Free Republic

Google has established itself as the arbiter of "truth" in the digital age. The company controls the flow of information and can amplify or bury stories on a whim. Its leaders have given themselves god-like powers over shaping human opinion. So when they change their rules over what information they can censor in a "Sensitive Event" scenario, it's worth examining closely. If you’ve ever advertised with Google, you might have received this email yesterday: Dear Advertiser, In February 2024, Google will update the Inappropriate content policy to clarify the definition of Sensitive Events. A "Sensitive Event" is an unforeseen event...

Hi everyone, senior tech reporter Kylie Robison here. I don’t want to say the L-word first, but it’s starting to look like some feelings are changing. Layoffs, not love, are in the air again. Google slashed hundreds of jobs today, while Instagram cut several dozen of its own on Wednesday Also this week, Amazon’s Twitch and Prime Video divisions announced hundreds of layoffs each, or a 35% reduction in staff, and AI startup Humane, which raised over $200 million and plans to ship its new wearable in the coming months, just cut 4% of its employees. Adding to the bloodshed,...

Instagram removed this video of Joe Biden discussing the laws his very own son broke. They removed it with 5 seconds of it being posted. I know it’s embarrassing but come on. Let’s make this viral so folks actually can judge for themselves.

I completely missed this when it was published at the end of last month. Fortunately, Jesse Singal did a great write-up about it which I noticed today. As you may know, Bill Adair is the founder of Politifact, a site which has generate a lot of content for this blog over the years. Last month, Adair was asked to share his predictions for 2024 and he wrote a piece titled “Fact-checking needs a reboot.” Part of that reboot would be pressuring social media companies to “suppress misinformation” more often.After I founded PolitiFact in 2007, I often said that our goal...

The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech. “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their...

Code is law, they say. ... Geofence warrants are warrants to obtain the location data that Google users let Google collect if they opt in to Google's location history service, which about a third of Google users do. Geofence warrants have been possible because, if you opt in, Google keeps a copy of the location history. And records are kept can be compelled, at least if the legal process is valid. All of which makes this Google announcement from yesterday of great interest. Google will no longer keep location history even for the users who opted in to have it...

The bursting of the tech and housing bubble is sending shockwaves through the markets, with ominous signs pointing to an impending economic downturn. San Francisco, a city synonymous with skyrocketing real estate prices, is witnessing a significant shift as condos are now priced under $1000 per square foot for the first time in eight years. This unsettling development comes alongside a series of WARN notices, indicating a rise in job cuts and economic uncertainty. According to reports from Goldman Sachs, the so-called “Magnificent 7” tech stocks—Microsoft ($MSFT), Apple ($AAPL), Google ($GOOGL), Meta ($META), Amazon ($AMZN), NVIDIA ($NVDA), and Tesla ($TSLA)—have...

Half a century ago, George Orwell, writing on literary censorship, wrote that “unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.” That dynamic now broadly extends to an opaque network of government agencies and self-proclaimed anti-misinformation groups that have repressed online speech. There’s no official ban on discussing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines or criticizing American involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war, but editors and journalists have realized that writing on such topics can come at a cost. News publishers have been demonetized and shadow-banned for reporting dissenting views and the bureaucratic means...

Microsoft helped Chinese state-run media outlets disseminate propaganda as part of previously unreported partnership agreements, documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. The nation’s second largest corporation signed collaboration deals with state-run Chinese media outlets including China Daily and People’s Daily, the latter of which is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese government. Summaries of the deal state Microsoft would provide China Daily with technology that lets the paper target potential readers and gave the People’s Daily access to an artificial intelligence bot specially designed to be controlled and censored by the Chinese Communist Party.The...

As the Biden administration pressured Big Tech companies to censor Americans’ speech during the COVID vaccine rollout, Google’s YouTube went along with the White House’s requests before Facebook was pressured to follow suit, according to documents shared with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and obtained by The Daily Wire. In an April 18, 2021, email, Facebook President for Global Affairs Nick Clegg expressed concern after Andy Slavitt, a senior White House advisor, told him that Facebook was “lagging behind” as YouTube “made significant advances to remove content leading to vaccine hesitancy.” “Just got off hour long call with Andy Slavitt,”...

A new study of big tech censorship claimed that online companies such as Google, X, and Meta had censored President Biden's opponents who are running for the Oval Office 162 times. Topping the list, according to NewsBusters, were Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and newly independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. The Republican was censored 18 times, while RFK Jr. was censored 17 times. These numbers did not include any community notes added to messages on Elon Musk's platform X. Third on the list was Nikki Haley (14), followed by Larry Elder (13) and Donald Trump (nine). President Biden was reportedly...

Leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard is the farthest thing from being the unbiased media referee it purports to be. It is a government-funded operation designed to attack right-leaning media by going after their advertiser funding. There are at least five core reasons why Congress should strip funding from NewsGuard in the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) since it received a $750,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the Department of Defense. The state funding of a leftist, so-called journalism gatekeeper that deceptively bills itself as “apolitical” is case in point. Such efforts by the government to censor media it does not approve...

And so it begins. In fact, it hardly ever stops – another election cycle in well on its way in the US. But what has emerged these last few years, and what continues to crop up the closer the election day gets, is the role of the most influential social platforms/tech companies.Pressure on them is sometimes public, but mostly not, as the Twitter Files have taught us; and it is with this in mind that various announcements about combating “election disinformation” coming from Big Tech should be viewed.Although, one can never discount the possibility that some – say, Microsoft –...

The mogul also spoke to the need for more deals with the Disney-Charter bundle: “All media better figure out how to get together with old distribution and save each other’s ass."Liberty Global chairman John Malone said he was “ringing the alarm” on big tech’s entrance into the media ecosystem, saying they will “erode” the broadcast industry. Speaking at the Paley Media Summit in Manhattan Wednesday, Malone, a billionaire investor, pointed to Amazon’s purchase of Thursday Night Football as an example of an “upside down regulatory world,” which he said allows tech platforms like Amazon, who have deep pockets and don’t...

A Democrat who helped prosecute January 6 participants is running for election to Congress against an incumbent Republican in a southern California seat, on a platform promising more tech censorship. Will Rollins, former assistant U.S. attorney in California, promises that if elected, he will tackle big tech platforms and media outlets that are “profiting by spreading division based on lies” and “erode our democracy.” Rollins is running for California’s 41st congressional district, currently held by incumbent Republican Ken Calvert.

An accurate reporting by Pfizer would have shown equal numbers of clinical trial deaths in the vaccine and placebo groups and thus, no benefit of vaccination. To obtain emergency use authorization (EUA) for its COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer and BioNTech submitted a data package in 2020 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) so the agency could evaluate the safety and efficacy of its vaccine. A recently published peer-reviewed study by the DailyClout Pfizer/BioNTech Documents Investigations Team suggests Pfizer excluded known deaths in the vaccine arm of its clinical trial from its data filing and withheld information from the agency...

A spokesman for Meta confirmed to AFP that it would not take part in this year's event, with Google telling the Irish Independent that it too would not be making the trip to Lisbon. We're now on WhatsApp. Click to join. Irish entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder of the Web Summit, wrote on social media platform X last week that he was "shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments." "War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are," Cosgrave wrote on October 13. Hamas militants...

Qualcomm, one of the largest microchip manufacturers globally, is scaling back its workforce. The San Diego, California-based company will be laying off about 1258 roles in California, according to a filing with the California Employment Development Department. Impacted employees include those based out of San Diego and Santa Clara in multiple roles, from engineers to legal counsel to human resources, with job reductions coming around December 13th. The layoff news comes about a month after the company announced a deal with Apple to provide 5G chips through at least 2026. Qualcomm is also the chip supplier for the newly announced...

Nearly a decade after the selling of the Iran deal, it’s much easier now for Americans to see that it was the origin point in a series of hugely consequential lies that have shaped our country at home as surely as they have shaped the lives of people in the Middle East. They lied about Obama’s successor being a Russian spy to delegitimize the government and divide the country, in the hope of removing an elected president from office. They lied about an “insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, to justify designating one half of the country as domestic terrorists, in...

A federal court ordered an injunction on a top agency within the Department of Homeland Security after finding that it likely violated the First Amendment by coordinating with social media companies to effectively censor "election-related speech." On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals extended the scope of an injunction in place that limits the Biden administration's communication with big tech companies to include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security. According to GOP Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is leading the litigation against the Biden administration, CISA is the "nerve center" of...