Liberals just can’t abide competing points of view
By Kelly Riddell – The Washington Times – Thursday, November 24, 2016
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
What worries me the most about fake news, isn’t that it’s fake, it’s that it’s being used by the left to try to silence opposing views.
Take for example a story reported by the Los Angeles Times that included a professor who put together a Google document of “false, misleading, clickbait-y and satirical ‘news sources’” to help people “cleanse their newsfeeds of misinformation.”
The only problem with the list, was it included real news sites of which the professor simply didn’t agree. Conservative blogs, including Red State and The Blaze, were on the list, as was more centrist, but GOP-leaning Independent Journal Review (IJR). None of those sites are fake — they often just peddle in the real news purposely not covered by the mainstream media.
Zuckerberg reveals plans to address misinformation on Facebook
Posted yesterday by Kate Conger (@kateconger)
Facebook’s fake news problem persists, CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged last night.
He’d been dismissive about the reach of misinformation on Facebook, saying that false news accounted for less than one percent of all the posts on the social media network. But a slew of media reports this week have demonstrated that, although fake posts may not make up the bulk of the content on Facebook, they spread like wildfire — and Facebook has a responsibility to address it.
“We’ve made significant progress, but there is more work to be done,” Zuckerberg wrote, outlining several ways to address what he called a technically and philosophically complicated problem. He proposed stronger machine learning to detect misinformation, easier user reporting and content warnings for fake stories, while noting that Facebook has already taken action to eliminate fake news sites from its ad program.
Posted by Jonathan Levin Saturday, February 20, 2016 at 11:05am
Twitter, an invaluable news aggregator when properly run and used, has seemingly taken aim at conservatives and those advocating conservative causes.
In early January, Twitter stripped Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero on Twitter) of his “verification,” saying he violated the anti-harassment Terms of Service.
A verified account means the user has a little blue checkmark next to his or her user name. It is Twitter’s way of affirming to all other users that this is, in fact, the person he or she claims to be. It sounds like a small thing, but Twitter, like so much social media, is rife with accounts purporting to be or that just look like a real public figure.
That verification checkmark tells all the other users that a particular account is the real thing. Having a verified account can be a big draw and boost followers who are otherwise reluctant to be suckered or drawn in by fakes. Stripping verification takes that mark of legitimacy away. It is also a sort of peculiar way to punish violations of terms of service. Assuming @Nero actually violated the terms of service, is the account somehow no longer Yiannopoulos’s?
Of course not. More important, it is not at all obvious that @Nero violated the terms of service at all. Stipulate that he is a troll who relishes destroying the Left’s sacred cows and laughs at the resulting discomfiture. Stipulate even that it’s really not nice and consciously deprives people of their “safe spaces.” So what? Five minutes on twitter reveals death threats by and against every possible demographic. Terror accounts proliferate. Anti-Semitism is rampant.
Leaving these accounts untouched but de-verifying a public figure like @Nero for violating the Terms of Service in the course of his public persona is nonsensical. Other Twitter methods for stifling anti-PC thought have come to light.
Speaking with host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily, Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos discussed the suppression of conservative voices by Twitter on the social media platform.
“Why are you beating up Twitter, and why are you saying that Twitter trying to suppress conservative voices, and why is Twitter’s stock in a total free fall because Milo’s taking them on?” Bannon asked. “Are you a bigger, badder guy than Jack Dorsey?”
“Yeah, of course I am,” Yiannopoulos replied mischievously. “I’m absolute convinced that Twitter is embarking on a war against conservative points of view, a war against what we might call ‘Generation Trump,’ the dissident, mischievous voices of the new counter-cultural alternative right wing and libertarian youth.”
“Look at who Twitter employs,” he warned in reference to Twitter possibly influencing the 2016 presidential election. “You know, this guy used to work with Hillary, this guy used to work with Obama…”
“This is why Obama ran the tables with Google and with Facebook,” Bannon agreed. “Let’s talk about Facebook for a second. Why is Facebook suppressing voices in the continent of Europe about immigration. Why is Zuckerberg in bed with Merkel?”
Referring to the story of Facebook teaming up with the German government to censor debate over the influx of Middle Eastern migrants, Yiannopoulos said, “This is what the left does all over the world. They’ll take ridicule and criticism and they’ll rebrand it as abuse and harrassment or hate speech in some way.”
Civility in Public Discourse :This is truly getting ridiculous!
This party has to be broken up!
What’s next? Will the Village Council eventually vote to make it illegal to go so far as to raise one’s eyebrow in response to misbehavior by public officials? Does anyone remember the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 1790’s which made it illegal to publicly criticize the government? We don’t need a quasi-public civility panel composed in large part of non-residents to impose via subtle (or not-so-subtle) social intimidation tactics what was so clearly unconstitutional for the government to impose via the criminal code.
Do we really want the newly-elected Bergen County Executive telling us how to express ourselves in Ridgewood? This was a mistake for Mr. Tedesco to intrude on Ridgewood’s strictly local concerns. Tedesco should withdraw from the scheduled appearance immediately unless, of course, he plans to break out into a full-throated defense of the God-given free-speech rights held so dear by self-respecting Ridgewood residents (much to the chagrin of Mayor Aronsohn, who by now must be fed up with us “bitter clingers”).
Make no mistake, the North Jersey Media Group would like nothing more than to turn back the clock to a time when letters to the editor (never anonymous) and speaking at the public microphone (never anonymous) at public meetings were the only timely and reliable ways to get one’s point across to the wider public when attempting to register discontent as a resident or taxpayer with the activities (or unaccountable lack of activity) of local government. Anonymous commenting on local blogs, demonstrably on the increase both in terms of frequency and political effectiveness, is so clearly anathema to traditional news outlets (such as print newspapers) straining to prop up the remnants of the political power structure built up so carefully over time by the progressive elite. Accordingly, we in Ridgewood should not put up with people who live outside the Village seeking to impose their free-speech restriction ideas on us, whether they were invited to do so by our mayor, or not.
The steady march of technology, and the irrepressible desire of Americans to speak their minds freely and without fear of disproportionate political or personal retribution, is making things more and more difficult for progressive House Organs like the Record of Bergen County and The Ridgewood News to control the terms of political debate. And that, as Martha Stewart would say, “is a good thing!”
Map of US Shows How Your State’s Internet Speed Stacks Up Against the Rest
But in Akamai’s 2014 State of the Internet report, it becomes painfully clear that internet speeds in the United States lag compared to the rest of the world leaders. In fact, the United States doesn’t even fall into the top 10 in average connection speeds.
In the first quarter of 2014, Virginia’s average connection speed came in at 13.7 mbps – just more than half of the average speed of world leader South Korea:
Censorship: 38 journalism groups slam Obama’s ‘politically-driven suppression of news’
BY PAUL BEDARD | JULY 9, 2014 | 11:21 AM
In unprecedented criticism of the White House, 38 journalism groups have assailed the president’s team for censoring media coverage, limiting access to top officials and overall “politically-driven suppression of the news.”
In a letter to President Obama, the 38, led by the Society of Professional Journalists, said efforts by government officials to stifle or block coverage has grown for years and reached a high-point under his administration despite Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to provide transparency.
Worse, they said: As access for reporters has been cut off, the administration has opened the door to lobbyists, special interests and “people with money.”
And as a result, they wrote, Obama only has himself to blame for the current cynicism of his administration. “You need look no further than your own administration for a major source of that frustration – politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies. We call on you to take a stand to stop the spin and let the sunshine in,” wrote David Cuillier, president of SPJ.
The administration has dismissed similar charges from other journalism groups, notably the White House Correspondents’ Association, but the new letter sent Tuesday provided several examples of censorship and efforts to block reporter access. Among them:
• Officials blocking reporters’ requests to talk to specific staff people.
• Excessive delays in answering interview requests that stretch past reporters’ deadlines.
• Officials conveying information “on background” — refusing to give reporters what should be public information unless they agree not to say who is speaking.
• Federal agencies blackballing reporters who write critically of them.
“In many cases, this is clearly being done to control what information journalists — and the audience they serve — have access to. A survey found 40 percent of public affairs officers admitted they blocked certain reporters because they did not like what they wrote,” added the letter.
In addition to asking for openness, the groups demanded Obama create an ombudsman position to help clear away barriers to news coverage.
