A journalist who testified about alleged government censorship Thursday described the rise of a “censorship-industrial complex” funded with American tax dollars to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“It was a very disturbing event, as you pointed out. They then proceeded to demand to know who our sources were, which of course, we were unwilling to share with them,” journalist Michael Shellenberger told Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller News Foundation. (RELATED: Jim Jordan Spars With Dem Rep Over Censorship Of ‘Lawful Speech’ On Twitter)
“It’s important to remember the context here,” Shellenberger continued. “We were revealing here this is way beyond woke censorship within Twitter, we have now discovered a censorship-industrial complex that includes government-funded entities that are doing state-sponsored censorship.”
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Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi testified during a hearing held by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government Thursday, describing the findings from multiple reports based on documents provided by Elon Musk, who purchased the social media site in October 2022. The FBI reportedly paid Twitter $3.5 million between October 2019 and February 2021, according to Shellenberger.
“They are now seeking widespread use of artificial intelligence to censor accurate information. We’ve now seen Facebook and Twitter caught censoring accurate information about coronavirus vaccinations because they were worried that it would lead to vaccine hesitancy,” Shellenberger said.
“The story has really evolved, and there is much more to say on it we are still discovering quite a bit of information, but what you’re basically seeing here is the rise of a for-profit censorship industry funded by American taxpayers to censor real-world information,” Shellenberger continued.
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