Social Media Trickery

Townhall.com ^ | August 22, 2018 | John Stossel

[Kaslin]

YouTube just added an "information panel" to all my videos about climate change.

We at Stossel TV do weekly videos on many controversial topics, but apparently YouTube thinks climate change is special.

The information panel seems benign -- just a link to a Wikipedia page about global warming -- and YouTube puts it on all climate change videos.

But Wikipedia's page was captured by activists. It's biased in favor of desperate alarmism. You'd have to read carefully to know that the billions we're spending now to fight climate change will make little difference.

The YouTube information panel doesn't mention the Climategate scandal in which scientists were accused of skewing data, ignores climate models that over-predicted warming, etc.

It basically says the science of climate change is settled.

Only near the very end does the YouTube information panel briefly mention skepticism from conservative and libertarian think tanks. But the editors don't let skeptics give reasons for their skepticism.

It's very one-sided.

In addition, adding these information panels is a form of bias. They don't add Wikipedia links on Bernie Sanders' ignorant videos on economics (this one would help, or this)

This is not a free speech issue because the First Amendment applies (and should apply) only to government censorship. YouTube is a private company (owned by Google) that can censor whatever it wants. We have several social media companies -- but just one government.

I'm glad Twitter purges robots and Facebook bans posts that call for direct violence (that's illegal, after all). But I worry when big media companies start policing content.

Recently, Facebook, YouTube, Apple Podcasts and others banned Alex Jones's network, InfoWars, for "hate speech."

Jones is an irresponsible jerk, but most sites didn't ban him for any specific thing he did recently. As Robby Soave writes on Reason.com, "We don't know which statements he made were deemed hateful, or why. We don't know if Jones is being singled out, or if anyone who said the things he said would be banned."

That's a problem.

Twitter permanently banned conservative commentator Gavin McInnes, saying he was "violating our policy prohibiting violent extremist groups."

McInnes founded a conservative group, and some of its members did attend racist rallies, something McInnes denounced. I cringe at things McInnes says. But he's not a racist. He's a defender of Western civilization.

Real extremists like Richard Spencer laughed about McInnes being banned on Twitter because McInnes often criticizes them.

McInnes suspects extremists like Spencer get to keep tweeting because they can so easily be dismissed or held up by the left to make the right look bad. Mainstream figures like McInnes are a bigger threat to Twitter liberals, he says.

"I'm not a violent extremist. I'm not even violent," McInnes says. "I'm just a Trump supporter who is fiscally conservative, socially liberal and refuses to kowtow to the PC left and their silly fads. That's more dangerous to the left."

Twitter never told McInnes what he did to warrant being banned, so we asked Twitter. They told us they have "nothing more to share at this time."

Another recent example: Facebook censored PragerU, a conservative outlet that posts dignified videos on topics like limited government.

Facebook "shadowbanned" PragerU's videos. That's when the user of a platform (PragerU) assumes posts reach viewers, but Facebook doesn't show the post to many people. Facebook tricked PragerU into thinking their messages were getting out.

Facebook later apologized, saying, "We mistakenly removed these videos ... We're very sorry and are continuing to look into what happened."

I suspect what happened is that leftist "content monitors" at Facebook decided that fewer conservative videos should be seen. Whatever Mark Zuckerberg says about his miraculous algorithms, censorship is generally done by humans.

Private media platforms have every right to decide who can use them. But the platforms are wrong to shut down people with whom they disagree.

President Trump took to Twitter this weekend to urge open and freewheeling debate, tweeting, "Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!"

Trump, despite his bluster in favor of strong libel laws, added, "Censorship is a very dangerous thing & absolutely impossible to police. If you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed."

The answer to bad speech is more speech. We're better off when people speak their minds.

[Da Coyote]

Heh, information panel indeed. I’d bet that I could give an elementary atmospheric absorption quiz to the perps of this “panel” to see how much they really know about CO2 absorption spectra, other gasses that absorb in the IR region, and some extinction lengths, and we’d get around a 1% pass rate.

[AAABEST]

“Information panels”... to be applied subjectively and arbitrarily... according to left-coasters trying to interfere in an election.

[Travis McGee]

[DiogenesLamp]

Here’s more!

[dforest]

Do good people realize yet what is going to have to happen to remain free? It is not pretty or anything we could have ever wanted.

[exDemMom]

I’d bet that I could give an elementary atmospheric absorption quiz to the perps of this “panel” to see how much they really know about CO2 absorption spectra, other gasses that absorb in the IR region, and some extinction lengths, and we’d get around a 1% pass rate.

Gee, I've studied that stuff, and I can't be sure I'd actually pass your quiz. It would be impossible for a non-scientist.

[palmer]

Thanks, that’s a good writeup and I’ve always like Stossel. It’s going to be difficult to regulate the social media sites that alter content like he described. If we disallowed alterations they would put the propaganda somewhere else that would be technically allowed. It would be whackamole to try to keep up with that even if we had the government on our side, which it won’t be.

[semimojo]

So now it’s not enough that they have to carry speech that they don’t agree with, they can’t even give their own opinion?

[a fool in paradise]

>>Private media platforms have every right to decide who can use them. But the platforms are wrong to shut down people with whom they disagree.

Bake the damn cake. None of their publicly stated policies are violated.

Also call the ‘fickless’ FEC as these are actions designed to influence elections by supressing something someone has to say. How much is this contribution worth to the Democrats?

[lapsus calami]

 

 

Dennis Prager made an interesting point the other day. He said if these sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. came out and said the ONLY speech they wanted on their sites would be from the Left, well, okey dokey then (though that would be ultimately awkward for the ones that are publicly traded), but yet they continue to push the narrative that they are not suppressing any speech, are neutral and objective - which is a lie and fraud.

 

 

[a fool in paradise]

Even still during an election year even commercial broadcasters have to offer a challenger equal time if they have a candidate on the air.

[semimojo]

It’s going to be difficult to regulate the social media sites that alter content like he described.

I don’t get what you mean about altering content.

All I see is that they provided a link to Wikipedia.

Now, if he’s complaining about the nature of Wiki I get it.

[usconservative]

Do good people realize yet what is going to have to happen to remain free? It is not pretty or anything we could have ever wanted.

See my tagline. I've had it for over 12 years now.

[usconservative]

Do good people realize yet what is going to have to happen to remain free? It is not pretty or anything we could have ever wanted.

See my tagline. I've had it for over 12 years now.

[I want the USA back]

Social media are run by leftists. They are using their facilities to suppress truth and promote lies.

[dsc]

Great meme, but what black person is willing to shake hands with a honkey-tonk redneck ofay gray dude these days?

[lapsus calami]

 

 

What's happening with the aforementioned sites is they are performing in-kind services in support of agenda driven political groups by attacking, defaming and deplatforming those who are not in agreement with those groups - they have discarded objectivity and aligned with and are now part of a specific political apparatus. There's been people running around this site posting stuff that it's 'their site, their rules' blah blah blah. Maybe once upon a time under normal circumstances - but these are not normal circumstances, not any more. That ship has long sailed.

 

 

[a fool in paradise]

Again, none of the so-called violations violate their rules. If they want to blame fraudulent reporting of violations by leftist users, isn’t that akin to “swatting” by registering false complaints? Is it enough to only restore content by Prager U that was banned or should the harasser see his own account banned?

There are attempts to monetize increased visibility, since only one side has to pay to restore their exposure, isn’t that a shakedown racket?

[lapsus calami]

 

 

their rules

 

One of the constructs they hide behind while committing their suppression and purges, all written in careful legalese.

 

 

There are attempts to monetize increased visibility, since only one side has to pay to restore their exposure, isn’t that a shakedown racket?

 

If not securities fraud. Interesting thing is that we have not heard any proactive stirring from investors and advertisers along that vein, so that is either an acceptable official policy or any thought of such action has itself been suppressed. If they had been operating against the deep state agenda, people would have been getting the Cohen/Manafort treatment left and right - you can bet your net worth on that.