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Big Tech is a censorship cartel — tracking you across the internet and sharing it with each other

by Jo Nova

Whistleblowers reveal just how well coordinated Big Tech collusion is at the Senate Judiciary Committee

Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley (a new Republican Senator) were on fire today at the Senate Committee hearing titled “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election,” Insiders had leaked information about two programs of the most insidious kinds.

Facebook has a program called Centra, which tracks the pages people visit, the links, and not just in Facebook, but across the entire internet. (Tucker Carlson wonders, if it’s even legal). Mark Zuckerberg says he’s not familiar with it. Hawley grilled Zuckerberg. When pressed to say whether there is some program that can do that, Zuckerberg evades answering. Apparently, Centra is run in order to spot “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” or astroturfing.

The second program is called Tasks, and Twitter, Google and Facebook use it which helps them coordinate their censorship. That way they can exile people together. Handy, eh?

Zuckerberg said they are just checking in with their peers. Josh Hawley got Zuckerberg to admit under oath that Facebook does have tools to track users, across platforms and accounts, all without their knowledge. Hawley pushed Zuckerberg to say how many times this tool had been used against Americans.

Josh Hawley Tweets at @HawleyMO:

Whistleblower says @Twitter and @Google routinely suggest censorship topics – hashtags, individuals, websites, many of them conservative – and @Facebook logs them for follow-up on Tasks. But Zuck REFUSES under oath to turn over list of @Twitter or @Google mentions on Tasks

 

Tucker Carlson wonders how is that different from what happens in China.

Ted Cruz grills Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter

This is worth watching. Cruz is relentless saying that Congress is effectively subsidizing Big Tech. They get a free pass through Section 230 — a special immunity from liability because they are defined as a platform, and not a publisher. Cruz drills down on the difference between a publisher and a platform.

Cruz: Was Twitter being a publisher when it censored the New York Post.

Dorsey: No. We have very clear policies on conduct on the platform. People choose to commit to our policies.

Cruz: Except your policies are applied in a partisan and selective manner. Did you block the release of Trumps tax material.

Dorsey tries to weasel out of the New York Post censorship by saying that they put a block on but then took it back when they realized they made an error. (Two weeks later!)

Cruz is savage on Dorsey and the idea that Twitter is not being a publisher.”. Twitter’s political position is that Voter fraud doesn’t exist.” At once point he baits Dorsey with quotes from President Carter and reports outcomes of legal cases asking whether Twitter would permit these or add a warning.

Dorsey claims he wants to embrace transparency. But Cruz wants to know how many times Twitter has blocked Republican and Democrat candidates in 2016, 2018, and 2020, and he wants the numbers in writing. Dorsey dodges the question, repeatedly, but Cruz keeps returning to it.

 

Excuses, excuses

Jack Dorsey says Twitter’s policies are designed to encourage “more speech”

Tom Parker, ReclaimTheNet:

Dorsey, throughout the hearing, claimed that Twitter’s controversial policies weed out abusive and misleading content from the platform, creating a safer space to express themselves, which according to him, promotes free speech. Yet, Dorsey didn’t address the danger in allowing Big Tech platforms to decide what is and what isn’t “misinformation” which is where the problem lies.

“What we saw and what the market told us was that people would not put up with abuse, harassment, and misleading information that would cause off-line harm and they would leave out service because of it. So our intention is to create clear policy, clear enforcement that enables people to feel that they can express themselves on our service and ultimately trust it,” said Dorsey.

“All of our policies are focused on encouraging more speech,” he went on to say.

Democrats wonder why Twitter lets conservatives speak at all

Chris Coons, US Senator for Delaware (D), wants even more censorship — specifically on climate change misinformation. He wonders why Jack Dorsey doesn’t have a policy on silencing climate skeptics.

 

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