Free Republic

In a little more than a year, the internet will face a major wave of regulation mostly targeted to protect data and fight misinformation. With the Jan. 1, 2024 implementation of the European Union’s Digital Services Act and the United Kingdom working on the Online Safety Bill, social networks and search engines will be subject to new requirements. The largest internet companies will face regulations that require them to perform annual transparency reports discussing how they recommend content to their users and allow researchers to access data to better understand risks and implement measures to counter illegal content. Still, regulation...

I can't stress this enough: at its core, Democratic politics is about criminalizing opposition to their party and ideology. Dissenting ideas are "disinformation" and must be censored by Big Tech. Trump voters are inherently criminal "("insurrectionists") and should be imprisoned.

More evidence of how vindictive, obsessive, and downright sinister Facebook is, now it appears to be monitoring private messages and suppressing material related to the whistleblower complaint of hero FBI special agent Steve Friend. After Friend’s bombshell revelations last week in a whistleblower complaint to the Department of Justice inspector general, his cause received an avalanche of public and private support, including from former FBI agents and conservative groups. As reported in this column, Friend’s complaint alleges that the FBI has been manipulating case-file management in order to falsely inflate the threat of domestic terrorism, and has been using unconstitutional...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has caved to the Democrats on legislation that would allow media organizations to create formal cartels to negotiate with Big Tech companies, several congressional aides and others familiar with the process told Breitbart News on Wednesday. If Cruz goes forward with his plans to back—and allow the senate to advance—the legislation, then he will immediately become one of the biggest enablers of the establishment media and Big Tech giants and he could seriously jeopardize his political future.

European Union, Excess mortality hits +16%, highest 2022 value so far UK latest excess death data, updated 16th September https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati... https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati... WE 2nd September 350 deaths involving COVID-19 (505 deaths registered, previous week) Total number of deaths registered in the UK 10,198, which was 7.4% above the five-year average 706 excess deaths in the week (Deaths involving COVID-19 accounted for 3.4% of all deaths) Excess mortality hits +16%, highest 2022 value so far https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/pro... Update, 16th September Data for July Climbed to +16% in July 2022 Highest so far in 2022 June, +7% May. +7% July, additional deaths The increase...

Supreme Court review of these laws will prove a victory for conservatism, as the originalist majority can cast aside evolving standards and return to the roots of the First Amendment.A Texas law prohibiting social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, from discriminating against users based on their speech does not violate the First Amendment, a federal appellate court held on Friday. Conservatives, whose speech represents the overwhelming target of censorship, are cheering the Fifth Circuit’s decision in NetChoice v. Paxton. A different federal court, however, struck down Florida’s law prohibiting Big Tech from censoring political speech, setting up a...

Yet another blow agnst the demented, controlling Big Tech demons. Guest: Dr Drew @drdrew (Twitter) www.drdrew.com Hosts: Tim @Timcast (everywhere) Ian @IanCrossland (everywhere) Luke @WeAreChange (everywhere) Lydia @sourpatchlyds (Twitter), sourpatchlyds.me

One of the biggest social media platforms in the world has allegedly been spying on the private messages and personal data of users who believe that voter fraud took place in the 2020 election, and has subsequently been handing this information over to the FBI. According to the New York Post, the alleged surveillance operation by Facebook and its coordination with the government was confirmed by several anonymous sources in the Department of Justice (DOJ). The sources allege that employees at Facebook have been red-flagging any suspicious private messages over the last 19 months, sending the information directly to the...

On Sept. 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed down a long-awaited ruling in NetChoice v. Paxton, upholding the constitutionality of a Texas law that greatly restricts the ability of large social media platforms to moderate content and imposes certain transparency requirements. NetChoice, a trade association, challenged the legislation on First Amendment grounds. The Fifth Circuit had previously stayed a preliminary injunction against the law issued by a district court, only for the Supreme Court to vacate the stay. In its ruling today finding the legislation constitutional, the appeals court found a key provision limiting content...

From the decision: "In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to “the freedom of speech.” But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech. The implications of the (Internet's) platforms’ argument are staggering. On the platforms’ view, email providers, mobile phone companies, and banks could cancel the accounts of anyone who sends an email, makes a phone call, or spends money in support of a disfavored political party, candidate,...

Facebook has been spying on the private messages and data of American users and reporting them to the FBI if they express anti-government or anti-authority sentiments — or question the 2020 election — according to sources within the Department of Justice.Under the FBI collaboration operation, somebody at Facebook red-flagged these supposedly subversive private messages over the past 19 months and transmitted them in redacted form to the domestic terrorism operational unit at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, without a subpoena.

Professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University Mattias Desmet is the world’s leading expert in the phenomenon known as “mass formation,” which is a type of hypnotic state that occurs when people are isolated from one another and free-floating anxiety is prevalent, as in during the COVID-19 pandemic. Desmet believes the world is now seeing a new form of totalitarianism, spawned in the last couple of decades and fostered by mass formation during the pandemic. “What you’re dealing with now is not a communist or not fascist authoritarianism. It is the emergence, I think, of technocratic totalitarianism,” Desmet said during...

President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that his administration would push to end the immunity Big Tech platforms enjoy for third-party content, an effort Republicans previously backed. "I'm calling on Congress to get rid of special immunity for social media companies and impose much stronger transparency requirements on all of them," the president said, per the New York Post. Specifically, he called for the repeal of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, echoing similar demands from Republicans in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, amid the outcry over tech company censorship of explosive allegations against Hunter Biden....

NBC News went after a conservative digital strategist who posted videos show Pennsylvania Lt. Governor and Senate hopeful John Fetterman having trouble speaking while on the campaign trail. NBC accused Greg Price of doctoring in the videos, when in fact the speech issues exhibited by Fetterman are likley the affer effects of a stroke he suffered earlier this year. Price put together a supercut of Fetterman having difficulty stringing words together to form coherent sentences, but for NBC, the real issue is not whether Fetterman is healthy enough to serve his constituents, but accusing Price of "doctoring" the images. NBC...

Through its censorship, Big Tech controls the flow of information that informs voters and impacts elections. As the 2022 midterms loom, big tech companies are again announcing their plans to meddle in U.S. elections by censoring news and information. Social media censorship ramped up dramatically following President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, leading to companies such as Twitter and Facebook colluding with Democrat operatives in intelligence agencies to censor and suppress factual stories that harmed then-candidate Joe Biden during his 2020 campaign. Two years later, following heavy documentation of the meddling, big tech companies are intent on using the same strategy....

Concerns about the state of the economy come with worries about job security. In fact, half of companies are expecting to cut staff according to a PwC survey of more than 700 executives. The same survey found many executives are also planning hiring freezes and even rescinding job offers. But many companies have already trimmed their workforce. Here are the sectors facing layoffs in this week’s Five For Friday.#5: Mortgage and real estateThe housing market has cooled after the COVID-19 pandemic-induced smorgasbord over the last few years. And as the Federal Reserve raises its interest rate, causing home loan rates...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., ripped NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci after a federal judge ordered the release of his emails sent to social media platforms regarding alleged misinformation and censorship. Paul claimed Fauci's "modus operandi" is to "cover up" his own activities while declaring his recommendations and edicts the only true path in terms of infectious diseases like the coronavirus. "I think that all of America should be appalled that America's doctor, the leading expert on COVID in public health, doesn't want to divulge information, doesn't want to divulge his communications with Big Tech," he said. Paul recounted Fauci's last...

Video sharing platform Rumble has broken records in August, increasing monthly active users to 78 million. This, the platform reports, is a 77 percent year over year growth. Much of that growth came from Gen Z users, between the ages of 18-24. That growth was strong in the US and Canada, as well, with a 63 million increase, or a 103 percent year over year growth. “When you look at the data, and especially our 63 million MAUs in the US and Canada, it is clear to me that Rumble’s growth is one of the reasons that Big Tech platforms...

Public health agencies are facing perhaps the most serious threats to their control over information since the COVID-19 pandemic started, playing defense in lawsuits that have already exposed substantial federal involvement in censorship and could next uncloak alleged manipulation of data that has driven COVID policy from the start. A federal judge ordered White House COVID adviser Anthony Fauci and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to respond to document requests in a First Amendment lawsuit alleging the feds coerced social media companies to stamp out dissenting COVID claims, some of which the feds now acknowledge have merit. Because of an untimely...