All the news that’s available at this moment. Use discernment please.
Has the pandemic failed? Brushfires? Urban riots? Are we now declaring war on a new front – domestic censorship?
Is this the first shot?
Twitter says it’s cracking down on conspiracy-theory group ‘QAnon’ and has already reportedly removed 7,000 accounts
Sarah Al-Arshani and Tyler Sonnemaker, Business Insider, July 21, 2020
(https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-cracking-down-on-conspiracy-theory-group-qanon-2020-7)
- Twitter will start cracking down this week on “so-called ‘QAnon’ activity” on the platform, the company said in a tweet Tuesday.
- Twitter said it would take a variety of actions, including suspending accounts that violate its “multi-account” policy, coordinate abuse against individuals, or try to evade previous suspensions.
- It will also stop recommending “QAnon” accounts or showing “QAnon”-related content in trends as well as de-emphasizing them in searches and conversations.
- Twitter has taken action against a number of bot networks and misinformation campaigns in recent months as pressure mounts on social media companies to address manipulative and harmful content.
[Going to Business Insider produces no articles on the banning of Q Anon.]
Twitter to suspend 150,000 accounts tweeting QAnon conspiracy theories
NewsHub, NZ, July 22, 2020 (Reuters)
(https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/07/twitter-to-suspend-150-000-accounts-tweeting-qanon-conspiracy-theories.html)
Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it would permanently suspend accounts that violate its policies while tweeting about QAnon, a fringe group that claims ‘deep-state’ traitors are plotting against US President Donald Trump.
Twitter, which announced the change on its Twitter Safety page, said it would not serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in trends and recommendations, and would block URLs associated with the group from being shared on the platform.
The suspension, which will be rolled out this week, is expected to impact about 150,000 accounts globally, Twitter said.
It said that more than 7000 accounts have been removed in the last several weeks for violating the company’s rules against spam, platform manipulation and ban evasion.
The suspensions will be applied to accounts “engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension – something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks,” Twitter said.
In online conspiracies, the term ‘deep-state’ is used to refer to a combination of elites from the intelligence, political, business and entertainment fields, with QAnon’s theories claiming that the ‘deep-state’ is at a secret war with Trump.
QAnon has also claimed that Democratic Party members are behind international crime rings.
The group’s content has spread widely on mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. Earlier this year, Facebook removed a US network of fake accounts linked to QAnon.
Last year, the FBI issued a warning about “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists” and designated QAnon as a potential domestic extremist threat.
Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship
Issued on:
(https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/)
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. Free speech is the bedrock of American democracy. Our Founding Fathers protected this sacred right with the First Amendment to the Constitution. The freedom to express and debate ideas is the foundation for all of our rights as a free people.
In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet. This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power. They cease functioning as passive bulletin boards, and ought to be viewed and treated as content creators.
The growth of online platforms in recent years raises important questions about applying the ideals of the First Amendment to modern communications technology. Today, many Americans follow the news, stay in touch with friends and family, and share their views on current events through social media and other online platforms. As a result, these platforms function in many ways as a 21st century equivalent of the public square.
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.
As President, I have made clear my commitment to free and open debate on the internet. Such debate is just as important online as it is in our universities, our town halls, and our homes. It is essential to sustaining our democracy.
Online platforms are engaging in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse. Tens of thousands of Americans have reported, among other troubling behaviors, online platforms “flagging” content as inappropriate, even though it does not violate any stated terms of service; making unannounced and unexplained changes to company policies that have the effect of disfavoring certain viewpoints; and deleting content and entire accounts with no warning, no rationale, and no recourse.
Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias. As has been reported, Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politician’s tweet. As recently as last week, Representative Adam Schiff was continuing to mislead his followers by peddling the long-disproved Russian Collusion Hoax, and Twitter did not flag those tweets. Unsurprisingly, its officer in charge of so-called ‘Site Integrity’ has flaunted his political bias in his own tweets.
At the same time online platforms are invoking inconsistent, irrational, and groundless justifications to censor or otherwise restrict Americans’ speech here at home, several online platforms are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments like China. One United States company, for example, created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party that would have blacklisted searches for “human rights,” hid data unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, and tracked users determined appropriate for surveillance. It also established research partnerships in China that provide direct benefits to the Chinese military. Other companies have accepted advertisements paid for by the Chinese government that spread false information about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities, thereby enabling these abuses of human rights. They have also amplified China’s propaganda abroad, including by allowing Chinese government officials to use their platforms to spread misinformation regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
As a Nation, we must foster and protect diverse viewpoints in today’s digital communications environment where all Americans can and should have a voice. We must seek transparency and accountability from online platforms, and encourage standards and tools to protect and preserve the integrity and openness of American discourse and freedom of expression.
(Read more: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/.)