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Here’s How Big Tech Plans To Rig The 2022 Midterms
The Federalist ^ | SEPTEMBER 14, 2022 | Victoria Marshall

Posted on 09/15/2022 6:30:31 AM PDT by george76

Through its censorship, Big Tech controls the flow of information that informs voters and impacts elections.

As the 2022 midterms loom, big tech companies are again announcing their plans to meddle in U.S. elections by censoring news and information. Social media censorship ramped up dramatically following President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, leading to companies such as Twitter and Facebook colluding with Democrat operatives in intelligence agencies to censor and suppress factual stories that harmed then-candidate Joe Biden during his 2020 campaign.

Two years later, following heavy documentation of the meddling, big tech companies are intent on using the same strategy. And they’re openly admitting as much.

Facebook ..

Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta — Facebook’s parent company — wrote in a blog post that Facebook’s approach to the 2022 midterms will be “largely consistent with the policies and safeguards” from 2020.

Posts rated as false or partly false by one of Facebook’s 11 so-called “fact-checkers” will receive a label titled “false information,” causing their outreach to be dramatically limited. During the 2020 election, NeverTrump outlet The Dispatch — one of the fact-checkers — published an inaccurate “fact-check” that shut down public communications from pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List just weeks before the election.

Lead Stories, one of Facebook’s many left-wing “fact check” censors, is partly funded by the Democratic National Committee as well as Beijing-based ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok. In 2020, Lead Stories was responsible for censoring The Federalist’s own correct reporting about the Georgia election. After The Federalist criticized Lead Stories for its fake “fact-checking,” it was censored again.

While accurate stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop were never fact-checked, their reach was also limited in 2020, as Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan. According to Zuckerberg, the FBI pressured Facebook to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story by falsely claiming it was Russian disinformation.

Such collusion between the intelligence community and Facebook is sure to continue: in its 2022 Factsheet outlining its approach to the U.S. midterms, the company writes that it will be “working with federal government partners including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as local and state election officials and industry peers, to make sure we’re all preparing for different scenarios.”

While discussing their approach to the midterms with The New York Times, Facebook employees said the company will take a “greater interest” in censoring information that it claims could lead to “real-world violence” like the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

According to internal documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook’s Disaggregating Harmful Networks Taskforce tracks hundreds of thousands of users and pages that could “distribute potentially harmful content.” Once Facebook employees identify a “dangerous information corridor” — networks of accounts, pages, and groups — they work to undermine it, usually by removing popular accounts or severely restricting users’ ability to transmit information. This is the same strategy Facebook applied when it censored more than 700,000 “Stop the Steal” supporters after the Jan 6. riot.

Yet Facebook took no action against the Democrat-funded and coordinated operation to question the legitimacy of the 2016 election by falsely accusing Donald Trump of being a traitor who stole the election by colluding with Russia. That lie, which led to mass public hysteria and years of investigations, is allowed free rein on its platform. Facebook’s so-called “fact-checkers” included journalists who participated in spreading the lie or otherwise allowed it to continue without censorship via fact-checking.

Despite this open political double standard, an internal memo from the task force claimed “an individual can question election results. But when it’s amplified by a movement, it can damage democracy. There is harm in the way movements shift norms and an understanding of collective truth.”

Twitter ..

In August, Twitter announced it would begin enforcing its “Civic Integrity Policy” for the 2022 midterms. This means taking “action against misleading claims about the voting process, misleading content intended to intimidate or dissuade people from participating in the election, or misleading claims that may undermine public confidence in elections outcomes.”

Like Facebook, Twitter will label what it claims is “false or misleading” information as misinformation. Once labeled, such content will not be distributed by the company’s algorithms. Twitter may also remove “false or misleading” tweets entirely.

“In cases where there is potential for harm associated with the false or misleading claim, the Tweet may not be liked or shared to prevent the spread of the misleading information,” a company blog post reads. Such a policy is unlikely to apply to disinformation from the left. For example, during the 2020 election, Twitter refused to censor viral tweets pushing misinformation about USPS mailboxes that negatively affected the right.

Ironically — as Federalist Senior Editor John Daniel Davidson notes – Twitter was probably the single greatest source of disinformation during the 2020 election. Just weeks before the election, the social media company worked overtime to censor The New York Post’s story on First Son Hunter Biden’s laptop, even locking the Post’s account and those of other users’ who tried to distribute it.

As such, Twitter “brazenly hid a story from its users that, had they seen it, would have been quite damaging to Biden and certainly would have caused some people to change their votes,” Davidson wrote. Davidson was later deplatformed by Twitter for saying scientifically accurate truths about biological distinctions between men and women. Twitter routinely bans effective communicators who question left-wing narratives pushed by its company and other activists.

Of course, no censorship comes close to the level of Twitter (and Facebook) banning then-President Trump, leader of the Republican Party, from their platforms after the Jan. 6 riot — effectively cutting off communication from the president of the United States to his supporters and the rest of the country.

TikTok..

Arguably the most popular social network in America right now, TikTok announced that it would also be countering so-called election misinformation through its Elections Center, a segment of the app that will “connect people who engage with election content to authoritative information and sources in more than 45 languages.”

As Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky reported, this gives the Chinese-owned social media company access to the voting profiles of all American users who opt to use TikTok’s Elections Center. As TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is connected to the Chinese Communist Party, TikTok’s Elections Center “will put detailed voter profiles in the hands of a company based in Beijing, stocked with party members and state employees, subject to laws that allow the Chinese government data access.”

As Jashinsky notes, China could influence the midterm elections using this data, as well as censoring American public discourse in favor of the Chinese Communist Party’s geopolitical ambitions by either fomenting public discord or undermining anti-CCP politicians under the guise of “combatting misinformation.”

YouTube..

YouTube was the last major social media platform to announce that it, too, had a plan to combat misinformation leading up to November’s general election.

In a Sept. 1 blog post, the company wrote that searches for midterm-related videos will prioritize “content coming from authoritative national and local news sources like PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal, Univision and local ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates,” although many of these corporate media outlets possess a heavy left-wing bias. Any content deemed “borderline” misinformation will be prevented from being widely distributed.

YouTube also claimed it will remove “election content that violates our policies,” including “misleading voters on how to vote, encouraging interference in the democratic process, inciting violence, or advancing certain types of election misinformation,” which includes “election integrity” content.

While this policy will be enforced regardless of “political viewpoint,” the company emphasized that videos “claiming widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, or alleging the election was stolen or rigged” would violate its policies. YouTube allows members of the Democrat Party to continue using its platform to claim elections it loses are rigged or stolen.

Snapchat..

Democratic organizations were accidentally granted access to a trove of Republican voter data on Snapchat, enabling them to hone their political ads leading up to the 2022 midterms. As Federalist Staff Writer Shawn Fleetwood reports, a “slip-up” by Snapchat gave groups such as the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’ gubernatorial campaign access to voter data by Republican-aligned firm i360. Such groups used the data to create targeted political ads to sway voters.

While Snapchat claims it is working to rectify such supposedly accidental data sharing, “the blunder underscores the sensitivities surrounding reams of voter data that have become a highly valuable political commodity,” Axios writes.

While the data breach affected both Republican and Democrat data firms, the data’s “use by political groups was significantly more prolific on the Democratic side.”

What This Means..

Much like in 2020, Big Tech companies are actively censoring information they deem harmful to their official narrative or preferred candidates. By falsely labeling factual information from conservatives “misinformation,” such companies have the power to control the flow of information that informs voters and rig elections in their favor.

It’s been heavily reported that companies like Facebook and Twitter have colluded with the Biden administration to censor information related to Covid-19. As the Biden administration already has plans to massively influence the 2022 midterms, they and other Democrats will continue to collude with big tech to swing high-stakes congressional races come November.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bigtech; censorship; elections; facebook; google; meta; twitter; voters; youtube

1 posted on 09/15/2022 6:30:31 AM PDT by george76
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To: george76

Quote:

“Much like in 2020, Big Tech companies are actively censoring information they deem harmful to their official narrative or preferred candidates.

By falsely labeling factual information from conservatives ‘misinformation,’ such companies have the power to control the flow of information that informs voters and rig elections in their favor.

It’s been heavily reported that companies like Facebook and Twitter have colluded with the Biden administration to censor information related to Covid-19.

As the Biden administration already has plans to massively influence the 2022 midterms, they and other Democrats will continue to collude with big tech to swing high-stakes congressional races come November.”


2 posted on 09/15/2022 6:33:23 AM PDT by Dr. Scarpetta ( )
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To: Dr. Scarpetta

All true of course, but at the same time the Republicans aren’t doing much in terms of laying out an agenda to motivate people to vote for them. This is another epic failure by the gang than can’t shoot straight.


3 posted on 09/15/2022 6:39:43 AM PDT by Starboard
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To: george76

I said it once and I’ll say it again. When the she-devil plastic Botox bitch comes out and guarantees a win in the midterm elections y’all better take note. The fix is in again! She did the same crap in 2020 and guaranteed a win and sure enough…she; the globalists along with some RINOS knew the massive fraud was about to take place. Almost all the columns are checked …all they’re waiting for is their coordinated October surprise to spring Loose!


4 posted on 09/15/2022 6:45:17 AM PDT by RoseofTexas
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To: george76

It’s worse than anyone knows. Do a search with GOP in it. Now do the same search with Democrat in it. You will be stunned


5 posted on 09/15/2022 6:58:48 AM PDT by iamgalt
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To: george76

Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
—Psalm 10

and

The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
—Psalm 33

I’m leaving this stuff in God’s hands. He always catches up to the plotters, and we seem to be left high and dry by “our” reps. They love $$$ and they, too, will answer for it.


6 posted on 09/15/2022 7:00:36 AM PDT by avenir (Information overload = Pattern recognition)
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To: george76

They are attempting to undermine our political system in an attempt to overthrow our government. There should be consequences. And it should start at the top of each of these organizations.

Liberals protests the homes of conservatives. Why are these people above being called out? I am not saying go to their homes (conservatives are more civil and most have jobs) but there should be protests at their organizations.


7 posted on 09/15/2022 7:06:10 AM PDT by boycott
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To: RoseofTexas

Hard to disagree. Pelosi shows no concern whatsoever. If we don’t get the house in the midst of this dumpster fire we will know it is truly over. The country is California


8 posted on 09/15/2022 7:13:54 AM PDT by iamgalt
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To: iamgalt
Do a search with GOP in it. Now do the same search with Democrat in it. You will be stunned.

No, really I won't. The Left has a strangle-hold on the Big Tech companies. We've known this since 2014 at least when Brandon Eich was forced out of Mozilla for the "crime" of donating to a pro-traditional marriage group.
9 posted on 09/15/2022 7:17:08 AM PDT by Antoninus (Republicans are all honorable men.)
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To: Dr. Scarpetta

Y’know, long ago, or maybe not not so long ago, I remember the Electronic Frontier Foundation telling me how computers and the Internet were going to be forces for Freedom...
Boy, did they they miss that one!


10 posted on 09/15/2022 7:26:06 AM PDT by Little Ray (Civilization runs on a narrow margin. What sustains it is not magic, but hard work. )
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To: Starboard

It seems like the entire Republican agenda is “Joe Biden Bad, ban abortion everywhere”.


11 posted on 09/15/2022 7:54:40 AM PDT by Republican in occupied CA (I will not give up on my native State! Here I was born, here I fight and die!!)
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To: george76

Big Tech controls the flow of information that informs voters and impacts elections.

Flow of information not required when all one has to do is look around what’s going on.

Big Tech and democrat party only show how stupid some people are stupid when they help get people like Biden elected.


12 posted on 09/15/2022 8:16:02 AM PDT by Vaduz ( )
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To: Republican in occupied CA

It seems like the entire Republican agenda is “Joe Biden Bad, ban abortion everywhere”.

**********

So many strong issues to run on and yet the GOP offers so little to its voters in terms of actions and results. Situation normal.


13 posted on 09/15/2022 8:20:44 AM PDT by Starboard
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To: Starboard

Republicans - We Suck Less!


14 posted on 09/15/2022 8:21:57 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: george76
(Big Tech)

"Trust your instincts our algorithms"

15 posted on 09/15/2022 8:25:03 AM PDT by RckyRaCoCo (Please Pray For My Brother Ken.)
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To: Starboard
So many strong issues to run on and yet the GOP offers so little to its voters in terms of actions and results.

It's because the Republican politicians have only one goal, to stay in office for personal gain and benefit. We mistake them for a political party with principles that they support and that they will take aggressive action on these principles because then they would be representing their constituency.

16 posted on 09/15/2022 8:25:39 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
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To: 1Old Pro

We mistake them for a political party with principles

**************

It is a soulless party devoid of any convictions. It really doesn’t stand for anything other than (as you say) stay in office for personal gain and benefit.

It is also a weak party that enables the Democrats’ radicalism, lawlessness and abuses. The Democrats do not respect or fear the GOP one bit. And why should they?


17 posted on 09/15/2022 9:03:36 AM PDT by Starboard
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To: george76

Gee, I feel so left out. I don’t use any of the Big Tech companies except for my Android (Google) cell phone. And I have texting turned off on that.


18 posted on 09/15/2022 9:12:37 AM PDT by upchuck (The longer I remain unjabbed with the clot-shot, the more evidence I see supporting my decision.)
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H E L P
19 posted on 09/15/2022 9:27:05 AM PDT by deport
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