Texas billionaire John Arnold has long held a notorious position for many in the free speech community as the financier for efforts to establish massive censorship systems in the United States. While Elon Musk has been attacked for his effort to reduce such censorship at X (formerly Twitter), Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have long pushed censorship efforts, even funding a commercial campaign to get people to embrace what they call “content moderation.” Now Zuckerberg has put Arnold on the Meta Board of Directors in a blow to efforts to get the company to accept free speech values.
Arnold has given millions to organizations pushing censorship systems. The Washington Examiner has revealed how Arnold Ventures has given $13.7 million to five groups seeking to expand censorship programs in the name of combating disinformation.
Among the recipients was the Social Science Research Council, a nonprofit group that runs the Social Media and Democracy Initiative and the project Mediawell. It “curates” news for “digital disinformation and misinformation.” Its site runs studies and articles that advocate government and corporate censorship efforts. For example, one explainer listed government intervention as a solution to climate change denial or disinformation:
The CAAD coalition emphasizes the importance of systemic solutions to prevent the spread of mis-/disinformation. CAAD recommends that online platforms adopt concrete measures to address mis-/disinformation and encourages governments to require advertising technology, broadcast, publishing, and social media companies to adhere to those measures.
The concern is that Zuckerberg has never been a defender of free speech at Facebook and Arnold will only reinforce an inclination toward censorship. While X opened up its files to reveal the massive censorship system coordinated with the government, Facebook has resisted such efforts.
Facebook has long tried to get the public to embrace its role as some kind of speech overlord. Years ago, Facebook rolled out an Orwellian commercial campaign to get the public to embrace censorship. The commercials showed young people heralding how they grew up on the internet and how the world was changing, creating a need for censorship under the guise of “content moderation.” Facebook, they promised, was offering the “blending of the real world and the internet world.”
I thought lefties were all for free speech and ‘tolerance’. What a joke. And they consider you a ‘nazi’ if you advocate for free expression.
Welcome to the dark side JT!
antonio
Mark Zuckerburg is quite likely a sociopath. This is not new. There’s a reason people replace the ‘Z’ in his name with an ‘F’. He’s a weasel, and part of the milieu that has done their level best to ruin Silicon Valley, along with Gates, Schmidt, Bezos, and the rest. I am not at all surprised.
OT
Congress should “take” Google Search for public use under its power of eminent domain per the 5th Amendment.
Google Search constitutes imperative basic infrastructure, or “general Welfare.”
Google Search enjoys a 91.47% market share as an effective monopoly.
There was a scandal once, in England, and a quip from the trial has become well-known:
“Stephen Ward was found guilty of living on the earnings of prostitution (money obtained from Rice-Davies and Keeler among others); the trial having been instigated after the embarrassment caused to the government.
While being cross-examined at Ward’s trial, Rice-Davies made a riposte which has since become famous. When James Burge, the defence counsel, pointed out that Lord Astor denied an affair or even having met her, she dispatched this swiftly with pert humour, “Well he would, wouldn’t he?”[9] (often misquoted “Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?”).[10] By 1979, this phrase had entered the third edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and is occasionally referred to with the abbreviation MRDA (“Mandy Rice-Davies applies”).[11]”
Which to me, the whole “disinformation control” characterization is just that – well they would say that, wouldn’t they? – because they can’t come out and call it censorship. They can’t come out and tell you that letting others speak their opinion might negatively affect their Narrative. They can’t come out and say, “Hey! We’re taking a page from Joseph Goebbels. Or, we’re taking a page from Little Rocket Man!” No, they have to tell you that they are doing you a favor, by restricting the flow of bad information. How ironic that Al Gore’s book was called, An Inconvenient Truth –
LOL!!!
Note to Self:
Self, be careful when responding to the Anonymi! [plural form of anonymous, as in hippopatomus => hippopatami]
Because when one of their stupid shill comments get trash-canned into the Spam/Worthless Drivel Bin, there goes your response, too! That long and thoughtful comment that you wrote, dies aborning, as it were. The Rotted Shill Cadaver drags it down the watery depths with it! So, that being said, let me comment one more time about the Disgruntled Shills, who wax wroth when their excrement is flushed, hopefully prior to stinking up the place. Last night, someone, one of the Anonymi, wrote, “Turley’s comment section has more clowns in it than Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey.” Under the assumption that they were speaking of the various Shills here, I responded:
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It is more like a Group Therapy session for the shills (assuming, for a moment, that is not a paid gig for them) where they come to work out their obsessions and inner angst. I try to get into the head of people, to better understand them, and their motivations.
In that line, I picture them as “Rob Reiner”, an angry, over-obsessed partisan Democrat, as fanatical as any Christian, who heard back in 1960, that the End Days are upon us, and has been living in that fantasy for 60 odd years. A person like that, is broken, and at that age, there is simply nothing that you can do to fix them. Short of involuntary commitment and some sort of cult-deprogramming therapy. Even then, I would despair of success. So, with that sort of basic nature, what then brings them to a website, day after day, multiple times, to repeat the same sort of drivel, over and over, and to call names, and perpetually mischaracterize facts, and engage in only the most superficial fashion. That takes it beyond their “Rob Reiner” basic nature, into a whole new realm of psychopathology.
Are they lonely? Do they seek attention? Are they possessed of a missionary zeal? And then, if there is a small group doing this, what does that say about their group dynamics? If they are a group, I hope I never encounter them on a backwoods road, at night. I would fear that a “The Hills Have Eyes!” scenario would be possible. (Those movies were about mutated cannibals, living in their own little clan, and preying on innocent passers-by.) If it is a circus, then it is a sad, run-down little shill circus, where the only attractions left are Bobo the Monkey Boy, the Bearded Mad-Woman, and a couple of other freaks. Oh, and a popcorn machine!
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Anyway, this was late at night, on a thread nearing the end of its life, and I was proud of it. I chuckled myself to sleep shortly thereafter. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.
Floyd – you may like this song by Allan Sherman, which starts:
One hippopotami cannot get on a bus,
Because one hippopotami is two hippopotamus
Thank you so much for that! Hilarious!
When people say ‘misinformation’ they’re really saying ‘blasphemy’.
You know, after reading all this, and thinking about it, and getting in a little morning nap – maybe we were all way too harsh on Claire McCaskill. I mean, at least she was honest enough to call for an end to “fact”-checking Joe Biden. Implying that Joe Biden is a liar. Which I believe, and apparently we should assume Joe “Big Guy” Biden is on the take, and is lying about everything. IIRC, she stayed away from using “disinformation” as an excuse for it. IIRC, kudos for her for being open about the whole truthiness thing.
When someone by their words or actions tells you they are fascists, believe them.
So, the progs have planted their own Thomas Bowdler on the panel…
Thomas Bowdler
You mean you don’t like Ophelia’s death described as an “accidental drowning?”
Exactly. Put a fig leaf over hunter and joe and call it a day.
Jonathan, My website was totally removed by Meta for no reason they would share with me or my attorney. The attorney sent them a letter asking why Facebook didn’t respond after months of attempts to find out. He sent the letter to the SEC filing address. It was returned as “Non-Delivery”. What do I need to do, file a complaint with the SEC?
“Congress shall make no law …” It must have seemed to the nation’s founders be the simplest, most easy to understand, prohibition against doing what all “right thinking persons” now believe to be an imperative — running the nation like a kindergarten with everything that entails. Prior restraints galore, ad hoc justice; carefully parsed truths; no mean words.
Maybe John Arnold could start with the words spewed out of sleepy Joe’s mouth the other night on Seth Myers show.
Is all censorship bad? There used to be a thing called the Hays Code:
“The code sought not only to determine what could be portrayed on screen, but also to promote traditional values.[36] Sexual relations outside marriage, which were forbidden to be portrayed as attractive or beautiful, were to be presented in a way that would not arouse passion or make them seem permissible.[37] Any sexual act considered perverted, including any suggestion of same-sex relationships, sex or romance, was ruled out.[32]
All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience,[5] or the audience must at least be aware that such behavior is wrong, usually through “compensating moral value”.[30][38] Authority figures had to be treated with respect, and the clergy could not be portrayed as comic characters or villains. Under some circumstances, politicians, police officers, and judges could be villains, as long as it was clear that those individuals portrayed as villains were the exceptions to the rule.[39]
Homosexuals were de facto included under the proscription of sex perversion,[32] and the depiction of miscegenation (by 1934, defined only as sexual relationships between black and white races) was forbidden.[33] It also stated that the notion of an “adults-only policy” would be a dubious, ineffective strategy that would be difficult to enforce;[34] however, it did allow that “maturer minds may easily understand and accept without harm, subject matter in plots which does younger people positive harm”.[35] If children were supervised and the events implied elliptically, the code allowed “the possibility of a cinematically inspired thought crime”.[35]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code#:~:text=The%20code%20sought%20not%20only,or%20make%20them%20seem%20permissible.
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Along that line, Ghana has introduced some new legislation, which I think will become more common across the world, as some countries are forced to deal with declining birth rates:
Ghana’s parliament on Wednesday approved a bill that will see people jailed simply for ‘identifying’ as LGBTQ+ or campaigning for queer rights.
Being gay has been illegal in the West African nation since the 19th century in a law originating from colonial times.
But lawmakers introduced the bill in 2021 to toughen the anti-LGBTQ+ laws already in the books.
The legislation, known as the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghananian Family Values Bill 2021, is among the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ measures on the African continent, according to Amnesty International.
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. The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.
needs to be changed to
The First Amendment provides that Congress make law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It “shall not” protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The Second Amendment “Not” gives citizens the right to bear arms.
Well if they are going to be a DEMOCRAT PAC…they should be held to that standard.
Or can the phone company CUT off your phone call…if they don’t like your politics!
I am old enough to remember when Censorship was something dictatorships, fascists and communist countries did…Oh wait…
TIME to FIGHT BACK!
When ever you hear the terms “disinformation”, or “misinformation” you’re being lied to.
You forgot to mention “racism”.
Some select few Thomas Jefferson quotes for Mr. Arnold to consider as he begins his new role as a member of the Board of Speech Police at Meta:
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
“Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?”
“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”
“When the people are afraid of the government, that’s tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that’s liberty.”
“There is no justification for taking away individuals’ freedom in the guise of public safety.”
“When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither.”
“I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
What a zucker.
Began his career at Enron (John received an $8 million dollar bonus from Enron just before the company filed for bankruptcy. It was the largest cash bonus ever distributed by the company) and is currently on the Board of Gates’s Breakthrough Energy. Arnold’s foundation, Arnold Ventures, created a Public Safety Assessment which gave recently arrested individuals a score to determine their flight risk and potential bail. The NAACP and ACLU have criticized the Arnold PSA because they believe risk assessment tools actually increased the number of prisoners under the guise of criminal justice reform.
This is the kind of guy you dull your gui!!o$ine on before using it on gates and soros.