So when the Intercept’s Lee Fang kicked off the 8th installment of the Twitter files, I was not expecting much at all. After all, Fang was one of the authors of the very recent garbage Intercept story that totally misunderstood the role of CISA in the government and (falsely) argued that the government demanded Twitter censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. The fact that the evidence from the Twitter files totally disproved his earlier story should at least result in Fang questioning his understanding of these things.
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LibsOfTikTok was ‘whitelisted’.
Thus, it’s not at all surprising that Twitter clearly has a similar whitelist feature. This was actually somewhat revealed in an earlier Twitter File when Bari Weiss, thinking she was revealing unfair treatment of the @LibsOfTikTok account, actually revealed it was on a similar Xcheck style whitelist that clearly showed a flag on the account saying DO NOT TAKE ACTION ON USER WITHOUT CONSULTING an executive team.
Twitter’s most recent transparency report, published in July, shows that it took action on 4.3 million accounts in the second half of 2021 and removed 5.1 million pieces of content. You could cherry-pick a few of those decisions to fit almost any ideological narrative. Right-wing commentators aren’t the only people complaining about platforms’ actions. Some Black and LGBTQ social-media users have also objected that they’re being unfairly moderated, as automated tools take down posts containing words and phrases deemed offensive. Distrust of Big Tech’s power is universal.
Manila Chan originally discussed the links between Twitter and FBI, CIA, NSA, deep state back in June 2022. Originally aired on a “certain” international media outlet. First shirked off as “Russian disinformation” – the now massive trove called the Twitter Files brought to light by Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss confirmed Manila’s reporting from 6 months prior.
In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower famously identified the military-industrial complex, warning that the growing fusion between corporations and the armed forces posed a threat to democracy. Judged 50 years later, Ike’s frightening prophecy actually understates the scope of our modern system—and the dangers of the perpetual march to war it has put us on.
In July, the medical community was rocked by a disappointing reminder of science’s weakest link: the humans doing the work. The journal Science had shared that its six-month investigation supported the findings of whistleblower Matthew Schrag, who first noted altered images in a high-impact paper on Alzheimer’s, published in Nature in 2006. That paper is still flagged on Natureas under review, but the damage has already been done. Alzheimer’s drugs for the last decade and a half have been developed around claims without as much evidence as initially believed—which might also explain why they haven’t been working, leading people to pour false hope into useless and often expensive treatment plans for declining loved ones.
On 30 November 2022, EU President Ursula von der Leyen announced that at least 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died. The announcement was so shocking that the figures were subsequently removed from the official announcement on the European Commission’s website and from the video version of the statement. Here is a look back at the battle over the figures and the attempt to rewrite the story in 1984 style.
As per the statement posted on the website of the Open Society Foundation (“Open Society” or Soros Foundation – which was declared an undesirable organization in Russia back in 2015), the so-called “charity” of American billionaire George Soros, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $6.7 billion, has decided to close its branch – the “Assistance Fund” – in Tajikistan. The alleged reason for this decision being “a restructuring launched in 2021 aimed at setting new priorities and restructuring the more than 20 semi-autonomous national foundations around the world with a new regional approach.”
With his refusal to go along with lockdowns and mask mandates during the pandemic, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis emerged as a hero to many in libertarian circles. But as his name is now consistently put forward as a prospective or even likely 2024 Republican Presidential candidate, those who view him favorably should take a sober second look. On foreign policy in particular, DeSantis promises to continue the disastrous policies of his predecessors, which have made us uniformly less free, less safe, and much poorer.
The same State Department office that partnered with a Department of Homeland Security-backed private consortium that reported purported election misinformation to tech platforms for removal in the 2020 and 2022 cycles is also using internet games to affect elections abroad.
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