Tag Archives: Google

Home

Google, YouTube Sued By De-platformed Content Creators

1 Comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – October 26, 2020

Conservative YouTubers Targeted 19 Days Before Election

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – On October 26, 2020, fifteen YouTube content creators filed a federal lawsuit against Google and YouTube, alleging in seventeen claims for relief, that Google and YouTube breached the Terms of Service and violated their First Amendment rights, when they summarily de‐ platformed the Plaintiffs’ channels and removed their content from YouTube without advance notice.

The Plaintiffs are the creators of YouTube channels, including: JustInformed Talk, SGT Report, X22 Report, SpaceShot 76, TruReporting, RedPill78, Edge of Wonder, Praying Medic, Amazing Polly, Woke Societies, Daniel Lee, Deception Byes, InTheMatrixxx, Destroying the Illusion and Sarah Westall. Together, their news and social commentary channels have reached more than 800 million views and together they had more YouTube subscribers than many legacy news channels, such as C‐SPAN, The New York Times, and NBC News. Plaintiffs cite a recent study by the Pew Research Center that concludes that many Americans get their news from independent YouTube channels along the same metrics as legacy or traditional news sources.

YouTube and Google are expected to defend the case and claim that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides them immunity for the actions they took against conservative commentators, just 19 days before the November 3 Presidential Election. However, the Ninth Circuit has recently issued an opinion, retreating from the broad interpretation of the immunity that social media has used for years to defend lawsuits from its contract partners and users.

The Section 230 immunities were provided by Congress as a means to give internet providers an ability to remove content that was considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” Enigma Software Group USA LLC. V. Malwarebytes, Inc., No. 17‐17351 (Opinion filed September 12, 2019). The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found persuasive the notion that the “unbounded reading” of Section 230 previously employed by social media giants such as YouTube would allow a content provider to “block content for anticompetitive purposes or merely at its malicious whim.”

The Plaintiffs allege that YouTube removed their channels without giving them notice or without cause under the Terms of Service that YouTube itself drafted and imposed on the Plaintiffs. The Plaintiffs allege that YouTube also violated the First Amendment rights of the Plaintiffs, and the public they serve through their social commentary, news and information channels. Although many courts have rejected the notion that YouTube is subject to the First Amendment, concluding that YouTube is a private party, the Complaint alleges that YouTube acted at the behest, was encouraged by and coerced by Congress, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Representative Adam Schiff. The Plaintiffs attach to the Complaint letters that Representative Schiff published on Congressional letterhead that urged that content be removed and replaced.

The Plaintiffs also reference the House’s recent action by the House, in passing House Resolution 1154, which condemned certain content and specifically mentioned social media. In direct response to Representative Schiff’s published letter demanding censorship, YouTube Chief Executive Officer Susan Wojcicki responded by Tweet: “Thanks for reaching out, we’re working every day to protect people from misinformation and help them find authoritative information. We appreciate your partnership and will continue to consult with Members of Congress as we address the evolving issues around #COVID19.” The Plaintiffs allege that under Supreme Court precedent, if a private party acts when it is encouraged or coerced by the government or its agents, then the state action theory applies and the First Amendment rights should be protected, particularly from viewpoint discrimination.

This lawsuit follows the filing of a massive antitrust action against Google by the Department of Justice and eleven states.

The “state action” theory was previously raised in by Armenta & Sol, on behalf of an African‐ American conservative commentator, Young Pharaoh, in July 2020 also against Google and YouTube. Although the Defendants in that case filed a Motion to Dismiss and oral argument was held, Magistrate Judge Virginia DeMarchi has not yet issued a decision.

The lawsuit will be served on Google and YouTube today.

***
The Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys M. Cris Armenta and Credence Sol. Both were previously affiliated with Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP. Both are former federal law clerks; Ms. Armenta in the Central District of California, and Ms. Sol in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Ms. Armenta has been named one of the top 100 female attorneys in California and is on the peer‐reviewed SuperLawyers list for civil litigation. Ms. Armenta is a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles. Ms. Armenta’s law practice focuses on civil litigation, entertainment, real estate, and the recovery of abducted children. Ms. Sol’s practice focuses on civil litigation and intellectual property, in which she has a Ph.D; she has published several articles on Internet law and international freedom of speech issues. Both Ms. Armenta and Ms. Sol have previously litigated against Google.

Home

Seed The Narrative Early and Often: How “Journalism” Works, According To CNET

Leave a comment

Andrew Torba
(October 5, 2020)

There are two emerging narratives that are being seeded by the mainstream media as weapons for censoring post-election information online. I know this first-hand because I’m getting inbound media requests daily asking how Gab plans to “handle the election.”

Last week the first post-election narrative was being crafted by the mainstream media: The Russian Hoax 2.0. I wrote about this narrative and shared my experience with a Reuters “journalist” here. 

One of the many players behind the emerging Russian Hoax 2.0 narrative is Graphika, a strange organization made up of former Google employees and, ironically, some Russian guy named Vladimir. 

Graphika partners with DARPA, The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Facebook, Google and more to “map social media landscapes and reveal unique patterns in information diffusion.” In other words: it appears that Graphika partners with the Deep State, the mainstream media, and Big Tech to track you and shut you up. 

This week a new narrative is emerging: pressure social networks to censor post-election information from President Trump and anyone who supports him.

More..

News

Blockbuster WSJ Investigation: How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results

Leave a comment

Naked Capitalism
by Jerri-Lynn Scofield

Jerri-Lynn Scofield has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

The WSJ published a comprehensive investigation Friday, How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results, that provides fodder for ongoing or new antitrust investigations of the company,  both in the US, and worldwide:

THE JOURNAL’S FINDINGS undercut one of Google’s core defenses against global regulators worried about how it wields its immense power—that the company doesn’t exert editorial control over what it shows users. Regulators’ areas of concern include anticompetitive practices, political bias and online misinformation.

Permit to me quote from the WSJ’s takedown at length – although I encourage readers, if possible, to read the entire (paywalled)  version, for it contains a wealth of information, as well as lots of cool graphics:

Google’s evolving approach marks a shift from its founding philosophy of “organizing the world’s information,” to one that is far more active in deciding how that information should appear.

More than 100 interviews and the Journal’s own testing of Google’s search results reveal:

• Google made algorithmic changes to its search results that favor big businesses over smaller ones, and in at least one case made changes on behalf of a major advertiser, eBayInc., contrary to its public position that it never takes that type of action. The company also boosts some major websites, such as Amazon.com Inc.and Facebook Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

• Google engineers regularly make behind-the-scenes adjustments to other information the company is increasingly layering on top of its basic search results. These features include auto-complete suggestions, boxes called “knowledge panels” and “featured snippets,” and news results, which aren’t subject to the same company policies limiting what engineers can remove or change.

• Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results. These moves are separate from those that block sites as required by U.S. or foreign law, such as those featuring child abuse or with copyright infringement, and from changes designed to demote spam sites, which attempt to game the system to appear higher in results.

More…

Guest Posts, Videos

Google Censors Dr. Joseph Mercola From Search Results

6 Comments

Dr. Joseph Mercola
Mercola.com
(June 24, 2019)

Over the years, the government and business monopolies, including the likes of Big Tech, have formed a global alliance hell-bent on protecting and concentrating member profits. The price for keeping business going as usual is personal liberty and freedom of speech that may impact these fascist government-industrial complexes.

The major industries colluding to take over the government and government agencies include banking, military, agriculture, pharma, media and Big Tech.

The leaders of these industries have organized strategies to buy off politicians through lobbying and to capture regulatory agencies through revolving door hiring strategies and paid-for media influence through advertising dollars.

Big Tech has joined the movement, bringing in a global concentration of wealth to eliminate competition and critical voices — voices that bring awareness to the frightening future as our rights, freedoms and competition erode into a fascist sunset, all disguised as a means to protect you from “misinformation.”

This year, we’ve seen an unprecedented push to implement censorship across all online platforms, making it increasingly difficult to obtain and share crucial information about health topics. If you’ve been having difficulty finding articles from my website in your Google searchers of late, you’re not alone.

More…

Guest Posts

Full Spectrum Dominance: Caught in the Crossed Wires

4 Comments

Radio host Clyde Lewis provides an excellent overview of the grave threat 5G wireless technology poses to public health and social well being. Despite serious health concerns this all-encompassing human health experiment is being rolled out to every nook and cranny of the nation and is a colossal exercise of collective uninformed consent and continued abandonment of the “precautionary principle” that should arguably govern decisions where human health in particular is concerned.

As we noted here at MHB in 2012:

The 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment & Development adopted the precautionary principle as a rule to follow in the situations utilities and school districts find themselves in today. “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”[17] In exercising the precautionary principle, public governance and regulatory bodies should “take preventive action in the face of scientific uncertainty to prevent harm. The focus is no longer on measuring or managing harm, but preventing harm.”

As Lewis explains, the 5G grid being rolled out today poses a much greater threat than its present 3 and 4G incarnations. Moreover, the technology at present alongside implementation of biometric devices and the “internet of things” will greatly accelerate corporate/government control over everyday existence, particularly for already powerful entities like Google, Amazon, and the local and regional authorities they partner with to “service” your community.

Clyde Lewis
Ground Zero Media
(November 16, 2018)

A few weeks ago at The Hague in the Netherlands, many birds died spontaneously, unexplainably falling dead in a park. I guess the story may not mean anything to most people because nowadays there are reports all the time of birds dropping dead – or even whales that beach themselves. But this case was different.

It is just business as usual in the apocalypse.

At first, a few birds were dropping dead which prompted the authorities to not rule out that someone was actually poisoning them. However there were reports of 150 more dying, then 200 and then 200 plus.

In the aftermath, it was proposed that perhaps the culprit was a new 5G Mast that was hanging from the roof of a nearby train station.

Later there were also reports that some of the area geese had dropped dead. Some were not eating while others were acting erratically.

Some of them were actually putting their heads in the water until they drowned.

Continue reading Full Spectrum Dominance: Caught in the Crossed Wires →

News

JamesFetzer.Blogspot Shut Down By #GoogleGestapo

3 Comments

Newly Launched Mirror Site Now Operating

Online behemoth Google has once again lashed out at would-be thought crimes of its users. As longtime conspiracy analyst Jim Fetzer was in the process of moving his website to a new domain and off the “Blogger” service, which hosted the blog for several years, the Google subsidiary pulled the plug on the site entirely.

Fetzer remarks in a September 28 email:

Unbelievable! We were in the process of posting a notice that I was moving to jamesfetzer.org when they took it out. Just in the nick of time! Stunning!

This is part of an ongoing campaign by tech and internet transnationals to censor content their owners do NOT deem fit to print.

See also:

News

President Trump Chastises Tech and Social Media Giants

Leave a comment

Editor’s Note: One of the major news stories this week involves Donald Trump’s public condemnation of tech and social media companies’ ongoing censorship of customer and user content. This was accompanied by the president’s introduction of the Twitter hash, #StoptheBias. In a statement that should foster a broad national conversation, a cursory query on the Google search engine itself reveals a general blackout of the president’s commentary in major media, with The Daily Beast the only major US-based mainstream outlet highlighted in “top coverage”–with a misleading headline suggesting that Trump’s remark suggests the creation of a forthcoming political strategy. CNN and MSNBC predictably highlighted Google’s denial of any bias against conservatives.

Greg Sandoval
Business Insider 
(August 29, 2018)

US President Donald Trump continued to blast away at Google on Wednesday, as he accused the tech company of showing favoritism to former President Barack Obama’s administration.

Trump posted a video to his Twitter page that alleges that Google promoted Obama’s State of the Union addresses multiple times on its homepage, but has not done the same when he has addressed Congress. He posted the video with a hashtag, “#StopTheBias.”

CNBC has confirmed that photos of the Google of pages that appear in the video are accurate. It’s not immediately clear if the video was created by the Trump administration, or if it was made by a third party and shared by the President.

The video was posted a day after Trump criticized Google multiple times on Tuesday, accusing the company of rigging search results to silence conservative media outlets and make his administration look bad.

Continue reading President Trump Chastises Tech and Social Media Giants →

The CIA and the Media

The CIA and the Media: Historical Fact #98

9 Comments

The creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1947 National Security Act constituted in several important ways the bond between the financial, “defense,” and scientific-technological industries. Over the next half century these seemingly disparate areas of corporate activity developed to where they became part of the Western citizen’s everyday existence. The introduction of spy craft in this way is evident in, for example, the company that owns the world’s most well-known internet search engine.

As social historian Darrell Hamamoto asserts, “The rise of IT conurbations known as ‘Route 28’ and ‘Silicon Valley’ are extensions of the corporatist national security state rather than expressions of capitalist entrepreneurial genius alone.” The American precursors and advocates for a civilian intelligence network that would be the basis of “the American shadow government,” such as Allen Dulles and OSS Director William J. Donovan, were also employed at Wall Street’s most prominent law firms.

IN-Q-TEL founding CEO Gilman Louie. Image Credit: Aspen Institute

“The relationship between spy-craft, high finance, and IT,” Hamamoto observes, “was to reach its logical endpoint by the formation during the late 1990s of IN-Q-TEL, as the financial investment arm of the CIA.” IN-Q-TEL has funded a wide array of well-known social media platforms capable of aggregating user data, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google. “Appropriately enough,” Hamamoto continues,

the first head of IN-Q-TEL was a Chinese American video game expert named Gilman Louie. Under his visionary leadership, Louie developed a civilian surveillance technology that today is in wide use: Google Earth. He resigned from the top spot at IN-Q-TEL not long after his appointment to become a full-time venture capitalist under his own banner as the story goes. It is more likely that Louie has been “sheep-dipped” and functions in the guise of a civilian entrepreneur while remaining close to government intelligence-IT entities.

Darrell Y. Hamamoto, Servitors of Empire: Studies in the Dark Side of Asian America, Walterville OR: TrineDay, 2014, 81, 82.

Live Coverage, News, Videos

Breaking: Active Shooter Reported at YouTube HQ

8 Comments

Live coverage via WashingtonPost

Live coverage via ABC News:

Occurred at 12:46PM PST

“Female Gunman [sic]”–ABC News

“FBI Monitoring the Situation”

“Saw blood drips on the floor and stairs”… Then took Uber home!–YouTube staffer

YouTube HQ: Police confirm there’s an active shooter at company campus

UK Independent

There is an active shooter at YouTube headquarters at the California-based company located around 11 miles south of San Francisco, according to police.

The San Mateo County Sheriff and local San Bruno Police are working together to resolve the situation. Product manager Vadim Lavrusik tweeted that he “heard shots and saw people running while at my desk” but he and some colleagues have been evacuated and are safe at this time.

The police have advised the public to stay out of the area of the offices. Footage posted via Snapchat close to the campus in San Mateo shows some people walking down the street with their hands above their heads and police surrounding the building while wearing tactical gear.

The San Bruno City Manager’s office told BuzzFeed News that the city received several emergency calls from inside the building and the surrounding area regarding gunshots. Police are currently searching individuals who have been evacuated before allowing them to leave the scene to prevent the shooter from blending in with escaping crowds.

Police have released very little information, however, unconfirmed reports from local media said that the shooter is female, and two people are injured.

Continue reading Breaking: Active Shooter Reported at YouTube HQ →

Guest Posts

“Want To Freak Yourself Out?” Here Is All The Personal Data That Facebook/Google Collect

3 Comments

 By Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
03/27/2018

The Cambridge Analytica scandal was never really about Cambridge Analytica.

As we’ve pointed out, neither Facebook nor Cambridge Analytica have been accused of doing anything explicitly illegal (though one could be forgiven for believing they had, based on the number of lawsuits and official investigations that have been announced).

Instead, the backlash to these revelations – which has been justifiably focused on Facebook – is so severe because the public has been forced to confront for the first time something that many had previously written off as an immutable certainty: That Facebook, Google and the rest of the tech behemoths store reams of personal data, essentially logging everything we do.

Continue reading “Want To Freak Yourself Out?” Here Is All The Personal Data That Facebook/Google Collect →

Home

Facebook and Google Are Today’s Thought Police

1 Comment

Personal Experiences From the Land of Orwellian Censorship

By James F. Tracy

Social media sites that have for many years allowed for the free and unimpeded discussion and exchange of ideas are now eliminating the posts and even entire accounts of content producers sharing observations and analyses that question the official narratives of complex events. This is straight out of a dystopian novel and entirely alarming. It won’t be surprising if colossal blog-hosting outlets such as WordPress.com eventually follow suit.

In late February 2018 YouTube has taken aim at several channels of well-known alternative media personalities using the platform, including David Seaman, Ron Johnson, Scott Creighton, and The Richie Allen Show. The common denominator of all these outlets is that they examine the relationships between the intelligence community, transnational forces, and political institutions.

The Fate of David Seaman, Ron Johnson, Scott Creighton, and Richie Allen’s YouTube Channels

Allen, for example, has over the years hosted an array of guests, many of whom hold nonconformist, “conspiracy”-oriented positions on political concerns and complex public events. At the time YouTube terminated Allen’s channel he had around 70,000 subscribers and his videos had many millions of views. Allen’s channel is one of many that YouTube has summarily pulled the plug on based on the company’s own subjective judgement and reaction to third party pressure.

Continue reading Facebook and Google Are Today’s Thought Police →

Guest Posts, News

Questioning Hillary’s Health is Not Conspiracy Theory

7 Comments

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg

Ever since alternative media sources made Hillary Clinton’s health a legitimate campaign issue, much of the mainstream media has been comically and instinctively rallying around her, smugly proclaiming that anyone who questions Her Highness’ physical or mental fitness for office to be a deranged rightwing conspiracy theorist.

What’s so amusing about the tactics of these self-important pundits is their willingness to do the exact same thing they demonize “fringe bloggers” of doing: playing doctor. Most of those rushing out to confidently ensure the public that everything is just fine and dandy with Hillary Clinton’s health lack any medical credentials. They’re just journalists and pundits who have decided Hillary is fine based on a two-page letter from internist Dr. Lisa Bardack. Does writing for the Washington Post or CNN make them the authority on Hillary Clinton’s health? Of course not.

Continue reading Questioning Hillary’s Health is Not Conspiracy Theory →

Guest Posts

Public Service Announcement from IMS: Unauthorized Access

36 Comments

Evidence suggests “lpozner@——.com” gained access to Independent Media Solidarity’s Google Drive. But how?

ims_theft05
IMS (Independent Media Solidarity), the independent collective of citizen journalists was recently the victim of theft. Thankfully for them, the experience wasn’t entirely negative. The community of people skeptical of the Sandy Hook narrative can now see the lengths to which the opposition will go to halt their efforts. Factors to better assess the true situation they find themselves in. But for the most part, what transpired was disruptive, unsettling and criminal.

Soon after IMS was formed in mid 2014, a Google Drive account was established for cloud storage of sensitive research materials and collaboration. Authorized IMS members stored a variety of files in Drive, including video, audio and photographic evidence, web page and PDF file evidence, meeting agendas and minutes, project proposals and outlines, scripted narrations, statistical analysis of evidence; basically everything the group had a need to store and collaborate on. Sometime after Feb. 1st and before Feb. 13th an unauthorized party made off with a copy of the entire contents of this drive.

Continue reading Public Service Announcement from IMS: Unauthorized Access →