CSNbbs

Quote:China plans to award media accreditation depending on a journalist’s social media history. The move will discourage reporters from posting criticism of the Chinese Communist Party online, further restricting independent journalism in a country where people do not trust the state-run press.

On January 19, the Chinese government announced that it would be looking at social media history before awarding media accreditation. It justified the decision by saying the purpose of the new regulation is “to thoroughly implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important ideas on propaganda and ideological work and build a team of journalists who are politically strong, realistic, and innovative.”

The new rule will affect radio, television, print, and website-only news outlets. Employing a reporter without a valid media accreditation will attract harsh penalties. The rule will not distinguish between professional and personal statements.

Quote:Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Instagram account has been deleted for what the company said was a violation of its policies around coronavirus and vaccines.

Kennedy, who is a vocal vaccination skeptic, as well as a big critic of three letter agencies, had 800,000 followers on Facebook-owned Instagram; his Facebook page remains up for the time being.

This wasn’t one of the usual bans that go with bot-generated messages and silence from giant platforms – a spokesperson for Instagram addressed the decision, probably due to the high profile of the latest victim of its censorship.

Quote:Instagram has announced that it will be implementing stricter rules around what its users are allowed to say in private Direct Messages (DMs) and permanently banning users that post “hate speech” in their DMs.

Previously, Instagram would temporarily block users from sending DMs if they violated the rules but now they’ll lose their account if they’re deemed to have violated Instagram’s rules.

Instagram also revealed that it’s working with UK law enforcement authorities on hate speech and providing information in response to “valid legal requests.”

Quote:Facebook has revealed that its artificial intelligence (AI) systems are now preemptively flagging 97.1% of the “hate speech” and 49% of the “bullying and harassment” that’s removed from the platform before any human flags it.

In a post discussing its proactive detection of hate speech and bullying and harassment for Q4 2020, Facebook revealed that these numbers reflected an increase from 80.5% of hate speech being proactively flagged by AI in late 2019 and 16% of bullying and harassment being proactively flagged by AI in Q1 2020.

As we’ve reported previously, Facebook has been caught enforcing its hate speech rules selectively and its automated systems are prone to errors. Experts have also explained that there’s no such thing as “hate speech” and that when you attempt to regulate so-called hate speech, the decision-maker can use it as an excuse to ban speech that they hate.

Quote:Facebook has censored Australian lawmaker Craig Kelly by removing one of his posts addressing the consequences of the use of face masks by children.

Kelly, who comes from the country’s ruling party, has previously been denounced by the opposition, who wrote to a local Facebook exec asking that the MP be monitored and if need be censored on the giant social network.

Facebook has recently ramped up policing of its platform for Covid-related information, and now Kelly’s claim contained in the removed post – that forcing children to wear cloths over their faces was tantamount to child abuse – has been declared as “harmful misinformation.”

Kelly recently hinted he may not wish to receive the coronavirus vaccine – to then issue a statement backing government vaccination plans, after PM Scott Morrison intervened in a private conversation. He in the past promoted the use of the drug hydroxyzine, which critics say has no beneficial effect on Covid patients, while others claim the opposite.