Free Republic

The United Kingdom has slapped 4Chan with a £20,000 (around $26,000) fine in a bid to clamp down on platforms that are hindering Online Safety Act (OSA) investigations. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom says the fine was issued after the controversial social media site ignored “legally-binding information requests” related to global revenue and its illegal harms risk assessment. Starting from tomorrow, 4Chan additionally faces a daily penalty of £100 (around $133) for either 60 days or until 4Chan complies with the information requests, up to a maximum of £6,000 (around $8,000). “Today sends a clear message that any service which flagrantly...

Whether by design or by quiet submission to a rapidly-evolving digital landscape, the world’s largest social media companies have allowed their platforms to become factories of division, dehumanization and, increasingly, real-world violence. What began as tools for connection have become engines of rage. It’s no accident. It’s business. At the heart of this transformation lies the engagement algorithm: a seemingly neutral mechanism that curates what billions of people see, like, share and believe. Algorithms are not neutral. They are engineered with a single purpose — to keep us on the platform, clicking, commenting and scrolling. In the race to capture...

Those Americans who insist that ‘it can’t happen here’ need to understand that it already is happening here. In an era where truth is increasingly subordinated to comfort, my colleague and a close friend, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff (an intrepid Austrian counter-jihad activist and human rights and free speech advocate), stands as a beacon of unyielding courage. Sabaditsch-Wolff has endured personal persecution for daring to voice historical facts that challenge prevailing sensitivities. Her October 2025 speech in Dallas, Texas, delivered amid global tensions over censorship and cultural shifts, serves as a stark warning: Free speech is not merely a right, but the...

‘It is time to return to a world where we can say what we wish without fear of being censored, or deplatformed, or shot dead’. The following remarks were submitted as written testimony at a hearing in front of the Senate Commerce Committee titled, “Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans” on Oct. 8, 2025.Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify on behalf of First Amendment speech and press rights and against authoritarian censorship designed to shut down the free speech rights of American citizens....

Spanish priest found guilty of ‘hate crime’ after criticizing Muslim persecution of ChristiansBarcelona priest Fr. Custodio Ballester was found guilty and now faces prison time for warning that ‘Islam does not allow dialogue’ with Christianity.Sentencing for a Spanish priest who this past week was found guilty of making “Islamophobic” comments more than seven years ago has Catholics as well as free speech advocates concerned.In February, Father Custodio Ballester was summoned by a regional court in Spain to respond to charges that he had committed a “hate crime” for calling attention to the unjust treatment Christians receive in Islamic majority countries.Ballester,...

SB-771 threatens to turn digital platforms into ideological enforcers, punishing those who hold traditional, faith-based viewpoints. California lawmakers are once again leading the charge — not toward progress, but toward repression. Their latest move, Senate Bill 771 (SB-771), is being packaged as a bold stand against “hate” on social media. In reality, it’s a direct assault on the free expression and constitutionally protected speech of ministries, minority groups, and faith-based organizations. The bill would force Big Tech to remove content that could be interpreted as “harassment” or “intimidation” based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, and more — or face...

Amazon is catching backlash again from 007 fans—this time for quietly editing classic James Bond movie posters on Prime Video and removing Bond’s guns.Posters Sanitized As shared by the SpyHards account on X, updated poster artwork for nearly every Bond film now omits Bond holding a gun. This includes posters for classics like Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye, and Skyfall, among others. The guns have simply been Photoshopped out (or through the use of AI). “Welcome to a world where promoting James Bond 007 needs to be done without his sidearm,” one fan wrote in response. You can view the images here:

Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger made waves this week when he discussed the crowdsourced website’s outright censorship of conservative voices via a blacklist of banned news outlets. For me, Sanger’s revelation came as no surprise: The news publication I founded and run, the Federalist, has been viciously censored by Wikipedia’s cabal of anonymous editors for more than a decade.We originally drew Wikipedia’s ire back in 2014 when we exposed left-wing darling Neil deGrasse Tyson as a serial fabulist and fabricator.At the time, the astrophysicist and professional bigmouth was going around the country giving talks about the ignorance and innumeracy of most...

Microsoft hosts ready-to-use political censorship software on its Azure Marketplace in China, further evidence of how the company has aided the development and implementation of the country’s repressive system of political control. An Associated Press investigation revealed American tech companies like Dell, IBM, and Microsoft are increasingly recognized to have played a pivotal role in the construction of the modern Chinese surveillance state over the last two decades by providing critical hardware and software. Less documented is the role some U.S. companies have played in enabling mass censorship. Microsoft in particular aids and abets censorship by the Chinese government far...

Tucker Carlson's most current interview of Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger (at https://x.com/i/status/1972716529608237173) brings up a nine-point list of Wikipedia policy reforms, of interest since the interview asserts that Wikipedia has a gargantuan influence, much greater than other media giants, on the total body of current knowledge--this in the information age. Question to ChatGPT: Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger maintains a 9-point list of reform measures for Wikipedia's policies at https://larrysanger.org/nine-theses/?utm_source=chatgpt.com#6-reveal-who-wikipedias-leaders-are. Presuming there will be no response from the Wikipedia governing body to item number 6, "Reveal who Wikipedia’s leaders are", is there a way for the identities of those anonymous leaders...

Most impressive compendium at 21:10: Jen Psaki: You shouldn't be banned from one platform, and not others, for providing misinformation out there... Tim Walz: There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformtion, or hate speech, and especially around our democracy Hillary Clinton: There are Americans who are engaged this kind of propaganda, ahh… and whether they should be civilly, or even in some cases criminally charged, is something that would be a better deterrent… John F. Kerry: If people go to only one source, and the source they go to is sick, and ah… you know, has an agenda, and...

A controversial bill awaiting California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature would slap steep new penalties on social media platforms that fail to censor content deemed in violation of the state’s civil rights laws. SB 771, which passed both chambers of the state legislature and was sent to Newsom’s desk on Monday, imposes fines of up to $1,000,000 on social media platforms that fail to remove content that violates the state’s civil rights laws. Critics warn the measure will lead to sweeping censorship of lawful speech. Lawmakers defended SB 771 by citing “rising incidents of hate-motivated harm,” including “hate crimes involving...

How does one of the world's most powerful companies please powerful Republicans — without actually doing that much? Mark Zuckerberg figured out that trick in the summer of 2024. That's when he sent a letter to Congress that sort-of-but-not-really apologized for behavior conservatives have accused Big Tech platforms of for years — but also said the real bad actors were Joe Biden and his administration. Now, we're seeing Google use the same playbook, with one twist, which we'll get to in a minute. But the very big picture is that Google, like Meta in 2024, is attempting to give a...

Google on Tuesday promised to restore YouTube accounts that have been banned for political speech, admitting that the Biden administration pressured it to censor Americans that did not violate the company’s terms of service, in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH). “Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” a lawyer representing Google wrote to Jordan. The letter would likely affect pro-Trump political commentators...

FIRST ON FOX: Google vowed on Tuesday to offer YouTube accounts that were permanently banned for political speech the ability to be reinstated, and the big tech giant admitted that it once faced pressure from the Biden administration to remove content about COVID-19. Google detailed its remarkable shift in a document, first obtained by Fox News Digital, that a lawyer for the company provided to the House Judiciary Committee. The new policy from Google, also known by its parent company Alphabet, could affect both average users and well-known figures like FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, White House counterterrorism chief Sebastian...

Here is Jimmy Kimmel doing his show during the Covid quarantine gloating over Trump being banned from social media outlets. Trump Booted from Twitter & Maybe the Presidency

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R) denied that President Donald Trump attacked free speech rights in a recent Oval Office question and answer session when he complained to the press about negative news stories.CNN's Dana Bash played video of Trump saying Friday, “When somebody is given, 97% of the stories are bad about a person that's no longer free speech, that's no longer anything, that's just cheating.”Clips of Harris, Hilary Clinton etc pushing hard for suppression of free speech for conservatives/banning conservatives from social media because they the Democrats didn't like what conservatives were saying. In fact Hilary and Harris threatened...

The Communications Act. The FCC was created by Congress in the Communications Act for the purpose of “regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communications service . . . .” (In this context, the word "radio" covers both broadcast radio and television.) The Communications Act authorizes the Commission to "make such regulations not inconsistent with law as...

The legacy media are now portraying multi-millionaire Jimmy Kimmel as a victim of censorship after ABC indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! for falsely linking Charlie Kirk’s suspected murderer to MAGA. The irony? Kimmel has repeatedly mocked actual victims of censorship, particularly those silenced by Big Tech. Let’s rewind to Jan. 8, 2021, when Kimmel gloated over Twitter’s permanent ban of then-President Donald Trump while he was still in office. “LIVE LOOK – Trump’s bathroom,” Kimmel sneered at the time, sharing a photoshopped image of Trump sitting on a toilet with a phone in hand, displaying the @realDonaldTrump Twitter profile as...

We’ve seen that Democrats don’t seem to understand some of the basic principles of the Constitution. Or perhaps, more accurately, don’t seem to care about complying with it. We’ve also seen that they don’t understand that Joe Biden isn’t king. He doesn’t get to declare, by unilateral fiat, the cancellation of student debt. That’s not within his Constitutional power, no matter what Democratic politicians may think. But they wanted to do it to pay off their base for their votes. So, they threw a tantrum on the steps of the Supreme Court. All they understand is that they should get...