Free Republic

Facebook is going to start fact checking, labeling, and burying fake news and hoaxes in the News Feed, the company announced on Thursday. The decision comes after Facebook received heated criticism for its role in spreading a deluge of political misinformation during the U.S. presidential election. To combat fake news, Facebook has partnered with a shortlist of media organizations, including Snopes and ABC News, that are part of an international fact-checking network lead by Poynter, a nonprofit school for journalism located in St. Petersburg, Florida. Starting as a test with a small percentage of its users in the United States, Facebook will make it easier to...

China's Ministry of Culture on Tuesday ordered all operators of live streaming platforms in China to apply for a permit from relevant authorities, which shall clearly state that its business scope includes "online performance". ... It means live streaming platforms in China, which normally hire individual performers to interact with their thousands of users, are now under strict supervision from at least three major Chinese regulatory departments. Operators that are incapable of censoring their own content are not allowed to provide live streaming, according to the Chinese regulators. Apart from close monitoring of these service providers, performers on the live...

video 15:51 Russian propaganda, fake news, HR 6393 Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 ....etc.

While the official meme promoted by the left-stream media is that President-Elect Donald Trump is a threat to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, a story reported by MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski points in the opposite direction. The co-host of the cable news network’s “Morning Joe” program related a pre-election day incident in which an irate Hillary Clinton campaign official contacted MSNBC executives demanding that she be punished for criticizing the candidate’s “taking the election for granted.” “The thing is, I was worried that Hillary might lose the election and was trying to help her make a small course...

Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles. “These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations,” Portman explained, adding that while the U.S. spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides enormous funding for its news organization, RT.“Surprisingly,” Portman continued, “there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department...

The award-winning "Dear Future Mom" video featuring children with Down Syndrome making the case for the value of their lives was banned from TV by France's Conseil d'État (State Council). According to the Council, the video was deemed "too insensitive" since it was "likely to trouble the consciences of women who had made different personal life choices" (i.e., had aborted babies predicted to have Down Syndrome). Council spokesman Henri Abattage defended the ban, maintaining that "our decision is in keeping with public perceptions of what is right. There's a reason why 90% of the pregnancies afflicted with this syndrome end...

Oleg Atbashian, the gifted satirist and artist who founded The People’s Cube, has written a classic essay that deserves the widest possible circulation. How I Became a Thoughtcriminal is a personal account of growing up in the Soviet Union and discovering censorship, leaving it behind, and rediscovering it here. This is chapter one of the story:

Portman/Murphy Bill Promotes Coordinated Strategy to Defend America, Allies Against Propaganda and Disinformation from Russia, China & Others WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that their Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations – has passed the Senate as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by Senators Portman and Murphy in March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and...

"I don’t know how to begin to write about what I consider to be a turning point on the restriction of free speech on our precious Internet. I just discovered that YouTube has censored some videos of one of the best citizen journalists on the Net: David Seaman. He is one of the most reputable and honorable journalists on YouTube…I will mourn the loss of his material and the assault on our First Amendment Rights. So be it…God is in control, and He will guide those of us who trust Him..."

France’s socialist government is attempting to crack down on pro-life activists by criminalizing online advocacy at odds with the nation’s abortion regime. On Thursday, the French National Assembly passed a bill that makes it a crime to post information online that challenges abortion. Pro-life activists who continue to operate online face up to two years in prison and a fine of more than $30,000.

(Reuters) — Web giants YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft will step up efforts to remove extremist content from their websites by creating a common database. The companies will share ‘hashes’ – unique digital fingerprints they automatically assign to videos or photos – of extremist content they have removed from their websites to enable their peers to identify the same content on their platforms.   “We hope this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency as we continue to enforce our policies to help curb the pressing global issue of terrorist content online,” the companies said in a statement on Tuesday....

Much to my surprise, I showed up in the WikiLeaks releases before the election. In a 2014 email, a staffer at the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta in 2003, took credit for a campaign to have me eliminated as a writer for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website. In the email, the editor of the think tank’s climate blog bragged to one of its billionaire donors, Tom Steyer: “I think it’s fair [to] say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538.”

The president-elect of the United States is a notorious troll — a fact which his promise to ban Muslims from entering the country, threat to imprison and strip Americans of citizenship for exercising their First Amendment rights, and widespread insulting of people online all make clear. We now learn via Slate that the two technology platforms Donald Trump uses most prominently to spread his messages of hate and division, Twitter and Facebook, take a very different stance on how to respond to future instances of harassment by Trump. Namely, Twitter says it would consider suspending his account. Facebook, which CEO...

Social media website Reddit Inc, known for its commitment to free speech, will crack down on online harassment by banning or suspending users who target others, starting with those who have directed abuse at Chief Executive Steve Huffman. Huffman said in an interview with Reuters that Reddit's content policy prohibits harassment, but that it had not been adequately enforced. "Personal message harassment is the most cut and dry," he said. "Right now we are in an interesting position where my inbox is full of them, it's easy to start with me." As well as combing through Huffman's inbox, Reddit will...

Article cannot be posted to FR. Link to the article is here. Summary: Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud owns 34.9 million shares of Twitter stock. Jack Dorsey, Twitter's co-founder and CEO, only owns 21.86 million shares. Links to the official filings substantiating these numbers are within the article linked above.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has confessed to modifying the posts of some users on the most visible Donald Trump-supporting "subreddit" community after they repeatedly slung verbal abuse in his direction.  The story begins earlier this week, when The New York Times published a report on Comet Ping Pong, a Washington DC pizza place that a false news item on social media had pegged as the center of a child-abuse ring run by Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee chair John Podesta, despite a lack of any evidence.Following that report, Reddit took steps to shut down the "r/Pizzagate" subreddit community, which...

The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block what it calls “fake news,” but the Times ignores its own record of publishing “fake news,” ___ In its lead editorial on Sunday, The New York Times decried what it deemed “The Digital Virus Called Fake News” and called for Internet censorship to counter this alleged problem, taking particular aim at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for letting “liars and con artists hijack his platform.” As this mainstream campaign against “fake news” quickly has gained momentum in the past week, two false items get cited repeatedly, a...

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has cultivated relationships with China’s leaders, including President Xi Jinping. He has paid multiple visits to the country to meet its top internet executives. He has made an effort to learn Mandarin. Inside Facebook, the work to enter China runs far deeper. The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network...

Since @Twitter is now in the #censorship business, I will no longer use its service for my constitutional right to free speech. #GoodbyeAll

Full title: College liberals think people who voted for Trump and Brexit are dumb but letting them brainwash our society is what's stupid ...Outraged at the prospect of a right-winger speaking freely at a state-funded school, the Department for Education's counter-extremism unit stuck on its full riot gear announcing Milo posed a threat to both the security and reputation of the school. Rather than let the 220 pupils who had signed up to hear him speak, listen, challenge him and make up their own minds, it was decided that exposing pupils to anything other than a liberal viewpoint could be...