Posted on 03/13/2023 7:09:37 AM PDT by Twotone
“It may be possible — if we can take off the tinfoil hat — that there is not a vast conspiracy,” Democrat Colin Allred of Texas scoffed at independent journalist Matt Taibbi during Thursday’s House Judiciary subcommittee hearing. But while Allred was busy deriding Taibbi and fellow witness, journalist Michael Shellenberger, the public was digesting the latest installment of the “Twitter Files” — which contained yet further proof that the government funds and leads a sprawling Censorship Complex.
Taibbi dropped the Twitter thread about an hour before the House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing began. And notwithstanding the breadth and depth of the players revealed in the 17-or-so earlier installments of the “Twitter Files,” Thursday’s reporting exposed even more government-funded organizations pushing Twitter to censor speech.
But yesterday’s thread, titled “The Censorship-Industrial Complex,” did more than merely expand the knowledge base of the various actors: It revealed that government-funded organizations sought the censorship of truthful speech by ordinary Americans.
In his prepared testimony for the subcommittee, Shellenberger spoke of the censorship slide he saw in reviewing the internal Twitter communications. “The bar for bringing in military-grade government monitoring and speech-countering techniques has moved from ‘countering terrorism’ to ‘countering extremism’ to ‘countering simple misinformation.’ Otherwise known as being wrong on the internet,” Shellenberger testified.
“The government no longer needs the predicate of calling you a terrorist or an extremist to deploy government resources to counter your political activity,” Shellenberger continued. “The only predicate it needs is the assertion that the opinion you expressed on social media is wrong.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
There was an earlier thread where some Free Republic handles were talking about all the conspiracy nuts here. Coincidently, they always seem to pop up in threads where maintaining the ‘party line’ is deemed important.
We should have a list of individuals who were censored. Then we file class action lawsuits against the individuals and organizations involved for violating our 1st amendment rights. This was government censorship through these “private” organizations.
They should be financially destroyed.
Yeah, they also claimed the 2020 election was fair and honest. How did Trump’s 500,000 vote lead on election night turn to a 50,000 vote deficit overnight when the 5 states stopped counting at 10:30 p.m.?
The talking memo for today is to call anybody who sees potential for SVB contagion an "ankle biter". Surprised they didn't just go with "muppets".
They will be back demanding we vote for the most progressive gop nominee soon. For what it’s worth, even FR changed a few years ago.. you can tell they are bots or leftist by their primary defense tactic… name calling, then just insult you’re intelligence instead of reasonable rational debate.
FR used to be the home of civilized debate and being able to agree to disagree.
Is it possible we were visiting different FRs? ...cuz I sure don't remember that. :^)
Las, do you miss the old flame wars? I sure do. That made for pure comic genius.
why do so many of the bots have signup dates from 20 or 25 years ago?
I’d say so did Rep. Tom Massie last night, too....
Thomas Massie
@RepThomasMassie
Just got off of a zoom meeting with Fed, Treasury, FDIC, House, and Senate.
A Democrat Senator essentially asked whether there was a program in place to censor information on social media that could lead to a run on the banks.
8:24 PM · Mar 12, 2023
We've always had 'operatives' on here (heck, Tony Snow used to interact here, but he was also upfront with who he was), and the pattern always ramps up in a presidential election year.
One thing that IS different is the nature and in the way some of handles post. Not going to help them by talking about it on the thread, but its sort of "you know them when you see them" sort of thing.
I remember them. Cannot say I miss them, but if I did, I could just go to any Ukraine/Russia war thread.
In fact, I did a little performance art in one of them. Admin or Jim deleted the first few of my terroristic responses on the thread, but I think they got what I was doing and left the rest.
Basically, no matter what side you were on, or what you said, I would savage the poster with the most horrendous response. It was GREAT fun. :^) After a bit, everyone got it.
they seemed to wake up when Jim was out sick ...
Stop reading my mind!
:snicker:
we are in the final stage of tyranny
criminalizing political opposition
“The bar for bringing in military-grade government monitoring and speech-countering techniques has moved from ‘countering terrorism’ to ‘countering extremism’ to ‘countering simple misinformation’—otherwise known as being wrong on the internet,” Shellenberger testified.
“The government no longer needs the predicate of calling you a terrorist or an extremist to deploy government resources to counter your political activity... The only predicate it needs is the assertion that the opinion you expressed on social media is wrong.”
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