Daily Archives: May 14, 2020

Screenwriter Zhou Xiaoxuan speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at her home in Beijing, China, on January 16, 2019, detailing her involvement in China's #MeToo movement.

Two years since the #MeToo movementtook offin China, Chinese feminists are battling headwinds in a political environment where the ruling Communist Partys control over the Internet, media and independent activism is tighter than it has been in 30 years.

Chinas party-state has zero tolerance for collective actions, so the countrys #MeToo movement has never been able to manifest in mass street protests. But individual victims have taken their cases to court, demonstrating extraordinary determination and resilience.

Facing intense slut-shaming on Chinese social media platforms and censorship of discussions of her case, University of Minnesota student Liu Jingyao who is suing, in a Minnesota civil court, Chinese billionaire Liu Qiangdong for an alleged rape vowed tonever settleor sign a nondisclosure agreement (prosecutorsdeclined to charge him in the case, and he maintains that the sex was consensual). Similarly, screenwriter Zhou Xiaoxuan who is suing, in a Beijing court, famed state media anchor Zhu Jun for alleged sexual harassment and assault, which hedeniessaid, Even giving me 100 million [yuan], I wouldnt settle.

Under pressure, the Chinese government has made limited improvements. In December 2018, the Supreme Courtadded sexual harassmentto the list of causes of action, making it easier for #MeToo victims to seek redress. Yet China still lacks robust laws against sexual harassment.

Silenced in their home country, Chinese feminists have increasingly found footingoverseas. Utilizing the relatively free and safe space in Western countries, #MeToo activistshold protests, discussions and trainings, and provide support to their counterparts inside China.

In late 2019, authorities detained Huang Xueqin, a journalist and leading figure in Chinas #MeToo movement, for three months for unknown reasons.Upon release, Huang reportedly wrote: This is Xueqin, and Im back. One second of darkness doesnt make people blind.

Amid the vast darkness, nevertheless, Chinese feminists persisted.

The rest is here:
#MeToo in the land of censorship - Human Rights Watch

A study has revealed that China-based WeChat is monitoring foreigners, prompting people with non-China-registered accounts to think twice about using the messaging app.

WeChat, owned by Chinese internet giant Tencent, is the most popular social media platform in China, and is also widely used in the rest of the world with 1 billion users globally.

However, the University of Torontos Citizen Lab claimed that the app, which follows Chinas stringent censorship rules, also monitors messages shared by people registered with non-China-based phone numbers, feeding the content into censorship algorithms to help build up the database it uses to censor China-based accounts.

The conclusions were based on an experiment that started by sending politically sensitive content between non-China-registered accounts. Afterward, when the same content was sent between China-registered accounts, it was flagged and subsequently censored.

While accounts outside of China were not censored, they are reportedly subject to content surveillance, information on which was not found on any public documents and data access requests, including discussions with Tencent representatives.

Citizen Lab clarified that there is no evidence that WeChats surveillance on international users was directed by the Chinese government. Tencent, however, told CNBC that it received the findings of the research, and that it was taking it seriously as the company considers user privacy and data security as core values.

With regard to the suggestion that we engage in content surveillance of international users, we can confirm that all content shared among international users of WeChat is private. As a publicly listed global company we hold ourselves to the highest standards, and our policies and procedures comply with all laws and regulations in each country in which we operate, a Tencent spokesperson told CNBC.

The accusations against WeChat follows similar claims against TikTok, another popular China-based app. To build user trust, the company behind the app opened the TikTok Transparency Center, a location where its moderators may be observed by outside experts.

It remains to be seen if Tencent will do something similar for WeChat, after the release of Citizen Labs research. The findings may also affect the apps listing on Apples App Store and the Google Play Store, as both platforms require developers to disclose the data that they collect.

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WeChat reportedly spying on foreigners to feed censorship algorithms in China - Digital Trends

Youve probably never heard of Robert B. Strassler. Thats OK, youre not alone.

Early in his career, Strassler worked in oil fields, but he always had an interest inthe classics(the formal designation for the studies of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations). Eventually, Strasslers hobby became an obsession. He went so far as to author his own translation of Thucydides, the Athenian historian of the Peloponnesian War.

The problem was nobody wanted to read Strasslers book. This was in the 1990s. It was more difficult to publish to the web and there was no social media. Strassler approached every Ivy League institution he could find. Nobody was interested in reading a manuscript about Thucydides penned by an oilman with no formal credentials. That was the situation until Strassler contacted Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist professor in Fresno, California. Hanson agreed to look at the manuscript and was astounded by Strasslers work: a brilliant, highly readable translation of Thucydides including maps, diagrams, and charts. Hanson helped the disconnected oilman get in touch with a literary agent. Strasslers landmark edition became the standard translation of Thucydides. Still read today, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War is as successful as any book on the classics can bein the age of Twitter.

Those of us who take the idea of democratic publishing seriously rejoice at how the field has opened to include anyone who has something to say and is willing to write it down. Thats why we should be more alarmed when we see social media companies crowd the spaces once occupied by blogs and do-it-yourself content creators. We see a decline in diverse opinions as the web quickly becomes less free and more autocratic.

How many Robert B. Strasslers are being stifled today by biased algorithms and arbitrary community guidelines?

In March, as COVID-19 exploded into a worldwide panic, the web gatekeepers weve come to rely on quickly massed around a singular interpretation of events andstifled dissenting voiceseven mild ones.

YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world, demonetized all videos that mentioned COVID-19, Coronavirus, or any term related to the pandemic, and herded viewers away from content creators and toward the Center for Disease Control (CDC) the sameCDC that first advisedagainstwearing masks. Even medical practitioners who deviated slightly from the prevailing visionwere removed from the platformafter gaining millions of views.

Experienced journalists who questioned official decrees (surely, the role journalists are expected to perform) were targeted with hit pieces and character assassination by their own peers.

As author/professor Cal Newport noted in anop-ed forWired, much of the dissenting viewpoints and on-the-ground data have become part of the mainstream conversation even after being suppressed by a small group of decision-makers:

We dont necessarily want to trust engineers at one company to make the decisions about what topics the public should and should not be able to read about.

How many times have you clicked on a link in a tweet and received a message as shown in the following screenshot?

Adults should be trusted to determine what kind of content is harmful (if such a thing exists) without the assistance of Twitter employees and their partners. And, are these warnings actually meant to protect people or simply to shield Twitter from corporate liability? I think we can guess what the answer is.

Its not only those without official-sounding credentials who are being barred from sharing content. Creators who clearly have experience in their fields of study are also facing arbitrary censorship.

The Great Courses Plus, a streaming service that produces college-level video courses taught by actual professors, was threatened with a ban from Google if they did not remove COVID-19-related content from their app. In an email to subscribers, the team wrote:

Google informed us they would ban The Great Courses apps if we continued to make [Covid-19] in-app content available. We are working with Google to ensure that they understand our content is factual, expert-led, and thoroughly vetted, so that we can remedy this misunderstanding as soon as possible.

The videos in question included content from Dr. Roy Benaroch, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine; Dr. David Kung, Professor of Mathematics at St. Marys College of Maryland; and Dr. Kevin Ahern, Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Oregon State University. How or why these scholars were found unworthy of Googles imprimatur is a mystery. As the public does not presume to give Google programming advice, perhaps Google could return the favor by not pretending to be experts on epidemiology, immunology, and virology.

The only way to see these offending videos is on the Great Courses website, where Googles authority is not absolute. It happens to be a WordPress-powered site. For intellectuals and laymen who value free expression, having your own website is becoming the only way to make sure you can keep it.

The problem of pitting credentials against experience in a zero-sum conflict is fixable, and WordPress is a big part of the solution.

WordPress allows capable scientists, economists, and medical professionals in other fields to write at length about their ideas without fear of being blocked by arbitrary restrictions. Also, the five-minute install (which does take a little more than five minutes for many people) imposes enough of a barrier to entry to discourage cranks.

We like to think of the internet as a true egalitarian system, where every voice is given equal consideration, but deep down we know thats not exactly how it works. Network effects tend to form hubs of concentrated influence around a handful of websites. This isnt always a bad thing. A recipe blog with poor taste and no pictures deserves fewer readers than a blog with great-tasting recipes and high-resolution images.

There is still room enough in the network for certain nodes to grow in size and influence based on the quality of their content. A node with enough backlinks, good organic search rankings, and high-quality content will gain an audience, and be able to keep it, without fear of corporate reprisals or aggressive algorithm updates.

If we really care about democratizing publishing, we wont always like what we read. There will be disagreements, but democracy requires a literate population eager for debate. We can challenge, discuss, and learn.

There are a lot of Robert B. Strasslers out there in the network, waiting patiently to be heard.

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Bringing Back Blogs in the Age of Social Media Censorship - WP Tavern

NCAC has joined a coalition of 36 organizations led by the ACLU, FreedomWorks, and Demand Progress, to urge Congress to reform the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020, a bill that would extend provisions of the Patriot Act which expired in March and pose unprecedented threats to Americans civil liberties.

These provisions include the controversial lone wolf and roving wiretap authorities. The coalitions letter calls for support of privacy-protection amendments to the bill, which were introduced by Senators Lee, Leahy, Paul, Wyden, and Daines. These amendments are both meaningful and extremely reasonable.

Senators Lee and Leahys amendment strengthens the role of independent, expert advisors to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which authorizes the government to conduct electronic surveillance, physical search, and other forms of investigative actions. Senators Daines and Wydens amendment prohibits warrantless surveillance of people in the United States internet search and browsing history. Senator Pauls amendment prohibits the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) against people in the United States or in proceedings against them. It also makes clear that if the government wants to surveil a US citizen, they must have a warrant.

The full letter is available below, co-signed by a wide range of organizations that advocate for civil liberties, racial and ethnic justice, and government transparency. We encourage all those with an interest in privacy to read it fully and contact their representatives to voice their opinions.

Co-signed by:

Access Now | American Booksellers for Free Expression | American Civil Liberties Union | Americans for Prosperity | Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law | Center for Security, Race and Rights | Constitutional Alliance Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) | Defending Rights & Dissent | Demand Progress | Due Process Institute | Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) | Free Press Action | FreedomWorks | Government Accountability Project | Government Information Watch | Human Rights Watch | Liberty Coalition | Media Alliance | National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) | National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) | National Coalition Against Censorship | Oakland Privacy | PEN America | People Demanding Action | People For the American Way | Progress America | Public Citizen | Restore The Fourth | Secure Justice | South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) | TechFreedom | The Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability | Union of Concerned Scientists | Woodhull Freedom Foundation X-Lab

Click here for a full-screen view.

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NCAC Urges Privacy Protection Reforms - Blogging Censorship

The glitter of Botswanas shining example of democracy is fading as the country of 2.3-million people slowly slides towards authoritarianism.

The trend began under former president Ian Khama, who silenced critical media and cowed citizens into apathy. His term in office ended in April 2018.

Early indications that his successor, Mokgweetsi Masisi vice-president for four years had a penchant for intolerance was evinced in the run-up to the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) congress in April 2019 when he openly thwarted his rival, Pelonomi Venson-Moitois incipient challenge for the party presidency.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a further centralisation of power: Parliament recently passed an emergency bill that gives Masisi sweeping powers to rule by decree for a six-month period.

It was bulldozed by the majority BDP despite opposition protests that putting power in the hands of one man will breed corruption and infringe on the powers of other branches of government.

On April 9, Botswanas government endorsed a six-month state of emergency.

The country was also placed under a 28-day lockdown, due to end on April 30. The lockdown was extended to May 7, and is now being gradually eased. To date, Botswana has reported one death and 23 cases of people infected with Covid-19.

The only explanation Masisi and his government have given, albeit vaguely, to the need for the lengthy state of emergency is that the Public Health Act is too weak to staunchly enforce a lockdown.

One alarming provision of the presidents emergency powers is the introduction of a prison term of up to five years or a $10 000 fine for anyone publishing information with the intention to deceive the public about Covid-19 or measures taken by government to address the virus.

Critics say the law, with broad and vague definitions, is a gift to authoritarian leaders who want to use the public health crisis to grab power and suppress freedom of speech.

Masisis backers argue that the law is needed as a deterrent. It has become necessary to curtail some rights to prevent the spread of the virus, said BDP spokesperson Kagelelo Banks Kentse.

There are well-grounded fears that the emergency powers will be used to extend the government grip on supposedly independent institutions. Already there are concerns that the security forces are meting outheavy-handed justice in the name of enforcing the lockdown.

Two police officers in central Botswana are facing assault charges and a schoolteacher was arrested after challenging the governments claim that a health worker who was screening lawmakers during a heated parliamentary debate on the state of emergency had tested positive for Covid-19.

On his Facebook page, the teacher, Rakkie Kelesamile, also questioned why people infected with Covid-19 inhospital were not developing further complications or recovering. It takes five days for corona to manifest in its victim. We are in the 14th day of lockdown. Common sense says patients should be showing signs of infection.

Police say Kelesamiles arrest is part of a larger effort to crack down on alleged misinformation under section 30 of the Emergency Powers Act.

His lawyer, Kgosietsile Ngakaagae believes that the government is trying to criminalise the airing of opinions. The interpretation of freedom of speech is wrong, he said. Making personal observation should not be criminalised.

Days earlier, police had arrested Justice Motlhabane, the spokesperson of Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF), an opposition party with ties to Khama for degrading and maligning the leadership.

The charges were labelled worrying by the Botswana Federation of Public, Private and Parastatal Sector Unions.They were also not brought under the Emergency Powers Act, but under the countrys Penal Code. Under the code, Motlhabane faces a potential fine of $50 or around P600.

Motlhabane and Oratile Dikologang are accused of suggesting on a Facebook page, Botswana Trending News, that Masisi had declared a lengthy state of emergency so that he could deal with his political rivals and business competitors.

A police spokesperson, assistant commissioner Dipheko Motube, said that all three men had published an offensive statement against the government as well as degrading and maligning the leadership of the country.

Motlhabane, who is out on bail, denied the charges, saying he does not have access to the Facebook account. He told INK Centre that the police gave him electrical shock treatment on several occasions while demanding certain information about a coup by the former president [Ian Khama].

They placed a Taser on my buttock and in between my thighs, he claimed. Biggie Butale, his lawyer and president of BPF, said the police do not have a case against his client.

He is not the administrator of the Facebook account in question, he said, adding: Police never questioned him over Covid-19 they asked him about a coup. You wonder what they are looking for.

Several other people have been charged under the Emergency Powers Act.

A South African woman, Charmaine Ibrahim, appeared before court on March 27 for alleging that two fellow South Africans in Botswana have tested positive for Covid-19. Ibrahim has since been released on bail.

One lawyer, Mboki Chilisa, commented on social media that there is no point in punishing innocuous false statements which no right-thinking member of the public could ever believe.

The Emergency Powers Act also risks worsening the already adversarial relationship between the government and private media. The Act prohibits journalists from using source(s) other than the [Botswana] Director of Health Services or the World Health Organisation when reporting on Covid-19. Journalists who use other sources potentially face a fine of $10 000 or a five-year jail term.

The executive director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Botswana Chapter), Tefo Phatshwane believes that the emergency prohibits independent journalists from holding those in power to account.He said Masisi has started a censorship pandemic, using wide-ranging restrictions as a cover to violate freedom of expression. As journalists, we cant rely on a government that we are expected to police.

If the coronavirus outbreak has taught us anything beyond the necessity of washing our hands, it is that its victim has been leadership. Bureaucracy and incompetence have made it difficult to trust the WHO and governments worldwide.

On March 21, Masisi, who has a penchant for air travel, defied the lockdown to fly to Windhoek to witness the swearing in of Namibian President Hage Geingob.He insisted that the trip was essential to enable leaders to discuss strategies to combat Covid-19.

Government also botched the handling of the death of Botswanas first, and currently only, victim of Covid-19.A local newspaper reported that the funeral of the elderly woman, from Ramotswa in the south-east of the country was not handled in a manner consistent with guidelines for the burial of victims.Government admitted days later that she had died of the disease.

It is tempting to demand prompt action to combat those who undermine national and global efforts to combat the pandemic through disinformation. But Ngakaagae insists censorship should not be part of the cure.

Government should identify the most efficient responses and communicate them to the public and allow reasonable and genuinely held opinions to flourish. Government has to engage the public in dialogue, he said.

Joel Konopo works for the INK Centre for Investigative Journalism

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Censorship, the unexpected side-effect of Covid-19 - Mail and Guardian

Kickapoo papers complain bitterly of the poor train service they receive these days one mixed train a day each way, taking seven hours to make the trip of 52 miles, with the prospect of the roadbed giving way at any time at that.

Uncle Sam, Monday of this week, wrote a gilt-edged guarantee of approximately 2 million dollars for Vernon county in 1945 in the form of tobacco crop insurance. The crop insurance is available to every person who has an interest in tobacco planted in Vernon county at an astonishing low rate to provide 75 per cent of normal income from the sale of tobacco.

Mrs. Edna Partridge, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Erickson of this city, but living in Madison, leaves Monday for Des Moines, Ia., where she will train in the Womens Army Corps. Mrs. Partridge, who has been in the teaching profession since the death of her husband, Charles Partridge, is the mother of two sons, Sgt. Albert Partridge, overseas, and Lt. Robert Partridge, also in the countrys service. As Sgt. Partridge has a young son, the new recruit has the honor of being the countys first grandmother in the army.

With the very extended hand and generosity of Mr. Harry Fehlberg, (the Viroqua Peerless Beer distributor) we were able to get a ball team started in Viroqua this year. We were fortunate that he could donate 100 dollars toward our uniforms. The teams manager, Fussy Hall, has had a rough time to get enough players, but he has been successful in doing so. He knows he has an airtight infield with the grand performance of such swell actors as Leslie Wiesy Wistenberg, Russel Clements, Melvin Harris, Loren Gronning, Stanley Yttri and Russel Lefty Olson, the hurler.

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Pages from the Past | News - La Crosse Tribune

It is time to draw a line. In the fight against Covid-19, people across the world have been required to suspend many hard-won freedoms to give up travel, loved ones, places of worship, the pub. They have gone along with it because they understand that some temporary restrictions on liberty are sometimes needed in times of crisis (even though we must ensure they do not become permanent). But one thing we cannot give an inch on is freedom of speech, our right to speak and our right to hear others, which is under serious threat right now.

An unholy alliance of corporate tech giants, government and international agencies is working to narrow the range of acceptable debate about coronavirus. Since the beginning of this crisis, officialdom has talked up the threat posed to containing Covid by an infodemic the World Health Organisations cute phrase for the spread of misinformation online. Social-media firms have been put under renewed pressure to expand their already extensive policies on what is and isnt acceptable content. And theyve been all too happy to oblige.

Take Facebook, home to around 2.6 billion monthly active users. During this crisis it has moved the goalposts dramatically on what can be posted. At first, it said it would continue to remove misinformation that could contribute to imminent physical harm, while deploying its army of fact-checkers to flag certain posts, depress their distribution, and direct sharers of such material to reliable information. Just a few weeks on and it is removing event posts for anti-lockdown protests in various US states, in tandem with state officials.

Last month it was revealed that Facebook had removed event pages for anti-lockdown protests in California, New Jersey and Nebraska. A spokesperson told Politico that Facebook reached out to state officials to understand the scope of their orders and resolved to remove the posts when gatherings do not follow the health parameters established by the government and are therefore unlawful, such as when protests intend to flout social-distancing rules.

Facebook has stressed that state governments did not ask them to remove specific posts. But what seems to have happened is almost worse. Facebook moderators appear to be banning events posts on the basis of what they reckon the laws of a particular state constitute. As David Kaye, UN special rapporteur on free expression, told the Guardian: If people show up to protest and I think the vast majority of public-health officials think thats really dangerous its up to the government to clamp down on them. For Facebook to do it just seems suspect.

Whats more, Kaye continued, this informal arrangement reached between Facebook and state governments will make it harder for citizens to challenge instances of censorship. If a state government were to issue a formal takedown notice to Facebook, asking it to remove a post for an illegal protest, then that government action would at least be subject to a challenge in court. But Facebook, a private company, is allowed to take down whatever it wants and is protected from legal liability.

This is, in effect, government outsourcing censorship to the private sector. Even if straightforward takedown requests arent being made, the increasingly cosy relationship between Big Tech, governments and intergovernmental organisations is leading to elite consensus effectively being enforced on social media. In a recent interview with CNN, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said her platform will remove anything that is medically unsubstantiated, as well as anything that goes against WHO [World Health Organisation] recommendations, essentially asserting this one UN agency as infallible and its critics as heretics.

As many have pointed out, this standard is almost impossible to enforce consistently not least because the WHO has got a fair bit wrong over the course of this pandemic, and in previous crises. But it seems YouTubes guidelines are now sufficiently broad that it can take down any dissident post that sparks outrage. It recently banned a viral video of two doctors, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, who run a group of urgent care centres in Bakersfield, California, discussing the data they have drawn from Covid testing, and arguing that California should lift its lockdown.

Experts and commentators have questioned the doctors claims and conclusions, and even their motivations (apparently one of them is a Trump supporter). But these two are not snarling conspiracy theorists. They are experienced medics giving their opinions on the data as they see it. But this apparently cannot be hosted on YouTube because, in the words of a spokesperson, it disputes the efficacy of local health authority recommended guidance on social distancing. It seems you cannot question the wisdom of the authorities at all.

As for the real snarling conspiracy theorists, theyve also been getting booted off platforms during this crisis. David Icke has been kicked off Facebook and YouTube, where hitherto he was allowed to promote his cobblers about lizard people, vaccines and Bill Gates relatively unmolested. But for spreading the conspiracy theory that 5G causes coronavirus, among other madcap corona ideas, he has been damned by the tech giants for spreading harmful disinformation. Inevitably, Icke and his supporters have taken this as vindication that, in his words, the elite are TERRIFIED.

Mad as these people are, the censorship of conspiracy theorists is a worrying development. For years, while Big Tech firms have expanded censorship in other areas, they have resisted clamping down on Icke and his ilk. As recently as March, Facebook said that claims that dont directly result in physical harm, like conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus would be fact-checked rather than censored. When Facebook banned Infowars Alex Jones in 2018 it was at pains to say that this was for glorifying violence and hate speech, not for spreading 9/11 or Sandy Hook conspiracy theories.

Social-media companies hesitancy in censoring conspiracy theories up to now was not out of any grand principle their policing of hateful speech is just as censorious. But notwithstanding the egotism and self-righteousness of Silicon Valley, you can understand why companies primarily interested in making money would be wary of moving more definitively into the role of pronouncing on what is and isnt true. Until now, it seems. That they hide behind the experts and reliable sources makes this no less problematic for free debate.

Facebook and YouTube now monopolise huge arenas of public discussion. Writers and thinkers unable to promote their work on Facebook, or videomakers unable to upload their work to YouTube, are effectively denied access to a significant portion of what now constitutes the public square. At a time when billions of people are under house arrest, and the literal public square is largely off-limits, this is an even more sinister development. As is the fact that governments and powerful organisations seem to be working hand in glove with tech firms to enforce conformity.

Covid-19 and the policies being pursued to tame it affect everyone. We must be free to question and debate all the issues this crisis raises, insisting that no one person or organisation has a monopoly on truth and that dangerous nonsense can be defeated in free debate. And we need to make sure we have a (relatively) free internet at the end of all this. That some firms are now helping to police offline protests, organised to oppose government policy, is a particularly alarming indication of how far Big Tech censorship has spread during this pandemic. We need to flatten the curve.

Tom Slater is deputy editor at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_

To enquire about republishing spikeds content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

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We need to stop the spread of Big Tech censorship - Spiked

Put hate aside, work for all

I am not an easy going person all the time, but there is something in the water that has caused all this hate during this time of lockdown. The name calling and threats, carrying weapons into the Capitol building and the partisan politics are getting more radical as each side becomes entrenched in who is right and wrong. There are thousands of people who have died during this pandemic, for no choice of their own. We all want to get back to work, school, church and the normal life that we had until February.

There may be constitutional rights, but they all have to take a back seat to the COVID-19 virus, not that we don't have those rights, but not the right to cause harm or spread infections. Ask those who have lost family, friends and co-workers and they would likely set aside their rights to have them back.

Put the hate and politics aside and work together for the good of all.

Tom Gilbert

Warren

Governor Whitmer has a task force to study why a higher percentage of blacks have died from the coronavirus. This task force should search for facts and not excuses.

George Hardy

Warren

As a long time subscriber to The Macomb Daily, I read the two gentlemen's letters from the May 10 edition. Although I did not agree with them, the part that was of concern to me was that the one urged you not to publish the offending column (authored by Brian Pannebecker). We live in the United States of America. We have freedom of speech. Not everyone is in step with the mainstream media as he states. No one is forcing them to read these columns. There are certain writers that I do not read because I know I do not agree with them but that doesnt mean I think they shouldnt be published. I also try and read some that I dont agree with to try and understand where they are coming from. I spend time fact-checking from different sources and then make up my mind. We have these freedoms because we live in America.

Janet Vereecken

Macomb Twp.

Original post:
Letters to the Editor 5-15-2020: Set aside hate, get facts and no censorship - The Macomb Daily

Youve probably heard of at least several authors of this new Politico piece, which I suspect but dont know for sure was submitted to (and rejected by) the New York Times after the paper retroactively redacted a column by Bret Stephens on the overrepresentation of Ashkenazi Jews in intellectual and creative fields. The article by Paresky et al. is a severe indictment of the Timess policies, which now include giving in to an outrage mob and changing a column (as well as removing genuine facts), without leaving a record of the changes. Truly, the New York Times under its relatively new management (wokemeister A. G. Sulzberger) is going down the tubesfast.

You probably know of Jon Haidt and Steve Pinker, whom Ive written about often, and have likely heard of Nadine Strossen (former head of the ACLU and now a Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law school) and of the first author, Pamela Paresky, who writes for Psychology Today and lectures at my own university. These are not slouches, and theyre rightfully pissed off. The only one I know here is Pinker, but it takes a lot to make him append his name to a piece like this. He musters and dispenses his anger carefully and infrequently.

Click on the screenshot below to read, and to weep at how far the New York Times has fallen. Truly, even the dubious 1619 Project pales before how they treated this column by Bret Stephens.

Heres the column, which has been changed with the redacted passages completely gone. Instead, theres a note at the top that says this:

Editors Note:

An earlier version of this Bret Stephens column quoted statistics from a 2005 paper that advanced a genetic hypothesis for the basis of intelligence among Ashkenazi Jews. After publication Mr. Stephens and his editors learned that one of the papers authors, who died in 2016, promoted racist views. Mr. Stephens was not endorsing the study or its authors views, but it was a mistake to cite it uncritically. The effect was to leave an impression with many readers that Mr. Stephens was arguing that Jews are genetically superior. That was not his intent. He went on instead to argue that culture and history are crucial factors in Jewish achievements and that, as he put it, At its best, the West can honor the principle of racial, religious and ethnic pluralism not as a grudging accommodation to strangers but as an affirmation of its own diverse identity. In that sense, what makes Jews special is that they arent. They are representational. We have removed reference to the study from the column.

Note that the sin of Stephenss column was not being racist or giving erroneous facts. Rather, he cited a paper uncritically when one of its authors had make racist statements. And Stephenss intentthe cultural hypothesiswas apparently already clear in the original paper. The apology here is not from Stephens, but from the paper to those readers outraged that Stephenss column would cite a paper partly written by an author who said racist things and dared imply that creative and intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews might have a genetic basis. (Saying something like that is, of course, verboten.) And you cant even check for yourself, for the paper has removed any reference to the study. (The link isnt in the Paresky et al. article either, but you can find the paper, published in the Journal of Biosocial Science, for free here.)

The original Stephens column cited a peer-reviewed study that advanced the hypothesis that Ashkenazi Jews had a complement of genes that led in part to their high achievement and intelligence. Stephens didnt accept the genetic explanation, and, in his column, apparently advanced an alternative cultural hypothesis. (I have no dog in this fight and have followed neither the data nor the controversy).

What happened is that social media discovered that one of the authors of the paper had expressed racist views. Stephens neither parroted them nor mentioned that, nor did he even allude to eugenics. But of course thats not good enough for social media: the fact that one author did express racist views discredits, in the mind of Outrage Culture, not just the original paper, but Stephenss column as well. Business Insider writes that Stephenss original column led to canceled subscriptions.

Paresky et al note that the appropriate response of the NYT would have been this:

. . . . to acknowledge the controversy, to publish one or more replies, and to allow Stephens and his critics to clarify the issues. Instead, the editors deleted parts of the columnnot because anything in it had been shown to be factually incorrect but because it had become controversial.

But the Times didnt follow that pathnot at all. Instead, they took it upon themselves to change what Stephens wrote. Thats censorship. (Note: the alterations are attributed to the papers editors wenot to Stephens.) To continue with Paresky et al.:

Instead, the editors deleted parts of the columnnot because anything in it had been shown to be factually incorrect but because it had become controversial.

Worse, the explanation for the deletions in theEditors Notewas not accurate about the edits the paper made after publication. The editors did not just remove reference to the study. They expurgated the articles original subtitle (which explicitly stated Its not about having higher IQs), two mentions of Jewish IQs, and a list of statistics about Jewish accomplishment: During the 20th century, [Ashkenazi Jews] made up about 3 percent of the U.S. population but won 27 percent of the U.S. Nobel science prizes and 25 percent of the ACM Turing awards. They account for more than half of world chess champions. These statistics about Jewish accomplishments were quoted directly from the study, but they originated in other studies. So, even if theTimeseditors wanted to disavow the paper Stephens referenced, the newspaper could have replaced the passage with quotes from the original sources.

The authors wind up listing three pernicious precedents for American journalism caused by the Timess handling of this piece. Rather than paraphrase them, Ill just quote from them:

First, while we cannot know what drove the editors decision, the outward appearance is that they surrendered to an outrage mob, in the process giving an imprimatur of legitimacy to the false and ad hominem attacks against Stephens. The Editors Note explains that Stephens was not endorsing the study or its authors views, and that it was not his intent to leave an impression with many readers that [he] was arguing that Jews are genetically superior. The combination of the explanation and the post-publication revision implied that such an impression was reasonable. It was not.

Unless theTimesreverses course, we can expect to see more such mobs, more retractions, and also preemptive rejections from editors fearful of having to make such retractions.

. . . Second, theTimesredacted a published essay based on concerns about retroactive moral pollution, not about accuracy. While it is true that an author of the paper Stephens mentioned, the late anthropologist Henry Harpending, made some deplorable racist remarks, that does not mean that every point in every paper he ever coauthored must be deemed radioactive. Facts and arguments must be evaluated on their content. Will theTimesand other newspapers now monitor the speech of scientists and scholars and censor articles that cite any of them who, years later, say something offensive? Will it crowdsource that job to Twitter and then redact its online editions whenever anyone quoted in theTimesis later canceled?

And finally:

Third, for theTimesto disappear passages of a published article into an inaccessible memory hole is an Orwellian act that, thanks to the newspapers actions, might now be seen as acceptable journalistic practice. It is all the worse when the editors published account of what they deleted is itself inaccurate. This does a disservice to readers, historians and journalists, who are left unable to determine for themselves what the controversy was about, and to Stephens, who is left unable to defend himself against readers worst suspicions.

In other words, what the paper did makes it look like Stephens somehow transgressed, and thus was given a spanking in words by the editor.

This is all part and parcel not only of the Timess increasing wokeness, evidenced in its 1619 Project, in its fairly blatant favoring of pro-Palestinian over pro-Jewish news (remember the long article about the stray bullet, implying that Israeli soldiers murdered a Palestinian medical aid worker?), and now in an unbelievable act of post facto censorship without letting us see what was censored.

The erasing or demonization of a person, or in this case a paper, because some of the views expressed by an author were racist, is classical behavior of the Control Left. First its Gandhi, then Galton, then Thomas Jefferson, and who will be next? And apparently we also need to remove facts that are indisputable because someone who had racist views expressed them! Should we redact the Declaration of Independence because Jefferson owned slaves?

Well, the Times is already trying to rewrite American history with the 1619 Project, which, unbelievably, got a Pulitzer Prize. Even those who like the Projectand its aims are admirableshould deplore its misrepresentation of fact and of history to accomplish an ideological end. (Sadly, some people, even here, will swallow the means of distortion if the ends are antiracist). But such misrepresentation could also be considered moral pollution, for its bending the truthand a paper like the New York Times cannot afford to bend the truth, or, in this case, expunge the truth. Thats truly Orwellian; remember what Winston Smith did for a living?

Its a pity that four distinguished authors had to correct the papers missteps in an article in Politico, rather than in the paper itself.

h/t: Muffy

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Four heavy hitters criticize the New York Times for Orwellian retroactive censorship - stopthefud

Its not easy to convince me that a class action by Facebook moderators (censors) isnt just a case of some pure BS meant to extract money from a company that just happens to have lots of cash to spare.

But according to Facebook moderators (human censors, to be clear) theyre basically on a par with war veterans/survivors.

This is not to say that interacting with billions of other people (such is Facebooks audience) might not legitimately give anybody disturbing nightmares, anxiety attacks, and grace their minds with intrusive imagery some of the prime ways your old, actual PTSD will manifest.)

But there seem to be other ways, too like this one:

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People really started to believe these posts they were supposed to be moderating, said Chloe a made-up name The Verge has used for its stories.

Facebook seems to have done well, though: it will only have to pay out $52 million in settlements to thousands of moderators who claim having developed PTSD from reviewing Facebook content.

And if there is something a trillion-dollar tech company like Facebook can do about any of this now like, say, pay out an average content moderator turned conspiracy theorist $1,000 or more just to keep these former third-party employees out of its hair of course it will.

After all, these moderators are actual people, with lives, feelings, and depending on where you stand, even souls, who were initially hired to complement Facebooks inadequate smart algorithmic solutions that are meant to automatically weed out anything unwanted by the platform, as it tried to make its primary ad business as appealing as ever and then, a while later, navigate the political minefield that is the US politics.

Turns out, though algorithms are still as smart, or as stupid, as the people who write them. So we still need real people.

Im fucked up, man, Facebook moderator Randy (fake name/NDA reasons) told The Verge.

See more here:
Facebook censors awarded $1000 for being subjected to conspiracy theories - Reclaim The Net