Thursday, August 20, 2020

Zuckerberg, Facebook, & Three ‘Fact-Checkers’ Sued for Government Sponsored Censorship

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How much of what you believe is going on within the world’s current events is actually true? Do you think you would make different decisions if your perception was missing important bits of information that change any given story? This is an important question right now, as much of what people think is happening comes from mainstream media or “fact-checkers,” and much of the time, it’s only a small piece to the story that doesn’t truly inform people.

Ongoing Facebook censorship is forcing the hand of independent organizations who have had enough of the platform’s allowance of independent “fact-checkers” to decide what is true and not true on Facebook, and also for unjustly destroying the trust these organizations work for years to build.

What Happened: Children’s Health Defense, led by Robert F Kennedy Jr., has sued Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook INC, and three “fact-checkers” (SCIENCE FEEDBACK, POYNTER INSTITUTE, and POLITIFACT) for censoring CHD’s content on Facebook. CHD cited 1) FIRST AND FIFTH AMENDMENTS (BIVENS); 2) LANHAM ACT (15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)); 3) RICO FRAUD (18 U.S.C. § 1962); 4) DECLARATORY RELIEF as their official complaints.

As posted on the CHD website:

Facebook acknowledges that it coordinates its censorship campaign with the WHO and the CDC. While earlier court decisions have upheld Facebook’s right to censor its pages, CHD argues that Facebook’s pervasive government collaborations make its censorship of CHD a First Amendment violation. The government’s role in Facebook’s censorship goes deeper than its close coordination with CDC and WHO. The Facebook censorship began at the suggestion of powerful Democratic Congressman and Intelligence Committee Chairman Representative Adam Schiff, who in March 2019 asked Facebook to suppress and purge internet content critical of government vaccine policies. Facebook and Schiff use the term “misinformation” as a euphemism for any statement, whether truthful or not, that contradicts official government pronouncements. The WHO issued a press release commending Facebook for coordinating its ongoing censorship campaign with public health officials. That same day, Facebook published a “warning label” on CHD’s page, which implies that CHD’s content is inaccurate, and directs CHD followers to turn to the CDC for “reliable, up to date information.” This is an important First Amendment case that tests the boundaries of government authority to openly censor unwanted critique of government.

Why It Matters: Many Facebook users are unaware that their perceptions about world events are manufactured by powerful interests and not facts. While people utilize news platforms and social media to get their news, they often don’t have the time nor take the action of verifying the claims from any news source. Mainstream media is often blindly trusted, and anything on Facebook labeled as ‘false’ is filed away in the mental category of “never trust this website or other stories of this same topic.” These perceptions then inform the decisions people make in their lives. Everything from what politicians to support, what products are safe, whether to vaccinate their children, and so on.

Are we allowing powerful corporations, with direct interests in public acceptance and belief in certain ideas to regulate what information is true? Can we honestly say that our beliefs and perceptions around certain current events are grounded in facts? Have we been told all the facts? Or are some left out due to censorship?

The Real World Results of Censorship

The fact that Science Feedback is on this list is somewhat a personal pleasure for me, as here at CE we have dealt a great deal with the ‘fact-checking’ company. They happen to be an organization that all too often uses the ‘strawman claim’ to debunk our material. They look at a piece of content they wish to censor, they then create a claim that isn’t said in the content but relates to the content’s subject, then they proceed to debunk the claim they created. The end result is a grey box on Facebook covering the news content and claiming it’s false. This immediately kills virality and casts a great deal of doubt over our work. Since the vast majority of people don’t read fact-checking ‘debunks’, they never get to see that fact-checkers don’t actually debunk all stories, they simply make it appear that they do.

Fact-checkers have cost our company over a million dollars a year in revenue since 2017, forcing us to have to lay off more than 70% of our staff. They’ve cut traffic to our website by over 90% as well. YouTube did the same on Jan 1st 2018 when they shut off traffic to our videos.

Google also virtually shut off our search engine traffic on May 1, 2020, as seen in the graph below. Prior to this period, they had already been declining our search traffic. This was the most drastic shut-off.

The results of a coordinated effort from major tech companies to censor our work has made it incredibly difficult to provide the trusted high-value service we worked for over a decade to build. Since all of this, we have created our own platform called CETV that is the primary means by which viewers/readers can support our work.

The Takeaway

We will continue to update you with what happens with this court case as it proceeds. The ‘war on consciousness’ and public perception has been ongoing for years, but seems to be culminating as shadow government powers are exposed over the course of time. This public awakening to what happens behind the scenes in our world is a powerful and primary process in the overall evolution of humanity’s consciousness. As we expose and do away with a world built on separation, conflict, and ego, we awaken to a consciousness that wishes to create a world of unity, connection, and thrivability.

Understanding what’s going on here is all part of the process.

Reprinted with permission from Collective Evolution.

The post Zuckerberg, Facebook, & Three ‘Fact-Checkers’ Sued for Government Sponsored Censorship appeared first on LewRockwell.



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