Live: US Election Updates and Analysis
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Trump won USA Presidential Elections 🎉🇺🇸😁😁 Who is going to celebrate tonight? 🍾🎈

I do truly look forward for it 🤗

  • the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 days ago

    Literally the first paragraph from the article by the US Congress:

    Newly released documents show that the White House has played a major role in censoring Americans on social media. Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital media, and social-media executives prove the companies put Covid censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House—not voluntarily. The emails emerged Jan. 6 in the discovery phase of Missouri v. Biden, a free-speech case brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and four private plaintiffs represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

    And now you admit that the ends justify the means?

      • the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 days ago

        I’m not sure why you’re insisting on not actually reading the document but alright:

        On March 14, 2021, Mr. Flaherty emailed a Facebook executive (whose name we’ve redacted as a courtesy) with the subject line “You are hiding the ball” and a link to a Washington Post article about Facebook’s own research into “the spread of ideas that contribute to vaccine hesitancy,” as the paper put it. “I think there is a misunderstanding,” the executive wrote back. “I don’t think this is a misunderstanding,” Mr. Flaherty replied. “We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy—period. . . . We want to know that you’re trying, we want to know how we can help, and we want to know that you’re not playing a shell game. . . . This would all be a lot easier if you would just be straight with us.”

        Emphasis mine is the government explaining the need for, and the demanding, censorship.

        Next paragraph:

        On March 21, after failing to placate Mr. Flaherty, the Facebook executive sent an email detailing the company’s planned policy changes. They included “removing vaccine misinformation” and “reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable misinformation.” Facebook characterized this material as “often-true content” that “can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.” Facebook pledged to “remove these Groups, Pages, and Accounts when they are disproportionately promoting this sensationalized content.”

        This paragraph details how Facebook, under pressure from the government, agreed to remove information. That is, the government censored information. If you’d like to argue that a private individual being coerced into deleting something isn’t censorship, then perhaps you’d say the same about a newspaper being forced to not run a story about a government killing?

        And for the sake of getting further context, let’s look at the next few paragraphs:

        In that exchange, Mr. Flaherty demanded to know what Facebook was doing to “limit the spread of viral content” on WhatsApp, a private message app, especially “given its reach in immigrant communities and communities of color.” The company responded three weeks later with a lengthy list of promises.

        Further explaining government demands for censorship.

        On April 9, Mr. Flaherty asked “what actions and changes you’re making to ensure . . . you’re not making our country’s vaccine hesitancy problem worse.” He faulted the company for insufficient zeal in earlier efforts to control political speech: “In the electoral context, you tested and deployed an algorithmic shift that promoted quality news and information about the election. . . . You only did this, however, after an election that you helped increase skepticism in, and an insurrection which was plotted, in large part, by your platform. And then you turned it back off. I want some assurances, based in data, that you are not doing the same thing again here.” The executive’s response: “Understood.”

        The government, again, demands censorship.

        On April 23, Mr. Flaherty sent the executive an internal memo that he claimed had been circulating in the White House. It asserts that “Facebook plays a major role in the spread of COVID vaccine misinformation” and accuses the company of, among other things, “failure to monitor events hosting anti-vaccine and COVID disinformation” and “directing attention to COVID-skeptics/anti-vaccine ‘trusted’ messengers.

        More pressure from the government.

        On May 10, the executive sent Mr. Flaherty a list of steps Facebook had taken “to increase vaccine acceptance.” Mr. Flaherty scoffed, “Hard to take any of this seriously when you’re actively promoting anti-vaccine pages in search,” and linked to an NBC reporter’s tweet. The executive wrote back: “Thanks Rob—both of the accounts featured in this tweet have been removed from Instagram entirely for breaking our policies.”

        And this is a very clear example of censorship happening.

        I think you get the idea. If you’d like to dispute what the article says, why don’t you read it yourself?

        • Sundial@lemm.ee
          0·
          8 days ago

          You’re conflating information with misinformation. The quotes say misinformation, not information.

            • Sundial@lemm.ee
              0·
              8 days ago

              Not “if the government says it’s false” if it is false. Why are you accepting being lied to?

              • the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world
                0·
                8 days ago

                I don’t know why you’re accepting a boot on your neck. The Supreme Court is clear that the government cannot regulate the speech of an organization simply because they don’t like the content. If you would like to give the government the right to determine what is and isn’t true and thus permissible on social media, that would mean Trump could rightly censor whatever claims/information he wanted - say, trans rights promotion, immigration assistance, and the like.

                Also, here’s some information about what was being censored:

                I’m glad we’re clear that you think the ends justify the means.

                • Sundial@lemm.ee
                  0·
                  8 days ago

                  The Supreme Court ruling doesn’t apply here since we already established we were talking about the distribution of misinformation.

                  Your list of censored opinions is ridiculous given they’re openly accessible, not to mention the fact that they don’t help your case at al.

                  The first link is from a publicly funded institution, so not censored, and the study corroborates that the benefits outweigh the cons for vaccines:

                  There is a broad consensus that the benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh the potential risks of rare vaccine side effects, such as vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT). Therefore, the importance of vaccination should be emphasized. This statement aims to focus on VITT.

                  Second bullet point is a frivolous lawsuit that never went anywhere.

                  Third bullet point is inconclusive and said more studies is needed. Furthermore, it’s not COVID specific.

                  Same with the fourth bullet point.

                  So far, you’ve given me complete bullshit to support some stupid and incorrect claim that vaccine and mask mandates are fascist and then tried to actually justify their ineffectiveness using sources that don’t even support your claims and sometimes even contradicts it.

                  I am not going to bother responding to you anymore. It’s clear you’d rather perpetrate misinformation than actually look at the evidence in front of your eyes. I only made this last comment to make sure anyone reading this how much misinformation you’ve been producing.

                  • the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world
                    0·
                    8 days ago

                    Yes, it does apply, because the entirety of what I’ve posted below was classified as “misinformation” and thus removed under pressure from the government. That is censorship. The Supreme Court found you cannot be forced to not publish information from a source the government doesn’t like. The scope of the censorship was specific to social media - again, this information was deleted by Facebook under pressure from the government.

                    Simply because the government believes the benefits outweigh the risks does not mean people shouldn’t be informed of the risks; that would be censorship, which was what the government did to Facebook and Twitter.

                    My point there was to point out the efficacy claims were not as straightforward as the media claimed; government didn’t like that truth, so it was censored.

                    You’re splitting hairs on the remaining points. The point is that the link between surgical masks and the spread of diseases was not what the media claimed. The government didn’t want that to be known, and thus it was removed from social media.

                    I’m not sure if you’re willfully misinterpreting and downplaying my statements, but the lengths you’ll go to defend censorship and pointless imprisonment are startling. A society should function on the basis of doing good so that good may come, not doing bad so that good may come. I don’t see what’s so controversial about that. I’m only producing information that’s been published already. You’re the one defending what would rightly be called government overreach while refusing to explain what the distinction between is and fascism is.

                    Again, your arguments could be used to justify Trump removing pro-trans and pro-immigration information from social media. I don’t want anyone to have that power.