U dumb, brainless puke, call urselves, "the people," better wake up, suckers--EU has erected MASSIVE censorship network--wants now to come to Jew S A

[Apollonian]

THE EU'S MASS CENSORSHIP REGIME IS ALMOST FULLY OPERATIONAL. WILL IT GO GLOBAL?​

Published: July 9, 2023

SOURCE: NAKED CAPITALISM​

Link: https://www.blacklistednews.com/art...e-is-almost-fully-operational-will-it-go.html

Government censorship of public online discourse in the West’s ostensibly liberal democracies has been largely covert until now, as revealed by the Twitter Files. But thanks to the EU’s Digital Services Act, it is about to become overt.

Next month, a little-known development will occur that could end up having huge repercussions for the nature of public discourse on the Internet all over the planet. August 25, 2023 is the date by which big social media platforms will have to begin fully complying with the European Union’s Digital Services Act, or DSA. The DSA, among many other things, obliges all “Very Large Online Platforms”, or VLOPs, to speedily remove illegal content, hate speech and so-called disinformation from their platforms. If not, they risk fines of up to 6% of their annual global revenue.
The Commission has so far compiled a list of 19 VLOPs and VLOSEs (Very Large Online Search Engines), most of them from the US, that will have to begin complying with the DSA in 50 days’ time:

• Alibaba AliExpress
• Amazon Store
• Apple AppStore
• Booking.com
• Facebook
• Google Play
• Google Maps
• Google Shopping
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Snapchat
• TikTok
• Twitter
• Wikipedia
• YouTube
• Zalando

Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs):

• Bing
• Google Search

Smaller platforms will have to begin tackling illegal content, hate speech and disinformation from 2024 onwards, assuming the legislation is effective.
Ominously, as Robert Kogon reports for Brownstone.org (granted, not the most popular source of information on NC, but it’s a good, well researched piece), the DSA “includes a ‘crisis response mechanism’ (Art. 36) that is clearly modeled on the European Commission’s initially ad hoc response to the conflict in Ukraine and which requires platforms to adopt measures to mitigate crisis-related ‘misinformation.'”
In a speech in early June, EU Vice-President for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, made it crystal clear which country is the current prime target of the EU’s censorship agenda (no points for guessing):

Cooperation among signatories and the high number of new organisations willing to sign the new Code of Practice show that it has become an effective and dynamic instrument to fight disinformation. However, progress remains too slow on crucial aspects, especially when it comes to dealing with pro-Kremlin war propaganda or independent access to data…
As we prepare for the 2024 EU elections, I call on platforms to increase their efforts in fighting disinformation and address Russian information manipulation, and this in all Member States and languages, whether big or small.

MEET THE “ENFORCER”​

The EU is offering tech companies little in the way of wiggle room. When Twitter withdrew from the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation in late May, the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton, issued a fiery reprimand as well as an unveiled threat — on Twitter of all places:

Jourová also laid into Twitter, saying the platform had mistakenly chosen the path of “confrontation.”
Days later, Breton announced he was visiting Silicon Valley to “stress test” US tech giants, including Twitter, to see how well prepared they are for the launch of the Digital Services Act on August 25. Calling himself the “enforcer”, serving the “will of the state and the people” (as if the two were the same things), Breton remind tech platforms that the EU’s DSA would transform its code of practice on mis- and disinformation into a code of conduct. From Politico:

“We are going there, but don’t want to be vocal before because I don’t want to speak too much. But we offer this and I’m happy that some platforms took our proposal,” Breton said of the non-binding compliance checks. “I am the enforcer. I represent the law, which is the will of the state and the people.”
“It’s a voluntary basis, so we don’t force anyone” to join the code of practice on disinformation, Breton said. “I just reminded (Musk and Twitter) that by August 25, it will become a legal obligation to fight disinformation.”

While Twitter may have left the EU’s voluntary code of practice, many of its other actions suggest it is complying with, rather than defying, the EU’s new rules on disinformation. After all, many other Big Tech platforms have not signed the code of practice, including Amazon, Apple and Wikipedia, but will be subject to the DSA’s obligatory requirements, as long as they want to continue operating in Europe. Also, as Kogon documents, recent programming that has gone into the Twitter algorithm includes “safety labels” to restrict the visibility of alleged “misinformation”:

The general categories of “misinformation” used exactly mirror the main areas of concern targeted by the EU in its efforts to “regulate” online speech: “medical misinfo” in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, “civic misinfo” in the context of issues of electoral integrity, and “crisis misinfo” in the context of the war in Ukraine.
In its January submission to the EU (see reports archive here), in the section devoted precisely to its efforts to combat Ukraine-war-related “misinformation,” Twitter writes (pp. 70-71):
“We … use a combination of technology and human review to proactively identify misleading information. More than 65% of violative content is surfaced by our automated systems, and the majority of remaining content we enforce on is surfaced through regular monitoring by our internal teams and our work with trusted partners.”

Moreover, some Twitter users recently received notices informing them that they are not eligible to participate in Twitter Ads because their account has been labelled “organic misinformation.” As Kogon asks: “Why in the world would Twitter turn away advertising business?”:

The answer is simple and straightforward: because none other than the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation requires it to do so in connection with the so-called “demonetization of disinformation.”

Ultimately, Kogon notes, once the DSA comes into full effect, in 50 days’ time, if Elon Musk stays true to his word on freedom of speech and chooses to defy the EU’s “permanent task force on disinformation”, the Commission will mobilise the entire arsenal of punitive measures at its disposal, in particular the threat or application of fines of 6% of the company’s global turnover. In other words, the only way for Twitter to actually defy the EU is to leave the EU.
That is something most tech platforms can but will not do, due to the huge impact it would have on their bottom line. One possible exception to this rule appears to be the Toronto-based streaming platform Rumble, which in November disabled access to its services in France after the French government demanded the multinational company remove Russian news sources from its platform.

EU COMMISSION: JUDGE AND JURY​

So, who in the EU will get to define what actually constitutes mis- or disinformation?
Surely it will be the job of an independent regulator or a judicial authority with at least clear procedural parameters and no or few conflicts of interest. At least that is what one would hope.
But no.
The ultimate decider of what constitutes mis- or dis-information, possibly not just in the EU but across multiple jurisdictions around the world (more on that later), will be the European Commission. That’s right, the EU’s power-hungry, conflict-riddled, Von der Leyen-led executive branch. The same institution that is in the process of dynamiting the EU’s economic future through its endless backfiring sanctions on Russia and which is mired in Pfizergate, one of the biggest corruption scandals of its 64-year existence. Now the Commission wants to take mass censorship to levels not seen in Europe since at least the dying days of the Cold War.
In this task the Commission will have, in its own words, “enforcement powers similar to those it has under anti-trust proceedings,” adding that “an EU-wide cooperation mechanism will be established between national regulators and the Commission.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) broadly supports many aspects of the DSA, including the protections it provides on user rights to privacy by prohibiting platforms from undertaking targeted advertising based on sensitive user information, such as sexual orientation or ethnicity. “More broadly, the DSA increases the transparency about the ads users see on their feeds as platforms must place a clear label on every ad, with information about the buyer of the ad and other details.” It also “reins in the powers of Big Tech” by forcing them to “comply with far-reaching obligations and responsibly tackle systemic risks and abuse on their platform.”
But even the EFF warns that the new law “provides a fast-track procedure for law enforcement authorities to take on the role of ‘trusted flaggers’ and uncover data about anonymous speakers and remove allegedly illegal content – which platforms become obligated to remove quickly.” The EFF also raises concerns about the dangers posed by the Commission’s starring role in all of this:

Issues with government involvement in content moderation are pervasive and whilst trusted flaggers are not new, the DSA’s system could have a significant negative impact on the rights of users, in particular that of privacy and free speech.

And free speech and a free press are the foundation stones of any genuine liberal democracy, as notes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):

The First Amendment protects our freedom to speak, assemble, and associate with others. These rights are essential to our democratic system of governance. The Supreme Court has written that freedom of expression is “the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.” Without it, other fundamental rights, like the right to vote, would cease to exist. Since its founding, the ACLU has advocated for broad protection of our First Amendment rights in times of war and peace, to ensure that the marketplace of ideas remains vigorous and unrestricted.

A TRANSATLANTIC “WISH LIST”​

The DSA and the Biden Administration’s proposed RESTRICT Act (which Yves dissected back in April) were among the topics discussed during Russell Brand’s recent interview of Matt Taibbi. Both bills, said Taibbi, are essentially a “wish list that has been passed around” by the transatlantic elite “for some time,” including at a 2021 gathering at the Aspen Institute:

The governments want absolute, full and complete access to all data that these platforms provide. And then they want a couple of other things that are really important. They want to have the authority to come in and moderate or at least be part of the process of moderation. And they also want people who are called trusted “flaggers” — that’s how they’re described in the European law — to have access to these platforms as well. What they mean by that are these outside quasi-governmental agencies who tell these platforms what they can and cannot print about things like vaccine safety.

In other words, the legal environment for free speech is set to become even more hostile in Europe. And possibly not just Europe. As Norman Lewis writes for the British online news website Spiked, the DSA will not only force the regulation of content on the Internet, but could also become a global standard, not just a European one:

In recent years, the EU has largely realised its ambition to become a global regulatory superpower. The EU can dictate how any company worldwide must behave if it wants to operate in Europe, the world’s second-largest market. As a result, its strict regulatory standards often end up being adopted worldwide by both firms and other regulators, in what is known as the ‘Brussels effect’. Take the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a privacy law which came into force in May 2018. Among many other things, it requires individuals to give explicit consent before their data can be processed. These EU regulations have since become the global standard, and the same could now happen for the DSA.

The GDPR is not the only EU regulation that has gone global. A few weeks ago, the World Health Organization announced that it will be adopting the EU’s expiring digital vaccine passport as a global standard, as we warned would happen over a year ago.
Of course, when it comes to mass digital censorship Washington is on a similar path to the EU (albeit in the face of stiffer public and judicial resistance). So too is the UK government, which was recently ranked in the third tier of the Index on Censorship, behind countries such as Chile, Jamaica, Israel and virtually all other western European states, due to the “chilling effect” of government policies and the policing, intimidation and, in the case of Julian Assange, imprisonment of journalists.
If approved by the House of Lords, the Online Safety Bill would give telecoms regulator Ofcom the power to force chat app makers and social media companies to monitor conversations and posts before they are sent for what is permissible to say and send and what is not. It will essentially put an end to end-to-end encryption, which allows only the senders and recipients of a message to access the human-readable form of the content.
“That is a precedent that authoritarian regimes are looking to the UK to set, to point to a liberal democracy that was the first to expand surveillance, Meredith Whittaker, president of not-for-profit secure messaging app Signal, told Channel 4 News. “In the terms of the UN human rights commissioner, this is unprecedented paradigm-shifting surveillance. And paradigm shifting not in a good way.”
“We would absolutely exit any country if the choice were between remaining in the country and undermining the strict privacy promises we make to the people who rely on us,” Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker told Ars Technica. “The UK is no exception.”
All of this is as dark as it is ironic. After all, one of the main justifications for the Collective West’s increasingly aggressive posture in other parts of the world — the so-called Jungle, as the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell calls it — is to stem the drift toward authoritarianism being led by China, Russia, Iran and other strategic rivals that are encroaching on the West’s economic turf. Yet back at home (or as Borrell would say, the Garden), the Collective West is, if anything, drifting faster in that direction through its wholehearted embrace of digital censorship, surveillance and control.

​

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[Apollonian]

FBI And Ukraine Spy Agency Ran 'Censorship Operation,' Pressuring Social Media Giants To Ban Users — Including Verified American Accounts — Over Alleged 'Russian Disinformation': House Committee Report​

Link: http://www.womensystems.com/2023/07/fbi-and-ukraine-spy-agency-ran.html

Women System July 12, 2023

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and a Ukraine intelligence agency ran a "censorship operation," pressuring social media platforms to ban users who were allegedly spreading "Russian disinformation," a Monday report by the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed.
The report found that some of the accounts targeted for removal belonged to Americans.

The committee obtained documents from Meta, Facebook and Instagram's parent company, and Alphabet, Google and YouTube's parent company, that uncovered that the FBI, at the request of the Security Service of Ukraine, pressured Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube to "censor Americans engaging in constitutionally protected speech online."
As a result, the committee accused the FBI of violating American users' First Amendment rights.
"The Committee's investigation has revealed that the FBI, the federal law enforcement agency responsible for disrupting foreign malign influence, facilitated censorship requests to American social media companies on behalf of a Ukrainian intelligence agency infiltrated by Russian-aligned actors," the report stated.

Some accounts the Ukrainian agency and the FBI flagged were American accounts, including a verified U.S. State Department account and several belonging to American journalists.
Considering that the lists included American accounts, the committee alleged that the FBI likely did not properly vet the lists provided to them by the Ukrainian intelligence agency. At the time that the requests were made, the Ukrainian agency had been infiltrated with Russian collaborators and double agents, according to the report.

In March 2022 alone, the FBI reached out to the social media giants more than a dozen times, according to the committee's report.
One such correspondence was sent to Facebook on March 1. The FBI agent's email contained two spreadsheets with "15,865 individual items of content on Instagram" and "5,165 Facebook accounts."
The special agent's email stated, "I have a few more Instagram and FB accounts that according to the [SSU] spread Russian disinformation. For your review and action as deemed appropriate."
The committee found that the agent's list included a New York photographer, a South Carolina moving company manager, a Minnesota musician, a California university professor, and a Washington children's book author. The report also noted that the Americans' posts had received fewer than 130 total engagements.
The special agent contacted Meta again a few days later to follow up on the action against the accounts.
"Would you be able to tell me if these accounts were taken down, or if you need some legal process from us?" the agent asked.
On March 2, the same agent sent more removal requests regarding accounts "believed to be involved in disinformation." According to the agent, the accounts were "distribut[ing] content that promotes war, inaccurately reflects events in Ukraine, justifies Russian war crimes in Ukraine in violation of international law."
"Incredibly, on this list was the account @usaporusski, which is the official, verified, Russian-language account of the U.S. State Department. Neither the FBI nor the [SSU] provides an explanation as to how the U.S. State Department account was 'involved in disinformation,'" the committee's report explained.
In late March, the same FBI special agent sent a list of flagged accounts to Twitter that had allegedly been "used to disseminate disinformation and fake news."
At the time, Twitter's head of Trust and Safety team, Yoel Roth, informed the FBI that its list contained a "mix of individual accounts… and even a few accounts of American and Canadian journalists." Roth requested additional information from the FBI about the accounts.
The FBI agent responded, "Understood. Whatever your review determines and action Twitter deem is appropriate. Unlikely there will be any additional information or context."
The committee concluded, "Based on open-source information, it appears that the FBI's cooperation with the [SSU] remains ongoing."
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment, the New York Post reported.

 

[Apollonian]

FOX News discusses the present cultural situation, Hollywood strike, censorship, and the Pres. campaigns

 

[Apollonian]

European Woes: Governments Clamp Down on Freedom of Speech and Media Amidst Riots​

BY CAPITALIST EXPLOITS
MONDAY, JUL 24, 2023 - 9:58

Link: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023...mp-down-freedom-speech-and-media-amidst-riots

EUROPEAN WOES​

"When they kick in your front door
How gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun
Even shoot us
But OO the guys of Brixton"
- THE CLASH

By now, you’ve likely seen the recent violence and rioting in France.
Actually, let me stop and restate that. Provided you are not ingesting mainstream media and instead using alternative media, you will be well aware of the chaos in France.

Censorship of media has meant that the vast majority of what has been transpiring is simply not being reported or being reported as “minor,” etc. The reality on the ground from multiple sources is quite different. You may recall that back in May I mentioned the conversation I’d had with an emigration official in Costa Rica mentioning to me that the prior eight months had seen an increase in French and German residence applications. I can’t imagine this trend has done anything but accelerated since.
This week Macron passed a law enshrining freedom of speech, then apologised for locking everyone in their homes, bankrupting thousands of small businesses for the flu, and promised he’d resign. Only kidding. He blamed the people complaining. No really!

And then proceeded to lock down the internet. I mean, when outright censorship via controlling the MSM fails to be having the desired effect, then it’s only reasonable, isn’t it?

Since you’ve not translated the document and assuming your français is as good as mine, I’ll give you the gist of this document. Internet lockdown for certain hours and certain areas in France. This is how it starts, folks.
Moving from France over to our bratwurst-eating friends…

The message is clear. Speak out against the elites, and we’ll destroy you.
Moving on to New Zealand, where, back during the height of the plandemic, the Government took control of the media outlets, we have the same totalitarianism.

I note that here is the German usage of the Tor browser application. Hahahaha!

It turns out that humans will always seek freedom. It’s a bit like forcing every female on earth to be a nun. Guaranteed you’ll have a certain percentage who break out and become raging nymphomaniacs.
Now that you’re all depressed and searching for a rope or sharp objects, consider this question. Would you invest in any of these countries?
Everything becomes relative, folks. I see this as a wild opportunity to front-run the arbitrage that still exists between woke Western countries where valuations of most every asset class are inconsistent with the rapidly developing trends unfolding in front of our eyes.
If you are a self-directed stock investor looking for an edge, we can show you. Just click on the links (below my name) to find a solution that works best for you.

 

[Apollonian]

NEW FILES SHOW BIDEN ADMIN FORCED FACEBOOK TO CENSOR “TRUE INFORMATION” ON VACCINE SIDE EFFECTS​

Published: August 1, 2023

SOURCE: SUMMIT.NEWS​

Link: https://www.blacklistednews.com/art...-censor-true-information-on-vaccine-side.html/

Facebook employees were pissed off about it

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan released a second batch of files Friday showing that the Biden administration was forcing Facebook to censor content relating to COVID vaccines, including what employees there described as “true information”.

Jordan noted that Facebook knew it was removing “humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine isn’t safe,” as well as “true information about the side effects.”

Jordan also noted that Facebook employees were annoyed at being made to take down content they knew was accurate, describing the administration’s definition of misinformation as “completely unclear” and noting that the White House was using “untested assumptions” to demand censorship.
“It also just seems like when the vaccination campaign isn’t going as hoped, it’s convenient for them to blame us,” one employee noted.
Another agreed, responding “This seems like a political battle that’s not fully grounded in facts, and it’s frustrating.”

Facebook also admitted that it removed content pertaining to the lab leak theory, not because it was inaccurate or deeming harmful, but “Because we were under pressure from the administration.”
“We shouldn’t have done it,” Facebook’s head of Global affairs admitted.
The company also admitted to changing its misinformation policy because the Biden administration was constantly haranguing them.
“This is stemming from the continued criticism of our approach from the US administration,” the communications note.

Related:

Video: Jordan Blasts Biden Facebook ‘Censorship By Surrogate’

“We Shouldn’t Have Done It”: Facebook Exec Admitted They Censored For Biden Regime

 

[Apollonian]

TYRANNY through CENSORSHIP: Web browsers could soon be required by law to block traffic to what the government labels “fraudulent” websites

08/11/2023 // Ethan Huff

Link: https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-08-11-web-browsers-block-government-fraudulent-sites.html/

The French government has issued a worrying proposal that Mozilla's Open Policy & Advocacy blog is warning could eventually lead to governments being able to block all websites deemed "fraudulent."

Calling the plan "well-intentioned yet dangerous," Mozilla warns that the French government is plowing ahead with plans to force web browsers like Firefox "to create a dystopian technical capability" allowing bureaucrats to regulate what people see online.

"Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list," Mozilla explains about the plan.

"A world in which browsers can be forced to incorporate a list of banned websites at the software-level that simply do not open, either in a region or globally, is a worrying prospect that raises serious concerns around freedom of expression. If it successfully passes into law, the precedent this would set would make it much harder for browsers to reject such requests from other governments."

(Related: Even before the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) appeared out of nowhere, Google was already pushing a "final solution" to eradicate independent news sites from the web forever.)

Could such a law ever be enacted in the United States?​

Since the deep state is having trouble containing the spread of "misinformation" online via content providers and publishers (i.e., Facebook, Google, and Twitter), it is apparently switching tactics to go after browsers themselves.

We are told that the government would basically feed a website blacklist to web browser creators like Mozilla and force them to encode a block that disallows internet users from accessing certain websites.


"If a capability to block any site on a government blacklist were required by law to be built in to all browsers, then repressive governments would be given an enormously powerful tool," reports Tech Dirt.

"There would be no way around that censorship, short of hacking the browser code. That might be an option for open source coders, but it certainly won't be for the vast majority of ordinary users."

Should this proposed law be enshrined on the books, it will do away with what Mozilla describes as "decades of established content moderation norms," effectively allowing authoritarian governments to "easily negate the existence of censorship circumvention tools."

It is not a stretch to assume that the copyright industry would also capitalize on the law by trying to force web browsers to also block websites that contain infringing content. In fact, such a concept has already been brought to life in the past – check out the book Walled Culture to learn more.

In 2004, BT (British Telecom) introduced something called CleanFeed that, again, also had good intentions, at least on the surface, in that it was contrived to block all illegal child pornography websites from being accessed. This is a good use of such technology, but there are also bad uses that we expect to also take place.

"Exactly the logic used by copyright companies to subvert CleanFeed could be used to co-opt the censorship capabilities of browsers with built-in Web blocking lists," Tech Dirt reports. "As with CleanFeed, the copyright industry would doubtless argue that since the technology already exists, why not to apply it to tackling copyright infringement too?"

"That very real threat is another reason to fight this pernicious, misguided French proposal. Because if it is implemented, it will be very hard to stop it becoming yet another technology that the copyright world demands should be bent to its own selfish purposes."

The latest news about the globalist quest to censor all truth wherever it may be found can be found at Censorship.news.

Sources for this article include:

TechDirt.com

NaturalNews.com

WalledCulture.org

 

[Apollonian]

A Draconian New Law Went Into Effect On August 25th That Institutes Extreme Censorship Of The Internet On A Global Basis​

August 29, 2023 by Michael

Link: https://endoftheamericandream.com/a...censorship-of-the-internet-on-a-global-basis/

The Internet just changed forever, but most people living in the United States don’t even realize what just happened. A draconian new law known as the “Digital Services Act” went into effect in the European Union on Friday, and it establishes an extremely strict regime of Internet censorship that is far more authoritarian than anything we have ever seen before. From this point forward, hordes of European bureaucrats will be the arbiters of what is acceptable to say on the Internet. If they discover something that you have said on a large online platform that they do not like, they can force that platform to take it down, because someone in Europe might see it. So even though this is a European law, the truth is that it is going to have a tremendous impact on all of us.

From this point forward, nothing will be the same. It is being reported that the DSA literally makes large tech companies “legally accountable for the content posted to them”…

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) has officially gone into effect. Starting on August 25th, 2023, tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and more must comply with sweeping legislation that holds online platforms legally accountable for the content posted to them.
Even though this new law was passed in the EU, we’ll likely see far-reaching global effects as companies adjust their policies to comply.

Initially, there will be 19 giant online platforms that will be forced to comply with this new law…

Ranging from social media platforms to online marketplaces and search engines, the list so far includes: Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Amazon, Booking, AliExpress, Zalando, Google Shopping, Wikipedia, Google Maps, Google and Apple’s mobile app stores, Google’s Search, and Microsoft’s Bing.

But starting on February 24th, 2024, the Digital Services Act will start applying to a much broader spectrum of online platforms that have fewer than 45 million monthly users.
We are being told that this new law will establish clear rules that online platforms must follow.
That will include censoring anything that is deemed “false or misleading” under the Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation…

So what kind of speech is the DSA expected to police? Last year’s Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation defines disinformation as “false or misleading content that is spread with an intention to deceive or secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm.” The code has already been put to work during elections and to “respond to crises,” such as COVID and the war in Ukraine.

And it really doesn’t matter if material that European bureaucrats consider to be “false or misleading” is actually “false of misleading” at all.
What matters is that if online platforms do not comply with what they are being told to do, they will pay dearly…

Online platforms that don’t comply with the DSA’s rules could see fines of up to 6 percent of their global turnover. According to the EU Commission, the Digital Services Coordinator and the Commission will have the power to “require immediate actions where necessary to address very serious harms.” A platform continually refusing to comply could result in a temporary suspension in the EU.

Big tech companies will be desperate to avoid such penalties, and so they will obey.
And so that means that “hundreds of unelected EU bureaucrats” will be in control of speech on the Internet now…

Under this Orwellian regime, a team of hundreds of unelected EU bureaucrats will decide what constitutes disinformation and instruct Big Tech firms to censor it. The firms themselves, faced with reputational risk and financial penalties, will have little choice other than to comply. This can be done in all manner of ways: simply by human moderators removing content, by shadow-banning problematic creators to reduce their reach, by demonetising certain content, and by tweaking algorithms to favour or disfavour certain topics. And though, legally speaking, the DSA only applies in the EU, once installed inside Big Tech firms, this vast content-regulation apparatus will surely affect users in the rest of the world, too.

We are being told that these EU bureaucrats will also be working with “trusted flaggers” to help identify content that needs to be censored…

The DSA’s “trusted flaggers” are entities with proven expertise in flagging harmful or illegal content to platforms. The new regulation provides that their content flagging shall be prioritised by platforms when moderating content.

You might be tempted to think that you will be able to avoid all of this censorship because you do not live in Europe.
Unfortunately, that is simply not true.
If you post something that someone in Europe might see, your content comes under the jurisdiction of this horrifying new law.
So you need to brace yourself for a level of Internet censorship that none of us have ever seen before.
In addition, most of the large tech companies that must comply with this new law are based in the United States.
And it turns out that the Federal Trade Commission actually sent officials to Europe in March to assist with the implementation of this new law on U.S. soil…

U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today sent letters to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Lina Khan and the head of the European Union’s San Francisco office, demanding answers regarding the degree of coordination between the FTC and the EU to enforce the EU’s Digital Services Act (“DSA”) and Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) on U.S. soil. Both foreign laws were written to weaken American tech companies, particularly in Europe. There are no corollary federal laws to the DSA and DMA, making the FTC’s efforts to conspire with foreign regulators against U.S. businesses unprecedented.
The FTC announced in March that it was sending agency officials to Brussels to assist the EU in implementing these laws, while the EU opened a San Francisco office to pressure U.S tech companies to comply with them.

From this point forward, it is going to become much more difficult to share alternative views on the Internet.
Personally, there will be certain things that I will only be able to share in my books or with the paid subscribers of my Substack newsletter.
I am going to need to be more careful about what I share from now on, because if I say something publicly on the Internet that offends the bureaucrats in Europe, I could get into really big trouble.
And that is going to apply to every other independent journalist as well.
For a long time, the Internet allowed ordinary people like you and ordinary people like me to share truth with a world that was desperate for it.
But now the gatekeepers are exerting a draconian level of control, and the Internet will never, ever be the same again.

 

[Apollonian]

EU Tells Musk to Censor Pro-Palestine Content​

October 11, 2023 6:52 pm by CWR
by Chris Black

Link: https://citizenwatchreport.com/eu-tells-musk-to-censor-pro-palestine-content/

In a democracy, the government dictates what you’re allowed to read and talk about.

The Guardian:
The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk over the alleged disinformation about the Hamas attack on Israel, including fake news and “repurposed old images”, on X, which was formerly known as Twitter.

The logical thing to do would be to let them do the blackout, and then hope the people of this terrorist bloc demand they have some kind of freedom.

See also 'Online Safety Bill to become law in crackdown on harmful social media content'

But it would cost Elon a lot of money, and it is unlikely that anyone in Europe would be demanding anything.

See also Putin Tells The West: FAFO in Not So Many Words

Instead, it would make sense to just block all Israel and Palestine related content, because they are saying “you must force people to promote the Israel agenda,” which is not a reasonable thing for a social media company to do.

 

[Apollonian]

EU Opens Investigation Into X After Making Censorship Demands​

by Reclaim The Net
October 14th 2023, 4:30 am

Link: https://www.infowars.com/posts/eu-opens-investigation-into-x-after-making-censorship-demands/

The EU is escalating its censorship campaign.

Sparking serious concerns over severe censorship and free speech restrictions, the European Union has initiated a formal investigation into X, due to perceived misinformation related to the recent Hamas attack on Israel.

The potential risk of such probes is that they could lead to a world where a centralized authority determines the validity of opinions and controls information flow.

From the perspective of anti-censorship advocates, this move by the EU is a slippery slope.

The imperative question that arises is who gets to define “misinformation,” and how can it be ensured that bias or interests of the few do not influence these definitions?

This investigation marks the inaugural application of the Digital Services Act (DSA) – a controversial legislative effort purportedly aimed at policing Big Tech.

However, free speech advocates argue that this aggressive stance strays dangerously close to infringing on foundational rights to free expression.

In the wake of recent hostilities between Israel and Hamas, there’s been a substantial uptick in digital content related to the conflict, some containing graphic imagery. While the EU’s initiative is purportedly to quell misinformation, it raises the age-old question: where does one draw the line between censoring misinformation and infringing upon free speech?

Elon Musk, now at the helm of X, received a letter from EU commissioner Thierry Breton, signaling unease that the platform could be a conduit for what the EU deems “illegal content and disinformation.” In response, Musk advocated for transparency, inviting the EU to make public the alleged violations, thereby allowing the public to form their opinions. “Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports. Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that that [sic] the public can see them. Merci beaucoup,” Musk wrote.

Yet, Breton’s rejoinder was less than satisfactory for proponents of free discourse. He retorted, “You are well aware of your users’ — and authorities’— reports on fake content and glorification of violence. Up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk.” This statement underscores a problematic vagueness and subjectivity in determining what constitutes a gray area that poses a potential threat to free speech.

 

[Apollonian]

YouTube Censorship: Rogan, Jones, Timcast, The New American. Who’s Next, and How Much Should We Care?​

by Gary Benoit | The New American
April 19th 2024, 5:46 pm

Link: https://www.infowars.com/posts/yout...erican-whos-next-and-how-much-should-we-care/

[see vid at site link, above]

The censorship cartel isn’t able to suppress everything.


The Big Tech censorship cartel has struck again. On Wednesday, Tim Pool posted on X that “Youtube has declared war on Timcast IRL retroactively enforcing rules against our 2 biggest shows ever featuring @joerogan, @michaelmalice, and @RealAlexJones.” In the same post, Pool noted that “these shows were 3 years old” and that YouTube “gave bs reasons for the removal.”

But the censorship cartel isn’t able to suppress everything. In a separate post, Pool clarified that “Our biggest show was not on youtube, it’s on rumble.” Rumble, of course, has not engaged in the censorship that YouTube has, and has been properly awarded for its belief in freedom of speech by becoming an increasingly popular website.
X also has become a platform known for allowing opposing points of view since its purchase (before Twitter was renamed X) by Elon Musk. Interestingly, Pool’s post about the the removal of three-year-old shows quoted above had gotten almost 1 million views as of this writing. Obviously YouTube’s pathetic attempts to control what the people are allowed to view or know are not going unnoticed.
Many regular readers and viewers of The New American are aware that we too have been censored by YouTube. For years, that censorship directed at TNA included shadow-banning. Also, certain content was removed based on YouTube’s “misinformation” policy — with the policy interpreted broadly to include accurate information on Covid and other subjects that did not fit the establishment line. But in June 2023, YouTube went full-throttle in its censorship of The New American, banning us outright without explanation.
https://www.infowarsstore.com/catal...utm_medium=banner&utm_content=wintersunbanned
Our message to YouTube regarding this censorship? Well, that’s perfectly encapsulated in this short 18-second ad we did:
To be clear: The truth hurts those who attempt to wage war against it! Truth is eternal. It is enduring. It is a powerful weapon — much more powerful than the inferior substitutes of lies and deception the enemies of truth rely upon to wage their propaganda wars to beguile the masses.
The Deep State and media mavens attack and suppress the truth because they fully recognize that the truth will be their undoing should it become widely enough known. People do not want to be slaves to the power elites, and when they understand the true nature of the dystopian future planned for them — that it will not be bread and circuses but desolation and servitude — they will rebel against it.

YouTube and other social and major media censors cannot kill the truth, nor can they stop it from eventually coming out, no matter how hard they try. In the end, truth will triumph.