Consumer Watchdog Website

Most conservatives have modified their social media preferences and buying habits to reduce support of Marxist and Never-Trump businesses. Our household makes every effort to NOT buy through Amazon and is no longer on Facebook, Watt’s App, etc.  Below is a link to a list of products and services that conservatives might want to avoid.  It’s a long list, and some of the company names will undoubtedly surprise you.  Some sure surprised this household.  We use Bing or other search engines to avoid using Google, and yet both Bing and DuckDuckGo are on the list – just not in the “WORST” category.  Anyway, you might want to bookmark the list for reference.

Consumer Watchdog Website: click here.

Link: https://investingadvicewatchdog.com/Liberal-Companies-Boycott.html

# # #

Canceling Big Tech

 

You've seen the ongoing headlines; conservative voices  -- including President Trump's -- are being censored or canceled by Big Tech.   Our household has:

• uninstalled Mozilla Firefox
• cancelled Amazon Prime
• begun the process of canceling Facebook and Gmail (a Google product)

And no more Apple products for us. A reader at RedState via Lucianne posted the following comment:

You don’t need [Facebook] to keep up with anyone - use email, text messages or actually call people and interact with them in person. You don’t need Amazon - you can go on their site, find what you need and then order it directly from the company, manufacturer or distributor bypassing Amazon completely. And you don’t need Google [for] anything. DuckDuckGo is a perfectly good alternative. Google tracks absolutely everything you do and can follow you as you move around even if you have your phone or tablet turned off.

Our household uses Bing for searches.

# # #

 

Is Big Tech censoring this?

 

In recent months, some of the major blogs and YouTube videos have been de-platformed, de-monetized, or have seen Twitter or FB accounts suspended.  Among those who have been censored are President Trump, the New York Post, Diamond and Silk, and Candace Owen. 

Websites such as NewsBusters, MRCTV, CNSNews.com, The Washington Free Beacon, Breitbart, The Resurgent, Twitchy, RedState, PJ Media, Judicial Watch, The Blaze, Townhall, Project Veritas, LifeNews, PragerU, and The Daily Wire could not be found in an organic search via Google. Google later apologized via Twitter after fixing this so-called pre-election “bug.”   (Source: Newsbusters report here)

Smaller blogs that I visit regularly, such as BookwormRoom and Blazing Cat Fur, have been blocked or do not come up on Google searches or Twitter feeds.  

By comparison, the Cleveland Tea Party blog is a tiny one;  most of what I post here is selected from conservative news aggregators and favorite bloggers and cartoonists.  Even though this blog is small potatoes, it may be on Big Tech’s radar screen.  Perhaps it is just coincidence, but in the last week, the daily traffic suddenly dropped by about 80%. 

I no longer rely on Google searches to track down news and reports.  I either bookmark my go-to blogs or use a non-Google search engine, such as Bing.  I wonder if anyone will read this…

# # #

 

Big Tech Election Interference

 

The headline is scary enough: “Election interference: YouTube is suppressing videos about Joe, Hunter, and Ukraine.”  Michio Hasai provides ugly details in his posting at The NOQReport:

Good luck finding a video on YouTube that details ANYTHING other than positive spin and fake debunking of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

This news will be shocking to none of our readers. If you’ve followed us for a while, you know that we’ve documented dozens of cases of censorship and suppression on Big Tech publishers like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and their video giant YouTube, among others. We’ve also shown how they’ve all placed various “fact-check warnings” on content, including ours, even when the facts detailed in the content are beyond reproach.

The latest as well as one of the most consequential moves by YouTube as it pertains to the election is their suppression and fact-checking of videos searched for through keywords like “Hunter Biden Ukraine” and “Joe Biden Ukraine.” As far as YouTube and its unsuspecting visitors know, there’s nothing afoul with the Bidens’ suspicious and likely treacherous dealings with Burisma and the Ukrainian government. . . .

 . . .

YouTube has gone to great lengths to “fact-check” and often suppress content that runs counter to their accepted political agenda. If it could possibly hurt Democrats, they suppress. If it can hurt President Trump or Republicans, they amplify. That’s their modus operandi.

The full report is here.  We all know people who are blissfully unaware that the information they see or read is censored.  So spread the word.

# # #

Steyn on the GOP: “A Useless Political Party”

 

Mark Steyn weighed in on this insane election cycle, censorship in the media, the “useless political party,” and more.  He begins:

If anybody is around to write history in a generation or two, October 14th 2020 will go down as the first day of a new Year Zero. Yesterday, with less than three weeks to go in a national election in a settled democratic society with an ostensibly free press, the woke billionaires of the social media cartel decided to freeze and/or cancel the Twitter/Facebook accounts of the President's press secretary, the Trump campaign, Republican Senate candidates and Republican House members.

So America is now formally a one-party state, at least as far as fair access to media platforms is concerned. 

He ran an image of what looks to me like an old mimeograph machine.

Mark concludes:

What's next? And by "next" I mean Wednesday November 4th. Look for more woke pressure on website registrars and banks and credit card companies to cease doing business with Breitbart and Daily Caller and, well, me:

A couple of years back I used a phrase, not entirely in jest, on one of our Clubland Q&As with reference to the death of the big, messy, sprawling, decentralized internet of the turn of the century that I miss so much since it was replaced by a tyranny of ever more doctrinaire and capricious thought commissars. And I said that one day we'll be disseminating SteynOnline via the last rusting Xerox machine in the woods. Well, the day of the last rusting photocopier in the woods is heading towards us very fast.

Eight years ago conservatives blew $1 billion trying to drag Mitt Romney across the finish line so that he could become president and spend the next four years screwing us over. Imagine what that billion dollars could've done starting an alternative to PayPal or Facebook...

If Lindsey Graham and Martha McSally and the Republican Senate survive on November 3rd, so be it. But those of us who've expended our energies dragging this useless political party across the finish line every two years need to get serious about redeploying our fast depleting resources into fighting on the turf that matters. We are well past the eleventh hour.

Mark’s full column is here.  And I wonder if any in Congress – or on the state and local levels -- are able to move the GOP party back to core conservative values.  President Trump is one man, and he’s been up against both parties in the swamp that is DC.

# # #

Enthusiasm gap, ballot fraud, and censorship

 

JD Rucker at NOQ Report weighs in on the final run-up to the election.  He opens with a photo of the Biden-Harris campaign event in Arizona:

Nobody showed up. That’s not hyperbole. There weren’t hundreds or dozens or even a few supporters there. They had literally ZERO fans come out for their first official joint campaign event.

Trump supporters have all the enthusiasm, but Biden supporters have election fraud on their side.  Over the past few weeks, I collected links to reports on voter fraud, ballot irregularities, mis-directed ballot applications, etc. in various states, including Ohio.  As of today, I have collected more than 30 reports. So now back to Mr. Rucker:

There has never been a more important election in any of our lifetimes. Both sides feel this way and are putting everything into helping their ticket win. Conservatives recognize the dangers a Biden-Harris presidency represents, so we’re doing everything we can to spread the truth. Leftists deny their own prosperity before the COVID-19 lockdowns and refuse to see the progress we’ve made in recent months. They’ve allowed their Trump Derangement Syndrome to supersede logic while suppressing their doubts in the efficacy of a Biden-Harris administration. But suppressing doubts does not equate to enthusiasm. That’s why images and videos like these exist, and why nobody in mainstream media is willing to talk about it.

Even knowing the truth, we cannot assume that everyone else knows it. We have to continue to press the issue on packing the courts, Russiagate, Hunter Biden’s crimes in Ukraine, Kamala Harris’ radical progressivism, and Joe Biden’s fading mental acuity. Mainstream media may be a joke to many of us, but their reach is still strong. Big Tech is fighting the truth as well, which is why stories like these must be shared far and wide.

It is incumbent on patriots to keep fighting the good fight for President Trump on behalf of this nation. Everything political is at stake right now. We cannot let the left and mainstream media hide the truth.

Mr. Rucker's full article is here. 

We are witnessing jaw-dropping censorship on Big Tech media of the Joe/Hunter Biden scandal.  We are also witnessing the lockdowns on Twitter or Facebook accounts including those of the White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Sebastian Gorka, and even the Trump campaign.  Pass on these links wherever you can, especially this one to Sundance at Conservative Treehouse.

# # #

 

 

Joe Biden’s sign falls down

 

Headline at PJ Media:

Who Could Blame It: Biden 'Build Back Better' Sign 
Commits Suicide During Rare Campaign Appearance

Almost buried amidst all the post-debate commentary was one short video of Joe Biden making a speech earlier today in Cleveland.  As if to serve as a metaphor, his “Build Back Better” sign fell off the lectern. The big drop happens at :27 or so. (The video is not coming up in any searches, so click here and scroll down. 

# # #

Pamela Geller: Big Tech censorship and the Election

 

At American Thinker, Pamela Geller comments on Allum Bokhari’s new book on Big Tech censorship.  It’s worse than we thought.  Ms. Geller begins:

Allum Bokhari, the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News, has performed an extraordinarily valuable service by giving us his new book #Deleted: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election. 

. . .

In #Deleted, Allum Bokhari tells the whole shocking story. For those who don’t realize the implications of what is going on, he includes a Prologue entitled “The Typewriter That Talked Back” that is as amusing as it is disturbing, and that makes abundantly clear even to the most technically challenged among us what is really happening to our foremost and most important freedom, right under our noses. Bokhari paints a vivid picture of a 1968 in which a typewriter refuses to type, typing instead its own message: “We regret to inform you that your last letter violated our terms of service (Rule 32: Abusive & Offensive Content). We have suspended access to your typewriter for 24 hours.” Newsstands remove from sale magazines that third-party “fact-checkers” have deemed to be “fake news.” The Post Office returns your mail because you told a joke in a letter that a censor found offensive.

It’s all funny until you realize that all this is exactly what email providers and big tech censors are doing to Americans today, every day on the Internet. In the pre-Internet world of 1968, it would have been preposterous. Americans would not have accepted it. But it has all happened gradually, as we gave away our freedom by clicking our agreement to dense and unreadable Terms of Service that turned over our right to say what we believe to shadowy, anonymous guardians of acceptable opinion. Most Americans today are only dimly aware, at best, that it is happening at all, and those that are approach it with grim resignation. After all, what are you going to do? Start your own Facebook?

Having been one of the early targets of social media censorship on Facebook, YouTube et al, I have for many years advocated for anti-trust action against these bullying behemoths. Bokhari makes an airtight case in #Deleted for why such action is necessary.

Read the full column here.  And it’s scary to think that even if millions of Facebook users cancelled their accounts, nothing would change.

# # #

 

More Twitter censorship

Two days ago, this blog linked to Katie Hopkins’s column at Front Page mag; her column was about the celebrations marking the UK's Brexit from the EU. It was a thoughtful and heartfelt report. And today, we read Robert Spencer’s report at Front Page that “Twitter Suspends Katie Hopkins, and you’re next”:

Twitter has suspended UK's courageous freedom fighter Katie Hopkins, who had a million followers on the platform, and one thing is certain: she will not be the last foe of jihad violence and Sharia oppression who is banned from Twitter. It’s all about silencing “hate,” you see. But the banning of Katie Hopkins illustrates yet again that for the Left, there is good “hate” and there is bad “hate.”

According to the UK’s Independent, “Twitter said that Ms Hopkins had been temporarily locked out of her account for violating the site’s hateful-conduct policy, which bans the promotion of violence or inciting harm on the basis of race, religion, national origin or gender identity.”

Twitter has erased all but a handful of Hopkins’ tweets, so it’s impossible to tell what the offending tweets were, but it is abundantly clear at this point that for Leftist guardians of acceptable thought nowadays, virtually any dissent from the Left’s agenda will be read as “the promotion of violence or inciting harm on the basis of race, religion, national origin or gender identity.” While “promotion of violence” is fairly easy to spot, “inciting harm” can be seen in any critical word. 

And then the offender has to go.

Full column is here. And of course, this is not a one-off. Many conservative voices, such as Pamela Geller, Dennis Prager’s Prager University, James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, and Michelle Malkin (article at the link includes details on de-platforming and de-monetizing), have been censored on Twitter, Facebook, on campuses, on PayPal, etc. As Robert Spencer warned: we’re next.

# # #

Big Tech – and now Huawei

The censorship on Facebook, Twitter, and Google is bad enough. Yesterday, Gordon Chang (a regular guest on Lou Dobbs) has somber warnings on another front -- Huawei:

China, with control of 5G, will be in a position to remotely manipulate the world's devices. In peacetime, Beijing could have the ability to drive cars off cliffs, unlock front doors, and turn off pacemakers. In war, Beijing could paralyze critical infrastructure.

There is no mystery to how Beijing thinks it will grab control.... The Chinese will use Huawei Technologies.... Huawei is a dagger aimed at the heart of America, and as the unnamed adviser... suggests, the threat is a mortal one.

. . .

"A prominent Republican who advises President Donald Trump called America's 5G strategy 'the biggest strategic disaster in U.S. history,'" wrote China-watcher David Goldman recently.

Many people will regard that as an exaggeration, but America's failure to have a 5G strategy will almost certainly prove to have historic consequences.

"5G" is shorthand for the fifth generation of wireless communication.

"In the very near future, dominating the wireless world will be tantamount to dominating the world," wrote Newt Gingrich in Newsweek in February. That is not an exaggeration.

Why not? With speeds 2,000 times faster than existing 4G networks, 5G will permit near-universal connectivity to homes, vehicles, machines, robots, and everything plugged into the Internet of Things (IoT).

Full article is here.

# # #

Indexing, advertising and payments: 3 threats to Free Speech

Daniel Greenfield has more on the threat to free speech, and how Big Tech censors information. At Front Page:

After the 2016 election, the claim that free speech had gone too far and needed to be controlled became widely accepted, first in the media, and then among the big dot coms who coordinated a censorship campaign with media fact checkers. The stated goal was to stamp out ‘disinformation’. And ‘disinformation’ was defined as any viewpoint that media lefties disagreed with or found disagreeable.

Fact checkers were embedded into Facebook and Google’s operations. Conservative content was censored, deranked, and pushed under corporate media content. The ‘disinformation’ pretext, which was supposed to describe foreign propaganda, was extended to apply to nearly any conservative view.

. . .

This push to suppress conservative content on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies is an attack on indexing. People find posts, articles, and videos through search engines, these days largely a Google monopoly, and peer feeds on social media. The indexing attack has been successful with conservative sites losing traffic, and conservatives being banned on social media.

But indexing is just one prong of the attack. The others are advertising and payments.

If you’re a leftist, you don’t want people finding conservative content. Going after indexing means that the people who aren’t specifically looking for conservative content won’t find it. The idea is to turn conservative media into a ghetto. The impact on elections and national debates is obvious.

. . .

There is much more in the full article here.

# # #

Instagram blocks Larry Elder

Image credit: www.mic.com

Another conservative is blocked. This time it’s Larry Elder on Instagram’s blacklist. Elder reported on PJ Media:

After averaging 450 new followers a day since March, when I became active on Instagram, my number of new followers suddenly stopped growing. Dead stop. The count read 68.9K. It remained 68.9K for over two weeks. Then, the number dropped by 100. Meanwhile, over the same two-week period, on Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, I continued gaining hundreds of new followers per day.

. . .

After following Instagram's complaint procedure to no avail, after writing a column about my frozen follower number, after consulting with several people who made contact or tried to make contact with the company, I received a polite letter from a Facebook representative identified as working for its "U.S. Politics & Government Outreach" team. 

. . .

After following Instagram's complaint procedure to no avail, after writing a column about my frozen follower number, after consulting with several people who made contact or tried to make contact with the company, I received a polite letter from a Facebook representative identified as working for its "U.S. Politics & Government Outreach" team. [Rep. made several "innocent" lame excuses.]

. . .

Elder then references Robert Epstein’s testimony before Congress; Cleveland Tea Party reported on that recently (go here and here).

. . .

[Rick] Chapman, the hi-tech expert, does not buy the Facebook rep's innocent explanation. Chapman said: "The answer is because they can. And they're not stopping. This attack on you is an example of how bold they're becoming." The challenge is for conservatives to invent and use alternative platforms not subject to liberal bias. For instance, in its June 2019 press release, a startup called Safe Space said it established its social media site for "conservatives frustrated over the censorship taking place on mainstream platforms." Safe Space's CEO said: "Instead of begging Twitter and Facebook to change, or pretending Reddit isn't a puppet for the Chinese, (we decided to) find a solution through capitalism. We've decided to offer a competing platform where no voices will be unfairly targeted."

Full article is here. I’ll ask our household's web expert to have a look at the Safe Space option.

# # #

Twitter: a virus of the mind?

Glenn Reynolds, a/k/a Mr. Instapundit, has a think-piece on the Spectator; his subject is about one of the Big Tech giants, in this case Twitter. Here’s a sample:

Twitter . . . is tightly coupled. The ‘retweet’, ‘comment’, and ‘like’ buttons are immediate. A retweet sends a posting, no matter how angry or misinformed, to all the retweeter’s followers, who can then do the same to their followers, and so on, in a runaway chain reaction. Unlike blogs, little to no thought is required, and in practice very few people even follow the link (if there is one) to ‘read the whole thing’. According to a study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of people who share a link on social media don’t read the underlying story. . . .

. . .

You can reject Twitter’s toxicity by leaving the platform, as I did in the fall of 2018. But . . . this doesn’t really solve the problem: ‘Absent large-scale collective action by the political/media class to reject the platform, simply logging off Twitter is merely a personal defensive mechanism — a sometimes necessary mental-health break that all too often correlates with diminished influence in the national political debate.’ With Twitter, you can participate and be driven crazy – or you can stay sane, and lose influence. That’s a bad trade-off.

. . .

Rather than focusing on the content of what individuals post on social media, regulators might better focus on breaking up these behemoths, policing anticompetitive collusion among them, and in general ensuring that their powers are not abused. This approach, rooted in antitrust law, would raise no First Amendment or free speech problems, and would address many of the most significant complaints about social media.

As Mr. Instapundit is wont to say, read the whole thing – here.

# # #

Big Tech is hiding behind the law: update

President Trump convened a summit of social media giants, including Facebook and Twitter. Following the summit, President Trump announced:

“Today, I am directing my administration to explore all regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech and the free speech rights of all Americans,” POTUS Trump announced. “We hope to see transparency, more accountability, and more freedom.”

J.D. Heyes at NewsTarget further reported:

In 2016, before the tech giants began altering their search, publication, and distribution algorithms, conservative speakers were dominant on social media, likely helping propel the president to victory. But by the 2018 elections, based on several studies and investigative reporting, the tech giants had begun — in concert — campaigns to silence conservative, pro-Trump voices, led by the behemoths Facebook and Twitter.

The companies are taking advantage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which “provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an interactive computer service who publish information published by others,” the Minc Legal Resource Center noted.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation added that “Section 230 says that ‘No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.’” 

But, argue opponents, when Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, and other platforms begin censoring content they find politically objectionable, that makes them publishers, and they therefore should lose their immunity to face legal consequences for those acts of censorship, especially if they have taken money from users they are censoring.

The president’s summit may already be having a positive effect on conservative and independent publishers. For instance, The Western Journal, whose Facebook traffic had been reduced significantly, suddenly found its traffic returning to normal levels a day before the summit — after months of battling with the platform to get it restored.

There is a long way to go, however, to ensure that all conservative and indy publishers’ traffic from their subscribers and followers returns to normal. The president has at least gotten the ball rolling, and well ahead of the 2020 elections.

Well, good. It's a start.

# # #

Steve Wozniak’s advice for Facebook users

image credit: wsj.com

David Solway at American Thinker asks the question:

Should First Amendment rights be extended to Big Tech corporations to publish and censor as they please?  This is a question that has agitated the discussion on whether antitrust legislation should be applied to infogiants such as Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Amazon, Pinterest and many others that have cornered the market on a public resource, information, and an essential human activity, the consumption of information. A solution to the problem of data sequestration and restricted access practiced by these companies is to rebadge them either as publishers or, alternatively, as public utilities.

Meanwhile, TMZ via Fox News reports:

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has some advice for most Facebook users: Delete your account.

The millionaire, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, recently said that a lack of privacy is his main concern regarding the Menlo Park, Calif. company and Big Tech in general.

“There are many different kinds of people, and some [of] the benefits of Facebook are worth the loss of privacy,” Wozniak told TMZ, which spoke with the tech mogul at Reagan National Airport in D.C. “But to many like myself, my recommendation is – to most people – you should figure out a way to get off Facebook.”

Wozniak deleted his Facebook account back in March 2018, shortly after news broke about the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which revealed that the private data of millions of Facebook users was being harnessed by the firm that worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The United Kingdom's top data watchdog group concluded that Cambridge Analytica's use of Facebook's data was illegal under British law.

Full report is here. Some related info from Business Insider:

Deactivating your Facebook account does not delete your information from Facebook's servers. It's hidden from other users, unavailable to the public, but it continues to live on in Facebook's vast digital-storage vaults. If you're ever interested in revisiting the photos you posted to Facebook way back when, or getting back in touch with that long-lost friend, you may want to deactivate your Facebook page instead of outright deleting it.

# # #

Independence Day: on strike against Big Tech

image credit; economist.com

Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, was on Tucker Carlson this evening to propose something all Big Tech users can do to start to chip away at the out-of-control companies.

On July 4 and 5, Sanger's designated days to make your statement, you can refrain from using your Facebook or Twitter or What’s App, etc. EXCEPT to share your displeasure with Big Tech on your social media.

You can also sign the Declaration of Digital Independence here (I had to try several times to access; traffic was heavy, so just wait a few minutes and try again). Since President Trump indicated to Tucker that his administration may be looking at potential action to rein in Big Tech, perhaps a strong showing on this Declaration will give President Trump additional leverage.

I’ll have more on this topic later this week.

# # #

Censorship creep

Thomas Lifson at American Thinker reports (“The next stage in tech overlords' censorship: De-platformingun-PC blogs”):

It's no longer just Facebook, Twitter, and Google who are censoring online content that offends political correctness.  Wordpress.com, a blog-hosting site that offers anyone the opportunity to create and publish a blog at no cost, has decided to de-platform — in other words, kill — a blog that has been operating for 15 years: Creeping Sharia.

As Pamela Geller points out, this move by Wordpress.com is itself an example of the blog's focus of creeping sharia happening in real time.  Shutting down a critic of creeping sharia is an example of creeping sharia.

Related: Newsbusters reports on a development (which may be a start, but doesn’t seem to me to go far enough):

The White House has announced a new system that gives Americans the power to call out foul play by tech companies.  

As of May 15 it read, “SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS should advance FREEDOM OF SPEECH.” 

“Too many Americans have seen their accounts suspended, banned, or fraudulently reported for unclear ‘violations’ of user policies,” it continued before delivering a bipartisan message that freedom of speech is a right held by all Americans. “No matter your views, if you suspect political bias caused such an action to be taken against you, share your story with President Trump.”

The submission form begins with a survey asking users to submit their names and confirm that they are citizens of the United States. It then asks whether they were censored via major Big Tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. It also listed an option for “Other” acknowledging that there are plenty of other platforms which deplatform users.

It then asks, if possible, for a link or screenshot of the restricted post. 

In a reversal of Trump’s earlier praise of Twitter as a way to reach his audience free of being filtered by the media, this White House page asked users for permission to send newsletters via email so that the administration “can update you without relying on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.”

The Trump administration said it was “fighting for free speech online,” while the liberal Washington Post characterized the new system as part of Trump’s “war against Facebook, Google and Twitter.” 

Rest of the report is here. Hmm. Either these companies need to be trust-busted, or they need to be subject to regulation by the FCC.

# # #

First Amendment under attack again

image credit: sott.net

Today’s targets: James Woods and Pamela Geller. Via 100 Percent Fed Up:

He has over 2.1 million followers and is one of the most active and important conservative accounts on Twitter, but conservative actor James Woods is finished with Twitter until Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, stops being a “coward,” and affords conservatives the same free speech rights as liberals in his platform.

. . .

“Twitter demanded that I rescind my tweet paraphrasing Emerson,” Woods said in a statement to The Daily Wire. “It now seems they have chosen to delete that tweet from my account without my permission. Until free speech is allowed on Twitter, I will not be permitted to participate in our democracy with my voice. As long as Jack Dorsey remains the coward he seems to be; my Twitter days are in the past.”

President Trump and his outspoken, conservative son Don Jr., both came to the defense of James Woods over his censorship on Twitter.

Don Jr. pointed out the hypocrisy of the social media giants censoring the voices of popular conservatives while allowing terror groups to openly post on their platforms. Tweeting directly to Twitter and Facebook, Trump Jr. asked if they consider James Woods to be more dangerous than Hamas?

It’s interesting how @twitter and @facebook both seem more concerned with silencing non-violent people who hold political opinions they disagree with, than violent terrorist organizations and the people that support them,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted. “Is @RealJamesWoods really more ‘dangerous’ than Hamas?”

And Pamela Geller was censored on Facebook. After complaints, her post was restored. Just another “mistake” by Facebook.

Ms. Geller’s advice:

Attention readers: Challenge ever ban, appeal every deletion. Do not stand by while left wing corporate managers and paid foreign operatives strip us of our unalienable rights as Americans.

# # #

Mark Steyn on “The Big Shut-Up”

image credit: webjunction.org

More censorship this way comes, and Mark Steyn nails it:

In this week of second-birthday celebrations for The Mark Steyn Club, the thing most worth celebrating is mere existence: We haven't yet been vaporized. Every day the Big Shut-Up advances: Last week Facebook eighty-sixed Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson and for good measure Twitter suspended the Hollywood contrarian James Woods. It's a bit unfair on poor old calypso conspiracist Louis Farrakhan, who found himself de-platformed with all the right-wing haters just because Speech Commissar Zuckerberg needed a bipartisan figleaf. He won't require that much longer, and indeed Big Social is growing ever more brazen in its preference for monitored speech over free speech. (See, for example, Google's thuggish and moronic censorship of the Claremont Institute.)

As readers may have noticed, I don't do Facebook posts or Tweet: We have social media accounts but we use them only to link to content here or to promote radio, TV and stage appearances. To be honest, I don't really understand why so-called "conservatives" write (for free) on Facebook and Twitter, providing the Big Social cartel with more free content and thus enriching them and cementing their near total control of the Internet. Nor do I understand why Dennis Prager, for whom I have almost boundless admiration, sued YouTube for giving his Prager University videos insufficient prominence. Conservatives demand that YouTube cease "de-monetizing" their videos. For what it's worth, the first time I was de-monetized on YouTube, I self-de-monetized all my other videos on the platform. Because whatever percentage of ad revenue you might get from them, YouTube takes more - much more. So you're getting pennies while they're getting even more stonkingly mega-rich: Conservatives who think more YouTube revenue is the way to close the gap don't seem to grasp that they're actually widening it.

In the end, the solution to Facebook and Google/YouTube is to break them up before they police every aspect of human existence on the planet. And right now the only prominent politician pledging to do that is ...Elizabeth Warren. In the meantime, in our modest corner of the Internet, our policy is to try and do as much as possible independent of the Big Tech oligarchies - because anything else just accelerates the shrinking number of entities that control access to all information.

A decade ago, we free-speechers were fortunate enough to fight our battles in Canada just before Facebook and Twitter came along and wrecked the Internet. Today, Twitter's main function is to provide a pretext for destroying random lives pour encourager les autres.

. . .

These are very dark times for a meaningful culture of free speech. Its subordination to identity politics and political correctness is now taken for granted by the Institute of Directors, Rugby Australia, the Philadelphia Flyers and on and on. In such a world I am grateful still to be here, and I thank all of you who swing by each morning even as the lights flicker and die around a once lively Internet.

And today we read that David Horowitz (Freedom Center, Front Page Magazine) has been suspended from Twitter. Anyway, read the rest of Steyn’s column here.

# # #

Censorship on the march

John Nolte at Breitbart has more bad news (“Poynter [Institute] Temporarily Pulls Blacklist with a Big Lie and Promise to Return”)

“Marketers can create blacklists,” Poynter helpfully points out, but since your blacklist might not be as comprehensive as our blacklist here’s a handy blacklist that will allow you to blacklist those we believe should be blacklisted.

Poynter’s list includes… Breitbart News, the Media Research Center, Pajamas Media, Washington Examiner, The Daily Wire, The Blaze, Red State, Project Veritas, Newsmax, Zero Hedge, LifeSite, Judicial Watch, Frontpage, The Washington Free Beacon, The Daily Caller, and the Drudge Report…

But nowhere on this list will you find the establishment media outlets — CNN, NBC, the Washington Post, Politico, the New York Times, MSNBC, etc. —  responsible for blowing the biggest stories of the last five years:

·         The Trayvon Martin Hoax

·         The Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax

·         Donald Trump Can’t Win

·         The Russia Collusion Hoax

·         The Brett Kavanaugh Serial Rapist Hoax

·         The Covington High School Boys Hoax

Poynter’s blacklist was only about one thing, had only one goal — one — and that was to tell advertisers to starve alternative media, alternative thought and ideas to death.

But here’s the real news, Poynter is not retracting its McCarthyite blacklist in shame — oh no… Poynter is promising to return with a better and bolder blacklist:

Therefore, we are removing this unreliable sites list until we are able to provide our audience a more consistent and rigorous set of criteria.

“Rigorous” or righteous? This report is one of several over the past months concerning ongoing efforts to blacklist or de-platform or otherwise shut down a debate. For example, see Daily Caller report here. Iain Murray at Instapundit has another:

Leftist activists have forced a vote at the Mastercard AGM next month to establish an Orwellian “Human Rights Committee” aimed at cutting off the rights of anyone they disagree with. The initial aim is to choke off the income stream to right-wing activists.

Master Card? Well, if Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube can get away with blocking our First Amendment rights, and companies such as Dick’s Sporting Goods bow to political correctness, what will stop Master Card?  

UPDATE from Breitbart's James Delingpole: 

Facebook is Big Brother.

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