Nazi Propaganda and Censorship Once they succeeded in ending democracy and turning Germany into a one-party dictatorship, the Nazis orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to win the loyalty and cooperation of Germans. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry, directed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, took control of all forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints in any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or eliminated from all media.

During the spring of 1933, Nazi student organizations, professors, and librarians made up long lists of books they thought should not be read by Germans. Then, on the night of May 10, 1933, Nazis raided libraries and bookstores across Germany. They marched by torchlight in nighttime parades, sang chants, and threw books into huge bonfires. On that night more than 25,000 books were burned. Some were works of Jewish writers, including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Most of the books were by non-Jewish writers, including such famous Americans as Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Sinclair Lewis, whose ideas the Nazis viewed as different from their own and therefore not to be read.

The Nazi censors also burned the books of Helen Keller, who had overcome her deafness and blindness to become a respected writer; told of the book burnings, she responded: "Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas." Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States protested the book burnings, a clear violation of freedom of speech, in public rallies in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis.

Schools also played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas. While some books were removed from classrooms by censors, other textbooks, newly written, were brought in to teach students blind obedience to the party, love for Hitler, and antisemitism. After-school meetings of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls trained children to be faithful to the Nazi party. In school and out, young people celebrated such occasions as Adolf Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of his taking power.

December 5, 1930Joseph Goebbels disrupts premiere of filmIn Berlin, Joseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitlers top deputies, and Storm Troopers (SA) disrupt the premiere of "All Quiet on the Western Front," a film based on the novel of the same title by Erich Maria Remarque. Nazi protestors throw smoke bombs and sneezing powder to halt the film. Members of the audience who protest the disruption are beaten. The novel had always been unpopular with the Nazis, who believed that its depiction of the cruelty and absurdity of war was "un-German." Ultimately, the film will be banned. Remarque will emigrate to Switzerland in 1931, and the Nazis, after coming to power, will revoke his German citizenship in 1938.

March 13, 1933 Joseph Goebbels heads Reich Propaganda MinistryJoseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitler's most trusted associates, is appointed to head the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. This agency controls the writing and broadcast of all media (newspapers, radio programs, and movies) as well as public entertainment and cultural programs (theater, art, and music). Goebbels integrates Nazi racism and ideas into the media.

May 10, 1933 Joseph Goebbels speaks at book burning in BerlinForty thousand people gather to hear German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels speak in Berlin's Opera Square. Goebbels condemns works written by Jews, liberals, leftists, pacifists, foreigners, and others as "un-German." Nazi students begin burning books. Libraries across Germany are purged of "censored" books. Goebbels proclaims the "cleansing of the German spirit."

Read the original here:

Nazi Propaganda and Censorship | The Holocaust Encyclopedia

Drew Brees, New Orleans Saints quarterback, who has a charity that feeds the needy and helps sick kids, was berated until he apologized for his own personal views about kneeling during the National Anthem:

I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country. Let me just tell what I see or what I feel when the National Anthem is played and when I look at the flag of the United States. I envision my two grandfathers, who fought for this country during World War II, one in the Army and one in the Marine Corps. Both risking their lives to protect our country and to try to make our country and this world a better place. So every time I stand with my hand over my heart looking at that flag and singing the National Anthem, thats what I think about. And in many cases, that brings me to tears, thinking about all that has been sacrificed. Not just those in the military, but for that matter, those throughout the civil rights movements of the 60s, and all that has been endured by so many people up until this point. And is everything right with our country right now? No, it is not. We still have a long way to go. But I think what you do by standing there and showing respect to the flag with your hand over your heart, is it shows unity. It shows that we are all in this together, we can all do better and that we are all part of the solution.

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, activist, attacked online and by GLAAD because she objected to the phrase people who menstruate rather than woman:

If sex isnt real, theres no same-sex attraction. If sex isnt real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isnt hate to speak the truth.

The idea that women like me, whove been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because theyre vulnerable in the same way as women i.e., to male violence hate trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences isnonsense.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), in a column that the New York Times published, then apologized for after a staff backlash:

But the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence. On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyds death for their own anarchic purposes.

These rioters, if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives. Many poor communities that still bear scars from past upheavals will be set back still further.

One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do whats necessary to uphold the rule of law.

Andrew Sullivan, iconoclastic columnist, not appearing this week in New York magazine. His thoughts (on Twitter) about the Times apology:

Not just a capitulation. A total surrender. The groveling for running a provocative op-ed by a sitting senator expressing an opinion I do not share but is widely supported is instructive. But groveling wont appease the social justice mob.

Each time they notch a victory, they move the goalposts. The NYT editors have effectively ceded their authority permanently. A woke committee already vets everything. Now it will be super-charged. And readers now know this is no longer a paper dedicated to the truth.

Its a newspaper run by those who believe truth is a mask for power, that dissent is oppression, that liberalism is a mask for white supremacy, that words are violence, and that open debate is a racist fiction. We all live on campus now.

Polls show these opinions are ones with which most Americans agree. Liberals dont want to change minds, to have a debate; they want to banish the argument. The things that youre not allowed to say. And then theyll bemoan that we live in a fragmented society, where people retreat to their bubbles, and theyll be shocked when the next election doesnt go the way they think.

The Post Editorial Board

Excerpt from:

Things you're not allowed to say: lowlights of the new censorship - New York Post

Its official: criticising Black Lives Matter is now a sackable offence, even here in the British Isles, thousands of miles away from the social conflict currently embroiling the US. As protesters again fill the streets of a rainy London on Saturday, as part of a now internationalised backlash against the brutal police killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, those who criticise them do so at their peril as two men have recently found out.

Stu Peters, a presenter on Manx Radio, has been suspended, pending an investigation, for an on-air exchange with a black caller. He said nothing racist, you can read the transcriptfor yourself. What he did was rubbish the idea of white privilege: I've had no more privilege in my life than you have. And he questioned the wisdom of staging a protest on the Isle of Man against a killing in Minnesota: You can demonstrate anywhere you like, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

For this, he has been taken off air. ManxRadio has even referred the exchange to the Isle of Mans Communications Commission to assess whether any broadcast codes have been broken. And for what? He took issue with the idea that skin colour confers privilege, regardless of any other consideration: a mad ideology whose adherents will actuallyreadily say that white homeless people enjoy white privilege.

And he wondered out loud if a protest against US cops on a small island in the Irish Sea is, well, a bit pointless. If Peters has broken any code it is a very new and unwritten one, and hes not the only person to fall foul of it in recent days. MartinShipton, chief reporter for the Western Mail, has been asked to step down as a judge of the Wales Book of the Year competition over some tweets he posted about the BLM protests in Cardiff. He said they were exercises in virtue-signalling and expressed concern about the effect they might have on the spread of Covid-19. He also got into some robust exchanges with people who told him that, as an old white man, he should just shut up.

How did we get here? In the space of just a few days, Black Lives Matter, its tenets and adherents have become almost unquestionable. No one worth wasting breath on disagrees with the literal message of the movement. But those who dare criticise a lot of the identitarian ideological guff that unfortunately accompanies the movement now risk being treated as heretics. Even criticising these mass gatherings for breaking lockdown remember when sitting too closely on a beach was a scoldable offence? is treated as alarming evidence of non-conformity or perhaps even racism.

This is all a neat demonstration that censorship is not exclusively about state clampdowns. The suspension of Peters and the sacking of Shipton are examples of what John Stuart Mill called the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them. If expressing an opinion, even one as mild as I support the sentiment, but Im not sure these protests are a great idea, the resulting backlashcan cost you your job or social status.

But this is also profoundly worrying not only for free speech but also for the quality of our discussion about racism and how to defeat it. We are being compelled to have a conversation about race, but one in which any dissent from the most extreme and absurd positions such as that Western society is still racist to the core and that dirt-poor white folk benefit from it, even if they dont realise it are treated as suspect. This is a recipe for censorship, division and neverending culture war and nothing else.

Link:

The march of progressive censorship - Spectator.co.uk

The last couple of weeks have highlighted just how much influence external pressure can have on the social media executives who shape content moderation policies.

Two weeks ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticized Twitters decision to fact-check President Trump and suggested that the company wouldnt be censoring his posts.

Less than a week after making this original statement and after facing sustained pressure to take action against the President, Zuckerberg changed his tune and said the company was considering adding warning labels to posts from world leaders.

But even this wasnt enough to stop the demands for more censorship on the platform with Facebooks moderators penning a letter this week which calls for the censorship of President Trump.

Double your web browsing speed with today's sponsor. Get Brave.

Now a similar situation is playing out on Reddit with more than 500 subreddits with over 200 million subscribers signing an open letter that demands more censorship of hate speech on the platform.

Related: How the term hate speech has become a mainline internet censorship tool

This open letter was penned after Reddit CEO Steve Huffmans recent announcement that even stricter moderation policies for tackling hate will be coming to the platform in the next few weeks.

The letter states that these upcoming changes are not enough and urges Huffman to ban hate speech targeted against protected groups, proactively ban hate-based communities, and ban hate users.

It also calls for Reddit to take a meaningful stand against hate by hiring more minorities and women, hiring more community managers, and honoring the wishes of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian by having his Reddit board seat filled with a black candidate.

Huffman responded to the open letter by thanking the users who had signed and insisting that theres lots of overlap between the demands of the open letter and the stricter moderation policies that will be coming to Reddit:

We shared our thoughts and intentions last Friday, June 6; your list and our list have a high amount of overlap. Wed like to show progress with what we do in the coming weeks rather than what we say. Im looking forward to speaking directly with those of you participating in the Mod Councils. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for all you do for your communities.

Days before Huffman thanked these users who are demanding even more censorship on the platform, he wrote that the decline of The Donald, a community that was once one of the most popular subreddits on the site, was fine with him and that he wished hed quarantined it sooner.

Originally posted here:

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman thanks users that asked for more censorship on the platform - Reclaim The Net

Times of crisis always bring out the best and worst of human nature. The COVID-19 pandemic is no different.

Communities around the world are rallying together to support vulnerable people, and healthcare workers are putting their health (and even their lives) at risk to fight the virus.

On the other hand, many governments are using the crisis as an excuse to increase censorship, mass surveillance is spreading alongside the disease, and the pandemic is exposing the failure of economic policy to deal with instability.

The Chinese government, in particular, has been accused of suppressing research into the disease, and of using the crisis as an excuse to further restrict the right to free speech in that country. In reality, governments around the worldfrom Iran to the United Kingdom to Spain to the United Stateshave been doing the same, albeit in less obvious ways.

In this article, well look at the scale of censorship in China, and how this has contributed to the spread of COVID-19. Well then return our focus to the USA, and see how it compares to China.

The scale of censorship in China is already huge during normal times, with more than 13,000 websites shut down by the Chinese government since 2015. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has seen a rapid and worrying increase in the scale of suppression.

Some of this censorship has been achieved through keyword-based analysis of popular social media sites such as WeChat, where COVID-19 discussions that are critical of the government have been blocked or removed.

More worrying is that the hashtag We Want Freedom of Speech has also been suppressed. Some activists have attempted to get around these restrictions by using the Ethereum blockchain, where an interview with Dr. Ai Fen (a subject of attempted Chinese state censorship) was posted by journalist Sarah Zang.

Given the growing scale of global internet censorship, such actions are not surprising. In the context of the current crisis, however, there are more worrying aspects of the Chinese governments approach to censorship.

Several news outlets have reported that the government appears to be censoring research on the origins of the virus by requiring that scientists submit their studies to the Ministry of Science and Technology before publication.

The most famous case of this concerned ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who raised early warnings about the virus and then died of it himself, but there have been reports of many other pieces of research also being suppressed.

During normal times, this censorship would be concerning enough. During a global pandemic, suppression of key information has undoubtedly cost many thousands of lives.

In Europe and the USA, governments have been widely criticized for being slow to react to the crisis, and epidemiologists have pointed out that losing just a few days in the response to the pandemic can have a huge impact on the final death toll.

The impact of censorship goes much further than just limiting the information supplied to governments, though. Without the ability to freely express themselves online, citizens groups in China are finding it difficult to coordinate responses to the virus: if you cant mention COVID-19, its difficult to arrange a food collection for vulnerable people in the wake of the virus.

Even worse is the fact that governments appear to be censoring the wrong information. Posts criticizing the response of authorities to the virus have been blocked or removed in many countries, but those relating to conspiracy theories have not. This has allowed falseand often absurdconspiracy theories to spread, most notably the belief that the ongoing rollout of 5G telecoms networks has caused the virus.

At the broadest level, this censorship also points to a dark future. The scale of the pandemic has made it easy for governments around the world to claim emergency powers: powers that they will be hesitant to give up in the coming years.

Though criticism over censorship has been mainly directed at China, it is far from the only country that has sought to suppress information about the virus. In Iran, the government has launched attacks against VPN services operating in the country, in order to make sure that citizens only have access to government-approved versions of websites.

In fact, a look at the countries that banned VPNs before the crisiswhich includes China and Iranis a fairly good guide to those countries that have put in place the most severe censorship in response to it.

The USA doesn't appear on that list, of course. But there are concerns that many local, state, and federal agencies across the country have dramatically slowed their responses to requests for access to public information in the past few months. Whilst some of these agencies face genuine difficulties in fulfilling these requests due to the way that their records are stored, others have put in place restrictions that don't seem to be directly related to the pandemic.

For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has now totally stopped processing electronic records requests, and now requires that all such requests be made by mail. The State Department has gone even further, having suspended all requests made under the Freedom of Information Act until further notice.

City governments have also responded in much the same way: the city of Philadelphia has declared a state of emergency in which "non-essential" city business, including FOI requests, have been suspended. Fresno, California has declared that all requests are on hold "until further notice".

Some of these responses are undoubtedly a genuine response to the crisis. Government employees working from home might not have access to the records requested, and agencies across the country are stretched, even as several waves of stimulus come fresh off the printing press.

We should also not underestimate the role of incompetence in what may be instances of "accidental" censorship: we've previously noted that decades of FDA misrule have made the pandemic worse, and agencies' IT infrastructure is notoriously outdated. This has led to them becoming a major target for cyberattacks.

Others have seen a more conscious intent behind these shifts, however. We should not forget that we are in an election year, and the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a huge impact on the way in which citizens vote in November.

The government also has form when it comes to suppressing information it doesn't like: one of the most frustrating aspects of the recent Huawei scandal was just how little information was released by the federal government, under the auspices that 5G network infrastructure is a critical part of national defense.

The current situation in the USA can be read in many ways. Some have argued that the crisis, and the number of denied or delayed FOI requests that it has caused, has merely exposed the failings of the FOI system itself. A lot of reporters would say the FOIA system is already broken, but this is just exposing the seams of it, says Colin Lecher, a reporter at The Markup.

Others worry that the problem runs deeper. At the moment, there is little to no clarity from the Federal or state governments as to how long their state of emergency is going to last. This could very well mean that we enter the next US Presidential Election without clear information on how our government has responded to the worst crisis since the Second World War. Information on the functioning of public bodies is important during normal times, of course, but during times of crisis it becomes even more so.

Its important to keep a sense of perspective, of course. The current suppression of FOI requests in the USA is on nowhere near the scale of the press crackdown around the world, and its unlikely that social media posts about COVID-19will be actively blocked or removed by the American government.

However, the steps taken in recent weeks may be the start of a slippery slope. The current crisis is undoubtedly important, but if we cannot protect constitutional rights during the pandemic, we risk lasting damage to the country.

Read the original:

The Censorship of COVID-19 Data Around the World | Sam Bocetta - Foundation for Economic Education

Concerns about censorship have been raised after third-party submissions were left out of the government-commissioned report on the disproportionate effects of Covid-19 on black, Asian and minority ethnic people

Public Health England said it had engaged with more than 1,000 people during its inquiry. But the report, which has been criticised for failing to investigate the reasons for the disparities or make recommendations on how to address them, did not mention the consultations.

Anger has been compounded by a report in the Health Service Journal claiming that before publication the government removed a section detailing responses from third parties, many of whom highlighted structural racism.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which called in its written submission for specific measures to tackle the culture of discrimination and racism [within the NHS], said it had contacted PHE to ask why its evidence was not included.

Its secretary general, Harun Khan, said: To choose to not discuss the overwhelming role structural racism and inequality has on mortality rates and to disregard the evidence compiled by community organisations, whilst simultaneously providing no recommendations or an action plan, despite this being the central purpose of the review, is entirely unacceptable. It beggars belief that a review asking why BAME communities are more at risk fails to give even a single answer.

TheMCBis seeking further clarification from PHE as to why the report removed the submission from theMCBand others. It is imperative that the full uncensored report is published with actionable policies and recommendations as suggested by community stakeholders, and a full Covid race equality strategy is introduced.

The report, which was published on Tuesday, found that BAME groups were up to twice as likely as white Britons to die if they contract Covid-19. But numerous studies had already established disproportionate mortality among BAME people, leaving many furious as to why PHE did not examine the reasons for the disparities or propose solutions.

Dr Zubaida Haque, the interim director of the Runnymede Trust, who attended a Zoom consultation relating to the review, said: Its extraordinary, theres nothing about that in the document at all. What was the point of carrying out that consultation exercise? Its a partial review, in terms of the fact that it doesnt have any written recommendations or plan of action, and its a partial review because it clearly hasnt taken onboard any of the concerns of voluntary and grassroots organisations. In that sense its very difficult to have confidence and trust in the review.

In a webinar on 22 May, Prof Kevin Fenton, the PHE regional director for London, who led the review, said the public health body had engaged more than 1,000 almost coming up now to 1,500 individuals who have participated in briefings, lectures, discussions, listening sessions on this issue. The extensive exercise included steps being taken already because we shouldnt be waiting to act when we know what to do, he said.

The British Medical Associations written evidence included the need to take account of socioeconomic factors. Its council chair, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, said: It is further incredibly concerning, if true, to hear claims that parts of the review have not been published. We first pushed for this review two months ago and a number of concerns we have consistently raised are not reflected in the paper. While this review was being compiled, BAME workerswere dying and will continue to do so unless the government engages in actions not words.

Neither PHE nor the Department for Health and Social Care responded to the Guardians question as to whether a section of the report had been removed before its publication.

See the rest here:

Censorship row over report on UK BAME Covid-19 deaths - The Guardian

In this episode of the Blood Brothers Podcast, Dilly Hussain speaks with the founder and editor-in-chief of DOAM (Documenting Oppression against Muslims), Zahid Akhtar.

Zahid explains how he manages DOAM across various social media platforms and in five different languages, and the challenges he has faced with bans, closures and censorship.

The content creator states how nationalism and weak leadership has resulted in the current state of the Ummah.

Both Dilly and Zahid briefly go over the different groups of Muslims who are being persecuted around the world: the Rohingya (Myanmar), Uyghurs (China), Palestinians, Syrians, Kashmiris, India among others.

Topics of discussion also include whether Uyghur Muslims should seek help from the U.S. against China, the role of Muslims in the west in standing up for the oppressed, and collaborating with other media outlets who we may differ with on some areas for the sake of unity.

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This makes us unique in comparison to other online Muslim media outlets who are neither independently regulated by a reputable body nor are they managed by qualified journalists.

Our journalism takes time, money and effort to deliver. But we do it because we believe we have a duty to Allah (swt).

You may not agree or like everything we publish. However, which other Muslim news site that is run by experienced journalists will take on the responsibility of being a shield for Islam and Muslims in the media?

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Blood Brothers #36: Social media censorship, nationalism and defending Muslim rulers - 5Pillars

During the last few years, the Google-owned Youtube platform has been accused of massive censorship and in the last three months, the video streaming business resembles the Ministry of Propaganda, more than an online video-sharing platform. This week Bitcoin.com was also censored for sharing a video about our bitcoin mining pool. Bitcoin.coms Youtube account was given one strike for allegedly violating community guidelines.

When the online video-sharing platform Youtube was first released in February 2005, it was a community of people sharing ideas with very little censorship and moderation. Nowadays, Youtube is under the ownership of Google, and the firms CEO Susan Wojcicki has been outspoken about removing videos. Weeks ago, Wojcicki told CNN that any videos that went against the WHO narrative in regards to the Covid-19 outbreak would be removed.

Last year, Youtube de-platformed a myriad of alt-right and so-called conspiracy groups and removed these channels from the video streaming site. Youtube also started harassing cryptocurrency content creators and Youtubers who operated channels that discussed bitcoin and other digital assets. During the holiday season in 2019, Youtube officials purged a massive number of cryptocurrency video channels for very little reasoning. The company typically just tells the person that the channel had violated community guidelines.

Prior to Bitcoin.coms recent video removal and strike, Wojcickis words came to fruition as her company banned many videos that spoke out against the WHOs narrative when it came to an oppositional narrative toward official coronavirus data. Youtube and Wojcicki took it upon themselves to shelter the public from an opposite narrative that claims herd immunity works and the fatality rate for Covid-19 was extremely over-exaggerated.

We now know that the proof is right in front of our faces and many respected scientific think tanks and epidemiologists have told the public that the lockdowns were very irrational. Despite the proof, Youtube has banned a number of videos that go against the ongoing fear-mongering narrative. When a video was posted on Youtube that featured Dr. Daniel W. Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi from California, the video got 5 million views before it was removed. Youtubes excuse was:

We quickly remove flagged content that violate [sic] our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local health authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance.

Youtube also banned a video called Plandemic, which featured Dr. Judy Mikovits soon after it was published on the online video sharing platform. Youtube, however, does allow videos that rebut Judy Mikovits, Daniel W. Erickson, and Dr. Artin Massihis narratives. The company has no issues allowing rebuttals that stay on course with the fear-mongering narrative.

But any dissenting views against the lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and social distancing continued to be removed to this day. The former head of biostatistics, epidemiology, and research design at Rockefeller University, Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski, recently told the public that Youtube had banned his video that went against the lockdown, and over-reaction narrative after it gathered more than 1.3 million views. Dr. Andrew Kaufmans videos were also removed, when he spoke out against the stay-at-home narrative and the data spread by people like the epidemiologist Neil Ferguson.

Now Youtube has banned one of Bitcoin.coms videos for sharing information about our mining pool. The video removal was based on the companys sale of regulated goods policy and the video allegedly went against community guidelines. The Bitcoin.com account was given a single strike, which gives the account a one week probation period. Two to three strikes could lead to far worse restrictions against the Bitcoin.com account that merely shares information and resources about cryptocurrency solutions. Bitcoin.coms CEO Mate Tokay has spoken out against the Youtube censorship in a tweet letting the company and Wojcicki know they have been immoral.

History shows that censorship has produced some manipulated realities and it has furthered evil time and time again. Youtube is a private company and it can do whatever it wants, but the censorship still speaks volumes on the companys tethered relationship with the status quo. Theres a reason why cryptocurrency videos are removed and it is because it goes against Youtubes financial masters. The reason why Youtube bans certain groups is because those groups gain grass-roots attention and make people think critically.

Youtube has banned videos that go against the Covid-19 narrative as well, because people started realizing that a virus with a 99% survival rate isnt as horrible as we all thought. Concrete evidence shows that the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders did absolutely nothing, even though Youtube continues to scream the less-powerful Covid-19 mantras. Staying at home saves lives, Were all in this together, Flatten the curve, and other propaganda slogans are still aired on nearly every ad published on Youtube today.

Censorship and propaganda techniques paint a clear perspective of Youtubes true colors. Censoring Bitcoin.coms mining video bolsters the argument that Youtube does not have the best interests of global citizens in mind. If anything, people who understand Youtubes vile acts of censorship and misinformation, should vacate the platform in great numbers and leverage a more decentralized online video sharing application like Lbry, or Bitchute. As the economic think tank Fee.org has said: Youtubes censorship of dissenting doctors will backfire.

What do you think about Youtubes censorship and propaganda techniques these last few months? Let us know in the comments below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Youtube, Twitter,

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Bitcoin.com's Mining Video Censored: The Tale of Youtube's Blatant Censorship and Propaganda - Bitcoin News

The editors at the prominent science journal BioEssays recently published an editorial demanding government-mandated censorship of intelligent design. My colleagues and I had expected something like this before long. They singled out Evolution News in particular as a being in need of prejudicial treatment from the huge tech companies that dominate electronic media. If giants like Google or Facebook hesitate, then says biologist Dave Speijer, the government should Make them.

The threat is no joke. You were aware that censors are already at work suppressing other ideas on the Internet that they dont like. Intelligent design was next in line.

What can you do to make a meaningful statement in favor of free speech? Heres an idea: Get a copy of the new book from Discovery Institute Press, Evolution & Intelligent Design in a Nutshell, the most accessible and up-to-date introduction to ID thats ever been released. It goes on sale today on Amazon, in paperback and Kindle formats.

The five authors, led by Thomas Y. Lo, cover the range of evidence for design in under 150 pages. The origin of the universe, the origin of life, the Cambrian explosion, and more theres no subject we cover at Evolution News that is left out, but it is all treated in a way that anyone can understand.

Why is it an effective counter to the bullies at BioEssays who want to shut down views that point to an underlying purpose in the cosmos?

As Dr. Lo writes in his Introduction, shuffling objective evidence of design under the rug is something that science textbooks have been doing for decades. He tells a moving story about his own journey to maturity as a scientist and as a religious believer, how his Christian faith unraveled when he was a young man, only to be regained as he realized what had been left out of his education: cosmological evidence of creation ex nihilo at the Big Bang, the fine-tuning of the universe, the truth about 19th-century German zoologists Ernst Haeckels classic embryo drawings, the puzzle of the Cambrian event that Charles Darwin acknowledged but that the textbooks papered over or ignored altogether.

He recalls one scientist, University of San Francisco biologist Paul Chien, whom he heard give a lecture thirty years ago. Dr Chien explained the challenge of the Cambrian explosion to standard Darwinian accounts of evolution. Today, Dr. Chien contributed a chapter to the Nutshell book that includes his own personal stories of visiting key Cambrian fossil sites.

The textbooks leave most or all of this out. In the same tradition, todays censors are bent on keeping minds closed. But they are more dangerous because of the way technology has turned social media platforms into potential bottlenecks.

So get Evolution & Intelligent Design in a Nutshell for yourself, or share it with a friend, or with a student. The book is just in time because, under an endless lockdown in many places, theres a bull market for studying at home. You might have a high school student in your household, or a college student, who would benefit from the insights and crystal-clear presentation of Lo, Chien, and their co-authors, Eric Anderson, Robert Alston, and Robert Waltzer.

Arguments for intelligent design, conveyed in weighty tomes, can be daunting for the learner seeking an introduction. As chemist Marcos Eberlin quips, evolutionists hope you dont know chemistry. Sometimes it seems that ID proponents assume that you know not only chemistry, but biology, physics, mathematics, computer engineering, and philosophy, just for starters. Thomas Lo has done a service by cutting through much detail to the core of intelligent design.

For more on BioEssays and its call for suppression, see here:

You are not powerless. Stick it to the censors by ordering your copy now.

Original post:

Here's How to Fight Censorship In a Nutshell - Discovery Institute

Asnoted here already, the prominent science journalBioEssayshas issued a remarkable editorial by biologist Dave Speijer, Bad Faith Reasoning, Predictable Chaos, and the Truth. The article is like a thermometer measuring a fever among evolutionists. Speijer calls for intelligent design websites, including the one youre reading now, to be censored by government mandate. And hes quite serious. It would be shocking were it not for the fact that censors are already empowered at YouTube, Facebook, and on other social media, to scour the Internet and wipe out ideas they dont like. This is not a drill.

The editorial proposes that search engines be required to have mandatory color coded banners warning of consistent factual errors or unscientific content, masquerading as science. BioEssays sounds off against proponents of intelligent design, saying we use bad faith reasoning, misquote in order to subvert belief in Darwinian evolution, promote nonscientific explanations, and engage in spreading misinformation. A crude graphic accompanies the article, calling ID proponents Bio-Liars.

Not content with just a little hysterical overwriting, Speijer goes on to call us the infamous Discovery Institute that promotes creationism in a tuxedo. Thats not acheaptuxedo, mind you, as the insult usually goes. We are moving on up, in our wardrobe as in the peril that diehard Darwin defenders believe that we pose. In Speijers telling, we are guilty of peddling unscientific, untenable positions, using cut and paste distortions. We publish consistent factual errors or unscientific content, masquerading as science. Some of these bad arguments include the claim that life is so complicated that it cannot be the result of random processes, a position that he says can be refuted by citing many examples of unintelligent or even downright stupid designs found in living organisms. With unintended irony, he goes on to lament the deterioration of our media ecosystem where debates should only take place among those who are part of a mature complex society.

What exactly were the falsehoods on ID Bio-Liar websites that led the mature and complex editors ofBioEssaysto publish this tirade? It was two articles Dr. Speijer read onEvolution Newsthat set him off. A lot is at stake (free speech, for one thing) so lets take a look in some detail.

One of the offending articles was published here last November, BioEssaysEditor: Junk DNA Full of Information! Including Genome-Sized Genomic Code. Speijer says:

A big problem with grasping the nature of complexity, unpredictability, and layers of interactions is a recurring theme in the antievolution community. Not so long ago, Andrew Moore speculated about the extent to which the socalled junk DNA might be performing (noncoding) functions, taking his inspiration from aBioEssayspaper by Giorgio Bernardi, claiming that (much of) it might be involved in orchestrating the nuclear chromosomal architecture. I presume he was somewhat surprised when he encountered quotes taken from his column under the heading of intelligent design, considering he so clearly dealt with the issues at hand from an evolutionary perspective. However, on reflection, this happening could have been predicted with high likelihood.

Here is his complaint: ID proponents fail to grasp the nature of complexity, unpredictability, and layers of interactions in genomic studies. Speijer thinks the staff-authored article at Evolution News misrepresented BioEssays editor Andrew Moore, making it appear he advocates intelligent design, whereas Moore so clearly dealt with the issues at hand from an evolutionary perspective.

So did our article misrepresent Andrew Moore? Not in any way, shape, or form. In fact, it explicitly stated that he is not an ID supporter, and is an evolutionist:

Moore is not an ID proponent; hes clearly writing from an evolutionary perspective. Even as he describes extensive function in our genome, he frequently adds evolutionary narrative gloss just to remind you what side hes on.

The article continues:

Though clearly evolution-based, Moores perspective stands out in an important way: it is open to seeing coordinated function across the entire genome.

And again:

Moores evolutionary bias is evident here as he repeatedly adds narrative gloss, ascribing functional aspects of our genome to evolution, rather than simply describing the functional nature of DNA and leaving evolution out of it. But the substance of what hes saying identifies function in an aspect of the genome that evolutionists have frequently ignored as junk.

Finally:

So heres what we have: evolutionary scientists proposing that most of our genomes sequence has functional importance because it carries a genomic code, controlling the three-dimensional packing in the nucleus.

The article repeatedly clarified that Andrew Moore is not an ID proponent. We added our own commentary about how the scientific evidence discussed by Moore is better explained by an intelligent design perspective (which has long predicted extensive function for noncoding DNA) than by an evolutionary perspective (which has repeatedly predicted that non-coding DNA was junk).

If Speijer were interested in accurately representing our article, he should at least have recognized that it in no way portrayed Moore as being supportive of ID. Instead, in the same paragraph, heres how Speijer describes our views:

In the famous words of Jacques Monod, biological phenomena can be explained by the interaction of chance and necessity (random occurrences and natural laws). In the eyes of antievolutionists there is no role for chance, and thus they zoomed in on the aspect that (some) junk DNA actually might have important functions. Sad to say, the source of much of the junk DNA is still to be found in chance (think of pseudogenes, repeat sequences, transposons, and viral elements). The second temptation for adherents of intelligent design lies in the fact that the phenomena described can be seen as imposing multilevel constraints (for instance, a sequence has to correctly encode a protein and allow proper chromosomal organization). Logically, the chances of getting sequences that work on both levels seem slimmer. Thus, they would feel empowered to bring back their old chestnut: life is so complicated that it cannot be the result of random processes.

Set to one side Speijers dubious claims that non-coding genetic elements like pseudogenes, repeats, or transposons should be assumed to be useless genetic junk. In Januarywe reportedon a new article inNature Reviews Geneticsarguing that pseudogene function is prematurely dismissed based upon dogma, because Where pseudogenes have been studied directly they are often found to have quantifiable biological roles.The very articlewe reviewed by Andrew Moore recognizes that vast stretches of the genome composed largely of repeat sequences and transposable elements and supposed viral sequences seem to have genome-scale functional roles. Those issues aside, there are many misrepresentations in Spiejers passage about how ID reasoning operates.

Is it true that for ID proponents there is no role for chance, as Speijer claims? Anyone who has read foundational ID books like William Dembskis The Design Inference,or even any of Dembskis popular treatments, will know that ID proponents fully recognize that chance, law, and chance + law are all forces at work in nature. Dembskis explanatory filter has appeared in numerous ID publications and is one of the key logical methods of detecting design. Heres a diagram showing how the filter works:

As seen in the diagram, in this method, chance is a perfectly valid explanation for natural events. Only when neither chance nor necessity can explain a feature, where the feature contains high levels of complexity and shows specification, then do we draw the inference that it was designed.

Stephen Meyers bookSignature in the Cellclearly recognizes the potential role of chance in the origin of life:

[O]ne of Francis Cricks colleagues was the French biologist Jacques Monod. In 1971 he wrote an influential book called Chance and Necessity, extolling the powers of chance variation and lawlike processes of necessity in the history of life. As an example of a chance process, Monod noted how random mutations in the genetic makeup of organisms can explain how variations in populations arise during the process of biological evolution. In Monods shorthand, chance referred to events or processes that produce a range of possible outcomes, each with some probability of occurring. The term necessity, on the other hand, referred to processes or forces that produce a specific outcome with perfect regularity, so that the outcome is necessary or inevitable once some prior conditions have been established.

Passages like that can be found in many ID works. They show that ID proponents like Meyer are well aware of Monods ideas. Do Meyer deny the role of chance? No.

Dembski notes that, as we reason about these different kinds of events, we often engage in a comparative evaluation process that he represents with a schematic he calls the explanatory filter. The filter outlines a method by which scientists (and others) decide among three different types of attributions or explanations-chance, necessity, and intelligent design-based upon the probabilistic features or signatures of various kinds of events. (See Fig. 16.1.) In Chapter 8, I described how Dembski came to recognize that low-probability events by themselves do not necessarily indicate that something other than chance is at work. Improbable events happen all the time and dont necessarily indicate anything other than chance in play-as Dembski had illustrated to me by pointing out that if I flipped a coin one hundred times I would necessarily participate in an extremely improbable event. In that case, any specific sequence that turned up would have a probability of 1 chance in 2100. Yet the improbability of this event did not mean that something other than chance was responsible.

Lets turn to Speijers claim that ID reasons that life is so complicated that it cannot be the result of random processes. Speijer calls this argument an old chestnut and indeed thats what it is: a hoary misrepresentation of ID arguments. We have addressed it numerous times (for example, see here, here, here, here, or here).

First, ID does not merely refute random processes. As Dembskis explanatory filter and the passage from Meyers book show, ID theory evaluates the ability of chance, law, and a combination of chance + law to explain elements of nature.

Second, ID does not begin by navely arguing that life is so complicated ID is inferred only after careful quantitative analyses show that random mutation and natural selection cannot produce a given feature. This is not a simple or nave argument. ID proponents have implemented complex population genetics models (which appropriately incorporate the roles of chance mutation and nonrandom selection) to test the efficacy of Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms. For some examples from the ID research literature, seehere,here, orhere.

Third, ID is not just a negative argument against material causes. Simply finding that Darwinian mechanisms are unable to produce a feature is not enough to infer design. Intelligent design is inferred only from a positive argument where we find the type of information and complexity in life that is known to derive from an intelligent agent. This type of information is called specified complexity, as Stephen Meyer explains:

[T]he inadequacy of proposed materialistic causes forms only part of the basis of the argument for intelligent design. We also know from broad and repeated experience that intelligent agents can and do produce information-rich systems: we have positive experience-based knowledge of a cause that is sufficient to generate new specified information, namely, intelligence. We are not ignorant of how information arises. We know from experience that conscious intelligent agents can create informational sequences and systems. To quote Quastler again, The creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious activity. Experience teaches that whenever large amounts of specified complexity or information are present in an artifact or entity whose causal story is known, invariably creative intelligence-intelligent design-played a role in the origin of that entity. Thus, when we encounter such information in the large biological molecules needed for life, we may infer-based on our knowledge of established cause-and-effect relationships-that an intelligent cause operated in the past to produce the specified information necessary to the origin of life.

For this reason, the design inference defended here does not constitute an argument from ignorance. Instead, it constitutes an inference to the best explanation based upon our best available knowledge.

This brings us to Speijers fourth mistake: the error in thinking that ID arguments are turned back by examples of supposed poor design. This is another classic:

Here is a concept that was invoked as an explanation after many examples of unintelligent or even downright stupid designs found in living organisms started littering biology books. One might understand why I think it a bit rich that they advocate reasoned explanations under headers such as truth in science, whilst peddling unscientific, untenable positions, using cut and paste distortions.

And exactly what are the unintelligent or downright stupid designs that show life was not designed? Speijer doesnt say. Weve tackled many such arguments over the years, responding to assertions about the poor design of the vertebrate eye, pandas thumb, whale pelvic bones, appendix, coccyx, sinuses, or laryngeal nerve, among others. Brian Miller has explained the general problem with the imperfection-of-the-gaps fallacy, which unscientifically presumes we have near-perfect knowledge of how organisms ought to operate. Another problem with such arguments is that poor design isstill design, as we havepreviously explained:

As a science, ID doesnt address theological questions about whether the design is desirable, undesirable, perfect, or imperfect. Undesirable design is still design. Gilmour just doesnt like it because (in his own subjective view) its undesirable. Heres a quick illustration of what I mean:

Im writing this on a PC using Windows; this PC has crashed probably a dozen times in the past two weeks. Right now, I hate my PC. I consider it poorly designed, full of imperfections, and very undesirable. Does that mean it wasnt designed by intelligent agents? No. Undesirable design and intelligent design are two different things. Undesirable, poor, or imperfect design do not refute intelligent design.

Speijer is critiquing a straw man.

What about the nefarious misdeeds that Speijer accusesEvolution Newsof committing using misquote[s] and cut and paste distortions in pursuit of spreading misinformation, to name a few? Its because of such wrongdoing that he suggests we need to be censored by the government. But consider: Did Speijer accurately represent our article on junk DNA, or did he falsely imply it presented Andrew Moore as a proponent of ID? Did Speijer use cut-and-paste common distortions about ID by saying it argues life is so complicated that it cannot be the result of random processes? Did Speijer spread misinformation or use bad faith reasoning about ID by claiming that it is refuted by unintelligent or downright stupid designs? Oh, and is it consistent for the editorial to call us Bio-Liars who promote creationism in a tuxedo while lamenting the deterioration of public discourse with its dearth of mature participants? Are Speijers criticisms more applicable to ID proponents, or to his own attacks on us?

Speijer has another complaint. Its about a brief article by Paul Nelson here, back in February. Nelson was responding to a short editorial, Is Popperian Falsification Useful in Biology?, that Speijer had written inBioEssays. Here is the offending passage from Nelson:

An open access editorial (whose title I have borrowed for the headline), by the Dutch biologist Dave Speijer, is worth a look in relation to this issue.

[E]volutionary theory, he writes, invites us to tolerate exceptions. I think this is exactly wrong. A theory that predicted the exceptions to its rules and generalizations would convey knowledge. A theory that tolerates exceptions, however, will end up in a 1:1 mapping with whatever one observes in which event, the theory is doing no work at all, simply wandering along behind the data like a puppy on a leash.

Thats the entirety of what Nelson said about Speijer. Was this a misquote? Consider what Speijer originally wrote:

Of course, overall Popper is right. Trying to establish facts that disprove broad theories is a worthwhile strategy, often generating further insights. However, the example above illustrates the problems involved: these only get worse when one turns to the field of biological theory. The complexity of biological entities (highly complicated systems that have many layers of intra and interconnectivity, themselves results of eons of prior development) is such that counterexamples are sometimes not what they seem to be. Allow me to give some examples. Eukaryotes are capable of a complicated system of procreation: full meiotic sex. However, less costly clonal (nonsexual) propagation also occurs. Most instances turn out to be relatively shortlived, but an exception to this rule is found in the bdelloid rotifers, which lost meiotic sex millions of years ago. Does this mean that sex is just something that eukaryotes got stuck with, and that it is lost again as soon as the opportunity arises? Of course not. The exception might inform the rule. Because they live in cyclically drying freshwater habitats, bdelloid rotifers evolved high resistance to reactive oxygen species (ROS) resistance (in their case coming from ionizing radiation more than from the mitochondrion). This might have made the DNA repair mechanisms associated with meiotic sex superfluous.2 What of other exceptions to biological rules? The mitochondrial DNA is practically always inherited from the maternal germ cell. Is that indeed because the active (motile) germ cell (sperm) has more ROSrelated damage, or do a few exceptions disprove this? Highly complex eukaryotic structures are almost always associated with an aerobic lifestyle. Does an instance of anaerobic complexity tell us that this is just a coincidence? In both cases I do not think so. Or take the mitochondrial ROS theory of aging: does the observation that an active lifestyle is conductive to longevity invalidate it? Careful analysis shows this not to be the case. In biology, largely true correlations often give important insights. Thus, at the risk of constructing our own Vulcans to prop up flawed models, evolutionary complexity invites us to tolerate exceptions.

Everyone seems to agree (to some extent) that the predictions of evolutionary biology often meet with counterexamples. Speijer dismisses this as unimportant, simply reflecting the eons of prior development that led to great complexity of biological entities with highly complicated systems that have many layers of intra and interconnectivity. Paul Nelson thinks that these failed predictions ought not to be dismissed, unless you are willing to tolerate a theory that fails to generate useful knowledge.

Nelson made a fair point, if you ask us, but feel free think otherwise. Are the editors ofBioEssaysso afraid of criticism that even very benign disagreement triggers them to call for government-backed censorship?

To be fair, Nelsons original post included a slight misquote of Speijer. It was unintentional, of course, and didnt change the meaning. Speijer spoke of evolutionary complexity rather than evolutionary theory, as Nelson first wrote. Naturally, weve since fixed that. Speijer doesnt mention it, so apparently it wasnt a big deal to him. What is a big deal to Speijer is that Nelson quotes Stephen Jay Gould. Speijer responds:

My concluding remark, regarding biology inviting us to tolerate exceptions, is quoted (without the crucial proviso, however) to just mean anything is possible. Talk about bad faith reasoning. But at least I was trashed together with the late Stephen Jay Gould, so that softened the blow to my ego.

But did Paul Nelson say that Speijer said that under evolutionary biology anything is possible? No, he did not. Rather, he quoted a different scientist commenting on Stephen Jay Gould. Nelson wrote:

Stephen Jay Gould grew very fond of the notion of contingency, which he would deploy to rationalize departures from prediction. If that seems a harsh judgment,consider the last sentence of this article, commenting on Goulds position:

Organisms tend to achieve similar solutions to similar problems, but give it [i.e., evolution] enough time (or a small enough population), and anything is possible.

Anything is possible may be true but then, dont pretend you have a theory which is doing any real work. You dont.

When Nelson cites this article he doesnt link to Speijer. He links toan article by Tiago Rodrigues Simes, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard. Speijer is upset that Nelson quoted another scientist talking about the views of Stephen Jay Gould in an article that also separately critiqued Speijers own views. Thats what all the furor is about. Thats why he was triggered into calling for censorship.

Well, actually theres one other thing that Speijer is angry about and it reduces to the mere fact that Nelson advocates intelligent design:

The Discovery Institute (and its websites) has a tendency of adding insult to injury. To quote from a column which mentions Poppers falsifiability criterion as a way of distinguishing scientific and nonscientific explanations to advance intelligent design is audacious to say the least.

Again, Nelson simply suggested that Poppers thinking should be applied to evolutionary theory. His post doesnt say anything about ID. But of course Nelson is an ID advocate. For Speijer, it seems, the mere fact that Nelson advocates ID means he is guilty of peddling unscientific, untenable positions, using cut and paste distortions. Audacious to some, indeed.

What has Speijer identified in our work that amounts to real misquotes, errors, or bad logic? Nothing. Nelson too was also unable to find anything that he had done wrong. Soon after Speijers editorial was published byBioEssays, Nelson wrote a friendly email to Speijer. Nelson essentially asked,Did I get anything wrong? Lets talk, because if I did I want to correct the record and make it right.

That email was sent well over a month ago. The response to Dr. Nelson from Dr. Speijer? Crickets.

So there you have it. These scientists were triggered bynothing. They erupted in response with demands for persecution. Does this sound to you like a sober, mature, balanced scientific outlook, one that should be dictating government policy on Internet freedom? These are the upholders of orthodox evolutionary theory! These are Darwins modern champions. Paul Nelson said it well in his post: evolutionary biology is not a healthy theory.

Photo credit:christian buehner viaUnsplash.

Originally posted here:

What Triggered a Biology Journal to Demand Government Censorship of Intelligent Design - Discovery Institute

Disney+ is getting a bit of a reputation for its strange choice of censorship, and this latest one that weve spotted is perhaps the most bizarre and unnecessary yet.

First seen by a friend of mine (LovelyChubly over on Twitter), this is perhaps the most extreme form of censoring that weve seen Disney use on the service.

It involves actor Maria Canals-Barrera (who plays Theresa Russo in Wizards of Waverly Place), and it seems that Disney has chosen to add some form of strange blurring to the tiniest amount of skin showing in one of her scenes in Wizards of Waverly Place. Now I am not going to do a before and after out of respect for the actor but you can see the blurring in full effect below:

Whats odd is just how bad the blurring looks when watching the episode and how it is used in a few scenes and not in others. If you wanted to check this out for yourselves, you can find it toward the end of season 2 episode 10 of the Wizards of Waverly Place TV show. Disneys decision on this one does appear to be very odd as it wont be impacting the younger audience at all. Additionally, note that these scenes involving Canals-Barrera originally aired on Disney Channel without any form of censoring, so its unclear why Disney made the decision to start censoring the actors appearance now that the episodes are on Disneys streaming service.

Related: The movies and scenes Disney refuses to put on Disney+

Disney has also censored items in other shows and movies that include:

Now I dont know about you guys, but I think it should be up to the paying customer to decide on what they do and dont want to be censored from a show on Disney+?

Why Disney doesnt just introduce a system similar to Netflix that allows for a kids profile to be introduced and controlled by parents is still beyond me. Adults are huge Disney fans and it is crazy that much of the content isnt accessible in its original format.

It would certainly stop the confusion that is happening internally at the company on figuring out what belongs on Disney+ and what belongs on Hulu (remembering that Hulu isnt an option for many of the markets where Disney+ is). We are still unsure if shows like Lizzie McGuire are even coming back due to the adult themes of the shows reboot.

Would you like to see less censorship and more adult choice on the Disney+ streaming platform, providing it was safe for kids? Let us know in the comments below!

Editors Note: The opinions expressed in this OpEd do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Inside the Magic overall.

Follow this link:

OpEd: Has Disney Taken Censorship Too Far With the Latest Disney+ Blur? - Inside the Magic

Disney announced on May 12 that Broadway sensation "Hamilton" will hit Disney Plus this summer on July 3, over a year in advance of the movie's planned theatrical release date of October 15, 2021. The film, which is professional recording of the stage production edited together from three performances of the show in 2016, features the original cast including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., and Rene Elise Goldsberry.

The production, which debuted in 2015, follows the life of Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Not only did the show win the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for drama, it also picked up 11 Tony Awards including best musical and direction of a musical. The show is best known for its rap and hip-hop style, which sees depictions of historical figures like Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr engaging in rap battles or dancing their way through the birth of the United States.

Following the announcement, however, people online worried that "Hamilton" would arrive on the streaming platform with some changes to some of its language or content. The show features several instances of explicit language as well as sexual themes and gun violence.

This isn't the first time that censorship has come up in reference to "Hamilton's" Disney deal. The show features several swear words that would jeopardize a PG-13 rating, although it does censor the f-word in songs like "Say No To This" and "The Adams Administration." Kyle Buchanan, a pop culture reporter at The New York Times, tweeted in February 2020 that he had asked Lin-Manuel Miranda about potential censorship of swear words.

At the time, the writer told Buchanan that there were no plans to cut out sections of the show, reportedly saying, "If we have to mute a word here or there to reach the largest audience possible, I'm OK with that, because your kids already have the original language memorized. I don't think we're depriving anyone of anything if we mute an f-bomb here or there to make our rating."

Disney Plus is committed to providing family-friendly content and has historically shuttled more mature programs over to Hulu, which Disney also owns, or censored them on the platform. The company moved a "Love, Simon" spinoff series from Disney Plus to Hulu recently sources told Variety that Disney felt that certain facets of the show like alcohol use and sexual exploration would preclude it from fitting in with Disney Plus' family-friendly fare (the original Love, Simon story is one of queer romance). Disney has also censored content on Disney Plus, including a post-credits scene in "Toy Story 2" and a partially bare butt in the 1984 movie "Splash."

That being said, it's currently unclear as to whether Disney has any plans to censor language or content in "Hamilton." That didn't stop people from taking to Twitter to plead for Disney to not censor.

Others imagined what "Hamilton" would be like if key words or plot elements were made more family-friendly.

Insider has reached out to Disney for comment as to whether it will censor "Hamilton" on Disney Plus.

Go here to see the original:

People are worried about Disney censoring 'Hamilton' when it comes to Disney Plus this July - Insider - INSIDER

Although it seems quick and easy to do and get away with, especially when you watch giant tech corporations do it these days censorship might actually be hard to pull off when alls said and done.

The crucial reason, that entrepreneur and YouTube personality Patrick Bet-David explores is this does censorship even work?

Even before the viral capability to spread information on the web came about, regimes struggled to make censored information go away, provoking instead more interest in whats forbidden.

But now, with the network effect, YouTube deleting a video to silence an issue or a person will likely lead to more eyes on it that would have been the case otherwise, he argues.

Double your web browsing speed with today's sponsor. Get Brave.

Ultimately, censorship doesnt work, Bet-David concludes, because visibility of censored content grows exponentially on social networks, by that very fact increasing the likelihood of the ideas that are suppressed gaining more, not less credibility.

Human nature plays into this as most people are intrinsically and instinctively rebellious, this YouTuber tells his audience of 2.3 million subscribers.

Bet-David brings up two issues that have come up lately as he is putting together and publishing his content: his failed idea to host both Judy Mikovits and her critic, YouTuber know as Dr Mike; and, complaints from Republicans (that apparently surface in comments left on his videos) that their politics and ideology are being denied a voice on social and other media.

(A clip from Mikovits upcoming documentary Plandemic has recently been deleted by YouTube and Facebook as conspiracy; she agreed to a Bet-David hosted YouTube discussion, but Dr Mike canceled after confirming.)

And while censorship is impossible in the US at government-level, he says powerful corporations can and will use it. He describes Democrats as strategic having invested in controlling the narrative to the point of now being capable of controlling the audience and dictating the next 50 years as opposed to Republicans focus on the money without an audience.

Implying that Democrats do in fact own figuratively and/or literally social media platforms and corporate media outlets, Bet-Davids advice to people is to use that money they have to create, or buy, their own platforms.

The next time a media platform censors its going to happen! why dont you go to your party and ask them how come theyre not creating more media platforms, he says.

Link:

Does Big Tech censorship ultimately fail, giving more legitimacy to the content it tries to hide? - Reclaim The Net

The conditions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, including restrictive government policies and a crashing economy, create fertile ground for conspiracy theories. This may be eased by the online nature of socialization and information dissemination.

Ive personally seen way too much mis- and disinformation about the coronavirus on my various social media feeds. Perhaps the most prevalent piece of this is the viral Plandemic video, which had been circulating on Facebook via a Youtube link until the platforms decided to axe the video due to safety concerns.

Much of what was included in the video was an extended interview with Judy Mikovitz, a figure in the anti-vaccination movement who has produced unsubstantiated claims about vaccinations and had a quite rocky career as a researcher and activist. Because a quick Google search can bring up her records and quickly debunk some of the foundational claims in the video, its a bit disheartening that it gained so much popularity.However, while I was on board with them removing the video, I recognize that the videos removal may hurt more than help matters regarding public distrust in elites handling of COVID-19.

Plandemic, or its claim that the pandemic was orchestrated by a malicious government and health department, is one of many conspiracy theories circulating about COVID-19 in this time of uncertainty, but it is not the strongest. The strongest and most circulated theory is about disinfectant, a claim/theory echoed by President Trump himself; this one is so disproportionate that Axios removed it from its data chart in order to show the other theories to scale.

Most experts and sources say that conspiracy theories are appealing because they offer a relatively simplistic and straightforward explanation for things their believers dont - or dont want to - understand. Nuanced explanations are often taxing and, in some cases, boring. This opens the door for people to find explanations with more accessible and convincing appeal, especially if these explanations reinforce their preconceptions.

Conspiracy theories are simply compelling, and a near majority of Americans believe in at least one. An Axios study found that in their nationally representative survey, a majority of respondents claimed to believe in at least one of the 22 conspiracy theories they were prompted with.

J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, in an article featured in the American Journal of Political Science titled Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion, found that half of Americans consistently believe in at least one conspiracy theory by analyzing data from four nationally representative surveys between 2006 and 2011. They also found that while some researchers find conspiracism to be a feature of right wing politics, political conservatism, authoritarianism, and political ignorance were not major factors in whether someone endorsed a conspiracy theory. Conspiratorial politics, it turns out, is a widespread tendency across the entire ideological spectrum.

Apart from ideology, these researchers found conspiratorial politics to be driven more by human behavior and belief in the religious or occult. Common characteristics of conspiracies are that unusual phenomena are claimed to arise from intentional, malicious forces, and that mainstream accounts of these phenomena are either a hoax or a distraction. Conspiracy theories also involve an attempt to interpret complex phenomena as a sort of battle between good and evil, where the believers group attachments play a sizable role. This is why partisan conspiracies have such strong appeal and support, although partisanship doesnt necessarily drive conspiratorial beliefs itself.

Conspiratorial politics also arent a result of political naivete or ignorance, as those who tended to be more politically knowledgeable were no less susceptible to their appeal. The strongest predictor of whether one is to believe in a conspiracy is previous conspiratorial ideation, which usually hinges on two psychological phenomena.

The first is that unexplained and complex phenomena tend to be boiled down to more simplistic, intentional, and malicious forces.

The second is that narratives of good versus evil are quite popular in American discourse and are especially present in religious and populist rhetoric.

The inclination towards attributing malicious intention to unexplained phenomena and processing political information as forces of good versus forces of evil, then, explains how Americans are so captured by conspiracism.

These conspiracies thrive with the internet as a tool, but there is no indication that the internet drives the conspiracies themselves. Often, it can place a natural ceiling on the belief in certain conspiracies; such is true with the Kennedy assassination conspiracism.

While coronavirus conspiracy theories arent as popular as theories involving the 1 percent and Jeffrey Epsteins supposed suicide, they may not have reached their ceiling. Those that center on intentional, malicious forces, such as Plandemic, the idea that the virus has been exaggerated to hurt President Trumps chances at reelection, and the idea that the virus was created and spread on purpose as a bioweapon, most likely hold water because they offer simplistic explanations of malicious, intentional forces in an intriguing narrative of good versus evil.

These kinds of conspiracy theories involving public health will likely continue, just as those involving vaccinations and 5G technologies have. In some cases, the internet-sanctioned public debates on these conspiracy theories may present a natural ceiling. In others, actors like Facebook and Youtube may be forced to intervene if their administrators believe conspiracies at this scale pose a threat to public health and safety, potentially fueling more conspiracism.

In any case, attributing malice to those who believe in these theories is mostly unhelpful, especially given the susceptibility of the larger American public to conspiracism. While questioning and assessing these narratives is necessary, demonizing those who hold conspiratorial beliefs is mostly unhelpful; theyre searching for answers, too.

The best way to navigate popular conspiracy theories, then, is to approach it from the understanding that these theories are a mostly natural phenomenon and that people arent necessarily wrong to endorse some of them. They may be factually incorrect, but they are not behaviorally out-of-bounds.

Further, popular conspiracy theories should be approached with the knowledge that public debate itself can put a ceiling on conspiracy theories. Facebook and Youtube may have added fuel to the conspiratorial fire by removing the Plandemic video.

Additionally, the COVID-19 crisis is relatively new, and the trajectory of these theories is still unknown. They may fizzle out, or they may find more fertile ground. Approaching them productively, and with this knowledge of human psychology, can be helpful both to media platforms and the government.

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Opinion: Conspiracism is a popular phenomenon; addressing it requires understanding and dialogue rather than censorship - Eastern Echo

ByGuy Birchall, British journalist covering current affairs, politics and free speech issues. Recently published in The Sun and Spiked Online. Follow him on Twitter @guybirchall

The increasingly heavy-handed restrictions used by the likes of Facebook and YouTube are backfiring. Their suppression of Dr Judy Mikovits Plandemic film has simply made her books soar to No. 1 in the bestseller charts.

Attempts by the tech giants of Silicon Valley to stop the spread of misinformation by pulling down a Covid-19 documentary are starting to make the planets botched attempts to contain coronavirus look successful.

There are few certainties in life, and even fewer during these difficult times in which we find ourselves. Although the infamous troublesome twosome of death and taxes are having something of a field day at the moment, the certainty I would like to discuss is the depressingly constant presence of censorship and, specifically, how spectacularly counterproductive it is. This has recently been demonstrated most effectively by Silicon Valleys attempts to stop wrong-thinking people from using their platforms to spread their message.

With all the liberal tolerance we have come to expect from the billionaires of the San Francisco Bay Area, big tech has proved even more censorious than usual since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all started pulling content off their sites or banning certain people from using them in the name of public safety. The latest example of this is the documentary Plandemic. A 23-minute clip of the film appeared on YouTube featuring a scientist of dubious reputation, Dr Judy Mikovits. During the clip, Mikovits makes a number of claims and assertions, suggesting that billionaires are encouraging the spread of Covid-19 in the hope of somehow making money. She also claims that they plan to mandate experimental and poisonous vaccines on the public.

The clip, which showed Dr Mikovits talking with Mikki Willis (a filmmaker and father, according to his credit in the film Im unsure what relevance the latter has, but I digress), racked up millions of views on YouTube and was widely shared on Facebook and other social media. This, in turn, prompted the typical media outrage and fightback. Fact checkers, journalists and YouTubing doctors all moved swiftly to dismiss her claims (in the name of science, not clicks, of course), until finally YouTube and Facebook pulled down the video from their sites, saying it violated their terms of service.

What was the result of the mainstream media and big techs attempts to silence Dr Mikovits for what they perceive as her irresponsibility? Its made her latest book a top 10 best-seller on Amazon (it was briefly at number one earlier this week), putting her tome in the storied company of Michelle Obamas Becoming, Sally Rooneys Normal People(which has just been made into a BBC drama) and the Twilight Saga author Stephenie Meyers latest offering.

It also rocketed straight into third place on the New York Times bestsellers list, sandwiched between Obamas Becoming and Erik Larsons The Splendid and the Vile, a study of Winstons Churchills leadership. And hey Google, guess what? Its in the non-fiction list.

Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science, retailing at $17.91 plus shipping, is now temporarily out of stock, following an enormous surge in demand prompted by the outcry against the banned clip of Plandemic.

No doubt the media and big tech will chalk this one up as a win, because the clip is now unavailable on their platforms, but one imagines the royalties from her spike in book sales will cushion the blow for Dr Mikovits. She certainly seems happy, judging from her tweets. She is also now one of the most famous scientists on the planet and receiving even more coverage (some of which you are reading right now) because her censorship has become the story.

There is a term for this type of occurrence: it is known as the Streisand effect. The name comes from a case back in 2003 where the actress and singer Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman for $50 million to remove an aerial photograph of her California home from his collection of 12,000 publicly available photos documenting coastal erosion in the Golden State. Before the Funny Girl star brought the action, the photograph of her home had been downloaded from Adelmans website six times two of which were by Streisands lawyers. After the case became public, the picture was downloaded more than 420,000 times over the course of a month, and Babs lost the case anyway. Oops.

As surely as what goes up must come down, and as inevitably as a homophobic preacher being caught short surrounded by rent boys and amyl nitrate, censorship of something will always lead to more people looking at it. It is, therefore, not only morally wrong, but as counterproductive as trying to dry out an alcoholic by locking him in a liquor store.

Dr Mikovits isnt the only person whose star has risen thanks to Covid-19 inspired censorship by tech giants. David Icke had barely been mentioned as anything other than a punchline since the mid-1990s, until YouTube pulled his channel when he started sounding off about 5G causing coronavirus.

Outside the realm of Covid-19, InfoWars founder and living, breathing meme Alex Jones became more famous than ever after Silicon Valley unilaterally banned him from every major platform and social network. Outspoken right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos dined out on being too dangerous for Twitter for at least a year before offence archaeologists found an old comment that derailed his career.

Silicon Valley needs to accept that people are going to think, say and post whatever they like and should be allowed to do so on their platforms.

The alternative is that they take the same responsibility for what goes out on their platforms as a publisher does, and face the inevitable libel suits.

The middle ground they are currently inhabiting in order to maximise profits while still pandering to their liberal, globalist, metropolitan agenda is unfair, untenable and disingenuous. It has to stop.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Hey, Google, your censorship of 'Plandemic' only turned its author's book into #1 bestseller. Its the Streisand effect, stupid! - RT

For a continent with a long history of dictatorship and control, the massive freedom afforded by the Internet seems to be irksome for most African governments. As they recognise the importance of the Internet, a number of strong-arm tactics have been employed to control its use.

According to a 2019 report on Digital Rights in Africa by Paradigm Initiative, there has been a sharp contrast between how the Internet is bringing development to Africa and how governments have focused more on control and promoting a climate of fear.

In Africa today, drawing from Chinese and Russian models of Information Controls, the information space is now perceived as a legitimate theatre of conflict much the same way as land, air and the sea are established theatres of conflict, the report states.

Between 2016 and 2019, the governments of several African countries shut down the Internet for political reasons. Sudan, Chad, DRC, Ethiopia, and the Republic of Benin are some of the more prominent examples in 2019.

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These events have not come without some costs. As Techpoint reported earlier, the global cost of government-motivated Internet shutdowns was about $8.05 billion in 2019, with sub-Saharan Africa alone accounting for a $2.16 billion loss.

Where shutdowns are not in place, there are usually some forms of legislation passed into law, or going through parliamentary reading to help guide the use of the Internet and mitigate the spread of misinformation.

The Republic of Benin was one of the first in Africa to adopt a law guiding the use of the Internet as the Digital Act adopted by the countrys National Assembly in June 2017 came into force in April 2018.

Earlier this year, Ethiopia also passed its Hate Speech and Disinformation Prevention and Suppression Proclamation Bill (now an Act) into law, in a bid to curb hate speech and misinformation.

In Nigeria, two bills the hate speech bill and social media bill are currently underreviewin the National Assembly, but it has been met by stiff opposition from various civil societies.

While some reports have indicated that social media and the Internet have led to a massive spread of misinformation and might be affecting democracies negatively, according to Techpoints discussion with Ridwan Oloyede, a cybersecurity and data protection lawyer, this is not a problem that will be solved by Internet censorship or hate speech laws.

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa has put a lot of strain on its less than stellar medical facilities. With various technologies, however, the process of tracing possibly infected persons could be eased to a large extent.

One of the most popular methods is contact tracing, a process where a contact tracer closely interviews a patient and deduces who else might have been exposed to the virus by the infected person.

Telecommunications technology could also offer a more targeted approach with the use of location history data from the mobile phones of confirmed cases, to help curb the spread of the infection faster.

The location of every mobile phone user could be assembled into a single searchable database that could be back-checked against the location history of infected persons.

This method, in combination with some others, has been used to great success by some countries globally. Without having to resort to a lockdown, South Korea reportedly uses a combination of credit card transaction records, CCTV footage, and cell phone location data to trace and curb the spread of the virus.

In Africa, countries like Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya have embraced the use of mobile phone location data for contact tracing.

Due to the initial vagueness of South Africas directive on the use of mobile phone tracing, it had to be revised to show what information will be used, how long it will be used for, and if it will continue after the pandemic.

While this seems like a brilliant initiative, the obvious implication is that governments have access to their citizens information and locations, raising a number of privacy issues in the process.

While most legislations allow for tough measures in cases of emergencies, so far, there has been scepticism from bodies such as the Paradigm Initiative and Privacy International, regarding the enforcement of such measures. This could be linked to the fact that other instances of surveillance or censorship are usually cloaked with something positive.

Based on recent events since the lockdown of most African countries, these fears are not without merit.

In the Republic of Niger, Kaka Touda Mamane Goni, a journalist who publishes news reports on Twitter and Facebook, was arrested by authorities, for releasing information about a COVID-19 patient.

In Kenya, which has already adopted mobile phone tracing, Elijah Muthui Kitonyo was arrested for spreading misleading information on Twitter about the whereabouts of a COVID-19 patient in Kenya.

Another adopter of mobile phone tracing, South Africa, has also introduced a law that criminalises the spread of misinformation about COVID-19, a scenario that could lead to a six-month prison sentence, in addition to a fine.

While emergency technology measures might be useful to tackle COVID-19 to a large extent, the continent needs to really take human and digital rights into consideration during and after the pandemic.

Nigerian startups raised $55.4m in Q1 2020;over 99% of which came from foreign sources. Find out more when you download the full report.

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The pandemic is making digital rights violation in Africa, the new norm - Techpoint.ng

YouTubers are being silenced if they dont agree with the United Nations on public health. AsThe Verdictreports:

YouTube will ban any content containing medical advice that contradicts World Health Organisation (WHO) coronavirus recommendations, according to CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Wojcicki announced the policy on CNN on Sunday. WHO is an agency of the UN, charged with overseeing global public health. The Verdict report continues:

Wojcicki said that the Google-owned video streaming platform would be removing information that is problematic. She told host Brian Stelter that this would include anything that is medically unsubstantiated.

So people saying take vitamin C; take turmeric, well cure you, those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy, she said. Anything that would go against World Health Organisation recommendations would be a violation of our policy.

While the decision has been welcomed by many, some have accused the streaming giant of censorship.

To be clear, for American YouTubers, this kind of censorship is not a violation of their constitutional right of free speech. The First Amendment protects citizens againstgovernmentcensorship, and YouTube is a private platform. Were the US government to force the private owners of YouTube to continue broadcasting certain videos against their will,thatwould be much more a violation of the First Amendment.

While YouTubes decision is not unconstitutional, it is unwise, exhibiting far too much deference to central authority in general and to WHO especially.

The World Health Organization is far from infallible. Its handling of information throughout the coronavirus emergency has been a long string of failures. As policy analyst Ross Marchand has recounted here onFEElast week, WHO failed to raise the alarm as the coronavirus rapidly spread through China during the crucial early period of the global crisis in January of this year. Then, as Marchand wrote:

The global bureaucracyuncritically reportedthat Chinese authorities had seen no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus on January 14, just one day afteracknowledgingthe first case outside of China (in Thailand). WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom GhebreyesuspraisedChinese President Xi Jinping for his political commitment and political leadership despite these repeated, reprehensible attempts to keep the world in the dark about the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump recently announced that the US would cease itsfundingof WHO over its many coronavirus-related failures.

And it is not just American conservatives who have been critical. AsFEEs Jon Miltimorewrote:

Our World in Data, an online publication based at the University of Oxford,announcedon Tuesday that it had stopped relying on World Health Organization (WHO) data for its models, citing errors and other factors.

This raises an interesting question: would YouTube censor Oxford if it posted a video on the coronavirus issue with recommendations based on data that contradicts WHOs?

As Miltimore wrote, Recent reports suggest US intelligence agenciesrelied heavilyon WHO in its national assessment of the COVID-19 threat.

This is gravely concerning because bad information leads to bad policies. This is true not only for government policy (like mayors, governors, and heads of state deciding to largely shut down the economy in their jurisdiction), but for the policies of private decision-makers like doctors, business-owners, and individuals making decisions about the health and overall lives of themselves and their families.

Indeed, WHOs misinformation early in the crisis squandered the most precious part of the worlds prep time, which likely crippled the publics responses and may have cost many lives.

YouTube risks compounding that tragedy by now insisting that the publics response to the coronavirus emergency conforms even more strictly with WHOs dubious pronouncements. Wojcicki wants to protect WHOs recommendations from contradiction. But WHOs recommendations are necessarily informed by WHOs information, which has proven to be extremely suspect. Sheltering untrustworthy pronouncements risks amplifying their dangerous influence.

So, it is ironic that YouTube justifies this policy in the name of protecting the public from dangerous misinformation.

It is true that many videos contradicting official pronouncements are themselves full of medical quackery and other misleading falsehoods. But, censorship is the worst way to combat them.

For one, censorship can actually boost the perceived credibility of an untruth. Believers interpret it as validation: evidence that they are onto a truth that is feared by the powers-that-be. And they use that interpretation as a powerful selling point in their underground evangelism.

Censorship also insulates falsehoods from debunking, allowing them to circulate largely uncriticized in the dark corners of public discourse.

This makes censorship especially counterproductive because it is open-air debunking that is one of the most effective ways to counter misinformation and bad ideas. As Justice Louis Brandeis expressed in a US Supreme Courtopinion, the ideal remedy for bad speech, is more speech, not enforced silence.

Again, YouTube has a right to set the terms of service of its own website. But the general principle applies here as well: the truth has a much better fighting chance with a proliferation of competing voices than with inquisitorial efforts to circumscribe discourse within a narrow orthodoxy.

Moreover, WHOs track record of misinformation is not exceptional among government organizations in neither its degree of error nor in its disastrous impact. Governments and the experts they employ not only get things wrong but have frequently proven to be fundamentally wrong-headed on big questions.

To take another example in the realm of public health, it is increasinglywidely recognizedthat the high-carb, low-fat diet recommendations, as depicted by the the USDAs Food Pyramid, and successfully promoted for decades to the population by the US government and the most respected authorities on dietary science and epidemiology, was basically backward. Science journalist Gary Taub tells the whole story of bad science, corrupt influence, and obtuse orthodoxy in his bookGood Calories, Bad Calories.

Again, bad information leads to bad advice which leads to bad choices. So how much illness and even death was caused by generations of Americans uncritically swallowing official diet advice and by Americans largely only having one choice on the menu of diet advice?

The more we centralize decision-making and the management of actionable information, the wider the scope of the damage caused by any single error. But if we let a thousand errors bloom along with a thousand truths, any single error will be circumscribed in its damage and more likely to be corrected through experience and counter-argument.

Champions of policies like YouTubes like to cast the issue in simplistic terms: as a black-and-white battle between respectable experts and wild-eyed crackpots. But the issue is more complex than that.

It is just as often a matter of overweening technocrats making pronouncements on matters that are way beyond them in complexity, that involve factors that fall way outside their domain of expertise, and that drastically impact the lives of millions or even billions. For example: a few dozen epidemiologists, with limited understanding of economics and a great many other relevant disciplines, holding sway over whole economies.

It is also a matter ofdissentingexperts being silenced along with the actual crackpots.

And, perhaps most fundamentally, it is a matter of weakening the individuals ability to discern between truth and falsehood, good advice and bad, by denying them the responsibility and practice of doing so in the first placeof turning self-reliant, free men and women into irresponsible wards to be led by the nose like dumb, deferential livestock by their expert caretakers.

That is not where we are, but that is the direction that the rigid enforcement of centralized orthodoxies tends toward.

Lets choose a different direction. YouTube, do better. Trust your users more. Treat them like human beings with all the capacities for learning, growth, discourse, and cooperation that are the distinctive glories of being human.

After all, that is what made you great in the first place. Your very name is derived from your original faith in the individual.YouTube (a crowd-sourced, individual-driven, pluralistic platform) is what made theboobtube (centralized, institutionalized, and homogenizing broadcast television) largely obsolete. As such, you had a starring role in the internets democratization of information and learning.

Dont betray that legacy. Not now. Not when we need open platforms for the free flow of information and discourse more than ever.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. It has been republished under a Creative Commons licence.

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YouTube bans content that contradicts WHO on Covid-19, despite its track record of misinformation - MercatorNet

Youve probably never heard of Robert B. Strassler. Thats OK, youre not alone.

Early in his career, Strassler worked in oil fields, but he always had an interest inthe classics(the formal designation for the studies of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations). Eventually, Strasslers hobby became an obsession. He went so far as to author his own translation of Thucydides, the Athenian historian of the Peloponnesian War.

The problem was nobody wanted to read Strasslers book. This was in the 1990s. It was more difficult to publish to the web and there was no social media. Strassler approached every Ivy League institution he could find. Nobody was interested in reading a manuscript about Thucydides penned by an oilman with no formal credentials. That was the situation until Strassler contacted Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist professor in Fresno, California. Hanson agreed to look at the manuscript and was astounded by Strasslers work: a brilliant, highly readable translation of Thucydides including maps, diagrams, and charts. Hanson helped the disconnected oilman get in touch with a literary agent. Strasslers landmark edition became the standard translation of Thucydides. Still read today, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War is as successful as any book on the classics can bein the age of Twitter.

Those of us who take the idea of democratic publishing seriously rejoice at how the field has opened to include anyone who has something to say and is willing to write it down. Thats why we should be more alarmed when we see social media companies crowd the spaces once occupied by blogs and do-it-yourself content creators. We see a decline in diverse opinions as the web quickly becomes less free and more autocratic.

How many Robert B. Strasslers are being stifled today by biased algorithms and arbitrary community guidelines?

In March, as COVID-19 exploded into a worldwide panic, the web gatekeepers weve come to rely on quickly massed around a singular interpretation of events andstifled dissenting voiceseven mild ones.

YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world, demonetized all videos that mentioned COVID-19, Coronavirus, or any term related to the pandemic, and herded viewers away from content creators and toward the Center for Disease Control (CDC) the sameCDC that first advisedagainstwearing masks. Even medical practitioners who deviated slightly from the prevailing visionwere removed from the platformafter gaining millions of views.

Experienced journalists who questioned official decrees (surely, the role journalists are expected to perform) were targeted with hit pieces and character assassination by their own peers.

As author/professor Cal Newport noted in anop-ed forWired, much of the dissenting viewpoints and on-the-ground data have become part of the mainstream conversation even after being suppressed by a small group of decision-makers:

We dont necessarily want to trust engineers at one company to make the decisions about what topics the public should and should not be able to read about.

How many times have you clicked on a link in a tweet and received a message as shown in the following screenshot?

Adults should be trusted to determine what kind of content is harmful (if such a thing exists) without the assistance of Twitter employees and their partners. And, are these warnings actually meant to protect people or simply to shield Twitter from corporate liability? I think we can guess what the answer is.

Its not only those without official-sounding credentials who are being barred from sharing content. Creators who clearly have experience in their fields of study are also facing arbitrary censorship.

The Great Courses Plus, a streaming service that produces college-level video courses taught by actual professors, was threatened with a ban from Google if they did not remove COVID-19-related content from their app. In an email to subscribers, the team wrote:

Google informed us they would ban The Great Courses apps if we continued to make [Covid-19] in-app content available. We are working with Google to ensure that they understand our content is factual, expert-led, and thoroughly vetted, so that we can remedy this misunderstanding as soon as possible.

The videos in question included content from Dr. Roy Benaroch, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine; Dr. David Kung, Professor of Mathematics at St. Marys College of Maryland; and Dr. Kevin Ahern, Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Oregon State University. How or why these scholars were found unworthy of Googles imprimatur is a mystery. As the public does not presume to give Google programming advice, perhaps Google could return the favor by not pretending to be experts on epidemiology, immunology, and virology.

The only way to see these offending videos is on the Great Courses website, where Googles authority is not absolute. It happens to be a WordPress-powered site. For intellectuals and laymen who value free expression, having your own website is becoming the only way to make sure you can keep it.

The problem of pitting credentials against experience in a zero-sum conflict is fixable, and WordPress is a big part of the solution.

WordPress allows capable scientists, economists, and medical professionals in other fields to write at length about their ideas without fear of being blocked by arbitrary restrictions. Also, the five-minute install (which does take a little more than five minutes for many people) imposes enough of a barrier to entry to discourage cranks.

We like to think of the internet as a true egalitarian system, where every voice is given equal consideration, but deep down we know thats not exactly how it works. Network effects tend to form hubs of concentrated influence around a handful of websites. This isnt always a bad thing. A recipe blog with poor taste and no pictures deserves fewer readers than a blog with great-tasting recipes and high-resolution images.

There is still room enough in the network for certain nodes to grow in size and influence based on the quality of their content. A node with enough backlinks, good organic search rankings, and high-quality content will gain an audience, and be able to keep it, without fear of corporate reprisals or aggressive algorithm updates.

If we really care about democratizing publishing, we wont always like what we read. There will be disagreements, but democracy requires a literate population eager for debate. We can challenge, discuss, and learn.

There are a lot of Robert B. Strasslers out there in the network, waiting patiently to be heard.

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Bringing Back Blogs in the Age of Social Media Censorship - WP Tavern

Screenwriter Zhou Xiaoxuan speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at her home in Beijing, China, on January 16, 2019, detailing her involvement in China's #MeToo movement.

Two years since the #MeToo movementtook offin China, Chinese feminists are battling headwinds in a political environment where the ruling Communist Partys control over the Internet, media and independent activism is tighter than it has been in 30 years.

Chinas party-state has zero tolerance for collective actions, so the countrys #MeToo movement has never been able to manifest in mass street protests. But individual victims have taken their cases to court, demonstrating extraordinary determination and resilience.

Facing intense slut-shaming on Chinese social media platforms and censorship of discussions of her case, University of Minnesota student Liu Jingyao who is suing, in a Minnesota civil court, Chinese billionaire Liu Qiangdong for an alleged rape vowed tonever settleor sign a nondisclosure agreement (prosecutorsdeclined to charge him in the case, and he maintains that the sex was consensual). Similarly, screenwriter Zhou Xiaoxuan who is suing, in a Beijing court, famed state media anchor Zhu Jun for alleged sexual harassment and assault, which hedeniessaid, Even giving me 100 million [yuan], I wouldnt settle.

Under pressure, the Chinese government has made limited improvements. In December 2018, the Supreme Courtadded sexual harassmentto the list of causes of action, making it easier for #MeToo victims to seek redress. Yet China still lacks robust laws against sexual harassment.

Silenced in their home country, Chinese feminists have increasingly found footingoverseas. Utilizing the relatively free and safe space in Western countries, #MeToo activistshold protests, discussions and trainings, and provide support to their counterparts inside China.

In late 2019, authorities detained Huang Xueqin, a journalist and leading figure in Chinas #MeToo movement, for three months for unknown reasons.Upon release, Huang reportedly wrote: This is Xueqin, and Im back. One second of darkness doesnt make people blind.

Amid the vast darkness, nevertheless, Chinese feminists persisted.

See original here:

#MeToo in the land of censorship - Human Rights Watch

Covid-19 is playing havoc with the publishing schedule - Roddy Doyle, Ottessa Moshfegh and David Mitchell are just some of the bestselling writers whose book launches have been pushed back from spring to late summer or autumn. Online book sales have gone up during lockdown, but without tours, readings, signings and festivals, it's hard to get attention for new books. Come September, we'll be facing a glut of new titles in what is already the busiest publishing month in the calendar. Unless we're back in lockdown and the new releases are pushed back till next year...

The vista is gloomy for publishers and authors, unless you have a controversy on your hands. Turns out this is the perfect time to publish a 'cancelled' book, as independent US publisher, Arcade, demonstrated when they fast-tracked Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing, for release on March 23. That memoir came with more baggage than a jet-setter. On March 2, Hachette announced that it had acquired the book and would be publishing in April. Cue a Twitter storm fuelled by two of Allen's children - Dylan Farrow, who accuses Allen of molesting her when she was a child; and Ronan Farrow, scourge of Harvey Weinstein, and stout defender of his sister's right to be believed. Farrow is also an Hachette author for his bestselling Weinstein expose, Catch and Kill.

Since the Farrows' position on Allen is long-established, Hachette had presumably factored in the backlash and decided to weather it. What they didn't factor in was a hundred or so of their employees striking in solidarity with Dylan and Ronan. This caused Hachette to cancel the memoir, just four days after they'd announced its acquisition. Stephen King tweeted that this made him "very uneasy. I don't give a damn about Woody Allen. It's who gets muzzled next that worries me".

Arcade, who have published Beckett, Tolstoy and Octavio Paz, spotted the chance to pick up a household name while standing up for freedom of speech, with founder Jeannette Seaver emphasising: "We as publishers prefer to give voice to a respected artist, rather than bow to those determined to silence him." And they were lucky with timing - the memoir appeared the day after New York went into lockdown over coronavirus. No bookshops, signings, book tours or festivals, and no gatherings of more than four people, means no opportunities for protests and placards. The Twitter trolls who love to insult and threaten publishers and bookshops into cancelling tours and signings lost traction. Preventing a book being ordered online appears to be beyond their powers.

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The religious right in the US tried to get JK Rowling's 'Harry Potter' series banned from libraries because of Satanism

Samir Hussein/WireImage

Flatiron, an imprint of Macmillan, may have looked on enviously. In January, they published Jeanine Cummins's migrant novel, American Dirt, initially to rave reviews and entry into Oprah's Book Club; then a savage online review by Mexican-American writer Myriam Gurba, entitled 'Pendeja [Bitch], You ain't no Steinbeck' went viral; the hashtag #culturalappropriation started trending; bookstores started cancelling signings and on January 29, Flatiron cancelled Cummins's national book tour and admitted "we made serious mistakes in the way we rolled out this book".

Cancel or gaslight? Censorship, in today's democracies, isn't a state instrument. It doesn't depend on a national censorship board like those that operated in Ireland and the USSR through the 20th Century. Now it's about particular groups coordinating protests to get books 'cancelled'. The 'no-platforming millenials' are one particularly vocal group. Another - diametrically opposed in their world view, and employing different methods, but identical in their aim, eg to stop us reading the books we might want to - are the religious right.

Every year since 2001, the American Library Association (ALA) has published its list of frequently challenged books - the ones that individuals, schools or churches try, with varying degrees of success, to get removed or restricted from libraries. The list demonstrates that millennials have no interest in influencing library reads, but it's the battleground for the religious right. Across the past two decades, almost all the challenged books are children's and YA (young adult) books.

At the start of the millennium, Harry Potter (reason: satanism/occult) and Catcher in the Rye (offensive language) were in the top 10 most challenged, but they've since been edged out by And Tango Makes Three (a picture book featuring a same-sex relationship), David Levithan's Two Boys Kissing (self-explanatory for some) and Alex Gino's George (includes a transgender character).

Since most schools and libraries resist removing the books, these efforts of parents and churches aren't greatly successful and are easy to mock as illiberal and anti-First Amendment rights. The same goes for millennials no-platforming, cancelling and trolling. Using death threats to get Cummins's book tour cancelled (Gurba also received death threats following her review) isn't a good look, and Farrow's show of muscle was a mistake. The accusation against Allen was investigated at the time. New York State child-welfare investigators found "no credible evidence" to support the allegation (although Justice Wilk refused to grant Allen custody), and the Farrow-Allen family rift predates the alleged incident.

Having taken sides so publicly (his mother's), Farrow, as a good journalist and lawyer, should have known to recuse himself. Censorship is never a good look. Whether it's the State operating a draconian censorship board, or the religious right trying to strong-arm libraries, or millennials taking to Twitter to 'cancel' and 'no-platform', the methods seem crude, and the aim ('we get to say what you read') offensive.

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Stephen King has voiced his concern about 'cancel culture'

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Woke millenials are at their sophisticated best when they move away from no-platforming and start gaslighting. If you want to cancel a book, it's much smarter to undermine, than ban it. The aim is to pull off the trick of the tailors in the Emperor's New Clothes - eg make the reader doubt their own taste and opinions. The insults deployed in the Cummins row - 'cultural appropriation' and 'check your privilege' - are the perfect weapons to discombobulate the average novel-reader, so liberal, so middle-class and so desperate to be right-on (by the way, the furore didn't harm Cummins's sales - American Dirt is a bestseller in the US and Ireland - but her critics successfully changed the discourse so that the next person writing outside their cultural experience will find it harder to get published). In the same spirit, Ronan Farrow would have done better to give Woody enough rope - reviews are resoundingly hanging the memoir on its tone-deaf attitude to women.

Home fires

In Ireland, we don't need persuading that cancelling and no-platforming are counter-productive. Irish libraries don't publish lists of challenged books, but the memory of 20th Century State censorship has left us with little appetite for book banning. Liberals have a knee-jerk reaction and conservatives fear the backlash when the censor goes in too hard. It's now almost impossible to get a book banned in Ireland (the only one since 1998 is Jean Martin's astonishingly titled The Raped Little Runaway in 2016).

The books that have been most likely to stir controversy in Ireland in recent years are memoirs. In 2006, Kathy O'Beirne's siblings called a press conference to dispute her account of her upbringing in the bestselling Kathy's Story, in which she alleges an abusive home life, followed by further abuse in religious institutions. (The press conference was a familiar scenario, recalling Limerick DJ, Gerry Hannan's attack on the veracity of Frank McCourt's memoirs, Angela's Ashes, in two ripostes, Ashes and Tis In Me Ass). A journalist, Hermann Kelly, wrote a riposte, Kathy's Real Story, rejecting O'Beirne's version of events. However, O'Beirne's original publishers, Mainstream Publishing, stood by her robustly, as did her ghost-writer, Michael Sheridan. Her first (and only) book is still available on Amazon, without a disclaimer.

Can you 'cancel' memory? In 2005, Augusten Burroughs and his publisher, St Martin's Press, were sued in Massachusetts by the Turcotte family for "defamation, invasion of privacy and emotional distress" over their depiction in Burroughs' bestselling memoir, Running with Scissors. The case was settled for an undisclosed sum and Burroughs agreeing to recognise on the acknowledgements page that the Turcottes' "memories of the events described in this book are different than my own".

Also in 2005, there was uproar - played out on Oprah, of course - when James Frey was found to have fabricated sections of his bestselling addiction memoir, A Million Little Pieces. His publishers, Random House, offered a refund to readers who had bought the book. The controversy put the onus on future US publishers to comprehensively fact-check all memoirs (a surely impossible task, recalling Lloyd's George's description of arguing with De Valera: like trying to pick up mercury with a fork).

Underlying neuroses

If you want to know what a society fears, look at what it seeks to restrict, ban or cancel. In the 20th Century, Soviet Russia banned, inter alia, Orwell's Animal Farm and Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago; Ireland banned Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls and Marie Stopes's Married Love; Pakistan, India and most of the Middle East banned Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. It's clear what each feared: politics, sex, and religion, respectively.

So what does the current situation with regard to cancelling/challenging books tell us about what our contemporary societies most fear? The answer is quite surprising - we seem to fear ambiguity and to crave absolute certainty. The religious right fears sexual and gender ambiguity and craves biological certainty; the woke no-platformers fear narrative ambiguity (only write what you know) and crave moral certainty (the Great Artist has to be a Good Person); and every reader who dishes out 15 for a memoir wants legal reassurance that it happened in just the way the author says it did.

But boys will be girls, great writers will be assholes, and memory will always play us false. Now that the world has gone so spectacularly beyond our control, we may as well relinquish the illusion that we have any control over the narrative. And if you're a publisher with a book that offends against absolute certainty and seems likely to provoke dissent, now is a good time to get it out. Coronavirus has cancelled the cancellers.

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The people have cancelled... there's a new kind of censorship in town - Independent.ie