What's the relevant line here from ethics rules? Something about avoiding even the appearance of impropriety?
However, regardless of ethics and financial interest, using "fact checkers" to label, block, censor, limit, ban users, or in any way prevent people from having an honest conversation online is improper. It's not up to Big Tech to be that annoying stranger inserting himself into a conversation between friends and appointing himself the arbiter of facts, the telling everyone else to shut up.
And don't forget, much of this "fact checking" was done at the request of government officials, making it also a 1st Amendment issue.
No more excitement without more indictments. But this is like a welfare check. Every so often Durham surfaces in public -- usually by obscure court filings -- so we know Hillary hasn't had him killed yet.
Trump was, and probably remains, our best chance to fix this. He has been personally bitten by all this in a way that no one else in the political class ever has.
DoD tries to memory hole medical data showing vax issues
In an article on DoD medical data regarding vaccine harms, I noticed the above quote. I've bolded for emphasis.
They aren't saying the post-vaccine data is wrong. They aren't saying it has been incorrectly analyzed. They aren't claiming there was some conflating factor. No.
They are saying, right out there in plain langauge, that the historical data will be adjusted to suit the present political narrative.
That should be setting off your 1984 alarm bells.
In a little while -- maybe a few weeks, maybe months -- we will start to see tiny little tucked away articles with headlines like "DOD data shows no harmful vax effects" with no mention of the earlier "corrupted" historical data having been "corrected".
And when we do, I'll have this article to look back to and point at and call bullshit, because they can memory hole the DOD database, but they can't easily memory hole me.
WA law criminalizing speech about election results advances
In WA -- which already has universal mail-in voting, to enable constant Dem fraud -- even asking to check the work of the people counting the fake ballots will get you thrown in jail.
This is a rule for totalitarian states run by dictators, not for America.
I'm not even going to try to keep up with quoting news on the situation. Foreign policy is not my expertise nor interest area.
I admit to being surprised Putin actually invaded. I'm half convinced he was bluffing and then decided to go ahead and do it when Biden publicly blamed him for it -- if you're going to pay the piper you might as well dance the tune, right?
Putin has legitimate security concerns about NATO on his borders. That doesn't make invading a sovereign nation OK. When said nation had a "color revolution" less than a decade ago that was likely led by the intelligence agencies of your foreign enemy, it clouds the matter up even more.
The only sane play for us at this point is to sit it out. The time to arm Ukraine was well before the conflict started. If there is a long lasting resistance, maybe we can arm them. For now, we wait and see.
Sanctions will likely be useless. Especially with oil prices so high due to Biden's idiocy. That played into Putin's hands.
China taking Taiwan, or at least trying, is now probably inevitable. If we have to pick one to defend, Taiwan is it. In case you haven't noticed, TSMC is there. They manufacture a huge chunk of the most successful and high performance computer chips and components. China can probably force us to choose between China capturing those facilities intact and simply destroying them. Either one would be a huge economic blow.
A new nuclear arms race is also likely inevitable. If you're a small nation and the US says "Give up your nuclear program, we will protect you", well, you now know that's a lie and those nukes will stay.
Will Putin stop with Ukraine? Probably ... for a while. He'll wait for China to move on Taiwan and if we get heavily involved in that he gobbles up a few more ex-Soviet territories.
Will China stop with Taiwan? Probably not. China has well defined territorial ambitions and planned fortifications throughout the region, including contested areas with most of their neighbors. China will grab everything they think they can hold and dare us to dislodge them. And we will let that stand, too, because we can't fight China and Russia with trans-admirals.
This appears to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt that COVID is the result of gain-of-function research in a lab. The question of which lab conducted that research may have suddenly become a lot more interesting.
At least the students didn't get run over. But I think, rather than pointing out that this is part of the dehumanization campaign against the unvaxxed, it's more likely to be the result of that campaign. These are kids! Students, not even yet adults, who are not at risk from COVID nor at risk of transmitting it to anyone. They aren't even sick. They just don't want to wear masks all day, every day, for the rest of eternity. Many of the teachers who locked them in the gym know their names, talked with them nearly every day for months at a time. And yet, their humanity is rejected because their faces can be seen?
This is insanity.
Also: if you were under any illusions that teachers in public schools actually cared about your kids, this should straighten that out right quick.
It's unAmerican, but Pelosi is an honest politician. Once bought, she stays bought, and the Chinese own her soul. And they know they are safe from criticism.
CDC admits natural immunity is superior, still pushing vax
Assuming that the difference in messaging is merely a disconnect between the scientists and the social media team is ignoring the politicians and bureaucrats standing in between the two.
Canada has fallen. Putin has, evidently, taken what parts of Ukraine he desires. It appears things are about to get even more exciting. The WEF's Great Reset now stands revealed as yet another plan to take over the world, albeit one that has seen more success than most.
This is a tricky one to figure out. The bright side: it repeals section 230, making tech platforms on the internet responsible for their content. The dark side: this is done through the scary tactic of child pornography and would impose even more draconian controls as a result.
The whole point of Section 230 in the original legislation (which was also flying a false flag of protecting children online) is to insulate platforms from legal responsibility for what their users posted, as long as they let their users post whatever they wanted and did not impose editorial control.
Today's Big Tech desperately wants to -- and is -- imposing editorial control, often at the behest of government officials.
This legislation appears to repeal section 230 and replace it with what amounts to you must submit all messages for review by law enforcement. Even if law enforcement could be trusted as a neutral arbiter that would only act on violations of clearly understood law (ie, child porn) it's essentially impossible to hand those determinations over to an algorithm and equally impossible for law enforcement to review all messages flagged as somehow suspect manually. Such review would itself be an invasion of privacy and a violation of the Constitution's bill of rights (1st, 4th, 5th at at least). You could even argue it would violate the 3rd Amendment by effectively placing a police "agent" in every home network, something that I don't know has ever actually been done before.
Big Tech and Section 230 are problems, but this legislation is not a solution.