Tuesday 25 June 2019

Project Veritas: Another Video Removed by YouTube? Alt-Tech Censorship.

Yesterday Project Veritas released a video containing information on Google's plans to steer the 2020 elections.

I've called this "Agenda 2020" for a long time now. Basically it started at a low level, but when the Data & Society report came out with the bullshit Alternative Influence Network of supposedly alt-Right activists (including the Leftist Tim Pool fer christsake) you knew the game was on.

And so it has come to pass. Once someone on the left could pool the non-mainstream thought influencers into a pot, that pot has been the subject of constant attack from alt-tech and the mainstream media.

From smear campaigns, de-monetising, de-platforming, and removal of videos, alt-tech has started a battle to remove alternative voices from the big social media online platforms.

All they have to do to justify censorship is to smear someone and classify them as objectionable or using hate speech so they fall foul of the good Samaritan clause of Section 230 of the US Communications and Decency Act.

Now Project Veritas has information supplied by insider whistleblowers from Facebook, Google and Pinterest showing there is a deliberate bias towards the left.

The latest video released yesterday regarding Google is the most blatant and damning. Videos of supposed Google executives blatantly admitting they want to avoid another Trump win in 2020. Admitting they skew search results by training their AI routines to bias search results in a certain way.

In one part of the video, a slide of a flow diagram that was for Google employees actually has the term "Editorial Decisions" in a decision box.

Now maybe it's just me, but didn't all of these big tech platforms successfully argue they weren't liable for what was on their platform because they didn't take editorial decisions?

It seems that the platforms have conveniently forgotten their deal forged in the supreme court of the US that removed their liability for libel and slander. Maybe the supreme court will have something to say about the level of contempt these companies have for the deal down not that long ago.

Last week's insider revelations from Pinterest got the video taken down from YouTube, ostensibly for a privacy violation. Eventually the video was reloaded but with some censoring of the material Pinterest complained about. The uncensored video is on Bitchute.

Now it looks like the same thing has happened to the video about Google. It has disappeared from project Veritas' YouTube channel. However it is still up on BitChute here.

The information is chilling. That big tech companies think they are big enough to sway the result of the 2020 Presidential election and that they have the gall to even consider it.

That tech companies are now actively involved in editing content despite going to the supreme court and testifying they didn't do any censorship. Instead they actively promoted the idea that they were just platform providers, much like a telephone company cannot be liable for the messages sent from person-to-person over the phone.

Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act is the legislation in play here. It offers big tech companies immunity from prosecution for slanderous and libellous material on their platforms, but also allows a moderate amount of censorship if they find material on their site that is Obscene, lewd, harassing or objectionable.

It's the definition around this "Good Samaritan" clause that the big tech companies are exploiting. It may well be that left-leaning big tech executives find Trump supporters and their views objectionable, but is it really what the good Samaritan clause was supposed to catch? I doubt that perfectly legitimate and legal viewpoints, as protected in the First amendment of the US Constitution are the things that the Supreme Court had in mind when it allowed this leeway.

I very much doubt that the Supreme Court envisioned the enabling of Big Tech companies to influence US elections my silencing dissenting voices and alternative viewpoints: the very essence of healthy political debate.

There is a very clear campaign to remove alternative voices. If something cannot be dredged up from years ago they can use to justify censorship under section 230, then something will be fabricated. I have seen a number of instances where an article for instance states a moderate (who cannot be touched under section 230) is having a discourse with the far right.  Then the same moderate in another article described as "associated with the far right" and then a further article maybe months later describes the same moderate as just plain "Far-Right". Guilt by association. The D&S report is a very clear road map that enables this sort of "smear by association".

Personally I think the line has been crossed. The revelations from the small number of whistleblowers shows that big tech have the intent to censor, to silence alternative voices and to bag themselves a political candidate that suits their agenda.

Personally I think it's time for the legislature to revisit section 230 and to allow freedom of political discourse online. And very importantly, the freedom from censorship by the big tech platforms when the big tech platforms themselves are accused of censorship.

And we Brits thought the Yanks didn't do Irony....