Free Republic

If you’ve seen people posting about “camping” on social media, there’s a chance they’re not talking about how to pitch a tent or which National Parks to visit. The term recently became “algospeak” for something entirely different: discussing abortion-related issues in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Social media users are increasingly using codewords, emojis and deliberate typos—so-called “algospeak”—to avoid detection by apps’ moderation AI when posting content that is sensitive or might break their rules. Siobhan Hanna, who oversees AI data solutions for Telus International, a Canadian company that has provided human and AI...

Chief Medical Advisor to the President Dr. Anthony Fauci will be deposed alongside nine other federal officials as part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by a pair of Republican state attorneys general alleging that the federal government colluded with social media companies to suppress protected free speech about COVID-19, according to a court order granting the deposition request. The depositions would require Fauci, alongside other top White House officials such as former Senior COVID-19 Advisor Andrew Schlatt and former Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, [CUT] “[P]laintiffs argue that even if Dr. Fauci can prove he never communicated with social-media platforms about...

Liberal billionaire George Soros funded groups that are now urging the heads of major Big Tech platforms to step up their censorship just before the 2022 midterm elections. The Soros-funded Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR) spearheaded an Oct. 13 open letter signed by 11 other liberal groups pining for Big Tech to “[t]ake immediate steps to curb the spread of voting disinformation in the midterms and future elections and to help prevent the undermining of our democracy.” The letter agonized over how “[t]he 2022 midterm elections are only a few weeks away, but online disinformation continues to...

The majority of social media users are standing behind Big Tech companies' efforts to curb misinformation, even as users of "alternative" social media sites find community in the unregulated media environments fostered by "free-speech" advocates. The information comes from a new study by the Pew Research Center, published Oct. 6, which dives into the motivations and digital consumption habits of account holders on "alt" sites like Truth Social, Parler, BitChute, and Telegram (among others). According to the study, while 64 percent of alternative social media news consumers favor the protection of free speech even if it fosters misinformation, "the majority...

This morning I was in the process of uploading a video I created about making the GREATEST Margarita in the world. However, I noticed there was no monetization button. When I checked further I noticed my entire channel had been demonetized (again). On top of that there was NO explanation from YouTube for the demonetization either on the dashboard or via email which always happened when they demonetized before. I checked on Twitter and it turns out that many other video creators had the same experience. For what I can piece together is that YouTube only meant to demonetize all...

RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told FBN's Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday morning that the Republican Party is "seriously looking at how we can sue Google" for suppressing their get-out-the-vote emails by labeling them as "spam." MARIA BARTIROMO: You also say that Google is suppressing millions of election-related e-mails, just in the last month the [Republican National] Committee is accusing the company of marking 22 million e-mails as spam, including get-out-the-vote messages. You're exploring legal options. What are you going to do? RONNA MCDANIEL: We spent the day on the phone with attorneys yesterday. We're very seriously looking at how we can...

It's no big secret that Big Tech's tentacles have a vast reach, with platforms like Facebook and Twitter admitting in so many words after the fact to deliberately suppressing news content prior to the 2020 presidential election that portrayed then-Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden and his international wheelin' and dealin' son Hunter in a less than flattering light being one of the more notable examples.But as has already been made clear by online payment systems like PayPal and Venmo, even more silencing of alternative points of view is needed in the form of financial strangulation if necessary, which can...

Three major American medical institutions wrote a letter to the Biden administration this week urging it to go after major figures online who are promoting content that exposes some of the radical gender surgeries that are being offered at some places across the country. The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Children’s Hospital Association all signed the letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging the administration to “investigate the organizations, individuals, and entities” that it claimed were “coordinating” and “provoking” outrage online directed at those providing the controversial services. “From Boston to Akron to Nashville to Seattle,...

Charlie Kirk talks with John Solomon about the bombshell story of government-directed censorship during Election 2020 e Charlie Kirk: While I was getting ready to speak at the great Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, Producer Andrew was emailing me and texting me about the story that came out on the terrific website, justthenews.com. And I couldn’t quite process it in time. And then I had a chance to read it and the weekend happened and I saw Sean Hannity did a segment on this with John Solomon. And essentially, it turns out new documents show that there is a censorship machine...

Section 230 of the Communications Act, which prevents online platforms from being liable for the content posted by their users, will be evaluated by the Supreme Court in the coming season. It’s anyone’s guess how it may be affected, but we can be sure that the regulatory landscape for tech will look rather different this time next year. We’ve discussed Section 230 many times on TechCrunch, and legal definitions and precedents can be found elsewhere, so we need not delve into the particulars for now. It suffices to say that this section of the law essentially says that as long...

Attempts to access Google Translate’s old mainland China address are now redirected to the Hong Kong site. Bloomberg noted that the Hong Kong version of the site isn’t accessible on the mainland without a VPN, marking Google’s move as an effective shutdown of the service. Google did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment, but the company did confirm with multiple outlets that it had discontinued the service in China “due to low usage.” TechCrunch, which initially reported on the news Friday, noted that the hubbub surrounding the upcoming National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which would mark...

The Supreme Court said Monday it would take up a case that could fundamentally change the way Google and other tech companies are governed by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects them from lawsuits over content created by users. In 2015, Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen studying abroad in France, was murdered by ISIS terrorists who fired into a crowed bistro in Paris. Her family filed suit against Google, arguing that YouTube, which Google owns, aided and abetted the ISIS terrorists by allowing and promoting ISIS material on the platform with algorithms that helped to recruit...

The leftist Big Tech overlords may finally face a day of reckoning as the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the Section 230 law that governs how tech platforms moderate free speech. SCOTUSblog tweeted Oct. 3 that SCOTUS granted a writ of certiorari to Gonzalez v. Google, “involving the scope of tech companies' immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.” USA Today summarized that the case will have “potentially enormous consequences for social media.” It is the “court’s first test of the broad immunity social media companies have enjoyed under a provision known as Section...

The federal government has been working with a group of four private companies to flag supposed election “misinformation” for censorship by social media platforms. Two recent reports, published on Friday and Saturday by Just the News, reveal the group was responsible for the censorship of 20 news outlets during the 2020 election. After Biden was in the White House, Just the News reported, the group was “rewarded” with millions of taxpayer dollars and its work continues today. Most of the targeted groups were right-leaning in their coverage. Those outlets include Just the News, the New York Post, The Epoch Times,...

With their partnership with google, UN Secretary for Global Communication says they "own the science" on "climate change," and other viewpoints have now been pushed down in search results.

Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion shines a light on Covid-19 vaccine injuries and bereavements, but also takes an encompassing look at the systemic failings that appear to have enabled them. We look at leading analysis of pharmaceutical trials, the role of the MHRA in regulating these products, the role of the SAGE behavioural scientists in influencing policy and the role of the media and Big Tech companies in suppressing free and open debate on the subject.

The private consortium that reported election "misinformation" to tech platforms during the 2020 election season, in "consultation" with federal agencies, targeted several news organizations in its dragnet. Websites for Just the News, New York Post, Fox News, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Epoch Times and Breitbart were identified among the 20 "most prominent domains across election integrity incidents" that were cited in tweets flagged by the Election Integrity Partnership and its collaborators. The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the State Department, and liberal groups such as the Democratic National Committee, also flagged purported misinformation through the consortium.

A consortium of four private groups worked with the departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and State to censor massive numbers of social media posts they considered misinformation during the 2020 election, and its members then got rewarded with millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration afterwards, according to interviews and documents obtained by Just the News. The Election Integrity Partnership is back in action again for the 2022 midterm elections, raising concerns among civil libertarians that a chilling new form of public-private partnership to evade the First Amendment's prohibition of government censorship may be expanding. The consortium is comprised...

There is no bigger threat to democracy in our country than the power of Big Tech companies to control what information we as citizens are allowed to share. The monopoly power that companies such as Google and Facebook have over the online advertising market gives the far-left employees of these firms far too much control over what ideas can be shared on their platforms. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Kennedy (R-LA) dealt a huge blow to these monopolists last week when they successfully attached an amendment to the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act that forbids Big Tech firms and...

How did harmful content and misinformation online get so bad — after so much time, money, and scores of people trying to limit the spread of inaccurate, violent, obscene, and harmful content? For starters, the problem is much bigger than it used to be, and human-driven efforts cannot keep up. Even with tens of thousands tackling the problem (Meta’s Trust & Safety team has swelled to an army of more than 40,000) the sheer amount of digital content is too overwhelming. Moderating this content by human review is not only time-consuming, ineffective, and error-prone, it also can endanger the mental...