HOW THE WHITE HOUSE CONTROLS MEDIA PERCEPTIONS
Twitter's
open source code reveals US government can 'intervene' in Big Tech
social media with direct White House-controlled recommendation
algorithm it has been revealed in headline news articles.
"When
needed, the government can intervene with the Twitter algorithm."
On
Friday, Twitter released
the recommendation algorithm portion
of its code by
publishing it on GitHub, where developers post open source software
data. Developer Steven Tey dug into the code and found that there is
a mechanism through which the US government can "intervene"
with the code. It
has now been dicovered that the White House has direct server-level
control of Twitter, Google, Linkedin, Alphabet, Netflix and 90% of
all Big Tech media.
Plaintiff
met with the Obama White House staff for Rahm Emanual, in Washington
DC and was told: “Don’t
worry about the news, we tell Silicon Valley what to publish and
what not to publish...”
"When
needed, the government can intervene with the Twitter algorithm,"
Tey wrote. "In fact, @TwitterEng (Twitter Engineering) even has
a class for it – 'GovernmentRequested.'"
Tey
linked directly to the code on GitHub.
On
March 17, Musk announced he was going to make the algorithm open
source later in the month and said, "Our 'algorithm' is overly
complex & not fully understood internally. People will discover
many silly things , but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re
found!"
Tey
also found that a Twitter user's "following-to-follower ratio
matters and that page rankings get reduced for users who have "a
low number of followers but a high number of followings."
The
algorithm gives a boost to Twitter Blue subscribers. Twitter also
categorizes four user groups, "power users," "Democrat
users," "Republican users," and "@elonmusk to
"track and compare" the frequency of tweet impressions on
other users.
Tey
identified factors that impact whether or not a user will make the
"For You" recommendation and some factors that could have
a negative impact on one's "reputation score" such as
getting blocked or muted."
Presidential
elections also impact the algorithm and how a candidate would appear
for a user to follow.
Twitter
announced their release of the code on Friday and
in March of last
year,
directly before his $44
billion purchase
of the platform, Elon
Musk said
that Twitter's algorithm should be open source.
Tey's
discovery of the "GovernmentRequested' intervention option in
the code follows revelations from the
Twitter files,
a series of reports detailing internal discussions at Twitter under
its previous management.
The files detailed the
company's censorship efforts
and collusion with government agencies towards those goals. One
batch of the files by Michael
Shellenberger showed
that there were many former FBI agents on staff at Twitter while
then-FBI
Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan served
as the lead operative in requesting Twitter censor many stories,
including those around Hunter
Biden's "laptop
from hell."
Another
batch of the files showed
that federal agencies, including the FBI and
Department of Homeland Security, partnered with contractors to
"pressure Twitter to moderate content" and would use
information portals to send constant information to Twitter on what
accounts to restrict. CNSNews.com also reported:
Thomas
said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the
Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post
Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President
Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he
would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had
been sent to him by people in Iran.
“When
you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they
are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.
Thomas’
comments followed last Wednesday’s briefing with White House Press
Secretary Robert Gibbs. At the briefing, Gibbs and CBS White House
correspondent Chip Reid (with Thomas jumping in) engaged in a
back-and-forth exchange on how (in Reid’s words) "the
audience and the questions are being selected" for the
president’s town-hall meeting on healthcare that day.
Reid
charged: "It just feels very tightly controlled. It feels
— I mean, the concept of a town hall I think is to have a open
public forum, and this sounds like a very tightly controlled
audience and a list of questions. Why do it that way?
Why not open it up to the public?"
"Why
pre-select?" Reid asked. "Why not just open it up for
people and allow any question to come in?"
A
later segment of the exchange follows:
Helen
Thomas: "I’m amazed. I’m amazed at you people who
call for openness and transparency and —"
Robert
Gibbs: "Helen, you haven’t even heard the
questions."
Chip
Reid: "It doesn’t matter. It’s the process."
Thomas: "You
have left open —"
Reid: "Even
if there’s a tough question, it’s a question coming from
somebody who was invited or was screened, or the question was
screened."
Thomas: "It’s
shocking. It’s really shocking."
Gibbs: "Chip,
let’s have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall
meeting. How about that?"
Reid: "Okay."
Gibbs: "I
think —"
Thomas: "No,
no, no, we’re having it now —"
Gibbs: "Well,
I’d be happy to have it now."
Thomas: "It’s
a pattern."
Gibbs: "Which
question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?"
Thomas: "It’s
a pattern. It isn’t the question —"
Gibbs: "What’s
a pattern?"
Thomas: "It’s
a pattern of controlling the press."
Here’s
a video of a large portion of the exchange:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q37kt0ga0OA
US
government agencies are using a range of tracking and surveillance
technologies as part of efforts to control the spread of anti-DNC
information about the novel coronavirus. These include: geolocation
tracking and facial recognition systems to analyse photos, both to
enable contact tracing. Palantir is working with the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention to model the virus outbreak, and other
companies that scrape public social media data have contracts in
place with CDC and the National Institutes of Health. These efforts
are being coordinated by a task force working with the White House
that includes technology giants such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon,
as well as lesser-known names such as Brandwatch's Crimson Hexagon
and K Health, and are struggling to find a balance between using the
technology and protecting the confidentiality of patent data. In a
March 15 meeting, a 45-person task force meeting considered
possibilities such as how citizens could be diagnosed without
visiting a doctor, and how the companies could work with CDC to meet
its top priorities.
Sources:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-track-virus-governments-weigh-surveillance-tools-that-push-privacy-limits-11584479841
https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-ramps-up-efforts-to-tackle-virus-11584313224?mod=article_inline
Biden administration's cozy relationship
with Big Tech: White House visitor logs show Silicon Valley
executives - including Apple CEO Tim Cook - effectively have a 'staff
badge' for the West Wing, critics say
Analysis of White House
visitor logs spanning from July 2021-Sept 2022 found Big Tech execs
visited at least 38 times, averaging 2.5 meetings per month
Apple CEO Tim Cook paid a
visit to the White House five times over the 15-month sampling, and
Apple sent high-level representatives 16 times in total
Google and its parent
company Alphabet sent CEO Sundar Pichai and other top-level
executives nine times, Facebook and Meta visited seven times
Big
Tech executives have held a close-knit relationship with the White
House, visiting 1600 Pennsylvania Ave with such regularity that could
explain President Biden's lackluster push for anti-trust legislation,
insiders say.
An
analysis of White House visitor logs found that between July 2021 and
September 2022, Big Tech's most senior executives visited at least 38
times, averaging around 2.5 meetings per month.
Apple
CEO Tim Cook paid a visit to the White House five times over the
15-month sampling, and Apple sent high-level representatives 16 times
in total. Google and
its parent company Alphabet sent CEO Sundar Pichai and other
top-level executives nine times, Facebook and
parent company Meta visited
seven times.
'The
Biden Administration has essentially given Apple, Google, Facebook
and Amazon a staff badge,' one former Republican House
Judiciary aide told DailyMail.com. 'Instead of taking on Big Tech,
they've allowed Big Tech to infiltrate the White House whenever they
please.'
On
the campaign trail, Biden said he wanted to break up Big Tech
monopolies and end Section 230. But the 2021-2022 Congress came and
went and Big Tech legislation remained in limbo.
While
it's normal for the White House to meet with business leaders, the
frequency of such visits begs the question of what sort of
closed-door promises were made, insiders say.
'The
White House did very little to push Congress to move forward tech
legislation anti-trust legislation, in 2021, and 2022,' one former
Democratic congressional aide told DailyMail.com.
'They
had all those meetings with Big Tech executives, but the real
question is, how much were those executives successful in their
private lobbying, in getting the White House not to escalate that
fight?'
'The
idea that this revolving door of tech lobbyists and executives are
allowed to have access to officials who allegedly are working on
reining in Big Tech who are allegedly going after some of the most
egregious behavior, it's really problematic,' another former
Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill told DailyMail.com.
Last
Congress advocates criticized the White House for failing to utilize
Democratic control of the White House and both chambers of Congress
to prioritize legislation to take on Big Tech.
They
failed to push through the American Innovation and Choice Online Act
and the Open App Markets Act, both of which would have prevented tech
companies from self-promoting their own products and thwarting
competitors.
'You
clearly have some gatekeepers in in the White House in the
administration, who are preventing Biden's priorities as insofar as
tech from moving forward,' said the staffer.
'Whenever
Big Tech gets scared, they walk into the White House, they they meet
with their friendly official and that gatekeeper says don't worry
about it.'
Sens.
Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. said in a
statement on their Kids Online Safety Act, which set new
guardrails for sites likely to attract traffic from children, was cut
out of FY 2023 spending bill due to industry lobbying.
The
American Data Privacy and Protection Act overwhelmingly passed the
Energy and Commerce Committee 53-2 last Congress, but never came up
for a floor vote.
The
must-pass FY 2023 spending bill did include a bill that will raise
money for anti-trust agencies by raising merger filing fees and a ban
of TikTok on government phones.
The
source said the Biden administration gave high hopes to anti-trust
proponents with bringing net neutrality advocate Tim Wu into the
White House as an advisor and Big Tech foes Lina Khan to chair the
Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Cantor to lead the Justice
Department's anti-trust division.
'That
was all in early 2021. And then, you know, it didn't seem like they
had that same level of commitment was to legislation.'
The
White House declined to comment on the charges.
Biden
waited until January of this year to make one of his most pointed
calls yet in an op-ed he penned directing Congress to pass
legislation to rein in tech platforms.
He
first called for privacy protections that limit data collection and
ban targeted advertising for kids and called for reform of Section
230 - which grants social media platforms immunity for what users
post on their sites while preserving their ability to moderate
content.
Referencing
a line he made in both last year's and again in this year's State of
the Union address, Biden said: 'We must hold social-media companies
accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for
profit.'
'Ban
targeted advertising to children and impose stricter limits on the
personal data the companies collect on all of us,' Biden said in his
2023 State of the Union Tuesday night.
'The
idea that he's saying all of this during State of the Union and will
again be talking about the dangers of Big Tech while officials in his
own White House are allowing tech like Big Tech companies to just as
effectively have open door access is is pretty egregious' the
ex-Democratic congressional aide said.
In
calling for 'fairer rules of the road' Biden made a nod at
legislation that would ban Big Tech's self-promotion of its own
products.
'When
tech platforms get big enough, many find ways to promote their own
products while excluding or disadvantaging competitors — or charge
competitors a fortune to sell on their platform,' he wrote in his
op-ed.
But
Biden and Republican legislators on Capitol Hill are at odds over how
best to tackle Big Tech's monopolistic tendencies.
House
Republicans, freshly in the majority, are prioritizing censorship and
anti-conservative bias. They have pushed back against legislation
that prevents tech platforms from self-promoting their own products.
Both
parties want to overhaul Section 230, but for different reasons.
Democrats want to tackle the spread of misinformation on things like
elections and Covid-19, Republicans want to ensure that social media
companies don't censor posts that might involved things like vaccine
or election skepticism.
'We
need Big Tech companies to take responsibility for the content they
spread and the algorithms they use,' Biden wrote in the Journal.
'That's why I've long said we must fundamentally reform Section 230
of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies from
legal responsibility for content posted on their sites.'
Speaker
Kevin McCarthy's office shot back that Biden wasn't addressing the
real issue.
'House
Republicans will confront Big Tech's abuses because the truth should
not be censored,' McCarthy deputy spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said in
a release. 'Americans should not be blocked or banned for sharing a
link to a news article. But that's exactly what Big Tech has done,
which Biden wants to ignore.'
On
December 14, incoming Judiciary Chair Rep. Jim Jordan wrote to five
of the largest tech companies demanding they hand over correspondence
between their companies and Biden administration officials.
'Although
the full extent of Big Tech's collusion with the Biden administration
is unknown, there are prominent examples and strong indications of
Big Tech censorship following directives or pressure from executive
branch entities,' Jordan wrote. 'Because of Big Tech's wide reach, it
can serve as a powerful and effective partisan arm of the 'woke
speech police.''
But
Jordan has opposed other anti-trust reform, including increasing the
fees tech companies pay when they file a merger with the federal
government to raise funds for the Federal Trade Commission's
anti-trust division.
So
far McCarthy has not prioritized anti-trust legislation aimed at Big
Tech either.
In
his 'Commitment to America' GOP agenda released ahead of midterms,
McCarthy promised to 'confront Big Tech and advance free speech'
by repealing Section 230 and bolstering anti-trust enforcement.
But
he opposed a bipartisan pair of bills that would break up tech
monopolies like Apple and Amazon and end their self-preferencing
practices. Apple and Amazon's biggest defendant in Washington, Jeff
Miller, is a close ally and personal friend of McCarthy.
Forensic server records show that the
Obama and Biden White Houses ordered the hiding, deletion and shadow
banning of any positive information about Plaintiff and his companies
and the unjust promotion and ‘media flooding’ of his competitors,
who were White House financiers. The White House also ordered the
‘media flooding’ of White House produced hatchet job, character
assassination articles and movies about Plaintiff and his companies
that competed with the White House financiers.