Though the NC is small, it has stood up to the bullying tactics of the censorship-industrial complex twice (in 2016, The Washington Post; 2024, Google) Help us continue to document our successes. By making a generous donation to the tip jar.
The goal of political leaders in the US, EU, UK and other ostensibly liberal democracies is simple: to gain greater and finer control over the information shared on the internet. As Matt Taibbi told Russell Brand: Interview Last year, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Biden Administration’s proposed RESTRICT Act Dissected These goals (April 2023) are essentially a wish list that has been communicated among transatlantic elites for some time, including at a gathering at the Aspen Institute in 2021.
The UK’s Online Safety Bill, led by Keir Starmer There’s nothing better than strengtheningSimilarly, Canada has introduced comprehensive new internet regulations through its Online News Act, which includes: Link Taxonline streaming laws. Australia is similarly Censorship Bill This is very similar to the EU’s DSA and could result in fines of up to 2% of global profits for social media companies that do not comply.
The reason is clear: Decades of financialization, kakistocracy and corporatization have caused economic conditions in the Western world to deteriorate so rapidly that even the United Nations is now A huge public-private partnershipThe social contract is effectively worthless. Even the WEF admit Its main support base, corporations, is fueling inequality, populism is on the rise almost everywhere, and angry, divisive protest movements have been growing since at least 2019.
Because of the counter-information that still exists online, governments are rapidly losing control over speech on important issues like the war in Ukraine and the ongoing Israeli carnage in Gaza. A common government tactic is to crack down on people’s ability to use the internet to produce, consume, and share important news, dissenting opinions, and uncomfortable truths.
I believe these are some of the core functions of Naked Capitalism: sharing the breaking news of the day from around the world, primarily through links and our Water Cooler page; producing valuable in-depth analysis of economic, political and geopolitical trends and developments in our original posts; and highlighting and eliciting opposing views and uncomfortable truths from our critics. (1) This is a vital, empowering and edifying service that, in this age of looming digital censorship, is most needed since the site was founded almost two decades ago. To support this independent source of information, analysis and debate, Please go to the tip jar and donate generously.
However, the ability of naked capitalism to perform these functions will likely change in the coming months and years. Paraphrase Spearheaded by the military, intelligence and diplomatic departments and assets of the US State Department, the UK Foreign Office and NATO, the Blob is intensifying its proxy war against free speech and “all global manifestations of domestic populism.”
but, Quote ShakespeareNaked Capitalism is “small, but fierce.” Despite its modest size, the site has twice resisted the bullying tactics of the censorship-industrial complex. In 2016, Naked Capitalism was one of nearly 200 independent media websites classified by the censorship-industrial complex.PropOrNot blog site with ties to the CIA and Ukrainian ultranationalists North Carolina was cast as Russia’s useful fool. This was one of the first attacks on independent media during the Russiagate debacle. When the Bezos-owned Washington Post published a front-page article highlighting the shady group’s unfounded allegations, North Carolina, through its equally tough lawyers, demanded a swift retraction, a highly visible public apology, and an equally visible opportunity for a rebuttal. Our readers then rallied to support us. Will you support us again in this fight for open information? The donation page is calling for donations!
Needless to say, no apology was made, and the article remained published despite extensive criticism from independent and mainstream journalists. Instead, the Washington Post responded to NC’s letter and other accusations by inserting an editor’s note at the beginning of the article with a vaguely worded disclaimer: “The Washington Post did not name any sites, and does not vouch for the accuracy of PropOrNot’s findings with respect to individual media outlets, and has no intention of doing so.” In response, Eve said: Provided This scathing response:
This is tantamount to admitting that not only does the Post not do any fact-checking, but that it doesn’t even consider it part of its job, but then has the audacity to accuse other companies of engaging in “fake news”?
Naked Capitalism suffered a second blow from internet censorship earlier this year when Google threatened to demonetize the site after its algorithms identified 14 posts in 2018 as committing serious violations, including ANTI_VACCINATION, HATEFUL_CONTENT, DEMONSTRABLY_FALSE_DEMOCRATIC PROCESS, and HARMFUL_HEALTH_CLAIM. The world’s largest media company handed out perhaps its harshest punishment to NC, which has never challenged the site since it began serving ads on it more than 16 years ago.
“This was a major ultimatum,” Eve points out. “Even though donations make up the majority of our income, losing our relatively small advertising revenue still hurts, especially now when fundraising is tight.” But rather than simply deleting posts, as many small online news site owners might be tempted to do, Eve and Lambert decided to rally together.
in Criticism PostEve methodically exposed just how sloppy Google’s Kafkaesque attempt at AI censorship has been.
Given the severity of the threat to Google, it’s shocking that the AI results were apparently systemically flawed. The algorithm didn’t even accurately identify individual posts that featured ads, presumably the first screening in the process. Google actually flagged only 14 posts in the spreadsheet, not 16. The false positive rate for just correctly identifying the posts was 12.5%.
These 14 posts are one of 33,000 posts posted throughout the site’s history, and one of roughly 20,000 posts in the time period Google appears to have used them (2018 to present). This means that, at best, we would have to enforce ad bans on posts that make up less than 0.1% of our total content.
And of those 14 cases, Google has only challenged eight. Of those eight cases, nearly all appear to be nonsensical on their own, as we’ll explain shortly.
The incident caught the attention of many independent journalists, including Matt Taibbi. AI Censorship? Naked CapitalismYves says that perhaps it helped turn the tide. A month after receiving the ultimatum, our ad agency notified us that Google had removed all of our target URLs. Once again, our relationship with the tech giant was clean. But Yves says that having been proven innocent, Written In a post announcing the retraction, Google said it “did not remove a single word from any of the posts.”
The moral of this story is that even as the Internet becomes an increasingly tricky terrain, especially for websites like Naked Capitalism that constantly challenge the self-serving narrative spread by governments and their corporate allies, NC will stand up to the tyrants of censorship. Please help! Your donation (don’t forget the tip jar!) Other forms of support help keep this important business healthy and thriving.
(1) Of the uncomfortable truths that have been discussed and analyzed on Naked Capitalism over the past few years, a few that come to mind are:
- It is unlikely that a BRICS currency will emerge in the not-too-distant future, even in BANCOR 2.0 format. Here are some reasons why: Eve and othersThis has been an unpopular opinion, especially among supporters of the emerging multipolar world order, but recent comments by BRICS leaders suggest that it is probably the correct one.
- The inevitable failure of US and EU sanctions against Russia and their devastating boomerang effect on the European economy. This is why we Correctly called Even before the Russian special military operation began.
- Western leaders Believing the impossible About the war in Russia, the escalating conflict with China, and other seismic changes taking place in the world. This formed part of a broader debate about the current state of Western leadership, not just in the political arena, but in many fields and areas.
- of A role that is largely ignored Over the past two years, corporations have been profiting from stoking inflation, and most media sites have focused their (and their readers’) attention on the relationship between rising wages and inflation, just as central banks and their core supporters would have you believe.
- The (also largely ignored) benefits of non-pharmaceutical interventions (ventilation, masks, etc.) in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic. Over the past four and a half years, Lambert has painstakingly documented these important aspects of public health and the criminal, eugenic indifference to them by public health authorities.
- COVID-19 vaccines have limited and fast fading efficacy against anything but wild COVID. When Pfizer executives revealed in testimony before the European Parliament that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine had never been tested for its ability to prevent COVID infection before it was brought to market, most people were shocked. But not regular NC readers, who have known this inconvenient truth for a long time thanks to the great work of NC’s COVID-19 Brain Trust, which has analyzed the COVID-19 vaccine trial data and translated it into layman’s terms (special thanks to IM-Doc).
- The potential benefits of off-patent medicines and supplements (including, of course, I-drugs) for treating COVID-19 (which are not only widely ignored but also massively censored). As Eve wrote in a January 2022 article, “COVID: The story is collapsing“The US should be ashamed that third world countries are doing better by sending their citizens care packs that include diagnostic and treatment kits, thermometers, blood oximeters, testing kits, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, fever reducers and sometimes antidepressants.”
- Michael Hudson’s always informative podcasts and articles on how geopolitics and economics intertwine, and sometimes clash, in today’s increasingly multipolar world.
- Talk of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) potentially revolutionizing the economy (and just about everything else) is finally starting to go mainstream.
- The risks posed by digital ID programs being rolled out around the world, from the EU to Russia, China, Canada and many countries in the so-called Global South.
- Conor Gallagher has doggedly reported on the German government’s relentless campaign to destroy the German economy, as well as many other major events in Europe and the Caucasus.
- An interesting and in-depth series of articles by Satyajit Das on the future of energy and the current quagmire in the Middle East.
- KLG brings you engaging essays on the state of science today every two weeks.
I’ll leave it to the commentators to elaborate further…
