Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…
© Mahabodhi Burton
30 minute read
This excerpt is from the Preface and goes into political developments over the last 15 months, since Elon Musk bought Twitter (now ‘X’) and invited independent journalists such as Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger to share what they found there. Included is a section on the Trusted News Initiative, a global media monopoly instigated by large legacy media outlets such as the BBC.
As a religious minister working within a western Buddhist tradition[1] and thus committed to the Buddha’s non-partisan teaching of the Middle Way, I find myself in a strange situation. We do indeed live in ‘interesting times.’ The Western world is enmeshed in the Culture Wars, seemingly chasing its tail/ fighting itself over ideology when under the surface essential resources are dwindling in a declining empire, causing people to fear for their future and that of their children and grandchildren.
The world we inhabit is increasingly one in which people live their lives in information silos: only hearing the message designed to justify power to their particular group, and otherwise blithely getting on with life, oblivious to what is going on elsewhere.
Scientia potentia est: ‘Knowledge is power’ as Francis Bacon said in 1597. Little did he know that this would play out by said knowledge acting as a reason for people to isolate themselves in their self-sustaining silos, fearing and balking from encounters with people holding different viewpoints. If a news source from across the cultural divide is encountered, it is typically regarded with suspicion and mistrust, even though it may be the only source of an alternative viewpoint.
People obey the group’s social mores: adopting its lifestyle choices and assumptions in line with the others on their radar, which often remain unchallenged, whilst in the silo on the other side of the political spectrum, the exact same thing is happening. God forbid anyone should attempt to occupy a middle ground or offer a balanced opinion. Ricky Gervais:
‘Social media amplifies everything. If you’re mildly left-wing on Twitter you’re suddenly Trotsky. If you’re mildly conservative you’re Hitler, and if you’re centrist and you look at both arguments, you’re a coward and they both hate you.’[2]
The two silos, as of 2022, consist of a) left-wing mainstream
‘The Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a self-described “industry partnership” launched by several of the world’s largest news outlets—including the BBC, The Associated Press (AP), Reuters, The Washington Post, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter—in March of 2020.’[3]
and b) conservative social media
a more conservative-leaning silo/ camp that consists of independent YouTube content creators—a high production value example is ‘Nate the Lawyer,’[4] Fox News; social media outlets such as Truth Social: which President Trump was obliged to establish after he was banned from Twitter in January 2021; and Elon Musk’s X: which aspires to be the non-partisan ‘digital town square,’ because Musk sees that as necessary for the future of civilization.
The Trusted News Initiative
Group boycott of independent media sources
It transpires however, that the two groups have not been operating on a level playing field: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and several other plaintiffs are suing several major news organizations, accusing them of antitrust and constitutional violations. The Defender reports, on 1 October 2023:
‘In a live interview this evening on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman and chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD,) announced that he and several other plaintiffs filed a groundbreaking novel lawsuit[5] making antitrust and constitutional claims against legacy media outlets.
‘The lawsuit targets the Trusted News Initiative[6] (TNI,) a self-described “industry partnership” launched in March 2020 by several of the world’s largest news organizations, including the BBC, The Associated Press (AP,) Reuters and The Washington Post — all of which are named as defendants in the lawsuit.’
‘All of the plaintiffs allege they were censored, banned, de-platformed, shadow banned or otherwise penalized by the Big Tech firms partnering with the TNI, because the views and content they published were deemed “misinformation” or “disinformation.” This resulted in a major loss of visibility and revenue for the plaintiffs.
‘The lawsuit further alleges that Big Tech firms, having partnered with the TNI, based their decisions on determinations jointly made by TNI, which touted its “early warning system” by which each partner organization is “warned” about an individual or outlet that is disseminating purported “misinformation.” The TNI’s legacy media and Big Tech firms then acted in concert — described in legal terms as a “group boycott” — to remove such voices and perspectives from their platforms. This forms the basis of the lawsuit’s antitrust and First Amendment claims.[7]
TNI viewed organizations reporting non-establishment views as ‘an existential threat’
The blanket reach over the world’s media by TNI is truly astounding. ‘The lawsuit states, “There are two main categories of TNI members, playing different but often complementary roles in the online news market: (A) large legacy news organizations (hereafter the TNI’s ‘Legacy News Members’) and (B) Big Tech platform companies (hereafter the TNI’s ‘Big Tech Members’).” Legacy news organizations are publishers of original news content and include the defendants named in the lawsuit. “By contrast,” the lawsuit states, “the TNI’s Big Tech members — Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft — are first and foremost Internet companies, each of which is, owns or controls one or more behemoth Internet platforms, including social media platforms and search engines.”’[8]
‘“Core partners” of the TNI include the AP, Agence France Press, the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta, Microsoft, Reuters, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter and The Washington Post.’[9]
‘The lawsuit’s executive summary[10] states:
“The TNI exists to, in its own words, ‘choke off’ and ‘stamp out’ online news reporting that the TNI or any of its members peremptorily deems ‘misinformation.’
“TNI members have targeted and suppressed completely accurate online reporting by non-mainstream news publishers concerning both Covid-19 (on matters including treatments, immunity, Covid-19, vax injury, and lockdowns/mandates) and U.S. elections (such as the Hunter Biden laptop story).”’[11]
The lawsuit contains a comprehensive list[12] of claims deemed ‘misinformation’ by one or more TNI members, and also alleges:
“By their own admission, members of the [TNI] have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant Internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to Covid-19 and U.S. politics. While the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ publicly purports to be a self-appointed ‘truth police’ extirpating online ‘misinformation,’ in fact it has suppressed wholly accurate and legitimate reporting in furtherance of the economic self-interest of its members.”
According to the lawsuit, “this is an antitrust action,” and specifically, “Federal antitrust law has its own name for this kind of ‘industry partnership’: it’s called a ‘group boycott’ and is a per se violation of the Sherman Act.” Legal precedent holds that a “group boycott” is “a concerted attempt by a group of competitors” to “disadvantage [other] competitors” by “cut[ting] off access” to a “facility or market necessary to enable the boycotted firm[s] to compete.”’[13]
As evidence of this allegation, the lawsuit includes the March 2022 statement by Jamie Angus, then senior news controller for BBC News:
‘Of course, the members of the Trusted News Initiative are… rivals…. But in a crisis situation like this, absolutely, organizations have to focus on the things they have in common, rather than… their commercial… rivalries…. [I]t’s important that trusted news providers club together. Because actually the real rivalry now is not between for example the BBC and CNN globally, it’s actually between all trusted news providers and a tidal wave of unchecked [reporting] that’s being piped out mainly through digital platforms…. That’s the real competition now in the digital media world. Of course, organizations will always compete against one another for audiences. But the existential threat I think is that overall breakdown in trust, so that trusted news organizations lose in the long term if audiences just abandon the idea of a relationship of trust with news organizations. So actually, we’ve got a lot more to hold us together than we have to work in competition with one another.
BBC & THE TRUSTED NEWS INITIATIVE, Jamie Angus, Senior News Controller for BBC News.’[14]
I am sure that this statement is grounded in genuine concern, but we need to remember the context: the staff of these news organisations are—like other Western institutions, such as American universities and social media platforms, massively weighted in their allegiance towards liberal values:[15] many are quite ungrounded[16] in their aversion to Donald Trump and all they imagine he represents: as an example of how such a bias builds up in an organisation, the billionaire Harvard donor Bill Ackman recently quizzed Harvard faculty on the issue of hiring practices. In a December 2023 letter to Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, he shared:
‘When I asked why Harvard’s faculty has shifted sharply leftward in recent years, they explained: “Each department decides whom they want, and the university can accept or reject the candidate. Left-leaning faculty appoint other left-wing faculty because they get to decide whom to hire and promote. It’s a bit like the Twitter algorithm which continues to feed you the points of view you want to hear. Eventually, each department reaches the tipping point.”
‘One senior member of the faculty shared that it is made abundantly clear that they cannot hire new faculty members unless they meet ODEIB[17] requirements. That is, the candidate has to be a woman, person of colour, or have LGBTQ+ status. Straight white males are “off the table.” Asians and those of South Asian (i.e., India) heritage are similarly disadvantaged in the process as they are deemed successful, overachieving minorities.
A number of the faculty bemoaned that in many cases they cannot hire the substantially more qualified person if he is a white or Asian straight male as the proposed candidate “has to be a woman or BIPOC person.” I was told that behind closed doors, it is common to hear: “I clearly don’t think this is the strongest candidate, but we can see where the train is headed. I therefore have no choice but to vote for the [lesser-qualified candidate.]”[18]
According to Kennedy, the BBC told its TNI partners that they could ‘stamp out and choke’ the independent sites by denying them platforms on the social media sites, because the viral movement of news stories was critical for the business models of those smaller news providers,[19]
‘“What they said is, anybody who departs from the trusted news, which is the official government narratives of WHO, CDC, the White House, Anthony Fauci, and NIH, we will make sure to identify them, and to make sure they are not given a platform.”
‘He added; “This has nothing to do with whether the statements were inaccurate. They use the word misinformation—and they acknowledge this throughout—as a euphemism for any statement that departs from official government orthodoxy.”’
‘That’s the point right there, Carlson commented. “They were censoring things that were true, and that’s when you cross into criminal propaganda in my opinion.”’[20]
‘As a result of this “group boycott,” the lawsuit states:
“The TNI did not only prevent Internet users from making these claims; it shut down online news publishers who simply reported that such claims were being made by potentially credible sources, such as scientists and physicians.”’[21]
And notes that:
‘ … the recently released “Twitter files” provide further indication of such inter-firm communication and coordination, including “regular meetings” [22] and “standing weekly call[s]” [23] to “discuss censorship policies and decisions.”’[24]
‘Remarking on the lawsuit, Kennedy told The Defender:
“My uncle,[25] President Kennedy and my father, the attorney general, sought to prosecute antitrust laws that are still on the nation’s books, with vigour. As private enforcers of those laws, we are confident that the federal court in Texas will vindicate our bedrock freedom to compete with legacy media in the marketplace of ideas.”’[26]
‘Mary Holland, CHD president and general counsel, told The Defender:
“I’m glad that CHD is bringing this case. We are hopeful we will get a fair hearing, and I’m glad that we are together with other organizations that have also been harmed by these corporate and governmental censorship policies.
“To have a free society, you have to have free speech, you have to have a diversity of views. We don’t have the same views as all of the other plaintiffs by far … but we want to protect the marketplace of ideas. If in fact the government and the corporations they collaborate with can engage in censorship and propaganda nonstop, and there are no alternative voices, democracy is dead.”’[27]
‘“By censoring independent voices, what they’re doing is economic suppression. Antitrust is against trusts, it’s against monopolies, and what the TNI has done is essentially create a global media monopoly in the English language.”’[28] (My emphasis)
It was quite amusing watching Elon Musk push back on the BBC; in an interview in April 2023, six months after he bought Twitter, Musk challenges the interviewer to name a single example of ‘hate speech’ on the new Twitter: he could not, and he asks him about the BBC’s own misinformation.[29]
‘Does the BBC hold itself at all responsible for misinformation regarding masking and side effects of vaccination? And not reporting on that at all? And what about the fact that the BBC was put under pressure by the British Government: to change their editorial policy? Are you aware of that?’[30]
That TNI has been part of a much larger Censorship-Industrial Complex: including Government departments, foundations, for-profit organisations, academic initiatives, think tanks, fact checkers, NGOs and Big Tech,[31] all conspiring to control the mainstream narrative, is explained in The Twitter Files: The Censorship Industrial Complex video by Matt Taibbi.[32]
The Twitter Files
Bari Weiss is a former op-ed staff editor and writer on culture and politics at The New York Times. In July 2020 she resigned, accusing her former employer of ‘unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge.’ She went on to found the media company The Free Press (formerly Common Sense.) She says:
‘At dinner time on December 2 [2022,] I received a text from Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, founder of SpaceX, founder of the Boring Company, founder of Neuralink, on most days the richest man in the world (possibly history), and, as of October, the owner of Twitter. Was I interested in looking at Twitter’s archives, he asked. And how soon could I get to Twitter HQ? In the days that followed, we—the journalist Matt Taibbi; investigative reporters connected to The Free Press, including Abigail Shrier, Michael Shellenberger and Leighton Woodhouse; plus Free Press reporters Suzy Weiss, Peter Savodnik, Olivia Reingold, and Isaac Grafstein—camped out in a windowless, fluorescent-lit room at Twitter headquarters and began looking through the company’s vast archive of internal communications.’
‘… In the two stories we are publishing today—Twitter’s Secret Blacklists[33] and Why Twitter Really Banned Trump[34]—you’ll see evidence of Musk’s claim that, at Old Twitter, “they were pressing the thumb hard in favour of the left. On the left, you could get away with death threats. On the right, you could get suspended for retweeting a Trump rally.” In one sense, that shouldn’t be surprising. Twitter is in San Francisco. Its workforce is between 97 and 99 percent Democrat.[35] If institutions are just people, well, of course Twitter would more readily censor conservatives. What’s surprising is how thoroughly Twitter misled the public, insisting that they didn’t suppress disfavoured users and topics when they absolutely did.
‘Musk promises that the future of Twitter will be a “level playing field” and that it will be “consistent and transparent.” He believes “the algorithm should be open-source, so people can critique it.” It sounds very good. But if the story of Old Twitter is about the biases and prejudices and power trips of the company’s former overlords, the question is what Musk will now do with the powerful tools they created? What does it mean when the owner of Twitter tweets that his pronouns are “Prosecute/Fauci”? Lots of people thought it was hilarious. Many others thought it was horrifying. It’s certainly not apolitical.’[36]
Musk essentially argues that his tweets are those of a private citizen entitled to his political opinion: but Weiss asks whether the tycoon is not taking the platform back to where it was before. Some people objected to Musk banning people for doxing: the practice of making public a person’s home or work address, thus opening them up to harassment and intimidation by activists. Just the previous day, news had broken of Twitter banning @ElonJet, an account with half a million followers that tracked the movements of Musk’s plane. Musk justified the ban by saying, “Any account doxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation,”[37] noting that a stalker had recently climbed onto a car carrying his two-year old son, X. Personally, I was surprised at Weiss’s objection to this ‘no-brainer.’
Weiss concludes: saying that as the platform is owned by Musk, it therefore follows his rules; maybe, she speculates, decisions in the future might be influenced by his business interests—say, in China—and asks, ‘Is this is too much power for one man?’ Characteristically, Musk replies: “I’m open to ideas. I’ve got a lot of work on my plate. I was just worried that Twitter was sending civilization in a bad direction.”[38]
After the release of the Files, conservative media thought them the biggest story in the world; however, the legacy media barely seems to acknowledge they existed. Weiss: ‘it is hard to think of a story that more vividly exemplifies a problem we are trying to tackle here at The Free Press. We are living in a culture that’s been suffering from a lack of open, transparent, informed, public debate. For people to have the courage to speak their minds, they have to know, at least, what’s happening.’[39]
Weiss interviewed Ro Khanna—‘[the] progressive congressman representing California’s 17th District—the wealthiest congressional district in America. He’s Silicon Valley’s congressman, so his constituents are the coastal elites of the elites.’[40] Khanna is not your normal Democrat:
‘Khanna consistently sounds the alarm on the unintended consequences of globalization and the digital revolution; on the gap between those creating automation and A.I. and the people whose jobs are being turned over to that new technology; and on the growing divide between the laptop class and those who still head to work before the sun comes up.
‘In fact, sometimes when you listen to Khanna—he says we need to “make more stuff here,” and “buy American”—he kind of sounds like . . . Donald Trump.
‘Which sort of tells you everything you need to know about our current political moment. About how the old rules—about what is left and what is right, about which party represents the working class and which party represents the elites—no longer apply.’ [41]
Khanna’s policies on Big Tech differ from the norm: he thinks Big Tech needs to be broken up. Moreover. he was one of the only Democrats to reach out directly to Twitter in October 2020 to criticize its decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story in the runup to the election.
‘In an era where the Democratic Party and Big Tech often seem to march in lockstep, Khanna says: Maybe we should be skeptical of this kind of corporate power. And, by the way, isn’t that the core of what the Democratic Party is supposed to be about? And if not, when did that change and why?’[42]
After the Twitter Files were published, a predictable ‘bun-fight’ rose up over whether or not they were a ‘nothingburger:’ Cathy Young, who explores the pros and cons of ‘Team Scandal’ and ‘Team Nothingburger’ in her article Are the ‘Twitter Files’ a Nothingburger?’[43] makes some pertinent points:
‘The polemics over the Twitter Files have often focused on whether Twitter executives lied when they said in 2018 that they “do not shadow ban,” and most certainly not “based on political viewpoints or ideology.” To some extent, this argument boils down to a disagreement over terminology. People who use the term “shadow banning” loosely to mean lowering the visibility of a person’s tweets claim that the execs lied, because they did just that. But Twitter officials talked openly about the distinction they drew between shadow banning, which the company defined strictly as making a person’s tweets completely invisible to anyone but the user, and other practices it put under the heading of “visibility filtering.” The same Twitter executives who denied they shadow banned users readily conceded[44] that they “rank” tweets and downrank ones from “bad-faith actors who intend to manipulate or divide the conversation.”
‘Fair enough; but this honest admission should still be worrying. Who gets to classify someone as a “bad–faith actor”? What constitutes manipulation and divisiveness as opposed to “healthy” polemics and exchanges? (My emphasis)
‘And “based on political viewpoints or ideology” is also not as simple as it seems at first glance, since many people don’t see their political biases as biases.’
Too true,
‘Thus, content moderators who allow self-proclaimed anti-fascists to get away with much more violent language than MAGA activists, or who allow progressives to attack conservative women or minorities with sexual or racial slurs that would not be tolerated from right-wingers, may sincerely believe that it’s not about politics but about good guys vs. bad guys. For the same reason, an online dogpile that includes the release of personal information[45] (“doxing”) and attempts to get someone fired may be rightly seen as harassment if the target is, say, a parent who brings a child to Drag Queen Story Hour, but not if it’s a “Karen” dubiously accused[46] of racist behavior (such as calling[47] a non-police parking hotline to report an illegally parked car whose owners turn out to be black).
‘Indeed, then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey openly discussed this issue in 2018 even as he denied that Twitter was shadow banning Republicans or making decisions based on ideology. In an August 2018 interview,[48] Dorsey told CNN’s Brian Stelter:
“We need to constantly show that we are not adding our own bias, which I fully admit is left, is more left-leaning. And I think it’s important to articulate our bias, and to share it with people so that people understand us, but we need to remove all bias from how we act, and our policies, and our enforcement.”
Although that bias has drifted further to the left, nevertheless:
‘Dorsey’s commitment to fairness seems genuine. But this dedication to neutrality has, over the years, inevitably come into conflict with the pro-“social justice” climate in the major tech companies, including Twitter. It is notable, for instance, that when Wired magazine hosted a roundtable discussion[49] on solving online harassment in late 2015 featuring Del Harvey, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, in conversation with several “experts” on the issue, every expert was a progressive activist, and Harvey herself expressed concern that tools developed to curb online abusers could be turned around against “marginalized group[s].” Likewise, anti-abuse initiatives at Twitter[50] and other tech companies[51] have been heavily dominated by activists who tended to support not only broad restrictions on “oppressive” speech in the name of “safety” but double standards favoring “marginalized” identities over the “privileged.” When Twitter announced the creation of its Trust and Safety Council[52] in February 2016, Ken White, generally skeptical of right-wing grievances about social media tyranny, nonetheless wrote[53] that the council “appears calculated to have a narrow view of legitimate speech and a broad view of ‘harassment’ (at least insofar as it is uttered by the wrong people).”[54]
On the question of viewing the Twitter Files as a ‘nothingburger,’ Khanna responds:
‘Here’s why I think the “nothingburger” argument is compounding the problem. Let’s stipulate that 60% of the country may not care about the Twitter Files. But if 40% of the country thinks they don’t have a fair shake on a modern platform, don’t you think you should listen?
‘It’s like you’re doubly censoring. You’re censoring in the first place. And then you’re censoring the emotion of being upset about being censored. I think until we start to have a conversation where we’re understanding where each other are coming from there’s no hope for stitching the country together.’[55]
Envisioning the political pendulum swinging back and forth, Khanna says:
‘It really has become a ball that’s going to bounce from one side to the other side. That’s the exact wrong vision of democracy. Both sides have a stake in this conversation because what happened to The New York Post in 2020 could happen to a liberal or progressive outlet in 2024 or 2028.’[56]
After Musk took over Twitter, Twitter’s mission statement remained the same as it was before: ‘To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers,’[57] however many barriers were erected in ‘old Twitter:’ as outlined in The Free Press article ‘Twitter’s Secret Blacklists:’[58]
‘After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, Twitter started to play a more active role in policing, or “moderating,” in tech parlance, that public square. It operated a secret blacklist, with teams of employees tasked with suppressing the visibility of accounts or subjects deemed undesirable or dangerous. All this was happening at the same time that major institutions across America—in the media, education, tech and elsewhere—were becoming less tolerant of views that, a few years ago, were considered well within the 40-yard lines of American politics but are now deemed far outside the parameters of acceptable discourse.
‘The people in charge of these institutions enforced the new parameters by expanding the definitions of words like “violence,” “harm” and “safety.” Things once considered part of everyday life in America—like disagreeing about whether a global pandemic started in a market or a lab in Wuhan—were increasingly off limits. Twitter’s waning appetite for ideas or points of view outside the mainstream, in other words, was part of a broader trend sweeping the country. Whether the platform was a catalyst for that trend or a mirror of it is a question better left to historians.
‘What is perfectly clear today is that the platform is an indispensable tool for journalists and politicians and that it has deeply affected which stories get covered and how. It has the power to determine the heroes and villains of contemporary news cycles, and to decide which areas of inquiry are legitimate and which are strictly off-limits—even wrong. So the fact that Twitter shielded users from perspectives it deemed extremist—and that it did so while pretending it wasn’t—is a fact relevant to all Americans, whether they have ever logged onto Twitter or not.
‘Tweets or accounts or hashtags that offended the powers that be were not publicly shamed, but quietly throttled, meaning users frequently did not know they were being deprived of arguments or data that did not support the prevailing wisdom or the politically favoured narrative.’[59]
Shadow banning
For years, Twitter denied that it engaged in shadow banning; what it did engage in was ‘visibility filtering,’ or ‘VF:’’
‘“Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us. Actually, it’s a set of tools that include locking users out of searches and preventing some users’ tweets from trending—which is how countless other users discover what’s popular or being talked about on Twitter. We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter employee told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed this.
‘“They say they didn’t put their thumb on the scale,” Musk, who became CEO of Twitter in October, told The Free Press. “But they were pressing the thumb hard in favor of the left. If left, you could get away with death threats, and nothing would happen. If right, you could get suspended for retweeting a picture of a Trump rally.”
‘Nor was the anger directed at Twitter confined to the right. Congressman Ro Khanna, a California Democrat whose district encompasses much of Silicon Valley, told The Free Press:
“The problem that’s happening here is that people are conflating hate speech with viewpoint discrimination.”
He added: “The essence of this story is that Twitter is telling some people that, based on the viewpoints that they have, that they aren’t allowed to ask a question or share their point of view in the same way as everyone else in the room. And that’s just anti-democratic.”
‘One person Twitter masked from view was Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an M.D., an economist, and a professor of health policy at Stanford.
‘In 2020, he and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, then a professor of medicine at Harvard, and Dr. Sunetra Gupta, a professor of epidemiology at Oxford, warned in an open letter[60] of the dangerous impact of lockdowns, especially on children, the working-class, and the poor. They argued for “focused protection” for the most medically vulnerable, and a return to normal life for the rest of society. This made the three scientists targets[61] of Washington’s public health bureaucracy. Twitter put Bhattacharya’s account on the Trends Blacklist, which meant that, no matter how many likes or views one of his tweets racked up, it could never “trend”; its visibility to users on the platform would be sharply curtailed. …
‘The revelation of these surreptitious actions left Stanford’s Bhattacharya shaken. After reading our initial Twitter thread,[62] he took to Twitter to share his thoughts,[63] opining that, in the absence of shadow banning—sorry, visibility filtering—the Covid lockdowns might have been applied differently. There would have been, in his view, less unhappiness, less isolation, less economic despair.
‘In a follow up tweet, he said:[64] “Still trying to process my emotions on learning that @twitter blacklisted me. The thought that will keep me up tonight: censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures and a generation of children were hurt.”’[65]
The ‘banning’ of Jordan Peterson from Twitter
The ‘great sin,’ however, on ‘Old Twitter’ was to comment on a transgender issue: as Jordan Peterson found to his cost when he was suspended[66] from Twitter for allegedly violating their rules against hateful conduct: ‘Mikhaila Peterson said her father would be off the platform until he deleted the tweet. Conservative Political Commentator David Rubin commented on the incident …:
“The insanity continues at Twitter. @jordanbpeterson has been suspended for this tweet about Ellen Page. He just told me he will ‘never’ delete the tweet. Paging @elonmusk.”’ [67]
only to be suspended himself. ‘Rubin and Mikhaila called on Tesla CEO Elon Musk – who recently bid $44 billion to take the platform over in efforts to promote free speech.’[68] Musk eventually took over Twitter in October 2022.
Peterson had claimed in a tweet on 24 June 2022 that ‘The Umbrella Academy’ star Elliot Page, who formerly went by the name of Ellen, and who had announced his transition in December 2020, had his ‘breast removed by a criminal Physician.’[69] Peterson had said ‘her’ instead of ‘his,’ tweeting,
‘Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician.’[70]
Peterson explains his thinking behind the tweet:
‘Page is a star, and she advertised her transformation and made the claim that this is revolutionized her life and then she displayed her new body in a public forum and got 1.7 Instagram likes for it, and probably enticed, let’s say, one young girl who is confused into becoming sterile, which is one too many for me.’[71]
Peterson’s tweet, along with other controversial tweets and statements in interviews, led the Ontario College of Psychologists to order him to undertake a social media coaching program; he appealed the decision, and lost:[72]
‘Dr. Peterson is subject to regulation by the College of Psychologists of Ontario, which received complaints about Dr. Peterson’s public statements. Following an investigation into those of Dr. Peterson’s statements alleged to be “transphobic, sexist, [and] racist,” the College’s Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (ICRC) ordered Dr. Peterson to complete a specified continuing education or remedial program regarding professionalism in public statements.
‘Dr. Peterson sought judicial review of this decision. The Divisional Court denied his application, finding that the ICRC’s decision was reasonable and proportionately balanced the College’s statutory mandate, including the protection of the public interest, with Dr. Peterson’s Charter right to freedom of expression. Dr. Peterson’s lawyers have publicly stated his intention to file for leave to appeal the decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal.’[73]
Peterson responded passionately to the court’s judgement, tweeting:
‘So the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that @CPOntario can pursue their prosecution. If you think that you have a right to free speech in Canada, you’re delusional. I will make every aspect of this public, and we will see what happens when utter transparency is the rule. Bring it on.’[74]
In a Foundation for Economic Education article,[75] Patrick Carroll says, ‘It’s easy to vilify trans-activists, but if we want to dissuade them from cancelling people, it’s important to understand where they’re coming from.’[76] The most likely objection Twitter had to the Tweets in question is that Peterson and Rubin both referred to now-Elliott Page using the person’s former name: Peterson says:
“I committed the fatal crime of what has come to be known in the appalling censorial terminology of the insane activists as ‘deadnaming,’” said[77] Peterson, “which is the act of referring to someone who has ‘transitioned’—another hated piece of jargon and slogan—by the name, and by the inference, the gender, really the sex, that everyone knew them by previously.”
‘This, it seems, is the crux of the issue.
‘According to many trans-activists, deadnaming can be incredibly hurtful to people who have transitioned. It reminds them of the person they used to be, the identity from which they’ve escaped, and even that simple reminder can take a huge psychological toll. [78]
Carroll says that ‘if trans-activists were merely pointing this out and encouraging people to be respectful, there would likely be little problem;’[79] just as when we might cease to use a nickname because it makes our friend uncomfortable or raise a sensitive topic when they indicate clearly that they don’t want to talk about it.
‘The problem, of course, is that many trans-activists don’t stop there. Instead of a respectful request, the exhortation to abide by the ever-evolving political correctness rules comes as a demand, and there are steep consequences, such as cancelling, for those who don’t comply.’[80]
The Mindset behind Cancel Culture
Carroll proposes that the motivation of the activists is compassion: he alludes to a mother bear lashing out at an aggressor to protect her cubs; he says: this kind of compassion often isn’t a bad thing; people in positions of power do cause harm; and there are circumstances where it’s entirely appropriate to call out bullies and defend victims: compassion has its place.
‘The problem is, compassion can be taken too far. Cancelling people over names and pronouns is a clear example;’[81] and cites others.
The people who promote these things often mean well: but, to the extent that their obsession with compassion is misguided, ‘they often end up causing far more problems than they solve.’[82]
Carroll thinks that the path to peace in the Culture War lies in a middle way between the extremes of too much and too little compassion: ‘we shouldn’t have so much compassion that we cancel and attack everyone who is deemed a perpetrator. For one, that approach will likely backfire, because it’s only a matter of time before we are all labelled perpetrators.’[83] Also, ‘cancelling people is antithetical to a genuine tolerance of diverse viewpoints.’[84] He says that the LGBTQ activists, of all people, should appreciate the value of such tolerance: it was the very tolerance of diversity–along with a culture of free speech–that allowed them to get their ideas into mainstream culture in the first place.
‘It would be incredibly hypocritical for them, having championed free speech as a means of advancing their cause, to suddenly turn their backs on it now that their detractors also have something to say.’[85]
Equally it would be wrong to neglect compassion: and act as if deadnaming didn’t matter.
Carroll cites John F. Kennedy, who said, ‘The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities,’ which for Carroll implies that the right to free speech comes with the responsibility to speak judiciously; he says, if you want people to let you speak freely, you should at least consider their requests: whether you do acquiesce to their demands will depend on the context: ‘you shouldn’t simply dismiss the voice of compassion, no matter how shrill it may sound.’[86]
Concerning ‘requests and demands,’ I am reminded here of the work of Marshal Rosenberg: in Non-Violent Communication the interlocutor is always encouraged to make (and hear!) a request rather than a demand: shrill sounds more like a demand, although we could try and hear it as a request.
‘The goal, then, is to get to a place where cancelling and scoffing are replaced with dialogue and understanding, tolerance and respect. It won’t be easy, but if we commit ourselves to this process, we can create a society where compassion and free speech can both be celebrated and fostered.’[87]
In fact, this is what Buddhism attempts with its speech precepts.
Compassion and its ‘enemies’
Buddhism has quite a sophisticated understanding of the family of emotions which constitute compassion, including its near and far enemies. Much of what passes for compassion today is mere indulgence: as when we support an alcoholic or drug addict in their addiction; the Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa had a term for this kind of activity: ‘Idiot Compassion.’ The technical term for justifying or indirectly supporting someone else’s potentially harmful behavior is ‘enabling.’ True compassion quickly recognizes such ‘support’ as a form of self-serving sentimentality and refrains from it; ‘tough love,’ which can be an aspect of compassion, on the other hand, might encourage the addict to ‘face their demons:’ through engaging in a structured programme with a mentor and peer group to guide them through, such as The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
For true compassion to be present, three conditions need to be met:
The giver
Firstly, the ‘giver’ (of compassion) needs to be in full contact with the reality of themselves: they need to be coming from a place of groundedness and self-knowledge. We might say they possess a certain wisdom; not practicing compassion from a place of lack, or in order to feel better about themselves–in fact, the more ‘self’ is out of the picture, the better (Virtue-signallers pay attention!,) they practice compassion from a place of resource.
The receiver
Secondly, the giver needs to be in full contact with the reality of the ‘receiver:’ the person they are responding to: they need to be coming from a place of true awareness (of that person.) My teacher Sangharakshita has an aphorism, ‘Love is awareness of the being of another person.’ We need, therefore, to be as fully aware of the object of our compassion as we can: in the particulars of their situation; in the reality of them being a living entity in need of kindness and care, rather than something instrumental to our needs. And we need to keep this awareness of the person and their situation as vivid and alive as we can; and not let it drift.
The connection between the two
Thirdly, we need to forge and maintain a live connection and building energy between these two realities: as we continue to maintain not only the connection between subject and object, or between ‘giver’ (as source of wisdom) and ‘receiver’ (as object of compassion,) but also the emotional energy between them.
Compassion (Sanskrit / Pali: karuna) is an emotion; and emotions are often concerned with ‘what we want.’ The important Buddhist emotion of universal loving kindness (Sanskrit:maitri; Pali:metta) is ‘wanting the welfare of all sentient beings;’ compassion is metta’s response to suffering. With both metta and karuna all three above conditions need to be in place: the giver needs to be genuine and rooted; the receiver needs to be seen fully in their situation (including seen fully in their real suffering, if compassion is in play) and there needs to be a growing emotional strength of connection between giver and receiver. All emotion exists on a spectrum of intensity: we can want a thing mildly; or we can be completely passionate about bringing it about. Just so with metta and karuna: they are said to be illimitable: there is no limit to how intensely they might be felt.
The power of compassion then is that it brings to bear passionate emotion onto a real situation (of suffering) in a way that is resourced and genuine. Keeping all three factors in play at the same time is difficult, which is why compassion can be an uphill struggle. If we let any one of these three elements go, then the creative conditions and tension necessary for true compassion can be lost.
We might illustrate this with an analogy: think of a guitar string, attached at the body and at the neck of the guitar: unless the string is ‘pinned down’ at both ends (namely, in terms of compassion: there is a grounded and resourced ‘giver’ and an accurately perceived ‘receiver’) and unless the string is plucked or struck (in terms of compassion: there is emotional energy between the two,) there will be no sound.
Near enemies of compassion
In Buddhist terminology a near enemy of a mental state is a state which appears like the real thing but isn’t; a far enemy is its opposite: there are therefore four possibilities when we try to cultivate compassion:
- True Compassion
- The near enemy of ‘Sentimental Pity’
- The near enemy of ‘Horrified Anxiety’
- The far enemy of ‘Cruelty’
Sentimental pity
This is what happens when we ‘let go’ at the ‘receiver pole.’ We might be grounded and resourced at the ‘giver’ pole and have strength of feeling and energy in our practice, but the string attached to the neck of the guitar is ‘not really pinned down:’ that is, we don’t have an accurate view of the person we are responding to. We drift into a kind of idealization of the person, seeing them as some kind of ‘abstract object’ in need of help; such sentimentality therefore seldom leads to our helping the person in a way that makes a difference: in fact, what we give them is often unwise. We see this when someone enables an addict by providing them with resources for their addiction: such as money for alcohol. Or today, where California seemingly throws vast amounts of money at the Fentanyl and homelessness crisis, which only seems to get worse.[88]
More often than not what transpires with sentimental pity is a kind of tokenism: often accompanied by demands concerning how other people should be helping that person more. Interest often centres on the person’s compassionate image of themselves: it is ‘all about them.’
Horrified Anxiety
This is what happens when we ‘let go’ at the ‘giver pole.’ We might be well connected with the person’s suffering and have strength of feeling and energy in our practice, but: particularly when the suffering is intense or widespread, as it can be today, looking at the global news, unless we are really grounded, the intensity of the suffering can become too much; and it can ‘blow us away.’ We become overwhelmed by anxiety. As a remedy, we need to become more in touch with a grounded and calm centre within ourselves: to perhaps withdraw and concentrate on rebuild our inner resources.
Cruelty
Where the far enemy of metta is ‘hatred,’ the far enemy of compassion is ‘cruelty,’ which is the mental state that arises when we direct hatred towards a person who is suffering: we delight in their suffering and want them to suffer more. This is no doubt what happens when we are connected neither at the ‘giver’ or ‘receiver’ pole. There is a certain ungrounded randomness in cruelty: we see this is psychopaths. the ‘giver’ is neither grounded in a healthy way within themselves, nor are they at all in touch with the reality of the suffering of the ‘receiver.’ The cruel person may, though, have energy for their cruelty; maybe they see suffering as an abstract lesson to be taught to others: a way, perhaps, of drawing attention to their own suffering.
We need to bear these variations (in compassion) in mind when we come to assess the emotions trans activists and their supporters are engaging in: probably a mixture of all four.
The Middle Way
Carroll spoke of a middle way between the extremes of too much and too little compassion; in fact, the Buddha expressed his teaching as ‘the Middle Way’ between extremes: one needed to avoid the extremes of eternalism and annihilationism: that either all phenomena are underpinned by a fixed unchanging essence (eternalism,) or that nothing continues after death (annihilationism.) It is human nature to go to one extreme or another: either retrenching into dogma, in the former case; or giving up, thinking: ‘What is the point of building anything anyway: everything is going to come to an end?’ in the latter.
And we not only see these tendencies in religious life, we see it everywhere: including in politics: where the harder thing is to ‘stay in the middle:’ marrying the opposites. Ricky Gervais’s ‘centrist coward’ is therefore doing the harder thing: by trying to occupy the middle ground.
The ‘political bias potential hill’
This difficulty illustrated by an analogy: suppose we take a bowl and place a marble inside the edge: when we let go of the marble, under gravity it will move towards the centre, then will oscillate back and forth until it comes to rest in the middle; in physics, this shape is called a potential well. But suppose we now turn the bowl upside down and create what could be called a potential hill: this time, when we place the marble on the top of the hill, at first it will slowly move away from the centre, and then pick up speed as it accelerates down the hill.
Staying in the middle ground requires effort! Those who call their mild political opponents ‘Trotsky’ or ‘Hitler’ are not really making that effort: they are taking the easy path: of polarization, and now there are many things about their opponent that they just do not have to think about. I am reminded of a passage from John Cleese and Robin Skynner ‘s book Families And How To Survive Them:
‘What’s so funny about really extreme political sects is their inability to get on with each other. They’re always splitting up and forming separate groups, which then split up after a time. We had a lot of fun with this in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.’[89]
The Socialist Workers Party hates the International Marxist Group; and so on! Cleese’s therapist suggests that the source of the antipathy is that the ‘other’ (group:)
“Stands for a lot of things (a person) can’t bear to see in their own personality.”[90]
Of course, it is very hard work to try to overcome these polarizing tendencies: especially when we get comfort and affirmation from membership of a group. But we must keep making the effort to bring into being an awareness of ‘the other’, otherwise our natural tendency is to ‘drift down the hill into unawareness:’ into viewing ‘the other‘ as an object in our way: thus, not really human.
Libs of TikTok
Another account placed on Trends Blacklist was Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok.) Founded in November 2020 by Chaya Raichik, it often consisted of reposting videos other people had made public on social media; for example, in 2022, Raichik posted videos of physicians at Boston Children’s Hospital discussing the gender-transition procedures they offer to kids and teens. The Libs of TikTok site was placed on the Trends Blacklist and designated as ‘Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting,’ meaning with a senior group including Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Global Head of Trust & Safety.[91]
‘Twitter suspended the Libs of TikTok account repeatedly for up to a week at a time. The reason Twitter provided Raichik for the suspensions was that she had violated Twitter’s Hateful Conduct Policy. But in an internal [senior group] memo from October 2022, the committee acknowledged that this wasn’t actually true.
“LTT has not directly engaged in behaviour violative of the Hateful Conduct policy,” it said.
‘Libs of TikTok was not guilty of any “explicitly violative tweets,” the memo stated, but “the user has continued targeting individuals/allies/supporters of the LGBTQIA+ community for alleged misconduct.”
‘The memo noted that, as a result of her “continued pattern of indirectly violating” Twitter’s Hateful Conduct Policy, Raichik’s posts had tended “to incite harassment against individuals and institutions that support LGBTQ communities.”
In other words, what in former times might be classed as genuine investigative journalism into the ethical practice of medical professionals, was now deemed ‘unsupportive’ and therefore violence–directed towards the LGBTQIA+ community; whereas encouraging violence in the other direction—’merely harmless activism,’ is completely justified:
‘Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes. But when Raichik informed Twitter that her address had been disseminated, she said that Twitter Support responded with this message:
“We reviewed the reported content and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.”
‘No action was taken. The doxing tweet is still up.’[92]
Imagine the chilling effect on your freedom of speech, if hundreds of activists turn up on your doorstep.
As of 17 May 2023, there have been 22 sets of Twitter Files, on unique topics, including:
- The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter BidenLaptop Story.[93]
- The second instalment addressed what Muskand others have described as the shadow banning of some users (see above.)
- The third instalment highlighted events within Twitter leading to President Donald Trump’s suspension from Twitter.
- The fourth instalment covered how Twitter employees reacted to the January 6 United States Capitol attack and the conflict within Twitter on how to moderate tweets and users supporting the attack.
- The fifth instalment—published by Weiss–covered how Twitter employees influenced the decision to ban Trump from the platform.
- The sixth instalment–Matt Taibbion The Twitter Files, Part Six: Twitter, The FBI subsidiary[94]–described how the FBI contacted Twitter to suggest that action be taken against several accounts for allegedly spreading election disinformation.
- The seventh instalment showed Twitter’s interaction with the intelligence community around the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
- The eighth instalment showed the Twitter Site Integrity Team whitelisted accounts from United States Central Command (CENTCOM) used to run online influence campaigns in other countries.[95]
- David Zweig on The Twitter Files: How Twitter rigged the COVID debate – By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy – By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed – By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s ‘own data,’[96] was Twitter Files, Part Ten. Here is a Zweig Free Pressarticle,[97] based on the COVID story and one on Why Are We Boosting Kids?[98]
- Matt Taibbi with Twitter Files: Part Fifteen: Move over, Jayson Blair: Twitter FilesExpose Next Great Media Fraud covers how Hamilton 68 proposed that legitimate conservative accounts were Russian bots.[99] Here is an explanatory video.[100]
[1] The Triratna Buddhist Order, established by Sangharakshita in 1968.
[2] Shawn Langlois. ‘Ricky Gervais talks “cancel culture” and says even “mildly conservative” voices on social media are viewed as “Hitler”: “Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right”.’ Market Watch. 14 July 2020.
[3] Debra Heine. ‘RFK Jr. Group Sues ‘Trusted News’ Outlets—Including BBC, AP, Reuters and WaPo—Over Alleged Antitrust, First Amendment Violations.‘ American Greatness. 10 January 2023. https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/10/rfk-jr-group-sues-trusted-news-outlets-including-bbc-ap-reuters-and-wapo-over-alleged-antitrust-first-amendment-violations/
[4] Nate the Lawyer. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nate+the+lawyer
[5] Case 2:23-cv-00004-Z. United States District Court Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/TNI-Complaint-1.10.22.pdf
[6] ‘Trusted News Initiative.’ BBC. Accessed 3 January 2024. https://www.bbc.co.uk/beyondfakenews/trusted-news-initiative/
[7] Michael Nevradakis, PhD. ‘Breaking: Landmark Lawsuit Slaps Legacy Media With Antitrust, First Amendment Claims for Censoring COVID-Related Content.’ The Defender. 1 October 2023. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/lawsuit-trusted-news-initiative-antitrust-first-amendment-censoring-covid-content/
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] TNI Antitrust Litigation: Executive Summary. Children’s Health Defense.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/TNI-complaint-executive-summary-1.10.23.pdf
[11] ‘Breaking: Landmark Lawsuit Slaps Legacy Media With Antitrust, First Amendment Claims for Censoring COVID-Related Content.’
[12] Claims that COVID-19 was manmade; Claims that COVID-19 was manufactured or bioengineered; Claims that COVID-19 was created by a government or country; Claims that “contradict” WHO or U.S. health officials’ guidance on the treatment, prevention, or transmission of COVID-19; Claims about the COVID vaccines that contradict “expert consensus” from U.S. health authorities or the WHO; Claims that Hydroxychloroquine (“HCQ”) is an effective treatment for COVID; Claims that Ivermectin (“IVM”) is an effective treatment for COVID; Claims that HCQ or IVM is safe to use as a treatment for COVID; Recommendations of the use of HCQ or IVM against COVID; Claims that COVID is no more dangerous to some populations than the seasonal flu; Claims that the mortality rate of COVID is for some populations the same or lower than that of the seasonal flu; Claims suggesting that the number of deaths caused by COVID is lower than official figures assert; Claims that face masks or mask mandates do not prevent the spread of COVID; Claims that wearing a face mask can make the wearer sick; Claims that COVID vaccines have not been approved; Claims that social distancing does not help prevent the spread of COVID; Claims that COVID-19 vaccines can kill or seriously harm people; Claims that the immunity from getting COVID is more effective than vaccination; Claims that the COVID vaccines are not effective in preventing infection; Claims that people who have been vaccinated against COVID can still spread the disease to others; Claims that the COVID vaccines are toxic or harmful or contain toxic or harmful ingredients; Claims that fetal cells were used in the manufacture or production of any of the COVID vaccines; Claims that a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was found at a computer repair store in or around October 2020 or that the contents reportedly found on that laptop, including potentially compromising emails, videos, and photographs, were authentic.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] See section from 12.08-14.20 mins, ‘American Universities FINALLY Hit A Wall: My Thoughts As A Former English Professor.’ Colonel Kurtz. YouTube. 6 December 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdBK1PwlffA&list=PLy922tRlXtvin_GRgdO4dbsmJbw2jpWPA&index=9
[16] ‘UNHINGED! MSNBC’s BATSH*T Claims About Trump‘ Russell Brand. YouTube. 29 December 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NH9jXB2spc
[17] Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. See https://www.aic.edu/about/odeib/
[18] Bill Ackman. X. 3 December 2023 https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1731532031048245631
[19] ‘RFK Jr. Group Sues ‘Trusted News’ Outlets—Including BBC, AP, Reuters and WaPo—Over Alleged Antitrust, First Amendment Violations.‘
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Matt Taibbi. X. 24 December 2022.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1606701431956049920
[23] David Zweig. X. 26 December 2022.
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867
[24] ‘Breaking: Landmark Lawsuit Slaps Legacy Media With Antitrust, First Amendment Claims for Censoring COVID-Related Content.’
[25] Robert F. Kennedy Jr. X. 7 January 2023.
https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1611767691743997952
[26] ‘Breaking: Landmark Lawsuit Slaps Legacy Media With Antitrust, First Amendment Claims for Censoring COVID-Related Content.’
[27] Ibid.
[28] Debra Heine. ‘RFK Jr. Group Sues ‘Trusted News’ Outlets—Including BBC, AP, Reuters and WaPo—Over Alleged Antitrust, First Amendment Violations.‘
[29] ‘Full Elon Musk BBC Interview with Video and Timestamps 12th April 2023.’ Tesla Intelligence UK. YouTube. 12 April 2023. See 17.50-27.45 mins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IflfP4XwzAI
[30] Ibid. 22.56 mins.
[31] Susan Schmidt, Andrew Lowenthal, Tom Wyatt and 4 others. ‘Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organizations to Know.’ Racket News. 10 May 2023.
https://www.racket.news/p/report-on-the-censorship-industrial-74b
[32] ‘The Twitter Files: The Censorship Industrial Complex with Matt Taibbi.’ Buckley Institute. YouTube. 27 April 2023. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cDVKR5uVPmM&feature=youtu.be
[33] Bari Weiss, Abigail Shrier, Michael Shellenberger and Nellie Bowles. ‘Twitter’s Secret Blacklists: Teams of employees were tasked with suppressing the visibility of accounts or subjects deemed undesirable or dangerous—all in secret, without informing users.’ The Free Press. 15 December 2022.
https://www.thefp.com/p/twitters-secret-blacklists
[34] Bari Weiss, Isaac Grafstein, Suzy Weiss, Michael Shellenberger, Peter Savodnik and Olivia Reingold. ‘Why Twitter Really Banned Trump.’ The Free Press. 15 December 2022. https://www.thefp.com/p/why-twitter-really-banned-trump
[35] Matt Taibbi. Twitter. 3 December 2022. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598829996264390656
[36] Bari Weiss. ‘Our Reporting at Twitter: If the story of Twitter’s former overlords is about their prejudices and power trips, the question now is what Elon Musk will do with the powerful tools they created.’ The Free Press. 15 December 2022. https://www.thefp.com/p/why-we-went-to-twitter
[37] Ibid.
[38] ‘Twitter’s Secret Blacklists: Teams of employees were tasked with suppressing the visibility of accounts or subjects deemed undesirable or dangerous—all in secret, without informing users.’
[39] Ibid.
[40] Bari Weiss. ‘The Twitter Files and the Future of the Democratic Party With Silicon Valley’s Congressman‘ The Free Press. 17 December 2022. https://www.thefp.com/p/ro-khanna-on-twitter-free-speech
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Cathy Young. ‘Are the ‘Twitter Files’ a Nothingburger?’ Cato Institute. 14 December 2022. https://www.cato.org/commentary/are-twitter-files-nothingburger#
[44] Vijaya Gadde, Kayvon Beykpour. ‘Setting the record straight on shadow banning.’ X. 26 July 2018.
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning
[45] Simar. Twitter. 31 October 2018.
[46] Cathy Young. ‘Viral Racist Videos Gone Wild. Medium. 1 July 2020. https://bit.ly/KarenCathyYoung2020
[47] https://bit.ly/Portlandparking
[48] Michael Grothaus. ‘4 takeaways from Jack Dorsey’s CHNN interview: He talked everything from Twitter’s political leanings to the growing fear of tech giants.’ Fast Company. 20 August 2018.
https://bit.ly/DorseyTwitter2018
[49] Laura Hudson. ‘6 Experts on How Silicon Valley Can Solve Online Harassment: Silicon Valley is all about using tech to solve problems. Yet the ugly reality of online harassment has remained intractable.‘ Wired. 22 October 2015. https://bit.ly/OnlineHarassment2015
[50] David Mathews. ‘A New Way To Report Gender-Based Harassment On Twitter.’ Fast Company. 6 November 2014. https://bit.ly/TwitterHarassment2014
[51] Jigsaw. X. 23 September 2015. https://bit.ly/TechInitiatives2015
[52] Patricia Cartes. ‘Announcing the Twitter Trust & Safety Council.’ X. 9 February 2016. https://bit.ly/TwitterSafetyCouncil2016
[53] Ken White. ‘#FreeStacy — But From What? In Defense of Free Speech Legalism.’ Popehat. 20 February 2016. https://bit.ly/FreeStacy2016
[54] ‘Are the ‘Twitter Files’ a Nothingburger?’
[55] ‘The Twitter Files and the Future of the Democratic Party With Silicon Valley’s Congressman.’
[56] Ibid.
[57] X. ‘Twitter 2.0: Our continued commitment to the public conversation.‘ X 30 November 2022.
https://bit.ly/TwitterMissionStatement2022
[58] ‘Twitter’s Secret Blacklists: Teams of employees were tasked with suppressing the visibility of accounts or subjects deemed undesirable or dangerous—all in secret, without informing users.’
[59] Ibid.
[60] ‘Why was the Declaration Written?‘ Great Barrington Declaration. https://gbdeclaration.org/why-was-the-declaration-written/
[61] ‘How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate: They worked with the media to trash the Great Barrington Declaration.’ Wall Street Journal. 21 December 2021.https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-collins-emails-great-barrington-declaration-covid-pandemic-lockdown-11640129116
[62] Bari Weiss. ‘Thread: The Twitter Files Part Two.’ Twitter. 9 December 2022.
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601007575633305600?s=20&t=EXDRD6VnlZwfc5PRNXjjYw
[63] Jay Bhattacharya. Twitter. 9 December 2022.
https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya/status/1601105540632834048
[64] Jay Bhattacharya. Twitter. 9 December 2022.
https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya/status/1601037983779389440
[65] ‘Twitter’s Secret Blacklists: Teams of employees were tasked with suppressing the visibility of accounts or subjects deemed undesirable or dangerous—all in secret, without informing users.’
[66] Patrick Carroll. ‘Peterson, Rubin Suspended from Twitter as the Culture War Heats Up.’ Fee. 6 July 2022.
https://fee.org/articles/peterson-rubin-suspended-from-twitter-as-the-culture-war-heats-up/
[67] Vanessa Serna. ‘Dr. Jordan Peterson is suspended from Twitter after tweeting that Umbrella Academy star Elliot Page had his ‘breasts removed by a criminal physician’ Daily Mail. 1 July 2022 Vanessa Serna. ‘Dr. Jordan Peterson is suspended from Twitter after tweeting that Umbrella Academy star Elliot Page had his ‘breasts removed by a criminal physician’ Daily Mail. 1 July 2022.
[68] Ibid.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Ibid.
[71] ‘Ontario court rules against Jordan Peterson over social media training.’ Trending Now. YouTube. 24 August 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6OmPqCAU4Q
[72] Ibid.
[73] Lily MacLeod. ‘Lessons from Jordan Peterson’s “Off Duty” Tweets – Regulating Professionals who Post on Social Media.’ Fasken. 15 November 2023.
[74] ‘JBP Reacts to Court Decision.’ Jordan B. Peterson. YouTube. 24 August 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_o8goN6FOA
[75] Patrick Carroll. ‘Peterson, Rubin Suspended from Twitter as the Culture War Heats Up.’ Fee. 6 July 2022.
[76] Ibid.
[77] ‘Article: Twitter Ban.’ Jordan B. Peterson. YouTube. 1 July 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYfKWQqvFac
[78] ‘Peterson, Rubin Suspended from Twitter as the Culture War Heats Up.’
[79] Ibid.
[80] Ibid.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Ibid.
[83] Ibid.
[84] Ibid.
[85] Ibid.
[86] Ibid.
[87] Ibid.
[88] Nick Watt. ‘California has spent billions to fight homelessness. The problem has gotten worse.’ CNN. 11 July 2023. https://cnn.it/48x74L2
[89] Robin Skynner and John Cleese. (2009) Families and How to Survive Them. Random House. p133.
[90] Ibid. p134.
[91] Roth came under intense questioning during the US Congressional Hearing on the Twitter’s involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop story. ‘“Who the hell do you think you are” Former Twitter execs squirm during US Congressional questioning.’ ANI News. YouTube. 9 February 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ_D1x4wjgY
[92] Ibid.
[93] Matt Taibbi. X. 3 December 2022.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598829996264390656
[94] Matt Taibbi. X. 16 December 2022. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857534737072128
[95] ‘Twitter Files’ Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
[96] David Zweig. X. 26 December 2022. https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867
[97] David Zweig. The Free Press. 26 December 2022. https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate
[98] ’Why Are We Boosting Kids?’ David Zweig. The Free Press. 27 January 2022.
https://www.thefp.com/p/why-are-we-boosting-kids
[99] Matt Taibbi. X. 27 January 2023. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105
[100] Matt Taibbi EXPOSES Hamilton 68 (clip.) Sabby Sabs. YouTube.
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