Matt, this is an outstanding effort to document such a critical issue. The timeline lays out, in plain sight, how ‘voluntary’ agreements quickly turn into mandates, and how private companies get roped into enforcing regulations that should be debated in public, not behind closed doors. Appreciate the thorough research—this is the kind of work that keeps the record straight. Keep going!
I understand you are all having a conversation about Europe vs the US. I live in India, and just from a media criticism perspective, this may be helpful.
The trend in the past few years in the mainstream media in the West is to claim democracy is "backsliding" in some countries around the world. In fact, this phrase "democracy backsliding" has its own wikipedia entry and there are "experts" in it who show up on CNN.
Also keep in mind the narrative that around Trump's election in 2016, "right-wing-populists" had made significant advances around the world. This narrative has been revived recently with Trump's second election.
One of the countries that was dragged into this narrative was India. The words "authoritarian", "right-wing-populist", "democratic backsliding" have been found in mainstream media articles in NY Times, WaPo, CNN, BBC, Guardian with reference to India.
The Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, the dynastic leader of the Indian National Congress party has been treated the way exiled princes from monarchies were treated back in the day when colonialists had fun - he has been invited to conferences all around the West to give his opinion of "democratic backsliding" in India since the current "Hindu nationalist" govt took over.
In fact, during the 2024 elections the coverage was so intense that it was treated like the last elections in India.
However, I want to show you how these kind of narratives are misinformation.
Back in 2008, the current opposition party, Rahul Gandhi's party was the ruling party in India.
In the Indian Parliament, his party brought in a set of Amendments to the Information Technology Act. Among these was section 66A.
Section 66A made it possible for the police in various state governments around India to punish social media users for content.
This became law, and in the period between 2008 and 2015, when the Indian Supreme Court struck down this section, hundreds of civilians across the country were arrested and imprisoned for mostly harmless content. In one case, two young women who liked a post were arrested!
This is the party that is now being held up as "Resistance to Hindu fascists" by not only the mainstream media in the US, but also by Congresswomen such as Ilhan Omar.
It is a different society, where rule of law is not there fully; and abuse of power from politicians and government is common. The Judiciary often gets into administration.
In the Indian Penal Code Section 295A: "Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) criminalizes deliberate acts that insult or attempt to insult a religious belief or practice. It's a hate speech law that prohibits blasphemy against all religions in India. "
This is a British era law.
Section 153A, which is commonly abused: "Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) punishes the promotion of enmity between groups based on religion, race, caste, language, or other grounds. It also punishes acts that disturb public tranquility. "
I have heard that these sections are similar to those in UK and Canada. But they are abused wildly in India.
"European rights guarantees are often framed as “freedom of expression, but,” as in the case of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It calls the “free communication of ideas” “precious… except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty.”"
"You are free to say what you want, as long as what you say doesn't piss important people off or skewer sacred cows" somehow loses its snap.
Hate speech? The front page of the New York Times has for eight years been an unending fount of hate speech towards Trump, and Kennedy, Gabbard, and now Vance. Complete with lies, mis/dis/ mal, and supported by a near rabid readership which recently shows evidence of encouraging actual violence. (Take a dip in today’s comments about the Firings at the Pentagon). Every definition of ‘hate speech’, if there were such a thing, could be applied there.
Russiagate was hate speech. Characterizing the opening of peace talks as “cozying up to a dictator”, is hate speech. It’s time to turn the game around.
True, but it's the NYT, and most everyone knows by now where they are coming from, so judges what they say accordingly. The hard Leftists who believe what they write are beyond our help, they need to find their own way out of the cult. All we can do is create and maintain a robust system of truth, vigorous debate, opinions, and the random crazy or hateful diatribes that are just part of an open dialog. Cultists who find their way out are welcome.
Right you are, but I climb, swim and dive with ‘Leftists’ and I can assure you that I don’t know of anyone who wears that badge proudly who thinks of the New York Times as anything but, in Jeffrey Sachs’ term, ‘a rag’.
When I was asked why I was canceling my subscription I wrote: “My parakeet died.”
To add to other comments, it is often said that these laws suppress minority views or disfavored speech. But the truth is they often suppress the truth or the ability to get at the truth. The point is not just that we should hear all speech short of speech encouraging imminent acts of violence no matter what, but that in hearing all speech, we may find we are being lied to, what is being said is not right, or not quite right. A minority opinion can become a majority opinion only if it is heard. That is what these sinister laws are designed to stop. If these laws/efforts prevailed in this country, Trump would be a Russian colluder, COVID came from pangolins, Fauci is a hero, we'd be on our tenth booster, Joe Biden is fit as a fiddle and enjoying his fourth four-day weekend of his second term...and the latest, "Nazi free speech caused the holocaust and importing millions of people who are not fond of Jews and Christians is a great idea and can't possibly fundamentally alter Europe or go wrong and it hasn't so shut up..."
Those who wish to suppress speech wish also to tamp down any questions that might arise from glimpses of the truth. Questions that might well expose those having something to hide.
The humor here if you choose to call it that is that the thread of commonality among all these laws, rules and regulations is to protect the political enterprise. It has nothing to do with terrorism, or democracy or any other signs of virtue. This is politics in the raw. It is aggression against speech for the protection of the status quo.
Matt, you are doing God’s work here and what I see here is our version of the Boston Tea Party happening. We left Europe(England) because they were wacky with religion and created the same shit using God as the reason. Now they have just substituted God with Govt. and woolah we have another hill we must stand on and stick our middle fingers straight up in the air telling them all it ain’t gonna happen here. The fog has been lifted in America thanks to you being the 21st century’s Thomas Paine. You not buckling to the intense pressure and death threats makes you an American worthy of the Medal of Freedom and I’ll be writing our President in the hope of you receiving that medal in short order. Matt, you may well in fact go down in history as one of the main saviors of our country. You’re a patriot and fellow Jerseyan and you can count on my support until freedom is taken from my cold dead hands. Keep up the noble work to pull the blinds open and expose and entity threatening our American way of life. God Bless.
Thank you Matt. This is a great idea. As I watch the Colorado legislature take up bills related to the censorship trinity (2024 session) or creating paths for our AG to get content taken down (last week), I’m increasingly concerned that Europe’s acts are coming ashore. Reading the European docs will help in our fight at home.
It (Europe) calls the “free communication of ideas” “precious… except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty.” how could one be so naïve as you think this would actually work? If the last nine years have showed us anything, it’s that we need to double down in support of free speech. Thank God for JD Vance. finally, there’s a grown-up in the room!!
I'd like an end to the terms: "misinformation/disinformation" etc. They are simply Orwellian terms, constructed in self-important academic language, to disguise what they really mean: words that threaten to expose governments and powerbrokers' abuse of power .
In a substack which is more or less devoted to information, and is challenging censorship and the altering of history - I think it’s important to point out that misinformation and disinformation are extremely important terms. (But they, along with many other words, have become weaponised by those in favour of censorship and propaganda.)
Misinformation and disinformation are important and different terms, though they are often used as if they are the same.
Fundamental to these terms is the idea that a fact is something that is verifiable.
Opinions and speculation are not facts.
Fundamentally, misinformation is factual information that is provided by someone, which is actually wrong/incorrect. This may be because the person who said or wrote it unintentionally got a fact wrong (eg they might claim X is married to Y, but they are in fact divorced), or they have misunderstood a fact. 👉🏼 But though they produced an incorrect fact, they did not intend to mislead.👈🏼
Anyone who has ever accidentally given the wrong directions to find a place, has engaged in unintentional misinformation.
Anyone who gave the same wrong directions, but did so deliberately, in order to mislead, engaged in intentional disinformation.
People often make innocent mistakes, without intending to mislead others. It is human nature. The corporate media, and political and other influential people often spout incorrect pseudo-facts, without the intention to mislead.
But the label of misinformation has been weaponised. In many instances, it seems that subjective opinions or speculation are dealt with by so-called fact checkers as if they are objective, verifiable facts - and the person or organisation may wrongly have their opinion suppressed or censored. In addition, references (which are not necessarily factual, but give context to opinion) used to support an opinion that is not consistent with the establishment references, may gets labelled as fake news, misinformation, disinformation or propaganda by the ‘Thought Police’ - instead of being recognised and tolerated as an opposing viewpoint.
Disinformation is information used 👉🏼deliberately to mislead people.👈🏼
Disinformation can be entirely true - but because context is missing or some other factor is introduced - it creates a false misleading impression.
Disinformation can be partly true. This can be the the most misleading type of information, because a person may be tricked into thinking the whole thing is true.
Disinformation can be totally false, but provided in such a convincing way that people get sucked in. Fraudsters are expert at this.
It can be argued that many people - particularly politicians, senior bureaucrats and agents of agencies that specialise in propaganda are expert at tgat.
Based on Matt’s Twitter files, it seems government agencies are quick to label political or corporate criticisms or views which oppose the official establishment as disinformation/propaganda.
There need to be words to express what is going on - otherwise, its like “Newspeak” in Orwell’s famous book “1984”:
Newspeak: a purposefully ambiguous and confusing language with restricted grammar and limited vocabulary used in 1984, its purpose, according or Orwell was, “to diminish the range of thought.”
We must discourage the narrowing of language, and insure meaning(s) remain alive.
This has been the greatest fleecing of money from American greatness ever. I truly hope all of American megatech steps up together and tells the EU and the rest of Europe that the days of extortion for GDP are over.
Regarding censorship and the indoctrination industrial complexes controlling the lumpenproletariat plebs; the "Road to HELL is paved with good intentions" but I don't believe for a minute that our parasitic dreck ruling classes ever had a good intention in recorded history. I try and do my analysis of everything other than physics by thinking, Que bono! Invariably the biggest benefit is for them and if I get something, it's a side effect. A pox on censorship and ALL who prompt and justify it and a "wake up call" to us lumpenproletariat plebs "Caveat emptor"; the bastards are always selling us something in their interests, not ours!
Whenever I hear "mis/disinformation" in MSM my first thought is "that is ACTUAL mis/dis, let me look at the flip side to see what's going on". The whole mis/dis trope has become a giant self-own by cockroaches scurrying from the flipped on light.
"New York Times reporter Cecilia Kang went on CBS to summarize the frustration of American officials over the 'thorniest' problem for implementing hate speech regulation, namely that 'we have in our law… the First Amendment.' As a result, Kang said, 'the US is sort of in a position where they have to abide by really our constitutional limits,'"
Oh, boo freakin' hoo, you absolute scumbag "reporter."
Thank God we have that pesky First Amendment standing in the way of the tyrants & their shameless toadies.
Matt, this is an outstanding effort to document such a critical issue. The timeline lays out, in plain sight, how ‘voluntary’ agreements quickly turn into mandates, and how private companies get roped into enforcing regulations that should be debated in public, not behind closed doors. Appreciate the thorough research—this is the kind of work that keeps the record straight. Keep going!
I understand you are all having a conversation about Europe vs the US. I live in India, and just from a media criticism perspective, this may be helpful.
The trend in the past few years in the mainstream media in the West is to claim democracy is "backsliding" in some countries around the world. In fact, this phrase "democracy backsliding" has its own wikipedia entry and there are "experts" in it who show up on CNN.
Also keep in mind the narrative that around Trump's election in 2016, "right-wing-populists" had made significant advances around the world. This narrative has been revived recently with Trump's second election.
One of the countries that was dragged into this narrative was India. The words "authoritarian", "right-wing-populist", "democratic backsliding" have been found in mainstream media articles in NY Times, WaPo, CNN, BBC, Guardian with reference to India.
The Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, the dynastic leader of the Indian National Congress party has been treated the way exiled princes from monarchies were treated back in the day when colonialists had fun - he has been invited to conferences all around the West to give his opinion of "democratic backsliding" in India since the current "Hindu nationalist" govt took over.
In fact, during the 2024 elections the coverage was so intense that it was treated like the last elections in India.
However, I want to show you how these kind of narratives are misinformation.
Back in 2008, the current opposition party, Rahul Gandhi's party was the ruling party in India.
In the Indian Parliament, his party brought in a set of Amendments to the Information Technology Act. Among these was section 66A.
Section 66A made it possible for the police in various state governments around India to punish social media users for content.
This became law, and in the period between 2008 and 2015, when the Indian Supreme Court struck down this section, hundreds of civilians across the country were arrested and imprisoned for mostly harmless content. In one case, two young women who liked a post were arrested!
This is the party that is now being held up as "Resistance to Hindu fascists" by not only the mainstream media in the US, but also by Congresswomen such as Ilhan Omar.
This is fascinating.
It is also posted twice on this thread…
Thank you so much!
It´s theirs colonial mindset...and most of them aren´t even aware of it...
What is the notion of freedom of speech in Indian law? Is India participating in the Western "civil war" over free speech?
It is a different society, where rule of law is not there fully; and abuse of power from politicians and government is common. The Judiciary often gets into administration.
In the Indian Penal Code Section 295A: "Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) criminalizes deliberate acts that insult or attempt to insult a religious belief or practice. It's a hate speech law that prohibits blasphemy against all religions in India. "
This is a British era law.
Section 153A, which is commonly abused: "Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) punishes the promotion of enmity between groups based on religion, race, caste, language, or other grounds. It also punishes acts that disturb public tranquility. "
I have heard that these sections are similar to those in UK and Canada. But they are abused wildly in India.
"European rights guarantees are often framed as “freedom of expression, but,” as in the case of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It calls the “free communication of ideas” “precious… except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty.”"
"You are free to say what you want, as long as what you say doesn't piss important people off or skewer sacred cows" somehow loses its snap.
Or question their agenda….
Or simply insult someone. . .
Hate speech? The front page of the New York Times has for eight years been an unending fount of hate speech towards Trump, and Kennedy, Gabbard, and now Vance. Complete with lies, mis/dis/ mal, and supported by a near rabid readership which recently shows evidence of encouraging actual violence. (Take a dip in today’s comments about the Firings at the Pentagon). Every definition of ‘hate speech’, if there were such a thing, could be applied there.
Russiagate was hate speech. Characterizing the opening of peace talks as “cozying up to a dictator”, is hate speech. It’s time to turn the game around.
True, but it's the NYT, and most everyone knows by now where they are coming from, so judges what they say accordingly. The hard Leftists who believe what they write are beyond our help, they need to find their own way out of the cult. All we can do is create and maintain a robust system of truth, vigorous debate, opinions, and the random crazy or hateful diatribes that are just part of an open dialog. Cultists who find their way out are welcome.
Right you are, but I climb, swim and dive with ‘Leftists’ and I can assure you that I don’t know of anyone who wears that badge proudly who thinks of the New York Times as anything but, in Jeffrey Sachs’ term, ‘a rag’.
When I was asked why I was canceling my subscription I wrote: “My parakeet died.”
To add to other comments, it is often said that these laws suppress minority views or disfavored speech. But the truth is they often suppress the truth or the ability to get at the truth. The point is not just that we should hear all speech short of speech encouraging imminent acts of violence no matter what, but that in hearing all speech, we may find we are being lied to, what is being said is not right, or not quite right. A minority opinion can become a majority opinion only if it is heard. That is what these sinister laws are designed to stop. If these laws/efforts prevailed in this country, Trump would be a Russian colluder, COVID came from pangolins, Fauci is a hero, we'd be on our tenth booster, Joe Biden is fit as a fiddle and enjoying his fourth four-day weekend of his second term...and the latest, "Nazi free speech caused the holocaust and importing millions of people who are not fond of Jews and Christians is a great idea and can't possibly fundamentally alter Europe or go wrong and it hasn't so shut up..."
Those who wish to suppress speech wish also to tamp down any questions that might arise from glimpses of the truth. Questions that might well expose those having something to hide.
The humor here if you choose to call it that is that the thread of commonality among all these laws, rules and regulations is to protect the political enterprise. It has nothing to do with terrorism, or democracy or any other signs of virtue. This is politics in the raw. It is aggression against speech for the protection of the status quo.
Matt, you are doing God’s work here and what I see here is our version of the Boston Tea Party happening. We left Europe(England) because they were wacky with religion and created the same shit using God as the reason. Now they have just substituted God with Govt. and woolah we have another hill we must stand on and stick our middle fingers straight up in the air telling them all it ain’t gonna happen here. The fog has been lifted in America thanks to you being the 21st century’s Thomas Paine. You not buckling to the intense pressure and death threats makes you an American worthy of the Medal of Freedom and I’ll be writing our President in the hope of you receiving that medal in short order. Matt, you may well in fact go down in history as one of the main saviors of our country. You’re a patriot and fellow Jerseyan and you can count on my support until freedom is taken from my cold dead hands. Keep up the noble work to pull the blinds open and expose and entity threatening our American way of life. God Bless.
This is exactly what we need. Thanks.
Thank you Matt. This is a great idea. As I watch the Colorado legislature take up bills related to the censorship trinity (2024 session) or creating paths for our AG to get content taken down (last week), I’m increasingly concerned that Europe’s acts are coming ashore. Reading the European docs will help in our fight at home.
Damn- great reporting as usual Matt.
It (Europe) calls the “free communication of ideas” “precious… except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty.” how could one be so naïve as you think this would actually work? If the last nine years have showed us anything, it’s that we need to double down in support of free speech. Thank God for JD Vance. finally, there’s a grown-up in the room!!
I'd like an end to the terms: "misinformation/disinformation" etc. They are simply Orwellian terms, constructed in self-important academic language, to disguise what they really mean: words that threaten to expose governments and powerbrokers' abuse of power .
In a substack which is more or less devoted to information, and is challenging censorship and the altering of history - I think it’s important to point out that misinformation and disinformation are extremely important terms. (But they, along with many other words, have become weaponised by those in favour of censorship and propaganda.)
Misinformation and disinformation are important and different terms, though they are often used as if they are the same.
Fundamental to these terms is the idea that a fact is something that is verifiable.
Opinions and speculation are not facts.
Fundamentally, misinformation is factual information that is provided by someone, which is actually wrong/incorrect. This may be because the person who said or wrote it unintentionally got a fact wrong (eg they might claim X is married to Y, but they are in fact divorced), or they have misunderstood a fact. 👉🏼 But though they produced an incorrect fact, they did not intend to mislead.👈🏼
Anyone who has ever accidentally given the wrong directions to find a place, has engaged in unintentional misinformation.
Anyone who gave the same wrong directions, but did so deliberately, in order to mislead, engaged in intentional disinformation.
People often make innocent mistakes, without intending to mislead others. It is human nature. The corporate media, and political and other influential people often spout incorrect pseudo-facts, without the intention to mislead.
But the label of misinformation has been weaponised. In many instances, it seems that subjective opinions or speculation are dealt with by so-called fact checkers as if they are objective, verifiable facts - and the person or organisation may wrongly have their opinion suppressed or censored. In addition, references (which are not necessarily factual, but give context to opinion) used to support an opinion that is not consistent with the establishment references, may gets labelled as fake news, misinformation, disinformation or propaganda by the ‘Thought Police’ - instead of being recognised and tolerated as an opposing viewpoint.
Disinformation is information used 👉🏼deliberately to mislead people.👈🏼
Disinformation can be entirely true - but because context is missing or some other factor is introduced - it creates a false misleading impression.
Disinformation can be partly true. This can be the the most misleading type of information, because a person may be tricked into thinking the whole thing is true.
Disinformation can be totally false, but provided in such a convincing way that people get sucked in. Fraudsters are expert at this.
It can be argued that many people - particularly politicians, senior bureaucrats and agents of agencies that specialise in propaganda are expert at tgat.
Based on Matt’s Twitter files, it seems government agencies are quick to label political or corporate criticisms or views which oppose the official establishment as disinformation/propaganda.
There need to be words to express what is going on - otherwise, its like “Newspeak” in Orwell’s famous book “1984”:
Newspeak: a purposefully ambiguous and confusing language with restricted grammar and limited vocabulary used in 1984, its purpose, according or Orwell was, “to diminish the range of thought.”
We must discourage the narrowing of language, and insure meaning(s) remain alive.
This has been the greatest fleecing of money from American greatness ever. I truly hope all of American megatech steps up together and tells the EU and the rest of Europe that the days of extortion for GDP are over.
Regarding censorship and the indoctrination industrial complexes controlling the lumpenproletariat plebs; the "Road to HELL is paved with good intentions" but I don't believe for a minute that our parasitic dreck ruling classes ever had a good intention in recorded history. I try and do my analysis of everything other than physics by thinking, Que bono! Invariably the biggest benefit is for them and if I get something, it's a side effect. A pox on censorship and ALL who prompt and justify it and a "wake up call" to us lumpenproletariat plebs "Caveat emptor"; the bastards are always selling us something in their interests, not ours!
Whenever I hear "mis/disinformation" in MSM my first thought is "that is ACTUAL mis/dis, let me look at the flip side to see what's going on". The whole mis/dis trope has become a giant self-own by cockroaches scurrying from the flipped on light.
Kathleen is fantastic—I’m excited to see her posting here!
Two enthusiastic thumbs up!👍🏼 👍🏼
"New York Times reporter Cecilia Kang went on CBS to summarize the frustration of American officials over the 'thorniest' problem for implementing hate speech regulation, namely that 'we have in our law… the First Amendment.' As a result, Kang said, 'the US is sort of in a position where they have to abide by really our constitutional limits,'"
Oh, boo freakin' hoo, you absolute scumbag "reporter."
Thank God we have that pesky First Amendment standing in the way of the tyrants & their shameless toadies.