patrick.net

MASSIVE! The US Dept of Homeland Security paid nearly $700,000 to a counter-terrorism NGO to "intercept and divert" Twitter/X traffic away from specific individuals in the manosphere.

@RationalMale
,
@Cobratate
,
@FreshandFitPod
among others were specifcally named as targets.

The DHS TVTP grant funding was given to Arizona State University, home of the McCain Institute. The purpose of the grant was to design a native tool to be used on Twitter to effectively suppress individuals in the manosphere by diverting their audiences away from their content towards "counter-messaging" content - websites, podcasts and creators curated by the McCain Institute to counter "hate speech and misinformation."

The US government has named the manosphere as one of the biggest terror threats facing the US. They claim this broad network is the main cause of (extremely isolated) acts of incel-related violence.

The conflation of incels with the broader manosphere as a justification for targeted counterterrorism ops, which can include aggressive surveillance and censorship, is part of a disturbing trend. The ever-broadening definitions of "terrorism" and "extremism" put forth by the US government poses a very real threat to the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.

EVEN WORSE - The grant application and resulting reports suggest a large-scale collaboration of tech giants, NGOs and US government agencies to design and implement tools to counter hate and disinformation by diverting web traffic away from specific individuals and communities deemed harmful.

What is "harmful content" according to the US government? White supremacy, anti-government views, foreign terror orgs (ie. ISIS), and the manosphere are the top 4 terror threats, according to the McCain Institute.

I wonder if they are the ones that took down Heartiste off of Wordpress.

Fortunately, it was archived so at least we still have that trove of wisdom:

https://heartiste.org/