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Ben Weingarten Federalist Senior Contributor; Claremont Institute Fellow
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Opinion

Censorship-industrial complex targets conservatives

Ben Weingarten Federalist Senior Contributor; Claremont Institute Fellow
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The spread of online misinformation has contributed to a variety of acute issues and concerns in modern politics, economics, culture, security, education and more. These concerns prompted the U.S. government to intervene, sometimes in partnership with private companies. While there’s been broad agreement on the necessity of this intervention, there have also been accusations from both the Left and the Right that these efforts have gone too far, and that they amount to the political censorship of free speech.

Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten examines these allegations by diving into the data behind some of the posts flagged for removal. Weingarten first explains to us how this process works. He then argues that moderators flagged plenty of legitimate content and unfairly targeted conservative viewpoints.

It coordinated these efforts through a digital ticketing system. There, one of up to 120 analysts, or an external partner, could highlight a piece of offending social media content or narrative consisting of many offending posts by creating a ticket and [sharing] that ticket with other participants by tagging them. Tagged participants could then communicate with each other about the legitimacy of the flagged content and what actions they might take to combat it. For the social media companies, that meant removing the content, reducing its spread, or slapping corrective labels on it.

During the 2020 election, EIP [Election Integrity Partnership] generated 639 tickets covering nearly 5,000 unique URLs, content that was shared millions of times, largely related to the de-legitimization of election results. The major platforms labeled, removed, or soft-blocked some 35% of the URLs shared from EIP.

in the run up to the 2020 election, cyber experts at DHS and Stanford decided America had a big problem. It wasn’t still voter rolls or opportunities for fraud and mail in balloting, but a gap in the government’s authority to fight election, missing disinformation, a gap found by DHS officials and interns on loan to Sissa. Its sub agency from the Stanford internet observatory. Si was research manager Renee de resta said there were unclear legal authorities and very real first amendment questions looming over this gap. So the parties hatched the plan to make a public private partnership, the election integrity partnership that would help Sissa surreptitiously censor your speech. I reported on documents exclusively obtained from the House Homeland Security Committee for real clear investigations that blow the lid off the key cog in the censorship industrial complex. They show the 1000s of tweets and Facebook posts on topics from ballot harvesting to aberrant election results, core protected speech that the Fed had partnership flagged social media platforms for censorship, much of which they suppressed SEO alongside three missing disinformation focused NGOs that comprised EIP scoured hundreds of millions of social media posts for content that might counter the government’s narrative about the integrity of election processes and outcomes, and collected still more posts from the operations government and non government partners sometimes very partisan ones including the DNC to identify offending speech, and then flag that speech to major social media platforms to get them to purge it. It coordinated these efforts through a digital ticketing system, they’re one of up to 120. Analysts, or an external partner could highlight a piece of offending social media content or narrative consisting of many offending posts. By creating a ticket and share that ticket with other participants by tagging them. Tagged participants could then communicate with each other about the legitimacy of the flag content and what actions they might take to combat it. For the social media companies. That meant removing the content, reducing its spread or slapping corrective labels on it. During the 2020 election. EIP generated 639 tickets, covering nearly 5000 unique URLs content that was shared millions of times largely related to D legitimization. of election results. The major platforms labeled removed or soft blocked some 35% of the URL is shared from EIP. I obtained data covering the nearly 400 EIP tickets that Sal produced for Congress only after being threatened with contempt it seems after being subpoenaed. Here’s some of what I found. About 10% of the ticket showed federal involvement through references to government email addresses, offices or officials. That number of Fed involved tickets grows to more than 25% when you cross reference the eip data with discovery in Missouri V Biden, nearly a quarter of the 400 tickets originated with misinformation reports from a Sissa funded entity. Federal officials directly forwarded dozens of those same misinformation reports to social media companies for potential action that is moderation. That is censorship. So the platform’s got pressure from the eip sis as outsource censorship conduit and from the feds themselves. Nearly all tickets dealt with domestic speech almost entirely from the right. The word recommend or a derivative appears over 100 times and ticket comments. This was about making social media companies act not some academic exercise. Here’s some ticket examples. Ticket ERP 482 came from the CES a funded entity I referenced before the EI sack, it identified a tweet from then President Trump indicating Most states allow one to change one’s original vote after early voting, which EIP called potential procedural interference. The claim based on the fact checks EIP looked to was at least partially true. Nevertheless, the comments on the ticket show EIP flagged it for Twitter. One commenter says Twitter received and is reviewing another replies. We heard back from Twitter through Cisco with this response. Our team concluded the tweet was not in violation of our civic Integrity Policy. evidences are produced in Missouri V. Biden shows that indeed, since his future chief mis and disinformation officer also reported this tweet to Twitter. So we support and that of the president at Sissa and executive agency, and it’s cut out EIP both forwarded the chief executive speech to a platform for censorship. Ticket EIP 923 came from the State Department’s GAC it highlights an Instagram post showing a video in which a poll workers purportedly modifying ballots they GAC submitter raises concerns. Then as this as this is out of my land due to privacy act restrictions. I will leave further investigation to the eip and Instagram teams. That’s evidence right there. This project was about circumventing the law outsource censorship. Tickity IP 953 identified social media posts sharing an article from the Federalist where I’m a senior contributor. America won’t trust elections until the voter fraud is investigated. It’s titled The ticket says the article quote misconstrues disinformation as evidence in the IP is considered opinion. Twitter apparently received and reviewed this tweet. In response all of this Molly Hemingway Federalist editor in chief told me quote, this unconscionable censorship of the Federalist and its reporters is sadly unsurprising. The censorship industrial complex in this country clearly views free speech as its enemy and will do anything to shut it down, including spreading lies and using intimidation to coerce private companies to censor factual legal speech on behalf of the regime. The tickets also find EIP dinging skepticism about the integrity of our elections, even when based on government documents, targeting credible claims that might mislead seeking to suppress speculation about Mammon Ballard handling, the DNC targeting conservative think tanks through the ticketing system, and even the flagging of political figures, satirical tweets for potential censorship. What will this censorship industrial complex have in store for 2024? The only thing that might prevent still worse is exposing these first amendment eviscerating efforts.

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