Fighting Disinformation ..... or Censoring Oppostion.

[Bob B]

I have a strong belief in freedom of speech. It is one of the founding principles in this country.
I thought about imbedding this in an existing thread, but believe it warrants having it's own thread.

Sure, the Supreme Court has found that there are certain exceptions to free speech such as yelling fire and causing harm to people in a crowded theater.
Of course, yelling fire would not be a problem if there actually is a fire. That act would be saving lives not endangering them.
So, yelling fire in a crowded theater could either save lives .... or put lives at risk ... depending on whether or not there actually is a fire.

So, who gets to decide what the truth is? Who gets to decide something is disinformation?
In my mind, the decision of to allow or deny speech has to be much like innocense or guilt .... speech must be allowed by default and must be proven harmful to be censored.

The censorship machine, however, is running at full speed in today's world ..... techniques developed by the CIA are being used on the public all over the world.

The censorship machine has been exposed by several independent journalists lately .... The latest version is here ....

https://twitter.com/x/status/1678406408084025351

Imbedded in that post is a link to this document, which appears to lay out most of the strategy.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kc0O7owFyGiYs8N8wSq17gRUPEDQsD5lLUL_3KGCgRE/edit?pli=1

Here is an interesting snippet under the category of "Create Fake Experts."


If all you want to do is shout about conspiracy theories, I'm not at all interested in hearing from you .... You need to bring proof that this is fake news.
I am extremely interested in how to tip the scales in favor of free speech.

I think exposing these tactics being used on us every day is an important part of tipping the scales.

 

[MurphyGuy]

I have a strong belief in freedom of speech. It is one of the founding principles in this country.
I thought about imbedding this in an existing thread, but believe it warrants having it's own thread.

Sure, the Supreme Court has found that there are certain exceptions to free speech such as yelling fire and causing harm to people in a crowded theater.
Of course, yelling fire would not be a problem if there actually is a fire. That act would be saving lives not endangering them.
So, yelling fire in a crowded theater could either save lives .... or put lives at risk ... depending on whether or not there actually is a fire.

So, who gets to decide what the truth is? Who gets to decide something is disinformation?
In my mind, the decision of to allow or deny speech has to be much like innocense or guilt .... speech must be allowed by default and must be proven harmful to be censored.

The censorship machine, however, is running at full speed in today's world ..... techniques developed by the CIA are being used on the public all over the world.

The censorship machine has been exposed by several independent journalists lately .... The latest version is here ....

https://twitter.com/x/status/1678406408084025351

Imbedded in that post is a link to this document, which appears to lay out most of the strategy.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kc0O7owFyGiYs8N8wSq17gRUPEDQsD5lLUL_3KGCgRE/edit?pli=1

Here is an interesting snippet under the category of "Create Fake Experts."
View attachment 165831

If all you want to do is shout about conspiracy theories, I'm not at all interested in hearing from you .... You need to bring proof that this is fake news.
I am extremely interested in how to tip the scales in favor of free speech.

I think exposing these tactics being used on us every day is an important part of tipping the scales.

I'm going to teach you something Bob.. and I'm going to do it in a sincere way.. but the question might upset you.

I suspect you won't learn anything however, but I'm not going to give up hope...

If you invite someone to your home and they start calling your mother and your wife dirty whores, will you allow their free speech to continue or would you kick them out of your home?

Are you capable of giving an honest answer?

 

[Bob B]

I'm going to teach you something Bob.. and I'm going to do it in a sincere way.. but the question might upset you.

I suspect you won't learn anything however, but I'm not going to give up hope...

If you invite someone to your home and they start calling your mother and your wife dirty whores, will you allow their free speech to continue or would you kick them out of your home?

Are you capable of giving an honest answer?

sincere my ass.

So .... what are you trying to say?
If someone says something bad we should kick them out of the country. This is my country and your country .... not one or the other.
I think you are wrong 90% of the time, but I don't deny your right to be wrong.

My home has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of censorship in America or the world in general.
My home is my home .... not the home of some fictitious person.

It's very telling that you don't understand the difference.

 

[Bob B]

I think you are wrong 90% of the time, but I don't deny your right to be wrong.

Actually .... Wrong and malicious slander are 2 different things.

For instance when you tried to claim that Dr Mercola was fraudulently selling products .... and that he was a con man ... That is probably NOT protected speech.
If anyone actually believed you, it could harm his business and hurt him financially.
It is slander and should not be allowed .... and you could have a law suit filed against you for that kind of speech.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Actually .... Wrong and malicious slander are 2 different things.

Not in your context of freedom of speech they aren't..

For instance when you tried to claim that Dr Mercola was fraudulently selling products .... and that he was a con man ... That is probably NOT protected speech.

It very much is protected speech..

If anyone actually believed you, it could harm his business and hurt him financially.

Good.

It is slander and should not be allowed .... and you could have a law suit filed against you for that kind of speech.

Stay on topic.. this thread is about Freedom of Speech and you're going off into la la land..

Slander is a legal term and has absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with Free Speech..

 

[Bob B]

Not in your context of freedom of speech they aren't..


It very much is protected speech..


Good.

Stay on topic.. this thread is about Freedom of Speech and you're going off into la la land..

Slander is a legal term and has absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with Free Speech..

Wrong again .... Slander is a form of speech. Just like crying fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire .... it is not protected speech.

You don't even seem to have a basic understanding of what speech is.

 

[Bob B]

Wrong again .... Slander is a form of speech. Just like crying fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire .... it is not protected speech.

You don't even seem to have a basic understanding of what speech is.

Actually, to be fully accurate, the defamation you engaged in about Dr Mercola wasn't slander .... it was libel. If you had been standing on a street corner spouting your lies about him, it would be slander .... since it was written, it was libel.

Defamation is a tort that encompasses false statements of fact that harm another’s reputation.

There are two basic categories of defamation: (1) libel and (2) slander. Libel generally refers to written defamation, while slander refers to oral defamation, though much spoken speech that has a written transcript also falls under the rubric of libel.

The First Amendment rights of free speech and free press often clash with the interests served by defamation law. The press exists in large part to report on issues of public concern. However, individuals possess a right not to be subjected to falsehoods that impugn their character. The clash between the two rights can lead to expensive litigation, million-dollar jury verdicts and negative public views of the press.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Wrong again .... Slander is a form of speech. Just like crying fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire .... it is not protected speech.

Oh for F*cks sakes.. Yes, slander if a form of speech.. so is yelling, so is singing.. so is any verbal communication that comes out of your mouth... so are a lot of things..

They have nothing to do with the 1st amendment of Free Speech.. which is what this thread is about. Damn, you started a thread about free speech and you don't even know what the hell it means?

This is going to go the same way as the space probes isn't it?

You don't even seem to have a basic understanding of what speech is.

Speech, in the context of the thread YOU STARTED, is defined as (almost) any kind of expression. This can be, but isn't limited to, verbal oor written communications, artistic expression, clothing, personal appearance, etc.

Here's the legal definition:
Freedom of speech is the right to speak, write, and share ideas and opinions without facing punishment from the government.


You still don't get it do you? This is space probes all over again..

 

[Bob B]

Here's the legal definition:
Freedom of speech is the right to speak, write, and share ideas and opinions without facing punishment from the government.

So .... do you think the government is trying to punish people for their speech?

Guess you can't see that Dr Mercola was being punished for his speech .... at the governments request has been DE platformed from YouTube. The government met with various corporations and gave them a list of people to act against .... is that censorship and a violation of freedom of speech?

You could practice eliminating unnecessary text from your posts and they would be much more understandable.

 

[aenyc]

The moment you start realizing that government does not work for your benefit, everything that is happening is going to start making sense.

 

[aenyc]

Docs Offer Glimpse Inside Censorship Industrial Complex​

Welcome to the Censorship Industrial Complex. It’s rather like the old “military industrial complex,” which was shorthand for the military, private companies, and academia working together to achieve U.S. battlefield dominance, with the R&D funded by the government that buys the final product.

But the censorship industrial complex builds algorithms, not bombers. The players aren’t Raytheon and Boeing, but social media companies, tech startups, and universities and their institutes. The foes to be dominated are American citizens whose opinions diverge from government narratives on issues ranging from COVID-19 responses to electoral fraud to transgenderism.

When first exposed a few months ago, many of the actors and their media defenders perversely claimed that they, as private entities, were acting out of concern for “democracy” and exercising their own First Amendment rights.

However, the records and correspondence of an advisory committee to an obscure government agency tell a different story. The Functional Government Initiative (FGI) has obtained through a public records request documents of the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The committee was composed of academics and tech company officials working with government personnel in a much closer relationship than either they or the media want to admit. Several advisory committee members who appear throughout the documents as quasi-federal actors are among those loudly protesting that they were private actors when censoring lawful American speech (e.g., Kate Starbird, Vijaya Gadde, Alex Stamos).

But the advisory committee members met often and worked so closely with their government handlers that the federal liaison to the committee regularly offered members his personal cell phone and even reminded them to use the committee’s Slack channel. Your average concerned citizen doesn’t have a Homeland Security bureaucrat on speed dial.

What were they working on? CISA’s “Mis-, Dis-, and Mal-information” (MDM) subcommittee discussed Orwellian “social listening” and “monitoring,” and considered the government’s best censorship “success metrics.” Who was to be censored? CISA was formed in response to misinformation campaigns from foreign actors, but it evolved toward domestic “threats.” Meeting notes record that Suzanne Spaulding of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said they shouldn’t “solely focus on addressing foreign threats … [but] to emphasize that domestic threats remain and while attribution is sometimes unclear, CISA should be sensitive to domestic distinctions, but cannot focus too heavily on such limitations.” So CISA should combat “high-volume disinformation purveyors before the purveyor is attributed to a domestic or foreign threat” and not worry so much about First Amendment niceties.

More telling is the group’s attitude toward what it called “mal-information” – typically information that is true, but contrary to the preferred narratives of the censor. Dr. Starbird wrote in an email, “Unfortunately current public discourse (in part a result of information operations) seems to accept malinformation as ‘speech’ and within democratic norms …” Therein lies a dilemma for the censors, as Starbird wrote: “So, do we bend into a pretzel to counter bad faith efforts to undermine CISA’s mission? Or do we put down roots and own the ground that says this tactic is part of the suite of techniques used to undermine democracy?”

It is chilling that there is no consideration of whether the information is true or of the public’s right to know it. “Democracy” in this formulation is whatever maintains the government’s narrative.

Accordingly, the group discussed recommendations for countering “dangerously inaccurate health advice.” It contemplated the roles of the FBI and Homeland Security in addressing “domestic threats,” and a CISA staffer felt the need to remind the subcommittee “of CISA's limitations in countering politically charged narratives.”

CISA couldn’t censor all the people the advisors wanted. And it could face the same outrage that greeted President Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board, led by singing censor Nina Jankowicz. Americans didn’t want that body deciding what they could say, and Biden shut it down within three weeks. CISA’s advisers were acutely aware their work could be conflated with that of the DGB, and even considered changing the name of the MDM subcommittee. Dr. Starbird noted in an email that she’d “removed ‘monitoring’ from just about every place where it appeared” and made “other defensive word changes/deletions.” Similarly, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde “cautioned the group against pursuing any social listening recommendations” for the time being.

The group also sought cover from outside and inside the government. They spent an inordinate amount of time talking about “socializing” the committee and its work – something DGB apparently hadn’t done. And like a partisan campaign, they looked for natural allies. Meeting notes record that they sought to “identify a point of contact from a progressive civil rights and civil liberties angle to recruit as a [subject matter expert].”

A government committee that seeks partisan allies, obfuscates its purpose, and can’t even be honest about the nature of its members’ participation is going to sort out online truth for Americans? Welcome to the Censorship Industrial Complex.

 

[aenyc]

The Censorship Industrial Complex Is The Revolt Of The Elites​

The political establishment has constructed a new apparatus of control...

In 2002, the Bush administration, desperate to sell its planned invasion of Iraq to the American public, turned to the mainstream media. Every evening on Fox News, White House officials invoked Hitler allusions and implied fictitious ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Fox, however, allowed them to preach only to the converted. To forge a working national consensus, they had to reach doves as well as hawks.

So the Bush administration zeroed in on The New York Times. With reporter Judith Miller, they hit pay dirt. With breathless headlines such as “HUSSEIN INTENSIFIES QUEST FOR A-BOMB PARTS, Miller stamped the President’s mythmaking about aluminum tubes, mobile weapons labs, and Weapons of Mass Destruction with the imprimatur of her illustrious employer. So critical was her reporting to the spinning of American aggression as self-defense that it’s conceivable that the White House’s entire drive to war may have failed without it.

By the time Miller’s stories were exposed as so much laundered propaganda, they had served their purpose: American soldiers were already occupying Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq marked the last time the political elite would wield the power to mobilize an entire nation merely by manipulating a handful of journalistic elites. The era of mass media, during which just a dozen or so giant print and broadcast corporations enjoyed hegemonic control over the national public discourse, lasted about eighty years, beginning roughly a century ago, when modern television was born. The incestuous relationship between the government and the media during those decades was depicted in Steven Spielberg’s movie The Post, in which Defense Secretary Robert McNamara tries and fails to leverage his cozy relationship with Washington Post editor Katherine Graham to compel the media to fall in line with the government’s suppression of the Pentagon Papers. The story is heroic because it’s so unusual; Graham’s decision was the exception that proved the rule.

That era ended two decades ago, when social media networks emerged. About a year after the invasion of Iraq, Facebook was founded. The year after that YouTube was born; the following year came Twitter. With the cheap, targeted advertising their technology enabled, the new tech platforms destroyed the business model of the mass media. Unable to compete for advertisers, the media mammoths of the twentieth century floundered. The entire industry was thrown into crisis, bleeding revenue and laying off staff.

At the same time, social media began sorting news consumers into hyper-polarized digital silos, shattering the broad political center that the traditional media catered to and relied upon to sell advertisements to a mass audience. The New York Times, CNN, and even Fox News saw their broad national readerships and viewerships contract into smaller and evermore partisan echo chambers, even as ordinary people began to forge horizontal connections with one another online, exchanging information laterally. The public began generating their own, autonomous narratives about world events, typically cobbled together eclectically from reports by various news outlets, but beholden to none of them in particular. The power to shape the national narrative devolved downward, becoming increasingly fractured in the process.

This anarchic new media ecosystem has defined the public discourse ever since. For both elected politicians and the administrative state, it has constituted a perennial crisis. Bureaucracies manage populations by striking bargains with leaders; you can’t negotiate with a mob, much less a thousand of them. From the perspective of the state, this new information landscape was essentially ungovernable. An entire regime of social control, helmed by the most powerful politicians in the country in partnership with the titans of the media industry, was felled. In the age of social media that the new platforms jump-started, the state’s ability to control world events by playing reporters like Judith Miller like pawns on a chess board withered away, as the influence of the media corporations they worked for dissipated.

The political elite stumbled through this bedlam for two decades. But over that time, new gatekeepers emerged to replace those that had faded away with the decline of the mass media.

The state created a new apparatus of control over the public discourse, one whose existence most Americans are still oblivious to.

...

Today, we are witnessing the emergence of a new so-called emergency: the “disinformation pandemic.”

Like Oceania’s distant war with Eurasia, it’s an emergency concocted expressly to justify its proposed remedy: the erection and expansion of the Censorship Industrial Complex.

...

The defenders of the Censorship Industrial Complex regard themselves as ordained to rule.

They take for granted their right to dictate to us what we read, watch and hear, as we can’t be trusted to decide for ourselves.

To them, the public is a barbarian horde that, given an ounce too much freedom, will run amok, destroying all in its path.

These are the delusions of a political nobility. In the spirit of a democratic nation, they must be stripped of their crowns and never be allowed to wield power again.

 

[MurphyGuy]

So .... do you think the government is trying to punish people for their speech?

Not in the context of this thread. There have been incidences of police arresting people for giving them the middle finger (which is protected speech).. and there have been cases of police pulling over cars with obnoxious bumper stickers (also protected speech).. We also now have a case in Florida where the governor is trying to punish Disney for their free speech.. (the gov is going to lose)..

But this thread is not addressing those violations, you seem to have supplemented your original post with some doctor selling snake oil under false pretenses and you seem to be implying that those false pretenses fall under the protection of free speech.. they do not. Not even close..

Freedom of speech is limited under congress's authority to regulate commerce. If your quack doctor was giving away the supplements for free, then it (probably) wouldn't fall under congress's authority to regulate, but since they are not free, it does.

You should read Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution called "the commerce clause".

The commerce clause is also why a car manufacturer can't tell you their car gets 80 mpg when it only gets 20 mph.. or why the label on your jeans can't say "100% cotton" when they're made from some cheaper material.. The commerce clause gives congress the authority to pass laws and regulations stipulating how products are sold and under what limitations.

I'm not a lawyer, and while this stuff can become convoluted, the basics seem easy to understand.

Guess you can't see that Dr Mercola was being punished for his speech .... at the governments request has been DE platformed from YouTube. The government met with various corporations and gave them a list of people to act against .... is that censorship and a violation of freedom of speech?

You could practice eliminating unnecessary text from your posts and they would be much more understandable.

He's not being punished for his speech, he's being punished for selling a product and making fraudulent claims.

The right to free speech does not extend to the right for false or misleading advertising to sell something.

 

[Bob B]

He's not being punished for his speech, he's being punished for selling a product and making fraudulent claims.

The right to free speech does not extend to the right for false or misleading advertising to sell something.

Quit telling the lie .... There are and have not been any charges against him. You have zero evidence of those claims ..... therefore you are still committing libel.
The truth is that Dr Mercola is VERY outspoken against the governments response to Covid .... they are out to get him for that.
He has presented proof of what is going on in the documents I linked and you won't read .... instead you just keep pushing the libel claims.
It is people like you in government that justify what they are doing based on lies.
The worst part is that you don't have a clue that numbskulls thinking like yourself is what will destroy our freedoms.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Quit telling the lie .... There are and have not been any charges against him. You have zero evidence of those claims ..... therefore you are still committing libel.
He has presented proof of what is going on in the documents I linked and you won't read .... instead you just keep pushing the libel claims.
It is people like you in government that justify what they are doing based on lies.
The worst part is that you don't have a clue that numbskulls thinking like yourself is what will destroy our freedoms.

He hasn't been charged (probably) because most of those types of commerce related "fake claims" cases are not prosecuted.. Some of the bigger ones are, like when Verizon claims you'll get a certain speed with your internet connection but then it's discovered the actual speeds were far lower and Verizon profited hundreds of millions from the scam. Those are the big fish they go after, not some quacky doctor making a few bucks off dumb ass gullible people.
Some of these "fake claims" cases aren't even criminal in nature, they're civil cases.. But even then they usually only go after the bigger fish because by the time the snake oil sales guy has hired a lawyer and dished out the fees to protect himself, he hasn't gained anything.

There are numerous examples of such products being forcibly taken off the market without criminal prosecution.

How the hell can you not know this stuff? Oh.. I have to keep reminding myself.. Space Probes...

 

[MurphyGuy]

sincere my ass.

So .... what are you trying to say?
If someone says something bad we should kick them out of the country. This is my country and your country .... not one or the other.
I think you are wrong 90% of the time, but I don't deny your right to be wrong.

I must have missed this post..
I just asked if you would respect the free speech of someone in your home calling your wife or daughter a whore.. IE: Saying things that offend you.

My home has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of censorship in America or the world in general.

Actually it does Bob.. You see Bob, in the context of social media, it has everything to do with your home.

My home is my home .... not the home of some fictitious person.

That's right Bob, and you have every right to "censor" someone in YOUR home.. Just as you would have the right to censor someone in your BUSINESS as well.

It's very telling that you don't understand the difference.

I understand the difference on constitutional level..

We operate on two different levels Bob.. I'm a rather normal person with some unusual hobbies, you are a conspiracy nut job who thinks we could be "spreading life thru the galaxy with our space probes"

 

[grizzzman]

The Constitution | The White House

Why a Constitution? The need for the Constitution grew out of problems with the Articles of Confederation, which established a “firm league of friendship” between the States, and vested most power in a Congress of the Confederation. This power was, however, extremely limited—the central...

www.whitehouse.gov

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

[Checkthisout]

I'm going to teach you something Bob.. and I'm going to do it in a sincere way.. but the question might upset you.

I suspect you won't learn anything however, but I'm not going to give up hope...

If you invite someone to your home and they start calling your mother and your wife dirty whores, will you allow their free speech to continue or would you kick them out of your home?

Are you capable of giving an honest answer?

Well, your have a mail-order bride sooo.....

 

[MurphyGuy]

The Constitution | The White House

Why a Constitution? The need for the Constitution grew out of problems with the Articles of Confederation, which established a “firm league of friendship” between the States, and vested most power in a Congress of the Confederation. This power was, however, extremely limited—the central...

www.whitehouse.gov

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This isn't about freedom of speech, this is about fraudulent advertising..

Bob thinks that its about freedom of speech.. of course, Bob also thinks we could be "spreading life thru the galaxy with our space probes".. so what Bob thinks doesn't mean much.

I suspect he won't learn anything.. but that's his problem.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Well, your have a mail-order bride sooo.....

And you have the young children you like to molest..