Articles by Rebekah Barnett via Dystopian Down Under

Censorship

How the US Government funded narrative control operations around the globe

April 23, 2025 Rebekah Barnett via Dystopian Down Under 0
Narrative control efforts to give the US a competitive advantage over Russia and China make sense – this is what we expect of nation states. Why the US Government should be so invested in pushing vaccines and influencing the information environment surrounding the elections of small and far-flung nations is less obvious, unless you understand the US to be an empire representing the interests of major cartels and an ambitious deep state.

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Censorship

State Department Closes Censorship Office

April 19, 2025 Joshua Arnold via The Washington Stand 0
Rather than censor Americans’ speech directly, which would raise obvious First Amendment concerns, GEC and other federal agencies “effectively outsourced to the newly emerging censorship-industrial complex” to private proxies, according to a report published by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — as if that made the First Amendment problems go away.

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Censorship

In Congressional Testimony, Whistleblower Accuses Meta Of Aiding China’s Censorship

April 14, 2025 Tyler Durden via Zero Hedge 2
Wynn-Williams served as the director of global public policy for Facebook, now Meta, from 2011 to 2017. During that time, she said Meta executives “lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress, and the American public. ”Wynn-Williams’s allegations against Meta, which she detailed in her memoir “Careless People,” include the claim that the company worked “hand-in-glove” with the CCP to custom-build and wield censorship tools against the regime’s critics.

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Academia

A battle over religion and schools in Oklahoma could decide the future of the First Amendment

April 4, 2025 Lawrence Hurley via NBC News 4
Under Walters’ watch, the state approved the first ever religious virtual public charter school, a provocative move that is now before the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of the move next month. He has also proposed placing Bibles in schools, a move that was recently blocked by the state Supreme Court, and is seeking to add more Christian-related themes to the curriculum, including information about the Ten Commandments.

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Censorship

How Big Pharma’s Favorite Ad Agency Helped Create NewsGuard

April 1, 2025 FFO Staff via Foundation for Freedom Online 1
Studies show NewsGuard’s ratings are heavily skewed against anti-establishment media sources. Its advertiser exclusion lists include some of the most prominent destinations for non-mainstream news, including Newsmax, Breitbart News, The Federalist, and One America News. While conservative websites bear the brunt, left-wing websites with an anti-establishment, anti-war tendency, like Consortium News, have also found themselves on NewsGuard’s blacklists.

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