Friday, May 26th., 2017
"...Data published by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that in 2016, billionaire George Soros made two payments totaling $400,000 to the group. The Washington Examiner has
stated that Soros and the Ford Foundation have donated over $196
million to various net neutrality advocacy groups. Soros has spent
hundreds of millions supporting various anti-government movements,
including the Women's March, the People's Climate March, the Tax Day protests and far left Berkeley protest group Refuse Fascism. The ACLU also began actively organizing and training protest movements just one month after Soros sank $35 million into the group..."
The Inconvenient Truth Behind The Net Neutrality Movement
May 26, 2017 11:29 AM
The
control of private information on the internet has been a contentious
for as long as the people have been online. It has long been the
consensus that maintaining internet freedoms is essential for
free expression, the exchange of ideas and the ability for proponents of
democracy and human rights activists to mobilize and advocate for
political, social, and economic reform. Currently, the debate about
internet freedom is centered around the concept of net neutrality.
Net
neutrality is the principle that internet service providers should
enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source,
and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites by
offering different speeds of bandwidth to different service providers.
While publications such as Forbes and The Heritage Foundation paint
net neutrality as a principle which threatens internet freedoms in the
long term and hurts consumers by reducing their ability to customize
internet services offered to them, proponents argue that it ensures
equal access to the internet. However, major supporters of net
neutrality have created doubts about the concept due to their increasing
support of censorship, violations of personal privacy and attacks
against political opponents and journalists.
The
most immediate issue with net neutrality is the fact that many of the
groups supporting it are purportedly concerned with social issues
which are totally unrelated. One such organization is the protest
movement Color of Change. Color of Change's website states that their
mission is "design campaigns powerful enough to end practices that
unfairly hold black people back." However, the group has increasingly
begun to focus on advocating for net neutrality, a cause which does not
appear to be related to their mission statement in any obvious manner. Color of Change claims
that changes the FCC plans to make to net neutrality rules will
"devastate black communities" without bothering to explain exactly how
this might happen. In February 2015, the executive director of Color for
Change Rashad Robinson published an opinion piece in The Hill where he claimed that securing the right to net neutrality victory would be "civil rights history in the making."
Despite
their apparent support for the principle of net neutrality, Color for
Change has primarily concerned itself with attacking journalists who
report news with a conservative perspective, including Fox News
personalities Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. On May 18th, 2017, USA News reported
that Color of Change and other protest groups planned a protest and
meeting with FCC officials ahead of it's intended vote to repeal Obama era protections requiring
that all internet traffic be offered equally. Rather than focus on
defending "information equality," the protest seemed to center around
attacking alternative media. Signs photographed at the event demanded
censorship of the Drudge Report, Breitbart News and conservative
journalists. Video footage of
the event shows Color of Change speakers stating that O'Reilly's firing
from Fox News was a result of net neutrality advocacy. The FCC
ultimately ruled 2-1 to start the process of eliminating net neutrality
rules and begin classification of home and mobile internet service
providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.
- Pro-net neutrality protestors carry signs advocating censorship
The
focus on censorship of the media at an event purporting to focus on
"information equality" is no surprise given Color of Change's financial
supporters. Data published by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that in 2016, billionaire George Soros made two payments totaling $400,000 to the group. The Washington Examiner has
stated that Soros and the Ford Foundation have donated over $196
million to various net neutrality advocacy groups. Soros has spent
hundreds of millions supporting various anti-government movements,
including the Women's March, the People's Climate March, the Tax Day protests and far left Berkeley protest group Refuse Fascism. The ACLU also began actively organizing and training protest movements just one month after Soros sank $35 million into the group.
Other
big name proponents of net neutrality have themselves been implicated
in improper censorship and violations of personal privacy. In April, The Verge reported
that Google, Netflix and Facebook were among a number of companies
leading a group known as The Internet Association in efforts to lobby
for retaining protections of net neutrality. The involvement of these
tech giants in pushing for net neutrality raises troubling questions
about who truly benefits from regulations which support the concept.
Since the end of the 2016 US presidential elections, Google has increasingly become involved in censorship of so-called "fake news." In spring of 2017, Google News Lab used
its CrossCheck project to fight “fake news” prior to the French
presidential election in collaboration with journalists, newsrooms, and
social media companies alike. What CrossCheck appeared to act a function
that took the liberty of appointing various groups to collaboratively
decide what is true or false in real-time. Google's push to become
involved in censorship came after George Soros acquired stakes in Netflix as well as Google's holding company Alphabet.
Facebook
has similarly faced criticism for engaging in censorship and instances
of improper access to user's personal data. In February, Disobedient Media discovered
that Facebook was self-censoring links to a story by CNBC which
discussed comments picked up on a hot mic during a conversation between
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
where Merkel asked Zuckerberg to censor speech critical of immigrants
and Zuckerberg agreed to do so. The censorship came after Zuckerberg
edited a manifesto to remove an admission that he supported monitoring
private channels of communication. In February 2017, Zuckerberg released
a 5,700 word essay warning
about “isolationist” threats to globalism, stating that Facebook was
there to help counteract popular trends towards nationalism and
pro-soveriegn state ideologies. The original draft of
the essay was “revised” to remove a reference which had revealed that
Facebook actively monitored private conversations of individuals accused
of plotting terror attacks.
In March 2017, BBC News conducted
an investigation exposing a child abuse ring operating on Facebook
which resulted in a four year prison sentence for one of the offenders.
In response to the BBC's report, Facebook left 80% of photos depicting
child abuse online, then reported the BBC journalists to the police
before cancelling plans for an interview. Facebook subsequently
apologized for their behavior, but The Times reported
in April that the social media giant may face criminal prosecution
relating to the images of child abuse as well as pro-jihadist content
which was being shared on the website. A May 2017 report by Heat Street has
also revealed that Facebook has been continually shutting down
"ex-Muslim" and atheist groups using its social media services.
While
the debate may continue for some years to come, the open support
by large sponsors for federal regulation raises serious concerns about
net neutrality. The deep financial involvement of George Soros, the
focus of protest groups on targeting free speech and the colored history
of corporate sponsors of the principle makes it clear that "information
equality" is likely much darker than it appears on the surface.