Free Speech

The first half of the conspiracy documentary, Plandemic, was removed several times from YouTube, according to The Washington Post. Twitter and Facebook also made statements to other media outlets confirming that both platforms were suppressing hashtags and content related to the documentary. 

Facebook is paying out millions to local news outlets, and it is being especially generous to “diverse” communities. The company announced that “200 news organizations will receive nearly $16 million in grants through the Facebook Journalism Project’s relief fund for local news,” in a May 7 press release. “These grants stem from $25 million in local news relief funding announced in March as part…

The liberal media met Facebook’s announcement of its first 20 members of its new Oversight Board with praise and applause. But for some, the lefty choices made were not liberal enough. “Some see the board as a valuable check on Facebook’s power to control the speech and behavior of billions of users,” wrote Columbia Journalism Review’s (CJR) Chief Digital Writer Matthew Ingram. Tech journal…

Facebook is partnering with Soros-funded Poynter’s “Mediawise” project and a progressive news outlet to teach youth how to process media. “ATTN:, the progressive social media-based news outlet aimed at millennials, is launching a video series on Facebook and Instagram, in partnership with Poynter's groundbreaking digital literacy project ‘MediaWise,’” Axios reported in its May 5 coverage. Axios…

Tumblr has launched its new witch-hunt style initiative to wipe out “hate speech” on the platform. Tumblr released a blog announcing its crackdown on offensive speech headlined “Updates to how we enforce our Community Guidelines on hate speech” on May 4. Tumblr claimed to be “steadfast believers in free speech” before showing its true colors — bragging about its accomplishment of “approximately 4…

Instead of arguing with people on Twitter, you may be getting nagged by the platform about your posts and what it suggests “could be harmful.” “When things get heated, you may say things you don't mean. To let you rethink a reply, we’re running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful…

The app so compromised by the Chinese government that it can’t be used by members of the U.S. military has now gone viral amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it’s planning on expanding into TV. TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese firm directly overseen by the Chinese government, has grown exponentially during recent months. TikTok “has been downloaded more than 2 billion times globally…

House lawmakers sent a scorching letter to the Amazon CEO, threatening to use force if he does not come voluntarily. House lawmakers sent a letter last Friday demanding that Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos answer for his company’s alleged monopolistic activities — such as using data from third-party merchants using Amazon to make competing products. The letter threatened that, “If…

Conservative commentator Candace Owens was suspended from Twitter for encouraging Americans to defy stay-at-home rules. Owens blasted Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday for her stringent stay-at-home policies enforced on her state. The fiery tweet reportedly read that: "Apparently @GovWhitmer believes she is a duly elected dictator of a socialist country. The people of Michigan need to…

Twitter’s rules against “misinformation” don’t apply to everyone. The platform didn’t stop a full-blown anti-American propaganda video from being released by the Chinese government. And this isn’t the first time Twitter allowed Chinese propaganda. The Chinese Embassy in France uploaded an absurd, lego-based propaganda video at 10:54 a.m. Apr 30. The Ambassade de Chine en France’s video “Once Upon…

Twitter does not seem to have a direct answer as to whether or not it has reduced visibility for President Donald Trump’s Twitter account. Twitter’s U.K. Head of Government, Public Policy and Philanthropy, Katy Minshall, was asked by MP Clive Efford if the company “often take[s] action against tweets from the president of the United States?” She seemed unable to answer the question in an April 30…

Even a global pandemic isn’t enough to make Americans want to surrender their privacy to Big Tech. Apple and Google had launched an unprecedented “contact tracing” project in mid-May that would notify users when they have entered the presence of a person with the coronavirus. This was launched in an effort “to protect people and get society back up and running,” according to an April 10…

YouTube’s fact-checking panels will now be launched in America after being tested in India. YouTube’s chief product officer Neal Mohan, was quoted in The Verge’s April 28 coverage explaining that “When users are searching on YouTube around a specific claim, we want to give an opportunity for those fact checks to show up right then and there, when our users are looking for information — especially…