Disinformation experts blast Trump's executive order on government censorship as 'direct assault on reality'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CNN Business

Published 8:12 AM EST, Wed January 22, 2025


New York CNN — One of President Donald Trump’s first actions as he returned to the Oval Office on Monday was signing an executive order aimed at “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship” of US citizens. The order bans federal officials from any conduct that “would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen” and instructs the attorney general to investigate if the Biden administration engaged in efforts to censor Americans.

“Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate,” the order states.

Right-wing media figures and some Republicans in Congress have for years decried what they claim are efforts by Democrats and technology platforms to censor their speech online, especially around the Covid-19 pandemic and elections. The Supreme Court ruled last year the US government can contact social media companies about mis- and disinformation swirling on their platforms, handing the Biden administration a major victory.

Nina Jankowicz, who briefly led the Biden administration’s disinformation board and is now CEO of the American Sunlight Project, said Trump’s order “has canonized lies and conspiracy theories about those responding to disinformation,” calling it “a direct assault on reality” that “emboldens both foreign actors and disinformation profiteers.”

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/22/media/trump-censorship-executive-order-disinformation/index.html

[durablend]

1. Meanwhile Trump smiles and shrugs

Knowing nobody's going to do anything about it.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

2. Propaganda is powerful. It would be far less so if

we had M$M that was less obsessed with $.

And, so very disappointingly to me, the www that was supposed to be a means to share knowledge has been perverted to be a means to disseminate lies, which have realistically been said to make a run all the way around the world before the facts get their sneakers on.

Also, lately, the www is a place to display endless & endlessly annoying ads. Gone are the many informational websites created by individuals passionate & knowledgeable about a subject who were happy to offer it for free.
First Wikipedia & now AI have stolen their work & even the ones that survived are hard to find. Google sure doesn't want us to see them.

[mahina]

5. The American Sunlight Project is good

https://www.americansunlight.org I only learned of it in this post.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

8. New to me. I'll check it out.

Thanks!

[Miguelito Loveless]

6. Wikipedia has stolen people's work?

Can you cite your source?

Wikipedia is an open source encyclopedia, run by a non-profit foundation and edited by volunteers. Even now the oligarchs are conspiring to suppress or buy it.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

7. My source is my own observations. Maybe "appropriated"

is a more accurate word. Everything on Wikipedia comes from other sources--mostly online. But the original source sites don't get visited.

By positioning themselves as the authoritative site for all info, Wikipedia has made themselves the first & only place most people go to get info & answers on any given topic.

Creators of the original sites from which Wikipedia draws their facts are virtually ignored. Even though their sites cover the topics in more depth and more visually interesting & creative formats, they are far, far lower in search results and so never even seen by most.

[Miguelito Loveless]

9. So, if I write an essay on topic A

and use a dozen cited sources as research for my essay, I am "appropriating" other people's work? I mean, in most circumstances, outside of academic papers/legal filings, how often are sources checked?

Maybe, I am weird, but I DO check citations on Wikipedia when I look up a topic. I use Wikipedia as a jumping off point in research, since it has a lots of good sources all in one place for the topic in question. Wikipedia is one of the few good things left on the Internet, everything else has been suborned or enshittified. Wikipedia's sourcing is far more reliable than Google, and other commercial search engines which are gamed by a variety of players.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

10. This article explains it better than I can:

Wikipedia - - Side Effects

[bucolic_frolic]

3. The truth vs. lies debate continues

[mahina]

4. American Sunlight Project

https://www.americansunlight.org

Thanks to this post I learned of this. I had no idea.