Views: 13
The Truth Shall Set You Free- “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”
164 164Category: Free Speech
164
Views: 25
Exerting a pressure campaign on social media companies to censor COVID-19 skeptics
A federal appeals court ruled that the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI, and the surgeon general violated a Stanford doctor’s First Amendment rights by using social media to silence him by exerting a pressure campaign on social media companies to censor COVID-19 skeptics — including Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
“I think this ruling is akin to the second Enlightenment,” Bhattacharya told The Post. “It’s a ruling that says there’s a democracy of ideas. The issue is not whether the ideas are wrong or right. The question is who gets to control what ideas are expressed in the public square?”
The court ordered that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly” to coerce social media companies “to remove, delete, suppress or reduce” free speech.
Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in the fall of 2020 with professors from Harvard and Oxford.
The epidemiologists advocated for “focused protection” — safeguarding the most vulnerable Americans while cautiously allowing others to function as normally as possible — rather than broad pandemic lockdowns.
The court ordered that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly” to coerce social media companies “to remove, delete, suppress or reduce” free speech.
The court ordered that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly” to coerce social media companies “to remove, delete, suppress or reduce” free speech.
Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in the fall of 2020 with professors from Harvard and Oxford.
The epidemiologists advocated for “focused protection” — safeguarding the most vulnerable Americans while cautiously allowing others to function as normally as possible — rather than broad pandemic lockdowns.
“The government had a vast censorship enterprise,” Bhattacharya said. “It was systematically used to threaten and coerce and jawbone and tell all these social media companies, ‘You better listen to us: Censor these people, censor these ideas, or else.’”
It was later revealed that then-NIH director Dr. Francis Collins called for a “swift and devastating takedown” of Bhattacharya and his co-authors — whom Collins dubbed “fringe epidemiologists” — in an email to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Subsequent reporting from Elon Musk’s so-called Twitter Files — internal documents and communications released by Musk, after he bought the platform, to expose Twitter’s inner workings — revealed that Bhattachrya’s profile was being suppressed on the platform.
A landmark case in curbing the influence the government has over social media
“It’s akin to the efforts by governments to suppress the printing press when it first was invented, when books represented an enormous threat to power,” Bhattacharya said, referring to efforts by King Henry VIII and the Catholic Church to curb use of the printing press in the 16th century.
“There’s an analogous fight that’s currently going on with social media, which makes it vastly easier for anybody to express their ideas, and very powerful people find that incredibly threatening.”
The September 8 ruling affirmed but narrowed a lower court order, issued on July 4 by US District Judge Terry Doughty, which found that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “engaged in a years-long pressure campaign [on social media outlets] designed to ensure that the censorship aligned with the government’s preferred viewpoints” and that “the platforms, in capitulation to state-sponsored pressure, changed their moderation policies.
Bhattacharya says the first victory, although in a lower court, was the most exciting to him.
“I was just absolutely thrilled, especially to have it on July 4th,” he said. “I think that judge was sending a message by issuing this ruling on July 4th that we’re going to restore free speech in this country.”
The Biden administration appealed to the Supreme Court on Thursday — a move that Bhattacharya anticipated.
But he believes it’s “unlikely” the Supreme Court will overturn the Fifth Circuit’s decision.
He feels his is a landmark case in curbing the influence the government has over social media — on matters that extend far beyond just COVID-19 and lockdowns.
“This new technology has created enormous opportunities for people to participate in debate in the public square,” Bhattacharya said. “And I hope that this is the beginning of a legal infrastructure that enables that to happen — rather than the opposite, which is a dark age where the government gets to decide what’s true and what’s allowed to be said.”
186Pass it on.
Views: 27
So go ahead and drink the Kool-Aid. Funnies to make your day.
259Pass it on.
Views: 71
I expect to be kicked off of ‘Breaking News’ soon.
Pud is supposed to be a mod there, but his name doesn’t appear as a mod there. I asked Finn, a gold star with a closed profile, about it. That will probably get me kicked off. Anyone still displaying a gold star in their screen name is likely not to be trusted. Several of our lurkers still display their gold star and brag about their “All Star” status.
Disqus is the AI bot. Fate is a gold star with a closed profile, and then there’s Finn: 
So, where is Pud’s name in that list????
He’s already stated although he was made a moderator on Breaking News and Chit Chat, he can’t override the Disqus Bot “decisions.” Numerous users have complained about innocuous posts getting deleted over there. (I can attest to that!)
But Leftists have free reign to insult every other poster on a thread. Why is that? Disqus is up to its old tricks.
Finally, they are also auto-censoring OP’s with no REAL reason given. Seriously? (You may need to enlarge the screencap below, even though it is full-size and easily readable IRL.)
The only POSSIBLE “rule” I am breaking there is #1: “Targeted Harassment”….hmm.
So, who am I targeting? Mod bots? Or maybe it’s the trolls showing up who call those who disagree with them MAGAts, Trumpers, commies, and assorted personal insults? As I say in the screencap, they are following the same tactics Media Mattress-trained trolls did eight years ago.
It’s strange how all those OP’s and comments attacking Trump (and conservatives in general) are fine and dandy with the Gods of Disqus.
Pud, aka The Coconut Whisperer, seems to be window-dressing to fool conservatives. He doesn’t seem to have any real power that Disqus can’t override without reason or explanation.
Remember when the original (and promoted by Disqus) NEWS VIEWS was the #1 channel — despite banning hundreds of unwary newbies who posted the wrong opinion there?
I do. I was one of them. This raises the specter of the same censorship starting all over again.
SSDD.
218Pass it on.
Views: 12
California colleges struggle in free speech rankings.
The Center Square) – According to national free speech rankings published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, 59% of California colleges rate from “below average” to “poor,” with only one California college of 27 — California State University, Los Angeles — ranked “above average.”
The survey was conducted from a selected group of 55,102 undergraduates enrolled at 254 four-year degree institutions across the United States drawn from more than 750,000 verified undergraduate students and recent alumni by college opinion research firm College Pulse.
“Each year, the climate on college campuses grows more inhospitable to free speech,” said FIRE Director of Polling and Analytics Sean Stevens in a public statement. “Some of the most prestigious universities in our country have the most repressive administrations. Students should know that a college degree at certain schools may come at the expense of their free speech rights.”
Scores were largely based on students’ comfort expressing ideas, tolerance for liberal speakers, tolerances for conservative speakers, prevalence of disruptive conduct towards speakers, administrative support for free speech amid controversy, on-campus conversation openness regarding political issues. Select actions, such as supporting or disinviting speakers, supporting or sanctioning student groups for speech, or supporting or sanctioning scholars whose speech rights were threatened during controversy, could earn or lose further points.
Coming in at 33 of 254 universities ranked nationwide but first in California, California State University was the only California university to rate as slightly above average, and was followed within California by the University of California, Merced, then Claremont McKenna College. Meanwhile, the worst-rated school in California, the University of California, Davis, ranked 237 nationally, was the one school in the state to receive a “poor” speech rating, and placed 250th for tolerance of disruptive conduct and 221st for tolerance for conservative speakers.
According to FIRE, the University of California, Davis, disinvited two campus speakers between 2019 and 2023. During one cancelation in 2022, administrators canceled a Turning Point USA speaking event when a fight broke out before the event in front of the venue.
Excluded from relative rankings for its bottom-barrel “warning” rating, Pepperdine University was criticized for a speech code that bars speakers from “statements that disparage God, Jesus Christ, or religion; language that demeans and exploits any identities; explicit lyrics; and references to sex, alcohol, and narcotics/drugs,” or using “profanity or tell obscene jokes or stories of any kind whatsoever during the performance.”
146
