Free Republic

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a Texas case that could have major ramifications across the country—including, perhaps, the end of anonymity online.A Texas law requiring people to provide proof of age before viewing online porn comes before the U.S. Supreme Court today. With similar laws already at play in 18 states besides Texas, and other states considering such measures, it's fair to say that the future of online porn in this country depends on what the justices decide in this case. The Texas law (House Bill 1181) is being challenged by multiple plaintiffs, including the Free Speech...

Article Excerpt Below:A shadowy group with links to British Army intelligence called the “Mutton Crew” has been using psychological warfare to target covid-sceptic British doctors and others.The group uses tactics such as emotional manipulation, harassment, misinformation and mass reporting to silence critics. Led by Dr. Graham Bottley, the Mutton Crew created thousands of fake social media accounts to suppress dissent and destroy the careers and reputations of covid critics.After the Mutton Crew’s activities were exposed by Andrew Bridgen in May 2024, some members disavowed the group and the group has gone “quiet.” But their legacy of social media manipulation and...

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted the Biden administration “pushed” for Facebook and Instagram to censor posts that were factually true but politically inconvenient. And his admission proves what many already knew: the Supreme Court’s decision in Missouri v. Murthy was a grave miscarriage of “justice” and an affront to the First Amendment. Upon taking office, the Biden administration coordinated with social media giants to censor posts that contained factually correct information that was deemed unfavorable. But the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Murthy v. Missouri that Louisiana and Missouri did not have standing to challenge the Biden administration’s collusion with...

Just hours after Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg announced last Tuesday that the social media giant would eliminate its US-based fact-checkers, the iconic hills above Los Angeles began to smolder. As fire crews scrambled in vain to contain the resulting firestorm, the fact-checking partners, still working for Meta, took on their own fight: trying to slow viral misinformation rapidly spreading around the wildfires. Rumor and speculation about the disaster began to swirl online like glowing embers, before eventually becoming a wild blaze of vast conspiracy theories. “Cutting fact checkers from social platforms is like disbanding your fire department,” said Alan Duke,...

Three doctors are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent a California agency from investigating them over their opposition to state-approved COVID-19 policies. The California Medical Board considers the expression of the doctors’ dissenting views on the disease as potentially dangerous misinformation that should be suppressed. The board argues it has legal authority to discipline the doctors for speech it deems to be medical misconduct. The physicians counter that just because they have medical licenses doesn’t mean they forfeit their free speech rights under the First Amendment. The emergency application in Kory v. Bonta was docketed by the high court...

The headline from Politico’s “Playbook” would have been unthinkable eight years ago: “Meta sends Trump a friend request.” After all, Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is a political lightning rod in conservative political circles, especially after the $300 million worth of “Zuckerbucks” spent during the 2020 election to elect like-minded politicians. Yet lately, Zuckerberg has been singing a much different tune. He referred to President-elect Trump as “badass,” visited him at Mar-a-Lago, and donated one million dollars to his inaugural fund. This week, Meta made news by adding Dana White, a longtime Trump ally and head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship...

History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power – and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.” Meta’s sudden dismantling of its fact-checking program – announced by Zuckerberg as a “cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech” – reads like a quiet footnote to what history may record as one of the most staggering violations of fundamental rights in recent memory. After eight...

Wildfires, fueled by strong winds, are destroying Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is begging President Joe Biden to silence “hurricane-force winds of mis- and disinformation.” “It breaks my heart as people are suffering and struggling that we’re up against those hurricane force, forces as well,” Newsom said on Friday in a video call with Biden. “I ask you, we’ve got to deal with this misinformation.” Never mind the actual winds that swept wildfires from the perimeter of Los Angeles to destroy suburban neighborhoods. Still, Newsom expressed concern that “misinformation” could harm Californians. “It infects real people that are...

Under the Digital Services Act, Elon Musk and his social media platform, X, could face heavy penalties should investigators for the European Union find that he manipulated the site's algorithm in order to influence voters. The DSA was adopted in 2022 to prevent disinformation and other illegal activities online. In July, the European Union found that X had violated multiple tenets of the DSA by not providing access to data to researchers, failure to complay with advertising-transparency requirements, and selling access to its "blue check" verification system in a way that allowed fraudsters to impersonate celebrities and public officials. On...

Meta employees are furious with the company’s newly announced content moderation changes that will allow users to say that LGBTQ+ people have “mental illness,” according to internal conversations obtained by 404 Media and interviews with five current employees. The changes were part of a larger shift Mark Zuckerberg announced Monday to do far less content moderation on Meta platforms. “I am LGBT and Mentally Ill,” one post by an employee on an internal Meta platform called Workplace reads. “Just to let you know that I’ll be taking time out to look after my mental health.” On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg announced...

UK officials are monitoring social media posts by Elon Musk and others as a possible security risk. The monitoring is being carried out by a team in the Home Office's Homeland Security group, which is responsible for reducing national security risks and, according to a government website, "focuses on the highest harm risks to the homeland".

Justin Trudeau’s leadership, if it can be called that has led to a country besieged with many problems. To be fair, not everything is Trudeau’s doing, but his policies have definitely exacerbated the country’s issues. This is not exactly a surprise, any country with a liberal leftist leader(s), is going to have problems, more to the point, their “leadership” always results in nationwide economic issues.

The Meta chief's surprising public address on free speech hints at a coming battle between the U.S. and the rest of the world. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a video promising a shift toward free speech: The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship, and making it difficult to build anything innovative there. Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down. China has censored our apps from even working in the country. The only way that we can...

The incoming Trump administration scored an early but possibly illusory victory last month in its effort to reform government overreach when it successfully pressured Congress to eliminate what it termed “sweetheart provisions for government censors” from a measure to stave off a government shutdown. Funding for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center – which Republicans had attacked as a tool of domestic censorship – was stripped from the final bill, and the center announced that it was closed for good on Dec. 23. Days later, however, reporting emerged that the State Department had devised plans to shift the center’s 51...

What has happened over the last few days has been nothing short of extraordinary. Tech mogul Elon Musk has engaged in a vocal critique of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Britain's Labour Government ... over its incredibly ham-handed handling of substantiated reports that rape gangs victimized tens of thousands of British girls for years and the gangs were protected by police and local authorities because of fear of ethnic turmoil; ... A series of utter horrific revelations we learned of young girls being returned to their rapists by police and of fathers being arrested for trying to rescue their...

Below is my column in the Hill on the resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his anti-free speech legacy. The collapse of free speech in Canada is a cautionary tale for Americans. It shows how Trudeau and the Liberal Party used faux rhetoric of tolerance and inclusion to justify intolerance and exclusion. Here is the column: With Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he will step down as prime minister, Canada is now looking for a new leader after a decade under his policies. The question is whether anyone will look for the remnants of Canadian free speech in the...

He will be missed. By no one.. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (D – Canada) finally resigned to spend more time playing dress-up in other countries. In his goodbye remarks, the widely unpopular socialist rumored to have been spawned well south of the border in a binge of Cuban cigar smoke, claimed that he had “fought for this country.” Trudeau unhelpfully did not specify which country. He did list his pandemic crackdown as one of his greatest achievements. Aside from bankrupting many small businesses and making life miserable for countless individuals, a high point of Trudeau’s pandemic policies included silencing a...

Leave it to the former Twitter worker to call for more social media censorship during a Miss America contest. During Sunday night's Miss America contest, Miss Georgia, Lulu Louizaire ended up with the "Censorship" topic and couldn't wait to tell the country that MORE censorship is the answer to social media's ills. According to Lulu's LinkedIn account, she was with the company until March 2023 when she was working as a Customer Success Specialist II. Lulu's job, according to her resume was to manage "a book of 100+accounts across the different verticals with a focus on government and causes." Yeah,...

FIRST ON FOX – Meta is ending its fact-checking program and lifting restrictions on speech to "restore free expression" across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have "gone too far." "We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video posted Tuesday morning. "More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S." Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, joined Fox...

Every Legal Scholar and Pundit, including the highly respected, and sadly recently passed, David Rivkin, as well as Jonathan Turley, Elie Honig, Andy McCarthy, Alan Dershowitz, Gregg Jarrett, Elizabeth Price Foley, Katie and Andy Cherkasky, Paul Ingrassia, and many others, have unequivocally stated that the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt is a nonexistent case, which is not only barred by the Statute of Limitations but, on the merits, should never have been brought. This illegitimate political attack is nothing but a Rigged Charade. “Acting” Justice Merchan, who is a radical partisan, just issued another order that is knowingly unlawful, goes against...