Censorship Industrial Complex
WEF Davos 2025: Attendees at annual meeting wrestling for control of information
World Economic Forum’s Prioritizes “Disinformation” Over Economic and Global Stability Threats
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The World Economic Forum (WEF) is gearing up for its Davos meeting, set to take place January 20-24, and the group has now released the Global Risks Report 2025.
The report is based on “insights” from the Global Risks Perception Survey that take into account the opinions of 900 “global leaders” across business, government, academia and civil society, the WEF said. The report reflects the unrelenting drive still present in many corners of the world and among political elites to push what they consider “disinformation” to the top of this agenda. And so the WEF paper talks about “armed conflict, environment, and disinformation” as “top threats” this year. And that, as the authors note, from their point of view leaves economic risks as having “less immediate prominence.” Meanwhile, “mis/disinformation” is ranked higher as a threat and that has happened two years in a row. This reads like another instance of taking an alarmist approach to “disinformation” (which then comes in handy when pushing all sorts of controversial policies, affecting online speech, security, and technology development). The WEF report elevates “disinformation” to a “persistent threat to societal cohesion and governance by eroding trust” – and even “exacerbating divisions within and between nations” and “complicating” ways to cooperate on ending international crises. And, when AI is thrown into the mix in its “adverse” form – “disinformation” underpins rising geopolitical tensions. The way the report frames the issue of disinformation, that seems to be the only thing standing in the way of world peace. While creating high drama around “disinformation” is one piece of the puzzle, the WEF also looks at long-term threats, such as to the environment. This, according to the document, will be dominant over the next decade, and this is the language the group uses: “(…) led by extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse.” With the threats presented like this, the “solutions” are also very much in line with the WEF mission: promote more and more globalization, even as many countries might be looking to what the group disapprovingly calls, “turning inward.” Instead, the WEF wants them to essentially double down on globalization, allegedly as the only way to “prevent a downward spiral of instability.” One of the goals the WEF promotes – and is also one of the five overall topics of this year’s Davos meeting – is “rebuilding trust.” Now, if only this group would focus more on explaining how that trust was lost. |
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Censorship Industrial Complex
Mark Zuckerberg Tells Joe Rogan That Biden Admin Would ‘Scream’ And ‘Curse’ At Meta Employees To Censor ‘True’ Content
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Cohen
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcast host Joe Rogan on Friday that officials in President Joe Biden’s administration would yell and hurl profanities at his company’s employees over content censorship.
The Biden administration pushed Facebook to censor posts about COVID-19 that it deemed misinformation, according to documents published by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan in July 2023. Zuckerberg, on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” revealed that also Meta faced investigations and backlash after Biden accused Facebook of “killing people” in July 2021 for not censoring so-called COVID-19 misinformation.
WATCH:
“Basically, these people from the Biden Administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse,” Zuckerberg said. “And it’s like these documents are — it’s all kind of out there.”
Rogan asked if Meta had recorded any of the calls, but Zuckerberg said he did not believe so.
“I mean, there are emails. The emails are published. It’s all kind of out there …. And basically, it just got to this point where we were like, ‘No, we’re not going to — we’re not going to take down things that are true. That’s ridiculous,’” Zuckerberh said. “They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how ten years from now or something, you’re going to see an ad that says, ‘Okay, if you took a COVID vaccine, you’re eligible, like for this kind of payment,’ like this sort of like class-action lawsuit-type meme. And they’re like, ‘No, you have to take that down.’”
“We just said, ‘No, we’re not going to take down humor and satire. We’re not going to take down things that are true.’ And then at some point, I guess — I don’t know — it flipped a bit,” he added. “I mean, Biden, when he was — he gave some statement at some point, I don’t know if it was a press conference or to some journalist, where he basically was like, ‘These guys are killing people.’ And I don’t know. Then like all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company. It was brutal.”
Facebook executives believed they were engaged in a “knife fight” with Biden’s White House on COVID-19 censorship, according to a House Judiciary Committee report published in May.
Zuckerberg in August expressed remorse that Facebook caved to pressure from the Biden administration to censor content in a letter to Jordan. He wrote that senior Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Facebook teams to censor COVID-19 content that the platform otherwise would not have suppressed, and voiced frustration when Facebook disagreed.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
Zuckerberg also alleged in 2022 on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that the FBI warned Facebook of a “Russian propaganda” dump just before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke.
“The FBI basically came to us and some folks on our team and said, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert, we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election and we have noticed that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that, so be vigilant,’” he said.
The Meta CEO said he could not recall whether the FBI specifically mentioned the Hunter Biden laptop story, but asserted it fit “the pattern.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Meta referred the DCNF to documents released by the House Judiciary Committee and Jordan.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Ireland Owens
Google soundly rejected the European Union’s push for the platform to censor content Thursday, declaring that it would not implement so-called “fact-checks.”
The tech giant told the EU that it would not incorporate fact checks into its search results and YouTube videos, Axios first reported. Google’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker wrote a letter to Renate Nikolay, deputy director-general for Communications Networks, Content and Technology at the European Commission, stating the fact-checking required by the law “simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services.”
The European Commission’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, which was introduced in 2022, would require Google to incorporate fact-check results alongside its search results and YouTube videos and would also require it to incorporate fact-checking into its ranking systems and algorithms, Axios reported.
Axios’ report comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Jan. 7 that his company was ending its third-party fact-checking program in favor of implementing community notes. Meta’s announcement states that Meta’s platforms are “built to be places where people can express themselves freely.” Zuckerberg said that his company’s approach to content moderation often resulted in “censorship,” NPR reported.
Zuckerberg recently criticized the European Union’s data laws as “censoring” social media. The EU has rejected his claims as “misleading.”
Some people have criticized some major tech companies, claiming that they have censored conservative speech. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced in October the launch of an investigation into Google for allegedly censoring conservatives.
Zuckerberg criticized Biden officials for pushing Meta to remove content that the Biden-Harris administration alleged to be disinformation during a recent appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to combat social media censorship.
In December, Trump announced that he was nominating Andrew Ferguson to lead the Federal Trade Commission, stating that Ferguson “has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country.”
Minnesota Republican Rep. Tom Emmer said in a post on X that Google’s decision was a “step in the right direction,” adding “Kudos to @Google.”
A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that the content of Google’s letter as reported by Axios was accurate.
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