Recently, New York University [NYU] published a “study” called “False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives.” Right off of the bat, the title sounds nothing like a typical academic study. It sounds like a headline from MSNBC or Huffington Post.
The authors of the “study” openly admit that social media companies don’t publish data on who they have censored, so they have no way of verifying the claims they are making! Tucker Carlson dissected the “study” on Fox News.
Page 2 of the study states, “We extend special thanks to Craig Newmark and Craig Newmark Philanthropies for continued guidance and financial support.” Craig Newmark is the only person listed as a financier of the study.
Craig Newmark is the founder of Craigslist, launched in 1996. He still owns 42% of the company. Ironically, Newmark is highly controversial for maintaining a section of Craigslist for prostitutes to advertise illegal services. It was called “erotic services.” One study alleges that the introduction of Craig Newmark’s Craigslist increased prostitution nationwide by nearly 20%.
Craig Newmark enjoyed legal protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, claiming that he could not be responsible for people advertising illegal services on his website because it was an open platform.
However, legal threats mounted as Craigslist faced accusations of facilitating sex trafficking and underage prostitution. In 2009, Craigslist finally removed the “erotic services” prostitution section of the website. This only happened after the Attorney General of South Carolina vowed criminal charges if it was not. Even then, prostitutes continued to use the “personals” section until Craigslist finally cracked down in 2018 because the US Congress passed a new bill against sex trafficking. Despite his close association with the nationwide facilitation of illegal prostitution, Newmark has the audacity to operate something called the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership!
Craig Newmark is also a board member of the Center for Technology and Society [CTS]. The CTS is an entity of the far-left Anti-Defamation League [ADL], which explicitly advocates conservative political speech censorship online.
The Anti-Defamation League [ADL] has been at the forefront of advocating censorship in America for decades. More than anything, the group is notorious for going to war against Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and trying unsuccessfully to get the movie canceled. They did succeed in getting major distributors to boycott the film. However, this led to Gibson making even more money by self-distributing with his own company Icon Films (with assistance by Newmarket Films).
However, the ADL is an extremely wealthy organization, and the media is on their side. Public records show that in 2017, the ADL raised nearly 72 million dollars to fund its operations. They have been at the forefront of advocating online censorship. The ADL alleges they have been combatting “cyber-hate” since the days of dialup Bulletin Board Systems [BBS] in the 1980s. In the early days of the world wide web, the ADL distributed free “hate filters” to schools, libraries, and Universities. The ADL would slip mainstream conservative websites into these filters.
The NYU study that denies social media platforms are censoring conservatives was funded by a board member for the ADL’s CTS, whose goal is to censor conservatives. A man who became wealthy operating a website that facilitated illegal prostitution nationwide for over a decade.
