Free Republic

A group of 20 leading tech companies on Friday announced a joint commitment to combat AI misinformation in this year’s elections. The industry is specifically targeting deepfakes, which can use deceptive audio, video and images to mimic key stakeholders in democratic elections or to provide false voting information. Microsoft , Meta , Google , Amazon , IBM , Adobe and chip designer Arm all signed the accord. Artificial intelligence startups OpenAI, Anthropic and Stability AI also joined the group, alongside social media companies such as Snap , TikTok and X. Tech platforms are preparing for a huge year of elections...

A green nonprofit that is indirectly funded by a foreign billionaire is pressuring broadcasters to drop advertisements that criticize the Biden administration’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda. Climate Power wrote to numerous broadcasters this week demanding that they stop airing American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM)-funded advertisements in swing state markets that rail against President Joe Biden’s plans to impose widespread EV adoption in the coming years. The charitable organization affiliated with Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss health care mogul and billionaire philanthropist, donates millions of dollars to the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate...

The funding partner for Trump Media & Technology Group said it has received regulatory approval from securities regulators that will allow it to proceed with a long-delayed merger. The combination could provide former President Donald Trump with a stake worth almost $4 billion. Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), a so-called special-purpose acquisition company, said Thursday in a statement that the Securities and Exchange Commission had signed off on its proposed merger with Trump Media. DWAC said it plans to announce within two days a date for shareholders to vote on the deal. The SEC said it doesn't comment on individual...

Just when we thought the extent of the federal government's censorship had been fully revealed, an entirely new industry has been exposed as a partner in burying dissent and subverting the First Amendment. This time, we're learning the National Science Foundation (NSF) worked with academic institutions — including the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, and others — to censor "misinformation" online through Big Tech platforms and search engines. Alarmingly, they're using new artificial intelligence technology to do it. This means studies and data coming out of universities can no longer be trusted. Grants depend on promoting a government...

Pointing to children’s mental health and online sexual predators, the Florida House on Wednesday passed a bill that seeks to prevent children under age 16 from having social media accounts. The House voted 106-13 to approve the measure (HB 1), a priority of House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast. The issue will go to the Senate, amid arguments from parts of the tech industry that the bill would be unconstitutional. “This is about protecting children from addictive technology and what we know harms them,” Renner told House members after the vote. “And what the social-media platforms know. For years, they...

Before a single vote was cast, the 2020 election was baked into the cake. America’s political and media establishment were not going to let what happened to them in 2016 happen again. ... TIME Magazine - “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” which describes a vast effort by a network of partisan political operatives, union leaders, and business titans to create a mail ballot “revolution” to oust Trump... a plan hatched by a highly motivated and well-funded few to undermine American democracy as we know it. Yet, it is not well understood exactly what...

At an undetermined date, in an undisclosed location, the Biden administration began operating a secretive new court to protect Europeans’ privacy rights under U.S. law. Officially known as the Data Protection Review Court, it was authorized in an October 2022 executive order to fix a collision of European and American law that had been blocking the lucrative flow of consumer data between American and European companies for three years. The court’s eight judges were named last November, including former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Its existence has allowed companies to resume the lucrative transatlantic data trade with the blessing of...

The Department of Homeland Security paid an activist group $700,000 to create self-described propaganda that attacked conservatives, a new investigation found. DHS used a grant program intended to combat terrorists, called the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Program, to pay activists to write blog posts that criticized Donald Trump and other conservatives under the guise of “media literacy,” the Media Research Center found through public records requests.

Finances at the vaccine manufacturer Moderna began to fall almost as quickly as they had risen, as most Americans resisted getting yet another COVID booster shot. The pharmaceutical company, whose pioneering mRNA vaccine had turned it from small startup to biotech giant worth more than $100 billion in just a few years, reported a third-quarter loss last year of $3.6 billion, as most Americans refused to get another COVID booster shot. Moderna’s then-chief commercial officer, Arpa Garay, attributed some of the hesitancy pummeling Moderna's numbers to uninformed vaccine skeptics. "Despite some misinformation," Garay said, COVID-19 still drove significant hospitalizations. "It...

Digital Kill Switches: How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent“No president from either party should have the sole power to shut down or take control of the internet or any other of our communication channels during an emergency.”—Senator Rand PaulWhat’s to stop the U.S. government from throwing the kill switch and shutting down phone and internet communications in a time of so-called crisis?After all, it’s happening all over the world.Communications kill switches have become tyrannical tools of domination and oppression to stifle political dissent, shut down resistance, forestall election losses, reinforce military coups, and keep the populace isolated, disconnected and in...

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,”...