SOCIAL MEDIA

An Associated Press spokesperson confirmed to SFGATE that Wilder “was dismissed for violations of AP’s social media policy during her time at AP,” but did not address any other issue Wilder raised, stating that the AP generally does not comment on personnel matters. Wilder said that because her editor originally noted that “everyone had opinions in college,” she sees her firing as selective enforcement against those who have expressed criticisms of Israel. “This is clearly a case of selective enforcement,” she said. “I don’t buy their convenient cover story at all because they never told me what specifically I did wrong, and in the termination letter, they said the harassment campaign prompted the review, and in that review they found supposed violations of their policy.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The emergence of the internet was met with hope and enthusiasm by people who understood that the plutocrat-controlled mainstream media were manipulating public opinion to manufacture consent for the status quo. The democratization of information-sharing was going to give rise to a public consciousness that is emancipated from the domination of plutocratic narrative control, thereby opening up the possibility of revolutionary change to our society’s corrupt systems.

GLENN GREENWALD—I do not believe that this bill will end up doing that, particularly because it empowers the largest media outlets such as The New York Times and MSNBC to dominate the process and because it does not even acknowledge, let alone address, the broader problems plaguing the news industry, including collapsing trust by the public.

GLENN GREENWALD—In a January Wall Street Journal op-ed, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Yale Law School’s constitutional scholar Jed Rubenfeld warned that Congress is rapidly approaching this constitutional boundary if it has not already transgressed it. “Using a combination of statutory inducements and regulatory threats,” the duo wrote, “Congress has co-opted Silicon Valley to do through the back door what government cannot directly accomplish under the Constitution.” Added: Deleted: That article compiled just a small sample of case law making clear that efforts to coerce private actors to censor speech implicate core First Amendment free speech guarantees.

Many people around the world, and now, the goverments of Russia, China and Iran, are also claiming that Covid-19 probably originated in a US bioweapons lab. This is a legitimate news, says Kim Iversen, a respected commetator on world affairs. The story was even carried by Western news services, but in her case Big Tech decided to censor her. Why? Apparently because she is not a dependable conduit for the official narative, which seeks to pin blame on foreign state actors, chiefly China.