Free Speech

An election integrity probe reportedly found that a nonprofit funded by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg swayed the 2020 election “in violation of Wisconsin law.”

It’s Episode 27 of CensorTrack with TR. This week we talked about how Big Tech is blocking posts that report on the Russia/Ukraine conflict and censoring content that stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people … all while allowing the murderous President of Russia to post freely online.

Montana’s attorney general has announced an investigation into Communist Chinese-linked social media app TikTok, including an examination of TikTok’s censorship.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) both called on President Joe Biden to take stronger action to protect children online as Biden delivered his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Big Tech platforms have allowed reported hoaxes about the Ukrainian war to spread, even as they consistently censor users for posting actual facts about COVID-19.

DirecTV dropped Russian propaganda outlet RT America on Tuesday as a belated response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. DirecTV absurdly refused to renew One America News Network earlier this year while RT’s programming was only suspended after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine being condemned by the U.S. and kindred countries around the world, Twitter continues to allow Russian President Vladimir to post on its platform.

Comedian, actor and commentator Russell Brand called out the American government for criminalizing misinformation, despite the government’s deep record of pushing misinformation itself.

Russian state-affiliated accounts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are still allowed to influence their approximately 38.7 million followers even as Russia attacks Ukraine.

Over the weekend during a CPAC panel, Senator James Lankford (R-OK) slammed Big Tech dominance. A long proponent of reforming Section 230, Lankford stated reform was essential to protecting free speech. Lankford doubled down on this stance and argued Section 230 must be reformed since Big Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter allegedly used it to censor conservatives.

TikTok has ramped up its censorship in 2022. The platform, affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, censored the Media Research Center three times last year and 14 times in the last two months for a total of 17 times.

A new study from Princeton alleged that liberal content on Twitter turned moderate voters against former President Donald Trump.

Although the federal government has not utilized vaccine passports to prove that someone has been vaccinated against COVID-19, some states are quietly using “SMART Health Cards."
 

NewsGuard CEO Steven Brill this week painted his company as a white knight that can save impressionable dupes from repeating another Jan. 6 “insurrection,” and said Fox News and OANN traffic in conspiracy theories.