Big Tech Continued Censorship

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Google Blocks RSBN With 7-Day YouTube Ban on Eve of Trump Indictment​

On the eve of the indictment of President Donald J Trump, Google, the parent company of YouTube, suspends Right Side Broadcasting Network from its broadcast platform.

AUBURN, Ala. — Just one day before RSBN was set to cover President Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan, YouTube has resumed its censorship practices and suspended RSBN’s channel, blocking our ability to livestream for seven days.​

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On Monday, RSBN received a notice from YouTube informing us that due to content violating their “elections misinformation” policies, the platform has removed several videos. These include President Trump’s most recent rally in Waco, Texas, his remarks at CPAC, and our exclusive sit-down interview with him at Mar-a-Lago.​

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SEC Sides With Conservatives in Allowing Vote to Probe Political and Religious Discrimination at PayPal​

Over the objections of PayPal’s management, the SEC allowed a proposal by the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) to go to a shareholder vote at the company’s next annual meeting. This decision follows a similar decision on March 29, in which the SEC green-lighted a proposal regarding alleged political and religious discrimination at JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank.

In an April 10 letter to PayPal’s attorneys, the SEC stated that NCPPR’s proposal “requests that the board conduct an evaluation and issue a report within the next year evaluating how it oversees risks related to discrimination against individuals based on their race, color, religion (including religious views), sex, national origin, or political views, and whether such discrimination may impact individuals’ exercise of their constitutionally protected civil rights.”

Responding to PayPal’s request to block the proposal from going to a shareholder vote, the SEC stated: “We are unable to concur in your view that the Company may exclude the Proposal under Rule 14a-8(i)(7). In our view, the Proposal transcends ordinary business matters.”

PayPal had argued that its shareholders should not consider NCPPR’s request because the issue of viewpoint discrimination is part of the company’s “ordinary business operations” and that “the proposal seeks to ‘micro-manage’ the company by probing too deeply into matters of a complex nature upon which shareholders, as a group, would not be in a position to make an informed judgment.”

 

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YouTube Abandons Election Misinformation Policy That Censored Political Speech​

YouTube will no longer remove content that promotes false claims about U.S. elections—a tacit admission that the platform's aggressive crackdown on misinformation about the 2020 presidential election had negative consequences for political expression.

The company announced the change on Friday.

"The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society—especially in the midst of election season," wrote site administrators in a blog post.

This is a marked departure from the policy in place at YouTube for the last...

 

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Google Doesn't Want You to See This Letter From a Christian Pastor About Pride Month​

Dan Phillips, a Christian pastor and sometimes blogger, recently posted a letter he sent to his congregation to help parents explain Pride Month to their children.

The letter (read it in its entirety below) was posted on June 5 on the Pyromaniacs blog, which is hosted on the Google-owned Blogger platform. It was a thoughtful letter with sound biblical advice for families trying to navigate the rainbow-saturated month of June. In fact, I forwarded it to my son and daughter-in-law and told them to bookmark it for when those questions come up with our granddaughter, as they inevitably will.

Not long after the letter was posted, Google/Blogger stepped in and censored the post. If you try to access the page now, you will see this:

That’s because the powers that be at Google deemed it hate speech:





Not only that, but the post has been scrubbed from archiving sites like the Wayback Machine and Archive.ph. It has also been disappeared from Google Search. And Blogger apparently even removed it from the backend of the site—a scary development that I’d not heard of before.

Phillips told PJ Media:

After about seven years without a post, I posted a copy of a letter I sent to the congregation I serve in Houston, Texas. I wanted to help parents talk with their children about the ubiquitous “Pride Month” intrusions. Then I followed up with a sermon. But someone flagged it to Blogger, where it was ruled that my post was “Hate Speech.” Their definition: “content that promotes or condones violence against or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against an individual or group on the basis of their …sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.” This, of a post that literally says “we don’t hate people who want bad things…. We love people who don’t know Jesus…” But today, to believe in the actual Jesus is to be called a “hater.” You will find my letter posted elsewhere, unedited.

 

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YouTube says it removed Jordan Peterson interview of RFK Jr. for violating vaccine policy​

Social media giant YouTube took down an interview of Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. claiming that chemicals in the water are turning kids transgender.

On Sunday, both Kennedy and podcast host Jordan Peterson tweeted that the video-sharing website had taken down their interview from an episode of Peterson’s show and accused the social media platform of censorship and interfering with a presidential campaign.

"What do you think... Should social media platforms censor presidential candidates?" Kennedy asked on Twitter. "My conversation with [Peterson] was deleted by YouTube

 

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The New Information World Order​

The rise of social media as a news source and opinion shaper is eating away at the influence of traditional media platforms. Fewer people, mostly oldsters, still watch TV. Already, “almost half of Americans use social media as a news source, according to the Pew Research Center.” With the 2024 elections right around the corner, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter cannot go unanswered.

But the phenomenon is larger than just confirming the increasing importance of social media for news. Many separate pieces are moving toward what might be called a new information system that will have far more potential impact than the old tube. Social media, AI and even crypto are converging in as yet poorly understood ways to comprise an emerging environment that will come to provide:

1. recommended content, as vetted by fact-checkers;
2. sentiment analysis, which identifies the emotional tone behind a body of text;
3. automated moderation, to create a safer online experience;
4. creation of filter bubbles, so individuals are grouped with users whose content aligns with positive beliefs and interests;
5. data capture as training material for machine content creation;
6. protection from misinformation and algorithmic bias;
7. virtual consensus.

Of course, it will all be tied together by artificial intelligence. It will be a whole new world and the big players know it. Meta’s entry into the fray only underscores how important it’s become.

Musk’s much-criticized limits on “extreme data scraping” on Twitter can be seen as a defensive move to prevent bots from obtaining sentiment analysis and data capture by free-riding on his platform. Data scraping involves pulling information out of a website and into a data store. A dedicated data scraper analyzes information someone else has gathered, and Musk is unwilling to give it to his competitors for free.

 

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Haha, while the government’s lawyers in Missouri v. Biden were busy arguing that no censorship occurred, in a recent podcast interview, Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted straight out that government censorship went too far and undermined trust in the institutions. In part:

“There hadn’t been time to vet a lot of the scientific assumptions, and, you know, unfortunately I think a lot of the kind of establishment on that, um, kind of waffled on a bunch of the facts, and you know, asked for a bunch of things to be censored, that in retrospect wound up being more debatable, or true, and that stuff is really tough, right, and really undermines trust.”

Zuck didn’t say, not explicitly, but WHO has the juice to ask Facebook “for a bunch of things to be censored?” It wasn’t my Aunt Sally. Unless Jen Easterly is my Aunt Sally. Which she isn’t. So.

☕️ NO-SHOW ☙ Wednesday, July 12, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Another terrific order in Missouri v. Biden; Zuckerberg gives away the censorship game; Smugnurse correction and update; Zelenskyy snubbed by NATO; tough Biden skips NATO dinner; and more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

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Internal Facebook Emails Reveal White House Pressured Social-Media Platform to Censor Covid ‘Misinformation’​

By July 2021, President Biden was accusing platforms such as Facebook of “killing people” by refusing to censor “misinformation” related to the virus. “They’re killing people,” Biden said during a press conference at the time. “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”

The public and private pressure appears to have yielded results: weeks after Biden’s comments, on August 2, 2021, Facebook leadership asked employees to “brainstorm some additional policy levers we can pull to be more aggressive against…misinformation. This is stemming from the continued criticism of our approach from the [Biden] administration.”

When the White House demanded that Facebook remove a Covid-related Tucker Carlson video, Facebook refused but offered the olive branch of suppressing the clip’s reach by 50 percent for seven days while the video was fact-checked, according to a “talking points” memo Clegg disseminated to his colleagues.

 

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Jim Jordan Unleashes ‘The Facebook Files’: Social Media Giant ‘Censored Americans Because Of Biden White House Pressure’​

“Public pressure mounted as well,” Jordan said, linking to a Reuters article. “In July 2021, President Biden publicly denounced Facebook and other social media platforms, claiming they were ‘killing people’ by not censoring alleged ‘misinformation.'”

“On August 2, 2021, Facebook admitted it was going to change its policies because of pressure from the Biden White House,” Jordan said. “August 2, 2021: ‘[Facebook’s] Leadership asked Misinfo Policy . . . to brainstorm some additional policy levers we can pull to be more aggressive against . . . misinformation. This is stemming from the continued criticism of our approach from the [Biden] administration.'”

“But it wasn’t just the White House. Facebook also changed its policies in direct response to pressure from Biden’s Surgeon General, censoring members of the ‘disinformation dozen,'” Jordan said.

 

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Biden White House asked Facebook to tweak algorithm to push mainstream over conservative news: memo​

The memos delivered recently under subpoena to the House Judiciary Committee make clear the White House was actively interacting with Facebook, and sometimes pressuring the social media giant to moderate content in a way that would encourage more Americans to get inoculations.

President Joe Biden would eventually mandate such shots for many Americans, though he was reversed by the courts and Congress.

On April 14, 2021, for instance, the White House's Flaherty asked Facebook whether it could promote The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal over The Daily Wire and Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren, according to Facebook meeting documents obtained by Just the News.

Flaherty asked Facebook employees “If you were to change the algorithm so that people were more likely to see NYT, WSJ, any authoritative news source over Daily Wire, Tomi Lahren, polarizing people. You wouldn’t have a mechanism to check the material impact?” according to Facebook's typewritten notes from the meeting.

Lahren had publicly announced she was choosing to skip taking the vaccine, and Daily Wire filed one of the landmark lawsuits challenge Biden's mandate that companies force their employees to get the shots as a term of keeping their jobs.

 

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YouTube and Facebook Censored Viktor Shokin Video Responding to Joe Biden’s Lies and Details of His Dismissal… Was US Government Behind This?​

During our research on this video we found that the video was censored by YouTube.

As Twitter user MazeMoore told us, the video was first published on Ukraine.gate website and on YouTube.

The videos were first uploaded on Ukrainegate.info and then on Google-YouTube.

The Gateway Pundit confirmed the translation on the video was correct.

The Ukrainegate.info videos on YouTube were posted on January 28, 2021. This was a week after Joe Biden’s inauguration.

And the videos were already being censored.

There are four videos in the series with Viktor Shokin’s interview being on Part 4 of the series.

The videos were loaded on Google-YouTube by MichaelEaddy4572. The four videos are his only uploads.

The first video had 1,000 views. The second had 113 views. Part 3 had 48 views. And part 4 with Shokin had 68 views.

The videos are being censored by Google-YouTube. If you run a search on “Shokin video” on YouTube the video WILL NOT pop up. Google is HIDING THE VIDEO.

It is impossible for a video with such explosive content would not have tens of thousands of views.

So, was the Biden regime behind this? Was the US government protecting Joe Biden by hiding this damning information from the public?

During our investigation, we also found that Facebook censored the video from the Ukrainegate website! Ukrainegate tweeted about this in early January 2020 before Joe Biden was sworn in as president. This information was hidden from the public.

 

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Jim Jordan Unleashes ‘The Facebook Files’: Social Media Giant ‘Censored Americans Because Of Biden White House Pressure’​

Rob Flaherty, President Biden’s then-Director of Digital Strategy, put pressure on Facebook to explain its content decisions. On March 26, 2021, Mr. Flaherty suggested censoring the New York Post, which was, at the time, reporting about COVID-19 deaths.

“I’m curious-NY Post churning out articles every day about people dying. What is supposed to happen to that from [a] policy perspective? Does that article get a reduction, labels?” Mr. Flaherty asked, according to a screenshot of the communication posted by Mr. Jordan.

On the same day, Mr. Flaherty also suggested that Facebook should look to “kick people off” from its site, pushing for censorship on the platform.

From then on, the Biden White House’s attempt to “censor opposing viewpoints only grew,” Mr. Jordan said. “So, they upped the pressure.”

On April 14, Mr. Flaherty said that his “dream” was for Facebook to “play ball” with the White House on censorship, Mr. Jordan pointed out.

Mr. Flaherty also suggested controlling what Facebook users saw on the site. “If you were to change the algorithm so that people were more likely to see NYT, WSJ, any authoritative news source over Daily Wire, Tomi Lahren, polarizing people. You wouldn’t have a mechanism to check the material impact?” he asked.

Facebook suggested to the White House that if it can’t remove a piece of content, “at least we need to contain it.”

“The company ADMITTED to the White House that it reduced content of certain posts—even if the posts didn’t violate the company’s terms and contained TRUE information,” Mr. Jordan said.

‘Kick People Off’: Rep. Jordan Releases New Info on Biden-Facebook COVID-19 Censorship

More information come out regarding the collusion between the Biden administration and Facebook in censoring online content and deplatforming users.

www.theepochtimes.com

 

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YouTube on Friday reversed course and halted its limited monetization enforcement of Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro’s first episode of his new series, “Facts,” which takes on the powerful entities trying to censor so-called “misinformation” and dictate what media is “safe” for advertising.

The reversal came after Media Research Center (MRC) Free Speech America pressed YouTube about why monetization of Shapiro’s video was suppressed. MRC said YouTube effectively refused to acknowledge that the platform had limited the video in the first place. Notably, The Daily Wire was in communication with YouTube when the media company twice appealed YouTube’s suppression of the limited monetization and a manual review upheld the suppression, suggesting YouTube’s demonetization was intentional and not in error.

“In order for a video to monetize on YouTube it must comply with our advertiser-friendly guidelines, which are publicly accessible and apply to all creators,” a YouTube spokesperson told MRC. “Upon review, the video in question is currently monetizing.”

YouTube Reverses Course After Throttling Ben Shapiro’s Video Uncovering Corporations Behind Censorship | The Daily Wire

www.dailywire.com

 

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And here we go again, again. CNBC ran a story yesterday headlined, “YouTube will remove cancer treatment misinformation.” The sub-headline explained, “The company will remove content that contradicts well-established guidance from health officials about topics such as Covid-19, reproductive health, cancer and harmful substances, among others.”

Reproductive health? What do you want to bet that’s a woke euphemism for abortion and trans surgeries?

The Verge’s story on the new policy added that the policy will also remove any medical advice that “is unproven” in YouTube’s opinion:

In its blog post, YouTube says it would take action both against treatments that are actively harmful as well as those that are unproven and are being suggested in place of established alternatives. A video could not, for example, encourage users to take vitamin C supplements as an alternative to radiation therapy.

At a time when excess deaths are skyrocketing from a wide variety of baffling causes like turbo cancer, it seems like an appropriate time to lock down people’s ability to trade treatment tips. Great idea.

The part of the policy I found most comical was this nugget: “Videos are not allowed to discourage viewers from seeking professional medical treatment.” Haha! So, not only can’t folks post videos about non-pharma remedies, they aren’t even allowed to criticize the medical-industrial complex.

It seems like there are some options to YouTube out there. It might be time to start looking into them.

☕️ COMMENTING ☙ Wednesday, August 16, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Some Republicans missing the point of the 4th indictment; Fulton clerk's lazy lie; masks back in the news; NHS gaslighting campaign; variant hysteria; paddleboarder SADS; Youtube crackdown; more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

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YouTube Demonetizes Channel Over Video of Democrats Challenging Election Results​

YouTube has demonitized a channel over a video for the crime of making Democrats look like raging hypocrites.

A journalist named Matt Orfalea, who works with Matt Taibbi, created the video which intersperses clips of Trump questioning election results with Democrats doing the exact same thing.

Someone at YouTube clearly thought this was a problem and yanked the monetization for the entire channel.






Matt Taibbi wrote about it at Substack:

YouTube Hits Orf Again, as Censorship Grows Silent But Deadly
When you know you’re being censored, you can protest. But what to do about silent editorial punishment, dished without announcement, by tech platforms that appear to be learning fast how to avoid public outcry?
A year ago, this site had to throw a public fit to resolve a preposterous controversy involving videographer Matt Orfalea and YouTube. The issue centered around the above video, “‘Rigged’ Election Claims, Trump 2020 vs. Clinton 2016,” which despite total factual accuracy was cited under its “Elections Misinformation” policy. YouTube in July of last year demonetized Orf’s entire channel over his content, saying “we think it violates our violent criminal organizations policy.”
As you will see if you click now, the above video, as I argued to Google, could not possibly be violative of any “misinformation” guideline, as it was comprised entirely of “real, un-altered clips of public figures making public comments.” After both Orf and I tantrumed in public — there’s not much else to do in these situations — YouTube sent Matt the “Great News!” that “after manually reviewing your video, we’ve determined that it is suitable for all advertisers”:

YouTube Demonetizes Matt Orfeala's Entire Channel For Making a Video Proving That Democrats Are Hardcore "Election Deniers" And Have Repeatedly Committed Insurrection​

This is actually the second time YouTube has ruled that Matt Orfeala is not allowed to make any money from his Dangerously-Unapproved Speech. The first time, they demonetized his channel over this video; the second time, they secretly "limited the visibility" of the video so that no one would see it -- but that Orf wouldn't know he'd been censored.

The second time they claimed the video "glorified violence."

When you know you're being censored, you can protest. But what to do about silent editorial punishment, dished without announcement, by tech platforms that appear to be learning fast how to avoid public outcry?

A year ago, this site had to throw a public fit to resolve a preposterous controversy involving videographer Matt Orfalea and YouTube. The issue centered around the above video, "'Rigged' Election Claims, Trump 2020 vs. Clinton 2016," which despite total factual accuracy was cited under its "Elections Misinformation" policy. YouTube in July of last year demonetized Orf's entire channel over his content, saying "we think it violates our violent criminal organizations policy."

As you will see if you click now, the above video, as I argued to Google, could not possibly be violative of any "misinformation" guideline, as it was comprised entirely of "real, un-altered clips of public figures making public comments." After both Orf and I tantrumed in public -- there's not much else to do in these situations -- YouTube sent Matt the "Great News!" that "after manually reviewing your video, we've determined that it is suitable for all advertisers":
We thought the matter was settled.

Note that this is not a positive resolution. One of YouTube's favorite tactics is to throttle and demonetize videos by conservatives in the crucial first 48 hours of their posting, in which the video receives 90% of the views it will ever receive, and therefore 90% of the advertising money it will ever earn. Once this crucial period is over, YouTube writes the censored video-maker to say, Whoops, our bad, after a manual review, we've determined your video does not violate our policy. Now that we've demonetized and throttled it, and thereby insured that almost no one will see it and that you'll never make a dime off it, our job is done. Next time, make a video supporting the San Francisco Democrat Agenda and maybe we'll allow people to view it, mother****er.

This week, Orf discovered the video had been re-classified as problematic by a new "human reviewer," who declared it in violation for "harmful or dangerous acts" that "may endanger participants." Potential problems, the reviewer determined, included "glorification, recruitment, or graphic portrayal of dangerous organizations," by which I can only presume they mean former Bernie voters like Orf and myself whose political homelessness apparently constitutes a threat.
I've once again sent complaints up the Google/YouTube flagpole. Perhaps Racket readers are tired of digital censorship tales. If so, I understand, I do. I want to underscore that the chief reason now for sharing incidents like this is to show the rapid progression of tactics being used not just against this site, or Orf, but everyone.

Their new favorite tactic is secretly "limiting the visibility" of a video -- throttling it, making it hard to share, putting it on the blacklist for automatic recommendations -- so that the censored speaker doesn't realize he's been censored. He just thinks his video was poorly received and that the public didn't want it.

 

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No, Big Tech Doesn’t Have A Right To Speak To Kids Without Their Parent’s Consent​

Future generations will wonder why, when parents and legislators tried to use the democratic process to end Big Tech’s massive experiments on America’s children, the judicial system said “no.”

The experiment results are in — they are not good. In a recent advisory, the Surgeon General has declared a “national youth mental health crisis,” as both sexes report unprecedented levels of depression, loneliness, and anxiety — not to mention large spikes in the rates of self-harm and suicide among teens.

Eminent researchers, such as Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt, place much of the blame squarely on social media.

Parents have learned the hard way that private parental-control software — and the meager collection of tools that Big Tech companies halfheartedly toss at parents — are not equal to the problem. The former cannot even monitor certain apps like TikTok and Snapchat or certain features like direct messaging on Instagram, where minors spend most of their time.

Aiming to help parents regain control over what kids see and who talks to them online, many states, including Arkansas, have passed laws requiring social media platforms to get parents’ approval before kids enter into contractual account-holder relationships. These laws, following uncontroversial legal precedents such as requiring parental consent for tattoos or liability waivers, restore to parents what the Supreme Court has recognized as fundamental to our democracy: The power to control, even online, who educates our kids.

 

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Google Sues Men Who Weaponized DMCA Notices to Crush Competition​

Two men who allegedly used 65 Google accounts to bombard Google with fraudulent DMCA takedown notices targeting up to 620,000 URLs, have been named in a Google lawsuit filed in California on Monday. Google says the men weaponized copyright law's notice-and-takedown system to sabotage competitors' trade, while damaging the search engine's business and those of its customers.

https://torrentfreak.com/images/dmca-google-s1.png
While all non-compliant DMCA takedown notices are invalid by default, there’s a huge difference between those sent in error and others crafted for purely malicious purposes.

Bogus DMCA takedown notices are nothing new, but the rise of organized groups using malicious DMCA notices as a business tool has been apparent in recent years.

Since the vast majority of culprits facing zero consequences, that may have acted as motivation to send more. Through a lawsuit filed at a California court on Monday, Google appears to be sending the message that enough is enough.

 

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MRC’s Schneider to Wayne DuPree: ChatGPT Propagates Leftist Media Against Conservatives​

To illustrate this important point, Schneider used the example of host Wayne DuPree’s eponymous show.” Schneider explained that the leftist media takes issue with DuPree spreading a conservative message: “Once [Big Tech companies] understand that Wayne is an effective communicator, they’re going to try to take him out.”

To do this, Schneider explained, Big Tech companies “use these ratings firms like NewsGuard and Ad Fontes to tell companies, ‘Don’t advertise on Wayne’s show because we’ve got to drive him out of business’” Schneider pointed out that this is happening for multiple right-leaning media outlets, including The Daily Wire, The Daily Signal and MRC’s flagship news site NewsBusters. Previous MRC Free Speech America studies have exposed both NewsGuard’s and Ad Fontes’s ratings as being disproportionately favorable for left-wing media outlets.

But it gets worse. Schneider exposed the way that AI models such as ChatGPT are getting in on the censorship. Schneider explained that if one were to use ChatGPT as a gauge for the reliability of news sources, they would favor leftist outlets such as The Washington Post, NPR and PBS, and leave out right-leaning media. This is meant to prevent readers from visiting non-legacy media sites and to scare companies from placing advertising on those sites, as previously reported on NewsBusters.