RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/29/how-social-media-

Whether it is Twitter’s “shadowban,” Facebook’s news-sifting algorithm, or YouTube’s concern for user “safety,” social media gatekeeping is now deployed shamelessly in the service of leftist politics. The latest victim is Alex Jones. While he is bombastic, prone to conspiracy theories, and, um, loud, that’s not why they banned him. He supports President Trump and is a critic of elite conventional wisdom. That’s his crime.

The Establishment Is Trying to Prevent a Repeat of 2016
In the early days of the World Wide Web—almost 20 years ago now—the watchword was freedom, whether freedom from censorship, freedom from local governments’ sales taxes, or freedom from government surveillance. The emerging tech companies then expressed reasonable concern that restrictions from these quarters would cripple the industry, defeating the emerging benefits of the instantaneous, nearly anonymous, and highly connected network that is the internet.

Then the election of 2016 happened. It was a wake up call to the tech world’s emerging establishment. It particularly traumatized those who thought Obama’s election was a permanent elevation of his politics, his style, as well as the “emerging majority” that brought him to power.

As they previously have done in talk radio, on social media the far right has shown acumen and effectiveness. While this may seem merely like preaching to the converted, it also encourages supporters and the uncommitted by undermining the dominant Left’s pretentions of inevitability and unanimity. Twitter in particular was a great equalizer. Whether president or peon, the accounts looked the same. It soon was overrun by a highly motivated army of right-leaning critics and trolls, hilarious anonymous memes, Pepe the Frog, Trump’s Taco Bowl, and, ultimately, their collective efforts contributed to his electoral victory.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271172/instagram-makes-free-speech-disappear-lloyd-billingsley

Project War Path, a clothing company owned by Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces combat veterans, Charlie Nash of Breitbart News reported Monday, “has been permanently suspended from Facebook’s Instagram platform for ‘hate speech’ after criticizing NFL players who kneel during the national anthem.”

The post in question read, “This sums it up, Veteran’s defend our freedom and keep us safe. Meanwhile overpaid turds throw a leather ball around in an overpriced stadium and shit on all the men and women who have been killed defending our country.”

Project War Path co-owner Tej Gill, a Navy SEAL veteran, told Breibart “players kneeling really hits home with me and my teammates, I think it’s disgusting, an insult to all veterans, Americans, and especially families of veterans that have been killed and wounded during war.”

The same post on Twitter was not removed but Instagram took it down. As Gill explained to Breitbart, “I tried to reinstate my account, the form I filled out said my account was permanently suspended for hate speech. I have not heard anything back from Instagram since.”

Gill cited “a very aggressive censorship operation that is being conducted by Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the mainstream media.” Instagram, as it happens is owned by Facebook, which purchased the upstart in 2012 and turned it into a profit center.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/28/3-major-problems-with-nyt-story-about-outing-of-fbis-trump-informant/
The story fails on multiple levels to make its central claim that congressional oversight regarding the use of human informants against the Trump campaign is hurting intelligence-gathering in Moscow.

The New York Times published an article last week that claimed “Kremlin Sources Go Quiet, Leaving C.I.A. in the Dark About Putin’s Plans for Midterms.” Reporters Julian E. Barnes and Matthew Rosenberg write that informants close to Russian President Vladimir Putin were talking to U.S. intelligence, but have recently clammed up.

The reporters give three possible reasons, after saying officials don’t think they were compromised or killed. They may have been spooked by more aggressive Russian counterintelligence. Information collection may have been dampened by the expulsion of American intelligence officials from Moscow — in response to American expulsion of Russian officers from the United States. But there’s another theory for what’s gone on, and let’s see if you buy it: Congressional oversight by Republicans is to blame.

https://thefederalist.com/2018/08/27/the-silence-over-a-potential-chinese-spy-in-feinsteins-office-is-deafening/

With concerns over attempts by foreign adversaries to influence the American political system at a fever pitch — notwithstanding that in the case of the president, the commentariat’s charges of certain treasonous Russian collusion have grudgingly been downgraded in slightly more sane quarters to dubious alleged campaign finance infractions — that the story of a Chinese spy in Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office has seemingly died is simply stunning.

From the start, this was a story the media had no interest in covering. Now it is apparent that our political class has no interest in probing it.

The reporting on Feinstein was limited to a few outlets — ignored by large newspaperssuch as The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and major networks, excluding Fox News, which provided scant details as to what transpired and downplayed the potentially dire ramifications of the alleged breach.

The press took at face value boilerplate statements from Feinstein’s office seeking to dispel any suggestion that the Chinese had penetrated her office, with nary a question directed at the senator herself as she enjoyed her tranquil August recess.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/22/nyt-stealth-edits-report-on-mollie-tibbetts-murder-to-attack-trump/

An illegal immigrant was arrested for seizing 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts and murdering her in cold blood, but the latest New York Times article on the subject blasts Trump for “seizing” on the story of the young woman’s murder.

According to records from NewsDiffs, the story’s original headline, “Body Believed to Be That of Mollie Tibbetts, Iowa College Student, Is Found,” was changed to, “After an Immigrant’s Arrest, Trump Seizes on Killing of Mollie Tibbetts, Iowa Student.”

Quotes from President Trump at a rally in West Virgina on Tuesday night were also quietly moved from the bottom of the story to the top, following the lede.

President Trump, who has repeatedly linked crime to illegal immigration, alluded to the case at a rally Tuesday evening in West Virginia.

“You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in, very sadly from Mexico, and you saw what happened to that incredible, beautiful young woman,” Mr. Trump said. “It should’ve never happened. Illegally in our country. We’ve had a huge impact, but the laws are so bad, the immigration laws are such a disgrace.”

The contents of the story’s abstract have also been drastically changed.

Reporter Alex Griswold pointed out that The New York Times has alternative, less violent verbs for headlines about President Obama politicizing tragedies.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/08/press_mocks_the_murder_of_mollie_tibbetts_once_it_became_an_illegal_alien_story.html

See also: MSNBC panelist labels Mollie Tibbetts a ‘girl in Iowa’ ‘Fox News is talking about’

After whipping up such a brouhaha about illegal immigrants being separated from their children as a result of their lawbreaking, the press was confronted with new story about illegals to report and comment upon, and it didn’t quite tug on the heartstrings the way the crying toddlers narrative did.

According to the New York Times:

A body believed to be that of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old student at the University of Iowa who vanished a month ago after going for a jog, was found on Tuesday morning, investigators announced. A 24-year-old undocumented immigrant has been charged with first-degree murder in the killing.

The body was found in a field southeast of Brooklyn, Iowa. Ms. Tibbetts was last seen nearby on July 18, Rick Rahn, a special agent of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said at a news conference.

“The identity has not been confirmed, however, we believe it to be the body of Mollie Tibbetts,” Mr. Rahn said. The authorities did not say what the specific cause of death was; an autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday.