Big Tech Censorship | The Arizona Sun Times

Katie Hobbs Used State Resources for Censorship ‘Volunteers’ Who Monitored Twitter for ‘Misinformation’ in 2022 Arizona Elections: Email

February 15, 2024February 14, 2024 Tom Pappert

An email surfaced by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) on Tuesday revealed Governor Katie Hobbs used government resources to facilitate a volunteer force that flagged “misinformation” ahead of the 2022 election, including on Election Day.

The legal organization explained that it revealed the email through an Arizona Public Records Law request to the Arizona Secretary of State which requested communications between Hobbs’ office and social media platforms Twitter, Facebook and Instagram between January 7, 2019 and January 1, 2023.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Reneges on Hosting Republican Event After ‘Doing Research’ on Group

June 30, 2023 Arizona Sun Times Staff

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University rescinded its agreement to host a College Republicans United convention “after doing research” on the group.

Richard Thomas, founder of the group, told The College Fix that the event was to be located at the university’s “Lower Hangar” at its Prescott, Arizona campus for three hours and cost a total of $630.00 for media, support and cleanup.

Twitter Suspends Mark Finchem’s Account Three Days After Elon Musk’s Takeover, Eight Days Before the Election – UPDATED

November 1, 2022November 1, 2022 Rachel Alexander

Just three days after tech mogul Elon Musk acquired Twitter, promising to bring free speech to the platform, the social media giant suspended Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem. The election is eight days away, and the Trump-endorsed state representative is running on a platform of combating voter fraud – a contentious topic that raises hackles on the Right and Left.

Finchem received a notice from Twitter Monday afternoon telling him, “We’ve temporarily limited some of your account features.” It went on to say, “We have determined this account violated the Twitter Rules. Specifically for:” However, there was no reason specified.

YouTube Censors Conservative Show Featuring Kari Lake

August 19, 2022August 19, 2022 Neil Jones

Arizona Republican Gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake recently spoke on the popular Conservative show “Louder With Crowder,” but YouTube has struck down the episode.

“Tech tyrants are censoring @scrowder for something we talked about on his show last week,” Lake Tweeted. “Who knows what it was & who cares–this is wrong. IT IS UNAMERICAN. We the people must denounce censorship in any form.”

Mailchimp Suspends Account of Arizona Attorney General Candidate Andrew Gould

July 3, 2022July 2, 2022 Rachel Alexander

Arizona Attorney General candidate Andrew Gould, a Republican and former Arizona Supreme Court Justice, said he has been suspended from Mailchimp for violating its terms of service. He believes it may have been due to a press release he issued on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down a New York gun control law, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Gould stated in a message to his supporters, “After a year of using this service, they have suspended our account without the opportunity to appeal it. Mailchimp claims that we have violated their Standard Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy. They will not specify the violation. I find it highly suspicious that, immediately after the release of my statement supporting the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the 2nd Amendment in New York, Mailchimp shut down my account.”

Kari Lake Sits Down with Brandon Straka to Discuss Plans If Elected as Arizona Governor

June 13, 2022June 12, 2022 Neil Jones

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona – Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for Arizona governor, sat down for a Saturday interview with #WalkAway Campaign PAC (WACPAC) founder Brandon Straka about how she will handle important policies if elected. It was the first-ever such event.

“It’s like we’ve [America has] got wounds and we’re bleeding; we’ve got to stop the bleeding. But the thing that caused the wounds and the bleeding is a stolen election,” Lake said when asked by Straka about election integrity. “Let me tell you, none of these people I’m running against on the Republican ticket even wanted to touch that. It’s the third rail. And I even had people in politics say, ‘Don’t mention the 2020 election.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I went out, I touched that rail, and I have not stopped talking about it because that’s the reason we have the problems we have.”

National Border Patrol Council-Endorsed Arizona Candidate for U.S. Senate Jim Lamon Running Barrage of Gutsy Ads, Some Censored by Big Tech

May 14, 2022May 13, 2022 Rachel Alexander

U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, who is running as a Republican for office in Arizona to defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, is making waves with his provocative, bold TV campaign spots. The left-leaning big tech companies don’t like them, however, and so both Yahoo and Facebook have pushed back, with Yahoo actually censoring them. While broadcast TV is generally required by law to run political ads (FCC rules state that if a station allows state and local political candidates to run ads, they must accept them from all candidates), big tech is not. Yahoo refused to run an ad of his because it merely said “Let’s Go Brandon.”

Stephen Puetz, one of Lamon’s campaign staffers, told The Arizona Sun Times the ads are making a difference in getting Lamon’s name known, since polls show his support is increasing. Lamon is running against Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich in the Republican primary, who has considerable name recognition, and another candidate, Blake Masters, is making significant ground due to funding from his boss, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel.

Twitter Reverses Ban on Account That Highlighted Left-Wing Hypocrisy

February 17, 2022 Peter D'Abrosca

Twitter Tuesday evening banned a well-known Twitter account called @DefiantLs, which posted screenshots pointing out left-wing hypocrisy.

The owner of the account, who has always been anonymous and remains so, said the account was banned for an alleged “ban evasion,” despite the fact that the account owner says he or she has “never had an account suspended so I’ve never had a ban to evade.”

Conservatives, Independent Voices Build Own Platforms to Counter Big Tech Censorship

February 7, 2022February 6, 2022 Arizona Sun Times Staff

Conservatives took critics to heart when they said, “build your own platforms,” in the wake of digital censorship claims.

Twitter competitors like Gab, Parler and now GETTR offer a “safe space” for those frustrated by the former’s inconsistent rules. The video platform Rumble, active since 2013 but experiencing a massive boost over the past year, is a haven for voices like conservative talker Dan Bongino recently silenced by Google-owned YouTube. And GiveSendGo.com lets clients denied access to GoFundMe crowdfund without compromising their values.

Left-Wing Activists Tied to ‘Disinformation’ Group Are Working to Demonetize Conservative News Sites

February 6, 2022February 5, 2022 Arizona Sun Times Staff

Activists linked to a left-wing disinformation network are pressuring advertisers to cut ties with conservative news sites.

Check My Ads, a group started by Sleeping Giants co-founder and activist Nandini Jammi and advertising consultant Claire Atkin, bills itself as “Adtech’s first watchdog” and claims to “cut disinformation off at the source.” The organization attempts to curb the spread of what it deems misleading or hateful content by pressuring advertisers and ad exchanges to sever business relationships with certain news and commentary sites.

Facebook Exec Promises to Crack Down on ‘Falsehoods’ Targeting ‘Marginalized Communities’

January 29, 2022January 28, 2022 Arizona Sun Times Staff

Roy Austin, vice president of civil rights for Facebook parent company Meta, pledged to crack down on “misinformation” and alleged discriminatory conduct propagated by the social media platform.

“We’re living in a time and a society where there are people who propagate obvious falsehoods,” Austin said in an interview with Axios. “My position is, when those falsehoods injure historically and systemically marginalized communities, that they don’t belong.”

Dan Bongino Permanently Banned from YouTube

January 28, 2022January 27, 2022 Arizona Sun Times Staff

Conservative talk show host Dan Bongino had both of his YouTube accounts permanently banned Wednesday, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Bongino’s second channel, the Dan Bongino Show Clips, was initially suspended and demonetized for seven days after Bongino posted a video in which he said masks were “useless” in stopping the spread of the coronavirus, violating YouTube’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. Bongino then attempted to upload a video within the seven-day suspension period on his main channel, resulting in a permanent ban for both accounts, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to the DCNF.

DirecTV to Drop OAN in Blow to Conservative, Pro-Trump News Network

January 17, 2022 Admin

Satellite broadcaster DirecTV has announced plans to drop the One America News (OAN) channel in a blow to the conservative, unabashedly pro-Donald Trump news network.

“We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires,” a DirecTV spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Amazon Disables Ability to Rate Books Sold in China at Chinese Government’s Request

December 26, 2021December 25, 2021 Arizona Sun Times Staff

Amazon stopped offering customer ratings and reviews of books sold in China at the request of the Chinese Communist Party, according to a Reuters investigation.

The Chinese government ordered Amazon to stop allowing customers to review books following less-than-perfect ratings of a collection of President Xi Jinping’s writings, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. Amazon partnered with a state-owned firm called China International Book Trading Corp (CIBTC) and created a portal, which it called China Books, that promotes Chinese Communist Party material and forbids negative reviews.

YouTube Demonetizes Video on Missing Chinese Tennis Star

November 22, 2021November 21, 2021 Arizona Sun Times Staff

YouTube prevented a video about a missing Chinese tennis star from receiving advertising revenue on Friday.

The video, titled “Chinese Star VANISHES After Rape Accusation I Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar” and appearing on the Breaking Points channel, was demonetized early Friday, according to a tweet from the channel’s host Saagar Enjeti.

Facebook Employees Actively Censored Conservative Websites, Even in Defiance of Managers

October 26, 2021October 25, 2021 Arizona Sun Times Staff

A series of new leaks from Big Tech giant Facebook has revealed even more bias against conservatives from the company’s employees, even to the point of causing internal debates between employees and upper management, according to the New York Post.

The latest leaks come from message board conversations reviewed by the Post, which showed back-and-forth discussions within Facebook about how to deal with conservative news outlets during last year’s race riots by far-left domestic terrorist organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

Some employees expressed their desire to completely remove sites such as Breitbart from Facebook’s “News Tab” feature. When one such employee asked a manager about doing so, the manager responded by pointing out that “we saw drops in trust in CNN 2 years ago,” before rhetorically asking “would we take the same approach for them too?”

‘Zuckerberg Should Be in Jail:’ Molly Hemingway’s New Book Hits Back at Silicon Valley over 2020 Election

October 13, 2021 Peter D'Abrosca

Author and Senior Editor at The Federalist Mollie Hemingway held nothing back in her forthcoming book “RIGGED,” detailing the irregularities in the 2020 election.

One chapter of that book is titled “Zuckerberg Should Be in Jail,” referencing Facebook’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg.

Psaki Doubles Down on White House’s Support for Tech Censorship

July 18, 2021July 17, 2021 Peter D'Abrosca

Just a day after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted that the Biden administration is colluding with Facebook to censor “misinformation,” Psaki advocated for even more online censorship.

During a Friday press briefing, she advised social media companies to “create robust enforcement strategies that bridge their properties and provide transparency about rules.”

YouTube Removes Former President Trump’s Press Conference Announcing Big Tech Lawsuits

July 12, 2021July 11, 2021 Cooper Moran

Youtube removed a video posted by the America First Policy Institute, which captured former President Trump’s press conference announcing a class action lawsuit against Big Tech giants.

President and CEO of the America First Policy Institute Brooke Rollins, who joined Trump at the press conference, argued that the video’s removal is yet another instance of the censorship of conservatives.

Silicon Valley Tech Platforms Receive Failing Grades on Quarterly Censorship Report

April 23, 2021April 22, 2021 Peter D'Abrosca

According to a the most recent quarterly censorship report card from the Media Research Center (MRC), most of the major Silicon Valley tech titans are failing to protect freedom of expression.

“By almost any measure, the first three months of 2021 were the worst ever for online freedom. Amazon, Twitter, Apple, Google, Facebook, YouTube and others proved to the world that the Big Tech censorship of conservatives is a reality,” the group said. “And they did so in disturbing, authoritarian ways that highlight their unchecked power over information and our political process.”

YouTube CEO Honored with ‘Free Expression’ Award as Big Tech Silences Conservatives

April 20, 2021April 20, 2021 Peter D'Abrosca

Despite its ongoing censorship and banning of prominent conservatives from its platform, the CEO of Google-owned YouTube collected an award for “free expression” last week.

The nonprofit Freedom Forum, which describes itself as “celebrating the world’s champions of free expression,” decided that Susan Wojcicki met that high bar.

Tag: Big Tech Censorship