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Since journalists, publishers and users would raise a hue and cry over their content being censored, Facebook simply carries out its censorship in secret. By blocking distribution on the Facebook news feed, the company’s actions have the same effect as simply deleting content, but without any legal proof that the company violated its users’ First Amendment rights.
While Facebook is the only technology company that has spelled out these actions with such directness, Google and Twitter have both admitted, via legal representatives in congressional testimony that they follow a similar policy to suppress “fake news”—i.e., oppositional viewpoints.
This is a material change from what this section stated as recently as November 2, when the section read “We believe in freedom of expression and in speaking truth to power"... with believing in "speaking truth to power" replaced with "open dialogue."
RT was thereby forced to reveal some details of the 2016 negotiations during which Twitter representatives made an exclusive multi-million dollar advertising proposal to spend big during the US presidential election, which was turned down.
Having since been banned, and in order to set the record straight, we are publishing Twitter’s presentation and details of the offer in full.
Brian Becker and John Kiriakou of Sputnik Radio's Loud & Clear spoke to journalist and author Max Blumenthal and former Assistant Attorney General of the United States Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer, to discuss Twitter's announcement....
Assange told his 439,000 Twitter followers on Friday that he is looking for a “decentralized/cryptographic alternative” to the social media giant.…
Twitter’s freedom of expression has been on an inexorable decline. It’s enslaved to its US jurisdiction and politics. Although it is substantially better than Facebook that is a very low standard indeed,” Assange said online.
The inevitable result of politicization is loss of credibility and creation of alternatives.
Not to mention that Twitter and FaceBook and most of social media constitute a gigantic waste of time.
According to reports, NBC posted a teaser on Twitter on Friday in which Modi praised a picture of Kelly posing with an umbrella. Clearly surprised by his use of the microblogging site, she asked the prime minister, “Are you on Twitter?” Modi laughed off her question.
With over 30.3 million followers, Modi is the third most followed politician on Twitter.
"Many US media outlets work in Russia, including television channels, they have the same rights and opportunities as the other outlets. If the unprecedented pressure on RT from US media and social networks leads to restrictions on the work of the Russian channel, we will have to prepare an active response," Alexander Zharov told RIA Novosti.
A recent decision of Facebook to temporarily ban the RT broadcaster from uploading videos, images and links to its page on the social network has followed a complaint filed by one of the projects of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the RT press service said Thursday, citing a notification from Facebook….
Ben Thompson mentions the fake news in the mainstream media like the New York Times, citing the Judy Miller fake news about Saddam's manufacture and possession of WMD. He fails to mention the ongoing stream of propaganda in the mainstream as fake news about what is going on the in the world as part of an information war. The New York Times and the Washington Post are poster child examples in their promotion of liberal interventionism based on questionable if not bogus sources as if it were well-verified, for instance.
Glaring in its omission also is the fake news about economics and finance that promotes economic ideology justifying rent-seeking based on so-called laws of economics and "sophisticated" modeling.
Chinese social media giant Sina Weibo overtook its U.S. counterpart Twitter in market capitalization for the first time ever during trading on Monday.
Nasdaq-listed Sina Weibo saw its market value rise to about 11.32 billion U.S. dollars at one point during trading on Monday, while that for Twitter, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, stood at about 11.22 billion U.S. dollars at the same time. It is the first time the Chinese microblog service has outperformed its U.S. counterpart in market cap,
Twitter has blocked users accused of 'harassing' accounts linked to ISIS. Meanwhile, hackers have revealed that Twitter handles used by ISIS can be traced back to Saudi Arabia -- and the British government. Surprise?…
The bigger problem is that they’ve abandoned interoperability. RSS, semantic markup, microformats, and open APIs all enable interoperability, but the big players don’t want that — they want to lock you in, shut out competitors, and make a service so proprietary that even if you could get your data out, it would be either useless (no alternatives to import into) or cripplingly lonely (empty social networks).
Google resisted this trend admirably for a long time and was very geek- and standards-friendly, but not since Facebook got huge enough to effectively redefine the internet and refocus Google’s plans to be all-Google+, all the time.4 The escalating three-way war between Google, Facebook, and Twitter — by far the three most important web players today — is accumulating new casualties every day at our expense.
Google Reader is just the latest casualty of the war that Facebook started, seemingly accidentally: the battle to own everything.
Micro-blogging service unveils shift in policy as it seeks to expand into new territories and expand its user base.
The micro-blogging service, Twitter, has announced that it has altered the technology behind the service to allow for country-specific censorship of messages.
The announcement comes as the San Francisco, USA-based company makes a push to expand into new territories hoping to increase their 100 million active user base and generate more money.
Selling the human spirit of freedom to the devil for filthy lucre. Sad.
Twitter follows Google:
Twitter says it has authored the new feature with transparency in mind. In a move similar to search engine Google, Twitter says it "will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld."
Though Twitter says it has yet to utilise the feature, it, like Google, will share removal requests from companies, individuals, and governments on the website.
Opposition to NDAA has upped the ante significantly. The concurrent trial of Bradley Manning, and the threat to implicate Julian Assange is adding fuel to the fire. Is widespread civil disobedience and economic pressure the nest step for the gathering movement?
That is the heart and soul of the U.S. Government’s framework: we can do what we want, in total secrecy and with no checks, including to U.S. citizens, and you don’t need to know anything about it and we need no checks: you should just trust us.
Has any government earned that trust? Silly me, I thought this was exactly what liberal democracy was designed to avoid. Oh, and isn't liberal democracy the sine qua non of "free market capitalism"? That's what I was taught anyway.
UPDATE:
Read it at CounterPunch America’s Silent Collapse
by Sam Smith, editor at the Progressive Review. He is the author of The Great American Repair Manual.
One of the curiosities of being chronically ahead of the mainstream is that periodically you suddenly discover that you’re not. For example, over the past decade I’ve putting forth the notion, seemingly bizarre to many, that the First American Republic was over and that we had moved into a post constitutional adhocracy. Lately, however, the idea seems to be becoming increasingly mundane, almost like saying, “Geez, that was a lot of rain we had.”
But when did it shift from being a radical thought to becoming so inevitable? I don’t remember people debating it on corporate TV, writing about it in the NY Times, arguing it in a campaign speech, or analyzing it in a professorial paper. It just happened. The most important development in our nation’s history since the Civil War crept into the room like a shy new guest. And somewhere in between, radical conjecture transformed itself into the norm.
UPDATE:
Read it at CounterPunch Raging Against the Machine
by David Michael Green, professor of political science at Hofstra University
If it feels to you a bit reminiscent of 1968 these days, that’s because it is.
And that’s a good thing.
It’s starting to look like 2011 was the year of Basta!, when people finally woke up and found the voice with which to say Enough!
These are all knock your socks of postings, and they show that this is 1968 redux. This is just the beginning of it, and it is going to have far-reaching social, political and economic consequences. Even if the protestors don't "win" a decisive victory, these experiences will shape the upcoming generation, expecially the millennials and post-millennials, and through them shape the future course of history as they accede to power with the passage of the silent generation and the boomers.
Bishop George Packard in full dress Episcopal bishop's uniform first over the fence, followed by Trinity clergy. Then busted. Bishop Packard was a military chaplain who served in Iraq.
An open letter from Archbishop Desmond Tutu to New York's Trinity Church urges the church to allow the Occupy protest in Duarte Park, which is owned by the Episcopalian parish:
"This is truly a theological line in the sand," Ellick said in a recent release. "The gospel is about real-world transformation, not cosmetic charity. How is it that Trinity's real estate is worth over 10 billion dollars, and all they can do for Occupy is hand out hot chocolate?"
