Governments Tighten the Noose on “Disinformation”

[GroundskeeperWillie]

Hello. I have an article here that's relevant to Canadians. It's from a Canadian news website called Druthers.. I will include an excerpt below, to raise awareness and maybe to get a discussion going. I will also provide a link to the full article below. Kindly read it over and let me know what you think.

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It can be difficult to sell any political message in 2024, and governments are peeved. That is because all messages are vulnerable to lightning criticism on X and other social media. One X influencer describes it this way: “Thousands of digital soldiers dig up the facts in minutes and spread the truth within hours. Narratives that would last weeks are destroyed in days.” Regardless, there is a conspicuous desire by many authorities to muzzle, if not silence, the giant army of online sharpshooters.

Not long ago, governments used the soft tactic of pressuring. Mark Zuckerberg talks about this in his August 2024 letter to the US Congress. Zuckerberg stated, “The White House repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire.” Zuckerberg goes on to say that warnings from the FBI caused Facebook to “denote” 2020 corruption allegations against the Joe Biden family, when, in fact, the news story “was not Russian disinformation.”

The Twitter Files1 also revealed government pressure tactics. A Toronto Sun article summarized that as follows: “Twitter suppressed content during the pandemic based on politics … at the behest of the Trump and Biden administrations.”

But these past stories of pressure tactics now sound like the good old days. That is because, in 2024, the force of government is heating up.

In August, Britain’s prosecution office issued a blunt statement. It warned the country’s citizens, “Think before you post.” The Week magazine reported that, as of August 30, 2024, “The U.K. has arrested 32 people for online incitement.” In September, the British house speaker said in a BBC interview that “misinformation is dangerous” and “no misinformation” should be allowed on social media. He suggested more laws are needed beyond Britain’s 2023 Online Safety Act. That same week, The Spectator published an article entitled, “The Death of Free Speech in Britain.”

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The above is just a snippet of the original article. The article goes into much greater detail. See it here for yourself: https://druthers.ca/governments-tighten-the-noose-on-disinformation/


If the link doesn't work, go to Druthers.ca. At the top, select Read. Then select By subject. Then select Canada from the Categories on the left. Then search for the article titled, "Governments Tighten the Noose on “Disinformation”. It's right on the first page.

Let me know what you think!

[Michael Hardner]

It's well established that foreign governments are funding disinformation campaigns via Twitter.

Yet another anonymous site defending the practice actually raises more concerns about the practice.