Free Republic

The Senate Judiciary Committee made an odd move out of the gate this year, passing an enormously consequential antitrust bill aimed at a handful of the biggest U.S. tech companies in spite of bipartisan agreement that the bill isn’t ready for primetime. Not only will this bill fail to help consumers by “reining in Big Tech,” but it could also hurt them by detracting from U.S. global competitiveness. Concerns that the legislation, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), S. 2992, might threaten U.S. global tech leadership came from as ideologically diverse a crop of lawmakers as Senators Coons...

Two aging Canadian folk-singers, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, the Adam and Eve of the ’60s, are protesting again.Against what? China’s genocide against the Muslim Uighurs? No, something more ominous. They are joining forces — and leveraging their playlist fans — to pressure Spotify to deplatform Joe Rogan. If you are not up on the modern zeitgeist, Joe Rogan is the most influential voice in America today. Joe Rogan is the straw that stirs the national conversation. So much so that Spotify was happy to land him at the $100 million price point. It’s worth noting that Spotify did not...

Big Tech speech restrictions turned COVID-19 into the most pro-censorship environment in the U.S. at least since World War II. Media Research Center has found more than 800 examples of bans, deleted content, and other speech restrictions related to the virus, as well as to resultant vaccines masking and government policies. MRC Free Speech America tallied a whopping 808 total cases of COVID-19 censorship across a litany of Big Tech platforms between March 17, 2020, and Feb. 3, 2022, in its unique CensorTrack database. Those included Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Ads, TikTok and YouTube. The platforms restricted anyone from...

Conservatives have sat in paralysis for a good part of the past 25 years now not knowing how to address the left’s radical transformation of society that is canceling conservatives and forcing the left’s rules on everyone. Amazon bans our books and only a few people who are ridiculed compare it to George Orwell’s 1984. It’s because we think the takeover is being done by private corporations and actors in a free society, so we don’t know how to react. Most of us aren’t ready to call it communism or socialism; it doesn’t seem to violate the Constitution. The reality...

The Heritage Foundation released a damning report blasting censorship and showing that it has jumped fully into the fight against Silicon Valley speech controls. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts didn’t mince words about his organization’s commitment against Big Tech efforts to silence conservatives: “‘Big Tech is the enemy of the people.’” The Heritage report, headlined “Combating Big Tech’s Totalitarianism: A Road Map,” called for “aggressive reforms to ensure that Big Tech is held accountable, provide scrutiny and oversight, and constrain its ability to reshape society.”

Kyle Rittenhouse supporters were not allowed to fundraise on the website. Defending oneself against attacks by the Left’s pet protesters, it turns out, is not allowed. When Rittenhouse jumped to GiveSendGo, Discover credit card cut off the ability to give money to that fundraiser. You might want to make a note of that. A “Save America” rally fundraiser by a conservative couple to oppose COVID-19 mandates was cut off. Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire set up a fundraiser for Congresswoman Alexandria Cortez’s grandmother to buy a new ceiling. But it was cut off when “someone” informed the fundraising platform...

Breaking — Rumble offers Joe Rogan $100 million contract with ‘no censorship guarantee’… Posted by Kane on February 7, 2022 11:22 am Hey @joerogan, we are ready to fight alongside you. See the note from our CEO @chrispavlovski… pic.twitter.com/G7ahfNNjtP — Rumble (@rumblevideo) February 7, 2022 Rumble is making a play for Rogan. https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/rumble-rogan.jpg

Twitter launched a new tool that allows users to secretly downvote tweets to “better surface the most relevant content,” the platform said in an email to MRC Free Speech America. Twitter will be able to poison tweets that leftists don't like by moving negative replies to the top and burying favorable comments. The Verge published a report Feb. 4 headlined, “Twitter expands downvote test worldwide.” The platform initially gave the option to select web users, but will expand it to include iOS and Android users. “Unlike on sites like Reddit, total tallies for upvotes and downvotes aren’t public, but are...

Make no mistake, the recent Joe Rogan vs. Spotify scandal is not about COVID and what constitutes proper medical protocols to fight it. It’s about the future of free speech in America. White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s statement on Tuesday, directing Big Tech and Spotify to do “more” to eradicate alleged COVID “misinformation” on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, suggests that the future of the First Amendment is bleak. A representative of a ruling party dictating to a private company what content is “accurate” and what is not, is a clear sign that the US government has embraced censorship....

The following is a news analysis and commentary. By now, most people are familiar with the corporate and political interests that have taken hold of information through self-proclaimed "fact checks," and the one-sided censorship policies of Big Tech, often resulting in suppression of accurate information and promotion of false information. Finally, a medical authority is considering suing over the potentially dangerous practices. The case at hand involves the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and an impressive investigative article by journalist Paul Thacker, published last November. The article was entitled, "Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry...

Former President Donald Trump on Jan. 31 lamented that the United States resembles a communist nation under his successor, pointing to rampant inflation, diminishing freedoms, and the porous U.S.–Mexico border. “They’re destroying our country. They’re making us a different country. We’re becoming like a socialist or a communist state,” Trump told former top White House aide Kash Patel on his EpochTV’s “Kash’s Corner” program. The interview will premiere at 8 p.m. Eastern on Feb. 7.“Why would they want to have a weak military? Why would they want to have high interest rates and higher taxes? And why would they want...

Facebook's user numbers declined for the first time in its history last quarter.Facebook's parent company Meta reported daily active user numbers of 1.929 billion over the last three months of 2021. In Q3 of 2021, it reported an average of 1.93 billion active users. This means it lost roughly 1 million users over that period.Facebook stock plunged 22% in premarket trading following its Q4 earnings.CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the company's earnings call that the company's social-media business is facing stiff competition.

When U.S. President Joe Biden accused Facebook of "killing people" by spreading vaccine lies in July, many experts and researchers hoped it marked the beginning of a White House battle against a flood of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic coursing through the United States. Six months later, the deluge of misinformation continues and entities combating harmful information want the White House to do more. COVID-19 deaths recently hit their highest in almost a year, with over 2,600 people dying on average each day. U.S. studies show the unvaccinated are dying at much higher rates than those with jabs and boosters....

Did Big Tech get a little smaller? The Washington Post reports on a “startling” loss of active subscribers at Meta/Facebook — enough of a loss for investors and advertisers to take a big notice. Whatever the reason, Facebook’s active-subscriber numbers are falling by mid-six figures a day globally. Has the social-media giant become passé? Facebook parent Meta’s quarterly earnings report on Wednesday revealed a startling statistic: For the first time ever, the company’s growth is stagnating around the world. Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history — falling by about half a million users in...

Note: VIdeo Google software engineer-turned-whistleblower Zach Vorhies rips open the soft censorship practices disguised by the tech goliath behind its algorithms for producing search results. He’s risked his own personal safety to bring to light the search engine’s manipulative practices. Each day, over 3 billion searches are conducted using Google. How DO we know whether results are catering to, or directing us?

Full title: As Neil Young, Joni Mitchell leave in protest of Joe Rogan’s podcast, Spotify loses more than $2.1 billion in market value: report ... Per the report, Spotify shares “fell %6 from Jan. 26-28. Over the same time period, the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 1.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.1%.”

The irony being half the video is about Youtubes' TOS and confusion regarding it

On Tuesday, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy offered insight into the purpose of Big Tech.Apparently, it’s censorship.Vivek’s comments concerned — in part — America’s most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan.If you’ve never given Joe’s show a listen, I highly recommend it. He truly has an open mind, and he hosts interesting people whose opinions run the gamut.That’s something Vivek doesn’t appear to appreciate, if a guest’s assertions run afoul of approved COVIDology.As reported by The Post Millennial, the government official was asked by MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski about coronavirus claims on Joe’s show.“[Joe]…has frequently promoted unproven methods for treating COVID-19 and downplayed...

YouTube on Wednesday permanently banned conservative commentator Dan Bongino from the platform, saying he attempted to evade a previous suspension. The Fox host uploaded a video to his main channel while his secondary channel, which primarily hosted short clips from his digital radio show, was actively suspended for violating YouTube’s COVID-19 misinformation policy.

The Washington State Attorney General is filing a lawsuit Monday against Google, claiming it secretly tracks consumer locations. Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s lawsuit is set to file at King County Superior Court and says Google continues to track consumers even after they turn off location tracking settings. "If you go to the trouble on your phone, and actually disable location tracking, you think, well, they're not going to track you anymore," Ferguson said in an interview with KOMO News. "Well, guess what? Google has a back-end way to still track you. Even when you affirmatively check the box saying I...