That's the first line of Professor Turley's tweet directing us to his blog.
April 12
“Connect to Opportunity”: State Department Pushed LinkedIn to Censor “Disinformation”
We have been discussing the growing amount of evidence of government censorship efforts using third party organizations as well as direct agency action. One source of funding for such effort was the State Department and its Global Engagement Center, or GEC. Now, litigation brought by Missouri and Louisiana shows that State Department officials pushed companies to get onboard with blacklisting efforts. Despite such evidence of direct government censorship efforts, Democratic members continue to oppose attempts to expose the full scope of such government programs and grants. Witnesses who testified about the dangers of such censorship efforts were even denounced as “Putin lovers” and apologists for insurrectionists and racists by leading Democrats.
The latest evidence involves the site LinkedIn, an employment-focused social media site. The concern is that the effort to enlist LinkedIn could reflect an effort to target blacklisted individuals. The company’s “connect to opportunity” takes on a more menacing meaning when used as part of a blacklisting system.
I previously wrote that the congressionally created, federally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) supported blacklisting efforts at the British-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The index was widely ridiculed for targeting ten conservative and libertarian sites as the most dangerous sources of disinformation; it sought to persuade advertisers to withdraw support for those sites, while listing their most liberal counterparts as among the most trustworthy.
Shortly after my column posted in The Hill, the NED wrote to me to say that it was discontinuing support for the GDI. Microsoft also was forced into retreat after it was shown to be pushing the GDI’s biased blacklist.
Then we learned of additional funding through the State Department’s GEC.
We also know of backchannel communications with the CDC and other agencies.
Now, there is reported evidence that an official at the State Department sent an email to the networking platform LinkedIn advertising the so-called “disinfo cloud,” a GEC-funded project to identify “disinformation” online. While it is now reportedly shutdown, it was advertised as a “one-stop shop” to “identify and then test tools that counter propaganda and disinformation.”
GEC senior advisor Samaruddin Stewart asked for a meeting in February 2020 and said that he was “building relationships with technology companies” as part of the State Department’s efforts at “countering disinformation.” He later sought to get LinkedIn to use the Disinfo Cloud to “assist with identifying, understanding, and addressing disinformation.”
The push to enlist LinkedIn is chilling. This is a site where millions post their resumes and backgrounds for employment purposes. The effort to get the company to filter such postings through its Disinfo Cloud could result in individual blacklisting with government support. If someone has an account on LinkedIn who was flagged as a purveyor of “disinformation” by the State Department, the suggestion is that the company should take steps to remove or take other action with regard to that person. In other words, LinkedIn could be used as the business end of blacklisting.....
....MUCH MORE
Microsoft bought LNKD for $26 billion in 2016.
I'd throw in a gratuitous "Who do these people think they are?" but we already know:
Dec. 26, 2018 Reid Hoffman, the tech billionaire whose money was spent on Russian-style social media deception in a Senate race last year, apologized on Wednesday, saying in a statement that he...
From hedgefunder Paul Singer's (Elliot Management) Washington Free Beacon (so all pronouncements come with a "grain of salt" caveat, ditto for MSFT pronouncements double-ditto for Bill Gates')....
Microsoft Exec Sounds Alarm About Chinese Tech Abuses as Company Collaborates With China
