Censorship Industrial Complex

Extracted Attributes

• Primary Tactics

  Debanking, Demonetization, Content Moderation, Shadowbanning

• Targeted Content

  Disinformation, criticism of mass migration policies, and COVID-19 skepticism

• Conceptual Origin

  Expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex

• Core Participants

  Government agencies, government-funded NGOs, academic institutions, and Big Tech platforms

• Key Regulatory Frameworks

  Online Safety Act (UK), Digital Services Act (EU), Section 230 (US)

Timeline

• Roots of the complex established during the War on Terrorism in the United States. (Source: [PDF] Censorship Industrial Complex - Document Repository)

  2001-09-11

• U.S. government agencies launch a disinformation war against ISIS recruitment, further developing information control techniques. (Source: [PDF] Censorship Industrial Complex - Document Repository)

  2015-01-01

• Facebook increases censorship of anti-vaccine content and the lab leak theory following pressure from the Biden Administration. (Source: [PDF] the censorship-industrial complex: how top biden white house)

  2021-02-01

• Internal Facebook emails reveal the White House pressured the platform to remove negative opinions about vaccines and satirical content. (Source: [PDF] the censorship-industrial complex: how top biden white house)

  2021-07-01

• Michael Shellenberger provides testimony to Congress defining the Censorship Industrial Complex and its mission. (Source: [PDF] Censorship Industrial Complex - Document Repository)

  2022-03-09

• The House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government holds a hearing on the Censorship Industrial Complex. (Source: The Censorship Industrial Complex - Senate Judiciary Committee)

  2023-03-28

• The Stanford Internet Observatory shuts down following public exposes and legal pressure regarding its role in censorship. (Source: [PDF] THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX HEARING - GovInfo)

  2024-06-01

• President Donald Trump signs an Executive Order on Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship. (Source: [PDF] THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX HEARING - GovInfo)

  2025-01-20

Industrial complex

The industrial complex is a socioeconomic concept wherein businesses become entwined in social or political systems or institutions, creating or bolstering a profit economy from these systems. Such a complex is said to pursue its own interests regardless of, and often at the expense of, the best interests of society and individuals. Businesses within an industrial complex may have been created to advance a social or political goal, but mostly profit when the goal is not reached. The industrial complex may profit financially, or ideologically, from maintaining socially detrimental or inefficient systems. Virtually all institutions in sectors ranging from agriculture, medicine, entertainment, and media, to education, criminal justice, security, and transportation, began reconceiving and reconstructing in accordance with capitalist, industrial, and bureaucratic models with the aim of realizing profit, growth, and other imperatives. According to Steven Best, all these systems interrelate and reinforce one another. The concept of the military–industrial complex has been also expanded to include the entertainment and creative industries as well. For an example in practice, Matthew Brummer describes Japan's Manga Military and how the Ministry of Defense uses popular culture and the moe that it engenders to shape domestic and international perceptions. An alternative term to describe the interdependence between the military-industrial complex and the entertainment industry is coined by James Der Derian as "Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network". Ray McGovern extended this appellation to Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, MICIMATT.

Web Search Results

• [PDF] Censorship Industrial Complex - Document Repository

  been much better able to control. In fact, with Section 230 protection, the censorship industrial complex may exert significantly more control over social media platforms, with their strict legal liability, than over news organizations. Whatever the final outcome, the direction of travel is clear: the censorship industrial complex seeks to restrict freedom of speech to narrow the public debate to exclude views that it regards as “delegitimizing.” The censorship complex employs various tactics. One is the relentless demand for censorship, as we saw with the Twitter Files and the Facebook Files, released by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana. Another is directing government and philanthropic money toward research and advocacy for greater censorship of social media platforms, [...] Whatever Congress does, it is incumbent upon the American people to wake up to the threat of government censorship via behind-the-scenes pressure on media corporations. “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” Eisenhower noted, “can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.” Shellenberger Testimony March 9, 2022 p. 8 The Censorship Industrial Complex Today Definition and Mission The censorship industrial complex is a network of ideologically-aligned governmental, NGO, and academic institutions that discovered over the last few years the power of censorship to protect their own interests against the volatility and risks of the democratic process. They are not [...] public opinion. Walter Lippmann in 1922 talked of the need for the government and industry leaders to utilize more advanced techniques through the mass media to “manufacture Shellenberger Testimony March 9, 2022 p. 32 consent.” In a 1988 book of a similar title, Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky documented how U.S. news media uncritically cheerled the national security establishment, with few exceptions. For three additional decades, this arrangement worked, including with Internet 1.0, itself a product of the national security establishment, particularly DoD and DARPA. The censorship complex has its roots in the war on terrorism, which began after September 11, 2001, and ran through to the 2015 disinformation war against ISIS recruitment by U.S. government agencies. In other words, its roots

• [PDF] THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX HEARING - GovInfo

  checking the company had outsourced to others. Thanks in large measure to work of this Committee, the Sub-committee on the Weaponization of Government last year, as well as to the investigative reporting by those of us here today, we were able to shine some light on some of the worst actors in the Censor-ship Industrial Complex such as the Stanford Internet Observ-atory, which I singled out in my testimony two years ago. In June of last year, the observatory shut down in response to our collective exposes. Unfortunately, the Censorship Industrial Complex remains al-most entirely intact in Europe, Australia, Britain, Brazil, and other Nations in the West continue to seek new forms of censorship and information control including digital identification tied to social media. My colleagues and [...] government contractors in-cluding the Stanford Internet Observatory, and Big Tech social media platforms that conspire to censor ordinary Americans and elected officials alike for holding disfavored views. Today, the Censorship Industrial Complex is on the defensive. On January 20, 2025, just hours after his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship. One week earlier, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced we are going to dramatically re-duce the amount of censorship on our platform. Zuckerberg an-nounced that he and Meta would follow the lead of Elon Musk at X and create crowd sourced fact checking in his ‘‘Community Notes’’ to replace much of the fact checking the company had outsourced to others. Thanks in [...] identification tied to social media. My colleagues and I have been over two years into our re-search characterizing the Censorship Industrial Complex, and we continue to discover whole new institutions involved in censorship. The latest is the United States Agency for International Develop-ment or USAID. Last October, we published a report that noted that USAID had funded the creation of a Censorship Industrial Complex in Brazil complete with third-party fact checkers, commit-tees of experts in charge of deciding for the entire society what the truth is on any given issue. After I published the ‘‘Twitter Files— Brazil,’’ last spring, the Attorney General of Brazil opened a for-mal, criminal investigation of me which is still ongoing. In 2021, USAID even published a so-called

• Michael Shellenberger – The Censorship-Industrial Complex

  Michael worries that the panoply of social, political, and environmental problems we’re now facing threaten the very fabric of civilization. He lists an increasing acceptance of censorship among Democrats as one of those threats. Yet the rise of social media has blurred the line between “speech” and “action” in ways that challenge our traditional ways of thinking about the 1st Amendment. Michael worries about what he calls the “Censorship-Industrial Complex”—the collusion between government agencies and tech companies—in suppressing online speech. His concerns aren’t merely technological. He worries that movements like Black Lives Matter have ginned up a kind of nihilism that’s eating away at the basic interpersonal civility that holds society together. What’s needed, he says, is a [...] The Glenn Show Michael Shellenberger – The Censorship-Industrial Complex Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -1:09:58 -1:09:58 ## Michael Shellenberger – The Censorship-Industrial Complex Glenn Loury Apr 08, 2024 My guest this week is Michael Shellenberger, author of several books—including San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities—CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at the University of Austin, and proprietor of the Substack Public. Michael’s concerns as a journalist run the gamut from the decay of cities under progressive administrations, environmental extremism, social media’s collusion with censorious government agencies, free speech, and the dangers of totalitarianism. [...] that holds society together. What’s needed, he says, is a broad-based coalition that will push back against these forces and safeguard the tenets of American liberal democracy.

• The Censorship Industrial Complex - Senate Judiciary Committee

  Skip to content Senator Facebook Twitter Instagram Home Logo Link 1. Committee Activity 2. Hearings Subcommittee on The Constitution # The Censorship Industrial Complex Type: Subcommittee Hearing Date: Time: 02:00pm Location: Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226 Presiding: Chairman Schmitt ## Witnesses ### Mollie Hemingway Editor-in-Chief The Federalist Washington, DC Download Testimony ### Jonathan Turley J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law The George Washington University Law School Washington, DC Download Testimony ### Benjamin Weingarten Investigative Journalist and Columnist Essex Fells, NJ Download Testimony ### Mary Anne Franks

• [PDF] the censorship-industrial complex: how top biden white house

  could provide before the policy had been finalized.10 The White House gushed: “at first blush, seems like a great step.”11 • The Biden White House’s Censorship Campaign Targeted True Information, Satire, and Other Content that Did Not Violate the Platforms’ Policies. Contrary to their claims of wanting to combat alleged so-called “misinformation” and foreign disinformation, the Biden Administration pressured the companies to censor true information, satire, memes, opinions, and Americans’ personal experiences. o For example, internal July 2021 Facebook emails obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee show that Facebook understood that the Biden White House’s position as wanting “negative information on or opinions about the vaccine” removed as well as “humorous or satirical [...] or noted a fear that things could “spiral[] out of control.”20 And while there is a difference in how long and in what ways each company succumbed to the White House’s pressure, by September 2021, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon had each adopted new content moderation policies that removed or reduced viewpoints and content disfavored by the Biden White House.21 The Facebook Files. In February 2021, Facebook increased its censorship of anti-vaccine content as well as the lab leak theory of the origin of the virus because of “tense conversations with the new [Biden] Administration” and as part of an effort to be responsive to the Biden White House’s exhortations to “do more” to combat alleged misinformation.22 After a few months, Facebook realized the White House cared more about censoring [...] from “abridging the freedom of speech.”37 Thus, “any law or government policy that reduces that freedom on the [social media] platforms . . . violates the First Amendment.”38 To inform potential legislation, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have been investigating the Executive Branch’s collusion with third-party intermediaries to censor speech. The Committee and Select Subcommittee have uncovered other serious violations of the First Amendment throughout the Executive Branch during the Biden Administration.39 The Committee and the Select Subcommittee are responsible for investigating “violation[s] of the civil liberties of citizens of the United States.”40 In accordance with this mandate, this interim staff report on the Biden White House’s violations of the First Amendment and