How Google is Controlling the Russia - Ukraine Narrative

I just received this email from Google which hosts my blog on its Blogger platform:

 

It would appear that I'm not allowed to think for myself, Google will do the heavy lifting for me because I'm incapable of right think when it comes to the bad Russia/good Ukraine narrative.  Those of us who have not subscribed to the Big Tech-approved narrative have been facing this sort of censorship since 2020 when we were told what was acceptable thinking during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  

George Orwell was prescient.  Sadly, we need to make 1984 fiction again.

Fact Checking Facebook's Fact Checking

Over the past 20 months, it has become very apparent that social media outlets in specific and Big Technology in general have done their best to control the COVID-19 narrative, censoring any information that doesn't subscribe to their viewpoint, no matter how qualified the source of the information may be.

 

As a prime example of promoting the so-called "truth" , Twitter has recently amended its policies regarding COVID-19 "misleading information", noting in particular the highlighted section:

 

 

In fact, if you look back at an earlier version of the Twitter page from December 2, 2021, the entire section on vaccine disinformation is not present with the exception of three references which are forbidden as follows:

  

1.) The pandemic or COVID-19 vaccines that invoke a deliberate conspiracy by malicious and/or powerful forces.

  

2.) Vaccines and vaccination programs which suggest that COVID-19 vaccinations are part of a deliberate or intentional attempt to cause harm or control populations.

  

3.) How vaccines are developed, tested, and approved by official health agencies as well as information about government recommendations.

  

In fact and as an aside, Twitter is actually guilty of disinformation considering that this is a quote from a Science Brief that appears on the CDC website:

 

With this example of Big Technology censorship in mind, let's go to the main subject of this posting.  A recent open letter which appeared on the British Medical Journal (BMJ) website was submitted by two members of the editorial staff at the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg.  Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi's letter states the following:

"We are writing to raise serious concerns about the “fact checking” being undertaken by third party providers on behalf of Facebook/Meta.

 

In September, a former employee of Ventavia, a contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial, began providing The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. These materials revealed a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety. We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites.

 

The BMJ commissioned an investigative reporter to write up the story for our journal. The article was published on 2 November, following legal review, external peer review and subject to The BMJ’s usual high level editorial oversight and review."

 

Here is the November 2, 2021 article mentioned in the open letter:

 

 

Here are some quotes from the November 2, 2021 article with my bolds:

 

"In autumn 2020 Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, Albert Bourla, released an open letter to the billions of people around the world who were investing their hopes in a safe and effective covid-19 vaccine to end the pandemic. “As I’ve said before, we are operating at the speed of science,” Bourla wrote, explaining to the public when they could expect a Pfizer vaccine to be authorised in the United States.

 

But, for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding. After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, the regional director, Brook Jackson, emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia fired her later the same day. Jackson has provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails....

 

In a recording of a meeting in late September 2020 between Jackson and two directors a Ventavia executive can be heard explaining that the company wasn’t able to quantify the types and number of errors they were finding when examining the trial paperwork for quality control. “In my mind, it’s something new every day,” a Ventavia executive says. “We know that it’s significant.”

 

In her 25 September email to the FDA Jackson wrote that Ventavia had enrolled more than 1000 participants at three sites. The full trial (registered under NCT04368728) enrolled around 44 000 participants across 153 sites that included numerous commercial companies and academic centres. She then listed a dozen concerns she had witnessed, including:

 

Participants placed in a hallway after injection and not being monitored by clinical staff

Lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced adverse events

Protocol deviations not being reported

Vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures

Mislabelled laboratory specimens, and

Targeting of Ventavia staff for reporting these types of problems....

In Pfizer’s briefing document submitted to an FDA advisory committee meeting held on 10 December 2020 to discuss Pfizer’s application for emergency use authorisation of its covid-19 vaccine, the company made no mention of problems at the Ventavia site. The next day the FDA issued the authorisation of the vaccine.

 

In August this year, after the full approval of Pfizer’s vaccine, the FDA published a summary of its inspections of the company’s pivotal trial. Nine of the trial’s 153 sites were inspected. Ventavia’s sites were not listed among the nine, and no inspections of sites where adults were recruited took place in the eight months after the December 2020 emergency authorisation. The FDA’s inspection officer noted: “The data integrity and verification portion of the BIMO [bioresearch monitoring] inspections were limited because the study was ongoing, and the data required for verification and comparison were not yet available to the IND [investigational new drug].”

 

Let's go back to the open letter.  The authors of the letter note the following with my bolds:

 

"But from November 10, readers began reporting a variety of problems when trying to share our article. Some reported being unable to share it. Many others reported having their posts flagged with a warning about “Missing context ... Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Those trying to post the article were informed by Facebook that people who repeatedly share “false information” might have their posts moved lower in Facebook’s News Feed. Group administrators where the article was shared received messages from Facebook informing them that such posts were “partly false.”

 

Readers were directed to a “fact check” performed by a Facebook contractor named Lead Stories.

 

We find the “fact check” performed by Lead Stories to be inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.

 

-- It fails to provide any assertions of fact that The BMJ article got wrong

 

-- It has a nonsensical title: “Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials”

 

-- The first paragraph inaccurately labels The BMJ a “news blog”

 

-- It contains a screenshot of our article with a stamp over it stating “Flaws Reviewed,” despite the Lead Stories article not identifying anything false or untrue in The BMJ article

 

-- It published the story on its website under a URL that contains the phrase “hoax-alert” 

 

We have contacted Lead Stories, but they refuse to change anything about their article or actions that have led to Facebook flagging our article.

 

We have also contacted Facebook directly, requesting immediate removal of the “fact checking” label and any link to the Lead Stories article, thereby allowing our readers to freely share the article on your platform."

  

Here is the key sentence:

 

"There is also a wider concern that we wish to raise. We are aware that The BMJ is not the only high quality information provider to have been affected by the incompetence of Meta’s fact checking regime. To give one other example, we would highlight the treatment by Instagram (also owned by Meta) of Cochrane, the international provider of high quality systematic reviews of the medical evidence. Rather than investing a proportion of Meta’s substantial profits to help ensure the accuracy of medical information shared through social media, you have apparently delegated responsibility to people incompetent in carrying out this crucial task. Fact checking has been a staple of good journalism for decades. What has happened in this instance should be of concern to anyone who values and relies on sources such as The BMJ."

 

Here is a screen capture of the entire open letter should it happen to disappear from the internet as things are prone to do in the post-truth era:

  

As well, in case you were curious, here is Lead Story's webpage, showing the names of the fact checkers that the company employs, only one of which has any connection to "science" (a BSc in Science) with the majority of the remaining fact checkers having backgrounds in journalism which is clearly does not qualify them to ascertain the scientific validity of any research being provided to them for analysis:

So basically, if we boil it down to its essentials, fact checking is little more than the generation of propaganda that suits the narrative of the company/person that has hired the fact checkers.

 It is very clear that, over the past two years, so-called "fact checking" has become laughable.  People with absolutely no education or training in medical science are controlling the COVID-19 narrative, using the heavy hand of censorship to negate any viewpoints that do not follow the interests of their employers and those who employ their employers.

 

Scientific facts have clearly become one of the casualties of the pandemic thanks to the efforts by Big Technology whose mission seems to be to prevent us from learning about the truth as they don't see it.

YouTube - Further Controlling the COVID-19 Vaccine Narrative

For those of you that have read George Orwell's 1984, one of my favourite books, Winston Smith, an employee at the ironically named Ministry of Truth, is responsible for destroying history that is inconvenient to the Party.  Over the past two years, it has become increasingly obvious that we are living under the same sort of authoritarianism, in this case, led by the world's social media platforms.

  

In its latest move to destroy any narrative that doesn't follow its preferred version of the pandemic and accompanying vaccine rollout, YouTube, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google's parent company, has made the following announcement:

 

 

Here are some highlights:

 

"Crafting policy around medical misinformation comes charged with inherent challenges and tradeoffs. Scientific understanding evolves as new research emerges, and firsthand, personal experience regularly plays a powerful role in online discourse. Vaccines in particular have been a source of fierce debate over the years, despite consistent guidance from health authorities about their effectiveness. Today, we're expanding our medical misinformation policies on YouTube with new guidelines on currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and the WHO.

 

Our Community Guidelines already prohibit certain types of medical misinformation. We've long removed content that promotes harmful remedies, such as saying drinking turpentine can cure diseases. At the onset of COVID-19, we built on these policies when the pandemic hit, and worked with experts to develop 10 new policies around COVID-19 and medical misinformation. Since last year, we’ve removed over 130,000 videos for violating our COVID-19 vaccine policies."

 

Notice how proud YouTube is of its ability to remove over 130,000 videos.  Way to go, YouTube!

 

So, what is being banned?

  

"...content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines will be removed. This would include content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that substances in vaccines can track those who receive them. Our policies not only cover specific routine immunizations like for measles or Hepatitis B, but also apply to general statements about vaccines."

 

YouTube claims that they have consulted with local and international health organizations and other experts when designing their program of antivaccine censorship.  I'm guessing that the World Health Organization aka the Bill Gates Health Organization was part of the team which helped establish YouTube's guidelines.

 

Not to worry though, YouTube is still allowing content that is important to the ongoing debate regarding vaccines and will allow the following:

 

"...we will continue to allow content about vaccine policies, new vaccine trials, and historical vaccine successes or failures on YouTube. Personal testimonials relating to vaccines will also be allowed, so long as the video doesn't violate other Community Guidelines, or the channel doesn't show a pattern of promoting vaccine hesitancy."

 

Given that absolutely no scientist has a complete picture of both the harms and protections offered by the COVID-19 vaccines since Phase 3 trials are not scheduled for completion for at least the next year, YouTube certainly seems to have cornered the market on "vaccine truth".

 

Just in case you cared, here is YouTube's newly crafted Vaccine information policy:

 

Joseph Goebbels would be utterly amazed at how easily the social media platforms of the new millennium have been at crafting a narrative that suits their own version of reality.  Unfortunately, YouTube hadn't quite come to the realization that controlling the vaccine narrative is not necessarily in its best interest business wise.  Thanks to YouTube's increasingly heavy-handed censorship, a number of alternative media platforms (i.e. Bitchute, Odysee etcetera) have appeared where censorship is non-existent, allowing determined physicians and researchers to spread their message to the masses.  I hate to tell YouTube, but the world can live without videos of cats and car accidents.

The Cancel Culture Part 2 - The Google Gods Strike Again

Apparently, this blog is now on Google's watch list.  Once again, I have offended the Google Gods by posting something that falls under their ever-watchful, Orwellian eye because it has "misleading content". This is the second time that I have been censored with my first offence being described here.

 

Here is the posting in question:

 

 

The posting contained an open letter that was published by the Ontario Civil Liberties Association in Ontario, Canada telling unvaccinated Canadians that they were not alone and that it is within their rights to say "no" to vaccines that have not been completely tested. 

  

Here are a few highlights:

 

1.) you can say no to a violation of your body.

 

2.) you are within your rights to question whether free and informed consent is possible given that the long-term health effects of the vaccines are not known.

 

3.) you are being targeted by the mainstream media, governments and social media companies which are telling you that you are endangering the world because you refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

 

4.) you are being accused of being a factory for the new Delta variant (and others) because you prefer to rely on your natural immune system.

 

5.) you are right to question the preliminary vaccine trial results.

 

6.) you are right to call for a diversity of scientific opinions regarding the pandemic and the associated vaccines.

 

7.) you should not be intimidated.

 

If you wish to read the entire open letter, you can find it here.  For those of us who are growing increasingly concerned about our individual rights in this totalitarian time, it is well worth reading.

 

Somehow, this message offended the Google Gods whose business model now includes censoring any viewpoint that doesn't follow their own narrow view of the pandemic.  On the upside, the posting was read over a thousand times before Google decided that it was offensive, not a bad tally for this small-time blogger.

God forbid that freedom should reign.  That's oldthink and, as we have learned over the past 18 months, oldthink is doubleplusungood.

 

The Google Gods and the Cancel Culture

After nearly a year and a half of posting many missives on the COVID-19 pandemic, I finally hit the "big time".

 

This message from Blogger was in my inbox this morning:

 

Apparently, this posting was "cancelled" by the Google Gods:

...because it violated Googles Misleading Content policy which you can see here:

 

Since the posting contained very little information other than this graphic which was posted on the World Health Organization's Facebook page:

 

...and my suggestion that the World Health Organization's COVID-19 vaccine agenda is being driven by one of its biggest financial supporters who is strongly pro-vaccine, a stance which cannot be denied, as shown here:

 

 

...along with a few comments on our innate ability to fight off viruses without the use of vaccines, perhaps the Google Gods censored my posting because Google itself believes that the World Health Organization posting misleading information regarding their belief that the COVID-19 vaccines provide a stronger immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus than our natural immune system, part of our evolution that has kept Homo sapiens around for the past 200,000 to 300,000 years....although, I rather doubt that was the "bee in their bonnet".

Perhaps it was my use of the words "propaganda" and "World Health Organization" in the title of the posting.  Let's look at the Cambridge Dictionary definition for the word propaganda:

I am quite willing to admit that my musings gives only one side of the argument if the World Health Organization is willing to admit that their belief in vaccines as a superior form of immunity is also one-sided.

In any case, I feel quite flattered to have finally earned my membership in the "Cancel Culture".  Thank you Google.  All Hail Google Gods.

  

As an aside, it will be interesting to see how long this posting remains up.

Social Media, the CDC and COVID-19 Collaboration

During the pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that the main players along with social media platforms are "singing from the same hymn book".  Thanks to Judicial Watch, we now have some idea why at least two of the biggest players are hand-in-hand when it comes to the COVID-19 narrative.

 

In this case, Judicial Watch launched legal actions against the United States Department of Health and Human Services to force compliance with the Freedom of Information Act after Judicial Watch sent an FOIA request to the Centers for Disease Control on September 15, 2020, asking for access to :

"Any and all records of communication between CDC officials and/or employees and employees, agents, and/or representatives of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube concerning, regarding, or relating to COVID-19 related content on company platforms. Such records include, but are not limited to, any advice or instructions issued on disinformation re COVID-19."

 

Since the first request was not fulfilled, Judicial Watch filed a second FOIA request on March 9, 2021 as shown here:

 

In response, Judicial Watch received 2,469 pages of documents from the CDC which clearly reveal close cooperation between the CDC and Facebook about the COVID-19 narrative and so-called "misinformation".  Let's look at some of the more interesting documents which show links between Big Tech and the CDC.

  

Here is a document from Google showing the launching of a COVID-19 alert on its products which provides consumers with the CDC's latest recommendations with most of the information redacted (pages 4 to 8 inclusive with pages 6, 7 and 8 being completely redacted):

 

 

Here is another email showing the link between Google's YouTube and the CDC (pages 14 to 16):

 

Here is an email showing the link between LinkedIn and the CDC (pages 27 to 35):

 

Here is an email showing how Facebook supplied the CDC with $2 million worth of advertising credits (second round) dated March 8, 2020, very early in the pandemic (page 36):

 

According to Judicial Watch, there is another email from mid-2020 showing additional funding from Facebook to the CDC for another $1 million worth of advertising.

 

Here is another email from the CDC to Facebook wondering if Facebook needed any assistance in providing credible content for coronavirus searches on Facebook dated January 31, 2020: (page 39)

 

Here is an email from Facebook and Instagram to the CDC regarding a product solution to support the CDC's efforts to get targeted information to specific populations (page 40):

 

Here is an email exchange between WhatsApp and the CDC offering support for the CDC's narrative on the COVID-19 issue (page 172 - 173):

 

I believe that is enough for this posting.  As you can see, right from the very beginning of the pandemic (and even before it was officially proclaimed by the WHO), the world's most influential social media companies picked their narrative which was in sharp contrast to the narrative of the Trump Administration and worked hand-in-hand with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure that the CDC's narrative on COVID-19 remained dominant in their online ecosystem.  This goes a long way to explaining why there has been so little long-lasting coverage of dissenting views (i.e. the heavy-handed use of censorship) on the science of the pandemic from the other side of the narrative and why all of the social media outlets seem to be using the same playbook.

 

Facebook and its Battle Against Extremism

With the Biden White House releasing its plans for battling domestic terrorism, the latest iteration of terror that is supposed to fill us with fear as shown here:

 

....Facebook has also availed itself of the opportunity to fight against domestic terrorism as shown here:

 

 

As you will see in the later part of this posting, Facebook has taken its responsibility for battling extremism to a new level.

Facebook's Redirect Initiative claims the following:

 

"The Redirect Initiative helps combat violent extremism and dangerous organizations by redirecting hate and violence-related search terms towards resources, education, and outreach groups that can help. This initiative is based on Facebook’s “Get Help” search based modules in combination with the Redirect Method, evolved to fit Facebook and Instagram. 

 

For example, when people search on Facebook for terms related to white supremacy in the US, results are directed to Life After Hate, an organization founded by former violent extremists that provides crisis intervention, education, support groups, and outreach."

 

Facebook has several initiatives that fall under the "counter speech" banner as follows:

 

1.) Extreme Lives

 

2.) Resiliency Initiative

  

3.) Peer to Peer Facebook Global Digital Challenge

  

4.) Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI)

 

Now, let's look in detail at two additional initiatives that are specilifally focussed on terrorism:

  

5.)  The Global Internet forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) - GIFCT's aim is to disrupt terrorist abuse and exploitation of digital platforms to maximize the extraordinary benefits of a free, open, and secure internet.   

GIFCT was formally established in July 2017 by four founding companies - Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube - as a program of knowledge-sharing, technical collaboration and shared research.  Today, it is an independent organization capable of sustaining and deepening industry collaboration and capacity in its efforts to prevent terrorists and extremists from abusing and misusing digital platforms.

 

GIFCT has four goals:

 

1.) improve the capacity of technology companies to prevent and respond to abuse of their platforms by terrorists and violent extremists.

 

2.) enable multi-stakeholder engagement around terrorist and violent extremist misuse of the internet.

 

3.) encourage those dedicated to online civil dialogue and empower efforts to direct positive alternatives to the messages of terrorists and violent extremists

 

4.) Advance broad understanding of terrorist and violent extremist operations and their evolution, including the intersection of online and offline activities.

 

Member companies agreed that governments will not be able to remove terrorist content directly from company platforms.

 

6.) Redirect Initiative - Here is a quote from Facebook about this initiative:

"The Redirect Initiative helps combat violent extremism and dangerous organizations by redirecting hate and violence-related search terms towards resources, education, and outreach groups that can help. This initiative is based on Facebook’s “Get Help” search based modules in combination with the Redirect Method, evolved to fit Facebook and Instagram. 

 

For example, when people search on Facebook for terms related to white supremacy in the US, results are directed to Life After Hate, an organization founded by former violent extremists that provides crisis intervention, education, support groups, and outreach.

 

Redirect is disrupting the connection between followers and the violent, extreme content they seek with Facebook claiming that the program has been successful and has expanded its program with organizations in the United States, Australia, Germany, Indonesia and the United Kingdom "to help individuals leave a life of hate so they can live a life of hope." "

  

Here is a "Life After Hate" promotional video:

 

  

Under the Redirect Initiative, Facebook is testing a new alert system by using pop-ups which redirect users to a support page.

 

Here is an example:

 

The "confidential support" link is found here:

 

 

Here is more information from Life After Hate:

 

 

Here is more information on the program:

 

The group is closely linked with ExitUSA as shown here:

 

...and here:

 

This test which is only on Facebook's main platform was being run in the United States as a pilot program and is being used to identify both users who may have been exposed to rule-breaking extremist content and other uses who may have previously been subject to Facebook's enforcement procedures.  

 

Now that we know that Facebook only has our best interests at heart with this new initiative that, coincidentally has been launched within days of the Biden Administration's plans to battle the domestic terror "bogeyman", let's go back in time to the mid-1960s for a quote from Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican National Convention:

 

 

Here's the key quote:

  

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you, also, that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

 

Take that Facebook.

You must admit that it's reassuring to see that Facebook through its Redirect Initiative is attempting to protect us all from extremist propaganda at the same time as it is censoring any narrative that doesn't follow its own COVID-19/pro-vaccine beliefs. (sarcasm intended)