Scientists Are Suing the Biden Administration for Censoring Them-- Using the Social Media Monopolies As Their Deputized Agents

Want I want to hear right now is AEI, National Review, and the other lobbyists for Monopoly Tech telling me that we must not pass any legislation regarding Monopoly Tech, because "we cannot permit the government to regulate speech."

While they all conspire to suppress reportage about the government regulating speech right f*cking now, because they're all doing Monopoly Tech's bidding.

National Review, can we all just assume you're going to embargo this story as you embargo every story about the government pressuring Monopoly Tech companies to censor conservatives and dissenters, while claiming you're champions of non-governmental interference in corporate speech?

Should we just go ahead and mark you down as "Refused to answer"?

Several well-known doctors and scientists joined a lawsuit against the Biden administration Tuesday over social media censorship of COVID-19 information.

Drs. Jayanta (Jay) Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff and Aaron Kheriaty joined the lawsuit filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, alleging that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) worked with Big Tech companies to censor Americans discussing the pandemic. The doctors alleged they were censored on social media platforms for expressing views in opposition to the positions of the federal government, their representation, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), said in a Tuesday press release.

Martin Kulldorff @MartinKulldorff

I am suing the government (@POTUS, @CDCgov, Fauci, etc) for colluding with @Twitter, @facebook, @LinkedIn and @YouTube to censor our free speech during the pandemic, jointly with @Eric_Schmitt, @JeffLandry, @DrJBhattacharya,
@akheriaty & @HealthFreedomLA.

"The Biden Administration's involvement in silencing the voices of those who have critiqued its responses to Covid-19, through pressure exerted on social media companies, is unprecedented in nature and degree," Jenin Younes, litigation counsel at NCLA, said. "The government's sweeping campaign to suppress the perspectives of the plaintiffs, and others like them, represents the most severe abrogation of the First Amendment in modern times, and we look forward to seeing this constitutional atrocity rectified in a court of law."

Recently unearthed government records show that health officials at the CDC coordinated with Big Tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, to advise them on what kind of content to flag as misinformation on their sites. Those platforms either removed, suppressed or added warning labels to thousands of pieces of content that contradicted CDC guidance throughout the pandemic, a study found.

See Also: Ben Weingartner, DHS Wants to Deputize Big Tech as Speech Police.

When the Biden administration first came under fire for creating a Ministry of Truth helmed by a serial spewer of disinformation, it was at pains to suggest the entity existed to combat disinformation imperiling the homeland from without--notwithstanding the DGB was housed in the domestic security apparatus. It purported to target supposed lies told by foreign traffickers about America's open borders, and Russian disinformation going into the midterm elections.

Yet the planning documents for the DGB tell a different story. In a memo to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas titled "Organizing DHS Efforts to Counter Disinformation," DHS officials Robert Silver and Samantha Vinograd wrote that disinformation threatens homeland security, beginning with "conspiracy theories about the validity and security of elections" and "disinformation related to the origins and effects of COVID-19 vaccines or the efficacy of masks."

The drafters expressed concern that such purported disinformation could threaten public safety and public health. "Domestic violent extremists," they warned, amplify dishonest narratives to drive "racially or ethnically motivated and anti-government/anti-authority violence."

...

The rhetoric in the memo parallels DHS's National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin from Feb. 2022, months after the memo was produced but before DHS announced the creation of the DGB, as well as prior bulletins. These documents suggest that among the greatest contributors to America's "heightened threat environment" was an "online environment filled with...mis- dis- and mal-information [MDM]," including on COVID-19 and election integrity.

The Biden administration's National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism similarly focuses on combating "dangerous conspiracy theories" and "disinformation and misinformation" that undermine "faith in government." It also called for federal authorities to collaborate with, among others, technology companies "on addressing terrorist content online" and "counter terrorists' abuse of Internet--based communications platforms to recruit others to engage in violence"--efforts that become more chilling when dissent from regime orthodoxy is treated as terrorist danger.

The DGB serves the role contemplated by that strategy, at least within DHS. Its charter, released in the Grassley-Hawley document trove, calls for the board to "support and coordinate...MDM work with other department agencies, the private sector, and non-governmental actors." Among them? Apparently Big Tech.

Notes prepared in advance of a meeting between DHS officials and several Twitter executives seemingly planned for April 2022 (whether and when the meeting took place has not been confirmed) indicate DHS planned "to discuss operationalizing public-private partnerships between DHS and Twitter," and ways "the Department could be helpful to Twitter's counter-MDM efforts."

DHS officials contemplated "inform[ing] Twitter executives about DHS work on MDM, including the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board and its analytic exchange, and the Department's ongoing [domestic violent extremist] work."

...

Another document seems to depict draft legislation sponsored by DHS that would have created a "Rumor Control Program" to counter MDM.

Internal DHS memoranda, according to Sens. Grassley and Hawley, also show that DHS believes that by "sharing information, DHS can empower...partners to mitigate threats such as providing information to technology companies enabling them to remove content at their discretion and consistent with their terms of service."

The expectation that--even with the DGB coordinating with social media companies on MDM in a way DHS believes could influence their content moderation policies--social media platforms would still be operating completely independently and of their own volition simply does not pass muster. It is particularly unbelievable when one considers that for months, Biden administration officials, from the president, to his press secretary, surgeon general, and now even his climate adviser, have been calling for or indicating that they already have pressed Big Tech to censor wrongthink and wrongthinkers. Big Tech seems to have happily obliged. The desire to harness the power of Big Tech in fact might explain in part why members of the Deep State are so hostile to seeing it broken up.

Every time Hawley points this out, a paid lobbyist from Conservative, Inc. attacks him -- but these paid lobbyists in Conservative, Inc. never criticize the Biden Administration for deputizing these allegedly "private corporations" deputized governmental censors.

I've mentioned this a dozen times before, but: a student can break into another student's locker and find pot and turn that in to the cops. And the kid caught with the pot can be prosecuted.

But if a cop tells the student, "Why don't you break into the locker for me and take a look?," the student becomes in that moment an agent of the state and subject to all the rules that any agent of the state is bound by. That is, the student is a deputized law enforcement officer for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. If he breaks into the other student's locker, he has violated that kid's civil rights, and nothing he found there can be introduced at trial against the kid whose rights were violated.

Any private corporation can restrict your speech -- if it's really their idea, like breaking into the locker was in the first version of the example above.

But if the government tells the corporation to restrict speech -- the corporation has become an agent of the state and now the First Amendment binds the corporation as it does the government.

National Review knows this. Half of these cucks are lawyers. The other half pretend to be on Twitter.

And yet every time I see the Biden Administration pressure a supposedly "private corporation" into becoming a deputized agent of state censorship power, I run over to National Review to check if THIS TIME, FINALLY, they will actually acknowledge this is happening.

It's not even that they're avoiding my conclusions. They're not reporting these facts and then arguing, "Eh, it's not as bad as it looks because of [rationalization Z]."

They're just completely embargoing these stories. Completely suppressing them.

Completely refusing to report each one of these stories.

And there have been a LOT of these stories.

It is becoming IMPOSSIBLE to come to any other conclusion other than National Review is simply being paid by Google or FaceBook (or by them, through AEI) to run interference for them and pretend these stories away, so that they can keep to their increasingly senseless "The government must never interfere in a private companies' free speech decisions (except when the Biden Administration does it every other month, because Google and FaceBook are paying us to be chill about that)."

So, can anyone at National Review confirm or deny?

I'm sorry, but next time I'm going to be calling out writers and editors by name.

I have done this nicely and addressed the group as a whole and you have all continued the Code of Omerta, refusing to ever even acknowledge that Biden is violating your very much alleged "the government must never interfere in a private corporation's free speech decisions" policy.

Are you really against government involvement in corporate speech decisions, or just being paid to keep conservatives out of it?

National Review has a dozen articles about or by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya -- so they know he's not a crank.

But then when he sues the Biden Administration about turning Google and FaceBook into his censors, suddenly they're shy about mentioning him.

National Review also has several blogger/news-writers on staff who write up short pieces about stories.

And yet these stories are never covered.

It's just not possible that everyone at National Review always just happens to not see these stories, or always just happens to have six other stories they have to get to first.

What the fuck is going on?

If this isn't corruption, gentlemen, someone's going to have to explain what the HELL it actually is.

Because it sure looks like corruption. It doesn't look like National Review is protecting any "principle." It just looks like they're protecting a payoff.

Flashback: AEI planted stories to protect one of their donors, Purdue Pharma, from growing concern about the addictiveness of oxycontin.

And AEI has their greedy, grasping fingers in just about every Conservative, Inc. pie.

posted by Ace at 05:40 PM

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