Free Republic

YGTBFKM Until today, I didn't realize that individuals are now being assigned ESG scores that some institutions use to decide whether they will do business with a person. I obviously knew about ESG scores that huge investment firms are using to force corporations to conform to ideological demands. I knew that in some cases, prominent individuals or troublemakers have been blackballed by banks and other firms. And, of course, I know that some companies that sell politically incorrect items are getting deplatformed by PayPal and even web providers. But I didn't know that an industry has sprung up to analyze...

Digital Kill Switches: How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent“No president from either party should have the sole power to shut down or take control of the internet or any other of our communication channels during an emergency.”—Senator Rand PaulWhat’s to stop the U.S. government from throwing the kill switch and shutting down phone and internet communications in a time of so-called crisis?After all, it’s happening all over the world.Communications kill switches have become tyrannical tools of domination and oppression to stifle political dissent, shut down resistance, forestall election losses, reinforce military coups, and keep the populace isolated, disconnected and in...

I completely missed this when it was published at the end of last month. Fortunately, Jesse Singal did a great write-up about it which I noticed today. As you may know, Bill Adair is the founder of Politifact, a site which has generate a lot of content for this blog over the years. Last month, Adair was asked to share his predictions for 2024 and he wrote a piece titled “Fact-checking needs a reboot.” Part of that reboot would be pressuring social media companies to “suppress misinformation” more often.After I founded PolitiFact in 2007, I often said that our goal...

The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech. “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their...

Leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard is the farthest thing from being the unbiased media referee it purports to be. It is a government-funded operation designed to attack right-leaning media by going after their advertiser funding. There are at least five core reasons why Congress should strip funding from NewsGuard in the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) since it received a $750,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the Department of Defense. The state funding of a leftist, so-called journalism gatekeeper that deceptively bills itself as “apolitical” is case in point. Such efforts by the government to censor media it does not approve...

The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to freeze an appeals court ruling blocking it from coercing or encouraging social media companies to censor speech. The Fifth Circuit found Friday that the White House, Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI violated the First Amendment, partially upholding a lower court’s decision in the free speech lawsuit Missouri v. Biden. While it ruled that the July injunction issued by District of Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty was “vague and broader than necessary,” it issued a revised version prohibiting the Biden administration from taking actions to...

A 19-year-old woman named Chloe Cole, who was medically transitioned as a minor and has since detransitioned, was censored by Instagram over the weekend. It’s unclear why Cole was censored, but the teen captioned a photo of her bio on the social media platform, wherein she identifies herself as a detranstioner. Cole’s bio notes that she’s “female” with two X chromosomes and a “former trans kid.” It also says that she was started on testosterone and puberty blockers at age 13, underwent a double mastectomy at 15, and finally detranstioned at 16. “The big tech overlords think I’m too cute...

We have been waiting for almost a month for the decision from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in this groundbreaking government censorship case. Its implications touch every single American citizen, and enormous precedent was set with this ruling. The following is a detailed analysis of the decision, and I hope that you will spend the time to read it. First, a brief review. The case, Missouri v. Biden, was filed last May by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with private plaintiffs, against numerous agencies in the federal government. Plaintiffs alleged that the government (including the FBI, White...

Google has partnered with the United Nations, World Health Organisation and others in a new global censorship tool that was introduced last Monday, according to LaToya Drake, head of Google News Lab.Google News Lab is “a team within the Google News Initiative whose mission is to collaborate with journalists to fight misinformation” and other things. And, the Google News Initiative (“GNI”) “works with publishers and journalists to fight misinformation.” The GNI and its Lab seem to be one and the same thing with the Lab simply being a page on the GNI website.Below are the short descriptions from GNI’s ‘About’...

Another piece of Trojan Horse legislation is moving through Congress. The so-called “RESTRICT Act,” introduced by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Tom Thune (R-S.D.), is supposedly aimed at blocking or disrupting transactions and financial holdings linked to foreign adversaries that the powers that be claim are a threat to national security. In truth, though, the RESTRICT Act appears to have been intentionally designed to target the free speech rights of everyday Americans. Warner, who is described as “a longtime opponent of free speech,” crafted the RESTRICT Act in such a way as to weaponize Big Tech, according to Instagram co-founder...

At today's House Weaponization of the Federal Government Committee hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) questioned D. John Sauer, Special Assistant Attorney General at the Louisiana Department of Justice, about Biden Administration attempts to curb speech on social media. WHITE HOUSE STAFFERS ARE SOME OF THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE ON THE PLANET EARTH. OFTENTIMES, THEY GET THE DISPOSITIVE OPINION ON APPOINTMENTS TO DIFFERENT POSITIONS WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. THEY INFLUENCE STATEMENTS OF ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY. THEY INITIATED REGULATORY REFORM. THEY OFTEN HAVE A SIGNIFICANT VOICE ON WHICH ASSIMILATION THAT IS CONSIDERED AN APPROVED. MR. SOUR, I WANT TO UNDERSTAND HOW MANY OF...

For years, conservatives have complained of apparent censorship of their voices on the principal social media platforms, like Facebook, Google and Twitter. Posts or tweets get taken down, or de-boosted, or de-monetized, or degraded in search results, or “shadow-banned,” or slapped with content warnings, or otherwise suppressed. But the response from Big Tech has always been, hey, we’re private companies, and we’re not subject to the First Amendment. We can do as we please. Then Elon Musk took over Twitter, and followed by giving several journalists access to Twitter’s electronic archives to investigate any untoward government manipulation. The result has...

The Twitter Files show how the FBI deputized Twitter to conduct illegal censorship of American citizens and undermine the First Amendment. ... Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter last October and the subsequent reporting on the “Twitter Files” by journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and a handful of others beginning in early December is one of the most important news stories of our time. The “Twitter Files” story encompasses, and to a large extent connects, every major political scandal of the Trump-Biden era. Put simply, the “Twitter Files” reveal an unholy alliance between Big Tech and the deep state designed to...

There’s a movement brewing to shut down conservative websites that offer views and information contradicting left-wing orthodoxy. Investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky did an excellent job of uncovering how activist organizations, some partnered with the State Department, work to blacklist and defund conservative media. His ongoing series at the Washington Examiner is worth reading and explains how this is part of a larger effort to effectively shut down conservative media publications. It’s predictable—yet nevertheless disturbing—stuff. “Major ad companies are increasingly seeking guidance from purportedly ‘nonpartisan’ groups claiming to be detecting and fighting online ‘disinformation.’” Kaminsky wrote. “These same ‘disinformation’ monitors are...

The Department of State has funded a deep-pocketed "disinformation" tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media, likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars, the Washington Examiner can confirm. The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged "disinformation," the Washington Examiner reported . This same "disinformation" group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress. "Any...

Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates said AI should be considered as a tool to combat “digital misinformation” and “political polarization” in an interview published on Thursday with Handelsblatt, a German news media outlet. In response to a question about the spreading of “misinformation” via AI, Gates referred to the events of January 6, 2021, as an “attack on the Capitol. He said: I’m certainly concerned about political polarization, and I know the U.S. situation best of all. I wouldn’t have expected people to attack the Capitol, or people to deny the validity of election results. I‘m in a state...

The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on GDI's list and spoke to an ad-buying source who said Breitbart News is also. Separately, GDI has said that the 10 "riskiest" news outlets for purported disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News Network, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a foreign think tank headquartered in the United Kingdom, released an assessment of American online media designed to blacklist conservative media outlets and choke off their advertising revenue. The information is kept on what GDI calls its “Dynamic Exclusion List.” Ad networks — including most prominently Xandr — which is owned by Microsoft — are now using this list to refuse to allow advertising on conservative media websites.

The FBI paid Twitter millions of dollars to cover the costs of processing the agency's requests. "I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!" wrote someone with Twitter's Safety, Content, & Law Enforcement (SCALE) team in a February 2021 email, according to internal messages reported by journalist Michael Shellenberger today.

It took $44 billion of Elon Musk’s money to uncover how national-security agencies like the FBI and Homeland Security — as well as Adam Schiff — conducted censorship on Twitter. Those revelations are still continuing, even while not much else seems to be changing on that platform. But what about Facebook? Who’s got $100 billion or so to buy out Mark Zuckerberg and get a peek under Meta’s hood? Reason Magazine certainly doesn’t, but it turns out that all Robby Soave needed was a lawsuit and a court order or two. Internal documents show that Facebook essentially allowed the CDC...