Tech

EXCLUSIVE: Infowars’ Facebook Link Ban Tied to ‘Hate Figure’ Designation of Gavin McInnes

The new information speaks volumes of how Facebook makes its decisions internally.

Published

1 year ago

May 6, 2019

In statements provided to Big League Politics, Facebook revealed that their decision to designate Alex Jones a “hate figure” was made, in part, because Jones interviewed Gavin McInnes on his broadcast and allegedly posted the interviews to Facebook.

When explaining their decision to name Jones a “hate figure”, Facebook told Big League Politics the decision was partially inspired by Jones interviewing McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys and co-founded VICE News.

According to Facebook, Jones interviewed McInnes twice and expressed positive sentiments of support toward him, which Facebook says is against the rules. Facebook says users are allowed to refer to McInnes, but may not express support for him or depict him positively. This is the reason many mainstream media sources are allowed to show video featuring McInnes and post articles with his statements and Infowars was not.

It is not clear from Facebook’s statement how Jones could have posted his interviews to Facebook, considering all official Infowars pages and Jones’s public figure page were already banned at the time. As Facebook will now ban any user who posts links or videos featuring Alex Jones or his broadcasts, they could have been referring to individual users posting links to the McInnes interviews.

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Because of his designation as a “hate figure”, Jones has been permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram, and users who post links or videos featuring Jones may now be banned from the platforms as well.

McInnes is currently suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for designating him and the Proud Boys as hateful individuals, which he believes led to them being banned from social media and major financial systems. While Facebook says they do not map to the SPLC to determine who is a “hate figure” and who is not, they also explicitly refused to condemn the SPLC in a statement to Big League Politics, even after the SPLC took credit for Facebook’s decision to ban Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulos.

Big League Politics reported:

The SPLC claimed last week that they put Facebook “under pressure” to ban the “dangerous” individuals from Facebook and Instagram, and heralded the move as “an important step for Facebook.”

In its article, the SPLC concluded that the organization “will continue to monitor how Facebook is enforcing its policies related to extremist content.”

Facebook replied to a request for a comment from Big League Politics, with a spokesperson writing in their statement that the company chooses to “speak with numerous organizations across the political spectrum to inform our policies,” and added that they use these conversations to “write and enforce our own policies” which they say are public knowledge.

The connection of McInnes to Jones in the statement provided by Facebook seems curious considering McInnes was first targeted by the SPLC.

It should also be noted that Facebook’s refusal to disavow the SPLC may represent a de facto endorsement of the culture of misogyny and racism present at the SPLC before multiple high ranking officials were fired or resigned.

Tech

China-Funded DLive Video Platform Allows Convicted Pedophile to Stream with Child on His Lap

This is what China is pushing on the West.

Published

2 days ago

Aug 4, 2020

Shane Trejo

DLive, a streaming platform founded with backing from the Chinese, is reportedly allowing convicted pedophiles to use their platform while booting conservatives from the platform.

One DLive streamer has been identified as 43-year-old Jason Mills, a child sex predator who has been convicted of preying upon several children.

@OfficialDLive please explain you all let predators stream and have a channel but I get banned for critiquing content? The way you treat streamers is completely biased! There’s no reason why a convicted child predator should be allowed to stream WITH A CHILD ON HIS LAP. pic.twitter.com/nAacdI8cVH

— 5Ever (@AceMaximillion) August 1, 2020

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Mills has the handle of @PEPPERONIxREDD on DLive and is a verified partner on the platform. The account is heavily pizza-themed, which may be an additional cause for alarm considering those infamous WikiLeaks disclosures from 2016.

An individual convicted of child porn has been identified as a DLive streamer as well. Christopher Murray While was convicted in Britain of downloading 22 images of child pornography but never served any jail time as part of his plea deal. He was forced to undergo therapy as a condition of his suspended sentence.

https://t.co/G5PsWtA5iA

— n8tesmokes (@n8tesmokes1776) August 1, 2020

DLive has emerged as a competitor of YouTube because they have allowed banished individuals to stream video on their platform. However, they are beginning to implement the same type of content restrictions that have caused the monopoly tech firms to become so reviled.

I have been patient with DLive but as their number one streamer and earner (easily), I feel I have been treated very poorly. I have made this known repeatedly and it hasn't gotten better! I guess that's just how things are going to be… so be it.

— Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes) June 23, 2020

Either DLive or Streamlabs is glitching because I can’t even get the stream to go live. Cool site, love it.

— Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes) July 30, 2020

DLive may be implementing the same type of policies as their monopoly competitors because of their ties to China. Tech entrepreneurs Charles Wayn and Cole Chen founded the platform with monetary assistance from Chinese investors. They have paid lip service to decentralization and cryptocurrency despite their Chinese ties.

“Today, the industry is dominated by a few massive companies who are incentivised to take money from their creators and push ads into content whenever possible. By decentralizing streaming, we can democratize video content while giving a better experience to viewers and creators. Creators on DLive also have a chance to find an audience and not get not buried under millions of streamers, as with larger platforms,” Wayn said.

DLive is far from the only social media platform that has taken a lax attitude toward pedophiles. Big League Politics has reported on how Twitter explicitly amended their terms of service to allow pedophiles to discuss the finer points of raping children on their platform:

Social media giant Twitter has quietly amended their terms of service to allow for “discussions related to… attraction towards minors” to be allowed on their platform.

“Discussions related to child sexual exploitation as a phenomenon or attraction towards minors are permitted, provided they don’t promote or glorify child sexual exploitation in any way,” reads Twitter’s terms of service.

Twitter allow noted that they would allow for nude depictions of children on their platform in certain instances.

“Artistic depictions of nude minors in a non-sexualized context or setting may be permitted in a limited number of scenarios e.g., works by internationally renowned artists that feature minors,” they added.

Twitter’s pro-pedo policy may have been implemented at the behest of Dr. James Cantor, who describes himself as a proud Jewish homosexual. Cantor is a leading researcher and advocate for pedophiles, who he refers to as minor-attracted persons.

Cantor wrote a letter in Jan. 2018 to John Starr, who works as Director of Trust and Safety with Twitter, with other university academics. The letter urged Twitter to allow pedophiles to network and discuss their attraction to children on the monolithic social media platform.

“Many of us have worked with a group of such non-offending pedophiles, also known as anti-contact MAPs (Minor-Attracted Persons), in a peer support network called Virtuous Pedophiles (@virpeds), as well as in other support networks,” they wrote in their letter.

“Recently, a prominent member of Virtuous Pedophiles, who goes by the pseudonym Ender Wiggin (@enderphile2), had his account permanently suspended by Twitter. At least one other member of the same network, Šimon Falko (@simgiran), also had his account permanently suspended around the same time, and a number of other accounts of non-offending, anti-contact MAPs have since been permanently or temporarily suspended,” they added.

They argued that denying pedophiles a place on the social media platform may lead to these so-called virtuous pedophiles acting on their impulses to sexually victimize kids.

Predators are being enabled by social media providers, and competition does not seem to be solving the problem. Amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act may be in order to bring these tech giants to heel.