The Racket Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex: the Top 50 Names to Know The result of months of work, by a large team, which among other things followed leads from #TwitterFiles material.
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Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
Author of GRIFTOPIA, THE DIVIDE, THE BUSINESS SECRETS OF DRUG DEALING, and HATE INC. racket.news
Matt Taibbi’s Tweets
Listen to This Article: The McCarthy Reboot, by
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She’s not the only one.
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Addressing legitimate criticisms by leveling counter-accusations of misogyny/racism/anti-Semitism/transphobia is a nearly 100% tendency in the “anti-disinformation” world.
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The trolling in response to this - including misogynistic slurs, threatening and hateful messages - are just more proof of why investigating this is so important.
Welcome trolls and stay tuned for my latest Radio 4 podcast, more upcoming investigations - and Undercover Voters. twitter.com/mariannaspring…
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You say that like it’s a bad thing.
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Replying to @mtaibbi
Her last name is a Taco Bell menu item she must not be taken seriously
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“Permitted to step foot”?
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FACTS: Trump is a Russian spy who works for Putin. He should not have been permitted to step foot in the White House. His presidency was a global security threat. The world will be safer when the U.S. holds him accountable. twitter.com/byrondonalds/s…
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Great point by :
In the #TwitterFiles we saw accounts actioned/denylisted for using aliases. Here the BBC boasts about using fake accounts to fight fakeness, or something.
“We use these kinds of undercover accounts… to be able to really understand polarization.”
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BBC is creating fake social media accounts to combat disinformation. twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/s…
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Muted for “Edgelord.” That’s been a rule for a while
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Replying to @mtaibbi and @jimmy_dore
. Of course Taibbi would cite grifting human garbage Jimmy Dore’s moronic COVID takes.
. Taibbi fell off of a cliff and somehow just keeps falling. He is now the poster child for shallow Edgelord grifting.42
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It’s still amazing that 44% of Americans believe the Steele dossier is a “true story.” It’s a religion.
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To start:
Majorities of Americans say it's *false* that Trump colluded with Russia. The the Steele Dossier is also "false."
In other words, they view the story the US media aggressively centered for 3 years as a hoax and a fraud, yet NBC and CNN won't even air this view.
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It'd be "The Office" meets "Hogan's Heroes."
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Replying to @mtaibbi and @mariannaspring
Get a film crew in the Disinformation Office and it could be the making of a great comedy series.
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Thanks so much to for listening to "America This Week"! The same kind of media lunacy is already driving coverage of his campaign, as noted last week: twitter.com/ggreenwald/sta
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twitter.com/mtaibbi/status
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Not long ago news services didn't need separate "fact-checking" services, because their daily reporting was the fact-checking. Mostly these services try to improve reputations of established brands by claiming different or better factual standards than alternative competitors.
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State-sponsored denigration of independent media, by a news outlet with its own record of credulous reporting of conspiracy theories, from the Steele dossier to Hamilton 68.
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"I'm looking at the alternative media, which finds itself at the heart of this [conspiracy theory] movement." - BBC "Disinformation correspondent"
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BBC News has unveiled BBC Verify to address the growing threat of disinformation and build trust with audiences through transparency.
The BBC's Disinformation Correspondent Marianna Spring had more details on #BBCBreakfast
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-656508
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Looking Back on the Sadism of the Covid-19 Shaming Campaign (Updated)
Note that did a routine about how "doing your own research" was called "reading" in the pre-Covid era:
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A lot of teachers are great, really dedicated people who do a lot of work for not much reward. I’m grateful for them. I just don’t understand the new tendency of some politicians to take shots at parents. It seems like a zero-upside play.
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Replying to @mtaibbi
And “teachers” is a gross generality. Some aren’t qualified to dog sit.
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The “peace” ad. If you want an antiwar or even just pragmatic foreign policy perspective in media, you won’t find it in the editorial sections. mattbivens.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-
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Like the sad spectacle of the retracted congressional “peace letter.” the plea for negotiations in Ukraine in a print ad is telling, writes.
“A print ad in a physical newspaper that already doesn’t exist anymore outside of archives.”
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Thoughts on The New York Times Advertisement Plaintively Advocating Peace Talks for Ukraine: from
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I don’t. But I’m a parent, and any bureaucrat saying teachers “know what is best” is a shot right to the fear center of everyone with kids.
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Replying to @mtaibbi
So why exactly do you hate teachers?
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So, run? Panic?
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Jim Cramer said: an economic wave is about to hit that will be fantastic for investors.
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“We’d like to try to win the next election without any votes from parents. Anyone got any tweet ideas?”
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Teachers know what is best for their kids because they are with them every day.
We must trust teachers.
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“That paper is so dead and gone…”
Jeff Sachs describes a conversation with a Washington Post reporter who privately — but not publicly — admits his paper no longer covers obvious controversial truths, adding the courage of the Pentagon Papers era is “dead and gone.”
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One of the most fascinating and important US voices is Jeffrey Sachs, long an avatar of establishment power.
He's now become one of its most trenchant critics. Listen to him with @robertwrighter on the death of the WPost and corporate media generally:
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In the #TwitterFiles we saw anti-disinfo experts claim that “doing your own research” and “asking questions” should be considered a form of disinformation. This Aspen Institute report called such people “savvy spreaders”:
open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/l
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Fantasies about taking away health insurance, or letting “wheezy” die untreated in an ER, aren’t sadistic? Doctors treat heroin addicts, the obese, smokers with lung cancer — I don’t remember Americans ever before celebrating the idea of denying medical treatment.
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Replying to @mtaibbi and @YouTube
The message changed as people learned more about the virus.
And initially yes there was a panic.
But sadism is enjoyment of suffering. I'm not seeing that in the videos on offer. Anger at non-conformists, maybe, but sadism?
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The number of these domestically produced, factually tortured media manias has piled so high now, a foreign power like Russia could never hope to catch up in impact.
youtu.be/zI3yU5Z2adI via
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What could be a more damaging and incorrect statement than telling people they “will not die” and “don’t have a risk” if they get the shot? Among other things that also undermines the ability of future officials to be taken seriously.
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Replying to @mtaibbi
They were not more right about the vaccines. They were wrong and still are wrong about the vaccines.
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Replying to @mtaibbi and @YouTube
Great job whoever did this video!!
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You seriously don’t see the problem of shouting “Fuck your freedom!” and blasting people as idiots from “Earth Two” when they turn out to be more right about the vaccine than the authorities?
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Matt Taibbi now asserts that the effort to convince people to get vaccinated was cruel and unnecessary. Surely there is some other method of convincing folks to get the jab.
What @mtaibbi does not offer is any other sensible method to herd cats into a parade.
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The job does in scrupulously searching out and displaying material otherwise slated for the memory-hole — this is a model for alt-media in the digital censorship age. It’s going to take work to ensure ugly facts aren’t disappeared.
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Looking Back on the Sadism of the Covid-19 Shaming Campaign:
racket.news/p/looking-back
THE UNVACCINATED | "Nobody is Safe!" youtu.be/zI3yU5Z2adI via
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Looking Back on the Sadism of the Covid-19 Shaming Campaign:
Matt Orfalea's new video shows apolgies are due for the media campaign against "the unvaccinated," which unveiled open cruelty as public policy strategy
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Nobody has ver shown even a scintilla of proof for either the “at least five years” claim, or the “regular flow of intelligence.” If these are your idea of “true” Steele tidbits, that’s pretty sad.
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Americans seem to have no problem with the FBI being a domestic intelligence service that can conduct surveillance and make house calls just to harass and gather information, not in an effort to build cases.
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Amazing. FBI Special Agents Ashley Roberts and Brian Costella of @FBIWFO CT-4 continue to harass my friend/FBI whistleblower AND his wife at their home and on the phone. They are assigned to “domestic terrorism” and bothering a retired and 100% disabled vet who was suspended.
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Ouch
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The censorship whac-a-mole game continues, but at least there are attempts to push back.
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Very interesting design decision by Facebook here to plug into the ActivityPub ecosystem from an anti-censorship standpoint. It'll be interesting to see what happens when someone with resources uses the protocol. twitter.com/aakashg0/statu…
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Well, yes, the great Kurosawa film was first, but we liked the American title, which was an easy translate and sounded even better in Russian.
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Replying to @mtaibbi
You mean a Russian version of Seven Samurai.
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