As Eugene Volokh notes, the Supreme Court today reinstated a trial court preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Texas’ social media law. This reverses a 2-1 Fifth Circuit court of appeals ruling lifting the injunction and ensures that the law cannot go into effect as the appeals process proceeds. Among other things, the law in question bars major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter from imposing almost any content-based restrictions on the material users are allowed to post on their sites.
Eugene and Will Baude have useful commentary about various aspects of this ruling. I would add the point that, while this is not a final decision on the merits, it strongly suggests that at least five Supreme Court justices believe the law is unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment.
One of the criteria for granting a preliminary injunction in federal court is that the plaintiff must prove they are likely to succeed on the merits. The five justices who voted to reinstate the preliminary injunction – Chief Justice Roberts, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Barrett – are well aware of this fact. They almost certainly would not have voted as they did unless they believe the law is indeed likely to be unconstitutional.
Obviously, they also must have concluded that the case meets the other standards for a preliminary injunction. As Judge Robert Pitman explained in the trial court ruling granting the injunction, these are that the plaintiff must show “he is likely to suffer irreparableharm in the absence of preliminary relief, that the balance of equities tips in his favor, and that an injunction is in the public interest.”
It’s also possible that one or more of the dissenting justices also might ultimately conclude that the law is unconstitutional. Justice Elena Kagan dissented without opinion. Thus, we don’t know which factor the plaintiffs failed to prevail on. It could be she thinks they are wrong on the merits. But it could also be she concluded they fall short on one of the other three requirements.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissent joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. That dissent does indeed focus on likelihood of success. But significantly, it does not conclude that Texas is actually likely to prevail, merely that the plaintiffs haven’t met their burden because “I have not formed a definitive view on the novel legal questions that arise from Texas’s decision to address the ‘changing social and economic’ conditions it perceives.” Alito suggests, therefore, that he is uncertain about the right outcome here. Thus, it is possible that one or more of these justices could also rule in favor of the plaintiffs if the Court ever decides to address this issue on the merits.
Such a vote in favor of the plaintiffs is unlikely in the case of Justice Clarence Thomas, who has previously expressed sympathy for the argument that the government can treat social media firms as “common carriers” required to post virtually any content without discrimination. But it is more plausible for Alito and Gorsuch, neither of whom joined Thomas’ 2021 concurring opinion expressing that view.
I have previously argued that the Texas law and others like it do indeed violate the First Amendment, and would pose a grave threat to freedom of speech if upheld (see also here for my critique of the common carrier theory). I agree with Judge Pitman’s analysis in his ruling against the Texas law, and with the recent Eleventh Circuit appellate ruling against Florida’s similar legislation. The Eleventh Circuit decision was authored by Judge Kevin Newsom, a conservative Trump appointee.
While today’s Supreme Court ruling is far from the end of the litigation over these issues, it sends a strong signal that the Court is likely to strike down laws like those enacted by Texas and Florida, should they ever take a case addressing these issues. And there is a good chance the issue will indeed eventually get to the Supreme Court, if lower appellate courts end up being divided on it. It’s an obviously important cutting-edge constitutional question, and the justices are unlikely to allow a circuit split on it to persist for long.
As Eugene Volokh notes, the Supreme Court today reinstated a trial court preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Texas’ social media law. This reverses a 2-1 Fifth Circuit court of appeals ruling lifting the injunction and ensures that the law cannot go into effect as the appeals process proceeds. Among other things, the law in question bars major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter from imposing almost any content-based restrictions on the material users are allowed to post on their sites.
Eugene and Will Baude have useful commentary about various aspects of this ruling. I would add the point that, while this is not final decision on the merits, it strongly suggests that at least five Supreme Court justices believe the law is unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment.
One of the criteria for granting a preliminary injunction in federal court is that the plaintiff must prove they are likely to succeed on the merits. The five justices who voted to reinstate the preliminary injunction – Chief Justice Roberts, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Barrett – are well aware of this fact. They almost certainly would not have voted as they did unless they believe the law is indeed likely to be unconstitutional.
Obviously, they also must have concluded that the case meets the other standards for a preliminary injunction. As Judge Robert Pitman explained in the trial court ruling granting the injunction, these are that the plaintiff must show “he is likely to suffer irreparableharm in the absence of preliminary relief, that the balance of equities tips in his favor, and that an injunction is in the public interest.”
It’s also possible that one or more of the dissenting justices also might ultimately conclude that the law is unconstitutional. Justice Elena Kagan dissented without opinion. Thus, we don’t know which factor the plaintiffs failed to prevail on. It could be she thinks they are wrong on the merits. But it could also be she concluded they fall short on one of the other three requirements.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissent joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. That dissent does indeed focus on likelihood of success. But significantly, it does not conclude that Texas is actually likely to prevail, merely that the plaintiffs haven’t met their burden because “I have not formed a definitive view on the novel legal questions that arise from Texas’s decision to address the ‘changing social and economic’ conditions it perceives.” Alito suggests, therefore, that he is uncertain about the right outcome here. Thus, it is possible that one or more of these justices could also rule in favor of the plaintiffs if the Court ever decides to address this issue on the merits.
Such a vote in favor of the plaintiffs is unlikely in the case of Justice Clarence Thomas, who has previously expressed sympathy for the argument that the government can treat social media firms as “common carriers” required to post virtually any content without discrimination. But it is more plausible for Alito and Gorsuch, neither of whom joined Thomas’ 2021 concurring opinion expressing that view.
I have previously argued that the Texas law and others like it do indeed violate the First Amendment, and would pose a grave threat to freedom of speech if upheld (see also here for my critique of the common carrier theory). I agree with Judge Pitman’s analysis in his ruling against the Texas law, and with the recent Eleventh Circuit appellate ruling against Florida’s similar legislation. The Eleventh Circuit decision was authored by Judge Kevin Newsom, a conservative Trump appointee.
While today’s Supreme Court ruling is far from the end of the litigation over these issues, it sends a strong signal that the Court is likely to strike down laws like those enacted by Texas and Florida, should they ever take a case addressing these issues. And there is a good chance the issue will indeed eventually get to the Supreme Court, if lower appellate courts end up being divided on it. It’s an obviously important cutting-edge constitutional question, and the justices are unlikely to allow a circuit split on it to persist for long.
The single most-overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of our society is the fact that immensely powerful people are continuously working to manipulate the thoughts we think about the world. Whether you call it propaganda, psyops, perception management or public relations, it’s a real thing that happens constantly, and it happens to all of us.
And its consequences shape our entire world.
This should be at the forefront of our attention when examining news, trends and ideas, but it hardly ever gets mentioned. This is because the mass-scale psychological manipulation is succeeding. Propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening.
To be clear, I am not talking about some kind of wacky unsubstantiated conspiracy theory here. I am talking about a conspiracy fact. That we are propagandized by people with authority over us is not seriously in dispute by any well-informed good faith actor and has been extensivelydescribed and documented for many years.
More than this, the managers of the US-centralized empire which dominates the west and so much of the rest of the world have straightforwardly shown us that they propagandize us and want to propagandize us more. They have shown us with their actions, and they have at times come right out and told us with their words.
It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media are meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.
But it only got worse from there.
2. Intelligence operatives now just openly working in the media
The CIA Used To Infiltrate The Media. Now The CIA Is The Media.
“This isn’t Operation Mockingbird. It’s so much worse. Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something *to* the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting *as* the media.”https://t.co/mFwHob0MFC
Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The Washington Post has consistently refused to disclose the fact that its sole owner has been a CIA contractor when reporting on US intelligence agencies as per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price, Rick Francona, Michael Morell, John McLaughlin, John Sipher, Thomas Bossert, Clint Watts, James Baker, Mike Baker, Daniel Hoffman, David Preiss, Evelyn Farkas, Mike Rogers and Malcolm Nance, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.
Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any meaningful separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.
3. Richard Stengel’s CFR remarks on propaganda
At a Council on Foreign Relations forum about “fake news,” former Editor at Time Magazine Richard Stengel directly states that he supports the use of propaganda on American citizens – then shuts the session down when challenged about how propaganda is used against the third world pic.twitter.com/ClAT5POv7G
— William Craddick (@williamcraddick) May 11, 2018
Former US State Department official and Time Magazine editor Richard Stengel expressed full-throated support for the use of propaganda on both foreign and domestic audiences during a 2018 event organized by the supremely influential think tank Council on Foreign Relations.
“Basically every country creates their own narrative story,” Stengel said. “My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist. I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”
Interestingly, years earlier during his time at the US State Department under the Obama administration Stengel actually provided his own definition of what precisely he means by the word “propaganda”, and it’s not nearly as innocuous as he made it sound for his CFR audience.
“Propaganda is the deliberate dissemination of information that you know to be false or misleading in order to influence an audience,” Stengel wrote in 2014.
Those are two mighty interesting positions for an empire manager to hold at the same time, especially one who just served on the presidential transition team of the current president.
4. US officials telling the press they’re circulating disinfo about Russia to win an information war against Putin
US Officials Admit They’re Literally Just Lying To The Public About Russia
“And the only plausible reason I can think of that they would want the public to know about it is that they are confident the public will consent to being lied to.”https://t.co/mYBJ4kQhk8
Last month NBC News released a report citing multiple anonymous US officials who said the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out “intelligence” about Russia’s plans in Ukraine that is “low-confidence” or “based more on analysis than hard evidence”, or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.
The report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin’s advisors misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.
So they lied. They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true, and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in the western world.
That this happened while the mass media is continually churning out reports warning the public about the dangers of “disinformation” is an irony that was lost on almost everybody.
5. Senators telling Silicon Valley representatives it’s their job to manipulate public thought to prevent dissent
Friendly reminder that last year representatives of Google/Youtube, Facebook and Twitter were instructed on the floor of the US Senate that it is their responsibility to “quell information rebellions” so as to “prevent the fomenting of discord.”https://t.co/X4Hc56fH0k
In 2017 representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter were called before the Senate Judiciary Committee and told they must “quell information rebellions” and were instructed to come up with a mission statement expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord” on their platforms.
“We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America,” the tech giants were told by think tanker and former FBI agent Clint Watts, who added, “Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced — silence the guns and the barrage will end.”
When monopolistic billionaire corporations are faced with demands from a legislative body that could easily make their lives a lot harder and a lot less profitable by taking action, up to and including major antitrust cases, they are being made an offer they can’t refuse. This was made abundantly clear by Senator Dianne Feinstein during the 2017 hearings in her threat to intervene if those corporations failed to curtail the spread of unauthorized information online.
“You have to be the ones who do something about it — or we will,” Feinstein told the online platforms.
6. The Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board”
Patriot Act co-author, former DHS secretary, surveillance porn addict, & Russiagate hoax spreader Michael Chertoff will be overseeing the review of the Ministry of Truth
You can’t make this shit uphttps://t.co/IeAelhFy3m
The Department of Homeland Security’s hotly controversial Disinformation Governance Board, which critics have not-unfairly labeled a government-run Ministry of Truth, has “paused” its operations pending a review in light of public outcry. That review will be headed by corrupt imperial swamp monsters MichaelChertoff and Jamie Gorelick, of all people.
No government entity has any business appointing itself the authority to sort information from disinformation on behalf of the public, because government entities are not impartial and omniscient deities who can be entrusted to serve the public as objective arbiters of absolute reality. They would with absolute certainty wind up drawing distinctions between information, misinformation and disinformation in whatever way serves their interests, regardless of what’s true, exactly as any authoritarian regime would do.
Whatever happens with that review we may be sure that the board’s mission will continue, either under its current name or under some other more carefully disguised iteration. The empire is expressing far too much enthusiasm for greater and greater control over public thought to just let this one slip past.
In December of 2012 the US congress passed a revision of the Smith-Mundt Act as part of the 2013 NDAA which critics said ended restrictions that were put in place to prevent the government from propagandizing US citizens.
The legislation was first highlighted in a BuzzFeed News article by journalist Michael Hastings, who the following year would die in a rather suspicious car wreck while reportedly working on a major story.
“It removes the protection for Americans,” an unnamed Pentagon official told Hastings. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”
Hastings’ report sparked online controversy, with many agreeing with his analysis of what would become known as the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 and others saying concerns were unfounded. Either way, with all that’s happened over the last ten years, it’s clear now that Americans were right to be worried about a dramatic escalation in domestic propaganda.
8. Reagan’s Psychological Operations
Robert Parry shows how three decades ago the US began an operation to flood the world with psyops, https://t.co/xXRRRufsBS
The late Robert Parry wrotenumerousarticles for Consortium News about the Reagan administration’s operations of mass-scale psychological manipulation, which related directly to Parry’s extensive work on the Iran-Contra affair during that time.
Parry described how Reagan and his neocon goons were obsessed with countering the public war-weariness and distrust of US interventionism which followed the Vietnam War in order to gain more consent for the depraved agendas the administration was working to roll out in Latin America. Central to this goal of consent-manufacturing, which the White House called “public diplomacy” in public and “perception management” in private, was a particularly odious-sounding spook named Walter Raymond Jr.
During his Iran-Contra deposition, Raymond explained the need for this propaganda structure, saying: “We were not configured effectively to deal with the war of ideas.”
One reason for this shortcoming was that federal law forbade taxpayers’ money from being spent on domestic propaganda or grassroots lobbying to pressure congressional representatives. Of course, every president and his team had vast resources to make their case in public, but by tradition and law, they were restricted to speeches, testimony and one-on-one persuasion of lawmakers.
But things were about to change. In a Jan. 13, 1983, memo, NSC Advisor Clark foresaw the need for non-governmental money to advance this cause. “We will develop a scenario for obtaining private funding,” Clark wrote. (Just five days later, President Reagan personally welcomed media magnate Rupert Murdoch into the Oval Office for a private meeting, according to records on file at the Reagan library.)
As administration officials reached out to wealthy supporters, lines against domestic propaganda soon were crossed as the operation took aim not only at foreign audiences but at U.S. public opinion, the press and congressional Democrats who opposed funding the Nicaraguan Contras.
9. Canadian military leaders using Covid regulations as an opportunity to test out psyop techniques on civilians
Sad that a tragedy like COVID was used to test Canadians’ reaction to fear propaganda. I hope we didn’t lay down our freedoms at the alter of gov created fear, segregation, & hatred. Was that the purpose of the secret military op, testing our malleability? https://t.co/IPtx8eVa7u
Last year Ottawa Citizen reported that the Canadian military used the Covid outbreak as an excuse to test actual military psyop techniques on its own civilian population under the pretense of assuring compliance with pandemic restrictions.
Some excerpts:
“Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test out propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public, a newly released Canadian Forces report concludes.”
“The plan devised by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, also known as CJOC, relied on propaganda techniques similar to those employed during the Afghanistan war. The campaign called for ‘shaping’ and ‘exploiting’ information. CJOC claimed the information operations scheme was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic and to bolster government messages about the pandemic.”
“A separate initiative, not linked to the CJOC plan, but overseen by Canadian Forces intelligence officers, culled information from public social media accounts in Ontario. Data was also compiled on peaceful Black Lives Matter gatherings and BLM leaders.”
“’This is really a learning opportunity for all of us and a chance to start getting information operations into our (CAF-DND) routine,’ the rear admiral stated.”
“Yet another review centred on the Canadian Forces public affairs branch and its activities. Last year, the branch launched a controversial plan that would have allowed military public affairs officers to use propaganda to change attitudes and behaviours of Canadians as well as to collect and analyze information from public social media accounts.”
“The plan would have seen staff move from traditional government methods of communicating with the public to a more aggressive strategy of using information warfare and influence tactics on Canadians.”
So empire managers are not just employing mass-scale psychological operations on the public, they’re testing them and learning from them.
10. The US government funding “independent” media in Ukraine
White House fact-sheet says part of the mammoth $33 billion spending package it’s requesting for Ukraine will be to “support independent media.” Because nothing screams “independent” like being directly funded by the US Government as part of its “information warfare” initiative pic.twitter.com/O3JshV1Mg9
Lastly, there’s the fact that the infamous $40 billion proxy war package sent to Ukraine includes funds allocated to “Counter Russian disinformation and propaganda narratives, promote accountability for Russian human rights violation, and support activists, journalists, and independent media to defend freedom of expression.”
So information warfare. The US government is funding information warfare to manipulate public perception of this war and running cover for those manipulations by calling them activism, journalism, and independent media.
Given that the mainstream western press have been uncritically reporting even the most outlandish stories coming out of Ukraine without a shred of evidence, we can expect this government-funded propaganda to spread throughout the western world.
* * *
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These Are The Best (& Worst) Months For Stock Market Gains
Many investors believe that equity markets perform better during certain times of the year.
Is there any truth to these claims, or is it superstitious nonsense? Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu investigates the issue using data gathered by Schroders, a British asset management firm.
What the Data Says
This analysis is based on 31 years of performance across four major stock indexes:
FTSE 100: An index of the top 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange (LSE)
MSCI World: An index of over 1,000 large and mid-cap companies within developed markets
S&P 500: An index of the 500 largest companies that trade on U.S. stock exchanges
Eurostoxx 50: An index of the top 50 blue-chip stocks within the Eurozone region
The percentages in the following table represent the historical frequency of these indexes rising in a given month, between the years 1987 and 2018. Months are ordered from best to worst, in descending order.
There are some outliers in this dataset that we’ll focus on below.
The Strong Months
In terms of frequency of growth, December has historically been the best month to own stocks. This lines up with a phenomenon known as the “Santa Claus Rally”, which suggests that equity markets rally over Christmas.
One theory is that the holiday season has a psychological effect on investors, driving them to buy rather than sell. We can also hypothesize that many institutional investors are on vacation during this time. This could give bullish retail investors more sway over the direction of the market.
The second best month was April, which is commonly regarded as a strong month for the stock market. One theory is that many investors receive their tax refunds in April, which they then use to buy stocks. The resulting influx of cash pushes prices higher.
Speaking of higher prices, we can also look at this trend from the perspective of returns. Focusing on the S&P 500, and looking back to 1928, April has generated an average return of 0.88%. This is well above the all-month average of 0.47%.
The Weak Months
The three worst months to own stocks, according to this analysis, are June, August, and September. Is it a coincidence that they’re all in the summer?
One theory for the season’s relative weakness is that institutional traders are on vacation, similar to December. Without the holiday cheer, however, the market is less frothy and the reduced liquidity leads to increased risk.
Whether you believe this or not, the data does show a convincing pattern. It’s for this reason that the phrase “sell in May and go away” has become popularized.
Key Takeaways
Investors should remember that this data is based on historical results, and should not be used to make forward-looking decisions in the stock market.
Anomalies like the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 can have a profound impact on the world, and the market as a whole. Stock market performance during these times may deviate greatly from their historical averages seen above.
Regardless, this analysis can still be useful to investors who are trying to understand market movements. For example, if stocks rise in December without any clear catalyst, it could be the famed Santa Claus Rally at work.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said on Tuesday that the United States is planning on “cooperation” between its National Guard and Taiwan’s military amid mounting threats from communist China.
The announcement comes as China, which wants to claim the self-ruled island as its own, has stepped up its military harassment of Taiwan in recent years.
Last week, China’s military organized military drills in the sea and air spaces surrounding Taiwan, a move it described as a “solemn warning” to Washington against its “collusion” with the liberal democratic island.
Col. Shi Yi, a spokesperson for the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army, said the regime’s military conducted “multi-service joint combat readiness patrol” and “actual combat drills” near Taiwan, according to a May 25 statement.
The warning came after U.S. President Joe Biden angered the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing when he said in a May 23 statement that America would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan if it was attacked, stating that it was the “commitment we made.”
U.S. officials said there had been no change to the longstanding U.S. policy toward Taiwan known as “strategic ambiguity” under which the administration has remained intentionally ambiguous on the subject of whether the United States would defend Taiwan, should it be invaded by the CCP.
President Tsai Ing-wen met with visiting U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) at her office in Taipei this week, and noted that Duckworth was one of the main sponsors of the Taiwan Partnership Act, aimed at developing a partnership between the National Guard and Taiwan as a means of maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability.
The Act has received bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress but has yet to become law.
“As a result, the U.S. Department of Defense is now proactively planning cooperation between the U.S. National Guard and Taiwan’s defence forces,” Tsai said, without providing further details.
“We look forward to closer and deeper Taiwan-U.S. cooperation on matters of regional security,” Tsai added.
Duckworth and 51 other senators sent a letter to Biden in mid-May, calling for Taiwan to be included in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam have signed up to be part of the IPEF initiative, however, Taiwan was not included in the IPEF last week.
Tsai said on Tuesday that the island will keep expressing its willingness to participate.
“In the near future, we look forward to Taiwan and the United States working together in taking new steps to develop concrete plans that further deepen our economic partnership.”
During Duckworth’s visit to Taiwan, dozens of Chinese warplanes entered its air defense zone and were scrambled by Taiwan’s military jets.
When it comes to content moderation, it turns out, Silicon Valley is a lot tougher on the Libs of TikTok than on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Instagram just suspended the Libs of Tiktok account, I report, while a recent Brookings study shows that the Chinese government’s narratives are polluting Google and Bing search results on a regular basis. Google News and YouTube do the worst job of keeping the Chinese party line out of searches. Both Google News and YouTube return CCP-supportive links on the first page about a quarter of the time.
I ask Sultan Meghji to shed some light on the remarkable TerraUSD cryptocurrency crash. Which leads us, not surprisingly, from massive investor losses to whether financial regulators have jurisdiction over cryptocurrency. The short answer: Whether they have jurisdiction or not, all the incentives favor an assertion of jurisdiction, so buckle up. And Nick Weaver is with us in spirit when we flag his rip-roaring attack on every bit of cryptocurrency – a don’t-miss-it interview for readers who can’t get enough of Nick.
Matthew breaks down the $150 million fine paid by Twitter for allowing ad targeting of the phone numbers its users supplied for two-factor authentication (2FA) security purposes.
You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
When it comes to content moderation, it turns out, Silicon Valley is a lot tougher on the Libs of TikTok than on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Instagram just suspended the Libs of Tiktok account, I report, while a recent Brookings study shows that the Chinese government’s narratives are polluting Google and Bing search results on a regular basis. Google News and YouTube do the worst job of keeping the Chinese party line out of searches. Both Google News and YouTube return CCP-supportive links on the first page about a quarter of the time.
I ask Sultan Meghji to shed some light on the remarkable TerraUSD cryptocurrency crash. Which leads us, not surprisingly, from massive investor losses to whether financial regulators have jurisdiction over cryptocurrency. The short answer: Whether they have jurisdiction or not, all the incentives favor an assertion of jurisdiction, so buckle up. And Nick Weaver is with us in spirit when we flag his rip-roaring attack on every bit of cryptocurrency – a don’t-miss-it interview for readers who can’t get enough of Nick.
Matthew breaks down the $150 million fine paid by Twitter for allowing ad targeting of the phone numbers its users supplied for two-factor authentication (2FA) security purposes.
You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
YouTube CEO Reassures Davos Elites That They Will Continue To Control The Narrative
Yet another story out of Davos that went mostly unnoticed by the mainstream, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki addressed issues of “misinformation” on the internet at the WEF forum and how the content platform plans to deal with it.
As we all know, the concept of “misinformation” is treated arbitrarily by Big Tech corporations according to whatever narrative corporate oligarchs and governments want to push at the time. If you are confused as to what they consider misinformation to be, just take any fact, piece of evidence or opinion that’s contrary to the mainstream narrative of the day and assume it is now “misinformation.” It’s as simple as that.
We saw this with painful clarity throughout the covid fear campaign of the past two years. Any discussions on medical facts that did not support the CDC, the WHO or Anthony Fauci’s assertions that we should be living in terror were swiftly removed from social media. In the meantime, corporate legacy media outlets were pushed the forefront and widely promoted despite their lack of audience support.
The acceptable narrative was this – The masks work, the lockdowns work, the vaccines work, and vaccines passports are necessary and justified. If you tried to point out that the evidence showed any or all of these claims were false, you were probably censored or blocked by a Big Tech platform or two.
If you pointed out that the Level 4 virology lab in Wuhan China is the most likely source of the Covid-19 virus, then you were probably censored. If you pointed out that Anthony Fauci and his cohorts funded gain of function research on covid at the Wuhan Lab, then you were accused of spreading “misinformation.” If you pointed out that the average vaccine is tested for 10-15 years while the covid mRNA vaccines were barely tested at all before release, then you were probably blocked for “misinformation.” All of these things are considered facts or are greatly supported by hard evidence today, but two years ago they were labeled misinformation on YouTube.
And what about the Biden Laptop story? Oh yeah, that was called “misinformation” too, even though it was indeed a concrete fact.
Wojcicki has left little doubt that despite YouTube being caught numerous times mislabeling the truth as misinformation, the company will continue on the same exact path and serve establishment interests.
The CEO suggested at the Davos conference this past week that the platform would work harder to remove incentives for the publishing of “misinformation.” The WEF made this query during the interview:
WEF: “So it sounds like, bury, to the extent that you can, things that are not credible sources and don’t recommend. But it also still sounds like a work in progress, do you think it always will be a work in progress?”
Wojcicki: “I think there’ll always be work that we have to do because there will always be incentives for people to be creating misinformation…The challenge will be to keep staying ahead of that…I think there’ll always be work. But after all this work that we have put in, this has been a huge initiative for us for at least over, you know, five, six years. I think we’ve come a long way. And I would challenge you if you go and you look and you do a search or you look at your home page in terms of what you’re seeing when it comes to sensitive topics, you’re going to see them coming from more authoritative sources.”
Beyond the suppression of alternative media sources with inconvenient facts, Wojcicki noted that the terms of service for YouTube would adapt to events. Despite the fact the YouTube still allows Russian news to operate on the site, the narrative could still be molded, suggesting that criticism of the Ukraine narrative could now be considered a violation.
Wojcicki: “…What we saw was if there was denial or trivialization associated with the conflict, with the war in Ukraine, that would also become a violation. So, the first and most important thing for us was to really focus on the responsibility, figure out how we could be good players in making sure that users can get authoritative and the right information. And what we’re really seeing in this conflict is that information does play a key role, that information can be weaponized.”
Of course, the weaponization of information is exactly what social media platforms including YouTube have been engaged in lately. This can be done through suppression of honest sources as much as censorship.
As the legacy media continues to falter and lose its audience to the alternative media, the establishment narrative must be encouraged by some other means. Big Tech platforms have taken up the propaganda mantle, asserting that information must now be filtered by the “authorities” instead of being allowed to spread freely. According to YouTube and other companies, average people are not capable of deliberating on data and information themselves and coming to their own conclusions. This is apparently too dangerous to allow.
But who determined that Big Tech corporations are qualified to dictate what is factual and what is misinformation? No one voted for them to do the job and very few people want them to do the job. According to polls, around 75% of Americans do not trust social media to make fair content moderation decisions. While 63% of people say they support the “removal of misinformation,” most people could not agree on what misinformation actually is. In the minds of establishment bureaucrats and Big Tech, they are the one’s that decide what it is. In other words, label the truth a threat and then offer to be a moderator for that threat, and in doing so gain power from thin air.
When it comes to content moderation, it turns out, Silicon Valley is a lot tougher on the Libs of TikTok than on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Instagram just suspended the Libs of Tiktok account, I report, while a recent Brookings study shows that the Chinese government’s narratives are polluting Google and Bing search results on a regular basis. Google News and YouTube do the worst job of keeping the Chinese party line out of searches. Both Google News and YouTube return CCP-supportive links on the first page about a quarter of the time.
I ask Sultan Meghji to shed some light on the remarkable TerraUSD cryptocurrency crash. Which leads us, not surprisingly, from massive investor losses to whether financial regulators have jurisdiction over cryptocurrency. The short answer: Whether they have jurisdiction or not, all the incentives favor an assertion of jurisdiction, so buckle up. And Nick Weaver is with us in spirit when we flag his rip-roaring attack on every bit of cryptocurrency – a don’t-miss-it interview for readers who can’t get enough of Nick.
Matthew breaks down the $150 million fine paid by Twitter for allowing ad targeting of the phone numbers its users supplied for two-factor authentication (2FA) security purposes.
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The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
