Free Republic

Facebook-owned Instagram is “fact-checking” satirical posts and memes on the platform via its third-party fact-checkers, and filtering them from hashtag and “explore” results. A spokeswoman for Facebook confirmed that satirical images of far-left climate activist Greta Thunberg had indeed been tagged with warnings that “fact-checkers” had rated the images as “false,” as originally reported by Summit. “We work with third-party fact-checkers to help identify, review, and label false information on Instagram,” said the spokeswoman. “When content is rated as false or partly false by a third-party fact-checker, we reduce its distribution by removing it from Explore and hashtag pages. In...

On “Trans Day of Remembrance” this year, numerous politicians and celebrities used the occasion to virtue signal on social media. They repeated the claim-turned-mantra from LBGT activist groups that there is an “epidemic” of trans homicides motivated by transphobia and racism in the U.S. Chelsea Clinton, doing what the Clintons do best, weighed in vapidly on Nov. 20: “Since 2013, more than 150 trans people have been murdered in the U.S., the majority Black transgender women. On #TDoR2019, we remember and honor the lives lost, hold their loved ones in our hearts and must commit to doing all we can...

Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, one of the anti-Trump witnesses at yesterday’s impeachment inquiry, is reportedly playing a critical role in Facebook’s establishment of its content oversight board, colloquially dubbed the “Facebook Supreme Court.” The oversight board will, among other things, review cases from banned Facebook users who argue that the termination of their accounts was unwarranted. It is meant to give banned users the right to appeal — but this is corporate due process, not state due process. The “Facebook Supreme Court” will be set up by Facebook and could be shut down at any time by Facebook.

Facebook has said it will not allow politicians to set up new accounts on the platform if they have previously been banned, according to a statement obtained from the social media company by Breitbart News. Breitbart News reached out to Facebook after learning that the platform was blocking a Republican congressional candidate’s attempt to set up an official campaign page. The candidate, Laura Loomer, is running in the Republican primary for the House of Representatives in Florida’s 21st district. She previously had her personal accounts on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram banned under the company’s “dangerous individual” policy. Loomer says the...

Google has changed its search algorithm to alter search results in ways it has publicly denied in the past, a new investigation from The Wall Street Journal finds. The report could add fuel to conservatives’ claims of bias and censorship by Google based on how it determines what content surfaces in its search engine and on its video platform, YouTube. CNBC reports Thursday that the 50 state attorneys general probing Google are planning to expand their investigation into Google’s search and Android businesses.

A coalition of civil rights groups are demanding that Facebook overhaul its political speech policy, according to a letter obtained by The Hill Thursday. The letter, dated Friday, followed up on a meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and the leaders of the groups — including the NAACP, Color of Change and National Action Network — at the Facebook CEO’s home earlier this month. The organizations, which also include Muslim Advocates, UnidosUS and the National Urban League, are asking for a response from Facebook by Nov. 25. Among the requests made in the letter is putting “guardrails on the newsworthiness exemption,” referring...

Full title: So then, conservatives, don't produce audio that's commercially viable. Simple! Problem solved. Not sure if you heard, but Google is going to be cutting off content that they deem to be "not commercially viable". Of course we all know that means cutting off conservatives. Yes, I'm a conservative, and no, I'm not worried one bit. Why would I be worried, I already don't produce anything commercially viable. Oh, you want to say that what I produced wasn't valuable? My personal favorite is the book The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, which according to the Archive page has...

I was banned for 24 hours of posting, for posting Ciaramella's name in a meme in Facebook today. Real censorship has arrived, folks!

Twitter has suspended or forced users to delete tweets naming the alleged whistleblower despite stating it is not company policy to do so. Several Twitter users said their accounts were suspended for tweeting out the name. One said Twitter later messaged him saying the suspension was “an error.” A Twitter spokeswoman told Breitbart: “Per the private information policy, any Tweets that include personally identifiable information about any individual, including the alleged whistleblower, would be in violation of the Twitter Rules.” The spokeswoman said posting the name of the person isn’t against the rules. Screenshots from a number of users confirm...

Search giant is amassing health records from Ascension facilities in 21 states; patients not yet informed Google is engaged with one of the country’s largest health-care systems to collect and crunch the detailed personal health information of millions of Americans across 21 states.The initiative, code-named “Project Nightingale,” appears to be the largest in a series of efforts by Silicon Valley giants to gain access to personal health data and establish a toehold in the massive health-care industry. Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are also aggressively pushing into health care, though they haven’t yet struck deals of this scope.Google began the effort in secret last year with...

The day has finally arrived when our online media monopolies are blatantly censoring the news that Americans can see. Chrissy Clark writes at The Federalist: Facebook and YouTube are removing all content from their platforms that mentions the anti-Trump whistleblower's name, whom news outlets including RealClearInvestigations have publicly identified as CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella. No law bans media outlets or any person but the intelligence community inspector general from making the whistleblower's name public. A Facebook spokesperson said the platform will remove "any and all mention of the potential whistleblower's name.

Facebook is removing any mention of the potential whistleblower’s name and is cracking down against Facebook publishers that mention any allegation of the potential whistleblower’s name, claiming they are violating Facebook’s Community Standards and Policies. For example, on Wednesday evening, Facebook removed Breitbart posts reporting on the fact other respected news outlets have reported the identity of the alleged whistleblower is Eric Ciaramella. Any Facebook user who attempts to click on that article on Facebook is now given a message that says, “this content isn’t available at the moment.”

We see how every single person involved Washington DC politics and/or media simply won't name him (nobody.... not a single person), but has anyone tried Google? He doesn't exist in the image search. Here, let me Google that for you: GOOGLE SEARCH FOR "WHISTLEBLOWER." Ciarmella's pic does not show up.

Top Republicans are privately worried about a new threat to President Trump’s campaign: the possibility of Facebook pulling a Twitter and banning political ads. Why it matters: Facebook says it won't, but future regulatory pressure could change that. If Facebook were to ban — or even limit — ads, it could upend Trump’s fundraising and re-election plan, GOP officials tell Axios. Trump relies heavily — much more so than Democrats — on targeted Facebook ads to shape views and raise money. Red flag: Kara Swisher, of Recode, the super plugged-in tech writer, predicted on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that Mark Zuckerberg...

There is growing and bipartisan alarm among Americans about the “bad acts” of Big Tech companies. For far too long, Big Tech has gotten away with profiting from human trafficking, revenge-porn, the opioid epidemic and drug addiction, terrorism, and other forms of human misery, while engaging in egregious business practices like snooping, spying, political bias against conservatives, employee abuses, and anticompetitive conduct. Big Tech has engaged in this deplorable conduct largely free from any real oversight from Republicans or Democrats in Washington. That’s not surprising, especially if you understand the ways of the DC Swamp. Big Tech is “feeding chickens”...

According to a Tuesday POLITICO report, there is a massive and coordinated effort on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), federal law enforcement agencies, and social media outlets like Twitter to monitor and remove “disinformation” from the internet during the 2020 election cycle. In principle, this effort is an authoritarian effort to control the free flow of information which will almost certainly be used against conservatives on behalf of the leftist political establishment. To wit, the aforementioned organizations, which include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are working to tackle what they...

Former Google senior software developer and whistleblower Zach Vorhies appeared on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour Friday to discuss Google’s relationship with Communist China and the company’s artificial intelligence project DeepMind, which has been called the “AI Manhattan Project.” LISTEN: Mansour asked Vorhies about Google’s business engagements in China. “Google has gotten in trouble in the past for doing business with the Communist government of China,” Mansour said. “And I wanted to ask you were those efforts ongoing when you were with the company? Can you give us any insight into that? Because it was quite troubling.”...

A Facebook page run by the Arlington Heights-based Church of Christian Liberty was shut down for not complying with the social media company's policies, church officials said Friday. Church leaders say they weren't told exactly what led Facebook to ban the Christian Liberty Press page, but they speculate it has to do with expressing their Christian views.

When Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., sued Twitter in Virginia court in March for negligence over multiple cases of defamation and impersonation by the social media giant’s users, he was mocked and laughed at for thinking his case would accomplish anything. But following a Virginia judge’s ruling last week that Nunes’ suit could proceed to trial in the Old Dominion, it may be Nunes who gets the last laugh. Nunes, who was first elected to Congress 2002, rose to prominence following the 2016 election as the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). With Nunes leading the charge...

Facebook has removed a fact check from a video posted by an anti-abortion group after Republican senators accused the platform of censorship. The moves comes after the group, Live Action, as well as Republican lawmakers, complained after Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers deemed that a video in which the group’s president, Lila Rose, claims that “abortion is never medically necessary” was inaccurate. They argued that the fact check was not impartial because two of the physicians involved in reviewing the claim had ties to abortion rights groups. The fact check was published by the group Health Feedback, part of the International Fact-Checking...