Category Archives: Censorship

The National Coalition Against Censorship and six co-signors have sent a letter to the Broward County Public Schools Board of Education objecting to the pause in teaching Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes after a complaint was lodged by local law enforcement.

Ghost Boystells the story of a bullied, 12-year-old Black boy who is killed by a police officer while playing with a toy gun and watches from beyond the grave as his family and community unravel. The story blends historical characters, including Emmett Till, with current events.

According to reports, the book was being taught by a veteran teacher when a parent who is affiliated with law enforcement complained to the local police union about the political views ostensibly expressed by the book. The police union then complained to the Board, and the teacher who was teaching the book was ordered to pause teaching it until parents were informed about the nature of the book and were given the opportunity to have their children opt out of reading it.

As the letter explains, this raises serious First Amendment concerns. The District does not appear to require parental notification for all books. By singling out Ghost Boys for special scrutiny because of its supposed position on police practice, the District has engaged in viewpoint discrimination, which almost always violates the First Amendment. Moreover, singling out a certain type of content necessarily gives a biased perspective, casts a negative light on the book regardless of its literary worth, and needlessly stokes alarm among parents.

Literature is not social science; it is not taught as objective truth. Rather, the purpose of literature is to evoke empathy with a variety of human experiences. Characters in a book can often espouse points of view that some, or even most, people disagree with. Whether or not a parent, teacher or student agrees with views expressed in a book should not determine whether all students are able to learn from that book.

In addition to returning the book to the classroom, NCAC is urging Broward County Public Schools to adopt an instructional materials challenge policy, as many other school districts have in place. Such a policy would, ideally, create a process for managing book challenges that avoids viewpoint discrimination.

Read the full letter to the school district below. Click here for a full screen view:

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NCAC Objects to Removal of Ghost Boys from Broward County School in Florida - Blogging Censorship

S. Kyle Johnson, Guest Columnist Published 11:23 a.m. CT May 19, 2021 | Updated 2:51 p.m. CT May 19, 2021

It is both hilarious and disturbing that the language of Tennessee's critical race theory ban bill would effectively bar the discussion of many Christian ideas from classrooms.

I am writing to express my shock and horror at the reprehensible attacks on Christianity in my home state of Tennessee.

I feel compelled as a scholar of Christian theology, and a native of Chattanooga, to condemn this terrifying threat to religious freedom.

I am, of course, writing about House Bill 580, which pertains to so-called critical race theory.

This education bill identifies and bans the teaching of several ideas that legislators have referred to as critical race theory.

The bill does not mention or define critical race theory. Since I am sure that the wise leaders of Tennessee would not legislate about something which they did not understand, I am forced to reach a conclusion from the descriptions that they give: Critical race theory must be an antagonistic code word for Christianity.

I am, of course, being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But it is both hilarious, and disturbing, that the language of House Bill 580 would effectively ban the discussion of many Christian ideas from classrooms.

Among the notions that the bill identifies and condemns is the following: An individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex."

S. Kyle Johnson(Photo: Submitted)

For most of Christian history, most Western Christians have maintained that all humans are guilty of the sin of Adam. Popular contemporary Protestant preacher, John Piper, puts it this way: The problem with the human race is Adam whose sin became our sin and whose judgment became our judgment.

The language of Bill 580 undercuts the Christian doctrine of original sin, which is the idea that thehumanrace is responsible for actions committed in the past by others of its own "race."

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Obviously, House Bill 580 means race in the sense more common in American discourse, that of a particular group of humans. But, of course, the law must be precise. This bill could theoretically be used to ban the teaching of this Christian doctrine.

Perhaps the leaders of Tennessee have somehow secretly joined the ranks of the liberal anti-religious forces, about which they often fear-monger? Or, perhaps, they are simply ignorant?

The religious right often insists loudly on so-called "traditional family values" and the freedom to practice and promote such ideas. It is ironic, then, that the bill's language would also restrict and condemns these views.

Conservative Christians have often taught that the notion of original sin has particular connotations for the sexes, based upon certain Biblical passages. Along these lines is also the idea that men and women have unique, particular "character traits."

Genesis 3, for example, places distinct curses upon Adam and Eve and all of their descendants: Arduous labor for men, painful childbirth for women.

In I Timothy 2:12 (according to conservative interpretations), the Apostle Paul rejects the idea that women can preach in church, claiming that women are uniquely prone to temptation and are responsible for Eve's sin. This suggests that people are responsible for the sins of their same-sex ancestors, and prone to certain behaviors on account of their sex. Discussion of these ideas is clearly rejected by the bill's language about the immutable "character traits" of those of the same group (i.e., sex), or the idea of corporate responsibility.

Do the conservative legislators of Tennessee really hope to ban discussion of the Bible and the traditional Christian perspectives they and their constituents so loudly trumpet?

This is, of course, unlikely. The only other conclusion is that they clearly have no idea what they are doing.

I compel my home state of Tennessee to squash House Bill 580and to reject these leaders and their foolish and humorously self-defeating attempts to regulate education.

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S. Kyle Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in and scholar of systematic theology at Boston College. He is a native of Chattanooga.

Read or Share this story: https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2021/05/19/how-critical-race-theory-ban-could-lead-censoring-christianity-too/5165403001/

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Critical race theory ban in Tennessee could lead to censoring Christianity too | Opinion - The Tennessean

The next time someone tells you campus censorship is a myth, made up by right-wing tabloids and leapt upon by a Tory government keen to wage a culture war against the left, tell them to Google Lisa Keogh.

Keogh is a 29-year-old law student at Abertay University in Dundee. She is currently being investigated by the university for the crime of saying that women have vaginas and men are stronger than women. For all the naysaying on the left, campus censorship is now apparently so extensive that stating widely accepted facts is a risky business.

As the Times reports, Keogh is facing disciplinary action over offensive and discriminatory comments that she made during lectures and seminars. These include saying that women are born with female genitalia and that the difference in physical strength of men versus women is a fact. Such heresies upset her younger classmates, who complained to the university.

Keogh also claims she was muted during a seminar for suggesting that trans women, given their physical advantages, shouldnt be able to compete against women in mixed martial arts. I made the point that this woman had testosterone in her body for 32 years and, as such, would be genetically stronger than your average woman, she said. I wasnt being mean, transphobic or offensive. I was stating a basic biological fact. She also objected to other students suggesting that all men are rapists.

When Keogh was informed that she was under investigation, she thought it was a joke: I thought there was no way that the university would pursue me for utilising my legal right to freedom of speech. But that is precisely what is happening. Abertays definition of misconduct includes using offensive language, and the ultimate punishment is expulsion. Students have been expelled at other universities for the crime of expressing their opinions. Felix Ngole, a Christian social-work student at Sheffield, was thrown off his course in 2016 for saying on Facebook that homosexuality is a sin.

There are no bigger pariahs on campus today than women who dare to believe in biological sex. Selina Todd, a trans-sceptical academic at Oxford, had to be given a security detail last year. Rosa Freedman, a professor at the university of Reading, found her office door covered in urine after she criticised proposed changes to gender-identification laws. And Jo Phoenix, a professor of criminology at the Open University, was no-platformed at Essex university in 2019. She was due to give a talk about the issues around putting trans women in womens prisons.

We can only hope that common sense will prevail in Lisa Keoghs case. Joanna Cherry, SNP MP for Edinburgh South West and deputy chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, has written to Abertay demanding to know what steps are being taken to protect students rights. Surely, expelling a young women for the crime of saying that biological sex is real is a PR blunder beyond even the wokest of university administrators. But, then again, common sense went out of fashion on campus a long time ago.

Read more from the original source:
Lisa Keogh and the myth of campus censorship - Spectator.co.uk

Social media users who have reported shadow banning and AI restrictions of Palestinian content on platforms like Facebook and Instagram have found an ingenious way to elude these censorial algorithms. In recent days, an increasing number of Arabic-speaking users online have been reverting to at least a thousand-year-old version of the language, which eliminates all dots (diacritics) from the modern alphabet.

As recently revealed by BuzzFeed News, Instagram has removed posts and blocked hashtags related to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islams holiest sites, because it was deemed as a terrorist organization by the companys moderation system. When trying to share footage of the Israeli raid on the mosque earlier this month, Instagram users said that their posts were restricted from view or removed entirely. Facebook, which owns Instagram, called the removals enforcement errors in response to complaints by dismayed employees. However, Israeli officials haveannouncedthat the country works closely with Facebook to monitor and remove inflammatory content (from Israels perspective) on the platform.

Diacritical points (dots above or below letters) were introduced to the Arabic script between the 8th-11th century, as the Islamic Empire grew in size. The practice is believed to have been borrowed from the Syriac script for clarity and more accurate pronunciation of consonants.

In an article on the independent Egyptian news website Mada Masr, written in the dotless Arabic script, activist Muhammad Hamameh describes how he came up with the idea, saying that he had previously considered using Morse code or replacing some letters with symbols.

Its not a new idea, Hamameh wrote. The original Arabic script did not know pointing and Diacritics until decades after the passing of the prophet Mohammad.

Its an easy technique, even for handwriting, Hamameh continued. We draw our letters, so we can simply ignore adding the points. But its much more challenging to the AI machine, which has a [binary] code for each letter.

Those who are interested in converting Arabic text to the dotless script can do so on the website http://www.dotless.app. But how long will it take before Facebooks programmers develop an algorithm to identify the ancient script?

Of course, it is only a matter of time before the automated systems also understand dotless Arabic script, an article on the website Arabic for Nerds says. But there are many other possibilities, the article suggests. Dialects in non-uniform transcription, for example, are still difficult for computers.

Fun fact: the word Algorithm itself originates from Arabic, named after the 9th-century mathematician Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa, who was more commonly known as al-Khwarizmi.

More:
People Are Using an Ancient Method of Writing Arabic to Combat AI Censors - Hyperallergic

Herman Mashaba's party, Action SA, has released a billboard with names and faces of various political party leaders with labels such as criminal, crook and fraud next to their names. He said that the refusal by media houses to flight the billboard amounted to censorship.

A screenshot of Action SA's election billboard.

JOHANNESBURG - The election season has not reached fever pitch yet, but the new kid on the block, Action SA, is already crying foul.

Herman Mashabas political project accused media houses on Tuesday of refusing to flight an election campaignbillboard in which leaders of various parties were labelled as anarchists, criminal and divisive among others.

Mashaba said through a statement that the refusal to flight their campaign amounted to censorship.

The aim of the billboard was not to target the individuals featured on our billboard, but rather to expose a political system that results in the selection of compromised candidates by political parties to serve in some of the highest public offices in the land.

"This system serves political parties instead of serving the people of South Africa. Despite the right to the freedom of speech entrenched in our Constitution, no less than six media owners refused to flight the billboard for fear of political reprisal, vandalism or defamation, Mashaba said in a statement.

The controversial billboard features Democratic Alliance (DA) chairperson Helen Zille and Solly Msimanga, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema, and from the African National Congress (ANC), Mashabas party targeted suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, Zandile Gumede, Geoff Makhubo and Bathabile Dlamini.

Meanwhile, political parties representing the named leaders in the Action SA billboard were contacted for comment. Eyewitness News received only one, saying that "commenting would give it traction."

Download the Eyewitness News app to your iOS or Android device.

Continued here:
Action SA's Mashaba slams media houses over 'censorship' of election billboard - Eyewitness News

Are sex workers being unfairly targeted by tech companies? Heres how social media censorship affects adult industry influencers.

According to a Centro University study, social media censorship is costing sex workers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A survey sent out to adult industry influencers back in February revealed startling results, with nearly half of respondents reporting that one of their social media accounts (on Twitter or Instagram) had been banned in the past year. Nearly 1 in 10 reported that both of their accounts had been banned.

Some adult industry influencers also reported that their accounts had been shadowbanned, meaning their traffic and engagement fundamentally came to a halt.

Though most of these influencers play by the Terms of Service, avoiding explicit content, monitoring what sorts of things they link and advertise, and keeping an eye on their followers and hashtags, they find themselves with banned accounts nonetheless. They often dont know just where and how they violated the Terms, and they often have no chance to appeal.

This comes at a detriment to their very livelihoods.

FanCentro VP Kat Revenga says, Social media censorship isnt some theoretical issue for adult influencers, it robs them of huge amounts of income. The majority of adult influencers are small business owners who use the income to pay rent and put food on the table, and the arbitrary closure of an account can be devastating, depriving them of tens of thousands of dollars.

CentroU wanted to see exactly how much an adult industry influencer could be affected by unfair social media bans, and created a profile of a typical adult influencer. They reported that someone earning $4,000 per month in January could easily drop to under $1,000 per month in July. By the end of the first year, they reported, an influencer suffers over $30,000 in lost income.

Revenga went on to say, Social media has enabled a new generation of independent adult influencers to thrive, and to own what they produce, but the true power rests with the social media companies. Their arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is costing an already marginalized population hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

CentroU is a free school for adult influencers and sex workers.

Photo at topby Seyi Ariyo on Unsplash

More:
Social Media Censorship Is Costing Sex Workers and Adult Influencers Big Money - Hornet

Parler has now returned to the iOS App Store after "months of productive dialogue with Apple," with a solution including censoring content that violates Apple's guidelines on the mobile app.

The social media site's interim CEO, Mark Meckler, said that the company has worked to "address Apple's concerns without compromising our core mission." Essentially, the platform will censor content on iOS to keep Apple happy.

"Anything allowed on the Parler network but not in the iOS app will remain accessible through our web-based and Android versions. This is a win-win for Parler, its users, and free speech," Meckler said in a statement to The Verge.

Parler positions itself as a free speech-focused alternative to Twitter or other social media sites. The platform was banned by Apple, Google, and other web platforms after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol because it didn't do enough to curb violent content that encouraged the riot.

Apple approved Parler's return to the App Store in April. That came after a rejection from Apple in March, when the Cupertino tech giant said that Parler still had objectionable content on its platform including Nazi imagery and white supremacist symbols.

According to Parler, the iOS app now has an automated system that can automatically detect violent or inciting content while still preserving user privacy. The company says that kind of content "has always violated Parler's guidelines."

As of writing, Parler remains absent from the Google Play Store. Unlike on iOS, however, users can still sideload the app on Android devices.

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Parler returns to App Store, says it will censor objectionable content on iOS - AppleInsider

Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) new mining pool has mined a bitcoin block that is fully compliant with U.S. regulations, meaning the company has started excluding transactions from entities it believes are sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury or have been involved in dark web activity.

The Marathon OFAC pool, which was first announced in late March, refrains from processing transactions from those listed on the U.S. Department of Treasurys Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN) to stay compliant with U.S. regulatory standards, according to the company.

Marathon said it is addressing a concern among many large funds and corporations that have expressed interest in purchasing bitcoin by marketing its mined bitcoin as OFAC-compliant. Marathon spokesman Jason Assad confirmed that the firms first OFAC pool block censored some transactions, but didnt specify which ones.

By excluding transactions between nefarious actors, we can provide investors and regulators with the peace of mind that the bitcoin we produce is clean, ethical and compliant with regulatory standards, Marathon said in a statement.

It should be noted that Marathon is mining compliant blocks of its own volition and that nothing in the current U.S. regulatory or legal code explicitly mandates that practice for miners.

The company uses DMGs Walletscore blockchain surveillance software to filter transactions, Assad told CoinDesk. The blacklist is based on information provided by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Office of Foreign Assets Control, databases of OFAC restricted cryptocurrency addresses, as well as other sources including the dark web, he said.

Iran, which is included on OFACs sanctions list, is a hotbed of bitcoin adoption, partly in response to the pressures sanctions place on its citizens. (Notably but unrelated, Irans government just said that only bitcoin produced in Iran is legal to trade.)

What are clean bitcoins?

The practice of censoring transactions, sanctioned or otherwise (put another way, excluding them from blocks because of the senders presumed identity), is a subject of heated debate within the Bitcoin community. Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin mining to facilitate permissionless and censorship resistant transfers of value, but initiatives like Marathons undermine that feature for no reason, critics say.

It is totally against the Bitcoin ethos as they are trying to make it a permissioned protocol instead of open for all, said Ben Carman, a Bitcoin Core and Suredbits developer.

He also said Marathons approach doesnt make sense. They are mining blocks that will not have the highest fee transactions, but (are) still on top of blocks with transactions they deem bad, giving them more security, he said.

Others also questioned the practicality of making a compliance claim.

Indeed, despite Marathons surveillance, transactions from a Russian dark web market, Hydra, were still processed in the clean block.

Further, shortly after Marathon blazoned the clean block on social media, bitcoiners from Iran and around the world began to send bitcoin to the address that received the Marathon clean block reward. The gesture was meant to display how easy it is to undermine Marathons initiative (and thus demonstrate how futile the chase is for clean coins).

Miners speaking to CoinDesk from other pools declined to go on the record about Marathon and its compliance push, but the sentiment was generally negative. One miner laughed at the notion, while another called it a manufactured issue.

The economics of a compliant bitcoin block

Marathon began directing its hashrate, or computer processing power, to the OFAC pool on May 1 and mined its first block on May 5, Bitcoin block 682170. That blocks transaction fee reward, 0.05 BTC (worth less than $3,000 at the time) is substantially less than the fees collected in the blocks before or after it (both of which were 0.31 BTC or ~$17,800). Block 682172 included 0.48 BTC for nearly $28,000.

BitMEX Researchs diagnosis notes that the block contained 0.00330944 BTC less transaction fees than expected. The block excluded a number of transactions that BitMEXs own hypothetical template would have included, which could indicate censorship, the post said.

Interestingly, it also included many transactions that BitMEXs model excluded because their fees were too low to be considered a priority. That could indicate out-of-band payments for the fee, BitMEX says, which are under-the-table payments that are not included in the payers transaction.

If Marathon is not receiving out-of-band fees, then so far its compliant blocks are netting significantly less in transaction fees. That portion of the block reward has become increasingly important for miner profits as bitcoins block subsidy has dwindled to its current rate of 6.25 BTC per block and demand for bitcoin has grown.

Marathons block occurred only a minute after the one before, which could explain the blocks lower fee reward and transaction count. Marathon, however, still used it to censor transactions that, for other miners, would have gone through.

Read more here:
Marathon Miners Have Started Censoring Bitcoin Transactions; Here's What That Means - CoinDesk

Fox News contributor Trey Gowdy said on Wednesday that conservatives have to fight Big Tech censorship in the marketplace.

"It is important that conservatives make the right argument. This is not a First Amendment issue. It's not a free speech issue because it's not government conduct," Gowdy told Fox News "Outnumbered."

"I mean, you have the right to come on Fox News, so you don't have a right to say whatever you want with any other private company. It's an antitrust issue," Gowdy said.

TRUMP BAN: REPUBLICANS THREATEN TO BREAK UP FACEBOOK AFTER OVERSIGHT BOARD DECISION

Facebook'sOversight Board on Wednesday upheld Trump's ban from Facebook and Instagram, but said it was "not appropriate"to impose the "indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension."

"The Board has upheld Facebooks decision on January 7, 2021, to restrict then-President Donald Trumps access to posting content on his Facebook page and Instagram account," the board said in a statement.

The board gave Facebook six months to review the "arbitrary" indefinite ban, saying in a tweet that the company "violated its own rules."

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Gowdy asserted that conservatives have to start their own social media platform if they don't like the rules enforced by sites like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

"Conservatives need to make the right argument, or else they need to find another platform to express their views. I mean, Facebook. I mean, why are they so popular? Why are conservatives using Facebook? I'm not, but why are others? So we gotta fight back in the marketplace."

Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

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Conservatives must fight Big Tech censorship in the marketplace: Gowdy - Fox News

Photo: Peter Macdiarmid (Getty Images)

The BBC has reportedly come under fire for censorship after editing an episode of RuPauls Drag Race Down Under in order to remove a joke made about Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew, a longtime associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was essentially sidelined from royal life after being accused of participating in the sex trafficking and sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre, who was a minor at the time of the alleged incidents.

During the Snatch Game challenge, Drag Race Down Under competitor Anita Wiglitwho was dressed in full drag as Queen Elizabeth II at the timemade a joke referencing the allegations against Prince Andrew, commenting: I wish a dingo would have taken my baby, then I wouldnt have anything to do with Prince Andrew anymore. Some sources are also reporting that the BBC removed another joke made by Anita Wiglit about Prince Andrew.When somebody turns 100, I write them a letter, and when somebody turns 16 Prince Andrew sends them a text, she joked. The original broadcast also contained a joke made by an in-character Anita Wiglit about Prince Philipwhich was also removed by the BBC after being deemed inappropriate for British viewers.

A BBC spokesperson confirmed that the joke about Prince Andrew had been removed but did not elaborate on the reasoning behind that decision, instead saying: The BBC occasionally makes edits to acquired programmes in accordance with UK audience expectations.

I personally dont think there are many circumstances where its appropriate to joke about sexual abuse and pedophilia, especially considering the deeply horrific details we know about the as-yet-unaddressed allegations against Prince Andrew. But the BBCs choice to censor these particular jokes in accordance with UK audience expectations appears to be a failed attempt to shield the royal family from even comedic critique. This is the second time in recent months where the BBCs decisions on how to cover the royal family garnered pushback from viewersthe first was when the broadcaster decided to dedicate all its channels to covering Prince Philips death, a choice that attracted a record-breaking number of viewer complaints.

The BBCs censorship also appears to only apply to comments about certain members of the royal family. During the very same segment from which the BBC removed the Prince Andrew joke, they left in anotherjoke from Anita Wiglit as Elizabeth II, in which she remarked that heradvice to Meghan Markle was dont piss me off and wear a seatbelt.

Read more here:
BBC Faces Accusations of Censorship After Removing Prince Andrew Joke From Drag Race Episode - Jezebel