Free Republic

"This is the latest example of big tech suppression of free speech, a step on the road to communist-style censorship' - publisher Stephen Gregory. YouTube, the video platform service that is a Google subsidiary, has banned The Epoch Times, a rising, conservative-leaning media outlet, from earning money off its videos. "YouTube demonetized the Epoch Times and related accounts last week," Stephen Gregory, publisher of The Epoch Times confirmed to Just the News on Tuesday in an email. "This is the latest example of big tech suppression of free speech, a step on the road to communist-style censorship." A YouTube spokesperson...

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,’ George Orwell famously observed. He was talking not about everyday life but about politics, where it is ‘quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously’. For years before the 2020 election, nearly all American conservatives were in favor of standing up to Big Tech — but most were also against changing the laws and regulations enough to make such a stand effective. And yet the threat from Silicon Valley was literally in front...

The increased censorship of people’s views expressed on social media by Big Tech companies has been part of an orchestrated attack on the First Amendment, Patrick Wood, director and founder of Citizens for Free Speech, told The Epoch Times. Wood believes that there is an agenda behind the censorship. It would be almost statistically impossible to attack simultaneously all five elements of the First Amendment: freedom of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, Wood said in an interview for Epoch Times’ “Crossroads.” All...

During the Gold Rush era it celebrates, the owners of Columbia Booksellers & Variety Store might settle their disputes with dueling pistols at dawn. But today, non-firing replicas of the very kinds of guns that would have been brandished during that time period appear to be at the center of a dispute between the small locally owned Tuolumne County shop and major San Francisco tech company Square, Inc. The store had to close both its physical location in Columbia State Historic Park and its online website sales due to the tech giant abruptly canceling its contract earlier this week. Now...

Parler, the beleaguered social network advertised as a “free speech” alternative to Facebook and Twitter, has had a tough month. Apple and Google removed the Parler app from their stores, and Amazon blocked the platform from using its hosting services. Parler has since found a home in DDoS-Guard, a Russian digital infrastructure company. But now it appears DDoS-Guard is about to be relieved of more than two-thirds of the Internet address space the company leases to clients — including the Internet addresses currently occupied by Parler.The pending disruption for DDoS-Guard and Parler comes compliments of Ron Guilmette, a researcher who...

Wednesday marked the four-year anniversary of the Capitol Inauguration Day riots.That day, cars were set ablaze, rioters blocked a bridge. There were well more than 200 arrests and dozens of injuries.Violence had taken a few months to get to Washington, but the country had been watching as masked wanna-be revolutionaries terrorized the elderly and young women at Trump rallies and Republican and conservative events across the states.America’s corporate leaders didn’t join the riots, but they might as well have. President Donald Trump and his administration weren’t like any previous administration: They were different. They were dangerous. They needed to be...

Dems ordered Silicon Valley monopolies to remove Parler. They obtained. That forced Parler to use a Russian company for hosting. Now, Dem @RepMaloney wants to investigate Parler for Russia ties, and the WPost article includes this:

As the new Biden-Harris administration assumes power, the most basic American freedom of speech and expression is under unprecedented threat. For the first time ever, I am concerned about my freedom to do my work, to run a policy institute addressing issues of culture, race and poverty from a conservative perspective. Technology -- the internet -- which was largely nonexistent just 25 years ago, now plays a huge role in our lives as a tool of communication. In a survey just published by the Pew Research Center, 86% say they "often" or "sometimes" get their news from a digital device...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday that he has issued civil investigative demands (CIDs) to Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon Web Services, and Apple following the Big Tech monopolies’ most recent wave of politically motivated crackdowns on President Donald Trump and his supporters. In a statement released by Paxton’s office, the Texas AG stated that the CIDs issued this week “are asking the companies for their policies and practices regarding content moderation and, more specifically, for information related to Parler, a social media application recently terminated or blocked by Google, Amazon, and Apple.” “First Amendment rights and transparency must be...

I think there's a bit of confusion over the meaning of the First Amendment. Twitter has every right to decide who uses its platform. So does Facebook. And Google. Whoever pays the mortgage gets to decide the rules. I own a broadcast media company that includes a news-talk radio station and two prominent websites. And just like Twitter and Facebook, I get to decide who has a voice on my platforms. Unlike Big Tech, I actually cherish free speech. I believe in spirited debate. And I believe in the free exchange of ideas. That's why this rock-solid constitutionalist conservative...

Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO: “We are focused on one account [@realDonaldTrump] right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration.” Dorsey: “So, the focus is certainly on this account [@realDonaldTrump] and how it ties to real world violence. But also, we need to think much longer term around how these dynamics play out over time. I don't believe this is going away anytime soon.” Dorsey: “You know, the U.S....

Taking his most drastic step yet in response to public criticism, celebrity chef Thomas Keller took down his Twitter account on Tuesday after almost a year of blowback. The departure from the social media platform comes after many critiqued him for Tweeting praise of a right wing billionaire. On Tuesday afternoon, the famed owner of Yountville’s the French Laundry posted thanking Sheldon G. Adelson, who had recently died, for his support of Keller’s restaurant in Las Vegas. “You will be missed,” Keller wrote. Adelson and his wife were President Donald Trump’s biggest donors in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Adelson...

January 14, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Corporate authoritarianism has come to America in the form of a secular technocracy where liberal businesses, backed by the uni-party Deep State, get to decide what is and isn’t acceptable political dialogue. This is an all-out assault not only on our Constitutional freedoms, but on conservative, Christian supporters of President Trump. The collective purging of the president (and others) from social media last week was a concerted effort meant to destroy him and the populist, nationalist movement he led. It was intended to send a message to any future political candidate who wants to run...

In the wake of the protests and tragic violence at the United States Capitol last Wednesday, Parler, the popular alternative to Twitter, is facing an unprecedented crackdown from its competitors. In the span of 48 hours, both Apple and Google announced they would be removing the app from their smartphone app stores. Shortly thereafter, Amazon Web Services announced it would stop hosting Parler, thus also wiping out its web component.

In just over two years, suppression of political speech online has grown from Google's purge of conservative employees and the subsequent collusion between tech companies to simultaneously ban commentator Alex Jones from their platforms, to the point where these companies are emboldened not only to ban the president of the United States from social media, but official campaign websites, financial services – and even his email companies are refusing service. In the past week, Twitter removed over 70,000 conservative accounts, and Facebook suspended former Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul after he wrote a column criticizing tech censorship. In...

Snapchat is ghosting President Trump. The messaging app banned the president’s account on Wednesday, joining other tech firms who have moved to curb Trump’s posting since a mob of his supporters breached the US Capitol last week. Snapchat said it decided to indefinitely suspend the account “in the interest of public safety, and based on his attempts to spread misinformation, hate speech, and incite violence.”

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says that the social media company has “no plans” to lift its ban on President Donald Trump. “[We have] no plans to lift it right now,” said Sandberg in an interview with NBC News. “At least through the transition we’ve been very clear,” she added. “There’s obviously so much happening, and this is such a big step. We will definitely let people know and be very transparent about any changes to that.”

"Google has suspended President Donald Trump’s account on YouTube, which is the world’s largest video platform. The Google-owned company said Tuesday night that Trump uploaded content that violated its policies, giving it an automatic one-strike, which leads to a minimum seven-day suspension from uploading new content. It said it is also disabling the comments section...... .....“After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump’s channel for violating our policies......."

Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler? Zero. The planning was largely done on Facebook. This is all a bullshit pretext for silencing competitors on ideological grounds: just the start.

In the aftermath of Wednesday’s Capitol riot, Big Tech went nuclear. Most prominently, Facebook and Twitter suspended President Trump’s accounts on their platforms: Facebook’s suspension will last though the president’s remaining time in office, while Twitter’s ban is permanent. Trump was not the only prominent conservative figure suspended: former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and his lawyer Sidney Powell were also banned from Twitter. Naturally, focus shifted to Parler, the most prominent of the “free-speech” alternatives to Facebook and Twitter. After President Trump’s suspensions, traffic to the site soared; consequently, left-wing activists demanded that Google and Apple pull Parler from...