The Big Tech censorship regime appears to be back in full force this election cycle as the overlords in Silicon Valley decide what information you can and cannot see.
You all remember that Meta deplatformed the NY Post in 2020 for reporting on the Hunter Biden Laptop story because they thought it might have been Russian disinformation—and yet the story turned out to be true.
As we reported, Google’s auto-populate search result feature recently brought up exactly nothing for “Trump assassination attempt” in recent days, though it instantly served up results for RFK and an attempt on Harry Truman. People paying attention immediately pointed out that this seemed to be censorship and manipulation, although Google quickly denied the charge and said that “no manual action” had been taken. Sure, we believe you.
There Is Good Reason to Believe Google Deliberately Suppressed Information on the Trump Shooting (VIP)
Now Facebook has been forced to admit that they erroneously censored one of the photos taken immediately after Trump was shot by a 20-year-old sniper at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13. The picture, showing a defiant Trump, depicted the former president rising to his feet and yelling, ”Fight! Fight!” as blood streamed down his face. It instantly became one of the most iconic photos of our times.
WON'T BACK DOWN: Injured Trump Pumps Fist As Blood Streams Down Face
Oh, sorry, said Facebook, it was just another little “error”:
Facebook acknowledged that it mistakenly censored the iconic image of former President Donald Trump with his fist raised in the immediate aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
A post on Mark Zuckerberg’s social media site by a user with the handle End Wokeness that showed the Republican presidential candidate defiantly pumping his fist in the air while blood streams down his face had initially been flagged as misinformation.
The user was threatened with being deplatformed.
However, on Monday, Dani Lever, a spokesperson for the social network’s parent company, Meta, admitted the tech giant made a “mistake.”
“Yes, this was an error,” Lever wrote on X in response to conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, who had called out Facebook for not allowing users to share the photo.
How is it that every single time there’s an “error,” it’s against the conservative side, and you almost never hear of a Big Tech company mistakenly censoring the left?
Trump just posted this on Truth slamming Facebook and Google for suppressing the story on his attempted ass*ss*nation.
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 30, 2024
ELECTION INTERFERENCE pic.twitter.com/nuNZ2DKhKv
UPDATE: This has been resolved. A "false positive." https://t.co/JRfmJiiqWx
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 29, 2024
BREAKING: Facebook is now censoring the iconic image of Trump's defiant fist
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 29, 2024
It's now flagged as MISINFORMATION pic.twitter.com/ePUl5kuMw6
Troubling incidents like these keep popping up as the election season heats up; in almost every case faceless executives claim it was inadvertent and had nothing to do with political bias. And yet, the same “mistakes” keep happening over and over again.
Meanwhile, we keep hearing about the wonders of artificial intelligence, so on Sunday I went over to ChatGPT and asked it a couple of questions. “Was there an assassination attempt on Donald Trump?” I queried. “Yes,” it answered, and then listed a series of incidents regarding threats to the former president made in prior years. There was no mention of the recent shooting in Pennsylvania. Granted, ChatGPT did issue the following disclaimer: "ChatGPT is not a real-time news product and may take time to update. Please check other sources for the latest information.”
At least they’re admitting their shortcomings, but they’re also kind of pointing out that they’re essentially useless, right?
I tried one more time and typed in, “Did Thomas Michael Crooks attempt to assassinate Donald Trump?” Now, I was just playing around, so I didn’t notice that I got the name wrong—the attempted assassin’s name is actually Thomas Matthew Crooks. Here’s what I got back:
“Yes, Thomas Michael Crooks was arrested in July 2023 for alledegly attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump. Crooks was reportedly found in possession of of firearms and other weapons near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.”
This is of course utter malarkey. It would seem that once again, we’re dealing not just with Big Tech, but with Big BS. Thankfully, at least Elon Musk bought Twitter and got rid of the censorship regime there. There aren’t many places online left where truth holds sway.
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