Category: Censorship

Covert agents gaming Facebook to suppress political dialogue and censor information

January 29, 2016January 29, 2016 · 23 Comments ·

Here is an illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document.

Yesterday morning whilst I was sharing this post in groups on Facebook, I received a notification informing me that my account was temporarily restricted, and that I wasn’t allowed to comment or post in Facebook groups for three days. No reason for the ban was provided, though the notice allowed me to click on “appeal,” which I did. But Facebook staff never read and respond to appeals or feedback.

This is the third such ban I have had from Facebook in the last twelve months, I have never been given any reasons for the restrictions on my account, and I have asked several times for them. There is provision for flagging up errors by following a link that says “if you think you are seeing this notice by mistake.” Facebook have never once provided any explanation of their actions, nor have they responded to my appeal or to any accounts of my experience.

My post had been removed in some of the groups I’d posted in and people informed me that where it remained, when they tried to open the link, it said “Content not available.”

There is nothing in the article that breaches Facebook’s “Community Standards” or that is offensive. There was nothing in the previous blogs that earned me a ban which could be deemed abusive or offensive either.

My previous bans happened the day after the election and earlier this month. Both times I was posting one of my own articles when the account restrictions were applied. I wasn’t even informed of the duration of the ban on the previous occasions. Just prior to the last ban, someone reported a meme by Robert Livingstone that I used as a group photo in a Facebook group I set up. Facebook notified me that the person complaining had said it contained “graphic violence”, though in fairness, it wasn’t removed.

The “offending” meme

The group in question is all about criticising Conservative anti-welfare policies, exposing Iain Duncan Smith and the government’s anti-humanist ideological prescriptions. Someone clearly shouldn’t have joined.

At the same time, someone also reported several of my personal photos on my own page as “offensive” and my account as “fake” so this is looking like a targeted campaign to try and restrict the sharing of my posts. It’s not the first time this has happened. I also know that I’m not the only person this has happened to. My site is reasonably popular, with 1, 143, 370 readers so far, and my articles also get quite widely shared. However, someone somewhere clearly doesn’t like what I write.

I left a couple of groups last year because Facebook sent me a notification whenever I tried to post an article on those sites that the content had been reported as “abusive or offensive” by members. They were groups claiming to support the Labour Party. As far as bloggers go, I’m probably amongst the top ten most pro-Labour commentators. But regardless of which party you support, censorship should bother everyone. It’s not only humble bloggers that are being silenced. It’s not so long ago that government agents marched into a Guardian office and smashed up the hard drives storing the Snowden leaks. Once you hear the jackboots, it’s too late.

Someone told me that the article earning me the ban has probably been reported by a group of people determined to trigger a Facebook algorithm in order to get the ban imposed.

Political gaming and manipulating group discussion outcomes on Facebook by using an algorithm for the censorship of reasonable and factual comments or information that you disagree with is a very problematic and particularly totalitarian tactic. If that’s what you have to resort to, it means that you have no credible arguments, can’t engage in mature dialogue and it reflects very badly on your opinions, world-view, personal integrity and ethics more generally.

Most groups I am a member of are left-leaning political debate groups – if you can’t debate democratically and have to resort to such oppressive and cowardly tactics to shut down discussion then it really is time for you to leave. With articles, you always have the option of not reading them. Especially recommended for those of you with right-wing fragile ego syndome, incoherent ideologies and non-robust views and prejudices. And GCHQ.

Now for the punchline. I have a Facebook Community page – Politics and Insights – where Facebook regularly offer to “boost” my posts for a fee. I don’t make any money from writing and so don’t have cash to invest in promoting my site. The post that got me the ban was shared a lot from my page, and so Facebook offered to boost it, only if I paid money, of course …

Last year I was harrassed by the charming Tommy Robinson, co-founder of the far-right English Defence League (EDL), on Twitter. I told him to stop mithering me and to go peddle far-right myths elsewhere. He then designed a meme that used my account photograph and details, claiming I had said that “child abuse is a far-right myth”, which of course is untrue. I didn’t mention child abuse at all. There was also an invitation on the meme for people to “let her know what you think of this” and details of my account were on there with the comment “she can be found here.”

The meme was circulated repeatedly by Britain First, some UKIP groups, on the National Front page, amongst others. As a consequence I received numerous death threats, threats of rape and a threat involving Combat 18, a neo-Nazi organisation, that is the armed branch of Blood and Honour. My crime? Simply being a Labour Party supporter and irritating Tommy Robinson by telling him to do one from my Twitter page. It’s also possible that my involvement with the Rock Against Racism movement back in the eighties marked my card.

I involved the police, and reports were made to Facebook about Tommy Robinson’s nasty design by a police officer and others regarding the malicious content of the meme and concerns about my personal safety. Guess what? Facebook did not remove the meme or ban any of the posters. The meme wasn’t just malicious, nor did it compromise just my own safety – my children also received threats – it was illegal, too.

Perhaps it’s time for an alternative to Facebook, a large social media platform where the Tories can’t buy favours and power, and where free speech is actually permitted. I don’t think Facebook banned my post and restricted my account because of a political motivation to do so. But those who reported my article to trigger the ban definitely have a political agenda, and Facebook don’t care about that, nor do they apply “Community Standards” consistently, fairly and when they actually ought to.

Meanwhile I’m not sure about the value of complaining to Facebook, I have yet to have a response from them. However it may be done at the Feedback link. It may also be useful to report the algorithm as a bug.

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Journalists blocked from Cameron’s meeting yesterday: apparently Muslim women are to be seen and not heard.

January 19, 2016January 23, 2016 · 4 Comments ·

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It’s emerged that journalists were blocked from interviewing the Muslim women at David Cameron’s speech about “empowering” Muslim women yesterday. Gerard Tubb, a Sky News reporter, was outraged when he was prevented from talking to the Leeds-based group of women, despite standing just a few feet away from them, whilst waiting for the Prime Minister to arrive at the meeting.

Tubb said that the lack of access to the group meant journalists would only be permitted to air propaganda from Downing Street. Other journalists were quick to point out the irony in banning media correspondents from talking to Muslim women about their reaction to Cameron’s new initiative on the day that the Prime Minsiter said he “despaired” that too many risked radicalisation because they were “isolated.” Apparently, Muslim women are to be seen and not heard.

There is a more subtle irony in the fact that an exclusively male Bullingdon club paternalist attempted to frame a political intervention in part by citing the patriarchy of another culture.

Then of course there is the broken logic of an expressed concern over impacts and barriers presented by a patriarchal culture for Muslim women, on the one hand, whilst threatening to deport them if they aren’t fluent enough in english on the other. It’s a kind of incoherence that always arises with populist authoritarian approaches to politics. It’s the sort of narrative Trump that Donald would be quite proud of.

A number 10 spokesperson insisted that Tubb was offered the chance to speak with the group’s leader, and added that “the cameras were only allowed to roll for five minutes, before the rest of their exchanges – a “private chat” – took place.”

The Conservative’s control freakery, aimed at micromanaging the media, came as Cameron outlined conservative plans to introduce english tests for people who have arrived in the UK using the five-year spousal settlement programme, in an interview with the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. He claimed that there were 38,000 Muslim women who could not speak English and 190,000 with limited skills in the language.

In his Times article on Monday, Cameron also claimed that a Pakistani-born mother at home in Bradford who can’t speak English “can help a young person’s slide towards radicalisation.” The Prime Minister has often expressed the view that multiculturism has “failed.” At a security conference in Munich during 2011, for example, he argued the UK needed a stronger national identity to prevent people “turning to all kinds of extremism.”

Cameron said yesterday that not just Muslim women, but all those who entered the UK on the five-year spousal settlement programme would soon have to sit the language tests halfway through that period. However, Cameron has overseen steep cuts to funding for language lessons for immigrants since 2011.

Sufia Alam, the women’s project manager of the east London Maryam centre, pointed out a wide discrepancy between Cameron’s suggestion that 22% of Muslim women have limited or no English, and the 2011 census, which indicated that just 6% struggled significantly with the language. She said:

There had been deep cuts in English teaching provision for non-native speakers in the last parliament.

My issue is that community facilities – especially those aimed at women – have also faced significant cuts.

Tim Farron also responded:

This announcement is dog-whistle politics at its best.

David Cameron cut the budget for English language classes in August last year by 45 million. Now the prime minister is dressing up a massive cut as a 20 million funding commitment.

Linking women in the Muslim community who struggle with the English language to home-grown extremism only serves to isolate the very people Cameron says he is trying to help.

Cameron went on to say:

After two and half years they should be improving their English and we will be testing them. We will bring this in in October and it will apply to people who have come in on a spousal visa recently and they will be tested.

Migrants who fail the language tests after two and a half years may be forced to leave the UK. Speaking later in Leeds, where he visited a mosque and a women’s centre, the Prime Minister said:

The evidence is that there are some 40,000 women in our country who really don’t speak any English at all and, perhaps altogether, some 190,000 with very poor English.

I think it’s quite right to say to people who come to our country that there are many rights that you have here – it’s a fantastic country to live in – but there are also obligations that we should put on people who come to our country, and chief amongst them should be obligations to learn English because then you can integrate, you can take advantage of the opportunities here and you can help us to build the strong country that we want.

Lady Warsi, the Conservative former party chairman, has joined Labour and the Liberal Democrats in criticising Cameron for linking failure to speak English with radicalisation.

The Prime Minister said that Muslim women need to learn English – but many say he needs to be more careful with his own language. Rather than “empowering” women, Cameron has probably been instrumental in stigmatising them, and in the further alienation of Muslim communities.

Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary, said that Cameron risked “doing more harm than good in a desire to grab headlines.” He went on to say:

His clumsy and simplistic approach to challenging extremism is unfairly stigmatising a whole community. There is a real danger that it could end up driving further radicalisation, rather than tackling it.

A spokesperson for the community organisation Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend) said:

Being able to speak English is vital to economic, social and political integration, but the prime minister is making wild allegations about misogyny in Muslim communities and conflating this with issues of integration. This is not helpful; we need positive interventions not misplaced, tendentious rhetoric.

When has Cameron acted to address workplace discrimination and the exclusion of minorities from the political sphere? It has become all too common in recent years for the government to point the finger of blame on Muslims and tell them to do more. It’s time the government took a long hard long look at its failings on integration – economic, social and political – and started offering solutions.

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Cameron’s pre-election contract: a catalogue of lies

November 14, 2014April 23, 2017 · 25 Comments ·

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I felt that this post was very worth preserving from Conservativehome, since it is a signed contract between the Conservatives and UK citizens, the insincerity of which is very evident four years on from when it was written. I took the liberty of converting the PDF into JPEG digital images, to preserve an exact copy of the contract, just in case the Tories decide to delete the original – well they do have form, after all. (See: Some of the promises the Tories are trying to delete from the internet and Lynton Crosby’s staff deleted valid criticism from Wikipedia, for example.)

“So this is our contract with you. I want you to read it and – if we win the election – use it to hold us to account. If we don’t deliver our side of the bargain, vote us out in five years’ time.”

Signed D. Cameron
May 2010.

Gordon Brown’s “economic incompetence” in the face of a global crisis caused mostly by US bankers, steered us out of recession by 2010, with no need for austerity measures. Furthermore, the Tories have borrowed more in just 3 years than Labour did in 13 and have not invested that money in public services. In fact the only people to have benefited from any investment at all this past 4 years are a few private companies that donate to the Conservative Party and a handful of millionaires.

Oh, and surely “incompetent” would include losing the Fitch and Moody triple A credit ratings, after promising to keep them … oh yes, that was Osborne, wasn’t it.

I could go on and address all of the other lies, but I know readers can see the enormous gap between the Tory pledges and the reality of four years of Conservative-led Government.

You cannot trust the Tories with the economy, or anything else for that matter. A glance at the pre-election empty promises and their bare-faced lies demonstrates this very well.

Vote them out, May 7th, 2015.

And vote Labour.

What Labour achieved, lest we forget

Key Labour policies

More Tory lies, with official rebukes

An email to authoritarian Tory MPs Charlie Elphicke, Priti Patel and Conor Burns

June 13, 2014December 31, 2023 · 17 Comments ·

I sent the following email to Tory MPs Charlie Elphicke, Priti Patel and Conor Burns, with a copy sent to Charities Commission.

The email has evidence hyperlinked throughout in a bid to spare me the standardised Tory bullshit avalanche in response:

Dear Charlie Elphicke, Priti Patel and Conor Burns,

I write to complain about your extremely authoritarian and oppressive treatment of the charity Oxfam.

First of all, I must point out that it is impossible to discuss poverty without reference to its root cause and that invariably involves reference to government policies. I am particularly disgusted by the way you have diverted attention away from the real issue raised – the rise of cases of absolute poverty.

Oxfam are not alone in their concern about the rise of absolute poverty. Medical experts recently wrote an open letter to David Cameron condemning the rise in food poverty under this government, stating that families “are not earning enough money to meet their most basic nutritional needs” and that “the welfare system is increasingly failing to provide a robust line of defence against hunger.”

Many charities have said that the UK government has violated the Human Right to food. Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognises the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing. The UK has signed and ratified, and in so doing is legally bound by the ICESCR, in particular, the human right to adequate food.

According to the Just Fair Consortium report, welfare reforms, benefit delays and the cost of living crisis have pushed an unprecedented number of people into a state of hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity in the UK. New research by Oxfam has revealed the extent of poverty amongst British children, with poor families taking drastic measures to survive.

What kind of government is concerned only about stifling critical discussion of its policies and not at all about the plight of the citizens it is meant to serve? This is a government that attempts to discredit and invalidate the accounts of people’s experience of the suffering that is directly caused by this government. By blaming the victims and by trying to smear and dismiss anyone that champions the rights of vulnerable citizens.

Priti Patel said: “With this Tweet they have shown their true colours and are now nothing more than a mouthpiece for left wing propaganda.”

When did concern for poverty and the welfare of citizens become the sole concern of “the left wing”? I think that casually spiteful and dismissive admission of indifference tells us all we need to know about the current government’s priorities. And no amount of right wing propaganda will hide the fact that poverty and inequality rise under every Tory government.

Mr Burns has written to the Charities Commission requesting an investigation into the “overtly political attack” on “the policies of the current Government.” However, he failed to mention this government’s overtly and cowardly economic attack on the most vulnerable citizens. I believe Oxfam has behaved responsibly, honourably, and with good conscience. It is the Tory-led government that have behaved disgracefully. We have a government that provides disproportionate and growing returns to the already wealthy, whilst imposing austerity cuts on the very poorest people. That is very clearly evidenced in their policies, the aims of which are clear when we examine who is carrying the burden of austerity. It is largely the poorest social groups and especially disabled people.

How can the government possibly claim Oxfam’s observations are “biased” when inequality is so fundamental to their own ideology, and when social inequalities and poverty are extended and perpetuated by all of their policies. The Tories have no right to be indignant about research findings regarding the poverty they have caused, and to complain about the genuine concern Oxfam expressed about those politically damning findings, when those findings are so patently true. I don’t believe that Oxfam have shown “bias” at all. I do believe that punitive Conservative policies are based on traditional class-based Tory prejudices, however.

The truth is the truth, whether conservative MPs like it or not. Tory “facts” are both constructed and seen through a lens of pre-conceptions and ideology. Oxfam and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation choose to study poverty. Cynical Tories, such as Iain Duncan Smith simply change the definition of it. But changing the narrative can never edit people’s experience of grinding poverty and their consequent suffering. Or disguise the causes.

So where is your concern for those vulnerable and increasingly impoverished citizens – the ones you are meant to serve? You didn’t even entertain the idea that there’s a problem, choosing instead to dismiss a respectable charity as “lefties”. Have you any idea how utterly callous, irrelevant AND ludicrous that comment was?

Or how obviously oppressive your actions are for reporting a charity for merely carrying out awareness-raising campaign work?

And before you spin me the poppycock line about inequality being ‘lower’ under this government, I already know about the methodological problems with the measurement method you purposely use, so spare me: https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/camerons-gini-and-the-hidden-hierarchy-of-worth/

Yours sincerely
Ms S Jones, MA (Hons)

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