Mediaboss Marketing

From PEN America:

In a cumulative data summary released today, PEN America reflects on the nearly 6,000 book bans in public schools documented from July 2021 to June 2023. Spineless Shelves: Two Years of Book Banning illustrates the spread of copycat book bans and an apparent Scarlet Letter effect, where several works from an authors catalog were subsequently targeted after at least one of their works was banned.

Over the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, the sweeping attack on the freedom to read in public schools impacted 247 school districts across 41 states, affecting millions of students, the century-old free expression and literary group said. The data summary pulls together data from PEN Americas July 2021 to June 2023 School Book Ban Indexes for the first time and provides new insight into the movement to censor books nationwide.

[Clip]

In the new data summary, PEN America reflects on two phenomena: copycat bans and a Scarlet Letter effect.

Books that are banned in one district are frequently banned in others, with such copycat bans proliferating in school districts across state lines. A useful example is the work of Sarah J. Maas. In the 2021-2022 school year, her work was banned 18 times across 10 districts; but in 2022-23, that exploded to 158 bans across 36 districts a 778% increase. As PEN America explored in Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools, groups pushing for book bans frequently share lists of titles to target, which has inflamed this copycat effect.

Several authors have also experienced a Scarlet Letter effect, where several works from their collection were subsequently targeted after at least one of their works was banned. This is again illustrated by author Sarah J. Maas. In the 2021-2022 school year, eight of her titles were banned. This doubled to sixteen titles in 2022-23. A similar effect has impacted bestselling authors Ellen Hopkins, Jodi Picoult, Alice Oseman, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Rupi Kaur, among others, all of whom saw more of their catalogs scrutinized after one of their works was initially targeted for banning.

[Clip]

From July 2021 to June 2023, PEN Americas Index of School Book Bans recorded 5,894 instances of book bans. Florida and Texas lead the country in number of bans, but the crisis has spread to 41 states. A significant increase in the number of books banned from both school libraries and classrooms indicates not only an increase in the number of books banned, but that more of the bans are being enacted as permanent removals.

[Clip]

PEN America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.

Direct to Complete News Release

Direct to Full Text Report: Spineless Shelves: Two Years of Book Banning

Filed under: Data Files, Libraries, News, School Libraries

Read more from the original source:
New Report From PEN America: Two Years of Book Banning: Cumulative Data Set and Censorship Trends - LJ INFOdocket

The federal governments censorship-industrial complex is an existential threat to Americans First Amendment rights, several witnesses testified during a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

The federal government not just participated, but led this creation of a mass flagging and censorship operation that was coordinated with a broader effort to pressure [Big Tech] platforms to do more censorship, independent reporter Michael Shellenberger said.

Titled Censorship Laundering Part II: Preventing the Department of Homeland Securitys Silencing of Dissent, Wednesdays hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability analyzed federal agencies extensive efforts to collude with Big Tech platforms to silence Americans online for questioning claims made by the government. During his opening statement, subcommittee chair Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., underscored the role of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a subagency within the Department of Homeland Security, in coordinating this censorship operation.

What is stopping DHS from overreaching its jurisdiction beyond elections to censor more Americans to protect whatever government-deployed orthodox notions it deems critical infrastructure? Bishop asked. The answer is: nothing.

Often called the nerve center of the federal governments censorship complex, CISA facilitates meetings between Big Tech companies, and national security and law enforcement agencies to address mis-, dis-, and mal-information on social media platforms. Ahead of the 2020 election, for example, the agency upped its censorship efforts by flagging posts for Big Tech companies it claimed were worthy of being censored, some of which called into question the security of voting practices such as mass, unsupervised mail-in voting.

An interim report released by House Republicans last month revealed that CISAs censorship enterprise was more extensive than previously known. According to that analysis, CISA along with the State Departments Global Engagement Center (GEC) colluded with Stanford University to pressure Big Tech companies into censoring what they claimed to be disinformation during the 2020 election. At the heart of this operation was theElection Integrity Partnership (EIP), a consortium of disinformation academics spearheaded by the Stanford Internet Observatory that coordinated with DHS and GEC to monitor and censor Americans online speech ahead of the 2020 contest.

Created at the request of CISA, EIP allowed federal officials to launder [their] censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny. As documented in the interim report, this operation aimed to censor true information, jokes and satire, and political opinions and submitted flagged posts from prominent conservative figures to Big Tech companies for censorship. Among those targeted were The Federalists Mollie Hemingway and Sean Davis.

[RELATED: State Of Texas Joins The Federalist, Daily Wire In Suing The Federal Censorship-Industrial Complex]

Also highlighted during Wednesdays hearing was Missouri v. Biden, an ongoing court case to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court that documents efforts by the Biden administration to coerce Big Tech platforms to engage in similar censorship activities. In his testimony, Mark Chenoweth, president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), noted how the federal government pressured social media platforms into censoring Americans who dared to express rational and scientifically accurate views about the Covid-19 virus and the vaccines and in doing so, violated their First Amendment rights. NCLA is representing the individual plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden.

Indeed, I daresay there are some in this roomon both sides of the aislewho brush away the monumental efforts of the Biden Administration to squelch speech on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites as merely the actions of private companies. Not so, Chenoweth said. When the government coerces or pressures a company with inducements or threats and the company responds by crushing private individuals, that is state action, and the First Amendment forbids it.

Meanwhile, CISA officials testifying during Wednesdays hearing avoided answering questions from Republicans about how the agencys efforts to combat so-called disinformation have changed in recent years. When pressed by Bishop on how CISAs practices have evolved since the 2020 election, for example, agency official Iranga Kahangama declined to provide a straightforward answer.

Despite evidence showing otherwise, House Democrats attempted to defend the federal governments censorship activities by pretending they never occurred. In his opening statement, for example, ranking member and Maryland Democrat Rep. Glenn Ivey claimed the evidence showing CISAs role in the censorship-industrial complex completely misses the mark and further cited a quote from a CISA official asserting the agency doesnt censor speech as evidence that it doesnt engage in such behavior.

Meanwhile, Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., similarly attempted to convince Americans the myriad communications documenting government-compelled censorship do not exist, falsely claiming there is no evidence CISA has engaged in any nefarious or unconstitutional activity.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

More here:
House GOP Highlights The Feds' Censorship-Industrial Complex - The Federalist

December 12, 2023 at 6:15 a.m. EST

Almost no one believes the world needs more jerks. A Google search for the phrase returns exactly 12 hits, all of them sarcastic. Which only makes sense. Who likes being around jerks? Almost no one, thats who. Youd have to be a bit of a jerk to suggest that we ought to have more of them despoiling our homes, workplaces and social gatherings.

Allow me to introduce myself, then, as the jerk who thinks we need more jerks, particularly in knowledge-making fields such as journalism and academia or at least the kind of people who get called jerks for saying things their colleagues dont want to hear.

These professions used to be sheltered workshops for those kinds of jerks: naturally distrustful folks who like asking uncomfortable questions and experiencing an uncontrollable urge to say whatever theyve been told not to. These character traits dont make people popular at parties, but they might well help them ferret out untruths, deconstruct popular pieties and dismantle conventional wisdom.

Jerks were never the majority, which would be chaos. But they were a teaspoon of leavening that kept social pressure from compressing the range of acceptable thought into an intellectual pancake: flat, uniform and not very interesting.

These days, human resources departments have cracked down on all manner of jerk-ish behavior including, of course, saying things that offend ones colleagues. But if youre in the truth business, all this niceness comes at a cost, as a perspective just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences makes clear.

The papers multiple authors exhaustively categorize the rising pressures for, and tolerance of, academic censorship including self-censorship. For example, they write, a majority of eminent social psychologists reported that if science discovered a major genetic contribution to sex differences, widespread reporting of this finding would be bad.

Their paper challenges many of our common assumptions about censorship. First, that because its bad it must be done for bad reasons; and, second, that censorship is mostly a matter of outsiders tyrannizing truth-seekers. In fact, censorship is often done by scientists themselves and often for reasons that suggest, well, an excess of niceness: fighting injustice, promoting equality, protecting the weak. And if they also want to stay on the good side of their colleagues, well, nice people usually do.

Unfortunately, the universe isnt here to please us, which means niceness and truth will sometimes be at odds.

I think, for example, of my fellow Post columnist Lawrence H. Summers, who was forced out as president of Harvard several years ago after he speculated, at a small private seminar, that one possible reason for the underrepresentation of women in elite science and engineering programs might be that their ability was less variable than mens. So while both sexes perform about as well on average, the women might tend to cluster near the middle, while the men are overrepresented at the bottom and the top the latter being where elite programs draw from.

Understandably, this caused hurt and outrage among many female academics. But things can be true even if they make us feel bad, and Summerss speculation is at least compatible with what we know about sex differences in other animals. A truth-seeking institution would have set feelings aside and asked whether the hypothesis was right or wrong (as Summers himself said it might well be).

Instead, Summers resigned.

This was a watershed event that has influenced how university administrators are selected and how they behave as we saw in last weeks congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, where three nice university presidents struggled to mount a coherent, and plausible, defense of free expression on campus.

One reason they struggled was that campuses have in fact become more and more hostile to debate on issues of identity, as you will find extensively examined in The Canceling of the American Mind, a new book by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott. But its not just a problem of overzealous DEI bureaucracies; scholars are censoring each other and themselves.

One has only to look at the way some academic disciplines have veered into activism unfortunately including public health during the pandemic. Or at the papers concerning sensitive issues like race and sexuality that were retracted under activist pressure. Or at recent editorial statements from the journal Nature suggesting that editors should vet papers not just for scientific accuracy but also for possible harm to marginalized communities.

Undoubtedly, the folks who wrote that editorial thought they were helping make the world a better place. But, undoubtedly, so did the men who prosecuted Galileo. Niceness doesnt prevent error in fact, it may make mistakes more likely.

Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, one of the authors of the paper, pointed out that research shows people who viewed themselves as strongly principled were actually more willing to tailor their findings to the wishes of their funders or distort their findings to advance noble goals. In many cases, peoples perception that they are strongly committed to social justice and rigor actually makes them more susceptible to being corrupted, he told me in an interview.

Niceness also makes incidents of censorship harder to address. If they were driven by bad people with bad motives, then the solution would be easy: Get rid of those people. But when its driven by people who are good, who are committed to doing good work and who are trying to do good through their work,then the solution becomes more difficult.

It might be worse than that, I responded: By trying to get rid of bad people, you could make science worse, because the most likely targets might be the semi-antisocial folks who just said what they thought, even if it upset people.

I think this is true, al-Gharbi said. To the extent that we select for only the most pro-social people, we might actually be making science more vulnerable not just to censorship, but to some of these other problems like fraud and corruption as well.

They and we would be better off if they kept a few ruthless iconoclasts around to periodically jerk them out of that complacency.

Original post:
Opinion | The world needs more jerks, especially in fields like journalism and academia - The Washington Post

China's infamous censorship body revealed fresh plans to boost internet censorship in the country, South China Morning Post reported.

Short videos appear to be the main target this time, especially those spreading extremism and, for the very first time, pessimistic content. Video material generated using AI will also be banned.

These new guidelines come as the latest attempt to further restrict and control the internet within the country's borders. As a result, we expect that reliable China VPN services will become an even bigger necessity for visitors, and citizens, who wish to keep securely accessing the open wide web.

Since 2020 the countrys top censorship body, the Cyberspace Administration of China, has been regularly updating the list of content to censor within the country. As mentioned, this year's "Qing Lang" campaign (which means clear and bright) took a strong stance against short-form videos.

Despite being a Chinese-developed software, the popular video-sharing app TikTok is banned in China. However, censors plan to target its Chinese equivalent, Douyin, and other platforms where short videos are widely shared, including WeChat and Weibo.

The watchdog specifically expressed a commitment to cracking down on creators who make up "stories about social minorities to win public sympathy" as well as "fake plots and spreading panic," SCMP revealed.

Do you know?

According to the South China Morning Post, China's censors have deleted or blocked a total of around 1.35 billion online accounts, 76 million illegal or improper messages, and 10,500 websites as a consequence of the Qing Lang crackdown campaign between 2021 and 2022.

While extremism and so-called "incorrect values" like money, history, and mixed-race relationships have long since been among the censors' targets, it's the first time that content promoting "pessimism" is included. This new tactic seems to be linked to the country's continuous struggle to recover economically after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Another new entry on the blacklist is AI-powered videos. The watchdog plans to ban short videos that manipulate content and illegally use other people's voices or faces.

Finding a way to fight back against the threats of AI-generated content, especially video and audio scams, is no doubt a massive challenge, and priority, for plenty of the nation leaders in 2024.

In July, China proposed a set of guidelines for generative AI software and large language models to minimize their risks. The EU Commission has just concluded the final negotiations for the AI Act, which is likely to become the new standard across Western countries.

Short for virtual private network, a VPN is a security tool that protects your privacy and anonymity, while also allowing you to bypass strict internet restrictions and censorship.

How? Every time you connect to the software, you'll need to choose one of the available serversall the best VPN services offer a wide range of speedy and secure locations across the world. Your real IP address is hidden so that your ISP is tricked into thinking that you are located in another country, depending on where your chosen server is based.

A VPN then enables you to access websites and social platforms that aren't available in your home country and some VPNs can bypass the notorious Great Firewall in China. However, a VPN cannot help you access content that authorities have deleted or prohibited a certain platform from sharing.

It's also worth mentioning that Chinese authorities strictly regulate VPN usage while working hard to find new and effective tactics to block VPNs.

China topped the list as the biggest offender worldwide for VPN censorship between January and May this year. In fact, authorities block providers' websites over eight times (812%) more than the global average of 8%.

This is why you should take care when picking a VPN provider. Services implementing obfuscation technology, for example, are less vulnerable to such attacks.

We also suggest downloading several apps to hop from one to another in case these get blocked. Check ourbest free VPNspage to choose the safer freebies on the market as well as our updated guide to the best working VPNs for China.

Lesser-known tools, like the newly launchedSnowstormor Lantern, are also effective ways to reconnect a splintering web and access all the content you want, without restrictions.

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

Compare the three best China VPN services right now:

View original post here:
China plans to boost up its censorship game to target AI videos and "pessimism" - TechRadar

By Jeremy Powell

Never let a good crisis go to waste. The once-overheard quote uttered by one of Barack Obamas advisors now represents the unjustifiable expansion and abuse of government powers of the Joe Biden era. With the pandemic arrived a litany of experiments that proved disastrous, from distance learning and expansion of the money supply to lockdowns. After all the damage and witnessing the lengths Biden and his fellows are willing to go to, anything seems to be permissible.

Whether the alternative leads us to a better or worse future is reserved for another day. Nonetheless, with real incomedecliningbecause of recklessmonetary policy, its no surprise that Biden is on the firing line. When totally reliable polls and fair, balanced outlets like NBC are suggesting that Donald Trump might be overtaking Biden, democracy is in crisis, again. At this stage, anything that doesnt align with a Far Left domestic agenda and a hawkish foreign policy is antidemocratic and xenophobic, per the usual arguments.

But at a certain point, gaslighting simply stops working. It no longer sells as false dichotomies are no more than mere justifications for continuing more failed progressive experiments. At some point, they simply cant tolerate counternarratives. You must not go down the rabbit hole,warnedtheNew York Times(the same paper that didnt return its Pulitzer Prize after lying about the Holodomor). Theyre afraid that their narrative is losing traction. In 2016, it was told that social media and disinformation caused Hillary Clinton to lose. During the 2020 general election, the Federal Bureau of Investigation pressuredTwitterandFacebookover the Hunter Biden story that many now acknowledge as authentic.

Despite being caught weaponizing federal government agencies and utilizing third-partyorganizationsfunded with taxpayer money to monitor,censor, and implement a double standard, Bidens team simply carried on. Once again, per theWashington Post,Bidenhas been working with TikTok creators to tell positive stories about the Bideneconomyhardly an unknowntactic.

But social media is hardly the only place where Biden and the Left seek to control the narrative. By thispoint, people haveseenmore than enough expert talkingpointsaboutartificial intelligence(AI). The narrative often goes like this: tomorrow AI will be the force that destroys democracy unless its regulated properly. Just a few weeks ago, Biden signed anexecutive orderregulating the development and utilization of AI to ensure trustworthiness and prevent discriminatory algorithms. The executive order washeraldedas a step forward by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an umbrellanetworkof left-wing advocacyorganizations, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.

The executive order delegates the power of implementing regulations to the National Institute of Standards and Technology and enforcement to the Department of Homeland Security. In its own words, The National Institute of Standards and Technology will set the rigorous standards for extensive red-team testing to ensure safety before public release. The Department of Homeland Security will apply those standards to critical infrastructure sectors and establish the AI Safety and Security Board.

It follows awhite paperpublished by the Biden administration roughly a month earlier. While the executive order was explicit about preventing discrimination by automated algorithms in housing and policing, it is eerily vague about the internet and online communications. The delegation of regulatory and enforcement powers is for applying them to critical infrastructure sectors. Therefore, AI models are regulated by which critical infrastructure sector they belong to. There aresectionsof the Department of Homeland Security dedicated to handling matters about the internet.

However, the white paper isnt a dead end as far as clues for how a potential regulatory regime would look like. Thepaper, titled A Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, doesnt limit itself to AI usage in healthcare, housing, finances, and criminal justice, even though most examples featured in the white paper and proposed regulations talk about AI in those specific areas. The talking points utilized for stringent regulation of AI utilization in the five aforementioned areas can translate beyond those areas, whether chatbots or social media algorithms, as the paper (and executive order) is part of the plan to tackle inequity.

In particular, two principles enshrined in the document can be interchangeably applied to AI usage in any sector. The first, as argued by Biden, You should be protected from unsafe or ineffective systems and consultation with stakeholders (i.e., diverse communities and experts). Designs should proactively protect you from harms ... unintended, yet foreseeable, uses or impacts of automated systems and inappropriate or irrelevant data use in the system. Among the examples cited by unintended, yet foreseeable harm of automated systems is the allegation that counter quotes, criticism of racist quotes, and journalism by black people are unfairly throttled or moderated.

Remember, this occurs under the mantra of fighting inequity. Among the many expectations set by the white paper, data fed into a system should be relevant, of high quality. But which data is high quality depends entirely on how Biden and company define it. Also acknowledged in the white paper was the National Science Foundation funds extensive research to help foster the development of automated systems that adhere to and advance their safety, security and effectiveness.

The second point Biden advances is the prevention of algorithmic discrimination through proactive equity assessments as part of the system design. Biden alleges that automated systems can produce inequitable outcomes and amplify existing inequity, and data that fails to account for systemic biases in American society can result in a range of consequences. An example cited was the automated contextualization of social media comments where statements like Im a Christian are more than likely to be shared, while Im gay might be blocked.

If one is on the Right, one almost is certainly ready to laugh at ChatGPTs (and others) left-wing, pro-Democratic biases. At best, right-wingers would only utilize Xs GrokAI here and there. But as shown above, its not merely chatbots that were talking about. It isnt difficult to conclude that an enforced equitable algorithm where progressive narratives (or nonprivileged, for that matter) are pushed, as with the aforementioned Im Christian and Im gay example Biden and company cited, means a framework for quelling counternarratives to the progressive orthodoxy on social media. X (formerly Twitter) might have broken away from progressive Big Tech, but soon X might forcibly rejoin the progressive digital ecosystem.

Even if the proposals only affect chatbots, doing nothing against a deliberately vague executive order and such a controlling regulatory regime isnt the correct answer. As nonleftists complain about the lack of youth in their ranks, especially when their attention span is declining, chatbots are a gateway for quick information (or echo chambers) to turn them into progressives. Now multiply it with controlled algorithms on social media and search engines and see where it will take us.

Originally posted here:
Biden's 'AI Bill Of Rights' May Just Be Another Censorship Plan OpEd - Eurasia Review