The Trustworthiness of The Media in Russia And The West (Konstantin Kisin)

People hate the media. Media dishonesty has accelerated considerably in the West since around 2015. The well-deserved loss of trust has made some jump onto the irrational assumption that whatever sounds the most remote from their media’s explanation is the reality. This “logic” has absurd side effects such as the mainstream media still remaining the compass and that their inconsistency must be mirrored whenever they knot their narrative into a pretzel.

In need of finding a standpoint that looks – at first glance – like the most remote one from that of Western media, a variety of political influencers have blindly trusted Russian media. The irony is big, literally, since Russian propaganda is infamous for its absurd level of inconsistency.

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Poland Set To Outlaw Arbitrary Social Media Bans and Post Removals

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro is working on a draft law that might create an anti-censorship regime for social media platforms operating in Poland. Failing to reinstate legal posts despite formal judicial review could carry hefty fines between 50,000 and 50 million Zloty (currently around $13,300 and $13.3 million).

After the platform does not respond positively to the users complaint, he can digitally file a ‘court petition’ which leads to a legal review of his post. If the judge upholds the legality of the post and the platform does not react, the case will go to a newly created ‘free speech council’ that has the power to mete out the penalties.

sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55678502
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/14/poland-plans-to-make-censoring-of-social-media-accounts

EU Fights “Hate Speech” With Upcoming “Digital Services Act”

The EU is working on a new ledger of legislation to combat “hate speech.” By the end of this week they are expected to present a “Digital Services Act” that is posing potential penalties for non-compliance of something between 6-10% of a company’s turnover. This should concern all of us, no matter where we live, because the clout of the EU market will shape the behaviour of Big Tech everywhere. Additionally, President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen is starting a “Transatlantic AI Agreement,” hoping to reign in the dark magic of AI-driven search results and recommendation systems. Artificial Intelligence is the part of the already highly manipulated algorithms that will always remain a black box for purely technological reasons. The mere idea that there is a something that the EU cannot control is driving the Eurocrats absolutely BONKERS. Ursula von der Leyen has repeatedly stated that she wants Artificial Intelligence and the removal of black boxes from algorithms at the same time. She lacks the knowledge und the humbleness to listen to qualified people to deal with the technological issues she tries to mess with. Hoping that you spread my content as far as possible on as many platforms as possible, I will only say, and say it loud and proud, that this has nothing to do with her gender or Islam.

The abortion lobby is delighted with Twitter’s censorship of Marsha Blackbur

By Philip Wegmann | Oct 10, 2017, 3:49 PM . . Instead of questioning the veracity of Blackburn’s statement, Twitter attacked its “inflammatory” sentiment and sided with the abortion lobby. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) According to the abortion lobby, the right to choose and the right to free speech are mutually exclusive. The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights […]

more on Peace and Freedom

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Deleting Popular Ex-Muslim’s Arabic Material Critizing Islam

Brother Rashid has a TV show on Al Hayat TV and is a fairly well-known figure in the Arabic-speaking world.

And the censorship goes on … Facebook, Twitter and YouTube officials have been actively deleting popular posts from an ex-Muslim who speaks about the truths of Islam — often, critically.

more on Geller Report

Catholic Missionary Guy Pagès Sees His Wikipedia Entry Scrubbed and Twitter Account Threatened

Guy Pagès has a mission that is both ordinary and extraordinary. His call is to save the souls of men for his faith and he specialised in converting Muslims.

This is not only the space where Christian and Muslim culture clash, but where democrats and Social Justice Warriors can lose it.

Leaving Islam is still considered a sin worthy of death by many Muslims, not giving one’s all to rescue souls is a sin worthy of eternal punishment for some Christians.

However, a battlefield of ideas is provided by our cultural framework that we espouse, the field of democracy. Democrats like myself, who are neither Muslim nor Christian, are there to pick a side, the side of impartiality.

Muslims have all the rights in the world to try whatever they can think of to convert the whole country to Islam. The same right, however, must be guaranteed for Christians. The faith with the more convincing ideas may win more followers, and eventually even all. The belief systems may change and adapt in the same way Christianity and Islam have changed in the past, in the long process of their expansion.

As long as both sides abstain from violence that intellectual battle is welcome in the reign of a democracy. Non-violence, however, can only be guaranteed when both sides get their voices heard. This is the point where Social Justice Warriors fail our culture. Today, all battles of ideas are fought over the internet as Guy Pagès correctly acknowledges. Muslims have their presence already there and so does Guy Pagès.

While the Social Justice Warriors take no umbrage with Muslims who try to convert Christians, the legitimacy of  Guy Pagès presence, however, is constantly questioned.

We are now in the ludicrous situation that his French Wikipedia entry was deleted while the short English language stub is not. And yet the Social Justice Warriors’ thoroughness must not be underestimated. Twitter has already warned to put ‘restrictions’ on Guy Pagès’ account.

He vows to continue his work against all odds. May the Lord be with him…and with the Muslims.

Pamela Geller Sues Facebook and Demands That Anti-Trust Authorities Step in

In the twentieth century, the US government used anti-trust laws to dismantle US corporations with far less money and infinitely far less power. Never in the history of mankind has such absolute power in the information battle-space been in the hands of so few. If the body politic understood this and the ramifications of inaction, they would be terrified. And rightly so.

Our events, social media pages, are scrubbed, censored and blacklisted. Shouting into the wilderness is not the freedom of speech. Talking to yourself is not freedom of speech.

– Pamela Geller

Every day I received emails from readers and members of my various Facebook groups, asking for help after having been blocked for posting a story or comment that might offend Muslims.

This is America, not Saudi Arabia. Enough.

I am suing.

The American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) is filing a federal lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) under the First Amendment. In a press release, he AFLC explained that “Section 230 provides immunity from lawsuits to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, thereby permitting these social media giants to engage in government-sanctioned censorship and discriminatory business practices free from legal challenge.” The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Jihad Watch.

read more here

Magazine STERN Sued Blogger for Criticising Bana Alabed Story

In December 2016 magazine Stern published an unbelievable article on their news blog stern.de.

We learnt that a seven-year old girl, called Bana Alabed, was tweeting from Aleppo in the midst of the fights. It was at a time when German media told their audiences how educated all the refugees are that come to us and that we are to expect medical doctors and engineers that would exactly meet the needs for high-qualification jobs in our society. In this atmosphere Stern decided to blow it and introduced that English-writing Arab child of seven years to German-speakers. (Her account description reads today ‘managed by mom’ who apparently can’t just write for herself.)

When a blogger Jens Bernert called the story ‘fake news’, Stern sued him for libel. While in America libel means writing something about somebody that is factually untrue, German sentiments include judgements they don’t like.

In July a court issued a restraining order against Bernert to take down the entry and not to do it again. If Bernert defies the order, he will have to pay a fine of up to a quarter of a million Euro.

The court specified that Stern may not be called a ‘fake news producer’ and may not be alleged to ‘produce fake news for the purpose of propaganda’. It is also forbidden to say Stern peddles a ‘story that is an obvious lie’ and separately to say that Stern ‘lies’.

Blogger Jens Bernert was supposed to proof to the court the intent behind the obvious lie. This, however, would require mind-reading technology not available to this date. The judge explicitely said again and again that neither truth, state of science, journalistic responsibility, nor ‘common sense’ play any role in this.

Bernert’s lawyer Markus Kompa says, ‘It is absurd that a publisher that relies on the freedom of the press produces a legal precedent against it.’ He finds it equally absurd that obvious war propaganda can be published without consequences while a blogger who calls out an author or company for doing so has to proof the intention of lying.

Both Bernert and his lawyer also criticise that the court communicated with Stern from the very beginning, but did not give a hearing to the accused blogger until the third day of the trial. Because Bernert was not informed about the first two days he also could not counter their arguments well-prepared.

Lawyer Markus Kompa vows to assist his client through the legal battles ahead. They expect a long, tiresome fight through all court circuits necessary. A fund was set up for private donations.

source de.sputniknews (a German-speaking leg of the Russian state media).

Blogs and Social Media – Brainstorming

At the beginning blogs were for the most part a matter of special interests. These artsy photo shots you wanted to display, the recipes of your nana, your life as an  Asperger and so on.

Then came Zuckerberg. His college interest was about shaming fellow students. He created Facebook. I’m not using FB, because I started taking interest in such affairs fairly recently, but leave all marketing aside and there is nothing but an ordinary blog. With time some gadgets were added to upload and play videos, send files and so forth, but nothing of it was extraordinary.

The whole reason why almost everybody is blogging now is that we as human beings have a tendency to be mean. And FB was the first ‘mean first’ blogging site.

Along came reddit. This started fairly innocently and was about following news and discussing matters of the day. Mean bloggers + politics = even meaner bloggers. Somehow, the age of doxxing began.

I’m not on reddit either so far and I can’t speak of its shortcomings, but somehow ‘Twitter’ rose up to more attention. Twitter differs from other blogs because never-ending texts were replaced with the one-thought-one-post concept. Anywhere in a discussion a different user can come in and make an argument or issue a correction to a post. Also new is that comments and posts are one and the same thing, giving everybody the same tools to slug it out.

The situation today is that Facebook is the basis for many arrests of political opposition around the world. We can’t prove that the company might even be cooperating, but we know that they are very gullible to governments. Until fairly recently Twitter was more defiant driving governments (like Germany) mad and having the lickspittle media complaining about it on end.

Now Twitter cracks down on its users. The tool gab.ai from Texas promises freedom of speech. However, Germans who access gab.ai receive a warning message not to break the law. If gab.ai is willing to kowtow to the German government (and given the threats to fine them I understand it), I’m sure that they will not resist the Chinese, the Pakistani, the Russians and so forth.

Along comes disqus. Disqus allows more signs per post and groups people into channels. You can join a discussion or issue a new post to one of the established channels. I can’t really tell, but I think that is equivalent to the FB Group concept. Disqus, however, does not have the reputation of constantly blocking users, closing accounts, or (I can’t prove it) passing information to totalitarian governments. They have found their niche by offering a widget that manages the comment section of many blogs (most famously Breitbart News).

As far as I can tell disqus is also better programmed than slow-motion Twitter.

And then of course there is WordPress and (Blogger) blogspot who are very traditional. Their strength is that they still serve the cat-photo-autism-poetry clientele well with features most other sites can’t provide. The weakness is indeed the lack of connection between the different bloggers.

That is my quick, uninformed brainstorming on Blogs and social media. Tell me what you think in the comment section?