On Wednesday, after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress while Democrats remained crushingly silent about Big Tech’s alleged attempts to suppress conservative points of view, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) ripped Dorsey, calling him a “partisan and a hypocrite,” and slammed Democrats: “There are no liberals left in the Democrat Party. Not a single Democrat Senator defended free speech or freedom of the press today.” He concluded, “This should terrify Americans.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Biggest take away from the big tech hearings: 
1) Jack Dorsey is a partisan and a hypocrite.
2) There are no liberals left in the Democrat Party. Not a single Democrat Senator defended free speech or freedom of the press today. 
This should terrify Americans.
&mdash; Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanCrenshawTX/status/1321482045818834944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<a href="https://reason.com/2019/08/12/every-democrat-in-the-senate-supports-a-constitutional-amendment-that-would-radically-curtail-freedom-of-speech/">Reason Magazine</a> noted in August 2019, “Every Democrat in the Senate is <a href="https://reason.com/2019/08/09/senate-democrats-back-constitutional-amendment-to-undo-citizens-united/">backing</a> a constitutional amendment that aims to overturn <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/08-205.html">Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission</a>, the 2010 decision in which the Supreme Court lifted legal restrictions on what corporations and unions are allowed to say about politics at election time. … the so-called <a href="https://www.tomudall.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Democracy%20For%20All%20Amendment%20Final%20Bill%20Text.pdf">Democracy for All Amendment</a> goes much further than nullifying one Supreme Court decision. It would radically rewrite the constitutional treatment of political speech, allowing Congress and state legislatures to impose any restrictions on election-related spending they consider reasonable.&#8221;
Section 230 of the U.S. Code <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230">states</a>:
<blockquote>No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account ofany action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.</blockquote>
The term “otherwise objectionable” has given license to sites such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor material they find “otherwise objectionable.”
Thus, Pichai, concerned that Congress might amend Section 230, tried to protect it; if the “otherwise objectionable” term were removed, Big Tech could be held liable for censoring views they don’t prefer.
Pichai <a href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/894758B6-F55E-471D-904F-480FCD9E4D98">claimed</a>, “Of course, our ability to provide access to a wide range of information is only possible because of existing legal frameworks, like Section 230. The United States adopted Section 230 early in the internet’s history, and it has been foundational to US leadership in the tech sector. Section 230 protects the freedom to create and share content while supporting the ability of platforms and services of all sizes to responsibly address harmful content.”
The Daily Wire noted that Dorsey claimed on Wednesday during the Senate hearing that Twitter has not censored President Donald Trump. Dorsey had <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-we-havent-censored-the-u-s-president-report-says-twitter-has-censored-trump-64-times">this exchange</a> with Tennessee GOP senator Marsha Blackburn:
<blockquote>BLACKBURN: “Mr. Dorsey, is Donald Trump a world leader?”
DORSEY: “Yes.”
BLACKBURN: “Okay, so it would be important for world leaders to have access to your platform, correct?”
DORSEY: “Correct.”
BLACKBURN: “And so, why did you deny that platform via censorship to the U.S. president?”
DORSEY: “We haven’t censored the U.S. president.”
BLACKBURN: “Oh yes you have. How many posts from Iran’s terrorist Ayatollah have you censored?”
DORSEY: “Um.”
BLACKBURN: “How many posts from Vladimir Putin have you censored?”
DORSEY: “We have labeled tweets of world leaders. We have a policy around not taking down the content, but simply adding more context around it.”
BLACKBURN: “Okay, and the U.S. president you have censored 65 times. You testified that you’re worried about disinformation and election interference, that is something that we all worry about. And of course, for about a hundred years, foreign sources have been trying to influence U.S. policy and U.S. elections. Now, they’re onto your platforms, they see this as a way to get access to the American people. So, given your refusal to censor or ban foreign dictators, while regularly censoring the president, aren’t you at this very moment, personally responsible for flooding the nation with foreign disinformation?”
DORSEY: “Just to be clear, we have not censored. We have taken the tweets down that you’re referencing. They have more context in the label applied to them. And we do the same for leaders around the world.”</blockquote>
The Media Research Center <a href="https://newsbusters.org/blogs/techwatch/corinne-weaver/2020/10/19/twitter-facebook-censored-trump-campaign-65-times-leave">reported</a>,“Twitter has been far and away the biggest offender, labeling, fact-checking, and removing Trump’s tweets and the tweets from his campaign accounts 64 times since the president’s election.”
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw.

Crenshaw Rips Twitter’s Dorsey: ‘Partisan And A Hypocrite’

Dan Crenshaw

Facebook

Google

Twitter

On Wednesday, after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress while Democrats

description

noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1

robots

Crenshaw Rips Twitter’s Dorsey: ‘Partisan And A Hypocrite’ | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/crenshaw-rips-twitters-dorsey-partisan-and-a-hypocrite/

twitter:card

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/01/2A6AD313-7E50-4F47-A59D-9CBABA140227.jpeg

twitter:image

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) claimed during a Senate hearing with tech companies on Wednesday that &#8220;anti-conservative bias is not a problem&#8221; and that the issue is not that there is too much censorship going on, but that there is not enough.
“The big tech business model, which profits ahead of people, is a real problem,” Markey claimed. “Anti-conservative bias is not a problem. The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down, the issue is that they’re leaving too many dangerous posts up.”
“In fact, they’re amplifying harmful content so that it spreads like wildfire and torches our democracy,” Markey claimed without evidence. “Mr. Zuckerberg, when President Trump posted on Facebook that when the looting starts the shooting starts, you failed to take down that post. Within a day, the post had hundreds of thousands of shares and likes on Facebook. Since then the president has gone on national television and told a hate group to stand by and he has repeatedly refused to commit that he will accept the election results.”
“Mr. Zuckerberg, can you commit that if the president goes on Facebook and encourages violence after election results are announced that you will make sure your companies algorithms don’t spread that content and you will immediately remove those messages?” Markey asked.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Democrat Sen. Ed Markey flipped the script at the tech hearing saying: &quot;The issue is not that the companies before us today is that they&#39;re taking too many posts down. The issue is that they&#39;re leaving too many dangerous posts up.&quot;
 <a href="https://t.co/0uH9a3wgOh">pic.twitter.com/0uH9a3wgOh</a>
&mdash; Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) <a href="https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1321492041960968195?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Republican Senators focused on sinking their teeth into Twitter CEO and left-wing activist Jack Dorsey.
“As you know, I have long been concerned about Twitter’s pattern of censoring and silencing individual Americans with whom Twitter disagrees,” Cruz said. “But two weeks ago, Twitter … crossed a threshold that is fundamental in our country. Two weeks Twitter made the unilateral decision to censor the New York Post in a series of two blockbuster articles, both alleging evidence of corruption against Joe Biden, the first concerning Ukraine, the second concerning communist China.”
“And Twitter made the decision number one to prevent users, any user, from sharing those stories, and number two you went even further and blocked the New York Post from sharing on Twitter its own reporting,” Cruz continued. “Why did Twitter make the decision to censor the New York Post?”
Dorsey responded by claiming that the platform decided to enforce its “hacked materials” policy and the goal of it was to limit the spread of materials that are hacked, and he did not want Twitter to be a distributor for hacked materials.
Cruz responded by highlighting how Twitter allowed, and even promoted, reports from The New York Times about President Donald Trump’s tax returns—which Cruz noted that it was “a crime, a federal felony, to distribute someone’s tax returns against their knowledge.”
Cruz later blasted Dorsey, asking, “Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear and why do you persist in behaving in a Democratic Super PAC silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?”
Dorsey claimed that was not happening.
Related:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-we-havent-censored-the-u-s-president-report-says-twitter-has-censored-trump-64-times">Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: ‘We Haven’t Censored The U.S. President.’ Report Says Twitter Has Censored Trump 64 Times.</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ted-cruz-reams-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-who-the-hell-elected-you">Ted Cruz Reams Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: ‘Who The Hell Elected You?’</a></li>
</ul>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Senator Ed Markey meets with BPL Union

Democrat Senator On Tech Censorship: ‘Anti-Conservative Bias Not A Problem,’ ‘Not Enough’ Censorship Happening

Big Tech

Censorship

Ed Markey

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) claimed during a Senate hearing with tech companies on Wednesday that &quot;anti-conservative bias is not a problem&quot; and that the issue

Democrat Senator On Tech Censorship: ‘Anti-Conservative Bias Not A Problem,’ ‘Not Enough’ Censorship Happening | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/democrat-senator-on-tech-censorship-anti-conservative-bias-not-a-problem-not-enough-censorship-happening/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/Ed-Markey-1200x800.jpg

Seth Dillon oversees one of the web’s funniest destinations, but there’s an edge to his voice that’s hardly comic. Dillon, the CEO of The Babylon Bee, is at war with social media. Again. It’s an odd place for a humor site to be, but it’s in sync with the current wave of Big Tech bullying.
Dillon says the trouble began two years ago when Facebook aligned with third-party fact checkers like Snopes to battle misinformation on the platform. That seemingly noble stance led to Snopes and, by extension, Facebook, labeling a satirical Bee article as “false.”
“Facebook treated us as purveyors of Fake News,” he says, tied to a farcical story about CNN buying industrial strength washing machines to better spin the news.
“Nobody believed the story was true,” Dillon says. Facebook disagreed, threatening the company’s social media monetization if the Bee kept producing fake news stories.
The Babylon Bee, a Christian humor site that politically leans to the Right, generates revenue from Facebook in several key ways. Facebook traffic comprises a large part of the Bee’s overall clicks.
Plus, publishers can utilize Facebook’s subscription tools to generate new customers or leverage its “instant articles” feature. The latter lets users click on a story and the article appears, but the process taps into Facebook’s ad network structure.
“When they demonetize you, they turn all of them off,” he explains.
Cooler cyber-heads prevailed, but recently Facebook once again threatened The Babylon Bee over its content.
The story in question <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/facebook-removes-babylon-bee-satire-mocking-sen-hironos-treatment-of-amy-barrett-says-it-incites-violence">poked fun at Sen. Mazie Hirono</a>, a Hawaiian Democrat, for grilling Judge Amy Coney Barrett about any sexual assaults she may have committed in the past.
The Bee piece’s headline, “Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against A Duck To See If She Is A Witch&#8221; referenced a classic Monty Python routine.
&#8220;Oh, she&#8217;s a witch alright, just look at her!&#8221; the Bee fictitiously quoted Hirono. &#8220;Just look at the way she&#8217;s dressed and how she&#8217;s so much prettier and smarter than us! She&#8217;s in league with Beelzebub himself, I just know it! We must burn her!&#8221;
The Bee satire triggered Facebook’s algorithms, a process that eventually gave way to a manual content review.
The results?
The story “incites violence,” and Facebook pulled the article from the Bee’s page on its own.
“We were told we would need to edit it or else we would remain in violation of their community standards,” Dillon says. “We appealed [the decision] and lost.”
So The Babylon Bee reached out to the media to amplify both the conflict and their side of the argument. Days later, Facebook changed its mind and apologized, noting the difference between satire and Fake News.
“It’s always a mistake,” Dillon says sarcastically. “They’re reaching, stretching to make us in violation of their community standards.”
Facebook’s cyber-bulling represents an existential threat to The Babylon Bee. A large portion of the site’s revenue comes from ads served on the main site. If Facebook were to prevent social media users from clicking on Bee stories shared on Facebook, it would be devastating.
“Fortunately, we’re not stupid. We’re not using all their monetization tools. It’s way too risky,” he says. “We’re doing all we can to generate revenue outside the Facebook ecosystem.”
Dillon is grateful to press outlets for amplifying their concerns about Facebook, but not every reporter is eager to do so. It’s typically right-of-center outlets like National Review and Fox News sharing their plight.
The mainstream media, in sharp contrast, ignores their struggles.
Reporters did rush to cover the Bee recently, but only after President Donald Trump shared a Bee satire, presumably thinking it was a true news item. That got the attention of sites like MSNBC, Vox, and others, Dillon says.
USA Today recently addressed the site’s mission in an “explainer” style story, but it noted the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/16/donald-trump-tweets-babylon-bees-satirical-news-story-joe-biden/3676071001/">publication mocked Black Lives Matter</a> as if that group should be untouchable to satirists.
The paper even activated its own fact-checkers after the Bee published this story: “Ninth Circuit Court Overturns Death Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
Otherwise, mainstream reporters look away from the Bee when social media slams the brakes on its satire.
The Babylon Bee is hardly the first website to poke fun at the news. The Onion’s satirical work dates back to 1988. That site routinely shreds the latest headlines, too, although from an increasingly left-of-center perspective.
Dillon has been researching his competitor to see if it ever runs afoul of social media giants. So far, he’s seen nothing remotely similar to his own site’s woes.
“Even world leaders get duped by Onion stories,” he notes, but reporters react with glee when it happens.
Not so with the Bee.
“You get these New York Times hit pieces [that say] we are capitalizing on confusion,” he says. “They put our motives in question. ‘Are they spreading disinformation on purpose?’”
Dillon says his company draws support from the creative community, albeit in modest ways. Think private messages from fellow artists offering moral support and law firms eager to have their legalistic back.
Prominent players like “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams and political gadfly Michael Malice also speak out on the Bee’s behalf, along with “disaffected liberals” like Dave Rubin.
It isn’t only Facebook that threatens the Bee’s ascent. Google previously flagged select Bee stories for violating its terms against hate speech, putting “strikes on our account,” he says. “That can put you in jeopardy of losing Google ads.”
Plus, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-briefly-suspends-babylon-bee-then-apologizes">Twitter suspended The Babylon Bee’s account</a> in August “out of nowhere,” he says, claiming the company violated Twitter’s “spam and platform manipulation” policies.
“They said it was a mistake,” he says, noting the social media giant eventually restored the account.
“We did hear there were other conservative sites caught up in that spam filter. What kind of spam filter was that? What really happened?” he asks. “It’s one more mistake that affected us and not The Onion.”
For now, getting media coverage from conservative outlets is enough to prevent Facebook from censoring its content completely. That’s not possible for everyday Americans who lack the Bee’s clout.
The site has nearly 758,000 Twitter followers, half a million on Instagram, and more than 800,000 “likes” on Facebook.
“We’re just blessed to be in that position … so many people are just out of luck,” he says of social media suspensions. “I get people all the time messaging me. They’ve been suspended and put in Twitter jail. It’s over for them. How many people has this happened to?”
The situation puts a fresh light on next month’s presidential election.
Dillon says the Trump administration cares “very much about free speech and for conservatives to have a voice in the public discourse.”
“The Left tends to stamp out disagreement,” he adds, worrying the matter could get worse under a Biden administration.
“The progressive Left assuming more power is a serious threat to conservatives and free speech,” he says. “Look at that’s happening to the New York Post.”
The Manhattan tabloid remains blocked on Twitter for investigating Hunter Biden’s mysterious business ties, a story that has yet to be debunked in any fashion.
“The Right is much more willing to tolerate opposing opinions,” he says.
For now, The Babylon Bee will keep offering a counterpoint to modern comedy sans apology.
“We fill the void,” he says. “It’s kind of cool to be the one outlier. It’s healthy for society to have multiple outlets to give a different perspective. We need more of that.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/conservatives-dont-dominate-facebook-despite-the-lefts-insistence-they-do">The Left Is Lying About Facebook &amp; Conservatives. Here’s The Truth.</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

EXCLUSIVE: Babylon Bee’s CEO Pushes Back Against Big Tech Bullying

Babylon Bee

Seth Dillon oversees one of the web’s funniest destinations, but there’s an edge to his voice that’s hardly comic. Dillon, the CEO of The Babylon Bee, is

EXCLUSIVE: Babylon Bee’s CEO Pushes Back Against Big Tech Bullying | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/nothing-funny-about-facebooks-serial-attacks-on-the-babylon-bee/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/7344BC28-7EAC-4F45-BBA8-4FD87DEAF279-1200x800.jpeg

Have we ever witnessed a stranger anomaly in modern presidential politics than the craven contempt the Biden campaign, the media and social media have shown for the American electorate in their disgraceful conspiracy to hide Joe Biden?
What bona fide presidential candidate would arrogantly hide in his basement during the heat of a campaign, especially in the last few weeks of an ever-tightening one?
If the liberal media weren&#8217;t providing Biden cover, he couldn&#8217;t get away with this. If they were even raising questions about his intentional invisibility, this campaign would look far different, and far less surreal.
As President Donald Trump has hopscotched the country, traveling thousands of miles to appear at vigorous, humongous campaign rallies, Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, are nowhere to be found. We&#8217;ve never had a presidential candidate virtually opt out of the campaign.
Please don&#8217;t use the virus as an excuse, unless you&#8217;re willing to point out that Trump has been fearlessly campaigning for reelection with a rigorous schedule that would exhaust most 30-year olds, while Biden is acting like an old man with no interest in engaging with the public or the media. And he seeks to be leader of the free world? Then again, when Biden has surfaced, he&#8217;s failed to draw a Sunday school-sized crowd.
Never has a presidential candidate taken the voters for granted like this. Hillary Clinton declined to visit the swing state of Wisconsin after April 2016, but that is nothing compared with Biden&#8217;s ghosting of the entire electorate throughout the campaign.
Even candidates who believed they were comfortably ahead have never hidden from view like this to run out the clock. They all believed enough in the superiority of their agenda that they wanted to make their case to the people.
Moreover, what other presidential candidate has refused to provide his position on key issues, including whether he would pack the Supreme Court? When has any other candidate haughtily waved off questions of debate moderators and reporters with the sophomoric dodge that, &#8220;Trump just wants you to focus on this issue (instead of what an SOB he is)&#8221;?
Adding insult to injury, when has the media ever let any candidate off the hook like this, which is a scandal of unprecedented proportions? Obviously, the media disrespects the electorate as much as the Biden campaign does.
If anything is indisputably the media&#8217;s job, it is to bring out the candidates&#8217; positions on important issues, and packing the Supreme Court and the Biden scandals are exceedingly important — and relevant — issues. What would the media&#8217;s reaction be if Trump refused to answer such questions?
The media dutifully promoted the canard that the Russians — yes, the Russians again — were behind the emails found on Hunter Biden&#8217;s laptop. But how will these crooked conspirators explain away the bombshell revelation of Hunter&#8217;s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, that the &#8220;big guy&#8221; referred to in Hunter&#8217;s email is Joe Biden himself? How will they handle Bobulinski&#8217;s assertion that Joe Biden was offered 10% interest in a Chinese business deal?
But for my money, even these cover-ups don&#8217;t hold a candle to the media&#8217;s scandalous concealment of Joe Biden&#8217;s declining mental acuity. In his current state, Biden clearly is not fit for office, yet the media ignores it while raising bogus questions about the uncannily vibrant Trump&#8217;s capacity. Reality has finally trumped George Orwell&#8217;s imagination.
Where is the perennial finger-wagger Bob Woodward when you need him?
The American public knows everything there is to know about Trump, as they&#8217;ve scrutinized every molecule of his being and business dealings and dug up every conceivably negative morsel about him during the last four years.
To complete the trifecta, we&#8217;ve watched the leftist social media giants conspire with the Biden campaign and the media to stack the deck in Biden&#8217;s favor. When the New York Post first reported on the Hunter Biden emails that implicated Joe Biden, Facebook and Twitter actively buried the story — preventing users from sharing it with other users, invoking the specious excuses that the story violated a hacked-materials policy and was unsubstantiated. Nice try.
So, here we are, less than two weeks from the most important election of our lifetimes — and millions of voters have been shielded from the agenda of this Democratic duo to radically transform America into a socialist hellhole with 70 genders, major tax increases on most taxpayers, a federally engineered war on law enforcement and law and order, open borders, increased regulations, the horrors of the Green New Deal (including a gutted domestic energy industry), and scores of other policies the majority of Americans would reject if the Democrats&#8217; positions were made known to them.
Don&#8217;t fool yourselves. This liberal trio knows the American electorate is still basically conservative and would never knowingly elect someone with such a radical agenda, which is why it will continue trying to deceive voters until Nov. 3.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is &#8220;Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win.&#8221; Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Fake news keyboard

LIMBAUGH: A Sordid Conspiracy To Deceive The American Electorate

2020 Election

Donald Trump

Joe Biden

Media Bias

Have we ever witnessed a stranger anomaly in modern presidential politics than the craven contempt the Biden campaign, the media and social media have

LIMBAUGH: A Sordid Conspiracy To Deceive The American Electorate | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/limbaugh-a-sordid-conspiracy-to-deceive-the-american-electorate/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/2552ABB0-C577-4459-A50D-4269A631D695-1200x800.jpeg

Former biology Professor Brett Weinstein, who found himself chased away from Evergreen State University several years ago for resisting a social justice mob, says he’s been booted from Facebook without an explanation or opportunity to appeal. 
In a Twitter post Thursday, Weinstein, who describes himself as a “professor in exile” in his Twitter bio, said that he’d received a notice from Facebook informing him that his account had been disabled. A screenshot, posted with his tweet, said the company&#8217;s decision was non-reversible. 
“I have been evicted from Facebook. No explanation. No appeal. I have downloaded ‘my information’ and see nothing that explains it. We are governed now in private, by entities that make their own rules and are answerable to no process. Disaster is inevitable. We are living it,” tweeted Weinstein. 
Liz Bourgeois, a spokesperson for Facebook, later responded to him saying he &#8220;was mistakenly flagged by our system for identifying imposter accounts. We&#8217;ve restored it and are sorry for the mistake.&#8221; In turn, Weinstein responded: &#8220;My first indication of a problem was this message saying Facebook had &#8216;already reviewed&#8217; the suspension and the decision &#8216;can&#8217;t be reversed.&#8217; My tweet about it clearly got your attention, but I have 400k Twitter followers. What protects regular people from such &#8216;mistakes&#8217; Liz?&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
My first indication of a problem was this message saying Facebook had &#8220;already reviewed&#8221; the suspension and the decision &#8220;can&#8217;t be reversed&#8221;. My tweet about it clearly got your attention, but I have 400k Twitter followers.
What protects regular people from such &#8220;mistakes&#8221; Liz? <a href="https://t.co/DEvvgOaV4i">https://t.co/DEvvgOaV4i</a> <a href="https://t.co/z43TZJr5j5">pic.twitter.com/z43TZJr5j5</a>
— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) <a href="https://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/1319504197134397441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2020</a></blockquote>
Weinstein, who has supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the past, has been extremely critical of both President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. He recently tried to mount a grassroots effort to recruit a high-profile Democrat and Republican candidate to run for the presidency on a joint “unity” ticket. 
One of the candidates his grassroots effort attempted to recruit, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), the vocally anti-establishment congresswoman who has endorsed Biden, responded to Weinstein’s statement that he had been booted from Facebook’s platform by tweeting: “This is insane.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
This is insane.
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) <a href="https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1319441947866509312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2020</a></blockquote>
Other right-leaning and conservative political commentators had similar reactions to Weinstein’s announcement, including Dave Rubin, host of the Rubin Report, Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, and BlazeTV reporter and podcast host Elijah Schaffer. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
They weren’t gonna stop with Alex Jones&#8230;
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/1319360761777377280?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2020</a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
This is vile.
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) <a href="https://twitter.com/bdomenech/status/1319463156742225920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2020</a></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Then they came for Bret <a href="https://t.co/dzzYjz69gr">https://t.co/dzzYjz69gr</a>
— ELIJAH SCHAFFER (@ElijahSchaffer) <a href="https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/1319434130887708672?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2020</a></blockquote>
Weinstein came to national attention back in 2017, when he refused to go along with the idea that white students and professors at Evergreen State College in Washington state should leave campus for a day for a so-called &#8220;Day of Absence.&#8221; Amid the subsequent outrage mob, Weinstein was told by the chief of campus police that officers had been told to stand down and could not protect him, as he previously outlined in an op-ed for <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-campus-mob-came-for-meand-you-professor-could-be-next-1496187482?shareToken=std70d4e33eeda4319bebe684e6fed2fd4&amp;reflink=article_email_share">The Wall Street Journal</a>.
He and his wife, biology professor Heather Heying, resigned from the university later that year and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/evergreen-college-settles-professor-bret-weinstein-emily-zanotti">received a $500,000 settlement</a> from the university, the college told faculty in an email at the time. The college did not have to admit liability for the incident.
Earlier this summer, Weinstein appeared on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/joe-rogan-news-media-on-the-left-has-completely-ignored-biden-in-cognitive-decline">Joe Rogan’s podcast</a> and blasted the Democratic Party for pushing Biden onto American voters in 2020, saying: “Joe Biden: He’s an influence peddler. He’s not an ‘idea guy.’ He’s the same ‘idea’ as Hillary Clinton in a different morphology. Who cares? This is not an answer to any known question. This is ‘stay the course’ at a moment when we could not afford to stay the course less. Look: How dare the Democratic Party do this to us again at this moment.”
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

In this photo illustration a Facebook logo seen displayed on

Brett Weinstein, Self-Described ‘Professor In Exile,’ Says He’s Been Booted From Facebook [Updated]

Former biology Professor Brett Weinstein, who found himself chased away from Evergreen State University several years ago for resisting a social justice

Brett Weinstein, Self-Described ‘Professor In Exile,’ Says He&#039;s Been Booted From Facebook [Updated] | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/brett-weinstein-self-described-professor-in-exile-says-hes-been-booted-from-facebook/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/Facebook.jpg

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to subpoena the testimonies of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg after all 10 Democrats boycotted the panel&#8217;s hearing to advance the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.
Republican members want the two CEOs to testify about their handling of a recent series of articles by the New York Post, America&#8217;s fourth-largest newspaper, concerning former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter&#8217;s business dealings. Both social media sites suppressed the stories.
Zuckerberg and Dorsey are already set to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee next week.
The Judiciary Committee voted to compel the CEOs to testify about their “suppression and/or censorship” of the Post articles, one that alleged Hunter Biden introduced his father to a top executive at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where he worked.
Joe Biden repeatedly refused to answer questions about the matter but finally broke his silence Wednesday while doing an interview with a Wisconsin TV station from his Delaware home.
Biden blasted Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who is using a Senate committee he chairs to probe Hunter Biden, and ripped President Donald Trump&#8217;s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani for peddling &#8220;garbage.&#8221;
&#8220;This is the same garbage—Rudy Giuliani, Trump&#8217;s henchman. It&#8217;s a last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family,&#8221; Biden said on WISN.
Reporter Adrienne Pedersen said to Biden, &#8220;Wisconsin&#8217;s Republican senator, Ron Johnson, put out a statement on Homeland Security letterhead saying Hunter Biden, together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name.&#8221; She asked Biden if there was any &#8220;legitimacy&#8221; to the claims.
&#8220;None whatsoever!&#8221; Biden said emphatically.
Biden said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) has criticized Johnson&#8217;s move.
&#8220;Even the man who served with him on that committee, the former nominee for the Republican Party, said there&#8217;s no basis to this,&#8221; Biden said. &#8220;And the vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there&#8217;s no basis at all. Ron should be ashamed of himself!&#8221;
Last week, following Twitter’s decision to ban sharing the Post stories about a mystery laptop containing emails that allegedly show international influence peddling by Hunter Biden, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) warned Dorsey that he should expect to be called before the Senate committee to explain his platform’s censorship policies.
Twitter blocked sharing of the Post stories and locked the Post out of its platform after the outlet published the pieces, citing its “hacked materials” policy. After an outcry, Dorsey apologized for censoring the Post’s link, claiming Twitter would update its policies.
“Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix. Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have [the] capabilities to do that,” Dorsey tweeted on Friday.
The platform re-activated sharing for the Post’s story late last week. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mit-twitter-ban-nearly-doubled-the-visibility-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story">reported</a>, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study released Monday showed that Twitter’s censorship had the precise opposite effect from what was intended and that presumed censorship of “conservative” material “nearly doubled” attention on the Biden allegations.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-panel-will-not-vote-to-subpoena-twitter-facebook-ceos-over-bias-after-republicans-object/">Senate Panel Will Not Vote To Subpoena Twitter, Facebook CEOs Over Bias After Republicans Object</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">m</a><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">ember</a>.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Testifies At Joint Senate Commerce/Judiciary Hearing

Senate Judiciary Committee Votes To Subpoena Facebook, Twitter CEOs

Hunter Biden

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to subpoena the testimonies of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark

Senate Judiciary Committee Votes To Subpoena Facebook, Twitter CEOs | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/senate-judiciary-committee-votes-to-subpoena-facebook-twitter-ceos/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/mz-2.jpg

As part of an ongoing campaign to pressure Facebook into censoring content that threatens their control of the flow of information, left-leaning media outlets have repeatedly sounded the alarm over conservative sites and voices supposedly having a “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/26/facebook-conservatives-2020-421146">massive advantage</a>” on Facebook. The self-serving claim reverberates throughout the media echo chamber despite clear evidence to the contrary. That evidence reveals the opposite is true: Left-leaning outlets enjoy more total engagements collectively, dwarf conservative sites in followers and dominate newsfeeds.
The metric left-wing journalists repeatedly point to as supposed proof that conservatives have some sort of unfair advantage on Facebook — a company which has a “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/26/facebook-conservatives-2020-421146">largely liberal workforce</a>,” as Politico admits — is engagements (comments, shares, and likes). Journalists like New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose regularly highlight the daily list of the 10 most engaged stories, which often feature conservative voices taking many of the spots. NewsWhip’s recent reports on engagements on the platform have added fuel to the conspiratorial fire. However, a closer look at the numbers reveals that the establishment media is cherrypicking data to present a false story about supposed conservative “domination” on the platform. 
In its September report on Facebook engagements, <a href="https://www.newswhip.com/2020/10/these-were-the-top-publishers-of-september-2020-on-facebook/">NewsWhip</a> announced that The Daily Wire had, for the third month in a row, taken the top spot for total engagements, earning 78 million engagements over the course of the month. Fox News came in second with 72 million, the Daily Mail third with 64 million, CNN fourth with 51 million, and NBC News fifth with 45 million.
So, The Daily Wire topped the other publishers on Facebook in September in engagements — this proves the leftist media’s point, right? Not at all, as some simple math quickly demonstrates. Here’s the full list of the top 25 publishers for September: 
<div class="image"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://slack-imgs.com/?c=1&amp;o1=ro&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newswhip.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F10%2FTop-25-publishers-September-2020.png" /></div>
Add up all of the engagements of conservative sites compared to mainstream and left-leaning sites and the “conservatives dominate” narrative falls apart. Right-leaning sites account for a little less than half (47.9%) of engagements produced by Facebook’s top 25 outlets.  
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-157974 aligncenter" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/September-Total-Engagements-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Total-Engagements-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Total-Engagements-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Total-Engagements-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Total-Engagements.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
That a few sites, like ours, do quite well in engagement is actually the product of conservative users being funneled to a smaller number of sites because of the overwhelming dominance of left-leaning outlets. Among the top 25 publishers that frequently appear on NewsWhip’s reports, only about a third (36%) are right-leaning. 
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-157975 aligncenter" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/September-Total-Publishers--1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Total-Publishers--1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Total-Publishers--300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Total-Publishers--768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Total-Publishers-.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
The left-wing narrative crumbles even further when one considers metrics ultimately more important than engagements. While some conservative sites score high on engagement individually, the full picture reveals that mainstream sites have far more influence collectively. 
A comparison of how many “likes” or followers of various outlets and pages have gained on Facebook reveals that left-leaning sites dwarf conservative sites in this metric. The total Facebook followers for the few conservative sites that regularly appear among the top 25 publishers in NewsWhip’s monthly list account for less than a third (31.6%) of the total followers of the sites on the list. 
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-157976 aligncenter" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/September-Likes-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Likes-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Likes-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Likes-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/September-Likes.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
A look at the total number of articles produced by the top 25 publishers reveals just how much left-leaning content overwhelms conservative content. In September, the top left-leaning outlets produced far more content than conservative outlets: more than 142,000 articles versus just over 95,000, respectively.
Left-leaning outlets also dominate in the most crucial metric of all: reach, or how many people see stories by the outlets in their newsfeeds. While the specific numbers aren’t available, Facebook officials have revealed that it is the left-leaning mainstream outlets that regularly have the most reach. 
In response to one of Roose&#8217;s steady stream of Facebook-themed tweets highlighting the platform&#8217;s engagement data in July, Facebook&#8217;s head of News Feed John Hegeman suggested that what Roose and others are missing is that even though conservatives do well in the engagement metric, the mainstream outlets enjoy a far broader reach. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-crowdtangle-data-top-posts-conservative-outlets-2020-7">Business Insider</a> reports (formatting adjusted):
<blockquote>[A]ccording to Hegeman, a more accurate metric for understanding what news people see on Facebook is &#8216;reach,&#8217; or the number of people who saw a link in their news feed (even if the link was posted by multiple different pages or users). Hegeman shared a list of links that had the widest reach on Facebook, compared with the posts with the highest engagement on the same day. On July 5, the posts with the highest engagement came from Franklin Graham, Ben Shapiro, Breitbart, ForAmerica, and CNN. By contrast, the links with the widest reach that day came from The Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, Ranker, BuzzFeed, and ABC News.</blockquote>
The real story here is that left-leaning mainstream outlets continue to control the lion’s share of news distribution. Their obsession with the success of right-leaning outlets on Facebook in one cherrypicked metric just serves to highlight that reality. What&#8217;s really going on here is obvious to anyone paying attention: The mainstream media doesn’t just want to “dominate” the distribution of information, it wants to completely silence conservative voices.
A previous version of this article was published on Sept. 24. It has been updated to include the latest data. 
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-new-york-times-dropped-millions-on-facebook-to-advertise-the-1619-projectwhile-trying-to-bully-facebook-into-censoring-others">The New York Times Dropped Millions On Facebook To Advertise The 1619 Project…While Trying To Bully Facebook Into Censoring Others</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Facebook logo

The Left Is Lying About Facebook & Conservatives. Here’s The Truth.

New York Times

As part of an ongoing campaign to pressure Facebook into censoring content that threatens their control of the flow of information, left-leaning media

The Left Is Lying About Facebook &amp; Conservatives. Here’s The Truth. | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/conservatives-dont-dominate-facebook-despite-the-lefts-insistence-they-do/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/Facebook-1200x800.jpg

Despite Twitter&#8217;s best efforts at slowing the spread of a New York Post story alleging evidence of international influence peddling within the Biden family, the story blanketed social media, becoming the lead political story last week, according to a <a href="https://www.axios.com/new-york-post-hunter-biden-facebook-twitter-censor-bf8d9f32-f8cb-444e-bc12-c3b5e8694e84.html">Wednesday report from Axios</a>.
&#8220;Facebook and Twitter&#8217;s frantic attempts to stop the spread of the New York Post&#8217;s Hunter Biden story didn&#8217;t prevent the article from becoming the top story about the election on those platforms last week, according to data from NewsWhip,&#8221; Axios noted.
The numbers are significant. NewsWhip found that the New York Post&#8217;s story &#8220;generated 2.59m interactions (likes, comments, shares) on Facebook and Twitter last week — more than double the next biggest story about Trump or Biden,&#8221; even though, for part of that time, Twitter actively prevented users from sharing the URL for the Post&#8217;s story, on the theory that it violated their policy against &#8220;hacked&#8221; materials.
The Post&#8217;s official Twitter feed was also suspended on Wednesday of last week and remains out of commission.
Despite that, the response to the story was significant, per Axios:
<ul>
<li>5 of the 10 biggest stories were about the Hunter Biden story, the fallout, or how Facebook and Twitter reacted.</li>
<li>It was the 6th-most engaged article this month, trailing pieces like Trump testing positive for COVID-19 and Eddie Van Halen&#8217;s death.</li>
<li>83% of the interactions happened on Facebook, with the other 17% on Twitter.</li>
</ul>
The censorship campaign, the outlet notes, became a story in itself — the second biggest story of last week, narrowly trailing the Hunter Biden laptop revelations.
&#8220;Behind the Biden story itself, Facebook and Twitter&#8217;s response to the report was the second biggest topic last week,&#8221; Axios said, based on the NewsWhip data. &#8220;The backlash largely came from the right, which accused the tech platforms of meddling in the election through inappropriate censorship.&#8221;
In addition, Twitter&#8217;s decision to censor the Post&#8217;s story resulted in an official complaint to the FEC from the Republican National Committee alleging that the decision to block the Post&#8217;s story amounted to an in-kind donation to Joe Biden&#8217;s presidential campaign, and triggered Congressional action. The Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees both expressed interest in hearing from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on whether the respective social media platforms viewed themselves as publishers.
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mit-twitter-ban-nearly-doubled-the-visibility-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story">The Daily Wire reported</a> earlier this week, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology determined that Twitter&#8217;s decision to suppress the story &#8220;nearly doubled&#8221; the story&#8217;s visibility.
“When Twitter banned, and then unbanned, links to a questionably sourced New York Post article about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, its stated intention was to prevent people from spreading harmful false material as America heads into the final stretch of the election campaign,” <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/16/1010644/twitter-ban-hunter-biden-emails-backfires/?fbclid=IwAR3VBtqnME4hFlHXn03RS2UZg8UjymzgOdyYLS6XvXOEWPH-mQUUba6ZUto">MIT’s Technology Review reported Monday</a>. “But thanks to the cycle of misinformation — and claims from conservatives that social-media platforms are deliberately censoring their views — Twitter managed to do the opposite of what it intended.”
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

App Photo Illustrations

NY Post’s Hunter Biden Laptop Story Topped Social Media Despite Twitter Censorship

Despite Twitter&#039;s best efforts at slowing the spread of a New York Post story alleging evidence of international influence peddling within the Biden

NY Post&#039;s Hunter Biden Laptop Story Topped Social Media Despite Twitter Censorship | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/ny-posts-hunter-biden-laptop-story-topped-social-media-despite-twitter-censorship/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/GettyImages-1229161229.jpg

This week, the New York Post published a bombshell story. Hunter Biden&#8217;s laptop was apparently given to a computer repairman in Delaware, and a copy of the hard drive was turned over to the Post. The Post found several alarming emails. The first was a communique from a Ukrainian businessman from the natural gas company Burisma — the same company from which Hunter Biden would gain a reported $50,000-per-month salary as a board member, despite knowing nothing about Ukraine or natural gas. The communique contained the businessman&#8217;s thanks to Hunter for brokering a meeting with Joe Biden.
This was mildly damning, considering that Joe had blithely informed the world that he knew nothing of his ne&#8217;er-do-well son&#8217;s foreign activities. What was more damning was an email thread that appeared to concern proposed compensation packages from the now-defunct CEFC China Energy Co. That thread identified Hunter as &#8220;Chair/Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC,&#8221; with a proposed equity split of &#8220;20&#8221; for &#8220;H&#8221; (presumably Hunter) and &#8220;10 held by H for the big guy.&#8221; A Fox News source privy to the thread confirmed that the &#8220;big guy&#8221; was Joe Biden. An apparent text from Hunter to one of his children contained this tantalizing suggestion: &#8220;(U)nlike Pop, I won&#8217;t make you give me half your salary.&#8221;
All of this would, in a normal world, prompt the media to ask Biden about the emails. Instead, the media have halfheartedly questioned Biden, who has promptly dismissed all questions, calling them a &#8220;smear campaign&#8221; and even suggesting that a CBS reporter was biased against him. The New York Times&#8217; Maggie Haberman was ripped up and down for even tweeting a link to the Post story; Politico&#8217;s Jake Sherman abjectly apologized for having tweeted the story.
Other media members have overtly made the case that the story shouldn&#8217;t be taken seriously. NBC News&#8217; Andrea Mitchell reported that the email scandal could be Russian disinformation; Politico reported that 50 former intelligence officials posited that the story was indeed Russian disinformation. In this, they followed the lead of Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who claimed, without evidence, that the Biden story was a Russian dirty trick — despite the fact that director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe openly denied such speculation.
Meanwhile, Biden has deployed his campaign surrogates to television to insist that the reports are &#8220;unconfirmed.&#8221; Not one surrogate denied that the emails were authentic or bothered to explain them.
But Biden hasn&#8217;t had to explain. His protectors aren&#8217;t relegated to the media. They also encompass the Big Tech heads, who quickly cracked down on dissemination of the Post story itself. Twitter banned tweeting of the link and suspended accounts that tried to spread it, including that of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Facebook announced that even though the story hadn&#8217;t been fact-checked or found to be false, the company would suppress its reach in anticipation of such fact-checking.
There is no doubt that Big Tech&#8217;s decision was political — or that the media&#8217;s hesitancy to cover the Biden allegations is similarly political. Both Big Tech and the media, staffed thoroughly with Democrats, are gun-shy about the prospect of turning the election toward President Donald Trump. If they err, they would far rather err on the side of Joe Biden than the side of journalistic aggressiveness. The last thing they want is getting the blame if Biden somehow blows the White House.
This is all deeply dangerous. At a time when our trust in media is already low, the media have thoroughly debunked themselves as neutral arbiters of fact. At a time when social media has consolidated unprecedented power to control the information seen by Americans, social media overseers have decided to bottleneck information they don&#8217;t like. Americans rightly distrust the journalistic establishment. They are right, too, to question whether they are being allowed to read stories that cut against the priorities of Silicon Valley Leftists.
The result of journalistic and social media overreach will not be Americans&#8217; quiet acquiescence to the new Informational Elite. It will be frustration and anger.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

SHAPIRO: The Media Officially Becomes the Communications Department for Joe Biden

This week, the New York Post published a bombshell story. Hunter Biden&#039;s laptop was apparently given to a computer repairman in Delaware, and a copy of

SHAPIRO: The Media Officially Becomes the Communications Department for Joe Biden | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/the-media-officially-becomes-the-communications-department-for-joe-biden/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/Joe-Biden-7-1200x800.jpg

Key Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are now &#8220;wavering&#8221; on whether to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over concerns about anti-conservative bias on social platforms, leaving the committee&#8217;s plan to address the issue up in the air according to a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/senate-subpeona-facebook-twitter-430245">report from POLITICO</a>.
Last week, following Twitter&#8217;s decision to fully ban sharing a New York Post story about a mystery laptop containing emails that allegedly show international influence peddling by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden&#8217;s son Hunter, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) warned Twitter&#8217;s CEO, Jack Dorsey, that he should expect to explain his platform&#8217;s censorship policies before the Senate committee.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who has been hammering on Twitter&#8217;s growing role as a &#8220;publisher&#8221; rather than a &#8220;platform,&#8221; backed Cruz.
Twitter blocked all sharing of the Post story and locked the Post out of their platform after the outlet published the story, citing its &#8220;hacked materials&#8221; policy but failing to demonstrate how the Post&#8217;s reporting related to any incident of hacking. After an outcry, Dorsey took to Twitter to apologize for censoring the Post&#8217;s link and claimed Twitter would update its policies but noted that future policy changes would not apply to the Post&#8217;s situation.
“Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix. Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have [the] capabilities to do that,” Dorsey tweeted on Friday. Twitter’s  Legal, Policy and Trust &amp; Safety Lead, Vijaya Gadde, confirmed that the social media platform is making changes to its “hacked materials” policy to address “concerns that there could be many unintended consequences to journalists, whistleblowers, and others in ways that are contrary to Twitter’s purpose of serving the public conversation.”
The platform re-activated sharing for the Post&#8217;s story late last week. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mit-twitter-ban-nearly-doubled-the-visibility-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story">As The Daily Wire reported</a>, an MIT study, released Monday, showed that Twitter&#8217;s censorship had the precise opposite effect from what was intended and that presumed censorship of &#8220;conservative&#8221; material &#8220;nearly doubled&#8221; attention on the Biden allegations.
On Friday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the hearing would include a vote on whether to subpoena Facebook&#8217;s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in addition to Dorsey.
During a Tuesday Senate meeting on the subject, though, Republicans reportedly &#8220;wavered&#8221; on demanding testimony from tech bigwigs.
&#8220;Judiciary staff has indicated internally that plans for the vote were delayed in part due to some GOP panel members wavering on whether to support the action, according to one Senate GOP aide, who spoke anonymously to discuss private negotiations,&#8221; POLITICO said. &#8220;Republican officials have also expressed trepidation about how quickly the committee has moved to vote on the subpoenas, the aide said. A committee spokesperson did not immediately offer comment on the matter.&#8221;
The wavering Republicans went unnamed.
Cruz did tell POLITICO that he plans on hearing testimony from both Dorsey and Zuckerberg, even if he cannot get all Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on board.
“One way or another, either voluntarily or pursuant to subpoena, they will testify and they will testify before the election,” Cruz told the outlet.
The Republican National Committee also filed a complaint against Twitter with the Federal Election Commission late last week, alleging that Twitter&#8217;s censorship of a story damaging to Joe Biden amounted to an in-kind donation to Biden&#8217;s presidential campaign.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Senate Holds Confirmation Hearing For Amy Coney Barrett To Be Supreme Court Justice

Senate Panel Will Not Vote To Subpoena Twitter, Facebook CEOs Over Bias After Republicans Object

Social Media

Ted Cruz

Key Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are now &quot;wavering&quot; on whether to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark

Senate Panel Will Not Vote To Subpoena Twitter, Facebook CEOs Over Bias After Republicans Object | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/senate-panel-will-not-vote-to-subpoena-twitter-facebook-ceos-over-bias-after-republicans-object/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/GettyImages-1229050564.jpg

In an audacious act of censorship — and what Senate Judiciary Committee members have condemned as “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-senators-to-subpoena-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-for-actively-interfering-in-election">actively interfering</a>&#8221; in a presidential election — Twitter and Facebook teamed up last week to suppress a bombshell story on Hunter and Joe Biden by one of the biggest news publishers in the country. The move ended up backfiring massively, MIT concluding that Twitter&#8217;s actions &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mit-twitter-ban-nearly-doubled-the-visibility-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story">nearly doubled</a>&#8221; the visibility of the damaging story. Amid congressional subpoenas and fierce backlash (which Twitter euphemistically called &#8220;significant feedback&#8221;), the platform <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/twitter-reverses-course-following-widespread-outrage-over-censorship-senators-announcing-subpoenas">reversed course</a>.
The actions of the platforms were the most egregious example of news suppression we&#8217;ve seen maybe ever, but even more troubling is the defense of those actions by mainstream media outlets.
On Sunday, the editorial board of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/twitter-and-facebook-were-right-to-suppress-a-biden-smear-but-they-should-tell-us-why-they-did/2020/10/18/e6a6fd36-0fdd-11eb-8a35-237ef1eb2ef7_story.html">The Washington Post</a> — which warns readers on every page that &#8220;democracy dies in darkness&#8221; — penned a shameful defense of Twitter and Facebook&#8217;s impulse to suppress the Biden-damaging story.
&#8220;Twitter and Facebook were right to suppress a Biden smear,&#8221; the headline declares. &#8220;But they should tell us why they did.&#8221;
Having announced to readers that they&#8217;ve concluded before all the facts are in that the New York Post&#8217;s story on the Bidens and Ukraine is a &#8220;smear,&#8221; the editorial board attempts, like Twitter and Facebook, to come up with an explanation for its premature decision that the claims included in the damaging report were &#8220;baseless.&#8221;
<div class="teaser-content">
<section>
&#8220;Last week, Facebook reduced the distribution of a dubious story by the New York Post that smeared Democratic nominee Joe Biden, pending third-party fact-checking. Twitter blocked the URL from being shared altogether,&#8221; the editors explain.
They then pronounce their official approval of the censorship, with some caveats: &#8220;Both platforms made the correct decision to slow what so far seem to be baseless accusations backed up by leaked emails of murky origin — yet the way the sites made that decision matters, too. The confusing and opaque process that accompanied the positive outcome threatens to render pyrrhic any victory over the forces of misinformation and meddling.&#8221;
So Facebook and Twitter were &#8220;correct&#8221; to suppress a major news story about a presidential nominee. The only problem was the &#8220;confusing and opaque process&#8221; by which they suppressed that major story.
The Post&#8217;s complaint about Facebook&#8217;s censorship of the Democrat-damaging story: the social media giant cited &#8220;signals&#8221; of falsehood in the story but, the editorial board admits, &#8220;no one knows what the signals in question are&#8221;&#8230;
</section>
</div>
<div class="remainder-content">
<section>
<blockquote>
Facebook justified its choice according to a year-old policy intended to prevent posts from spreading widely when the site detects “<a title="about.fb.com" href="https://about.fb.com/news/2019/10/update-on-election-integrity-efforts/">signals” of falsehood</a>. This is a smart rule — a sort of circuit-breaker to stop the platform’s own internal mechanics from catapulting a lie to viral status. The problem is that no one knows what the signals in question are: whether they are based on objective measures such as the number of people who reshare a piece and then delete their resharing, or whether they are based on subjective surmises such as the possibility, in this case, that the New York Post article was part of a propaganda campaign against the former vice president. And though Facebook says it has applied this stricture before in sensitive situations, it’s not standard practice.
</blockquote>
Twitter, we&#8217;re assured, was also correct to blackhole a massive story — the only problem was Twitter&#8217;s entire premise for blocking it:
<div>
<blockquote>
Twitter, on the other hand, based its more radical intervention on an entirely distinct standard: a prohibition on the sharing of hacked materials. Critics were quick to ask why this restriction didn’t also apply to the New York Times’s reporting on President Trump’s tax returns, or any number of prizewinning journalistic products from years past. Twitter backtracked, announcing that it will now only remove hacked content directly shared by hackers or accomplices, and that the inclusion of personal details in the New York Post story was actually responsible for the URL-blocking. But Twitter never shared its basis for believing the materials were hacked. And while the site doesn’t have a general policy against misinformation, it strains credulity to imagine that its action had nothing to do with doubting the legitimacy of the story it shut down.
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
Having revealed that their own rationale for defending both platforms is as fundamentally flawed as the platforms&#8217; rationale for blocking the story, the Post&#8217;s editors conclude by showing their hand about what is actually driving their soft rebuke of the platforms: they&#8217;ve opened the door to new &#8220;accusations of anti-conservative censorship.&#8221;
<blockquote>
The contradictions that came with these calls have stirred up a fresh firestorm of accusations of anti-conservative censorship. Allegations of partisan bias in content-moderation decisions have never been borne out by the evidence. Yet it’s much easier to launch such allegations when platforms aren’t clear about precisely what their rules are and precisely how they’re being applied. Twitter would do well to develop a comprehensive misinformation policy; Facebook should better explain how its current misinformation policy actually operates. And both must figure out how their existing policies interact with the concerns about hack-and-leaks haunting the upcoming election. One way of restoring trust in the public sphere is to stem the transmission of untrue tales — but that can create distrust of its own unless it is done forthrightly.
</blockquote>
Democracy indeed dies in darkness, and the Post&#8217;s editorial board is openly calling for more blackouts.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.
</div>
</section>
</div>

Washington Post

Washington Post Editors Defend Twitter, Facebook Suppressing Biden-Damaging Report

Ukraine

In an audacious act of censorship — and what Senate Judiciary Committee members have condemned as “actively interfering&quot; in a presidential election —

Washington Post Editors Defend Twitter, Facebook Suppressing Biden-Damaging Report | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/washington-post-editors-defend-twitter-facebook-suppressing-story-that-damages-biden/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/Washington-Post-.jpg

Between Facebook and Twitter, two reasons have been given to justify their <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/twitter-locks-news-orgs-u-s-officials-reporters-celebrities-for-sharing-bombshell-biden-story">sweeping censorship</a> of the New York Post&#8217;s explosive <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden-tried-to-cash-in-big-with-chinese-firm/">reports</a> about Hunter Biden. We are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54552101">told</a> that the story might be &#8220;misinformation&#8221; and must be fact-checked before it can be posted, and that the alleged damning material reportedly recovered from Hunter Biden&#8217;s laptop was &#8220;obtained without authorization&#8221; and has to be banned so as not to &#8220;incentivize hacking.&#8221;
A number of problems with this reasoning immediately spring to mind. First of all, how can the Post report be both misinformation and the result of hacking? If the alleged email revealing that Hunter set up a meeting between his father and a top executive at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma is fake in some way, then it probably wasn&#8217;t obtained through hacking. If it was obtained through hacking, then it&#8217;s probably not fake. It seems that there is a big difference between &#8220;this information is false&#8221; and &#8220;you have no right to access and publish this information.&#8221; Indeed, these seem like mutually exclusive claims.
More importantly, Facebook and Twitter do not appear to actually have policies banning the publication of misinformation or materials obtained without permission. They may have the policies written somewhere in their terms of service, but these supposed rules only become active realities in very select — and politically convenient — circumstances.
WikiLeaks documents are often the fruits of hacking. President Trump&#8217;s tax returns were illicitly leaked to the press. The Melania Tapes were recorded and released without permission. They also had no news value whatsoever, except to embarrass the First Lady (and failed even in that regard). Dozens of other examples could be offered.
&#8220;Material obtained without permission&#8221; is a category that covers a great many news stories, for better or worse, and also includes some of the biggest and most important scoops in modern history. Yet this is the first time that Twitter or Facebook has locked down the account of a major news outlet for publishing such content and disabled users from viewing or sharing it.
As for misinformation, any consistent policy banning unsourced, dubiously sourced, or flat out false reporting, would have to cover drivel like The Atlantic story alleging that Trump called fallen soldiers &#8220;losers&#8221; and &#8220;suckers.&#8221; There was no compelling evidence that Trump ever said it and many current and former White House officials — including John Bolton, a critic of Trump&#8217;s — went on the record to refute it. But The Atlantic was never flagged, suspended, blocked, or otherwise punished in any way for its report.
Black Lives Matter and its promoters have also never been censored by the social media giants despite using their platforms to spread misinformation on a massive and destructive scale. Going back to the thoroughly debunked &#8220;hands up don&#8217;t shoot&#8221; lie, all the way through the high profile police shootings this summer, BLM consistently passes off its wild assumptions and fabrications as fact, ignoring the evidence or directly contradicting it. The effects of this misinformation are dire, and often take the form of smoldering buildings and looted gas stations. Any effort to tamp down on the propagation of dangerous falsehoods would have to involve severe consequences for BLM and its supporters.
It is obvious that Big Tech does not view all misinformation, or alleged misinformation, as created equal. The kind that advances left wing causes is justified, in their minds. Misinformation (or accurate information, for that matter) becomes bad and harmful only if and when it threatens to interfere with the Left&#8217;s agenda. This is, quite clearly, the real policy of both Facebook and Twitter.
More from Matt Walsh: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-democrats-invent-absurd-reasons-to-oppose-amy-coney-barrett-because-they-cant-be-honest-about-the-real-reason">Democrats Invent Absurd Reasons To Oppose Amy Coney Barrett Because They Can’t Be Honest About The Real Reason</a>
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe"> member</a>.

Censored Twitter

WALSH: Big Tech’s Crackdown On ‘Misinformation’ Doesn’t Seem To Include Any Left-Wing Misinformation

Between Facebook and Twitter, two reasons have been given to justify their sweeping censorship of the New York Post&#039;s explosive reports about Hunter

WALSH: Big Tech’s Crackdown On ‘Misinformation’ Doesn’t Seem To Include Any Left-Wing Misinformation | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/walsh-big-techs-crackdown-on-misinformation-doesnt-seem-to-include-any-left-wing-misinformation/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/Censored-Twitter.jpg

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced on Thursday afternoon that he intends to move forward with an FCC “rulemaking” to clarify the meaning of Section 230 following widespread accusations this week that tech companies are censoring news stories that are damaging to the presidential campaign of Democrat Joe Biden.
&#8220;Members of all three branches of the federal government have expressed serious concerns about the prevailing interpretation of the immunity set forth in Section 230 of the Communications Act,&#8221; Pai said in a statement. &#8220;There is bipartisan support in Congress to reform the law. The U.S. Department of Commerce has petitioned the Commission to ‘clarify ambiguities in section 230.’ And earlier this week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out that courts have relied upon ‘policy and purpose arguments to grant sweeping protections to Internet platforms’ that appear to go far beyond the actual text of the provision.&#8221;
&#8220;As elected officials consider whether to change the law, the question remains: What does Section 230 currently mean? Many advance an overly broad interpretation that in some cases shields social media companies from consumer protection laws in a way that has no basis in the text of Section 230,&#8221; Pai continued. &#8220;The Commission’s General Counsel has informed me that the FCC has the legal authority to interpret Section 230. Consistent with this advice, I intend to move forward with a rulemaking to clarify its meaning.&#8221;
&#8220;Throughout my tenure at the Federal Communications Commission, I have favored regulatory parity, transparency, and free expression,&#8221; the statement concluded. &#8220;Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters.&#8221;
The move by the tech companies to censor reports from the New York Post about the business dealings of Joe Biden&#8217;s son, Hunter Biden, have spurred top officials to accuse those companies of interfering in the U.S. election.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-senators-to-subpoena-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-for-actively-interfering-in-election">said</a>, “We have seen big tech, we’ve seen Twitter and Facebook actively interfering in this election in a way that has no precedent in the history of our country.”
Officials from the Trump campaign, Donald Trump Jr., and other law makers have also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/election-interference-twitter-locks-trumps-campaign-account-adds-warning-label-to-house-gop-government-link">accused</a> the companies of &#8220;election interference.&#8221;
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

US-POLITICS-SENATE-HEARING-FCC

FCC Chairman Begins Taking Action On Section 230 Following Alleged Social Media ‘Election Interference’

Ajit Pai

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced on Thursday afternoon that he intends to move forward with an FCC “rulemaking” to clarify the meaning of Section 230 following widespread accusations this week that tech companies are censoring news stories that are damaging to the presidential campaign of Democrat Joe Biden.

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/fcc-chairman-begins-taking-action-on-section-230-following-alleged-social-media-election-interference/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/Ajit-Pai-1200x800.jpg

Top Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee announced Thursday morning that they will be issuing a subpoena to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey over the social media platform’s censorship of news reports that allege corruption by the family of Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden.
&#8220;In the last two days, we have seen a remarkable development,&#8221; Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said. &#8220;We have seen big tech, we&#8217;ve seen Twitter and Facebook actively interfering in this election in a way that has no precedent in the history of our country. Yesterday, the New York Post broke a story alleging serious corruption of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden concerning Ukraine. The allegations in the New York Post story, if true, indicate that Vice President Biden lied when he said that he had never discussed his son&#8217;s business dealings.&#8221;
&#8220;That story, once the New York Post broke it, was blocked by Twitter and Facebook,&#8221; Cruz continued. &#8220;Anyone who attempted to share was prevented from sharing it on Twitter and Facebook. The New York Post itself, when it attempted to put out its story, was blocked on Twitter and Facebook. The New York Post has the fourth-largest circulation of any newspaper in this country.&#8221;
&#8220;Never before have we seen active censorship of a major press publication with serious allegations of corruption of one of the two candidates for president. That was last night,&#8221; Cruz continued. &#8220;This morning the story escalated and got even worse. The New York Post broke a second story of a series of emails that indicate yet more corruption; in this instance, the Biden family receiving millions of dollars from communist China government officials.&#8221;
“Just minutes ago, I tried to share that story on Twitter and Twitter is actively blocking, right now this instant, stories from The New York Post alleging corruption and the Biden family receiving millions of dollars from communist China,” Cruz continued. “This is election interference and we are 19 days out from an election. It has no precedent in history of democracy. The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to know what the hell is going on. Chairman Lindsey Graham and I have discussed this at length and the Committee today will be noticing a mark-up on Tuesday to issue a subpoena to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next Friday, to come before this Committee and the American people and explain why Twitter is abusing their corporate power to silence the press and to cover up allegations of corruption.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham addressed the media immediately following Cruz’s remarks, noting that the tech companies allowed salacious and unverified allegations from the Steele dossier to be circulated on their platforms.
“All the allegations about Russian collusion and Trump and every other idea that Trump may have done something bad, nobody blocked that,” Graham said. “So, what we’re going to do is we’re gonna finally have an accounting that’s long overdue. These social media platforms have a dominance in our lives, they’re newspapers, they’re tv stations, they’re radio stations, they’re publishers, and this to me crystalizes the problem better than anything I could think of for the American people. You may be a Democrat, saying I don’t want to hear The New York Post, it could be you tomorrow.”
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
WATCH:
Senators <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@tedcruz</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@LindseyGrahamSC</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/HawleyMO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HawleyMO</a> call out Twitter and Facebook for their censorship of The New York Post&#39;s reporting on Joe and Hunter Biden&#39;s corrupt business dealings. 
Tuesday, Senate Judiciary Committee will vote to subpoena Twitter&#39;s Jack Dorsey. <a href="https://t.co/JTU5W3gIug">pic.twitter.com/JTU5W3gIug</a>
&mdash; Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/1316764014811242500?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Senators To Subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey For ‘Actively Interfering’ In Election

Josh Hawley

Lindsey Graham

Top Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee announced Thursday morning that they will be issuing a subpoena to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey over the

Senators To Subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey For ‘Actively Interfering’ In Election | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/breaking-senators-to-subpoena-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-for-actively-interfering-in-election/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/Ted-Cruz-1200x800.jpg

Facebook is limiting the reach of a story from the New York Post showing that Hunter Biden allegedly introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a Ukrainian energy executive a year before the vice president pushed Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor who was then probing the executive’s company.
“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook&#8217;s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone tweeted on Wednesday hours after the story broke. “This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We temporarily reduce distribution pending fact-checker review.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We temporarily reduce distribution pending fact-checker review. <a href="https://t.co/vf3CBvLmjj">https://t.co/vf3CBvLmjj</a>
&mdash; Andy Stone (@andymstone) <a href="https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316423671314026496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The social media company said that restricting the story’s spread on its platform is part of its standard fact-checking process used on some news article to limit “misinformation.” Such fact-checks may take as long as a week to complete before Facebook decides whether to lift restrictions.
On Wednesday, the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/">published</a> an April 17, 2015 email from Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, addressed to Hunter Biden and thanking him for setting up a meeting between Pozharskyi and Vice President Biden. The email was sent roughly a year after Hunter Biden had joined the board of Burisma at a reported salary of $50,000 a month and with no experience working in the energy sector.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent (sic) some time together. It’s realty (sic) an honor and pleasure,” the email says. “As we spoke yesterday evening, would be great to meet today for a quick coffee. What do you think? I could come to you (sic) office somewhere around noon or so, before or on my way to [the] airport.”
The email calls into question previous claims of ignorance made by Joe Biden about his son’s business dealings in foreign countries. In September 2019, the former vice president <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-biden-explodes-when-confronted-his-ukraine-ryan-saavedra">denied</a> ever discussing his son’s overseas business dealings with him.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden told a reporter, Biden added that President Trump should be investigated for “trying to intimidate a foreign leader,” referring to a July 2019 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
At the end of 2015, Vice President Biden, who was leading U.S. diplomatic relations with Ukraine at the time, began pushing the Ukrainian government to take action against Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was then investigating Burisma for alleged corruption. Biden went as far as withholding $1 billion worth of U.S. aid to Ukraine until the Ukrainian Parliament voted to remove Shokin from office in March 2016.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-will-launch-probe-into-emails-allegedly-linking-joe-biden-to-sons-work-with-ukrainian-gas-company">reacted</a> to the New York Post report by announcing that Senate Republicans would launch an investigation into whether former Vice President Biden improperly used his office to help his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Related: <a href="http://dailywire.com/news/watch-ted-cruz-walks-through-the-hunter-biden-joe-biden-ukraine-scandal-timeline-in-detail">WATCH: Ted Cruz Walks Through The Hunter Biden/Joe Biden Ukraine Scandal Timeline In Detail</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Hunter and Joe Biden

Facebook Restricts Bombshell NY Post Report Alleging Hunter Biden Brokered Meeting Between Burisma Exec And Joe Biden

New York Post

Facebook is limiting the reach of a story from the New York Post showing that Hunter Biden allegedly introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden,

Facebook Restricts Bombshell NY Post Report Alleging Hunter Biden Brokered Meeting Between Burisma Exec And Joe Biden | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/facebook-restricts-bombshell-ny-post-report-alleging-hunter-biden-brokered-meeting-between-burisma-exec-and-joe-biden/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/10/Hunter-Biden-Joe-Biden.jpg

Facebook announced Monday that they will be removing content that &#8220;denies or distorts the Holocaust&#8221; in an effort to clamp down on hate speech on the platform.
&#8220;Organizations that study trends in hate speech are reporting increases in online attacks against many groups worldwide, and we continue our efforts to remove it,&#8221; said Monika Bickert, VP of Content Policy, <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/removing-holocaust-denial-content/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">in a statement</a>. Explaining how they have banned more than 250 white supremacist organizations, as well as &#8220;updated our policies to address militia groups and QAnon,&#8221; Bickert claimed Facebook &#8220;took down 22.5 million pieces of hate speech from our platform in the second quarter of this year.&#8221;
&#8220;Following a year of consultation with external experts, we recently banned anti-Semitic stereotypes about the collective power of Jews that often depicts them running the world or its major institutions,&#8221; Bickert continued.
Citing a recent survey that showed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shocking-and-saddening-survey-shows-profound-ignorance-of-holocaust-among-u-s-young-people-including-nearly-20-in-new-york-who-believe-jews-were-responsible" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">nearly a quarter of Americans aged 18-39</a> believed the Holocaust was a myth, Bickert said their decision &#8220;is supported by the well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people.&#8221;
In <a href="https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10112455086578451" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a post on his Facebook page</a>, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in part, &#8220;We&#8217;ve long taken down posts that praise hate crimes or mass murder, including the Holocaust. But with rising anti-Semitism, we&#8217;re expanding our policy to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust as well.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;ve struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust,&#8221; Zuckerberg added. &#8220;My own thinking has evolved as I&#8217;ve seen data showing an increase in anti-Semitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech. Drawing the right lines between what is and isn&#8217;t acceptable speech isn&#8217;t straightforward, but with the current state of the world, I believe this is the right balance.&#8221;
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, praised the social media giant&#8217;s new standard, tweeting, &#8220;this has been years in the making. Having personally engaged with @Facebook on the issue, I can attest the ban on Holocaust Denial is a big deal. Whether it&#8217;s @ADL &amp; #StopHateForProfit&#8216;s insistence, #NoDenyingIt-it doesn&#8217;t matter. Glad it finally happened.&#8221;
&#8220;Relieved that Zuckerberg and Facebook recognize the harm Holocaust Denial causes,&#8221; Greenblatt added. &#8220;Again, I wish this had happened five years ago, three years ago or even earlier this year, but as MLK said: &#8216;The time is always right to do what is right.'&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Relieved that Zuckerberg and Facebook recognize the harm Holocaust Denial causes. Again, I wish this had happened five years ago, three years ago or even earlier this year, but as MLK said: &quot;The time is always right to do what is right.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/cto05hSO6z">pic.twitter.com/cto05hSO6z</a>
&mdash; Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) <a href="https://twitter.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1315693714233266176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 12, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Misinformation regarding the Holocaust is prevalent among younger people, according to a recent survey in all 50 states. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shocking-and-saddening-survey-shows-profound-ignorance-of-holocaust-among-u-s-young-people-including-nearly-20-in-new-york-who-believe-jews-were-responsible" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">As The Daily Wire reported</a>:
<blockquote>A surprisingly high number of young Americans polled nationwide displayed profound ignorance about the Holocaust, with a sizable percentage even believing that Jewish people were responsible for it, according to the <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Millennial-Holocaust-Survey-TOPLINE.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">results of a survey</a> released on Wednesday.
In the <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/millennial-study/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">first-ever survey of young people between 18 and 39 in all 50 states</a> about the topic, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany discovered that nearly two-thirds of those polled did not know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Nearly half could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto. Almost a quarter either did not believe the Holocaust happened, that it was exaggerated, or were unsure. About 12% had not heard about the Holocaust at all, or were unsure if they had.
In a finding that the study described as “particularly disquieting,” nearly 20% of respondents in New York believed that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust, which was the highest percentage in a nation where 11% of young people polled overall believed the same thing.
Another portion of the survey discovered that about half had “witnessed Holocaust denial or distortion on social media,” and 30% had seen Nazi symbols either on social media or in their community.</blockquote>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shocking-and-saddening-survey-shows-profound-ignorance-of-holocaust-among-u-s-young-people-including-nearly-20-in-new-york-who-believe-jews-were-responsible" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">‘Shocking And Saddening’: Survey Shows Profound Ignorance Of Holocaust Among U.S. Young People, Including Nearly 20% In New York Who Believe Jews Were Responsible</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook Bans Holocaust Denial To Fight ‘Alarming Level Of Ignorance’

Holocaust

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook announced Monday that they will be removing content that &quot;denies or distorts the Holocaust&quot; in an effort to clamp down on hate speech on the

Facebook Bans Holocaust Denial To Fight ‘Alarming Level Of Ignorance’ | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/facebook-bans-holocaust-denial-to-fight-alarming-level-of-ignorance/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/02/4EE0A65F-2A65-40DD-AD65-C38E8AB631FB-scaled-e1602547479395.jpeg

We had plenty of suspicions about social media platforms long before “The Social Dilemma” dropped on Netflix. The streamer’s new documentary breaks down even more reasons to distrust social media behemoths. Be afraid. Be very afraid. But, of course, be suspicious of any Hollywood product purporting to tell the unvarnished truth. “The Social Dilemma” is no exception.
The docudrama, and we’ll get to that descriptor in a moment, begins with a chilling quote from Sophocles: “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.”
The film introduces us to former big tech employees who fled their respective companies after their Spider Senses started to tingle. Or, to be more accurate, began ringing like a fire alarm in “The Towering Inferno.”
Something is deeply wrong behind the scenes, and they could no longer be part of the problem.
These young, articulate ex-tech employees share how Silicon Valley’s noble intentions turned toxic before their eyes.
And ours.
“We were naïve about the flip side of the coin,” one ex-worker explains about social media’s promise to make a better future for its users.
From there, it’s a compendium of shocking reveals about how social media works and why we can’t stop consuming it. It’s socially addictive, for starters, and the algorithms tracking our every click ensure it stays that way.
It’s fascinating to see how social media works from the inside, how it preys upon human weakness and works overtime to inflame partisan divides.
Any casual Twitter user could tell you the same, but to see it broken down by the experts is eye-opening.
It’s a massive topic given social media’s tentacles in modern society, and the film only has 90 or so minutes to share its dire warnings. Yet a large chunk of that screen time is dedicated to a fictional family’s digital lifestyle. Professional actors like Skyler Gisondo (“Booksmart,” the “Vacation” remake) act out social media’s negative effects in clunky, oh, so obvious ways. Far better is seeing how Big Tech insiders struggle to keep their own families from staring at their smart phones for hours a day.
The fictional asides prove an atrocious creative decision, especially when we hunger for more hard data, more tools, to fight against social media overreach.
And it is a fight, one to protect our children, our families and, the movie alleges, our democracy, we&#8217;re told.
“The Social Dilemma” strains to be apolitical and mostly succeeds. Liberals should fear our digital overlords as much as rock-ribbed conservatives. Yet the film can’t help but tease themes from a progressive point of view.
Climate Change comes up frequently, and the documentary resurfaces the “Pizzagate” conspiracy, a favorite topic among liberals.
The film’s quiet biases are the most glaring during a foray into social media’s governmental powers. We’re told Facebook swayed an entire election and sent thousands of persecuted Muslims to flee their native Myanmar. Social media, we’re told, could do the same in other nations, even developed western cultures.
You know what’s coming next.
An ominous close up of Russian President Vladimir Putin, brought up in connection to America’s 2016 elections. “The Social Dilemma” slams on the brakes before it dons Hillary Clinton’s Tinfoil Hat, but the suggestions are both obvious and poorly defended.
The spectre of Fake News gets serious consideration here, with experts showing how it thrives on various platforms. It’s too much for any one documentary to connect those concerns with the Fake News churned out from The New York Times and other august news outlets, but their absence here is telling.
When the documentary shreds the “disinformation for profit” business model, it&#8217;s criminal not to name check CNN. It’s still notable how users of social media giants glom onto conspiracy theories and the people who adore them.
The solutions to our digital concerns, of course, aren’t easily found. The toothpaste is out of the proverbial tube, and it’s impossible to erase Twitter, Snapchat, and other platforms with the snap of our fingers.
Big government regulation is essential, we’re told, much like the old Ma Bell phone company eventually felt the government’s boot for our collective good. Again, this part of the film needs more structure, more detail.
“The Social Dilemma” is an important watch despite its glaring flaws. We all need to know what we’re up against when we carelessly scroll through the platforms.
“The Social Dilemma” ends with experts sharing small, but valuable, tips to take back control of your life. It suggests a cultural component missing from our lives, but one that’s sorely needed in our educational system.
Social Media 101: What to Do and What to Avoid in Your Online World.
Without it, parents and family members alike are on their own with only intriguing but also flawed documentaries like “The Social Dilemma” as their guide.
More from Christian Toto: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-dem-director-shreds-immigration-narrative-targets-biden-in-new-doc">Dem Director Shreds Immigration Narrative, Targets Biden In New Doc</a>
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Social media

REVIEW: ‘The Social Dilemma’ Paints Scary Picture Of Platforms, Flirts With Left-Wing Conspiracies

Instagram

Netflix

We had plenty of suspicions about social media platforms long before “The Social Dilemma” dropped on Netflix. The streamer’s new documentary breaks down

REVIEW: ‘The Social Dilemma’ Paints Scary Picture Of Platforms, Flirts With Left-Wing Conspiracies | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/review-the-social-dilemma-paints-scary-picture-of-platforms-flirts-with-left-wing-conspiracies/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/06/5530BA7F-63A8-4D8E-97E9-3DE4B1520C4B-scaled.jpeg

This week, Facebook censored several ads from right-leaning organizations over faulty and misleading fact checks. In one example, however, a fact checker went beyond labeling an ad misleading and suggested it contained “a prediction we can’t fact-check.”
The ad was from the American Principles Project PAC, which spent $4 million on a campaign featuring an ad alleging incumbent Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would “destroy women’s sports” if they were elected. The ad centered around the so-called Equality Act, which among other things would allow biological men to compete in women’s sports. This, the ad said, would take away from female athletes “a fair shot at competition, at a scholarship, at a title, at victory.&#8221;
There is ample evidence for such concern, rooted in biology. Women simply can’t compete against men in sports, hence the need for separate women’s sports leagues. The Daily Wire has reported on numerous examples of biological men identifying as women excelling in women’s sports, such as the MMA fighter who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-male-trans-mma-fighter-who-beat-up-women-dubbed-bravest-athlete-in-history">fractured the skull</a> of a biologically female opponent. Or the trans athlete who won the women’s world cycling competition for the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trans-athlete-wins-womens-world-cycling-competition-again-slams-transphobic-critics">second year in a row</a>. Such disparities have led to a lawsuit in Connecticut filed by three high school female athletes who have lost opportunities due to trans women competing against them.
“Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), were denied opportunities to compete at higher levels as boys took home the prizes,” The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/boys-competing-with-girls-won-track-meets-the-girls-just-filed-a-lawsuit-in-federal-court">reported</a>. “CIAC’s policy allowed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-two-transgenders-blow-out-girls-state-meet-hank-berrien">two males to compete in girls’ athletic competitions</a> beginning in the 2017 track season. Those boys have taken 15 women’s state championship titles (titles held in 2016 by nine different Connecticut girls) and have taken more than 85 opportunities to participate in higher level competitions from female track athletes in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons alone.”
Yet left-wing fact-checker PolitiFact deemed the ad to be “missing context” and attempting to “mislead people.”
As Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Center <a href="https://www.frc.org/updatearticle/20200916/facebook-asterisk">wrote</a>, the “‘missing context’ PolitiFact thought the ad should include was opinions in favor of the transgender push to destroy women&#8217;s sports.”
“Evidently, they think all conservative candidates should give their opponents airtime in ads they pay for within 60 days of the election. And it seems they thought the ad might ‘mislead people’ to vote for candidates who oppose the radical Equality Act,” Perkins continued.
PolitiFact found no actual errors in the ad but admitted the ad’s “specific criticism is &#8230; a prediction we can&#8217;t fact-check.&#8221;
Every political ad should come with these labels if PolitiFact maintained this standard. Yet Facebook eventually banned the ad after first appending fact-check labels to it.
This isn’t the first ad to receive dubious fact-check warnings on Facebook this week. As The Daily Wire’s John Bickley <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-censors-pro-trump-ad-on-biden-raising-taxes-after-fact-checker-admits-claim-may-be-true-rules-mostly-false-anyhow">reported</a>, an ad explaining that Biden would raise taxes “on all income groups” received a “mostly false” rating from PolitiFact despite the outlet acknowledging the claim was, in fact, true.
Biden actually said, “If you elect me, your taxes are going to be raised, not cut,” and said his plan would affect “all income groups.”
PolitiFact acknowledged that “some tax experts estimate that Biden’s plan would mean higher taxes on average for all income groups,” yet still gave it a “mostly false” rating because the ad didn’t give enough “context” to Biden’s claim. The “context,” PolitiFact wanted was for the ad to say that Biden’s tax hikes would affect high-earners far more than others. Another tax-focused ad from America First &#8212; which published the Biden tax ad &#8212; was also censored.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Facebook Censors Ad About Joe Biden Allowing Men To Participate In Women’s Sports, PolitiFact Says It Can’t Fact Check Future

PolitiFact

Transgender

This week, Facebook censored several ads from right-leaning organizations over faulty and misleading fact checks. In one example, however, a fact checker

Facebook Censors Ad About Joe Biden Allowing Men To Participate In Women’s Sports, PolitiFact Says It Can’t Fact Check Future | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/facebook-censors-ad-about-joe-biden-allowing-men-to-participate-in-womens-sports-politifact-says-it-cant-fact-check-future/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/GettyImages-1228265271.jpg

Amid pressure from left-wing activists and media outlets to clamp down on “misinformation” from the right, Facebook has begun censoring political ads that receive negative fact-checks — fact-checks that are produced by mostly left-leaning fact-checkers and that mostly target right-leaning ads. In at least two new cases, these fact-checks do not actually check facts — they instead merely state that factually true claims are &#8220;missing context,&#8221; then downgrade the ads.
The danger of this political speech-silencing policy by the social media giant — which nearly <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/16/facts-about-americans-and-facebook/">70%</a> of Americans use and where more than 40% read their news — is on full display in the case of the censoring of the pro-Trump 30-second political ad “Too Risky.”
The ad launched on Aug. 4 before getting slapped with a “mostly false” rating by PolitiFact and subsequently blocked by Facebook the next month. The ad directly quotes Biden declaring, “If you elect me, your taxes are going to be raised, not cut,” and warns that his plan will raise taxes “on all income groups.”
<iframe title="Too Risky (NC)" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P7XhHjCnZj8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The overarching problem of curbing political speech aside, was America First actually guilty of pushing a “mostly false” message in the ad? No. And to confirm this, we need look no further than the very fact check that resulted in the silencing of the pro-Trump organization.
The fact check actually reveals in its first few paragraphs that its own rating is wrong. First, it openly acknowledges that experts have concluded that Biden’s plan will result in higher taxes in all income groups. “[S]ome tax experts estimate that Biden’s plan would mean higher taxes on average for all income groups,” the fact-checker admits.
So how does PolitiFact rationalize its “mostly false” rating? The fact-checker subjectively accuses the PAC of not giving the audience for the 30-second ad enough “context” and giving the wrong “impression” about what Biden meant.
PolitiFact then assures the reader, the “biggest earners” will be harder hit by Biden’s plan than lower income groups, whose increases “would be relatively small.”
In other words, PolitiFact uses a Democratic talking point about the rich paying more in an attempt to distract from the fact that the ad’s claim is actually true.
Here’s how the fact check begins (emphasis added):
<blockquote>A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7XhHjCnZj8">new ad</a> from a pro-Trump super PAC uses out-of-context footage of Joe Biden to claim that the former vice president wants to raise taxes for Americans across the board.
Versions of the ad from America First Action <a href="https://www.a1apac.org/news/america-first-action-launches-new-anti-biden-ads-in-pa-wi-and-nc/">began airing</a> Aug. 4 on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AmericaFirstAction/videos/2932530136855645">Facebook</a> and on TV screens in Wisconsin and North Carolina. They focus largely on a comment Biden made in response to a voter during a February campaign stop in South Carolina.
But the America First Action ad presents that remark out of context. And while some tax experts estimate that Biden’s plan would mean higher taxes on average for all income groups, those increases would be relatively small for all but the biggest earners.</blockquote>
In its attempt to argue that the ad is “mostly false,” PolitiFact specifically cites a “Biden campaign official” as supposed evidence of the Democrat’s intent (emphasis added):
<blockquote>The full exchange shows that Biden was saying his plan would raise taxes for people who, in his words, &#8220;benefited from&#8221; the GOP’s <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1/titles">Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017</a>. A Biden campaign official said his point was that the wealthy — not all Americans — would not benefit from his plan.
The ad’s portrayal of the exchange leaves a different impression.</blockquote>
The fact check goes on to make a similarly flimsy case against the ad’s inclusion of Biden warning that his tax increases could “go higher.&#8221; The supposed evidence of this being “mostly false” is the following full quote from Biden:
<blockquote>&#8220;We should charge people the same tax for their capital gains as their tax rate is,&#8221; Biden said. &#8220;And I think we should raise the tax rate back to, for example, I take it back to where it was before it was reduced. It could go higher.&#8221;</blockquote>
This isn’t the only ad by America First that’s been censored by Facebook for a left-leaning fact-check. A similar <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3460609543995217">tax-focused ad</a> by the organization was hit recently with an unfavorable rating as was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AmericaFirstAction/posts/1056808834779418">an ad</a> featuring Kamala Harris commenting on racial unrest.
America First told The Daily Wire that they are fighting back, with their legal team currently drafting legal letters to both PolitiFact and Factheck.org “challenging their bogus, politically driven ‘fact checks.’&#8221;
“We are going to ask them to revise their ratings based on the actual facts,” America First Communications Director Kelly Sadler told The Daily Wire. “Someone needs to fact check the fact checkers.”
As for Facebook blocking one of the most fundamental of constitutionally protected rights during the most crucial of times, a presidential election, Sadler said, “Facebook&#8217;s ‘fact checking’ system is broken, it relies on 22-year-old wannabe Democratic campaign staffers masquerading as arbiters of the truth. The American public deserves to hear from both sides, and unfortunately, only Republican voices seem to be silenced by Silicon Valley.”
America First is not the only conservative organization censored by the platform. In another recent case, Facebook <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/facebook-axes-political-ad-saying-trans-athletes-will-destroy-girls-n1240262">censored an ad</a> by the conservative American Principles Project that stated that the Democrat-backed Equality Act allowing transgender athletes will “destroy girls sports” because the ad was “<a href="https://twitter.com/approject/status/1305902971264344066">missing context and could mislead people</a>.” The censorship was imposed despite PolitiFact openly admitting in its review of the ad that the claim is “<a href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/sep/15/ad-watch-peters-supports-ending-discrimination-bas/">a prediction we can&#8217;t fact-check</a>.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Here’s the notice we received from Facebook. <a href="https://t.co/xWHqlWCBk3">pic.twitter.com/xWHqlWCBk3</a>
&mdash; American Principles (@approject) <a href="https://twitter.com/approject/status/1305902971264344066?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Facebook Censors Pro-Trump Ad After Fact-Checker Admits Claim May Be True

Amid pressure from left-wing activists and media outlets to clamp down on “misinformation” from the right, Facebook has begun censoring political ads that

Facebook Censors Pro-Trump Ad After Fact-Checker Admits Claim May Be True | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/facebook-censors-pro-trump-ad-on-biden-raising-taxes-after-fact-checker-admits-claim-may-be-true-rules-mostly-false-anyhow/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/02/GettyImages-1193665396.jpg

In a report published on Tuesday, The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/turning-point-teens-disinformation-trump/2020/09/15/c84091ae-f20a-11ea-b796-2dd09962649c_story.html">smeared</a> conservative activists, likening them to &#8220;Russian bots&#8221; and a Macedonian &#8220;troll farm&#8221; for posting pro-Trump and conservative content online from their own accounts, in coordination with Turning Point USA marketing partner Rally Forge.
The Post, ironically railing against so-called election interference, boasted Tuesday about prompting social media giants like Twitter and Facebook to ban the young Arizona-based politicos&#8217; accounts:
<blockquote>In response to questions from The Post, Twitter on Tuesday suspended at least 20 accounts involved in the activity for “platform manipulation and spam.” Facebook also removed a number of accounts as part of what the company said is an ongoing investigation.</blockquote>
There is no evidence presented by the Post or otherwise that the accounts are in fact &#8220;bots.&#8221;
The young conservatives used their real names and personal accounts—or pseudonyms to protect themselves from bullying and harassment—posting pro-Trump, conservative, and lockdown-skeptical content online for months.
Moreover, numerous Democrat organizations engage in the same message-pushing outlined in the Post report, noted Breitbart <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/09/16/washpost-compares-pro-trump-teenagers-to-russian-trolls-gets-them-banned-from-social-media/">reporter</a> Allum Bokhari.
Here are a just a couple of the examples highlighted by Bokhari:
<blockquote>The <a class="x5l" href="https://archive.is/0ZOR5" target="_blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer">Texas Democrat Party</a> is currently advertising for a “deputy digital organizing director” who will “Recruit and manage an in-state volunteer digital captains program to develop, curate, and distribute grassroots-generated content in support of Democrats up and down the ticket.”
The <a class="x5l" href="https://archive.is/EVGmN" target="_blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer">South Carolina Democrat</a> party is currently recruiting a “digital organizing manager,” who will “develop volunteer communities via Facebook, Slack, and/or other online platforms.”</blockquote>
“Comparing American conservative teenagers to Russian bots is, in and of itself, the height of misinformation by the mainstream media,” said a spokesman for Students for Trump, which contracted Rally Forge. “They should be ashamed. It’s beyond ridiculous at this point.”
Paige Noonan, one of the young conservative activists, pushed back against the Post.
“I love this job,&#8221; she said, according to Breitbart. &#8220;It’s a great environment and I actually have fun with it — I am grateful I have a job during corona[virus].”
“It’s sick that the Washington Post and Twitter are working together to take away my right to free speech” she added.
“It’s stupid and dumb,” said activist Brent Hamilton. “They call us ‘Russian bots,’ which we’re obviously not. We’re American and Arizonan, writing about what we believe in.”
Hamilton had his account banned from social media following the Post&#8217;s pushback regarding the conservatives to big tech companies.
Turning Point Action field director Austin Smith issued a statement in response to the report, too. “This is sincere political activism conducted by real people who passionately hold the beliefs they describe online, not an anonymous troll farm in Russia,&#8221; he said.
<div>
“Like everyone else, Turning Point Action’s plans for nationwide in-person events and activities were completely disrupted by the pandemic,” Smith added. “Many positions TPA had planned for in field work were going to be completely cut, but TPA managed to reimagine these roles and working with our marketing partners, transitioned some to a virtual and online activist model.”
</div>
<a href="https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/09/16/washpost-compares-pro-trump-teenagers-to-russian-trolls-gets-them-banned-from-social-media/">H/t</a> Allum Bokhari 
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

President Donald Trump Addresses Conservative Political Action Conference

Washington Post Gets Conservative Teens Banned From Social Media, Flagged As ‘Troll Farm.’ Teens Hit Back

Turning Point USA

In a report published on Tuesday, The Washington Post smeared conservative activists, likening them to &quot;Russian bots&quot; and a Macedonian &quot;troll farm&quot; for

Washington Post Gets Conservative Teens Banned From Social Media, Flagged As ‘Troll Farm.’ Teens Hit Back | The Daily Wire

https://editorial.dailywire.com/news/washington-post-gets-conservative-teens-banned-from-social-media-flagged-as-troll-farm-teens-hit-back/

https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/09/GettyImages-923440366.jpg

Menu