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https://nordictimes.com/tech/zuckerberg-biden-administration-forced-us-to-censor-vaccine-criticism/

Tech

Zuckerberg: Biden administration forced us to censor vaccine criticism

Internet censorship

Published 11 January 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Mark Zuckerberg says it was Biden's team that forced Facebook to censor vaccine criticism.
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In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says it was the Biden administration that forced the company’s platforms to censor posts criticizing the experimental COVID-19 vaccines.

The conversation covered several topics, but one that stood out was when Zuckerberg talked about government censorship and how the outgoing administration forced the tech company to weed out uncomfortable opinions – even if they were completely true.

– This hit the most extreme. I’d say it was during the Biden Administration when they were trying to roll out the vaccine programme. Now I’m generally pretty pro rolling out vaccines, I think on balance the vaccines are more positive than negative but I think that while they’re trying to push that program they also tried to censor anyone who was arguing against it.

– They pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly true. I mean, they basically pushed us and said, ‘You know anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you need to take down’ , the billionaire explained in the interview, claiming he opposed this demand.

According to Zuckerberg, representatives of the Biden administration contacted him personally and demanded that posts highlighting the side effects of the mRNA vaccine be deleted.

“That’s ridiculous“

Referring to the investigation, and the committee set up to look into the Biden administration’s censorship, Mark Zuckerberg went on to say that government representatives called and yelled at Meta’s team, demanding that various posts, even of a humorous nature, be deleted immediately.

– It just got to this point where we were like, no, we’re not gonna take down true things. That’s ridiculous… We’re not going to take down humor and satire.

According to Zuckerberg, his alleged refusal to comply with the Biden administration’s censorship demands also led the government to begin attacking his company through various pronouncements and government investigations.

– It was brutal, he claims.

With the departure of the Biden administration and the arrival of the Trump administration, the Facebook founder says it is high time to “restore freedom of expression” on platforms that were previously subject to widespread and arbitrary censorship, and where dissent was often effectively banned.

– We will go back to our roots, they say.

“Criminal censorship”

Not everyone finds Zuckerberg’s claims particularly credible, however. For example, author David Icke, an early critic of mass vaccination programs, points out that he was censored and suspended from Facebook back in 2020 when Donald Trump was president.

“They are all at it – letting Zuckerberg’s criminal censorship be whitewashed to bring him into the MAGA fold while Biden takes the blame”, he writes.

Editorial Staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

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https://nordictimes.com/tech/facebook-stops-fact-checking-too-much-censorship/

Tech

Facebook stops fact-checking: “Too much censorship”

Internet censorship

Published 8 January 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Mark Zuckerberg himself has been a driving force in censoring dissidents and other dissenters on Meta's platforms.
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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta, announces that it will stop fact-checking posts on both platforms and move to a user-driven system.

Zuckerberg also blames politicians and the media for forcing such widespread censorship, saying it is now time to “restore freedom of expression“.

– We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the US, the billionaire states in a video clip.

He also admits that Trump’s election win played a big role in the decision, while criticizing “governments and legacy media” for pressuring the company to “censor more and more”.

– The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.

The Facebook CEO also acknowledges that the sophisticated systems created to moderate the platforms do not work well and lead to an unreasonable censorship of content that does not violate any rules at all.

– The problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that’s millions of people, and we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.

“A trade-off”

Some content guidelines will also be removed, for example on immigration and LGBT issues. This is interpreted as meaning that in future it will be possible to discuss these topics more freely and to hold dissenting views – without risking being suspended or censored as easily as before.

The content filter will also be modified, it says, and set so that posts are not deleted as easily and arbitrarily as before.

– The reality is that this is a trade-off. It means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down, Zuckerberg continues.

In recent years, censorship on Facebook has been extremely widespread and it has often been difficult to discuss political or other topics without risking censorship. According to analysts, the reason for Meta’s reversal is that Mark Zuckerberg wants to improve relations with President-elect Donald Trump and his administration.

Trump himself has been banned from both Facebook and Instagram for years – but was welcomed back this summer when it became clear that he would again be the Republican presidential candidate.

Editorial Staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

https://nordictimes.com/tech/russian-media-blocked-on-telegram-in-sweden/

Tech

Russian media blocked on Telegram in Sweden

Internet censorship

Published 30 December 2024
– By Editorial Staff
It is unclear whether the media channels have been blocked in all EU countries.
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The messaging service Telegram has previously been presented as a more privacy- and free speech-friendly alternative to the services provided by major American tech companies.

However, censorship has now started to increase there as well, and several Russian media outlets have recently been blocked in Sweden and several other EU countries.

These include the state news agency Ria, the TV channels Rossiya 1, Pervyj Kanal and NTV, and the newspapers Izvestiya and Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

Users in Sweden who try to access the media’s Telegram channels are prevented from doing so and are instead met with an error message stating that the channels cannot be shown because they violate local legislation.

It is unclear whether the Russian media are blocked on Telegram across the European Union – but it is clear that they cannot be accessed in Poland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy and the Czech Republic either.

“An informational iron curtain”

It should also be noted that several of the media outlets now blocked by Telegram have previously been banned, blocked or sanctioned by EU powers for allegedly being under the “permanent direct or indirect control” of the Kremlin and playing a “essential and instrumental” role in the war in Ukraine.

Senator Alexei Pushkov, who heads the Russian media policy committee in the Federation Council, is highly critical of the censorship, drawing parallels with the Cold War.

– I believe that the blocking of the RIA Novosti Telegram channel and other Russian mass media, including Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta in a number of EU countries, is a continuation of the effort to create an informational iron curtain between Europe and Russia, he says, according to Russian state channel RT.

CEO arrested in France

RT also had all its Telegram accounts blocked across the EU shortly after the Ukraine war started in 2022.

This summer, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was also arrested and detained by French police, accused of not doing enough to prevent criminals from using his platform and told that he risks being held personally liable for the crimes others commit on Telegram.

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov. Photo: facsimile/Tucker Carlson/YT

Shortly thereafter, Durov also promised that Telegram would become a “safer place,” while the service quietly updated its FAQ. Promises that chats were private and that data would not be shared with outsiders were replaced with instructions on how users can report “suspicious” messages.

Critics were quick to point out that it is not only criminal actors who risk being removed from the platform but also accounts belonging to political dissenters or other voices that Western leaders may want to silence.

Editorial Staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

https://nordictimes.com/world/meta-admits-to-large-scale-censorship/

World

Meta admits to large-scale censorship

Internet censorship

Published 4 December 2024
– By Editorial Staff
According to critics, the arbitrary censorship on Facebook has made it difficult to have long discussions at all.
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Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta, admits that moderation on the company’s platforms today is far too strict and that content is constantly deleted even though it does not violate any rules at all.

According to Clegg, moderation’s “error rates are still too high” and he claims that it now wants to “improve the precision and accuracy with which we act on our rules”, reports The Verge.

– We know that when enforcing our policies, our error rates are still too high, which gets in the way of the free expression that we set out to enable. Too often, harmless content gets taken down, or restricted, and too many people get penalized unfairly, he continues.

The Meta chief also claims to be remorseful about how Meta very aggressively censored users’ posts related to COVID-19, which, according to Mark Zuckerberg, was largely due to pressure from the Biden administration.

– We had very stringent rules removing very large volumes of content through the pandemic. No one during the pandemic knew how the pandemic was going to unfold, so this really is wisdom in hindsight. But with that hindsight, we feel that we overdid it a bit. We’re acutely aware because users quite rightly raised their voice and complained that we sometimes over-enforce and we make mistakes and we remove or restrict innocuous or innocent content, he continues.

Extreme censorship

When Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt, photos and videos of the incident went viral on Facebook – but were also censored on a massive scale, which is just one of countless examples of what critics have described as politically motivated censorship.

A large number of words and terms are also effectively banned on Facebook today, and the arbitrary and extensive censorship has, according to critics, made it difficult to have any lengthy discussions about, for example, politics or news events.

It is unclear whether censorship will continue on the same scale as before during Trump’s presidency, and although the president-elect recently met with Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta has not yet made any major known changes to its content rules.

Editorial Staff
editorial@nordictimes.com

https://nordictimes.com/world/meta-censors-billionaires-flight-habits/

World

Meta censors billionaires’ flight habits

Internet censorship

Published 23 October 2024
– By Editorial Staff
Sometimes one private jet isn't enough – Bill Gates, for example, owns four.
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Meta has deleted a number of accounts on Instagram and Threads that map the private jets of multi-billionaires and their travel patterns. The company argues that the elite risk violence if the public knows their whereabouts.

Accounts that publicized the travel around the world of power players such as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have been deleted, and Meta claims that the decision was taken to protect the billionaires’ safety. The company states that the publication of the jets’ travel risks causing “physical harm” to the celebrities and further violates Meta’s privacy policy.

“Given the risk of physical harm to individuals, and in keeping with the independent Oversight Board’s recommendation, we’ve disabled these accounts for violating our privacy policy”, a Meta spokesperson stated in an email to TechCrunch.

Previous posts with links tracking flights by presidential candidate Donald Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis and certain pop culture celebrities have also been deleted, and anyone trying to click on them is instead met with an error message that the link may be broken or the page may have been removed.

Jack Sweeney is a Florida student who was banned from X (formerly Twitter) two years ago after mapping and posting Elon Musk’s air travel, and now he’s banned from Instagram.

Anonymized registration information

As recently as May, US President Joe Biden signed a law allowing private aircraft owners to anonymize their registration information, but Sweeney says it is still very easy to track “high-profile individuals” – not least through tips from other flight-tracking enthusiasts.

Censorship measures are a heated topic on social media, with some arguing that even billionaires deserve privacy and freedom from surveillance. Others counter that, since they often travel to meet with leaders, expand their influence, and attend events impacting the lives and futures of citizens, transparency should take precedence.

Some also highlight the fact that it is often multi-billionaires and other celebrities with private jets who urge people to stop traveling and consuming for the sake of the climate, while their own travels frequently generate as much emissions as hundreds, or even thousands of ordinary people, and that this hypocrisy remains important to point out.

Editorial Staff
editorial@nordictimes.com