Pompeo says U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said late on Monday that the United States is “certainly looking at” banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok. “I don’t want to get out in front of the President (Donald Trump), but it’s something we’re looking at,” Pompeo said in an interview with Fox News. U.S. lawmakers have raised national security concerns over TikTok’s handling of user data, saying they were worried about Chinese laws requiring domestic companies “to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”

The app, which is not available in China, has sought to distance itself from its Chinese roots to appeal to a global audience and has emphasized its independence from China. Pompeo’s remarks also come amid increasing U.S.-China tensions over the handling of the coronavirus outbreak, China’s actions in Hong Kong and a nearly two-year trade war. TikTok, a short-form video app owned by China-based ByteDance, was recently banned in India along with 58 other Chinese apps after a border clash between India and China. Reuters reported late on Monday that TikTok would exit the Hong Kong market within days, deciding to do so after China’s establishment of a sweeping new national security law for the semi-autonomous city.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tiktok-china-pompeo/pompeo-says-u-s-looking-at-banning-chinese-social-media-apps-including-tiktok-fox-idUSKBN2480DF

SEVP modifies temporary exemptions for nonimmigrant students taking online courses during fall 2020 semester

WASHINGTON – The Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) announced modifications Monday to temporary exemptions for nonimmigrant students taking online classes due to the pandemic for the fall 2020 semester. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to publish the procedures and responsibilities in the Federal Register as a Temporary Final Rule.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-exemptions-nonimmigrant-students-taking-online-courses-during

>>9881227

Indeed, each of us should shine in our own counties, where the best of the best can teach the rest.

Trump critics using copyright laws to target tweets

Where boycotts and allegations of inciting violence or hatred have failed to get Big Tech to silence President Trump, copyright complaints have proven to be a much more successful weapon. Facebook altered policies about election content in response to boycotts and Twitter has restricted the visibility of some of the president’s tweets in response to growing complaints, but total removal of the president’s content has been accomplished largely by adversaries charging copyright infringement. Twitter removed an image from one of Mr. Trump’s tweets last week after The New York Times complained, according to Harvard University’s Lumen database. Liberals such as Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California have tried and failed to get Twitter to delete Mr. Trump’s account, but The New York Times succeeded in getting content deleted according to Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Social media companies’ content enforcement decisions are protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but not under Section 512 of DMCA, said Jesse Blumenthal, Stand Together vice president and Charles Koch Institute director of technology and innovation.

“What happens when you have a notice-and-takedown system like 512 is there are massive incentives for Twitter as a company to take something like that down if there’s even a slight chance it might be infringing,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “Because they have received notice, if they don’t take it down they’re liable for statutory damages.” If social media companies fail to act on DMCA complaints, they could be held liable for damages carrying six-figure penalties for each time someone accesses the copyrighted content. The high ceiling of potential monetary damages has made internet companies jump at many requests they might ignore if the content was questioned for any other reason. Last month, Twitter took down a Trump campaign ad after receiving a copyright complaint. “They are fighting hard for the Radical Left Democrats,” Mr. Trump tweeted of Twitter’s action. “A one-sided battle. Illegal. Section 230!” But Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied that the content removal was not illegal and done to comply with DMCA. In the interim, some of Mr. Trump’s prominent supporters have been felled by copyright complaints as well. Twitter removed prominent pro-Trump user @CarpeDonktum for allegedly repeatedly violating DMCA on its platform.

The company bringing the complaint against @CarpeDonktum, Jukin Media, had no ostensible anti-Trump mission, but it delivered a win for the president’s adversaries anyway. Tattletale mechanisms have been used by media companies with far less success outside the copyright realm. After the NBC News Verification Unit said it had alerted Google to potential violations of the search engine’s policies by the conservative Federalist website, Google sprung into action. Google threatened to remove the Federalist from its advertising platform but didn’t go through with it after the conservative website made changes to its comments section. Boycotts have similarly produced varying results. The Stop Hate for Profit campaign led by the Anti-Defamation League and NAACPS attracted some big-name participants such as Verizon and Hershey that were slow to follow through on a proposed boycott of Facebook ads. The boycott secured some changes to election-related content moderation but did not alter how the company intends to address Mr. Trump directly. Facebook Vice President Nick Clegg urged users to make themselves heard at the ballot box on Election Day rather than use Facebook to hold politicians accountable. Other tech titans are still pursuing ways of weaponizing tech against Mr. Trump. Reid Hoffman, a billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, said last week he has been looking at starting an anti-Trump boycott aimed at the president and has previously suggested he may spend upwards of $100 million against Mr. Trump’s reelection campaign.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/6/trump-critics-using-copyright-laws-to-target-tweet/

EXCLUSIVE: New foreign broadcasting chief cleans house, pushes pro-America reporting

Michael Pack moves fast in bid for greater accountability at U.S. broadcasters

The U.S. government’s foreign broadcasting services have suffered in recent years from a lack of leadership, and the Trump administration’s new broadcasting chief says he wants to fix the problem. Michael Pack, chief executive officer of the new U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), said more assertive news reporting, especially to China, is needed to counter foreign disinformation and to promote American ideals. Mr. Pack, a former television executive and documentary filmmaker, took over two weeks ago as the senior official in charge of the U.S. government network of media outlets that receive about $800 million annually in taxpayer funds to send news and information to closed states such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

“My plan here, and I think everybody in the White House and everybody else knows this, is to hold these agencies accountable to fulfilling their mission, and in [Voice of America’s] case, its charter, and that’s what I plan to do,” Mr. Pack, 66, said in an interview with The Washington Times. Voice of America, the flagship of U.S. government outlets, has a mandate under its charter to provide news and to present U.S. government policies “clearly and effectively” to foreign audiences. Other government-funded outlets under the USAGM are Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. In recent years, however, VOA has come under fire for shifting its focus from hard news and American views to what critics say is “fluff” soft news with little explanation of U.S. policies. The criticism reached an unusual level in April when a White House website posted a statement saying VOA “too often speaks for America’s adversaries — not its citizens.”

Dan Scavino, President Trump’s social media director, echoed the claims on Twitter. He said American taxpayers were “paying for China’s very own propaganda, via the U.S. government-funded Voice of America! DISGRACE!!” That in turn has fueled liberal complaints that the White House is trying to turn a broadcaster with a reputation for evenhandedness into a propaganda organ for the government.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/6/michael-pack-us-agency-global-media-ceo-cleans-hou/

>>9881440

I agree, Parlor seemingly is being pushed in the same way..

>>9881494

>>9881494

There is some interesting information about this company here:

#9743415 at 2020-06-25 19:09:56 (UTC+1)

Q Research General #12472: Watching the D Party Con Burn Edition

#12469

>>9741670 worth eyes: interdasting info on Parlor

Good News: Andrew Cuomo Investigated Andrew Cuomo, Found His Disastrous Nursing Home Policy Was Just Great

I’ve got good news. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York has conducted a thorough investigation of himself and found that sticking COVID-19 postive patients back into nursing homes had nothing to do with the mass carnage in those facilities. It was, according to his report, “other factors” that lead to the thousands of deaths in his state that did not occur in places like Florida and Texas. Nothing to see here. Well, that’s a relief.

ALBANY – In a self-examination of one of the most controversial public health policy decisions during the Covid-19 pandemic in New York, the Cuomo administration says its policy requiring nursing homes to admit coronavirus positive patients was not a “significant factor” in the thousands of deaths seen at the facilities across the state. The 33-page review released Monday by the state Health Department instead blamed Covid-19-positive staff and visitors who unknowingly infected the vulnerable population of nursing home patients, at least more than 6,000 of whom died in numbers that are not yet complete.

You got that? It wasn’t the large number of coronavirus infected older people forced back into these nursing homes that spread the virus. Rather, it was “visitors” and healthcare workers bringing the virus in that caused the massive total of deaths. If that doesn’t make sense to you, that’s because it’s obviously nonsense. While it’s possible that some family members infected people, visitors were banned from these facilities weeks before Cuomo’s fateful order. The spread of the virus proliferated long after March 25th as well. Further, per his own report, they have no data whatsoever to support the idea that visitors coming did this. There was a “high likelihood” that Covid-19-positive visitors came to nursing homes, though the report said there is “no specific data to support this assumption and so, ultimately, this is inconclusive.” Cuomo shut down visitation at nursing homes March 13, two weeks after the first confirmed case was revealed in New York.

Meanwhile, the staff of these facilities were overworked, having patients sick with a deadly disease shoved back into their care without the proper equipment and training to treat them. That’s 100% on Cuomo, who chose to send those patients back into long term care facilities because he completely failed at managing his emergency hospital capacity, some of which went largely unused (the Javits Center is an example). The report eventually tried to place most of the blame on healthcare workers in the nursing homes. The report is more clear about what it called the main spreader of Covid-19 in nursing homes: employees. It said nursing home industry data estimated that about 37,500 facility staffers tested positive between March 19 and early June. Nearly 7,000 of those people were working at nursing homes in March at a time when testing was far from widespread or even urged in some quarters. The report said that thousands of staffers “unknowingly” transmitted the virus in March – “through no fault of their own” – while at work at facilities upstate and downstate.

https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/07/06/good-news-andrew-cuomo-investigated-andrew-cuomo-and-found-his-nursing-home-policy-was-great/

https://buffalonews.com/news/cuomo-agency-report-other-factors-not-cuomo-policy-to-blame-for-nursing-home-deaths/article_208e37ba-bfbd-11ea-bad2-e343863b6186.html?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_TheBuffaloNews