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A New and More Powerful Censorship Coming
The world we once knew has shifted into something many of us have never experienced, at least in the United States. But you shout, we have protection! The US Constitution! The Bill of Rights! We are free to say and do as we please, framed within the Rule of Law created by our Founders for a day and time such as this.
Opportunity and abundance, along with many hardships, have given us advantages that many other countries only dream of. But power, control, and money have blinded those, as it always does, with the means to take away those freedoms while cloaked as sheep, trying to hide their fangs. We’ve seen this scenario many times before and it always starts with a vague, pleasing message and the urgent need for censorship.
A company called “Newsguard” (how catchy) has created a platform that will guard you against what they deem is fake, false, or harmful news.
NewsGuard is a self-appointed misinformation watchdog. It seems to be just one more way Americans are not allowed to think for themselves. Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz claim it is the “librarian for the internet.” Set up specifically to rate online journalistic integrity, Brill states NewsGuard provides services that “explain to people something about the reliability and trustworthiness and background of those who are feeding them the news.” Eric Effron is the organization’s Editorial Director.
These guard dogs of the news look pleasant enough, like the guy over the fence mowing his lawn and waving. Unlike Stalin or Hitler, they wear no military uniforms or salute a crooked ideology. These screeners of free speech hide behind expensive tailored suits, stellar credentials from Ivy League schools, and having worked for some of the most impressive news outlets and Fortune 500 companies. So, trust them!
They smile as they speak in calm tones and assure us that we need their protection in the age of The Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, where so-called misinformation now travels across the world in seconds. Eric Effron, Newsguard’s Editorial Director, wants you to picture a prim, well-dressed librarian at the front desk, looking over his or her glasses while screening acceptable content going in or out of the building. Only this library is a haunted building where the books are blank, their content erased or altered. There is no memory of the writer or the meaning of their message. So you move along, still looking for information, but pointed in a different direction, where what you are allowed to see has been found acceptable.
NewsGuard mentions its partnership with the WHO in August 2020 and discusses its Misinformation Fingerprints cataloging tool. The tool is essentially a database with a “unique identifier for each hoax that, when combined with the platforms’ machine learning tools, will allow platforms to identify each hoax across the entirety of their platforms.” NewsGuard describes Misinformation Fingerprints as an “extraction and cataloging” tool. It provides “data seeds for existing AI/Social Listening tools to trace false claims across the internet and social media or can be used by human analysts to understand mis- and disinformation risks.” NewsGuard was also a signatory in 2021 to the Code of Practice on Disinformation for the European Commission.
But wait….there’s more! They won a contest!
NewsGuard won a 2020 contest run by the “Pentagon and Department of State to offer solutions to hoaxes related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” The contest focused specifically on the “pre-bunking” of internet hoaxes. NewsGuard was also “a winner of the Countering Disinformation Challenge, a contest offered jointly by the State Department and the Department of Defense (DoD) as a part of the DoD’s National Security Innovation Network (NSIN).” NSIN is a “government program office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OSD (R&E)) that collaborates with major universities and the venture community to develop solutions that drive national security innovation.
Didn’t it just come to light that the Covid virus was leaked from a lab? Weren’t many credentialed scientists blocked from publishing their suspicions after studying the gene sequence of the virus?
Let’s continue:
NewsGuard issued its first “social impact report” in 2022. The report championed NewsGuard’s provision of tools that would promote “online safety for readers, brands, and democracies.” Its CEOs proudly state a mission to fight false claims of “Nazis running Ukraine’s government and Americans running bioweapons labs in Ukraine,” COVID-19 misinformation, and misinformation surrounding the mid-term elections.
According to the report, “more than 938,200 people were exposed to COVID-19 vaccine myths between Oct. 2021-Feb. 2022 on social media.” The report also reveals NewsGuard’s exposure of “pink slime sites pushing Democratic propaganda in battleground states ahead of the midterm elections.
Didn’t someone in the Biden administration testify under oath that there were biolabs in Ukraine? I saw her testimony on TV. Didn’t it just come to light that the Jan. 6th Commission was feeding information that was altered or not accurate? Tucker Carlson of Fox News aired some altered footage just last night. Medicines readily available that were shown to help people who contracted Covid, were deemed questionable, and this resulted in these meds not being dispensed or limited by health providers. Newsguard needs to give their prize money back.
Here’s the worst part:
NewsGuard has partnered with Microsoft, Pfizer, the Department of Defense with a 2021 $749,387 one-year contract, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the WHO using NewsGuard’s trademark “new Misinformation Fingerprints” analyst and AI cataloging tool. NewsGuard’s other products include NewsGuard, HealthGuard, and BrandGuard—which help marketers concerned about their brand safety.
It seems the same people and companies keep popping up and isn’t it odd that they are all affiliated with these new guard dogs of their and others’ information? How clever and foresighted!
Our US Constitution is being shredded by those who have not been voted for. The results of groups like this speak for themselves, and they are influencing our access to healthcare treatments, the freedom to choose what kind of treatments we receive or choose not to receive, what we see, hear, read, and teach, and what our children and young people are being taught to believe, to the detriment of freedom, natural (not artificial) health, access to fresh natural food and fuel, employment (as many lost their jobs over the vaccine mandates), and the God-given pursuit of happiness, as our Founders stated. These are dangerous developments that counteract everything we have taken for granted as being available.
Why censor words? If your Scrabble opponent has most of the pieces and you have only a few, who controls the board and wins? Words can heal or wound, start a war or bring peace, can promote hate or produce love, can ask questions, or shut down thought. Censorship and freedom cannot co-exist.
Published in General
Stephen Brill is a long-time grifter who has made a living defending Democrats. I’m not surprised he’s involved in this scheme.
Good god. This is not a great thing to see after just finishing Steve Deace and Daniel Horowitz’s Rise of the Fourth Reich. I’m already totally bummed, angry, and a little bit scared.
I heard that Canada, which heavily funds official news channels, is fixing to pass a law that would allow the government to bury news stories or news outlets at the bottom of search results. That is, Google will not “find” any news the government has not approved.
America is becoming an island and half the people want to sink it too.
And some who have. Witness Schumer’s attacks on the first amendment (again) today. Freedom of the press? Not if Chuckie has his way. Freedom of speech? Nope.
About that Jan.6th video, who are you going to believe? CNN, or your lying eyes?
People over 35 were schooled at a time when civics classes, history classes, and local news people applauded free speech as the first and most important right of a free people.
Younger people have been carefully taught that the most important thing about speech is that it is approved of by some “enlightened” authority.
And they were taught that no speech by anyone anywhere should ever hurt anyone. Ever!!
My current 3 favorite commentators on the matter are these:
“One ring to rule them all
And in the darkness bind them”
JRR Tolkien
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Then Ricky Gervais defending the very needed freedom that court jesters must have, and in under 60 seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z4EL5jfPjD4
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And in a more serious bent:
Google has buried stories since at least 2013.
As a hypothetical, if tomorrow Rasmussen polling found that either Ron deSantis or Donald Trump could beat any Dem contender for the Oval Office by 40 % points, two days later, some university panel would step forward and denounce Rasmussen’s polling techniques.
Then two days later it would be announced that both deSantis and Trump would lose to Dem candidates by 69%.
Then if you ever looked for the original story, you’d have very little chance of finding it.
Well, my opinion of Orwell just plummeted. I didn’t get the impression that he was an anarchist, but maybe he was.
All governments rule by force. That’s what government is. This quote equates government with tyranny. If you think that all government is tyranny, you’re an anarchist.
Shallow thinking, in my view. This is disappointing from Orwell, as I had the impression that he was a man of some insight. Maybe this is just a bad example from him.
On the other hand, I don’t recall any positive vision of government and a good society that he ever presented. He was a critic. I’m familiar with 1984, Animal Farm, and The Road to Wigan Pier. Maybe he was just useful as a former Socialist who was willing to criticize his own side.
Scripture does not teach freedom of speech, you know. It says that false teachers are to be cast out, ostracized, and shunned.
This is a rule for the Church, of course. There is little direction in the New Testament about government. There is direction in the Old Testament, and it sure ain’t Leftist, of any variety — nothing that would be called “liberal,” classic or otherwise.
Where is the empirical evidence that freedom of speech, of the type adopted during the first half of the 20th Century, actually works? What we’ve witnessed is the collapse of faith and morality, during the ascendancy of this radical notion. We used to ban books, you know. The 1st Amendment wasn’t even held to apply to the states until 1925 (as to freedom of speech — later as to other portions).
Yet people think that this is the view enshrined in our Constitution. That is not the case. The states used to regulate speech — even blasphemy.
It has been years since I trusted librarians.
Marc Andreessen, the entrepreneur and venture capitalist, wrote in December of last year:
Seriously, though. The censorship pressure applied to social media over the last decade pales in comparison to the censorship pressure that will be applied to AI.
“AI regulation” = “AI ethics” = “AI safety” = “AI censorship”. They’re the same thing.
The level of censorship pressure that’s coming for AI and the resulting backlash will define the next century of civilization. Search and social media were the opening skirmishes. This is the big one. World War Orwell.
See my post New Frontiers in Censorship and Propaganda.
Andreessen also wrote, in April 2022:
Buy physical copies of any book you plan to read in the future. Do it now.
No. His quote only said that all tyrannies rule by force. It did not say that force is enough to make a tyranny.
Precisely.
What about the type adopted before then?
I would think that anything by Rodney Stark touching on these questions would be the right place to go to look into this issue.
You ask where is the evidence that freedom of speech works? Works in what way? The evidence that people can prosper and live in relative peace is evidence. Where it is censored or erased, like with communism, people suffer – so where would you rather live? Our Founding Fathers drew our documents from scripture and they quoted frequently as God and faith being the inspiration for their speeches and declarations. In communism, the state is where all things are drawn and it always suppresses.
Just the same, I am not in favor of casting you out of Ricochet, no matter how much false information you pass out.
The message that Orwell was attempting to portray was one of what activities happen under totalitarian regimes.
So I believe if he was around today to discuss this matter with you, he might opine “My bad, Jerry. What I should have said is ‘all totalitarian governments rule with draconian force.'”
This is getting tiresome. There is never a standard of any kind that makes sense with these kinds of presumptuous people. For example, “aliens built the pyramids” is misinformation. But even if somebody is dumb enough to believe it, so what? What is the harm. Why bother?
On the other hand, ingesting bleach to cure COVID is misinformation. (Saying that Trump advised doing so is also misinformation but we will let that go for the moment.) Believing that could be harmful. So is actual harm the standard? If so, then believing that The Science(TM) called for closing schools during the pandemic is serious misinformation–all harm no benefit for kids and their families. The Steele dossier, the bullsh** claim about Russia planting the Hunter Biden laptop, every one of the predicted climate catastrophes… Show me a “fact-checker” or “misinformation” service that got any of that right.
Don’t forget that Orwell’s sentiments about governments is supported by the fact that all wars have been started by governments. From what I understand even in WWII France, the war there was started by Germany’s government and not countered by the French government or the new Vichy government but fought against by the laisse faire French resistance.
I admit it: I rarely have thought about the good intentions of those who are self proclaimed censorship authorities:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67684212/consortium-for-independent-news-inc-v-newsguard-technologies-inc/
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/10/23/consortium-news-sues-newsguard-u-s-government-over-censorship-collaboration/