Staff Reports
Big tech giants want to suppress news and information ahead of the 2022 midterms. After Trump's 2016 triumph, Twitter and Facebook colluded with Democrat agents in intelligence agencies to block and conceal true stories that impacted Joe Biden's 2020 campaign.
Two years later, after the meddling was documented, IT corporations are adopting the same tactic. They confess it.
Facebook's approach to the 2022 midterms would be "essentially consistent with the policies and precautions" from 2020, said Meta's global relations president Nick Clegg.
Facebook's 11 "fact-checkers" label inaccurate or partly false posts "false information," limiting their reach. During the 2020 election, NeverTrump source The Dispatch produced an incorrect "fact-check" that shut down pro-life nonprofit Susan B. Anthony List's public communications.
Lead Stories, one of Facebook's left-wing "fact check" censors, is financed by the DNC and Beijing-based ByteDance, which owns TikTok. Lead Stories censored The Federalist's 2020 Georgia election coverage. The Federalist was restricted again after criticizing Lead Stories' bogus "fact-checking."
While true tales concerning Hunter Biden's laptop were never fact-checked, their reach was limited in 2020, according to Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg. The FBI wrongly claimed the Hunter Biden laptop tale was Russian disinformation, according to Zuckerberg.
In its 2022 Factsheet on its approach to the U.S. midterms, Facebook says it will "work with federal government partners including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as local and state election officials and industry peers"
Facebook employees told The New York Times they will restrict anything that could lead to "real-world violence" like the Jan. 6 Capitol incident.
According to Wall Street Journal papers, Facebook's Disaggregating Harmful Networks Taskforce tracks hundreds of thousands of individuals and pages that "distribute potentially harmful content." Once Facebook staff discover a "hazardous information corridor," they remove popular profiles or restrict users' capacity to communicate information. This is how Facebook blocked 700,000 "Stop the Steal" supporters following the Jan. 6 violence.
Facebook did nothing to stop the Democrat-funded operation that falsely accused Donald Trump of stealing the 2016 election by conspiring with Russia. This deception led to huge public frenzy and years of investigations. Facebook's "fact-checkers" included journalists who spread the deception or let it continue without censorship.
Despite this double standard, a task committee letter said "election results can be questioned." It can undermine democracy when amplified by a movement. Movements undermine norms and common truth.
Twitter declared in August it would enforce its "Civic Integrity Policy" in 2022. This entails taking action against false claims about the voting process, deceptive content intended to frighten or deter people from voting, or misleading claims that may damage public trust in election outcomes.
Twitter calls "false or misleading" information disinformation, like Facebook. Once identified, algorithms won't spread such stuff. "False or deceptive" tweets may be deleted.
In circumstances where a false or misleading claim could cause harm, Twitter won't like or share it to prevent its spread. Left-wing disinformation is unlikely to be covered. Twitter refuses to remove right-leaning falsehoods concerning USPS mailboxes during the 2020 election.
Twitter was the biggest source of disinformation throughout the 2020 election, according to Federalist Senior Editor John Daniel Davidson. Just weeks before the election, Facebook censored The New York Post's report on Hunter Biden's laptop, locking the Post's account and those of other users who tried to spread it.
Twitter "brazenly suppressed a story from its users that would have been highly detrimental to Biden" Twitter banned Davidson for accurately describing biological differences between men and women. Twitter restricts successful communicators who challenge corporation and activist left-wing narratives.
No censorship compares to Twitter (and Facebook) banning then-President Trump after the Jan. 6 riot, essentially cutting off connection with his followers and the country.
TikTok
TikTok, arguably the most popular social network in America, claimed it would battle election misinformation through its Elections Center, which will "link users who engage with election content to authoritative information and sources in more than 45 languages."
This offers the Chinese-owned social media business access to the voting profiles of American users who utilize TikTok's Elections Center. As TikTok's parent business, ByteDance, is related to the Chinese Communist Party, TikTok's Elections Center "would place detailed voter profiles in the hands of a Beijing-based company filled with party members and state employees, subject to rules that allow Chinese government data access."
China might use this data to influence the midterm elections and regulate American public discourse in support of the Chinese Communist Party's geopolitical aspirations by fomenting public conflict or damaging anti-CCP politicians under the pretense of "combatting disinformation."
YouTube
YouTube was the last big social media platform to reveal a plan to tackle misinformation before the election.
In a Sept. 1 blog post, the business claimed that midterm-related video searches will highlight "authoritative national and local news sources including PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal, Univision and local ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates" Many of these corporate media channels have a major left-wing tilt. "Borderline" falsehoods won't be broadly circulated.
YouTube said it will remove "election content that breaches our policies," including "misleading people on how to vote, promoting intervention in the democratic process, inciting violence, or pushing certain sorts of election misinformation"
This prohibition will be enforced regardless of "political perspective," although the firm highlighted that films "stating significant fraud, flaws, or problems occurred in the 2020 U.S. presidential election" will violate its regulations. YouTube lets Democrats claim lost elections were rigged or stolen.
Snapchat
Democratic groups mistakenly gained access to Republican voter data on Snapchat, allowing them to hone their 2022 advertisements. Snapchat's "slip-up" provided the DNC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams' gubernatorial campaign access to Republican-aligned firm i360's voter data. These organisations utilized the data to target voter ads.
Snapchat says it's attempting to fix the allegedly inadvertent data exchange, but "the gaffe emphasizes the sensitivity of voter data," Axios writes.
The leak affected both Republican and Democrat data firms, but Democratic groups used the data more.
Result
Big Tech corporations are blocking information they deem harmful to their official narrative or chosen candidates. By dubbing conservative factual material "misinformation," firms can influence voter information and rig elections.
Facebook and Twitter allegedly worked with the Biden administration to remove Covid-19 material. As the Biden administration tries to influence the 2022 midterms, they and other Democrats will continue to conspire with big tech in November.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on THE FEDERALIST.
