Adam Schiff Demands Google, YouTube, and Twitter Step Up their ‘Authoritative’ Censorship and Silencing
House Intelligence Committee Charmain Adam Schiff is one of the most dishonest men not just in Congress, but probably in the world.
This tool sent a letter to the CEOs of Google, Twitter, and YouTube pushing them to further censor people who have a differing opinion than the one that they hold to.
These companies are already bowing down to the World Health Organization and working to silence anyone who challenges the WHO’s official story. The evidence is beginning to suggest that the WHO has been lying and that they are working with China to deceive the world and cover-up the fact that the virus started in a Wuhan lab.
Here is the letter from Schiff to the CEOs:
As we all work to control the COVID-19 pandemic, I want to thank you for the actions you have taken to ensure Google’s users are provided with timely, authoritative, and factual sources. I was encouraged to see your early commitment to working closely with other social media companies to jointly combat fraud and misinformation during this societal challenge that transcends any one platform or service.
As we face this public health crisis, Americans want and need to receive the best information possible so that they can keep themselves, their families, and their communities healthy. I commend you for steps you have already taken to highlight information from official health sources and to remove or limit content that promotes harmful medical misinformation. YouTube’s commitment to remove videos with information that is medically unsubstantiated or contradicts World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations is an important action to protect the health and safety of billions of users. The recently announced policy of adding links to fact-checking sources for certain searches is a further step towards directing users to accurate health information.
Despite your best efforts, however, users will continue to see and engage with harmful medical content on your platforms, whether by intentionally seeking it out or otherwise. Among the harmful misinformation currently on YouTube, recent reporting has shown that it is easy to find videos spreading false and dangerous statements about the coronavirus or treatments, [1] including conspiracy theories linking the virus to 5G towers, anti-vaccine messages suggesting the virus was engineered, and videos suggesting that drinking or consuming bleach may cure the disease.”
Though the best protection is removing or downgrading harmful content before users engage with it, that is not always possible. As you are likely aware, Facebook recently announced plans to display messages to any users who have engaged with harmful coronavirus-related misinformation that has since been removed from the platform and connect them with resources from the World Health Organization. I urge you to adopt a similar practice for YouTube users and others who engage with harmful information on your platform, to proactively inform them and direct them to authoritative, medically accurate resources.
While taking down harmful misinformation is a crucial step, mitigating the harms from false content that is removed requires also ensuring that those users who accessed it while it was available have as high a likelihood of possible of viewing the facts as well.
I recognize the complex challenges that misinformation presents to online platforms such as Google, in this and many other contexts. As we all grapple with this unprecedented health situation, I hope you will consider this suggestion for keeping users better informed. Thank you for your attention to my concerns, and I look forward to continuing our ongoing dialogue on these important issues.
So let me briefly address those portions that I underlined.
“Americans want and need to receive the best information possible”…
Yes, Americans want and need the best information possible, but you don’t get to decide what that information is. To avoid an authoritarian dictatorship there needs to be a free expression of ideas. Telling someone to drink bleach is bad, and that may be in a different class, but seriously, people don’t need to be that stupid.
“Among the harmful misinformation currently on YouTube, recent reporting has shown that it is easy to find videos spreading false and dangerous statements about the coronavirus or treatments, [1] including conspiracy theories linking the virus to 5G towers, anti-vaccine messages suggesting the virus was engineered, and videos suggesting that drinking or consuming bleach may cure the disease.”
There does seem to be some evidence to suggest that 5G towers may be harmful. I can’t say for sure as I haven’t researched it enough, but we should be able to make our own decisions about things like 5G and vaccinations regardless.
“I urge you to adopt a similar practice for YouTube users and others who engage with harmful information on your platform, to proactively inform them and direct them to authoritative, medically accurate resources.”
Again, who gets to decide what’s medically accurate? There are studies that suggest hydroxychloroquine works, and studies that don’t. Some say that there are studies that say vaccinations are safe, and there are studies that suggest they’re not. I’m talking about scientific studies. You can’t censor someone because you disagree with them.