Security knew Twitter had second thoughts about censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story.

    6. [More . . . ]

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FIRE Comments on the Forbidden Words of Stanford University

Excerpt from an Article by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression):

By now, much has been written about the words and phrases Stanford removed from its website for their potential to cause harm. “That was insane!” isn’t palatable, because “This term trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions.” What to do when referring to a whitelisted or blacklisted IP address? Try “allowlist/denylist,” because the former terms “[a]ssign value connotations based on color (white = good and black = bad), an act which is subconsciously racialized.” You get the idea. “American,” “dumb,” and “lame” are out, too . . . .

Last week, after the list became public and backlash mounted, Stanford announced it would conduct a review of the guide. The statement from Chief Information Officer Steve Gallagher clarified the website does not represent Stanford University policy. “It also does not represent mandates or requirements,” Gallagher wrote. The list simply provides “suggested alternatives.” “But, we clearly missed the mark,” Gallagher concedes. “We value the input we have been hearing, from a variety of perspectives, and will be reviewing it thoroughly and making adjustments to the guide.”

While FIRE is, of course, relieved to hear these alternatives are not required, the inherent infantilization of steering adults away from words and phrases like “tone deaf” and “mailman” is troubling. By prematurely wading into conversations and deeming words and phrases offensive on behalf of its adult students, Stanford deprives its community members the chance to build resilience and talk through the issues of the day without having to constantly worry about stepping on rakes.

We think institutions of higher education better serve students by not inserting themselves in language debates that are almost certain to produce a “Streisand effect,” occurring when more attention is brought to forbidden words and phrases in the effort to silence them. FIRE recommends a culture of trust, not coddling....

In 2016, Nick Haslam coined the term “concept creep” to describe the tendency for the semantic range of harm-related concepts to expand over time. In other words, the meaning of concepts such as “trauma,” “bullying,” and “violence” has broadened to include ever milder, subtler phenomena.

[More . . . ]

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Read more about the article Wilfred Reilly is Keeping Score on those Twitter “Conspiracy Theories”
Wilfred Reilly: Twitter's Shadow-Banning Exposed

Wilfred Reilly is Keeping Score on those Twitter “Conspiracy Theories”

Wilfred Reilly is a fact-driven political scientist. And I'm referring to old-fashioned kinds of facts. I have followed him for several years and I enjoy his comments and candor. At The National Review, Reilly recently commented on the supposed conspiracy theories involving Twitter, which repeatedly denied that it was shadow-banning users:

What is newsworthy, however, was that the Big Lie of information neutrality was just that: a lie. Probably for decades now, conservative and heterodox thinkers have been called weird paranoids for doubting “the science ™,” “the experts,” “the trends,” “the (new) dictionary definitions,” “what the search results obviously show,” and so forth. We now know that those lonely cynics were largely correct: the Great Barrington Declaration and the Hunter Biden laptop, among many other things, never “trended” because they were not allowed to. More broadly, almost all of the information we see on a daily basis is greatly shaped by the people who allow access to it. This is not a “conspiracy theory” — it is a fact.

Definitely don’t stop tweeting and searching and reading the morning paper with your eggs — but also never forget that fact, consider the DuckDuckGo option that actually shows you all of the results, and remember also that libraries still exist. And, if I can give one last piece of takeaway advice in this first column: Buy a hard-copy dictionary and encyclopedia from before about 2012, and never let those bad boys go.

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The Hate Speech Exception to the First Amendment

Contrary to the title of this post, there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment.

FIRE explains

There is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. So, many Americans wonder, "is hate speech legal?"

Contrary to a common misconception, most expression one might identify as “hate speech” is protected by the First Amendment and cannot lawfully be censored, punished, or unduly burdened by the government — including public colleges and universities.

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly rejected government attempts to prohibit or punish “hate speech.” Instead, the Court has come to identify within the First Amendment a broad guarantee of “freedom for the thought that we hate,” as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes described the concept in a 1929 dissent. In a 2011 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts described our national commitment to protecting “hate speech” in order to preserve a robust democratic dialogue:

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.

In other words, the First Amendment recognizes that the government cannot regulate “hate speech” without inevitably silencing the dissent and dialogue that democracy requires. Instead, we as citizens possess the power to most effectively answer hateful speech—whether through debate, protest, questioning, laughter, silence, or simply walking away.

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