Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryCensorship

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Chatbot in a modern GPU card 3D rendering

Educating Chatbot Claude About Design in the Universe

In an age when “prebunking” drowns information, chatbots need to go back to school

Last week, Richard Stevens wrote about the new fad in information control known as prebunking — setting about to destroy the reputation of a news source among the unwary. The tactic seems popular among a newer type of journalist for whom there is no other side to a story, who views alternative takes as a threat. That sort of journalism is currently associated with a huge decline in mainstream media readership even among stalwarts such as the Washington Post, which is currently facing a top-drawer upheaval as a result. Stevens demonstrated how a chatbot could provide free prebunking copy, using Mind Matters News‘s About page and Introduction as the subject. Anything can be prebunked in principle and sometimes chatbots may Read More ›

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Woman news announcer in the studio

Attention: Mind Matters News Has Been Prebunked!

ChatGPT-4 produced attacks on Mind Matters News, aimed at people who had never heard of it (prebunking), based only on the About page and the Introduction
Journalists who advocate prebunking to discourage audiences from seeing alternative information are helping propagandists defeat the search for truth. Read More ›
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Portrait of young African-American boy sanitizing hands in school classroom, covid safety measures, copy space

COVID Felled Both Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci as Heroes

As Wesley J. Smith recounts, more honest researchers were discredited for saying things that Fauci and Collins later admitted to be true
As we find out what really happened, the credibility of our public-health systems has been shattered and “Trust the science!” is becoming a joke. Read More ›
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The word ban on wooden cubes with internet www icon background. Internet ban and censorship concept.

Musk vs Australia: Down Under Is Down One For Now

A federal court has refused to extend the demand that Musk’s X platform remove videos showing the stabbing attack on Rev. Mar Mari Emmanuel
The story highlights once again, the way X (Twitter) is one of the few important social media to resist government censorship. Read More ›
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smartphone coiled metal wire in the hands of a man, gray-green background, censorship of social networks. cancel cultural ban, erase

Yes, TikTok is Bad. But is a Ban the Answer?

This might be the way censorship sneakily invades.
It might make more sense to have conversations about age limits with TikTok. Like nicotine, should it be reserved for those above the age of 18? Read More ›
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Violation of law, law-breaking concept. Metal handcuffs on Canadian flag on black background top view

Canada Prepares Harsh New Online Harms Bill to Fight “Hate”

Canada is a comparatively peaceful country, so onlookers might puzzle over the assumption that draconian measures are needed to fight poorly defined “hate.”
Canada is a comparatively peaceful country, so onlookers might puzzle over the assumption that draconian measures are needed to fight poorly defined “hate.” Read More ›
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Ottawa Parliament Buildings Center Block with Peace Tower and Canadian flag

When Government Manages the News Business: Canada Tried That…

Any comprehensive censorship regime requires that the government begin by managing the news business
Canadians lost the right to post news links to Facebook and Instagram. And, amid media layoffs, Google did not give media the sum they hoped for. Read More ›
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journalist, reporter, dedicated storytellers of world, news and information, era of rapid media evolution, well-informed, microphone TV television press communication role online.

Why Mainstream Media Can No Longer Really Fight Censorship

Whether they realize it or not, by accepting funds in order to survive, the MSM will gradually become agencies of government

TV personalities — ones you might not have expected — have begun to notice the way mainstream media now drop the ball on news coverage. The usually apolitical TV psychologist Dr. Phil, for example, was recently holding forth to podcaster Joe Rogan on their inability to report honestly on many sensitive political subjects. Medical doctor Drew Pinsky, who has offered relationship advice in a number of media venues, is saying similar things. News about every cultural flashpoint now seems to be managed in the way that facts about COVID-19 were at the height of the pandemic scare. Why fight censorship if you can just censor yourself? An inevitable outcome of the strategic lack of curiosity among journalists is a marked Read More ›

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A man puts wooden blocks with the words Fact and fake. Concept of news and false information. Yellow press.

So Who Are Today’s Disinformation Police?

Social scientists are striving to develop ways to blunt the force of information that governments would rather the public did not know or heed
The disinformation experts claim to be defending democracy — and yet their principal weapon is indoctrination. Read More ›
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Locked padlock on network cables connected to white Wi-Fi wireless router on a desk. Prohibit and restrict access to the internet, limit internet connection and internet censorship concepts.

When Censorship Parades Itself as a Science…

A House Subcommittee discovered that the National Science Foundation — which is supposed to support science and engineering — is readying censorship tools
The bee in the bonnets of the researchers who received the funding for the internet censorship program is that Americans can’t tell fact from fiction. Read More ›
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Anonymous call

Book Banning Today: Silently … Not Like in the Old Days

Traditional anti-book banning groups are simply not where the action is and maybe don’t want to be

Last week we looked at the way censorship in the age of the internet is typically invisible. It’s not the police raiding bookstores; it’s — for example — sudden downranking of posts so that information that might have reached millions of people reaches only dozens. Constantly suppressed, it can’t go viral. We can see the change more clearly if we look at the difference between how books (and other information) used to get banned and how they get banned today. Book banning before the internet When the word “book bans” is used today, it usually means something different from what it meant even a few decades ago. Ulysses, a groundbreaking work by Irish novelist James Joyce (1882–1941) was indeed banned Read More ›

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Censorship on freedom of speech. Restriction of public opinion, right to protest and activism. Undemocratic practices and governments.

How Censorship Has Changed and Why That Matters So Much

The way censorship works now, you don’t even know about it. So it is much more difficult to protest.
Today’s censorship depends in part on the fact that failing mainstream media don’t want to know. Stories are increasingly broken by independent writers. Read More ›
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Archaeological excavations and finds (bones of a skeleton in a human burial),   a detail of ancient research, prehistory.

Scientists Spar Over What a Netflix Science Documentary Should Be

Should “Ancient Apocalypse” be relabeled “science fiction” if archeologists don’t think the documentary writer’s claims are valid?
Berger’s confidence about homo Naledi’s intelligence rankles colleagues but he is as entitled to a documentary for his case as they are to oppose it. Read More ›
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Woman gesticulating during interview with media, press conference, close-up

As Legacy Media Continues in Decline, It Espouses Censorship More

Even as late as the turn of the millennium, media people tended to be reflexively against censorship, but then courage failed along with relevance
It won’t be long before serious proposals are floated in the United States for government to fund legacy media, which would make them PR for government. Read More ›
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Why Don’t We Hear So Much About “False Information” Any More?

The new censorship target, “disinformation,” means something profoundly different, and the difference is scary
As Tablet editor Jacob Siegel shows, truth or falsehood is irrelevant to disinformation, which is whatever government does not want you to know. Read More ›
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press and media camera ,video photographer on duty in public new

How Bottom Up Media Now Threaten the Traditional Top Tier

New media resources like subscription-based Substack are rapidly becoming the venue of choice for whistleblowers with stories to break
The rise and fall of intellectual movements may well now depend on their ability to use new media successfully to express their views. Read More ›
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Young freelancer working with laptop at home. Side view of male working on freelance at home office.

How Bottom Up Media Are Slowly Replacing Top Down Media

The decline and death of legacy media organizations is speeding up and the media replacing them are much smaller, more numerous and more independent
A key problem: The legacy media that cling to government and corporate interests in order to survive have so much less use now for freedom of the press. Read More ›
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Big brother electronic eye concept, technologies for the global surveillance, security of computer systems and networks

This is Digital McCarthyism

Far from being liberated by these technologies, we have been plunged back into the worst abuses of surveillance and privacy violation.

The notion that we’re getting somewhere, making progress, is remarkably durable. It survives wars, financial collapse, riots, scandals, stagnating wages, and climate change (to name a few). Though techno-futurists are also fond of AI apocalypse scenarios, where artificial intelligence somehow “comes alive,” or at any rate uses its superior intelligence to make an autonomous decision to wipe out humanity, much more ink has been spilled this century prognosticating indomitable technical progress, which somehow stands in for human progress generally. But sanguine belief in progress is belied by the actual events of the twenty-first century. Computers have gotten faster and AI more powerful, but digital technology has also been used to spread misinformation, make deep fakes, and conduct relentless cyberwarfare. Financial Read More ›

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Chinese flags on barbed wire wall in Kashgar (Kashi), Xinjiang, China.

China: An inside look at Neo-Totalitarianism

Writing in the journal Dignitas, Heather Zeiger outlines the Chinese government’s attempt at total control of the everyday life of residents of XinJiang province
This approach to government — a hybrid of totalitarian aspirations and advanced AI surveillance techniques — has been called neo-totalitarianism. Read More ›