Facebook reportedly created a “special portal” that allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and government partners to flag so-called “disinformation” for censorship.
The Intercept on Monday reported that newly unearthed government documents indicate social media platforms coordinated with the government to censor so-called “disinformation” much more closely than previously known.
The Intercept linked to Facebook documents with instructions for government workers and law enforcement officers to log into a “Facebook Content Request System” still hosted at the URL https://www.facebook.com/xtakedowns/login. It appears that Facebook designed the portal so that government officials could easily identify content they deem objectionable and request that the platform remove it.
Evidence of the portal points to the fact that although DHS technically terminated its Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) in August, the board’s underlying work is ongoing.
The Intercept explained the potential dangers of DHS’s covert, Ministry-of-Truth-type operations.
“How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech,” The Intercept noted.
Two months ago, NewsBusters reported that DHS continued its counter-“disinformation” work in a more cloaked fashion, and that the government specifically intended to target certain content areas including COVID-19, election security and “domestic violent extremism.”
DHS appears to have support from its ostensibly independent auditing body as well. The Intercept referred to a DHS Office of Inspector General report that recommended that DHS “develop a unified strategy to counter disinformation campaigns that appear in social media.”
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