Censorship: Twitter Takeover Totally Panics Political Regime of LeftLibDemSocMediaTechPol

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Mar 19 17:15:50 PDT 2023


https://twitter.com/NameRedacted247
https://www.racket.news/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter

search: Stanford Research Institute SRI History of 1984


Stanford Project Worked To Censor Even True Stories On Social Media

"True Stories... Could Fuel Hesitancy -- Stanford"

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/03/19/true-stories-could-fuel-hesitancy-stanford-project-worked-to-censor-even-true-stories-on-social-media/
https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/content/virality-project
https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/launching-sio-virality-project
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/03/06/more-trout-than-milk-twitter-releases-more-evidence-of-government-censorship-operations/
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1636729166631432195
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD

While lost in the explosive news about Donald Trump’s expected arrest,
journalist Matt Taibbi released new details on previously undisclosed
censorship efforts on social media. The latest Twitter Files revealed
a breathtaking effort from Stanford’s Virality Project to censor even
true stories. After all, the project insisted “true stories … could
fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. The effort
included suppressing stories that we now know are legitimate such as
natural immunity defenses, the exaggerated value of masks, and
questions over vaccine efficacy in preventing second illnesses. The
work of the Virality Project to censor even true stories should result
in the severance of any connection with Stanford University.

We have learned of an ever-expanding coalition of groups working with
the government and social media to target and censor Americans,
including government-funded organizations.

However, the new files are chilling in the details allegedly showing
how the Virality Project labeled even true stories as “anti-vaccine”
and, therefore, subject to censorship. These files would suggest that
the Project eagerly worked to limit free speech and suppress
alternative scientific viewpoints.

Taibbi describes the Virality Project as “a sweeping, cross-platform
effort to monitor billions of social media posts by Stanford
University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded)
NGOs.”

    1.TWITTER FILES #19
    The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine
    Stanford, the Virality Project, and the Censorship of “True
Stories” pic.twitter.com/v41dyC26ZR
    — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

He added: “We’ve since learned the Virality Project in 2021 worked
with government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for
Covid-related content. At least six major Internet platforms were
‘onboarded’ to the same JIRA ticketing system, daily sending millions
of items for review.”

    5.Just before @ShellenbergerMD and I testified in the House last
week, Virality Project emails were found in the #TwitterFiles
describing “stories of true vaccine side effects” as actionable
content. pic.twitter.com/dKxTnxDc3a
    — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

According to Taibbi, it targeted anyone who did not robotically fall
in line with the CDC and media narratives, including targeting
postings that shared “Reports of vaccinated individuals contracting
Covid-19 anyway,” research on “natural immunity,” suggesting Covid-19
“leaked from a lab,” and even “worrisome jokes.”

That included evidence that it “knowingly targeted true material and
legitimate political opinion, while often being factually wrong
itself.”

The Virality Project warned Twitter that “true stories … could fuel
hesitancy,” including stories on “celebrity deaths after vaccine” and
the closure of a central New York school due to reports of
post-vaccine illness.

The Project is part of the Cyber Policy Center at Stanford and bills
itself as “a joint initiative of the Freeman Spogli Institute for
International Studies and Stanford Law School, connects academia, the
legal and tech industry and civil society with policymakers around the
country to address the most pressing cyber policy concerns.”

The Center launched the Project as a “a global study aimed at
understanding the disinformation dynamics specific to the COVID-19
crisis.”

As with many disinformation projects, it became a source of its own
disinformation in the effort to suppress alternative views.

It is being funded by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and the Hewlett Foundation.

On its website, it proclaims: “At the Stanford Internet Observatory
our mission is to study the misuse of the internet to cause harm, and
to help create policy and technical mitigations to those harms.” It
defines its mission to maintain the truth as it sees it:

    “The global COVID-19 crisis has significantly shifted the
landscape for mis- and disinformation as the pandemic has become the
primary concern of almost every nation on the planet. This has perhaps
never happened before; few topics have commanded and sustained
attention at a global level simultaneously, or provided such a wealth
of opportunities for governments, economically motivated actors, and
domestic activists alike to spread malign narratives in service to
their interests.”

What is even more disconcerting is that groups like the Virality
Project worked against public health by suppressing such stories that
are now considered legitimate from the efficacy of masks to the lab
origin theory. It was declaring dissenting scientific views to be
dangerous disinformation. Nothing could be more inimical to the
academic mission. Yet, Stanford still heralds the work of the Project
on its website.

There is nothing more inherently in conflict with academic values than
censorship. Stanford’s association with this censorship effort is
disgraceful and should be a matter for faculty action. This is a
project that sought to censor true stories that undermined government
or media narratives.

I am not hopeful that Stanford will sever its connection to the
Project.  Censorship is now the rage on campuses and the Project is
the perfect embodiment of this movement. Cloaking censorship efforts
in self-righteous rhetoric, the Project sought to silence those who
failed to adhere to a certain orthodoxy, including scientific and
public health claims that were later found flawed or wrong. The
Project itself is an example of what it called “media and social media
capabilities – overt and covert – to spread particular narratives.”

Stanford should fulfill its pledge in creating the Virality Project in
fighting disinformation by eliminating the Virality Project.


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