Big Tech project to judge 'truthfulness' of online information

[Stone]

Microsoft heads Big Tech project to judge truthfulness of online information

Critics view the Big Tech coalition's 'content provenance specifications' as the makings of a dystopian future in which free thought is effectively banned.

February 23, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Several of the world’s largest tech and media companies have joined forces in a new globalist effort to combat “disinformation, misinformation and online content fraud” in a move that has raised concerns about the complete governance of the internet.

A press release issued February 22 by Microsoft stated that the computer and software company would be joined by Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel, Microsoft, and Truepic, who would together form the “Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).” The C2PA would have as its aim the tackling of what Microsoft termed the “prevalence of disinformation, misinformation and online content fraud through developing technical standards for certifying the source and history or provenance of media content.”

In order to effect this, the C2PA announced its plan to “establish a standardized provenance solution with the goal of combating misleading content.” Under the “solution” mentioned, the C2PA seeks to enable vast numbers of internet users to take part in locating any piece of information deemed “misinformation.” The statement reads: “C2PA member organizations will work together to develop content provenance specifications for common asset types and formats to enable publishers, creators and consumers to trace the origin and evolution of a piece of media, including images, videos, audio and documents.”

C2PA’s announcement pointed to the nature of the internet necessitating such an organization to build “trust” and stressed the need for collaboration among companies, whose purview extended to nearly all corners of the digital world: “Collaboration with chipmakers, news organizations, and software and platform companies is critical to facilitate a comprehensive provenance standard and drive broad adoption across the content ecosystem.”

The C2PA is not a novel idea, as Microsoft acknowledges that it builds upon the similar, pre-existing Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) and Project Origin. The latter is a joint effort of Microsoft, the BBC, CBC/Radio Canada, and the New York Times. These four organizations referred to the “growing threat” of “misinformation” and wrote that Project Origin would “establish a foundation for trust in media.”

“With the foundation of the C2PA, technical standards will be unified while these two entities [CAI and Project Origin] continue to pursue adoption, prototyping and education within their respective communities,” Microsoft announced.

Microsoft’s chief scientific officer and Project Origin executive sponsor Eric Horvitz mentioned that there was a “critical need to address widespread deception in online content.” In a blog post about the C2PA, Horvitz revealed that the organization is a brain child of the 2019 Davos meeting, the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting to organize and promote globalist agendas and social engineering.

Horvitz wrote that a key part of the “fight against disinformation is to develop and field technologies for certifying the origin, authenticity and history of online media.” With the arrival of the C2PA, headed by the U.K. news group BBC and software company Microsoft, online media looks set to be subject to the certifying, and authentication of organisations which are part of the C2PA, or merely conform to its directives and standards.

Such news of the formation of C2PA met with backlash from some online, as people were quick to comment on the potential dangers of the new organization. “‘Combat disinformation’ = ‘information we deem fit to be released to the pleb’,” wrote one Twitter user.

Irish media outlet Gript noted that the plans to vet information on the internet raise “all sorts of potential issues surrounding the accuracy and trustworthiness of so-called “official” information.” Gript noted the example of the World Health Organization’s messages in early January 2020 claiming that there was no evidence of any person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 before having to change its “official” statements shortly after.

The formation of the C2PA comes shortly after an opinion piece in the New York Times, one of the four members of the C2PA’s parent group Project Origin, advocated for the appointing of a “reality czar,” who would “tackle disinformation and domestic extremism.” The author, Kevin Roose, called for U.S. president Joe Biden to appoint someone who would solve what Roose styled a “reality crisis,” particularly with regard to COVID-19 and the recent U.S. presidential election.

One of the “experts” Roose appealed to in making his self-confessed “dystopian” argument mentioned how a “centralized task force” would join with “tech platforms” and thus “push for structural changes that could help those companies tackle their own extremism and misinformation problems.”

Only days before, Fox News host Tucker Carlson had warned that a “profound change” was taking place due to moves by the Biden regime to eradicate “forbidden ideas” — namely, those held especially by conservatives. “Your mind belongs to you. It is yours and yours alone,” stated Carlson. “Once politicians attempt to control what you believe, they are no longer politicians. They are by definition, dictators. And if they succeed in controlling what you believe, you are no longer a citizen. You are not a free man. You are a slave.”

Big Tech is increasingly censoring conservative and pro-life voices, particularly since the November presidential election. LifeSiteNews itself was recently completely banned from YouTube, resulting in the deletion of all videos from the channel, which had over 300,000 followers.

[Emphasis mine.]