Posted on 12/11/2023 2:43:57 AM PST by george76
Half a century ago, George Orwell, writing on literary censorship, wrote that “unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.”
That dynamic now broadly extends to an opaque network of government agencies and self-proclaimed anti-misinformation groups that have repressed online speech.
There’s no official ban on discussing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines or criticizing American involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war, but editors and journalists have realized that writing on such topics can come at a cost.
News publishers have been demonetized and shadow-banned for reporting dissenting views and the bureaucratic means for enforcing this form of control are under increasing scrutiny.
NewsGuard, a for-profit company that scores news websites on trust and works closely with government agencies and major corporate advertisers, exemplifies the problem.
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Such an endeavor might appear as an objective public service, but the devil is in the details.
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the founders of NewsGuard privately pitched the firm to clients as a tool to engage in content moderation on an industrial scale, applying artificial intelligence to take down certain forms of speech.
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Pentagon’s $749,387 contract with NewsGuard to identify “false narratives” regarding the war between Ukraine and Russia, among other forms of foreign influence.
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The issue may rest, ultimately, with a decision from the Supreme Court. Next year, the high court is scheduled to take up Missouri v. Biden, a sweeping case that will decide how and when the government can step in to shape content decisions on social media platforms.
The Louisiana judge who first ruled on the subject noted that the federal government appears to have “assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,” a role that is plainly not in the constitution.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
On a local forum, I used “Ministry of Truth” as my screen name—using an avatar of a Soviet-Era “beehive” apartment building.
NewsGuard Technologies was founded in 2018 by Steven Brill and L. Gordon Crovitz, who serve as co-CEOs. Investors include the Knight Foundation, Publicis, and former Reuters executive of Tom Glocer.
Its advisors include former officials such as Tom Ridge, former homeland security secretary, Richard Stengel, former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, Michael Hayden, former CIA director general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO chief, as well as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
NewsGuard approved sites include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BuzzFeed. Sites labeled as unreliable include InfoWars, the Daily Kos, Sputnik, RT, WikiLeaks, and Fox News.
FTA:
“NewsGuard, a for-profit company that scores news websites on trust and works closely with government agencies and major corporate advertisers, exemplifies the problem.”
How is this NOT Fascism, as defined by Mussolini?
“But perhaps the greatest danger is posed by NewsGuard’s extensive ties to the government. Internal documents I obtained through the “Twitter Files” show that the founders of NewsGuard privately pitched the firm to clients as a tool to engage in content moderation on an industrial scale, applying artificial intelligence to take down certain forms of speech.”
Be careful what you write online, comrade. You are being watched.
tool to engage in content moderation
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...is that anything like a
narrative control cubicle ?
..asking for a freind .
They are nearly correct on the unreliable ones, but most people already knew thlose sites are garbage. Where they went wrong was listing unreliable media as “reliable” when they are, often as not, everun bit as kooky as the blacklisted media sites.
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