CIVIC LISTENING & ONLINE CENSORSHIP
The spread of the surveillance state and the AI "superweapons of mass deletion"
I feel some days as though I am trapped in a giant conspiracy Ferris wheel that spins from one globalist trap to the next. I have been writing for the past month about the United Nations and their forthcoming Summit of the Future or “Multilateral Solutions for a Better Tomorrow”, which will be held 22-23 September 2024.
In the briefing papers, prominence was given to misinformation and disinformation and the need for “approved” information. Also, I have noted that the World Economic Forum, in its recent meeting in Davos, expressed concern about misinformation and disinformation. The solution to all this appears to be government legislation and “fact-checkers”.
It is extraordinary to see the proliferation of “fact-check” sites. Wikipedia lists more than 120 fact-checking websites internationally. The most well-known fact-checkers are associated with university communications schools (invariably, these promote left-wing, collectivist views). They are supported by various foundations promoting left-wing environmental and social causes. The fact-checkers should be fact-checked because none are independent, and all come with a collectivist bias that promotes the current “liberal” causes.
Examining Some of The “Fact-Checkers”
Megan Ellis has assessed the most well-known fact-check organizations on the Make Use Of website. She reports as follows about less reliable sites:
“There are a few popular fact-checking websites that do receive high ratings for factual reporting but do not qualify for this list due to receiving a biased score on MBFC (Media Bias Fact Check).
A few of these sites include:
CheckYourFact: Right-center bias
FactMyth.com: Left-center bias
Zebra Fact Check: Right-center bias
ExposingTruth.com: Left-center bias
Politifact: Left-center bias”
Here are some of the fact-checking sites that I have investigated myself and which Megan Ellis reported as being reliable:
Factcheck.org - which is associated with the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania - and University of Southern California - https://annenberg.usc.edu/faculty-staff-resources and funded by the Annenberg Foundation - https://annenberg.org/about/ and the Flora Family Foundation.
The Annenberg Foundation (current assets ~US$1.5 billion) was established in 1989 and is a family foundation established by Walter H. Annenberg, a noted broadcaster and Ambassador to the UK from 1969 to 1974, during President Nixon’s presidency. The foundation has its base at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently chaired by Wallis Annenberg, who the Foundation’s website describes as follows: “Wallis Annenberg is a visionary who uses philanthropy as a powerful instrument to improve the well-being of people and communities, not only by addressing vexing societal problems, but also by creating new pathways to fulfilment, excellence, and success.”
Surprisingly, Wallis hasn’t been pushed up to Secretary-General of the UN!
When reading about the staff who are directing the very influential Annenberg Communication Schools at the East and West Coast sites, you find, not surprisingly, that their focus is on all the woke issues du jour, such as “media, identity, citizenship, and cultural politics, consumer culture and popular media, race and the media, and intersectional feminism.”
The Flora Family Foundation was created by the Hewlett family (of Hewlett-Packard fame) and says it supports “social progress, environmental well-being, and cultural vibrancy across the world”. This mission statement may have been written by people who went on to write the UN Policy Papers.
Mediabiasfactcheck.org - MBFC – seems relatively independent, with funding from donations and third-party advertising. It is run by a man called Dave Van Zandt, with volunteers, and Dave himself has been “fact-checked” for exaggerating his qualifications.
John O’Sullivan, writing in Climatechangedispatch.com wrote: “In a 2017 WND Exclusive ‘Phony baloney: The 9 fakest fake-news checkers’, Chelsea Schilling uncovered that Van Zandt was a seasoned systemic faker. She wrot
“WND was unable to locate a single article with Van Zandt’s byline. Ironically, the “fact checker” fails to establish his own credibility by disclosing his qualifications and training in evaluating news sources.”
O’Sullivan wrote that the MBFC site owner “admits that he is unqualified and misrepresented himself as a seasoned journalist”.
I checked on various news sources via MBFC that I have faith in – e.g. The Spectator Magazine, The Australian and the Australian Financial Review. These were described as follows by MBFC:“These media sources are slightly to moderately conservative in bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words ..”
One of my favourite programs: “Steve Bannon’s War Room”, was described by MBFC as a “questionable source”, as were “Breitbart” and the “Epoch Times”.
So – MBFC fact-checkers are unreliable from my brief investigations, and they tell people that credible outlets are “questionable”.
I suspect that I wouldn’t pass the test with the Sons of Issachar Newsletter, but I believe the information I present is highly reliable!
Truthorfiction.com - has been around since 1999. It is funded via digital advertising and donations, and on the website, the organization says that it discloses any donations over $1,000. Seventy-nine % of their funds support editorial staff. They say, "We offer a facts-only approach to topics, but we also try to place current events and reportage in their proper contexts so that people can understand who may be lying or misinformed and why.”
The site investigates various topics, and these include recently: “The Role of US Support in Israel-Palestine Conflict Persistence”, “Understanding the Israel Conflict: A Detailed Fact-Check”, and “Fact Check: Do All Palestinians Reject A Two-State Solution”.
I read these articles, and they are long and nuanced. They try to present a balanced picture. However, while the analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict is interesting, the fact-checkers want to be on both sides of every argument, and they fail to note the differences in intent between Islam and Judaism. The summary of the long article on understanding Israel concludes as follows, with a foot in all camps:
“After evaluating the various proposed solutions to this dispute, it becomes apparent that overcoming the adversarial stalemate necessitates not only political will and strategic diplomacy, but above all, the courage of both Palestinians and Israelis to envision a shared future built on mutual respect and coexistence.”
A summary of this paragraph is more simple: the Israeli-Palestinian problem is impossible to solve!
The truthorfiction.com site provides helpful information and attempts to be even-handed. The group has limited evaluation tools in analyzing the medical literature as in one of the fact-checks, the title is: “COVID-19 Vaccines Don’t Alter DNA or Cause Cancer”. Recent information has indicated that both these “facts” are incorrect, although contested by mainstream medical science.
Leadstories.com - this site describes their methodology as follows: “Lead Stories looks for claims and stories to fact check using several tools and methods, here are the most important ones: Our own Trendolizer™ engine, Google Trends, Facebook's tool for Fact Checkers, TweetDeck, CrowdTangle AND Reader tips”
Furthermore, they created a tool called “Trendolizer” which they describe as follows:
Lead Stories created the Trendolizer™ engine to monitor the internet and look for newly trending content. It can measure the engagement rate (likes, views, comments, retweets etc.) of links, images and videos appearing on various platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok...) and gives us an overview of what is currently going viral.”
In other words, there is an analysis of what is trending on social media, which then determines “engagement”, but I am not sure how the site assesses from this what is true.
Leadstories.com was contracted by Facebook in 2019 to do fact-checking – see this link - and the company also does work for TikTok. These don’t seem like high recommendations!
The company was started in 2015 with limited finances, but “in 2018 and 2019, Facebook contributed $461,000 in revenues for its fact-checking service. The company has played an active role in disputing the claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential race, thus contributing to the censorship of conservative opinions on Facebook.”
It looks as though leadstories.com may be compromised in relation its funding sources.
Some Fact-Checking Conclusions
Unsurprisingly, ensuring that any information is free from bias is difficult. Unfortunately, various organizations claim they have “fact-checked” information when it seems impossible to obtain independent information. All the fact-checkers come with their own world view which impacts whether it is factual or not.
Once you start to look into the “fact-checkers”, you find a maze of funding arrangements and links to various organizations and foundations that make it impossible to determine their independence.
In my interview with Mike Benz, the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, later in this newsletter, he responded as follows when I asked him about whether any fact-checking organizations were wortwhile:
”No, not a single one, not even close. The whole field exists as a scam. The whole field exists because they lost the 2016 election. They lost the Brexit referendum in the UK. And so there was a transatlantic capacity building of a field. Of fact checking, none of - let me make this perfectly clear - none of the major fact checking groups, none of them are independent from our government….”
And yet this is our problem because governments are increasingly attempting to legislate to prevent “misinformation” and “disinformation”. They are being encouraged in this endeavour by globalist organizations like the UN and the World Economic Forum.
Legislation to Prevent Free Speech Is Spreading Like Wildfire
The UK Government passed its controversial Online Safety Bill in late 2023, after several years in development. The government claimed the Bill would make the UK “the safest place in the world to be online”. However, in an article published in The Verge, Jon Porter writes:
“The Online Safety Bill has been a controversial piece of legislation, with opponents ranging from encrypted messaging apps to the Wikimedia Foundation. Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal have objected to a clause in the bill that allows Ofcom to ask tech companies to identify child sexual abuse content “whether communicated publicly or privately,” which the companies say fatally undermines their ability to provide end-to-end encryption. Providers of these services have suggested they’d rather leave the UK than comply with these rules.”
Even though the UK government may have some good intentions, it is clear that the bureaucratic legislation will be challenging to comply with and will restrict free speech.
Similar legislation is currently being introduced in Australia by the collectivist Labor government (see this link) where a government-controlled organization, ACMA (the Australian Communications and Media Authority) will have “reserve powers” to determine what is true. The legislation focuses on misinformation and disinformation.
“The Bill defines misinformation and disinformation as follows:
Misinformation is online content that is false, misleading or deceptive, that is shared or created without an intent to deceive but can cause and contribute to serious harm.
Disinformation is misinformation that is intentionally disseminated with the intent to deceive or cause serious harm.
Serious harm is harm that affects a significant portion of the Australian population, economy or environment, or undermines the integrity of an Australian democratic process.”
You can see from these definitions, which have phrases that themselves are almost impossible to delineate – e.g. “misleading”, “deceptive”, “intentionally disseminated”, “harm that affects a significant portion of ..population”, that there is extraordinary leeway for a government bureaucracy to shut down information that they deem as “misinformation, disinformation or causing serious harm”.
Similar attempts to silence any dissenting voices are occurring in Canada where the government’s “Digital Citizen Initiative (DCI) - “will fund projects that increase digital media and civic literacy, help Canadians identify content created by artificial intelligence, develop and publish resources to prevent and address online violence and cyberbullying, and build capacity in Canada to fight disinformation and other online harms.”
The Minister of Canadian Heritage was reported to have said recently :
“There are many tactics used every day to mislead the public. As a government, we support projects that will help people tell the real from the fake online, because we believe that an informed and resilient population is the best defense against disinformation and harmful content online.”
I wonder what the projects are that will enable people to “tell real from fake”?
New Zealand is introducing similar legislation to other countries to try to prevent misinformation. The New Zealand government says: “The Government is seeking to support a “whole-of-society” approach to build understanding and resilience against the harms of disinformation, that can be led primarily by those outside government.”
In other words, “trust us – we’re the government but don’t trust any other sources”.
In 2022, the Biden Administration attempted to introduce a Disinformation Governance Board via the Department of Homeland Security – see this link. After significant criticism and protest, the Board was shut down, but undoubtedly new proposols to regulate speech are in the pipeline.
Governments Want A “Ministry of Truth”
The aim of governments is clear. They hold “the truth”, and anyone questioning their views is spreading “misinformation”, “disinformation” or even “hate speech”! From a government viewpoint, truth seems to be what the government says it is.
This approach is particularly alarming when looking back at the misinformation and disinformation that came from governments during the COVID-19 “pandemic”.
George Orwell outlined the fabled “Ministry of Truth” in his book 1984. Here is a link to a good overview. He would be amazed to see his forecast become reality 75 years after his book’s publication.
There must be a memo that has gone out from Person X (see my post from last week) that governments need to control information flow and shut down free speech because similar messages are coming from many governments and global organisations.
And Now – Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse – We Face “Civic Listening”
On 1st February, I listened to Steve Bannon’s War Room – (see this link to Episode 3364 - listen from 19 min and 30s) – and there was a remarkable interview with Mike Benz, who is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. This is a US-based non-profit organization that “is a free speech watchdog dedicated to restoring the promise of a free and open internet”. They do this via “educational reports, legal assistance, and public policy analysis concerning developing threats to digital liberties”.
The Foundation has just released its latest report, and I recommend that readers download the report:“Civic Listening: Political Informants and Citizen Spies, Rebranded”.
In a weird universe, we seem to have returned to the days of the East German Stasi and Soviet informers, rebranded as a noble enterprise involving “snitching” to the government and “fact-checkers” about things you don’t like. In the report from the Foundation for Freedom Online, the authors noted that: “At its peak in the late 1980s, the German Stasi reportedly maintained 1 informer for every 50 citizens. The number of KGB informants was estimated to be in the millions.”
Mike Benz is a former US State Department official who was tasked with negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and IT issues. In his interview on “The War Room”, he outlined the findings from the report just released by his foundation about “Civic Listening”. He showed an alarming spiel from Cameron Hickey, who started his career at the Information Disorder Lab that is part of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. This is a left-wing center supported by the “great and good” of the liberal East Coast establishment. Mr Benz described the Harvard Center as “dedicated to censoring the internet. Anyone who was pro-Trump or COVID orthodoxy critical was perpetuating information disorder in society. This was one of four major branches at Harvard tasked with censoring the internet”.
Mr. Benz noted that Cameron Hickey is now the CEO of the government-funded National Conference on Citizenship (see more below), created and funded by the US Congress. In the video played on the War Room, Mr Hickey told listeners that they could report content that concerned them by texting (there was an SMS number), emailing, using a WhatsApp number, using a web forum, and there was also a QR code shortcut to “dob in” anyone you don’t like. Mr Benz said that Cameron Hickey cited things like: “If you see Tucker Carlson …talking about replacement migration with respect to open borders..that should be submitted on the government propped up snitch line……he also included Senator Rand Paul because of his criticism of Tony Fauci”.
The information was more alarming than anything I had heard recently and follows on from the material that I have outlined in the first part of this week’s newsletter.
The new report from the Foundation for Freedom Online tells us:
“Under the brand of “Civic Listening,” informant networks are now coming to the West. The concept has been embraced by the censorship industry’s network of nonprofits, research institutes and private companies that work to shut down disfavored political speech online.”
The US government is extensively involved in this “snitching program” via a range of funding. The report notes that:
“One of the organizations at the forefront of creating this snitch network is Meedan, a San Francisco based nonprofit. The organization has received one of the largest federal grants ever awarded for a censorship program: $5.7 million in taxpayer dollars was awarded to it by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for its work to tackle “hate, abuse, and misinformation with minority led partnerships.” Meedan also received a smaller ($144,850) grant from the government-funded Open Technology Fund for a “claims and memes database” to monitor “fact-checked claims and debunked visual misinformation from internet repressive countries.”
Meedan’s flagship product is Check, a tool that allows users on private messaging platforms (WhatsApp, Messenger, and Telegram are specifically named) to report “misinformation” in private chats through a tipline. “
Meedan is an organization supported by almost every left-wing organization and educational institution in the US.
Then there is the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) – which sounds inoffensive and is a non-profit organization chartered by the US Congress in 1953 – see this link.
Their mission: “Connecting People. Strengthening Our Country”. How good is that? Not good!
Regular reports from the NCoC provide information on the Civic Health Index - produced in conjunction with the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The Civic Health Index is described by the NCoC as follows: “We think of “civic health” as the way that communities are organized to define and address public problems. Communities with strong indicators of civic health have higher employment rates, stronger schools, better physical health, and more responsive governments.”
The NCoC contains the Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI) – under the direction of Cameron Hickey – see this link (you couldn’t make this stuff up) and “seeks to improve the transparency of algorithms that shape society by providing tools and data that can be leveraged by all to hold the powerful accountable.”
The ATI has created a “Civic Listening Corps” (CLC), which is a group of volunteers trained to “snitch”. This is how the CLC puts it:
“The CLC is a volunteer network of individuals trained to monitor for, critically evaluate, and report misinformation on diverse topics central to our civic life: voting, elections, public health, civil rights, and other important issues.
CLC participation achieves two complementary goals: teaching individuals how to be more resilient to misinformation within their community and gathering and aggregating insights to inform your organization’s communications to power a real-time response.”
The CLC sounds exciting, and it is possible to volunteer and be trained in detecting misinformation. There is a Volunteer Coordinator at the ATI who, each week, “provides a list of priority topics that volunteers will monitor during each shift”.
I may apply for CLC training and reach the lofty heights of becoming an ATI Volunteer Coordinator – or “top snitch” if I fail to be appointed UN Special Envoy for Future Generations – see my previous newsletter .
The Foundation for Freedom Online report is quite alarming because, with millions of dollars of government and other foundation funding, a monitoring program is being implemented to shut down free speech. As the report from the Foundation for Freedom Online notes in its conclusion on “civic listening”:
“The goal of the censorship industry is clear — the infiltration of private messaging groups for the purpose of surveillance in the first instance and censorship in the second. This is made plain by Cameron Hickey’s explanation that the purpose of collecting tips from volunteers is to “escalate” cases of disfavored speech to the platforms.”
The issues of misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech will become more critical in the coming years as governments, under the likely direction of Person X, seek to prevent information like this newsletter from getting into the hands of readers. This is more than alarming because we know that the US government was able to censor information that was relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. There also was censorship related to the 2020 US presidential election with the emergence of the “laptop from hell” belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Senior former intelligence officials falsely claimed that the laptop story was “Russian disinformation”.
Many more foundations, fact-checking organizations and now snitching groups are at work today to ensure that only government-approved information sees the light of day. These groups are backed up by government legislation with punitive fines and imprisonment. It won’t be long until there is an official “UN and WHO Ministry of Truth” that would then undoubtedly propose mandatory re-education camps for those who don’t toe the party line.
I explored this story further with an interview this week with Mike Benz, the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online.