The Censors Will Never Give Up – National Review

People line up for taxis across the street from the New York Times headquarters in 2013. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

In the New York Times, Emily Bazelon reminds us once again that an enormous number of journalists, law professors, and other academics simply cannot be trusted to defend the First Amendment and, in fact, that they spend an increasing amount of time coming up with what they believe are new arguments for censorship. In a key paragraph, Bazelon writes that:

Its an article of faith in the United States that more speech is better and that the government should regulate it as little as possible. But increasingly, scholars of constitutional law, as well as social scientists, are beginning to question the way we have come to think about the First Amendments guarantee of free speech. They think our formulations are simplistic and especially inadequate for our era.

In addition:

These scholars argue something that may seem unsettling to Americans: that perhaps our way of thinking about free speech is not the best way. At the very least, we should understand that it isnt the only way. Other democracies, in Europe and elsewhere, have taken a different approach. Despite more regulations on speech, these countries remain democratic

There is nothing novel about the arguments presented in Bazelons piece. Indeed, they are exactly the same arguments that have always been made by people who would like to be more powerful than they are. And we are by no means obligated to buy into her euphemisms. When Bazelon writes that democracies, in Europe and elsewhere, have taken a different approach, or that the principle of free speech has a different shape and meaning in Europe, she means that governments in Europe use violence to prevent people from saying things that they dont want them to say. When she refers to regulations on speech she means censorship enforced by the police. When she observes that some liberals have lost patience with rehashing debates about ideas they find toxic, she means that those people have abandoned freedom of expression both legally and culturally, and, having privately decided what is true and what is false, have decided to ruin the lives of anyone who dissents. When she proposes that our formulations are simplistic, she means that people cannot be trusted with the unalienable liberties they inherited, so experts must step into the breach. When she waxes lyrical about the mid-20th century arrangement, during which broadcasters were held to a standard of public trusteeship, in which the right to use the airwaves came with a mandate to provide for democratic discourse, she means that she would like the government to decide which broadcasts counted as a public service and that the public would be better off if given a choice between three different versions of the same thing. When she suggests our way of thinking about free speech is not the best way she means that we should tear up the First Amendment. She can put it how she likes; the answer is No.

All in all, Bazelon provides only two examples of what happens when the First Amendment isnt applied rigorously in the United States, both of which should have been sufficiently horrifying to have made her reconsider her premise:

From 1798 to 1801, more than two dozen people, including several newspaper editors, were prosecuted by the administration of President John Adams under the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made malicious writing a crime. Protesters were also jailed for criticizing the government during World War I.

Whether Bazelon thinks these incidents were good or bad is unclear. Either way, she concludes with the preposterous suggestion that free speech of the sort we enjoy in the United States may, in fact, be an enabler of fascism. Herbert Marcuse has a good deal to answer for, but hes still no master of disguise.

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The Censors Will Never Give Up - National Review

Opinion | Is big social media censoring those they disagree with? – The Breeze

Since late May, fact checks, censors, warnings and even removals have appeared on President Trumps social media posts. Throughout the pandemic, social media companies have been exposed for censoring all kinds of voices, like medical professionals, politicians, event organizers and even the president.

The problem many have with this censorship is that the majority of these voices appear to be conservative-leaning. Is it true that companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are silencing those with opinions they dont agree with? Is big tech truly infringing upon the First Amendment and taking away individuals and the presidents right to free speech?

While this narrative has been effective in stirring the emotions of those who agree with the voices being censored, its most likely not the case.

The censorship, which began as far back as March, was introduced by most big social media companies as a method to combat dangerous misinformation regarding the pandemic.

Misinformation is one of the biggest problems related to the pandemic and has made an incredibly complicated issue even more so. Removing harmful, incorrect information from social media sounds like a great step to prevent dangerous underreaction or overaction on a large scale.

However, this was much easier said than done.

Almost immediately, people started to take issue with new censorship policies when posts on Facebook were mistakenly blocked by a bug in their anti-spam system. The blocked posts included sources many thought to be legitimate and well recognized like Buzzfeed and USA Today. The bug was soon corrected, but the conspiracy theories had just begun.

Fox News Tucker Carlson spoke about a viral video on TouTube by doctors who were suggesting that the COVID-19 death count was heavily inflated and that serious policy changes were necessary. The video was taken down by YouTube, and Carlsons main argument was that media giants were silencing any form of dissent from the opinions of those in power. This may sound like something to be seriously worried about, but its actually the exact kind of misinformation that threatens our safety.

The doctors statements, thought by many to be a credible source of information, have since been completely debunked and proved to be filled with a variety of statistical errors. YouTube was right to censor this information as it was false and had it been spread any further, it couldve persuaded the millions who saw it to take the pandemic much less seriously and act accordingly.

On May 26, 2020, Twitter placed the first fact check warning on one of Trumps tweets. The president and many of his supporters were outraged, as it seemed as though Twitter was participating in partisan bias and trying to silence Trump for a difference in political views.

However, when the information contained in the tweet and the surrounding situation is examined closely, it becomes clear why this censorship was justified and necessary for American safety. The tweet was an argument for the theory that mail-in ballots are completely untrustworthy and shouldnt be used in the upcoming election. The reason Trump made this argument wasnt that it was true, but because he knows his supporters are more likely than the opposition to disobey quarantine standards and come out in larger numbers for an in-person event, as they have been for months, to protest the quarantine laws.

The tweet was a political move filled with misinformation that could still put people in danger. This is exactly the kind of censorship that isnt done because of partisan bias, but because false information could put our national health in danger.

Shortly after Trumps tweet was censored, a federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit claiming that these social media agencies were suppressing conservative views.

Evan Holden is a sophomore political science major. Contact Evan at holdened@dukes.jmu.edu.

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Opinion | Is big social media censoring those they disagree with? - The Breeze

Censor social media content & harvest data from banned accounts: House Intel witnesses testify on combating misinformation – The Sociable

Expert witnesses tell the House Intelligence Committee how to best combat misinformation online with more content restriction on social media and posthumous data harvesting from banned accounts.

Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a rare open hearing on the subject of Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories Online where expert witnesses testified on best practices for censoring content.

Towards the end of the hearing, Chairman Adam Schiff asked a peculiar question whose answer hints at a future where theres even more censorship and greater amounts of data harvested from social media accounts.

As researchers, as analysts, one of the most important things for us is getting the data on what content, what accounts, what pages, and all of that have been removed Cindy Otis

Schiff asked Alethea Group Vice President of Analysis Cindy Otis what data social media companies are not sharing that they should be sharing in order to help analysts do their work.

Otis responded that getting access to the data from content that had already been removed would be extraordinarily helpful for conducting digital autopsies to find out the strategies, methods, and tactics of social media movements.

As researchers, as analysts, one of the most important things for us is getting the data on what content, what accounts, what pages, and all of that have been removed, Otis testified.

On Facebook, for example, you get an announcement every week or every couple of weeks about the content thats been removed. We get a couple of screen shots maybe. We get maybe an account, maybe a page name that sort of thing but its after the content has been removed.

That sort of data would be extraordinarily helpful as we look at things like current threat actors shifting their operations, what new tactics are they employing, hows this manifesting on the platform Cindy Otis

Otis added, Unless we were particularly tracking that threat or were part of that analysis to begin with, were not able to go back and identify the tactics and procedures that were used by threat actors to do this campaign in the first place.

And so that sort of data would be extraordinarily helpful as we look at things like current threat actors shifting their operations, what new tactics are they employing, how this is manifesting on the platform.

While Otis called for harvesting data posthumously from banned accounts like digital autopsies, Melanie Smith,Head of Analysis at Graphika Inc., testified that big tech platforms should continue to restrict content, so that movements like Qanon would be forced to alternative platforms with smaller audiences.

The best possible solution, here, when we restrict content on mainstream social media is that Qanon will retreat to the fringes, and therefore not be able to be exposed to new audiences and new communities that could be impacted Melanie Smith

She argued that on the so-called alternative platforms, there would be fewer opportunities for the cross-pollination of ideas.

The best possible solution, here, when we restrict content on mainstream social media is that Qanon will retreat to the fringes, and therefore not be able to be exposed to new audiences and new communities that could be impacted, Smith testified.

But it didnt stop with the big tech companies. Smith told the committee that there should also be more pressure on alternative platforms to restrict content after its already been beaten back to the fringes.

We need to be talking to more alternative platforms about restricting content and making a concerted effort in that space, Smith testified.

I also think there could be changes to platform engineering to restrict the exposure of new audiences to algorithmic re-enforcement of some of these ideas, she added.

If you combine the strategies of both Smith and Otis, what you get is more censorship, and then once a user or group is banned, the data is harvested posthumously to discover their tactics.

We need to be talking to more alternative platforms about restricting content and making a concerted effort in that space Melanie Smith

As big tech companies purge thousands of accounts for spreading so-called conspiracy theories, theres a lot of personal data that analysts could have access to if they had their way and if the platforms were to have an obligation to hand over that data.

The data could then be used to track where users go next, and the potential for abuses of privacy is enormous, no matter how well-intended the idea may sound.

Why would the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee ask data analysts what they would need if he wasnt already thinking about a way to obtain that data?

If analyzing data harvested from banned accounts would be so extraordinarily helpful, would there be an incentive to ban even more accounts, so more data could be collected?

Where would it end?

Online censorship is toppling statues that havent been built yet: op-ed

Facebook to censor anything it deems necessary to avoid adverse legal or regulatory impacts

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Censor social media content & harvest data from banned accounts: House Intel witnesses testify on combating misinformation - The Sociable

Xi’s Reach: Propaganda and Self-Censorship on Campus – The Bates Student

Here in the United States, we lack an official government mouthpiece; a publication solely dedicated to trumpeting the governments every action. Fortunately, Chinas Xinhua News, China Daily, Peoples Daily, and China Global Television Network all trumpet their governments successes around the world. Some of these reported successes are Confucius Institutes. Lets take a look at their history, and what a Chinese government approved version of education is like.

First championed by Politburo member Li Changchun in 2011, the institutes are, in his words, an appealing brand for expanding [Chinese] culture abroadthe Confucius brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical. The institutes are overseen by the Ministry of Education, informally known as Hanban, and are part of a propaganda initiative that has $10 billion in funding behind it. The institutes espouse a Beijing-approved version of Chinese culture and history, ignoring human rights concerns and teaching that Tibet and Taiwan indisputably belong to mainland China, a la Manifest Destiny.

Minister of Propaganda Liu Yushan celebrated the institutes expansion across the world in Peoples Daily: We should actively carry out international propaganda battles against issuers such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, human rights and Falun Gongwe must establish overseas cultural centers and Confucius Institutes.

To Mr. Changchuns credit, the Chinese government has found out that many American colleges desire one thing above all: money. Exploiting a reduction in college funding from the American government, many Confucius Institutes bring millions of dollars for the universities that accept them into their communities. As Politico reports, colleges get to outsource Chinese language instruction, while still collecting their free money. This has led to Confucius Institutes being established across the United States and a complete list can be found here. According to a report put together by Dr. Marshall Sahlins, teachers within the institutes are carefully vetted by Hanban, and need to possess a strong sense of mission, glory, responsibility, and to explicitly ban discussion of human rights in China or the Tiananmen Square massacre. If a student raises uncomfortable questions about the political status of Tibet, Haban orders instructors to refocus the discussion on Tibets natural beauty or indigenous culture. Thats not exactly a place for academic freedom or freedom of inquiry.

Several controversies have marked Confucius Institutes government propaganda in recent years. When Matteo Mecacci of the International Campaign for Tibet requested a sample of course materials from an institute in Washington D.C., he received books and DVDs from the State Council Information Office, whose main function is to produce propaganda products. One student at the University of Kentuckys Confucius Institute recalls one of the faculty responding to a question about air pollution in China by stating that reports of air pollution were misinformation reported by U.S. media.

Another controversy involved a slip up by Hanban officials in their vetting process. Sonia Zhao, a Chinese national, was dispatched to McMaster University in Canada to teach Chinese language. Unbeknownst to Hanban, she was a practitioner of Falun Gong (a Buddhist spiritual movement), and she was ordered to renounce her faith in order to secure her permanent employment. She later quit, arguing that McMaster University was giving legitimization to discrimination. Her contract stated that she was forbidden from joining illegal organizations like the Falun Gong.

Under Canadian and U.S. law, such discrimination because of religious beliefs is illegal, and McMaster University later shuttered the institute due to its hiring practices. At North Carolina State, a visit by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was scuttled by the university in order to avoid hurting strong relationships [they] were developing with China. Confucius Institutes are also expanding into primary and secondary education, with many Confucius Classrooms setting up shop in education systems around the world, most notably the City of Chicago Public School System.

Luckily, public officials and academics across the world are starting to wake up to this trend of cultural imperialism in higher education. What is the purpose of college if it does not challenge, reform, and inform the way you see the world? The American Association of University Professors recommended in 2014 that universities cease their involvement with Confucius Institutes unless several reforms are made, including standardizing freedom of inquiry for all faculty in the institutes and making the contracts between the institutes public.

The United States Senate Committee on Investigations published a report on their recommendations to the Department of Education and the State Department on how to address the Confucius Institutes Communist Party-approved programs. Committee Chairman Rob Portman (R-OH) and ranking member Tom Carper (D-DE) agreed that Confucius Institutes are part of a broader strategy to export Chinas censorship to American college campuses. The report concludes that unless the Institutes become fully transparent and the Chinese government reciprocates by welcoming the State Departments funded American Cultural Centers into China, Confucius Institutes should not continue in the United States.

Who cares, right? Bates College does not have a Confucius Institute. Sadly, however, some Chinese students at Bates are very careful not to express their political opinions publicly. One student at Bates told me that they dont do anything political. [They are] worried if therell be any consequences back home for [them] or [their] family. This student is one of many Chinese students in universities across the country that consciously keep their opinions about their government under wraps. Dan Wang, a pro-democracy activist, elaborates on the methods that the Chinese government uses to silence critics in the U.S. in a piece for The New York Times. Another student at the University of Minnesota, Luo Daiqing, was arrested upon his return to China for posting comment denigrating a national leaders image and indecent pictures.

This is the reality that some Bates students deal with every day, in fact, two of the people I talked to prefer that I not even quote them out of fear that they might be subject to repercussions back home. Many schools dont even need a brick and mortar Confucius Institute to silence government critics. The students that spoke with me are courageous individuals, and I especially want to offer thanks to the individual who gave me permission to quote them in my article. If youd like to learn more, be sure to check out the links to the previous paragraph about what it is students go through on some campuses, despite lacking an actual Confucius Institute. Authoritarianism takes many forms and in the age of technology can be extended to oppress individuals even beyond the borders of a single country.

Excerpt from:

Xi's Reach: Propaganda and Self-Censorship on Campus - The Bates Student

Online censorship is toppling statues that havent been built yet: op-ed – The Sociable

To the victors go the spoils, they say, but in the siege of online censorship over freedom of thought, the statues are being toppled before theyve even laid the foundation, and history is being re-written in real-time.

We have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood Thomas Jefferson

Social media companies like Facebook fuel polarization, and they were created for mass deception intentionallyby design.

Their algorithms are trained to keep people on the platform as long as possible as they continue toamplify division,and the majority of the American people believe social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints.

As of June, 2020, roughly three-quarters of US adults said it was very (37%) or somewhat (36%) likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints that they find objectionable. Just 25% believed this was not likely the case, according to a PEW Research Center survey.

Citizens of a free society can only make informed decisions based on the information that is available to them.

But when information is suppressed and skewed, as with censorship in the name of fighting online misinformation, then the people are stripped of their right to review and assess the information for themselves.

With the discrimination between truth and falsehood [] the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness Thomas Jefferson

In fact Thomas Jefferson wrestled with this conundrum. He knew that misinformation was a scourge among the press, but logic and reason dictated to him that it was better to allow the free exchange of ideas and to let the public decide on their merits rather than to censor anyones voice.

Jefferson penned a letter to Marc Auguste Pictet on February 5, 1803, in which he stated:

Our newspapers for the most part, present only the caricatures of disaffected minds.

Indeed the abuses of the freedom of the press here have been carried to a length never before known or borne by any civilized nation, but it is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use [. . .] of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood, and hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.

Allow them to print, and let the public decide.

But in order for the public to decide, it must be privy to all sides of an argument, not just the ones approved by the authoritative sources decreed by the magistrate.

The House of Representatives urges all Americans, regardless of our beliefs or partisan affiliation, to seek information from authoritative sources and to engage in political debate from a common factual foundation H Res 1154

Earlier this month Congress passed House Resolution 1154,which condemns believing in conspiracy theories and encourages that all Americans seek information from authoritative sources.

Thinking for yourself or exploring any line of questioning that isnt the established norm shall be deferred to a so-called authoritative source.

Big tech companies adhere to this principal like a fly to a VPs head in heated debate by enlisting theirthird-party fact-checkers as their authoritative sources,who themselves are not free from bias or influence.

After the New York Postpublished a supposed smoking gun article of a political nature on Wednesday, Facebook communications director Andy Stone, who was previously the press secretary of a former senator, tweeted that Facebook was reducing the articles distributionevidentlybefore the story had even been reviewed by Facebooks third-party fact checking partners.

While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebooks third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.

Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020

In response, Senator Josh Hawley lambasted Facebook and demanded that the social media company explain its course of action.

.@Facebook explain your decision to censor the sourced reporting of the @nypost. Did Biden campaign ask you to do so? pic.twitter.com/FdGQV5N7i3

Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) October 14, 2020

If the NY Post story turns out to be accurate, then Facebook would be guilty of suppressing important information that could influence the course of American history with a presidential election less than a month away.

Likewise, if the story turns out to be unequivocally false, then it would also be labeled an attempt at election interference, and the newspaper would lose credibility.

Either way, sometimes the truth can be considered an attempt at election interference just as much as a falsehood, and readers should be wary of rhetoric that attempts to dumb-down a complex issue for political gains.

In the end, fake news peddlers will only damage their own reputations and bring doubt on their reporting The Heritage Foundation

Echoing the wisdom of Jefferson, theHeritage Foundation published in 2017that For all the uncertainty and chaos that an unfettered media seem to engender, Americans have been best at ultimately veering closer to the truth than any other people.

In the end, fake news peddlers will only damage their own reputations and bring doubt on their reporting.

Instead of being met with immediate censorship, why not allowinformation that comes forth from the media, from government, or from private citizens to be put to public discourse after a thorough evaluation of the known facts that are made available to everyone?

Whether the news seems outright preposterous or whether it transcends some universal truth let logic and reason (and in some cases perhaps a little faith and intuition) be the guiding forces not an authoritative body that determines what you can and cannot know, should or should not believe.

If an argument doesnt hold water, it will sink very quickly.

And what happens when there are two authoritative sources with conflicting information?

Anything that goes against WHO recommendations would be a violation of our policy Susan Wojcicki, CEO at YouTube

You would think that medical doctors would be authoritative sources for health issues, but not in 2020! No matter how qualified you are to talk about COVID-19 in a medical setting, if your advice goes against the World Health Organizations (WHO) recommendations, you will be censored, at least by Google-owned YouTube.

In April, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN, Anything that goes against WHO recommendations would be a violation of our policy, and that the videos would be removed.

When authoritative sources such as doctors, economists, politicians, and news pundits all have different points of view, which authoritative source should you listen to?

Without mentioning which ones, the House of Representatives says all Americans should trust authoritative sources, and they say so without the slightest sense of irony of the self-serving nature of their request.

Recent trends in the spread and reach of misleading or unfounded claims online have the unsettling potential to come to a head after Election Day House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, October 13, 2020

Next up, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will be holding a hearing on Thursday to explore how the government should assist in censoring the free and open exchange of ideas in order to combat Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories Online.

In the hearing, the Committee will examine:

Is misinformation really the intended target? Who benefits from censorship? Who loses?

When you take away the right of the people to access, share, and discuss information on a free and open forum, you are creating a class of uninformed citizens whose decision-making is surrendered to tow the authoritative line.

A wise man I once interviewed said, Censorship destroys the very diversity it was meant to protect.

Information warfare is raging, and misinformation is coming at us from all sides.

I agree with Thomas Jefferson that no matter how many inaccuracies the media prints, the people should be able to decide for themselves whom to trust.

If a newspaper prints nothing but garbage, then the people who think for themselves and have access to other sources will be able to recognize this, and they may simply choose not to subscribe.

Likewise, any media company that misleads on purpose should be called out, criticized, and made accountable including ours.

It is just as much the responsibility of the reader to do their due diligence in investigation as it is for the media to do theirs.There are multiple sides to every story, not just the authoritative one.

But once the wheel of censorship starts to turn, its very difficult to put on the brakes, especially if the power to suppress information is given to influence by political forces.

History is omitted and re-written in real-time as the information warfare rages.

The statues topple, though they have not been built.

Facebooks business model is poison & its algorithms amplify misinformation: digital forensics expert testifies

Social media services that I & others have built are tearing people apart: ex-Facebook ads chief testifies

Facebook to censor anything it deems necessary to avoid adverse legal or regulatory impacts

Originally posted here:

Online censorship is toppling statues that havent been built yet: op-ed - The Sociable

10 Scenes From Classic Cartoons That Didn’t Make It Past Censors – Screen Rant

From Pokemon to Gumball, sometimes cartoons just push it too far and end up getting pushed back by the censors.

There are tons of cartoon innuendos that happened in older shows, fromSpongebobtoInvader Zim, and honestly, it's a very surprising fact that some of these jokes even made it into the shows at all. There are some shows likeRen And Stimpy orMr. Meaty that made their living off of Gross-Out humor and body horror, which doesn't seem like a sustainable model for a kids' show in the first place.

RELATED:15 Cartoon Episodes That Were Too Controversial To Air

Invader Zim was particularly bad about this since Nickelodeon specifically did a call for a television show that would cover their 12-16 year old demographic. Let's take a look at some scenes like this that didn't quite make it to air.

Ren And Stimpy was always known for pushing the envelope, so much so that eventually John Kricfalusi got fired from his own show. John K. was fired for plenty of other reasons, but the scene that got him canceled wasn't the first time he had gotten a scene pulled from the show.

The first scene that Nickelodeon got rid of was in an episode where Ren's cousin Sven comes over, and Stimpy and Sven spend the day together. The issue is when they hide in a closet together, and Stimpy decides they can play a game called "Sword Swallower".No need toextrapolate that point, but that's why the scene was pulled (although it's available on DVDs for any curious fans).

Denno Senshi Porygonis probably one of the most infamous cartoon episodes ever to air. It's the 38th episode of the 3rd season, in which something is wrong with the Pokeballs, so the team enters them to figure out what's going on.

The worst offender in the show is when Pikachu delivers a thunderbolt to a cyber missile, after which the screen rapidly flashes between red and blue. This event gave seizures to tons of people across Japan, putting about 685 people in the hospital. It was known in the Japanese press as the Pokemon Shock. Stocks fell by about 5%, the episode was pulled from the rotation for all time, and it's never been aired again.

This is the actual episode that got John K. fired, in addition to the fact that he was notoriously hard to work with and did so many edits of the show that were already completed that episodes were frequently turned in well past their airing deadline. In the episodeMan's Best Friend, we see Ren savagely beat a man with an oar.

RELATED:Parks & Rec: 10 Controversies That Almost Killed The Show

The man who was beaten is named George Liquor for some reason, which is already pretty weird for a kid's show. There's a sequence where Ren very visibly snaps in a very realistic and dark way, with surreal, splotchy backgrounds behind him. After this, he beats the man until he's black and blue, swollen, with bulging eyes.

For whatever reason, thePowerpuff Girls show decided it needed to take the George OrwellAnimal Farm route with one of their episodes, in which for some reason, a gnome shows up who starts a cult in which they have sacrificed happiness for peace.

The show has an incredibly biased depiction of what Communism is, and regardless of anyone's view on the economic system, it gets into some pretty weird and heavy topics for a kids' show about 3 little girl superheroes. He's also one of the only characters in the series who has straight up been killed, aside from some sentient broccoli and the Rowdy Rough Boys.

Rocko's Modern Life is pretty well-known for having some pretty racy jokes thrown into the mix more or less all the time. There was one episode where Rocko was a phone operator for an adult phone line, an episode where the word "hell" is plainly shown in text.

In the very second episode of the show, the first segment is entitled "Leap Frogs". The whole plot of the episode is already pretty weird, which can be summed up by saying that his neighbor Beverly Bighead is feeling unfilled in her relationship. She then invites Rocko over to "help her out around the house". She appears naked in the episode, shares an adulterous kiss with Rocko, and they watch a tape of frog mating together.

As with every anime that exists, Pokemon has a beach episode. Weirdly enough though, this might just be one of the more risque beach episodes that's happened in an anime that's aired for children. There's a pretty frequent thing in the show where Jessie and James seem to enjoy dressing in drag pretty frequently, generally for the sakes of a disguise.

RELATED:The 10 Most Controversial Animated Disney Movies, Ranked

The issue isn't with the crossdressing, thee issue enters into the equation when James for some reason decides to don a bikini complete with an inflatable chest. Misty, who is a minor, also partakes in a bikini contest, and the fact that James' chest isn't as flat as hers is played for laughs since it's demoralizing.

In the 1984Spider-Man television series, for whatever reason, they decided that they wanted to bring in Morbius as a villain. The censorship that happens with this character is pretty dumb, but at the same time, it's pretty odd that they decided to include this character in the series anyway. Morbius, for anyone who doesn't know, is a vampire. A vampire who drinks blood.

For some reason, there's some weird restriction (or was) against saying the word "blood" or showing a character sucking blood in a children's cartoon. Their solution to this was to make Morbius drink plasma, and he uses suction cups in his hands to acquire it.

Daria was a series that kind of pushed the limits for its time, both on MTV and on a relic of the early 2000s, called The N. The show frequently explored themes of drugs and sexuality, and despite the fact that it was a cartoon specifically meant for adults and for teenagers, the fact that the show was a cartoon made both censors and parents uncomfortable with the concept of the show exploring such mature themes.

RELATED:15 Controversies That Almost Ended Pixar

Another issue is that a lot of the sexuality hinted at was not of the heterosexual variety, making homophobic parents in the 90s extremely upset. It's ludicrous that this type of thing would be censored, but it definitely put a damper on the show.

Heff In A Handbasket is an episode ofRocko's Modern Life. The show was already well known for going too far pretty frequently, already having the episodeLeap Frogs on this list. Apparently, they didn't learn their lesson, because the episodeHeff In A Handbasket happened.

There was already an episode where the show explored Hell pretty heavily, but this episode took the Satanic hell imagery to another level. For whatever reason, censors have a major problem with anything that could present Christianity in a questionable light, which is a reason that a lot of Japanese RPGs have been censored when being ported over.

Happening in season 1 ofThe Amazing World Of Gumball, Darwin and Gumball share a kiss with each other and then go on to talk about how great it was. Having characters kiss in really any kid's show is pretty weird in the first place, but for a lot of censors in other countries, the fact that it was shared by two boys is again what put it over the top.

For some reason, there's still tons of censorship when it comes to LGBTQ+ themes, which in our current year is pretty sad. Oh, the kiss was also an accident and it's played for laughs anyway, so it really makes no sense that it was cut.

NEXT:15 Controversies That Almost Ended Great TV Shows

Next 10 Things About Harry Potter's Scar That Make No Sense

Cody is an author from Ohio. When he's not writing, he enjoys improv comedy, making music with friends, and consuming whatever media he can. Before working for Valnet mainly on the Screen Rant site, he got his writing experience in doing music reviews and comic book scripts.

Continued here:

10 Scenes From Classic Cartoons That Didn't Make It Past Censors - Screen Rant

NFT and crypto art can magnify the truth of our reality without censorship – Cointelegraph

Earlier this month, Christies auction house announced the sale of a digital portrait of the Bitcoin code for more than $130,000 when the first estimated price was $12,000$18,000. It was the first time a nonfungible token was auctioned at one of the major auction houses for traditional art.

One of the last events, Bridge to Metaverse, presented by Snark.art, showed tokenized artworks by both established and emerging contemporary artists. A group exhibition brought leading artists of our time the Kabakovs, Kendell Geers, AES+F, Recycle Group and others to the blockchain space, and a series of panel discussions worked as a bridge between the traditional and blockchain-based art worlds with its own systems of distribution.

One criticism of the crypto art market has been the perceived naivety of the works. Although people were being distracted by the emergence of memes and CryptoKitties, there have also been some serious artists who have made their presence felt in the crypto world.

The traditional position of arts has been a commentary on the current state of affairs. A way to subversively criticize and, at the same time, to magnify the truth of what we are living through.

This is a perfect match with the emergence of the anonymity of blockchain technology in the new climate of being constantly tracked by our everyday gadgets.

Related: Painting a different picture: How digital artists use blockchain

Will the emerging artists in the new field of crypto art be influenced by traditional artists bringing their works into a shared blockchain space? With strong voices raising political, race, gender and inequality issues, their influx in these current times may create a shift in the way art is created, collected and viewed.

The traditional art market brings with it not only artists but also gallerists and curators who are naturally also drawn to growing markets. In fact, we are already seeing a move toward more classic ways of buying, with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles purchasing works from artists to exhibit them in its own permanent collection.

Of course, this will also open the door to Crypto Art Basel, Biennale and other curated events whose crypto artworks will break sales records at Christies or Sothebys.

Fifty years from now, those first NFT artworks by world-acclaimed artists could become highly valuable, just like what happened with the first animations of John Whitney, the father of computer animation, who created the first animated art on his computer back in 1960.

Serious contemporary artists mirror and even magnify the truth of our reality without censorship. In the current political world, a marriage between the established artists and crypto art with no censorship is virtually a perfect match.

Misha Libman, co-founder of Snark.art, certainly believes this is a challenge to not only take on but to relish in, and he stated that:

Therefore, is the crypto art audience ready to be challenged with serious statements of shifting toward digitalization? Especially as established artists now find themselves with a new technological medium and a way to reach audiences they never had before.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Alexandra Luzan is a Ph.D. student researching the connection between new technologies and art at Ca Foscari University in Venice. For about a decade, Alexandra has been organizing tech conferences and other events in Europe dedicated to blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. She is equally interested in the relationship between blockchain tech and art.

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NFT and crypto art can magnify the truth of our reality without censorship - Cointelegraph

EFF and ACLU Ask Ninth Circuit to Overturn Government’s Censorship of Twitter’s Transparency Report – EFF

Citing national security concerns, the government is attempting to infringe on Twitter's First Amendment right to inform the public about secret government surveillance orders. For more than six years, Twitter has been fighting in court to share information about law enforcement orders it received in 2014. Now, Twitter has brought that fight to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. EFF, along with the ACLU, filed an amicus brief last week to underscore the First Amendment rights at stake.

In 2014, Twitter submitted a draft transparency report to the FBI to review. The FBI censored the report, banning Twitter from sharing the total number of foreign intelligence surveillance orders the government had served within a six-month period. In response, Twitter filed suit in order to assert its First Amendment right to share that information.

Over half a decade of litigation later, the trial court judge resolved the case in April by dismissing Twitters First Amendment claim. Among the several concerning aspects of the opinion, the judge spent devoted only a single paragraph to analyzing Twitters First Amendment right to inform the public about law enforcement orders for its users information.

That single paragraph was not only perfunctory, but incorrect. The lower court failed to recognize one of the most basic rules underpinning the right to free speech in this country: the government must meet an extraordinarily exacting burden in order to censor speech before that speech occurs, which the Supreme Court has called the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.

As we explained in our amicus brief, to pass constitutional scrutiny, the government must prove that silencing speech before it occurs is necessary to avoid harm that is not only extremely serious but is also imminent and irreparable. But the lower court judge concluded that censoring Twitters speech was acceptable without finding that any resulting harm to national security would be either imminent or irreparable. Nor did the judge address whether the censorship was actually necessary, and whether less-restrictive alternatives could mitigate the potential for harm.

This cursory analysis was a far cry from the extraordinarily exacting scrutiny that the First Amendment requires. We hope that the hope that the Ninth Circuit will say the same.

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EFF and ACLU Ask Ninth Circuit to Overturn Government's Censorship of Twitter's Transparency Report - EFF

Trump intensifies conflict with big tech over Section 230 protections following censorship moves by Facebook and Twitter – WSWS

Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday censored posts by President Donald Trump that the social media platforms said violated their rules against misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. In his posts, Trump compared COVID-19 to the seasonal flu, downplayed the deadly nature of the pandemic and said, we are learning to live with COVID.

The morning after he returned to the White House from Walter Reed Hospitalstill infectious and heavily medicatedand posed in Hitlerian fashion for a photo op on the Truman Balcony, Trump took to social media to bolster his homicidal herd immunity policy and dangerously demonstrate by example how the great leader is facing down the virus.

Facebook removed his post entirely but not before it was shared approximately 26,000 times, according to data published by the social media metrics company CrowdTangle. A Facebook spokesperson told CNBC, We remove incorrect information about the severity of Covid-19, and have now removed this post.

The action by Facebook is unusual in that the worlds largest social media platform has been reluctant to remove posts by the president in the past. In August, Facebook deleted a video of Donald Trump falsely asserting that children were almost immune from COVID-19 during an interview with Fox News, the first time the platform ever removed one of his social media posts.

In the case of Twitter, the tweet remains up but is covered by a warning that says, This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the publics interest for the Tweet to remain accessible, along with a link to learn more about the companys coronavirus information policy. Trumps post cannot be retweeted or shared.

The full Tweet reads, Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!

That Trumps comparison of the seasonal flu to the coronavirus is completely false is easily confirmed by information readily accessible on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The site contains data for every year of the seasonal flu going back to 2010-2011 and shows that the death rate among those who get sick from the flu ranges between 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent. The death rate, through July, of those who have contracted COVID-19 is 2 percent, showing that coronavirus is between 6.7 and 20 times more deadly than the flu.

Additionally, as pointed out by the Washington Post, many people who have been infected with the virus have lingering symptoms for months, including difficulty breathing, inability to exert themselves physically, recurring pain. The virus can cause long-term damage to organs other than the lungs, damage that is not common to the seasonal flu.

In response to the censorship measures by Facebook and Twitter, the President tweeted REPEAL SECTION 230!!! Section 230 contains the provisions within the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that shield online services such as social media platforms from being legally responsible for the content posted by users of their systems.

When Twitter began labeling the presidents tweets in late May, he issued an executive order making the US government the arbiter of political speech online. The order called upon the Federal Communications Commission to revise the scope of Section 230 and also empowered the Federal Trade Commission to evaluate the content moderation polices of the tech giants and determine whether or not their actions violate free speech rights.

With Attorney General William Barr standing next to him, President Trump said on that day, Were here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers, before he signed the order. By empowering the federal regulatory agencies in his executive order, Trump was sending a message to big tech that attempts to censor his social media postsalong with those of his far-right and fascist allies and supporterswould result in the removal of Section 230 protections and open up the online service providers to fines and lawsuits.

Since then, the Department of Justice (DoJ) and AG Barr late last month drafted proposed legislation modifying the language of Section 230 to address concerns about online censorship by requiring greater transparency and accountability when platforms remove lawful speech. In a letter dated September 23, Barr jumbled together claims that big tech is hiding behind the shield of Section 230 to censor lawful speech with the allegation that online service providers are invoking the laws protections to escape liability even when they knew their services were being used for criminal activity.

Simultaneous with the DoJ-drafted legislation, Republican Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee introduced a bill in the Senate that calls for nearly identical modifications to Section 230 rules for online services. At the top of their list is the unsubstantiated charge that right-wing political views are being singled out by the tech monopolies for persistent online censorship.

Sunday, October 11, 7pm US EDT

The sickness in the White House

An online meeting with Socialist Equality Party candidates in the 2020 US elections, Joseph Kishore and Norissa Santa Cruz.

In moving the bill, Senator Wicker said, For too long, social media platforms have hidden behind Section 230 protections to censor content that deviates from their beliefs. These practices should not receive special protections in our society where freedom of speech is at the core of our nations values. Our legislation would restore power to consumers by promoting full and fair discourse online.

On October 1, the Senate Commerce Committee, which includes 14 Republicans and 12 Democrats, voted unanimously to subpoena the top executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google to appear at a hearing on Section 230 on October 28. After initial opposition to the subpoenas from Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, the Republicans agreed to add the topics of privacy and misinformation to be discussed along with censorship issues.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee released a 449-page report on Tuesday on the results of its antitrust investigation into Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook which condemns big techs monopoly power and calls for the companies to be broken up and restructured.

The coming together of the White House and Democrats and Republicans in Congress over a raft of regulations and attempt to assert government control over the Silicon Valley tech giants raises to a new level contradictions embedded within the capitalist system, not least of which is that these firms are the most valued properties on Wall Street worth trillions of dollars and a primary source of the massive fortunes being made by the financial oligarchy that controls both parties and the entire US political establishment.

Behind the frenzied efforts to reign in the powerful technologies of these firms is a growing awareness that the utilization of these systems by billions of people amid expanding class struggle internationally presents the ruling elite with a problem of revolutionary proportions.

While the ruling establishment is roiled by intense conflicts in the run-up to the November 3 electionswith Trump asserting that he intends to stay in office regardless of the outcome the Democrats and Republicans are unified in their drive to clamp down on information technologies. Their central aim is to prevent the working class from using these technologies to organize their struggles, including across national boundaries, and above all to stop the program of revolutionary socialism represented by the World Socialist Web Site from reaching the working class and youth.

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Trump intensifies conflict with big tech over Section 230 protections following censorship moves by Facebook and Twitter - WSWS

TSPM Online Book Store Self-censors and Avoids Using the Word Christ – International Christian Concern

10/09/2020 China (International Christian Concern) The China Christian Council (CCC) and Three-Self Patriotic Movement, commonly known as the lianghui (two organizations) in China, govern all things for state-sanctioned churches. However, some Christians recently discovered that the word Christ has been removed from all of the publications available for sales on its online bookstore.

According to Ying Fuk-tsang, director of the divinity school at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, he was notified by Chinese Christians that the Christian books on sales at Tianfeng Bookstore on WeChat platform, have their covers altered. The word jidu (Christ) on all the books has been covered with stars or replaced with English letters JD (abbreviated from jidu).

While it is possible that the bookstore owned by lianghui did this in order to avoid censorship from WeChat, since anything religious is becoming increasingly sensitive in cyberspace, this shows that both freedom of speech and religious freedom are deteriorating with each passing day under Xis regime.For interviews, please contact Olivia Miller, Communications Coordinator:press@persecution.org.

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TSPM Online Book Store Self-censors and Avoids Using the Word Christ - International Christian Concern