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TagMiranda Devine

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A television anchorwoman at studio

As the Twitter Files Drop, Ponder the Future of Mainstream Media

Mainstream media are largely ignoring the story for reasons that go to the heart of their own growing weakness and unstoppable decline

The Twitter files, as Elon Musk’s publication of Twitter’s internal censorship records — via dissident journalists — has come to be known, continue to drop. To recap, the drop started with the suppression of the story, on the eve of an election, about Hunter Biden’s seemingly incriminating laptop (Matt Taibbi). It continued with information about widespread shadowbanning (Bari Weiss), a practice the company denied it engaged in. Twitter files slice 3 and slice 4 (given by Musk to journalist Michael Shellenberger) address Twitter’s ban on former U.S. president Donald Trump. Slice 5 (Bari Weiss) detail doubts among Twitter employees about censoring on that scale: 7. There were dissenters inside Twitter. “Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on Read More ›

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A man with the sky surreal painting illustration

Facebook and Government: Working Together for Thought Management

A critical distinction between Facebook and traditional media is that Facebook is global and total, not regional and partial

In recent years, motivated perhaps by a sense of public duty, Facebook (rebranded as Meta) has turned its attention to fine-grained political reeducation and censorship of the nearly 3 billion monthly active users of its platform. All the instances listed below (plus, doubtless, many others we don’t know of at press time) add up to quite the program of thought management: ● Working closely with the FBI to monitor Americans who questioned the results of the 2020 election: “It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause,” alleged one of the sources, who spoke on condition of -anonymity. “Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” These private messages Read More ›