Childrens authors and performers say growing censorship, institutional timidity and online backlash are resulting in stories about diversity, sexuality and even contemporary world events being deemed inappropriate for younger readers.

It feels like were living through a second section 28, but one that the UK government has outsourced to an anonymous Twitter lobby, one performer says.

When acclaimed gay author Simon James Green was banned from school visits in the south of England by the Catholic church last month, it drew attention to what many believe is a developing trend that mirrors the escalating censorship of childrens reading in the US, described by Art Speigelman recently as a culture war thats totally out of control.

Savita Kalhan was expecting to take a school assembly with a group of teenagers for World Book Day recently. She planned to touch on themes of respect and consent that appear in her young adult novels That Asian Kid about institutional racism in schools and The Girl in the Broken Mirror which includes a sexual assault. But the event was cancelled because the deputy head deemed her work inappropriate.

Since then, Ive had lots of school librarians message me to say they believe the situation is getting much worse and more widespread, with a backlash against certain topics from school management and parents, Kalhan says. There seems to be a fear of something that might or might not happen, and its unnecessarily affecting childrens choice of reading.

Young adult books, covering diversity, sexuality, even contemporary world events, are now being deemed unsuitable for teenage readers, she adds. This is completely out of touch with what teenagers are actually reading and watching, and the expertise of librarians themselves is completely overlooked.

Juno Dawson author and former teacher, whose acclaimed sexuality handbook for young people, This Book is Gay, is the subject of removal petitions in the US agrees there is a shift in mood.

Its part of a wider culture war, she suggests, now gaining traction in the UK. You cant stop a kid being trans or LGBT but you can stop a book. A lot of these attempts to have books pulled or readings cancelled feel vexatious, so huge credit to the librarians and teachers who are dealing with irate parents and campaigners.

Elle McNicoll joined Simon James Green on the platform for the Bristol Teen Book Awards the week after his ban, which she describes as sending a painful message to young gay pupils.

Ive seen the absolute force for good that Simon is when he visits a school, and Im just sorry that some children will be denied that joy.

McNicolls latest book, Like a Charm, includes a dyspraxic protagonist; her debut featured a heroine who is autistic, like McNicoll herself.

Diverse authors take on a lot more than questions about plot and story, she argues. Were also often expected to fix societal problems or defend ourselves outside of our work.

Hazel Plowman, head of creative learning at the Bath Childrens Literature festival, says there has been a definite shift towards more inclusive stories in children and young peoples books since she started working there a decade ago.

Were programming our autumn festival, and while theres still work to do, we are getting all kinds of voices pitched as commercial books now, rather than being pigeonholed as an issues book for example. There are LGBTQ+ books for all ages, picture books with two mums, British-Indian detectives and neurodiverse authors and characters.

Jodie Lancet-Grant is one of the authors Plowman lists. Her debut picture book for 37 year olds, The Pirate Mums a swashbuckling adventure about a boy called Billy who happens to have two mothers attracted some trolling earlier this year. The idea that anyone would think this story is not appropriate for children beggars belief. Its just a different family circumstance, but its incredibly important that children see that represented.

There is a worrying trend of censorship of LGBTQ+ authors and books happening as a consequence of the more polarised world we are living in, she says, suggesting that section 28 the legislation enacted in 1988 to prohibit the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities and only abolished in 2003 still has an impact. A lot of adults grew up not reading about these subjects because of clause 28, and now assume they are not acceptable because they accepted that absence as children.

Drag performers have attracted particular controversy, with a number of schools caught out in recent years after booking an act seen as having a non-child friendly name or online presence. Sab Samuel AKA Aida H Dee, childrens author and founder of Drag Queen Story Hour UK, is clear that not all drag acts are suitable for education, but believes that schools and local councils are becoming increasingly aware of the potential for backlash, and consequently steering clear of anything that could be deemed risky.

Adam Carver, whose drag performance for kids Palaver! generated complaints to local authorities and the Arts Council England last year, is blunt: It feels like were living through a second section 28, but one that the UK government has outsourced to an anonymous Twitter lobby.

Carvers company, Fatt Projects, is working on a model to support arts organisations facing similar attacks, offering advice on how best to respond to criticism.

There is a resurgence of the idea that queer people shouldnt be around children, he says. There is a perfect storm now where venues and organisations are so afraid of backlash that they dont take any risks. But there is still demand from children and families for work that explores difference.

View original post here:

Out of touch: childrens authors describe increasing censorship of books on diversity - The Guardian

On Saturday, a Brazilian political official ordered Lollapalooza Brazil to ban political demonstrations from its future events after Marina and other performers shared their distaste for the countrys government on stage the night before. Now, the Welsh artist is speaking out against artist censorship.

Censorship is still alive and well, she wrote on Twitter Tuesday, referring to the electoral judges order calling for a $10,500 fine for any artist who uses the Lollapalooza stage to address politics. Marina and Pabllo Vittar were among the artists who were named in the judges order after speaking out against the countrys far-right president Jair Bolsonaro during their sets at Lollapalooza in what the official called propaganda and premature campaigning. Brazils election is set for later this year.

We need to stick together. Im just sick of a certain kind of energy. Fuck Putin. Fuck Bolsonaro. Fuck him! Marina said on stage at the So Paulo festival on Friday. We are sick of this energy. We are sick of it. You are the new generation and things are going to change.

So many of us are sick of these old men who think they own the countries they lead They dont own anything, she wrote in a second tweet. And they are weaker than we think. When people feel they have no power they try to take it away from others.

Brazilian popstar Pabllo Vittar shared a similar message on stage when she performed at the festival, yelling, Get out Bolsonaro! She wore a red towel featuring the image of Lula da Silva, the leftist politician who is running against Bolsonaro and is poised to win, according to polls in Brazil. Rapper Emicida promoted voter registration during her set, before chanting, Hey Bolsonaro, take it in the ass, according to The Guardian.

Earlier this week, superstar Anitta laughed at the fine proposed by the Brazilian official, writing on Twitter, one less bag. She added, Does this law apply abroad? Because my festivals are only international.

Marinas sentiment seems to echo that of many young Brazilians and her fans, many of whom are queer who oppose the leadership of Bolsonaro in Brazil, who has espoused anti-gay rhetoric.

Her statements at the festival also align with the feminist, forward-thinking lyrics of her songs, Purge the Poison and Mans World. (Vittar is featured on a remix of Poison.) I want to see change, she toldPeople last year. The world we live in really lacks femininity. We need more feminine so we can connect with Earth and nature. So that we care again.

A rep for Lollapalooza did not immediately respond to Rolling Stones request for comment.

Read the original post:

Censorship Is Still Alive and Well: Marina Slams Brazilian Governments Attempt to Silence Musicians - Rolling Stone

This is a version of an article published in the Out of Frame Weekly, an email newsletter about the intersection of art, culture, and ideas. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.

In this newsletter, we often talk about how social media companies decide what content is and isnt allowed solely based on the subjective opinions of people who run the platforms. And this week gifted us two glorious examples.

The Intercept reported that Facebook will allow users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian White nationalist paramilitary group, in contradiction to the social network's policy banning support for "dangerous individuals and organizations." According to the United Nations, the Azov Battalion raped and tortured civilians in 2014.

Facebook said it made the change to "allow Facebook users to obtain information about the forces' military activity" and "ensure that news coverage of the conflict can continue to be shared on the platform," according to Insider. It is unclear why this change was necessary to allow that, but that may speak to bigger problems in how Facebook's rules conflict with users' ability to freely share information.

Facebook also made an exception to its hate speech policy to allow statements like "death to the Russian invaders" and calling for violence against Russian president Vladimir Putin and his ally, Belarussian president Aleksandr Lukashenko.

The change only applies in several countries in the Caucasus and Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, where Facebook is currently banned.

People should rightfully condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But these actions by Facebook, along with decisions to ban propaganda from only one side in the war, demonstrate that decisions that should be made on some kind of objective principle are instead being made on the basis of team sport. Policies are chosen on the basis of trying to help "the good guys" and harm "the bad guys." What is the objective reason that people should be allowed to call for the death of Putin and Lukashenko but not any of the world's dozens of other dictators?

This shows that while banning "false information" or "hate speech" sounds good in theory, in practice it is not so simple, and the execution is prone to political bias.

View post:

The Most Blatantly Biased Social Media Censorship Decisions of the Week | Matt Hampton - Foundation for Economic Education

On Saturday, Facebook deleted a popular anti-war video produced by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) without providing any reason. The video, titled No Third World War! Against Ukraine war, NATO aggression and German rearmament! had been viewed over 20,000 times within a few days.

The SGP called on Facebook on Sunday to immediately reverse the deletion. We are exercising our constitutional right to participate in the formation of political opinions with the video, the party stated in its appeal, but the corporation did not give any response. The deletion can therefore only be seen as an act of political censorship directed against the SGPs independent anti-war perspective. We call on all readers to oppose this censorship and use all their channels on social media and beyond to protest against it in the strongest possible terms.

In the video, SGP Chair, Christoph Vandreier, and German WSWS Editor-in-Chief, Johannes Stern, unequivocally condemn the Russian governments war. But they also explain how it was provoked by the wars conducted by the United States and its European allies over the past 30 years and the military encirclement of Russia by NATO.

They make it clear that a proxy war is being waged in Ukraine between NATO and Russia at the expense of the population, which threatens to end in a nuclear world war. The only way to prevent a catastrophe, Vandreier and Stern explain, is to unite Russian and Ukrainian workers as part of an international, socialist movement against war and its root: capitalism.

This analysis and perspective struck a nerve, and reached tens of thousands of people on Facebook in a short time. The video received over 150 likes, was shared 140 times, and commented on 120 times. It expresses widespread opposition to NATOs warmongering, which is suppressed in the official media, which instead provides a torrent of deafening war propaganda aimed at all-out war against Russia, and ultimately, China.

The weekend the video was deleted, US President Biden declared that regime change in Russia was a goal of American foreign policy and announced a decades-long state of war. Germanys Chancellor Scholz made similar statements when he defended the tripling of the war budget on Sunday so that Germany would once again be able to wage war against Russia.

This insane drive towards a third world war is rejected by the vast majority. That is why the media have switched into war propaganda mode and will not allow discussion of even the most basic questions. The censorship that is now to be imposed is the desperate response to the fact that this propaganda is fooling fewer and fewer people and masses of workers are looking for an independent perspective against the war.

Censorship measures by governments in collaboration with the tech giants have been systematically increasing for years. In 2017, Google announced that it would favour authoritative sources in search results in the future. At the same time, socialist and anti-war websites, and in particular the World Socialist Web Site, were censored and banished from search results.

Facebook has hired more than 20,000 people to monitor posts on its platform and censor undesirable posts. Many of these employees have intelligence or law enforcement backgrounds and work closely with the US government. In Germany, the close cooperation of tech companies with the government has even been regulated by law through the Network Enforcement Act.

In the last year, Facebook has already tried twice to censor the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), of which the SGP is the German section. On January 22, Facebook blocked the accounts of prominent representatives of the ICFI and of local sections of the party in the US, and only restored them on 25 January after massive protest. A month later, Facebook prevented users from sharing the WSWS article Washington Posts Wuhan lab conspiracy theory stands exposed. Facebooks reasoning was that the article was spreading misinformation. In May, the company was forced to admit the untenability of this statement and unblocked the article.

Facebooks censorship is directly linked to the German governments efforts to silence the SGP and criminalise any opposition to war. In 2018, the Interior Ministry had for the first time included the SGP in its annual secret service report as being left-wing extremist and defamed it as anti-constitutional. After the SGP filed a complaint against this, the ministry justified the surveillance of the party by the intelligence agencies on the grounds that simply arguing for a democratic, egalitarian, socialist society and agitation against alleged imperialism and militarism were unconstitutional.

In response to this attack, the SGP stated in July 2019: The attack invokes the criminal traditions of authoritarianism and fascism in Germany. The Interior Ministrys attack on the SGP is intended to set a dangerous precedent. It will be used to legitimize state action against organizations, groups and individuals who oppose social inequality, environmental destruction, state repression, the buildup of the military or other injustices of capitalist society. This was confirmed once again when the Berlin Administrative Court backed the federal government in its legal ruling.

Facebooks censorship of the SGPs anti-war video confirms these warnings. In the face of growing social inequality, the murderous profits before lives policy in the pandemicand above all the reckless course towards a world waranyone who opposes the war drive and policies in the interests of the rich is to be suppressed.

The struggle against the suppression of the SGP, which ultimately targets any opposition to the official war policy, is therefore of utmost importance. The censorship by Facebook and the German government can only be stopped by the mobilisation of the international working class. Therefore, spread this article and protest against the censorship on all channels. Use the hashtags #defendSGP, #StopCensoringSocialism and #SpeakOutAgainstWW3 and share the video that has been censored by Facebook.

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Stop Facebook's censorship of the SGP's anti-war video! - WSWS

Theres a really horrifying censorship story unfolding in Anchorage, Alaska. But much as I wish I could tell it, part of the reason the true depths of whats going on there arent being shared broadly is because of how officials are using their states FOIA laws to keep that information impossible to access.

The story is out of the playbook were seeing across the country, and its destroying the Anchorage Public Library.

Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson won a very tight mayoral race in late May 2021. Of note were the tactics his team took to intimidate and suppress voters, including stationing people outside voting areas to watch who was going in and out of those areas. He is radically anti-LGBTQ.

Among the first tasks for Bronson was appointing a new director for the Anchorage Public Library. The most recent had retired, and the first candidate Bronson put forward was Sami Graham. Graham, who had failed in her attempts to win a school board seat the previous election, had no library experience, no library degree, and had reached out to Bronsons transition team about wanting to get involved somehow. She is a proud conservative.

After backlash from the public, the Assembly did not confirm Grahams appointment. Bronson needed to find another person, and he did immediately. This candidate was Judy Eledge who, coincidentally, also lost a school board election earlier in the year (indeed, in trying to pack the Anchorage Public Schools school board with a conservative slate, more than one did not succeed).

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Eledge also has no library experience, but her choice proved a little less controversial than Graham, despite her outspokenness as a conservative. She was the President of the Anchorage Republican Womens Club. She was a Republican elector for Alaska in the Electoral college.

Despite the fact the job required library experience and a library degree, Eledge was approved by the Assembly without being qualified for the role.

One of the powers of the Anchorage Mayor is that they can appoint who sits on various boards within city departments. Up to 150 board positions are available annually, and all board seats end after members have served for three years. In October of 2021, numerous library board seats were available for appointment.

Bronson packed the board with his friends, including Dennis Dupras, a state trooper (who has posted queerphobic, all lives/blue lives matter material on Facebook), Doug Weimann (with right wing affiliations), Travis Gularte (proudly posting right wing social media posts), and Deb Bronson (his wife). A fifth appointment was that of a teenager, Denali Tshibaka. Shell become important shortly. She serves as part of Anchorages Youth Advisory Committee.

The Anchorage Public Library board notes begin to shed light into what Eledge aimed to do in her role as Director. Among those were to ensure a safe environment for employees and others to have honest discussions with differing views and opinions, as mentioned in the October minutes. She met with leaders of homeschool cooperatives and began to invite them into library partnerships (the results of which arent clear). Likewise, Eledge began to talk about the librarys strategic plan, which, coincidentally, is under the Mayors direction.

When December rolled around, the new board was introduced by none other than Sami Graham. Its then things took a real turn. Eledge brought a Bible Story Hour to the library, allowing her pro-life, right-wing friend Wendy Perkins to partner with one of the librarians on this event.

Denali Tshibaka brought up inappropriate books during this initial meeting. Remember Denali is the teen appointed to the board for youth input. Perhaps its pertinent to mention that she is the daughter of Kelly Tshibaka, who ran a Trump-endorsed campaign to win Lisa Murkowskis U.S. Senate seat and lost. Decembers meeting minutes note that Denali found inappropriate books in the childrens section, specifically noting those were transgender books. Gularte bolstered her discussion by mentioning something about men in dresses being derogatory. Denalis task for the January board meeting would be to research these inappropriate books and present on them to the board.

In January, Denali gave a presentation to the board. Below are the minutes:

The board discussed options and landed on reorganizing the books via age group would be enough. Interestingly, Weimann noted he was having the same problem at his elementary school with inappropriate books.

This comes to light because Lily Spiroski, a teenager serving on Anchorages Youth Advisory Committee, stepped out of their role. They felt that Bronsons leadership was hateful toward queer people, and this move at the library showed the ways in which censorship of queer voices played out under his leadership (remember: he appointed all of those in support of this reorganization project).

Judy Eledge actually stepped down from her role as director in November, though she still played some kind of role thereafter. Utilizing the powers granted to her by the city charter, Anchorage Municipal Manager Amy Demboski took over control of the library as director in January. Dembowski wields her power in that role in some fascinating ways, namely in the fact shes issued gag orders to staff and administration in the library.

And its here where the story Id been hoping to tell falls apart.

On Tuesday, February 8, I submitted a FOIA request to the city of Anchorage. To do so requires sending the request to department heads, meaning that to FOIA information about the library, that request goes to the library director. As Demboski has ceded Eledge, this meant the FOIA request went to her.

I requested the following:

In the above-linked piece, Demboski reminds the library staff and administration that theyre not allowed to use email to communicate among city departments. This came February 10, two days after my request was submitted. Its likely a coincidence, but the message itself is chilling: staff cannot communicate.

A series of emails followed between myself and Demboski, including an initial response that no records could be quickly found. I would be able to continue to request, but because it would be time-consuming, there would likely be a fee assessed. Oh, and I needed to provide a list of all staff noted in my request, which I copy and pasted from the librarys website (seems like all staff wouldnt be a hard thing to search on their end, but I support I can copy/paste).

The note came back with the estimated fee: $940.

For being unable to find anything in an initial search to suggesting that the above search would take over 23 staff hours is certainly something. Without a budget for FOIA requests Id have paid up to $30 or so on my own Im unable to access information that should be publicly available.

But this is precisely what a corrupt system wants to happen. By making FOIA financially inaccessible, the full story cant be told.

Whats going on in Anchorage is whats happening in public libraries around the country. Among them, ImagineIf in Kalispell, Montana. In Pikes Peak, Colorado, the director leftafter the city council appointed a conservative board. The director at Mid-Continent Public Library in Missourileft for a similar reason, as his new right-wing board rejected inclusive programming.

Tune into this rock star panel of authors whove had books challenged, alongside professor Emily Knox, who is a scholar on censorship. The panel is Tuesday night, March 29, at 7:30 pm eastern.

For more ways to take action against censorship, use this toolkit forhow to fight book bans and challenges, as well as this guide toidentifying fake news. Then learn how and why you may want touse FOIA to uncover book challenges.

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The Censorship Story I Cant Tell You: This Weeks Book Censorship News, March 25, 2022 - Book Riot

ABC bleeped out the expletive-ridden exchange that followed Will Smiths blow to Chris Rocks face during Sunday nights Academy Awards but it didnt matter since unedited footage of the incident leaked onto social media just minutes later.

As is customary for broadcasts of live shows, ABCs feed was on a 20-second delay to enable producers to cut or bleep foul language or any other display that potentially violates Federal Communications Commission guidelines.

But while the audio was cut and censored for several seconds, closed captions indicated that the King Richard star said, Keep my wifes name out of your fking mouth.

International broadcasting crews, meanwhile, were beaming the raw feed of the awards show to global audiences. Audio from the uncensored Australian broadcast appears to confirm this, including Rocks stunned reaction: Will Smith slapped the st out of me.

So while ABC may have momentarily spared American viewers the tense Rock-Smith exchange, it quickly went viral on their mobile devices.

Rob Mills of ABC, who was in the networks production trailer during the show, told Variety that it quickly became apparent that the incident was not scripted.

Before Smith smacked the comedian, Rock had made a joke about Smiths wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, being in the fake action film because of her bald head. She had previously spoken about having a hair loss condition, alopecia.

Chris Rock came on and he was doing, I think, material based on what happened that night, as any comedian will do, Mills told Variety. He made the [G.I. Jane] joke. Obviously, you could see the joke did not land with Jada. And then you see Will start to get up and walk up.

Mills added: There have certainly been unpredictable moments where people have gotten up and done things, so we thought this was one of those.

Once Rock and Smith both used expletives in their reactions, it dawned on the ABC producers that this was real.

You started to realize this is real once Chris, who certainly knows the limits of broadcast standards, said, Will Smith slapped the st out of me, Mills said. Thats when it became obvious that this was not a joke.

Due to strict FCC guidelines on the use of profanity during domestic broadcasts, Mills said, he and his team erred on the side of caution in censoring the aftermath.

When youre on the button, which I wasnt but our standards people were, I think you obviously go towards overcorrection than letting something get through, Mills said.

American viewers instead relied on clips from overseas, which do not apply the same rigorous requirements against profanity.

Americans can be a bit more puritanical and outraged by these things, a radio producer for BBC told the Washington Post.

See the article here:

How ABC tried -- and failed -- to censor Will Smith slap of Chris Rock - New York Post

On March 27, YouTube removed the entire archive of six years of Chris Hedges On Contact from its platform without any notice or explanation. Even though very few of Hedges shows referenced Russia or Vladimir Putin directly, his association with RT America as well as his opposition to NATO warmongering was all that was required for YouTube to delete hundreds of hours of interviews on a range of political subjects that were critical of both the Democrats and Republicans.

The World Socialist Web Site denounces the malicious and anti-democratic suppression of the archive of On Contact and demands that full public access to it be immediately restored.

As reported previously by the World Socialist Web Site, the Russian state-funded cable news network RT America was shut down in the US on March 3 and all 120 of its employees were laid off at offices located in New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Miami.

Although the management of the news channel said the network had experienced unforeseen business-interruption events, the abrupt shutdown of RT America was no doubt part of the anti-Russian offensive mounted by corporate media outlets and governments aligned with the US and NATO in the proxy war being fought in Ukraine against the regime in Moscow.

Among the RT America programs terminated were several popular left-wing and anti-war TV shows including Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp and On Contact with Chris Hedges. These programs were specifically targeted for censorship because they adopted an anti-war standpoint that was opposed to the narrative developed by the ruling political establishment in the US and Europe.

This campaign to silence voices critical of the role of imperialism in provoking the war in Ukraine has been extended to the removal of video content from YouTube, podcasts from Spotify and other censorship measures by the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter.

Hedges had denounced as a war of aggression the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. But he went on to explain the war in historical context and suggested that the betrayal of agreements with Moscow, which he covered as a reporter in Eastern Europe during the dissolution of the USSR, as well as the expansion of NATO on the perimeter of Russia likely baited Putin to invade Ukraine.

In a statement published on Substack, Hedges wrote of the censorship by YouTube, The entire archive of On Contact, the Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT International, has been disappeared from YouTube. I received no inquiry or notice from YouTube. I vanished. In totalitarian systems you exist, then you dont.

Hedges went on to explain that the lack of oppositional content in the mainstream media was one of the reasons he was on RT in the first place, I was on RT because, as a critic of US imperialism, militarism, the corporate control of the two ruling parties, and especially because I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, I was blacklisted.

Hedges denounced the Democrats for being the biggest advocates of online political censorship in the US, The most vocal cheerleaders for this censorship are the liberal class. Democrats in the U.S. Congress have held hearings with the CEOs of social media companies pressuring them to do more to censor content. Banish the troglodytes. Then we will have social cohesion.

He also drew broader conclusions about the meaning of the removal of his programs from YouTube, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden exposed the truth about the criminal inner workings of power. Look where they are now. This censorship is one step removed from Joseph Stalins airbrushing of nonpersons such as Leon Trotsky out of official photographs. It is a destruction of our collective memory. It removes the efforts to examine our reality in ways the ruling class does not appreciate. The goal is to foster historical amnesia. If we dont know what happened in the past, we cannot make sense of the present.

The actions of YouTube, which is owned by Googles corporate parent Alphabet Inc., are part of a coordinated effort by the big social media platforms to silence anyone who does not adopt the political line of the White House and US State Department and label them as Russian propaganda.

Other recent developments include the decision by Twitter as of February 28 to label the tweets of those who worked at RT America with a message that says, Russia state-affiliated media. Absurdly, this includes the Twitter account of Ed Schultz, the former host of MSNBCs The Ed Show and, starting in 2016, the host of News with Ed Schultz on RT America. Schultzs Twitter account now has the Russian state media label even though he died of natural causes on July 5, 2018.

Also reported previously on the WSWS, comedian and activist Lee Camps 500 hours and eight years of video archive of Redacted Tonight was removed from YouTube and his podcast Moment of Clarity was removed from Spotify. In a recent post, Camp called the anti-Russian censorship McCarthyism, We live in a world of immense censorship that is increasing every day. America claims to be this is the place where we have freedom of press or freedom of speech and yet they are deleting everything that is possibly anti-war and anti-imperialist.

On Saturday, Facebook deleted a popular anti-war video produced by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) without explanation. The video, No Third World War! Against Ukraine war, NATO aggression and German rearmament! resonated with the public and had been viewed over 20,000 times within a few days before it was removed.

The video gained a following because it presented a fundamental truth about the present danger of a world war with nuclear weapons. The SGP both condemned the Putin regimes war in Ukraine and explained how the conflict was provoked by the encirclement of Russia by NATO and the wars conducted by the US and its European allies over the past thirty years.

The new round of online censorship is a continuation of the campaign mounted by the tech monopolies under the direction of the intelligence state apparatus that began in 2017 to prevent anti-capitalist and revolutionary socialist political ideas from reaching wide layers of the working class. With the development of the Internet, and especially social media, over the past three decades, the ruling elite fears that its grip on information and political analysis through traditional corporate media channels has been significantly undermined.

The World Socialist Web Site views as a basic responsibility the defense of all progressive and left-wing individuals and political tendencies against government instigated censorship and repression. We therefore urge all supporters and readers to circulate this statement as widely as possible in order to build public support for the restoration of access to Hedges On Contact archive.

Foreword to the German edition of David Norths Quarter Century of War

Johannes Stern, 5 October 2020

After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger.

Read more from the original source:

Six years of Chris Hedges' On Contact program erased by YouTube - WSWS

To message a friend, you have to know which app theyre using. Someone might not respond to texts or Signal, but might be addicted to WhatsApp. The DMA, which is closer to becoming law after European authorities signed off on it last week, will require large messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp to open up to smaller networks (if the platform requests it). That means your iMessage text could be received by someone who only uses Signal, for instance.

The largest messaging services (such as [WhatsApp], Facebook Messenger or iMessage) will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms, if they so request, EU lawmakers agreed. Users of small or big platforms would then be able to exchange messages, send files or make video calls across messaging apps, thus giving them more choice.

Sounds great, right? Interoperability supporters are celebrating the new rules, but those advocates and security experts alike also have questions: How would this work, exactly? Where will user data be stored? What does this mean for end-to-end encryption?

Researcher Carla Griggio has studied interoperability at Aarhus Universitys Department of Computer Science and said the DMA is essentially about letting users have the freedom to decide where they want to communicate without being cut off from the people who choose to use a different messaging platform.

Having this law ask at least the biggest platforms to open up would allow you, for example, to choose to stop using WhatsApp if you wanted without being cut off from communication with the people that still choose to use WhatsApp, she said.

But Griggio said its still unclear whether people will be able to control who reaches them where. How are we still going to have control over where we communicate with whom? she said.

Theres also a social component to making messaging platforms work seamlessly together, she said. iMessage, for instance, allows users to send stickers or animations, but its unclear whether those functionalities can be carried over when communicating with people on different apps. If anything in the content of the conversation is not part of that contract between apps, for example stickers or voice messages, I don't think that interoperability is going to work, she said. And it's going to bring frustrations, miscommunication.

The other big question is how end-to-end-encryption will work across all apps. Security experts are concerned it will need to be weakened or dropped for the sake of interoperability. Neil Brown, managing director of the internet-focused law firm decoded.legal, said requiring users to accept weaker security in order for platforms to remain interoperable would seem counterintuitive.

Brown said he could see platforms offering end-to-end encryption giving their users a heads-up if theyre working with platforms that do not offer the same.

I would not be surprised that, if platforms offering end-to-end encryption were able to interoperate with platforms which do not, they would warn their users about the implications of those originating communications from a non-end-to-end encrypted platform, he said.

There could be one way to allow for interoperability while circumventing these concerns about end-to-end encryption and data privacy, said Conrad Kramer, who has worked on Apples Shortcuts feature and co-founded Workflow. Kramer said companies like Apple, Meta and others could open their messaging service APIs to one central app. From there, users would be able to choose whether they want to send a message from iMessage or Signal or Messenger without opening those apps.

The rules may also have the effect of allowing Android users to finally have access to iMessage (though no word on whether the green and blue bubble divide will come to a close).

[If] I am a smaller messaging app, and I would like to interoperate with WhatsApp and iMessage, those companies would be legally required to provide an API for my app to reach into and talk to the iMessage and WhatsApp networks," he said.

In the case that abuse occurs through a messaging platform or the government needed messaging data for whatever reason, the network where the message traveled to would be responsible: If you are using iMessage, and you message over the WhatsApp network to someone else on WhatsApp, the answer is Facebook because Facebook operates the network that the message traversed," Kramer said.

Kramer said the main concern with encryption is that if the rules required the servers of Apple or Facebook to talk (or interoperate), then an iMessage going to WhatsApp would potentially need to be decrypted from iMessage and then re-encrypted for WhatsApp: at which point that is breaking the encryption. But it would be less of an issue if the message traveled through one network.

In any model where the message traverses a single network, and it goes from one phone to another phone, the encryption would still preserved and not broken," he said.

Regardless, platforms are going to need to cross engineering hurdles to make interoperability work. Apple is already worried the rules will create security vulnerabilities, while Google thinks theyll hinder innovation.

Requiring coordination between large tech companies is something that is very hard to do, Kramer said. They do not like each other, they do not work well together.

Read more:

Google ordered translators to censor the word 'war' in Russia - Protocol

Something both convoluted and disturbing happened on Twitter this week that illustrates why its not enough for lawmakers in Washington to haul Big Tech executives before congressional committees every now and then and give them a good talking to.

Congress actually has to do something about this. Regulating social media giants like Twitter and Facebook as common carriers, prohibiting them from censoring under the absurd pretext that speech they dont like is harmful or abusive, would be a good place to start. If that doesnt happen, Twitter will eventually ban every conservative voice and every media outlet that dares to challenge left-wing pieties about race, gender, and a host of other issues.

Heres what happened. On Wednesday evening, around the time Twitterbegan censoring Federalist articlesby appending a warning they may be unsafe and their contents could be violent or misleading, I got a notice from Twitter support letting me know that someone had complained about a tweet of mine noting that Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, is a man.

As a result, my tweet would be banned, but only in Germany, where, according toTwitters explanationof what it calls, country withheld content, an authorized entity issued a valid legal demand to block my tweet.

I had written the tweet in response to news this week that Twitter locked the account of Charlie Kirk for saying Levine is a man. Banning Kirk made no sense, I wrote, because Levine is obviously a man a man who dresses like a woman, but a man nonetheless.

To be clear, Levine is a 64-year-old man who spent the first 54 years of his life presenting or living publicly as a man. He was married and fathered two children. In 2011, he decided to transition and began dressing and presenting as a woman, changing his name to Rachel Levine (previously, he went by Richard, his given name). He divorced his wife of 25 years in 2013.

Levine is and will always be a man. His story is a sad one, and far from mocking or berating him, conservatives should pray for him and hope that he gets the help he obviously needs.

But none of this is really about Levine. Its about Twitter. Twitter locked Kirks account after itlocked the account of The Babylon Beeearlier this week for postingan articleheadlined, The Babylon Bees Man of the Year is Rachel Levine, riffing onan actual USA Today piecenaming Levine as one of its 2022 women of the year, despite the fact that Levine is a man.

After Twitter locked out the Bee, which is a satirical publication, its Editor in Chief Kyle Mann tweeted, Maybe theyll let us back into our @TheBabylonBee Twitter account if we throw a few thousand Uighurs in a concentration camp, which prompted Twitter to lock Manns account for hatful conduct. Later, the Bees founder Adam Ford was locked out of Twitter for retweeting Mann.

While all this was going on, articles at The Federalist suddenly started getting blocked by Twitter. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the handful of articles that were blocked, but it started withan article by Libby Emmonspublished Wednesday morning entitled, Everybody Knows Rachel Levine Is Truly A Man, Including Rachel Levine.

When my colleague Tristan Justiceasked Twitter about it, a spokesperson told him, the URLs referenced were mistakenly marked under our unsafe links policy this action has been reversed. Nothing to see here, it was all just a big mistake!

But we all know it wasnt. It was no more a mistake than my tweet getting flagged in Germany, of all places, or Kirk and Mann and Ford and the Bee all getting locked out of their accounts. This kind of behavior from social media companies has become all too common for anyone to believe that getting locked out of your account or getting an article taken down is ever a mistake, and certainly not when the tweet or article in question is asserting the plain truth that a man does not become a woman simply by growing his hair out and putting on a skirt. When youre account is locked overthat, its on purpose, and the point is to shut you up.

And its not just Twitter. This week, YouTuberemoved a bunch of videosfrom the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, including a speech by J.D. Vance and a panel discussion with Federalist CEO Sean Davis, Rachel Bovard, and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. a panel discussion that happened to be aboutthe harms of Big Tech and how federal law protects them from liability.

Its obvious that these firms will eventually silence everyone who dissents from their woke ideology. Theyre not even trying to hide it anymore. If you say that Rachel Levine is a man, or that Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who just won an NCAA Division I national championship, is a man, they will come after you. It doesnt matter that Levine and Thomas are in fact men. Truth is no defense against censorship by Big Tech.

So until Congress under what would have to be a Republican majority, given Democrats enthusiasm for online censorship acts to put an end to this, it will continue. And the list of things you cant say will grow. Before long, you wont be able to say, for example, that abortion is the taking of a human life, that gay marriage is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, or that children should not be taught that America is systemically racist.

In such an environment, the only way to ensure the censors dont come after you is to follow the extraordinary example of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was asked by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on Tuesday during the confirmation hearing to define the word woman. Jackson replied, infamously, Im not a biologist.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

The rest is here:

If Congress Doesn't Rein In Big Tech, Censors Will Eliminate The Right From Public Discourse - The Federalist