MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Jamie Fly’

Online Censorship: The Cure is Worse than the Disease | The Nestmann Group

Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2019

https://www.nestmann.com/online-censorship-the-cure-is-worse-than-the-disease

By Mark Nestmann

Fake news is a big problem. And as I’ve written, technology is about to make a lot worse.

But censoring online content to combat fake news is equally problematic. And it doesn’t matter where on the political spectrum your opinions lie…it’s a problem for everyone.

From a legal perspective, it’s clear that the government can’t force the media to filter out fake news. After all, the First Amendment reads, in part:

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

But private companies are free to censor anyone they want. That’s how iTunes, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube justified removing Jones’ audio and video content produced by online provocateur and right-wing activist Alex from their platforms last August…

But as big a problem as fake news is, online censorship isn’t the answer. Like it or not, booting Alex Jones off social media puts us as a society on a dangerous slippery slope. And we are sliding down that slope now. On October 11, within weeks of kicking off Jones, Facebook removed hundreds of pages of smaller left-wing, libertarian, and anti-war media outlets. Four of the more prominent organizations affected are Cop Block, the Free Thought Project, the Anti-Media, and Press for TruthRead the rest of this entry »

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Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media “Just the Beginning,” Says Top Neocon Insider – Grayzone Project

Posted by M. C. on October 27, 2018

https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/10/23/facebook-censorship-of-alternative-media-just-the-beginning-says-top-neocon-insider/

By Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague

In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge — and promised more takedowns in the near future.

“Russia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system,” remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is funded by the U.S. government and NATO. “They can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning.”

Fly went on to complain that “all you need is an email” to set up a Facebook or Twitter account, lamenting the sites’ accessibility to members of the general public. He predicted a long struggle on a global scale to fix the situation, and pointed out that to do so would require constant vigilance.

Fly made these stunning comments to Jeb Sprague, who is a visiting faculty member in sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara and co-author of this article. The two spoke during a lunch break at a conference on Asian security organized by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin, Germany… Read the rest of this entry »

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