Free Republic

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) attacked Twitter on Thursday after the company mistakenly barred some tweets from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a think tank that favors restrictions on immigration. “Does Twitter now ban the plain text of federal law?” Cruz asked on Twitter, in reference to CIS’s claim that several of its tweets were not allowed to be promoted on the platform for using the term “illegal alien.” The think tank, which has been labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty and Law Center, said that after several of its tweets were denied paid promotion status, it...

There is no question that technology empowers China's one-party state to repress people effectively. Exhibit A for this proposition is the country's social credit system. China's "social credit" system, which will assign every person a constantly updated score based on observed behaviors, is designed to control conduct by giving the ruling Communist Party the ability to administer punishments and hand out rewards. The former deputy director of the State Council's development research center says the system should be administered so that "discredited people become bankrupt". Officials prevented Liu Hu, a journalist, from taking a flight because he had a low...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reportedly considering an investigation into the social media giants, according to Bloomberg. Sessions will have a meeting with the state attorney generals from Alabama, Nebraska, Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas later this month, all of whom have been reviewing the sites’ practices. The meeting is intended to determine whether “there’s a federal case to be made against companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook, and Twitter for violating consumer or antitrust laws,” according to Bloomberg. “Those are the kind of resources that we’re going need to break these companies up,” Louisiana AG Jeff Landry stated in...

In a video published on Infowars.com on Saturday, Alex Jones declared that “digital martial law” is being put in place to “shut down all free speech that is not pro-leftist and pro-democratic party.” “We are going under digital martial law just 58 days out from the (midterm) election,” Jones said in the video. “This is authoritarianism. Every prominent conservative or nationalist or capitalist or pro-Trump person I know has either been shadowbanned or completely banned on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. They’re going after prominent conservative, Jewish activist David Horowitz and taking away their credit card processing … They...

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was in the hot seat Wednesday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee over his company’s practices on content moderation. Both Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Michael Burgess (R-TX) asked about the excessive amount of time it took the company to take down a tweet threatening Meghan McCain despite many people reporting it.An image of McCain crying by her father’s casket was doctored to show a gun trained at her with the caption: “America, this one’s for you.”Many Twitter users, including Meghan McCain’s husband Ben Domenech, complained as the image was left up for five...

As executives from Facebook and Twitter prepare to testify Wednesday on Capitol Hill, the social media monopolies are scrambling to demonstrate how far they have gone to implement censorship measures demanded by the intelligence agencies and dominant sections of the political establishment.

Among the more attention-grabbing findings: More than one in four people have deleted the Facebook app from their phones, a figure that gets a lot higher when you focus just on 18- to 29-year-olds (44 percent of whom say they’ve done so). All told, 74 percent of Facebook users, according to the Pew data, say they’ve taken one of the following actions in the past year.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has scheduled a meeting with state attorneys general in September to discuss a “growing concern” that tech companies may be “intentionally stifling” the free flow of ideas on their platforms. In a statement issued right after executives from Facebook and Twitter finished testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Department of Justice also suggested that the platforms were running afoul of antitrust laws. “The Attorney General has convened a meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free...

Social Media and search giants are being hit with a class-action lawsuit from a pro-Trump group who claims that they conspired against Conservatives. Freedom Watch, which promotes right to privacy among other causes, claims that Facebook, Google, Twitter and Apple violated antitrust laws. “Our YouTube account on Google never gets above 49 thousand,” said Larry Klayman, the group’s founder, during an interview on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.” on Tuesday. “It goes up, it goes down. That’s been going on for about six months,” he claimed while adding that other conservative groups and interests are also experiencing the same issues....

Facebook is gearing up for the upcoming midterm elections by building a physical “war room” in order to fight off “bad actors” who wish to influence voters. Facebook’s head of civic engagement, Samidh Chakrabarti, told NBC in an interview published Tuesday that the company was in a better place than it was in 2016 in regards to fighting “misinformation” and “fake news.” “I think we are in a much better place than we were in 2016. But it is an arms race. And so that’s why we’re remaining ever vigilant, laser-focused to make sure that we can stay ahead of...

Top executives from Facebook and Twitter are expected to face a grilling from Capitol Hill lawmakers in two separate hearings on Wednesday covering alleged anti-conservative bias and foreign governments manipulating social media platforms to influence U.S. politics. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg are set to face the biggest political tests of their careers as they face lawmakers for the first time in a public congressional hearing. Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are likely to come at Dorsey with knives out over claims that conservatives are being suppressed on Twitter. At the...

Shares of Google, Facebook and Twitter traded lower on Tuesday after President Trump accused the tech leaders of bias against conservative voices, warning they are “treading on very, very troubled territory.” “Google is really taking advantage of a lot of people and I think that’s a very serious thing and a very serious charge,” Trump said after an Oval Office meeting with FIFA President Gianni Infantino. “I think what Google and what others are doing, if you look at what’s going on at Twitter, if you look at what’s going on at Facebook – they better be careful, because you...

President Donald Trump continued challenging big tech companies on Tuesday, warning them about censoring content from conservatives. “I think what Google and what others are doing – if you look at what is going on with Twitter and if you look at what’s going on in Facebook, they better be careful because you can’t do that to people,” Trump said. “You can’t do it.”

Billionaire globalist George Soros is planning to eliminate the majority of Trump supporters from social media before the 2020 election, according to a leaked document. The 49 page document outlines plans by Soros to exert his influence, via his immense personal wealth, to pressure Big Tech to censor and purge pro-Trump journalists, citizens and outlets ahead of the next Presidential election. "A confidential, 49-page memo for defeating Trump by working with the major social-media platforms to eliminate "right wing propaganda and fake news" was presented in January 2017 by Media Matters founder David Brock at a retreat in Florida with...

• For US President Donald Trump and some of his allies, the idea that there's a liberal bias in tech produces the same gut reaction as gun control and immigration. • The news website Axios reported Thursday that Trump was not about to back down in his war on Google and other firms, with one unnamed source calling it "an issue that's here to stay." • Silicon Valley seems resigned to the long fight. "There will be no fixing this," a tech executive told The New York Times. President Donald Trump and his allies are getting ready for a long...

President Donald Trump again went after the liberal internet goliaths of Facebook, Twitter, and Google Tuesday afternoon, saying they are “treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful.” Trump went on to take direct aim at Google, telling reporters, “Google has really taken advantage of a lot of people and I think that’s a very serious thing and it’s a very serious charge. They better be careful because they can’t do that to people.” Twitter continues to deny its liberal bias despite its shadow banning and silencing of conservative voices on its platform. The flamingly liberal...

(Skip) The resulting sense of isolation and lack of collective action renders them [conservatives] increasingly vulnerable, reinforces the sense that one has to keep his head down to survive, and builds in the Left a false sense of unanimity that only reinforces their view that all sensible people share their views. Progressive activists interpret silence as agreement, and the lack of dissent only spurs more activism. It takes real moral courage to break the isolation, declare your beliefs, and seek to organize like-minded conservatives (and sympathetic liberals). It also happens to be the single most effective way of breaking groupthink...

Donald Trump Jr. said in a new interview that he would back a conservative version of Facebook. “I’d love to do it. But what I prefer is, take one of the two Silicon Valley conservatives and let them start it,” Trump Jr. told Axios when asked if President Trump’s 2020 campaign might create such a platform. “And then I'd help promote the platform and be all over that.” Trump Jr.’s comments come on the heels of a report from The New York Times that more than 100 Facebook employees are forming a group to challenge what the group’s founder, senior...

President Trump said Wednesday that he has "personal experience" of possible political bias against conservatives by social media giants, citing fluctuations in his number of online followers, and saying alleged bias by companies "may not be legal." Expounding on his recent claims of bias in social media and search results, Trump told reporters at the White House that "I think that Google, and Facebook, and Twitter, I think they treat conservatives and Republicans very unfairly." "I could tell you that I have personal experience, I have a lot of people on the various platforms," Trump said. "I can tell you...

Bravado not withstanding, social media could not alter the outcome of the 2016 election—even through a well coordinated ganged-up effort. So they blamed the Russians The one truth scurrilous social media will never be able to suppress: their epic and irrefutable two-time failures. Social media Big Fail Numero Uno: In 2016 Facebook, Google, Twitter et al ganged up to try to cheat the American electorate out of the outcome of the presidential election.