Free Republic

A collection of leaked documents appears to show Facebook redefining rules around hate speech and re-educating content moderators following the Charlottesville protest in 2017. According to leaked internal documents obtained by Motherboard, the 2017 Charlottesville protests were a moment of intense introspective for Facebook, which scrambled to redefine what they consider “hate speech” and to educate content moderators about American white nationalists. One training document obtained shortly after the protests reads: “Recent incidents in the United States (i.e. Charlottesville) have shown that there is potentially confusion about our hate org policies and the specific hate orgs in specific markets.” A...

Articles about the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of independent journalist and activist Tommy Robinson are being rapidly scrubbed from the internet after the British government put restrictions in place banning any reporting on the matter. Robinson, 35, was arrested on Friday for suspicion of ‘breaching the peace’ while livestreaming to report on the trial of a child grooming gang and will now have to serve a prior 13 month suspended sentence for a similar offense. Articles from the Daily Record, Birmingham Live, The Mirror, RT and even Breitbart News were all taken offline in the hours following his detention.

Author Carol Horton identifies herself as someone who leans left on political and cultural issues. Yesterday, in a piece for Quillette, she describes looking into Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and finding him “a refreshing departure from the standard discourse.” That put her at odds with friends who warned her that Peterson was “hate-filled right-wing propaganda.” But while Horton was willing to make up her own mind about Peterson, she found doing so left her feeling isolated and uncomfortable. Horton says the social pressure was so intense that she felt scared to speak up with her opinion. She believes that pressure...

After months of clashes with angry students, the university decided that the young professor it hired had to go. From the day of his first class on campus, protesters had disrupted his lectures. Police had to clear angry students out of the room each day. Officials feared for the professor’s safety and appealed to students to respect his freedom to teach, but the students responded with a manifesto declaring that the offending professor must be dismissed and “a new university of a political nature built up.” They said they were entitled to the teachers they wanted, not someone like him....

How does the left think that normal people are going to react to the left’s rejection of the idea of rational discussion and debate and it’s attempt to keep them from participating in their own governance? What does the elite think lurks at the bottom of that slippery slope? Do liberals think the normals will A) meekly submit to abuse and be cowed into submission, or B) that the normals will grow even more militant and make their voices heard in other, nastier ways?Spoiler: The answer is B. Donald Trump is just one manifestation of the blowback against the rule-by-contempt our alleged betters currently...

GLENSIDE, Pa. (CBS) — Protesters hit the street to voice their concerns about conservative commentator Tomi Lahren. The protesters were kept across the street from the Keswick Theater in Glenside where Lahren gave a speech Thursday night. A group of counter-protesters expressed support for Lahren. Lahren herself then came out amidst those supporting her and urged respect for the counter-protesters and their First Amendment right to free speech. Jack Posobiec🇺🇸 ✔ @JackPosobiec #Breaking “Nazis Die” spray-painted on Keswick Theater in PA where @TomiLahren is speaking tonight This all followed an incident overnight “Nazi’s die” was spray-painted on the theater. “Truth...

Students at the University of Michigan, beware. If you say anything politically incorrect or out-of-line with the political and social orthodoxy on your campus, you may get a knock on your dorm room door from the university’s equivalent of the Thought Police, and be forced into a re-education camp. Or you may be suspended or thrown out of school, potentially damaging your educational prospects and your entire future professional career. If this sounds like an exaggeration, consider a new lawsuit filed in federal court in Michigan by Speech First, Inc., against the president of the University of Michigan, other...

For some reason, Alyssa Milano took it upon herself to take part in a ‘protest’ of the NRA by the ‘No NRA or NoRA’ group at this year’s NRA Convention site, and it didn’t go so hot. Between a shockingly small turnout (some shots look to show a few dozen people, others show maybe 100, half of whom were journalists) and a good deal of missteps like Alyssa bringing armed security to the event, this group protest was a serious dumpster fire. Alyssa Milano ✔ @Alyssa_Milano I don’t want to take your guns away. I AM NOT AGAINST THE 2nd...

Your free speech rights can be violated by nearly anyone, as can your right to freely associate. But though almost anyone can violate your rights, no one may do so. And the modern idea has been that governments ought to protect our rights. Unfortunately, politically-motivated mobs have recently decided that they “are” government, or that they get to redefine our rights . . . by violating them. And governments and other established authorities have not been consistently coming to our aid. Last month, libertarian-conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulis went into the Churchill Tavern in New York to dine with a fellow...

A long-awaited report on free speech protections at the University of California, Berkeley, blames “hard to defend” conservative speakers for inciting left-wing students to violence. A commission of Berkeley faculty, students formed in 2017 after violent and costly student protests called its commitment to free speech into question. Their months long study of the issue resulted in the conclusion that “ultra-conservative rhetoric” by the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter only exists to “advance a facile narrative that universities are not tolerant of conservative speech.” “Contrary to a currently popular narrative, Berkeley remains a tolerant campus,” the report says,...

US whistleblower and transgender rights advocate Chelsea Manning on Wednesday warned that she is deeply troubled about the way in which governments and large companies collect and use people’s data. The former US Army soldier said that search engines and social media firms were helping an “accelerated progress towards totalitarianism.” “I do not think Google or Facebook are accidentally storing data,” Manning told delegates on the opening day of the “Re: publica” internet forum in Berlin. The 30-year-old added that “algorithms are not neutral,” and urged those who develop the high-tech instruments and machine learning tools to closely consider their...

Pro-Trump conservative media personalities Diamond and Silk, sisters whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, testified before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday on the topic of bias against conservatives by companies like Facebook, in a hearing that frequently went off the rails. The sisters defended their claims that they were censored by the tech giant, often in very strong terms. They said that if Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was censoring liberals, “Democrats would be in the streets right now marching and calling him all types of racist.” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) implied the sisters were making a lot...

They say doctors make the worst patients. Seems they have no problem diagnosing others and proscribing solutions, but fall short when it comes to following the advice they dispense. Liberal pundits suffer from the same problem – they love diagnosing others but don’t like it when it comes time to take their own medicine.Joy Reid is the latest liberal to be exposed as not living up the standards she insists other achieve. The MSNBC personality is quick to accuse anyone who doesn’t share her progressive views of being a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe – you name the...

He was awake when most of the country was asleep, cultivating a loyal following while sharing his fascination with the unexplained on his nighttime paranormal-themed show. For the better part of two decades, longtime late-night radio personality Art Bell was his own producer, engineer and host of his show, “Coast to Coast AM.” He later launched his own satellite radio program from his Pahrump home after retiring from full-time hosting duties in 2003. On the airwaves, Bell captivated listeners with his fascination for the unexplained, such as UFOs, alien abductions and crop circles. He died Friday at his home at...

Two days of congressional hearings with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg underlined how American perceptions of media power are changing. After 2012, Democrats and their media allies oozed over the way former President Barack Obama's brilliant strategists changed the face of campaigning through Facebook. But in 2016, Donald Trump was elected, and Facebook became a malignant ghetto of "fake news" and inappropriate election manipulation. Congress is justified in asking how Facebook's massive popularity could also lead to massive violations of privacy and, potentially, international manipulation in our political process. But there is more to discuss, questions of bias and censorship that...

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg endured two grueling days of testimony on Capitol Hill this week, during which he was peppered with questions from members of Congress -- some of whom did not evince a strong grasp of how social media works -- in both the House and Senate.  His testimony was deeply apologetic and deferential, and was generally well-received by many observers, as well as the markets (even as fact-checkers picked apart some of his assertions).  The reason he was dragged to DC stemmed from a freakout over news stories about the Trump campaign-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Tuesday about whether or not the social media platform was biased against conservatives. Zuckerberg acknowledged that Cruz raised a “fair concern” but insisted that Facebook was committed to being a “platform for all ideas.” "There are a great many Americans who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship," Cruz said. He read off examples of Facebook suppressing conservative speech, starting with former Facebook employees admitting to suppressing conservative news in May of 2016. Cruz brought up...

Diamond & Silk, two tremendously funny comics with a huge following who support President Trump, have been "shadowbanned" by Facebook, meaning, their posts are not being fed into the feeds of their subscribers, in what's known as "deplatforming." Facebook did it by labeling the women "dangerous to the community" and told them there was no appeal. Diamond & Silk, whose real names are Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, explained to Fox News that they think it was a bid to goose the midterms for Democrats and outlined what they did: "Facebook gave us another bogus reason why Millions of people...

Laura's opening monologue on free speech was epic. She nailed it. Unprecedented.

SB 1424, as amended, Pan. Commercial law. Internet: social media: false information: strategic plan. Existing law prohibits a person, among others, from making or disseminating in any advertising device, or in any manner or means whatever, including over the Internet, any statement concerning real or personal property or services that is untrue or misleading, as specified. This bill would require any person who operates a social media, as defined, Internet Web site with a physical presence in California to develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Web site. The bill would require the plan to include,...