No, Facebook is NOT “Private,” Their Censorship Arm is Government Funded

in #news6 years ago

 “Facebook is a private company and can delete any pages they want,”  has been repeated ad nauseam since Alex Jones was wiped from its  platform. While it is certainly true that a private company can and  should be able to choose who they associate with, the idea that Facebook  is private is not accurate. 

For this reason, the recent purge of  hundreds of alternative media sites, including the Free Thought Project, was not only questionable, but unconstitutional. In May, after Americans were successfully whipped into a tizzy of  Russian hacking and meddling, along with the fake news hysteria, the  Americans begging for censorship craze came to a head when Facebook  partnered with the Atlantic Council. 

Facebook announced that it partnered with the arm of the council,  known as the Digital Forensic Research Lab that was brought on to help  the social media behemoth with “real-time insights and updates on  emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world.”

 Apparently, Free Thought Project was one of those threats. Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council, so what, right? They  can do whatever they want and hire outside third parties to help them  police the platform they own, right? 

Yes, this is correct. However, the Atlantic Council is funded by government. The Atlantic Council is the group that NATO uses to whitewash wars  and foster hatred toward Russia, which in turn allows them to continue  to justify themselves. It’s funded by arms manufacturers like Raytheon,  Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. It is also funded by billionaire oligarchs  like the Ukraine’s Victor Pinchuk and Saudi billionaire Bahaa Hariri. 

The list goes on. The highly unethical HSBC group — who has been caught numerous times laundering money for cartels and terrorists —  is listed as one of their top donors. They are also funded by the  pharmaceutical industry, Google, the United States, the US Army, and the  Airforce. The “think tank” Facebook partnered with to make decisions on who  they censor is directly funded by multiple state actors — including the  United States — which voids any and all claims that Facebook is a wholly  “private actor.”   It gets worse. 

The Atlantic Council wields massive influence over mainstream media  too, which is why when this partnership was announced, no one in the  mainstream press pointed it out as the Orwellian idea that it is.  Instead, headlines such as “US think tank’s tiny lab helps Facebook battle fake social media(Reuters)” and “Facebook partners with Atlantic Council to improve election security (The Hill)” were put out to spin the fact that a NATO propaganda arm is now censoring the information Americans see on Facebook. 

They have even been caught engaging in the creation of actual fake news and no one in the mainstream has called them out on it. As Bryan MacDonald so aptly noted,  some of the stuff the Atlantic Council itself gets away with serves to  show its power over the mainstream media. 

For instance, when Ben Nimmo, a  one-time NATO press officer, and Atlantic Council board member, himself  ludicrously insisted grammar mistakes were “proof” that social media users critical of NATO were paid Kremlin trolls, and later when he smeared a  British man by labeling him a Russian bot, the popular press didn’t  bother to question whether he was a fit and proper person for Facebook  to engage as a censor. 

Even after the victim appeared on Sky News to  prove he was a real person. Thus, what should have been a warning of the  dangers of DFR Lab was essentially ignored. 

At the time, after Nimmo, instead of apologizing, wrote “interesting to see the real face of Ian56789, rather than the David Gandy one, at last (referring to his Twitter avatar). Not a troll factory account. Rather, a pro-Kremlin troll(definition  based on [sic] use of someone else’s picture, systematic use of Kremlin  narratives, and repetitive abusive behaviour),” WikiLeaks was the sole voice of reason, and challenged the lobbyist. 

You  literally produced, with money from weapons companies and  dictatorships, a fake news story that spread all over the world,  defaming a very British retiree, who wants to reduce arms company  profits, as a Kremlin bot,” they wrote“So who’s the paid troll?”   

This is the group Facebook is now taking direction from in regard to  who is allowed to post information on their platform. The Atlantic  Council has been proven to create fake news to slander people who have  an antiwar stance in an effort to keep their pro-war weapons companies  in the black. It is utter insanity. 

However, in today’s information war,  it is to be expected. Caitlan Johnstone, who has been a champion of calling out this censorship since the start, also pointed out several other reasons why Facebook is anything but “private.” 

Has not Facebook been inviting US government-funded groups to help regulate its operations, vowing on the Senate floor to do more to facilitate the interests of the US government, deleting accounts at the direction of the US and Israeli governments, and handing the guidance of its censorship behavior over to the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from  the US government, the EU, NATO and Gulf states? How “private” is that?  Facebook is a deeply government-entrenched corporation, and Facebook  censorship is just what government censorship looks like in a  corporatist system of government.

Indeed, unless we fight back in the form of sharing information  deemed “wrong think” by the censors, this problem will only continue to  get worse. We must continue to alert our fellow humans to this  censorship before it becomes the norm. We must use this recent purge as  our Streisand moment and turn this massive and blatant act of censorship  around as a tool to expose the tyrants behind it. Make no mistake, October 11, 2018 marked the day the battle over information became a war. If you are not on our email list, please sign up here. If you’d like to subscribe to our site to aid in the battle against the censors and receive special perks along the way, you can do so at this link.  We are also working with the folks from minds.com and have created a  platform on their uncensored network as well. You can follow us at this link.  We have been on Steemit as well. And Instagram too. We are also in meetings with software developers who are building a  platform that government will never be able to touch. Stay tuned for  more information on this move. 

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The truth is that social media is becoming a weapon to manipulate public opinion. And the public opinion is the most valuable asset in a democracy.

Great post!
Thanks for tasting the eden!

You got a 26.34% upvote from @brupvoter courtesy of @discernente!

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Google was also a DARPA project too, and to my understand still receive large sums of money from tax payers.

of course it's not private, you just need to read their privacy & policy and decide for yourselves. I personally benefit from using the platform and don't have nothing to hide from NSA. They maybe make some cash off of me from showing me ads, although I'll never buy nothing from facebook ads. It is a tool that can be used for good. I also think Zuckerberg's intentions are good. He's a good guy and a mentor (not idol) for me regarding business.

fucking hell. youre a tool.

Facebook in particular has been trying to dance on the head of the pin between being a platform for free speech and a publisher... They want to be a free speech platform because it allows them liability protection, but they also want censorship, which makes them publishers and makes them liable for the content.

Nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide; that was the mantra of the nazis... consider that for a moment.

Zuckerbergs intentions is NOT good... I'm sorry that you haven't been able to recognize this.

The premise that it's a private corporation is still true regardless of who it choose to do business with. It doesn't change it's status and becomes a public entity simply because it's choice is to engage a public entity to do various tasks.

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absolutely. if he had banged on about how it was actually formed (think its called inQtel or something) he would have an argument but this whole thing just sounds like butthurt. of course facebook is evil, but we dont need to point to its funding, that is irrelevant really. the mass psychological effect which anyone with a brain can see is what is wrong with it and the fact that it goes against basic principles of computing that nobody seems to notice. e.g. if i have a photo on my computer and i want to show my friends, why transfer the image to another server when people can just log into mine ? i believe personally that when something is used by so much of the human race, having one person controlling it is against the human races best interests. it should be forced to be public owned. lets face it its not like fuckerberg hasnt made enough cash out of it. imagine if the ad revenue was instead given to causes the users vote on, it could transform communities. they make billions from that bullshit website, those billions really belong to the users, they created all the content!

Yeah but you cannot force any private entity to become a public entity. All you can do is create a clone that's public.

The CIA created Fakebook by funding it. This makes it a government agency. Despite the claims of propagandists that they are a private company, the fact is that they are a propaganda/surveillance agency of US/global intelligence services.

That makes censorship and indoctrination of Americans unconstitutional on Fakebook and other corporations, like Goolag.

There's a very good reason for opposing psychological operations intent on subverting delegative democratic government. Only an informed citizenry can exert control over their government. When disinformation, misinformation, and censorship impedes the ability of the electorate to know and understand their world and the policies of government, then that ability to control shifts to government agents.

Examples of government controlling people abound, and exemplify horrors like genocide, tyranny, and terrorism. Allowing government agencies to pretense of private action opens the floodgates of those horrors upon the American people, and if semantics or disagreement as to facts are all that impede opposing such despotic harm, then we should make every effort to resolve our differences that we can prevent those evils.

Government funding of a public forum creates obligation of that forum to conform to lawful restrictions on government, or there are no restrictions on government in fact.

That's not how government agencies are created. In spite of who funded it, exactly like Lockheed Martin Corporation who's number one customer is the government, they aren't a State Owned Company.

Facebook or Google can censor who they want for whatever reason they want. They never agreed to the Constitution, did they?

A citizen works for the government, is provided privileges and is expected to perform duties, and in such a relationship of Employee-Employer there's little to no room for the former to make demands upon the later. The only difference between a citizen and an agent of the government is that one is directly employed by the state while the other is simply considered a servant of the state, meaning the compensation is in form of "privileges".

The lawful restrictions on government only work when you're talking about actual lawful government and not a bankrupted Governmental Service Corporation like the US Congress and US inc who's predecessors were equally bankrupted and who was NEVER anything other than a Private, For Hire, Governmental Service Corporation.

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"A citizen works for the government, is provided privileges and is expected to perform duties, and in such a relationship of Employee-Employer there's little to no room for the former to make demands upon the later. "

The Federalist Papers, various American authors and contemporaries of the founders of the American republic utterly disagree, and the legal foundations of the USA and it's states do as well. It is government - the agreement of individuals undertaking their own governance - that is the servant of those people.

The legal theory proceeds: individuals are inherently endowed with rights. Insofar as they agree, they delegate their authority to do so, and this service is called government.

I completely agree that corruption has utterly voided any lawful authority once delegated US government presently. Also, I note that neither I, nor any other American, has signed any compact or agreement delegating our lawful authority to that entity, and so retain our personal rights and responsibilities to govern ourselves.

I will agree to disagree as to the privacy of Fakebook et al... Regardless of how one parses the facts of their genesis, censorship and propaganda are the enemy of free peoples, and whether you want to rectify the corruption of governmental abuse of power, or relegate those propaganda mills to the cesspit of history, if you post and comment here, where we can speak freely without being banned or our content deleted (except by whales - which seem presently to not be intent on such acts), we are acting to resist censorship, propaganda, and promote the free communication of ideas that is the foundation of liberty and free society.

Thanks!

There's no such thing as the American Republic, there are 50 Republics joined together in a Confederation.

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Also the Federal Government has stopped being lawful the moment it overstepped it's limitations, specifically when it denied the sovereign States the right to secede over 150 years ago.

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Read the Federal Farmer essays, and recognize that one cannot be both citizen and sovereign.

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well, actually you are wrong there, its called nationalising. how is it possible someone can make such a stupid comment as this ? are you 10 years old ? you really have never heard of nationalising ?

We're still talking about the states correct and not some socialist country in Europe.

Nationalization is the process of transforming private assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets or assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being transferred to the state.

Show me one example where a company was FORCED to become State Operated.

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you really should have googled that first. lol. we are not still talking about your shitty country because i wasnt talking about your POS country in the first place, i was just talking generally. you insular fucks make me laugh. you think the world is the usa. you know fuck all, you dont even know european countries are not generally socialist but your type of mindset doesnt care about facts, despite the fact your country would have probably imploded had it not been for the socialist policies of 1933-36 (new deal). try getting a passport, you need more experience of the world because you are stupid.

from : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nationalizations_by_country

1917: Merck & Co. seized by the government during the war, later became a private company, separate from the original Merck Group operating outside of the US.
1917: All U.S. railroads were operated (but not owned) by the Railroad Administration during World War I as a wartime measure. Railroads were returned to private control in 1920.
1918: The U.S. telephone system was nationalized on July 31, 1918, and placed under control of the Post Office department. It was returned to private ownership on July 31, 1919.[70]
1939: Organization of the Tennessee Valley Authority entailed the nationalization of the Tennessee Electric Power Company.
1971: The National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) is a government-owned corporation created in 1971 for the express purpose of relieving American railroads of their legal obligation to provide inter-city passenger rail service. The (primarily) freight railroads had petitioned to abandon passenger service repeatedly in the decades leading up to Amtrak's formation.
1976: The Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) was created to take over the operations of six bankrupt rail lines operating primarily in the Northeast; Conrail was privatized in 1987. Initial plans for Conrail would have made it a truly nationalized system like that during World War I, but an alternate proposal by the Association of American Railroads won out.
1980s: Resolution Trust Corporation seized control of hundreds of failed Savings & Loans.
2001: In response to the September 11 attacks, the airport security industry was nationalized and put under the authority of the Transportation Security Administration.
2008: Some economists consider the government's takeover of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and Federal National Mortgage Association to have been nationalization (or renationalization).[71][72] The conservatorship model used with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is looser and more temporary than nationalization.[73]
2009: Some economists consider the government's actions through the Troubled Asset Relief Program with regards to Citigroup to have been a partial nationalization.[74] Proposal was made that banks like Citigroup be brought under a conservatorship model similar to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that some of their "good assets" be dropped into newly created "good bank" subsidiaries (presumably under new management), and the remaining "bad assets" be left to be managed under the supervision of a conservatorship structure.[73] The government's actions with regard to General Motors in replacing the CEO with a government-approved CEO is likewise being considered as nationalization.[75][76] On June 1, 2009, General Motors filed for bankruptcy, with the government investing up to $50 billion and taking 60% ownership in the company. President Barack Obama stated that the nationalization was temporary, saying, "We are acting as reluctant shareholders because that is the only way to help GM succeed"[77]

i think you would rather give money with no return than nationalise something because you are stupid. your country subsidises the fuck out of everything and you still bleat on about the free market. if you think throwing away money to private business is better than nationalising something i cant help you. not that i want to, i wouldnt piss on you if you were on fire.

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The purge began subtly a few years ago. I was following the Bundy ranch standoff and they suddenly stopped showing them in my feed. They did make sure however to continue placing every single stupid meme anyone I knew was posting.

I am sorry that they did this to you and many others, however having said that, many like myself closed their accounts after they were caught giving our information to that analytica group, and I am guessing that with each move like this they lose more of their user base.

Now here is my question for those who think the so called right is concerned about this. Why haven't they created their own echo site to rival what Fakebook is doing? Of course, what is called the right today is to the left of where Democrats used to be about 45+ years ago.

At the end of the day, those of us who find your work interesting will continue to find you. It will be the newer people trying to make a following that will have to rethink the platforms they use to do so.

Get ready for the second wave of the purge I'm hearing a lot of people claim they are getting notices on their pages about being unpublished on Facebook and literally nothing works for me on YouTube right now. #PoliceState #Censorship #Fascism

I am late to the party is seems, but I heard something very valuable a while back. I can't recall who said it, but it is nonetheless true.

Always think about what the product is and who the users are. If you aren't paying for a product, chances are you are the product.

InQTel, a CIA front, was integral in funding and shaping Fakebook from the get go. Goolag as well.

Make no mistake, Big Tech is Big Brother, and censorship of Americans by American government is ongoing and getting worse by the day on all the platforms funded by InQTel/CIA, as well as those infiltrated by their agents, all the enemedia like WaPo, NYT, etc...

Thanks!