Tag: Big Tech Censorship

Katie Hobbs Used State Resources for Censorship ‘Volunteers’ Who Monitored Twitter for ‘Misinformation’ in 2022 Arizona Elections: Email

Tom Pappert
Gov. Katie Hobbs

An email surfaced by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) on Tuesday revealed Governor Katie Hobbs used government resources to facilitate a volunteer force that flagged “misinformation” ahead of the 2022 election, including on Election Day.

The legal organization explained that it revealed the email through an Arizona Public Records Law request to the Arizona Secretary of State which requested communications between Hobbs’ office and social media platforms Twitter, Facebook and Instagram between January 7, 2019 and January 1, 2023.

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Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Reneges on Hosting Republican Event After ‘Doing Research’ on Group

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Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University rescinded its agreement to host a College Republicans United convention “after doing research” on the group.

Richard Thomas, founder of the group, told The College Fix that the event was to be located at the university’s “Lower Hangar” at its Prescott, Arizona campus for three hours and cost a total of $630.00 for media, support and cleanup.

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Twitter Suspends Mark Finchem’s Account Three Days After Elon Musk’s Takeover, Eight Days Before the Election – UPDATED

Rachel Alexander

Just three days after tech mogul Elon Musk acquired Twitter, promising to bring free speech to the platform, the social media giant suspended Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem. The election is eight days away, and the Trump-endorsed state representative is running on a platform of combating voter fraud – a contentious topic that raises hackles on the Right and Left.

Finchem received a notice from Twitter Monday afternoon telling him, “We’ve temporarily limited some of your account features.” It went on to say, “We have determined this account violated the Twitter Rules. Specifically for:” However, there was no reason specified.

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YouTube Censors Conservative Show Featuring Kari Lake

Neil Jones

Arizona Republican Gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake recently spoke on the popular Conservative show “Louder With Crowder,” but YouTube has struck down the episode.

“Tech tyrants are censoring @scrowder for something we talked about on his show last week,” Lake Tweeted. “Who knows what it was & who cares–this is wrong. IT IS UNAMERICAN. We the people must denounce censorship in any form.”

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Mailchimp Suspends Account of Arizona Attorney General Candidate Andrew Gould

Rachel Alexander

Arizona Attorney General candidate Andrew Gould, a Republican and former Arizona Supreme Court Justice, said he has been suspended from Mailchimp for violating its terms of service. He believes it may have been due to a press release he issued on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down a New York gun control law, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. 

Gould stated in a message to his supporters, “After a year of using this service, they have suspended our account without the opportunity to appeal it. Mailchimp claims that we have violated their Standard Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy. They will not specify the violation. I find it highly suspicious that, immediately after the release of my statement supporting the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the 2nd Amendment in New York, Mailchimp shut down my account.” 

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Kari Lake Sits Down with Brandon Straka to Discuss Plans If Elected as Arizona Governor

Neil Jones

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona – Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for Arizona governor, sat down for a Saturday interview with #WalkAway Campaign PAC (WACPAC) founder Brandon Straka about how she will handle important policies if elected. It was the first-ever such event.

“It’s like we’ve [America has] got wounds and we’re bleeding; we’ve got to stop the bleeding. But the thing that caused the wounds and the bleeding is a stolen election,” Lake said when asked by Straka about election integrity. “Let me tell you, none of these people I’m running against on the Republican ticket even wanted to touch that. It’s the third rail. And I even had people in politics say, ‘Don’t mention the 2020 election.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I went out, I touched that rail, and I have not stopped talking about it because that’s the reason we have the problems we have.”

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National Border Patrol Council-Endorsed Arizona Candidate for U.S. Senate Jim Lamon Running Barrage of Gutsy Ads, Some Censored by Big Tech

Rachel Alexander

U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, who is running as a Republican for office in Arizona to defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, is making waves with his provocative, bold TV campaign spots. The left-leaning big tech companies don’t like them, however, and so both Yahoo and Facebook have pushed back, with Yahoo actually censoring them. While broadcast TV is generally required by law to run political ads (FCC rules state that if a station allows state and local political candidates to run ads, they must accept them from all candidates), big tech is not. Yahoo refused to run an ad of his because it merely said “Let’s Go Brandon.” 

Stephen Puetz, one of Lamon’s campaign staffers, told The Arizona Sun Times the ads are making a difference in getting Lamon’s name known, since polls show his support is increasing. Lamon is running against Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich in the Republican primary, who has considerable name recognition, and another candidate, Blake Masters, is making significant ground due to funding from his boss, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. 

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Puskaric to Ask Pennsylvania Agencies to Ditch Social Media Platforms That Censor

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania state Rep. Mike Puskaric (R-Jefferson Hills) indicated Wednesday he will urge state agencies to ditch social-media platforms he says engage in censorship.

In a memorandum asking fellow representatives to cosponsor his upcoming resolution, the Pittsburgh-area legislator argued that especially large information-technology companies violate the state and federal constitutions when they make politicized publishing decisions. He insisted government institutions and officials should respond by cancelling their accounts on such sites and signing onto more permissive online venues instead.

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Twitter Reverses Ban on Account That Highlighted Left-Wing Hypocrisy

Peter D'Abrosca

Twitter Tuesday evening banned a well-known Twitter account called @DefiantLs, which posted screenshots pointing out left-wing hypocrisy. 

The owner of the account, who has always been anonymous and remains so, said the account was banned for an alleged “ban evasion,” despite the fact that the account owner says he or she has “never had an account suspended so I’ve never had a ban to evade.”

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Conservatives, Independent Voices Build Own Platforms to Counter Big Tech Censorship

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Conservatives took critics to heart when they said, “build your own platforms,” in the wake of digital censorship claims.

Twitter competitors like Gab, Parler and now GETTR offer a “safe space” for those frustrated by the former’s inconsistent rules. The video platform Rumble, active since 2013 but experiencing a massive boost over the past year, is a haven for voices like conservative talker Dan Bongino recently silenced by Google-owned YouTube. And GiveSendGo.com lets clients denied access to GoFundMe crowdfund without compromising their values.

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Left-Wing Activists Tied to ‘Disinformation’ Group Are Working to Demonetize Conservative News Sites

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Activists linked to a left-wing disinformation network are pressuring advertisers to cut ties with conservative news sites.

Check My Ads, a group started by Sleeping Giants co-founder and activist Nandini Jammi and advertising consultant Claire Atkin, bills itself as “Adtech’s first watchdog” and claims to “cut disinformation off at the source.” The organization attempts to curb the spread of what it deems misleading or hateful content by pressuring advertisers and ad exchanges to sever business relationships with certain news and commentary sites.

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Facebook Exec Promises to Crack Down on ‘Falsehoods’ Targeting ‘Marginalized Communities’

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Roy Austin, vice president of civil rights for Facebook parent company Meta, pledged to crack down on “misinformation” and alleged discriminatory conduct propagated by the social media platform.

“We’re living in a time and a society where there are people who propagate obvious falsehoods,” Austin said in an interview with Axios. “My position is, when those falsehoods injure historically and systemically marginalized communities, that they don’t belong.”

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Dan Bongino Permanently Banned from YouTube

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Conservative talk show host Dan Bongino had both of his YouTube accounts permanently banned Wednesday, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Bongino’s second channel, the Dan Bongino Show Clips, was initially suspended and demonetized for seven days after Bongino posted a video in which he said masks were “useless” in stopping the spread of the coronavirus, violating YouTube’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. Bongino then attempted to upload a video within the seven-day suspension period on his main channel, resulting in a permanent ban for both accounts, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to the DCNF.

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DirecTV to Drop OAN in Blow to Conservative, Pro-Trump News Network

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Satellite broadcaster DirecTV has announced plans to drop the One America News (OAN) channel in a blow to the conservative, unabashedly pro-Donald Trump news network.

“We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires,” a DirecTV spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

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Amazon Disables Ability to Rate Books Sold in China at Chinese Government’s Request

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Amazon stopped offering customer ratings and reviews of books sold in China at the request of the Chinese Communist Party, according to a Reuters investigation.

The Chinese government ordered Amazon to stop allowing customers to review books following less-than-perfect ratings of a collection of President Xi Jinping’s writings, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. Amazon partnered with a state-owned firm called China International Book Trading Corp (CIBTC) and created a portal, which it called China Books, that promotes Chinese Communist Party material and forbids negative reviews.

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Facebook Employees Actively Censored Conservative Websites, Even in Defiance of Managers

Admin
Facebook logo with smartphone showing lock in front

A series of new leaks from Big Tech giant Facebook has revealed even more bias against conservatives from the company’s employees, even to the point of causing internal debates between employees and upper management, according to the New York Post.

The latest leaks come from message board conversations reviewed by the Post, which showed back-and-forth discussions within Facebook about how to deal with conservative news outlets during last year’s race riots by far-left domestic terrorist organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

Some employees expressed their desire to completely remove sites such as Breitbart from Facebook’s “News Tab” feature. When one such employee asked a manager about doing so, the manager responded by pointing out that “we saw drops in trust in CNN 2 years ago,” before rhetorically asking “would we take the same approach for them too?”

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Psaki Doubles Down on White House’s Support for Tech Censorship

Peter D'Abrosca
Psaki Tech Censors

Just a day after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted that the Biden administration is colluding with Facebook to censor “misinformation,” Psaki advocated for even more online censorship.

During a Friday press briefing, she advised social media companies to “create robust enforcement strategies that bridge their properties and provide transparency about rules.”

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YouTube Removes Former President Trump’s Press Conference Announcing Big Tech Lawsuits

Cooper Moran

Youtube removed a video posted by the America First Policy Institute, which captured former President Trump’s press conference announcing a class action lawsuit against Big Tech giants.

President and CEO of the America First Policy Institute Brooke Rollins, who joined Trump at the press conference, argued that the video’s removal is yet another instance of the censorship of conservatives.

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DeSantis Calls Out Biden, Big Tech on Fox News

Grant Holcomb
Screen cap of live comments from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called out President Joe Biden and Silicon Valley Big Tech companies for caring more about China’s interests than “middle America” on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News program.

Biden’s big event last week was meeting with world leaders at the G-7 summit. DeSantis said Biden’s “performance may have played well with European elites, but not sure there was much in it for Middle America.”

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Facebook to End Rule Moderating Speech for Politicians

Grant Holcomb

Facebook announced it will likely scrap its highly debated policy regarding moderating the speech and content posted on its site form politicians. Previously, politicians were subject to suspension or permanent ban under a different set of rules compared to regular Facebook users.

This decision comes on the heels of former President Donald J. Trump being permanently banned from Facebook, but no decision has come regarding whether to resurrect Trump’s Facebook account. Facebook’s Oversight Board is giving Facebook time to determine if Trump will be allowed back on the platform.

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Big Tech Lobbyists Sue DeSantis over New Regulations

Peter D'Abrosca
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

A pair of Big Tech lobbying groups, NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, have filed a lawsuit against Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, along with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other state officials, after DeSantis signed into law a bill that regulates Big Tech’s censorship abilities earlier this week. 

“Americans everywhere should oppose Florida’s attempt to run roughshod over the First Amendment rights of private online businesses,” Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice said, according to POLITICO. “By weakening the First Amendment rights of some, Florida weakens the First Amendment rights of all.”

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DeSantis Signs Bill Curbing Censorship by Big Tech Companies

Grant Holcomb
Ron DeSantis at press conference

Yesterday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill, SB 7072, designed to limit the scope of Big Tech companies and their influence in Florida. The bill will fine companies $250,000 per day if they censor or suspend accounts for political candidates, with Disney World being a notable exception.

“This session, we took action to ensure that ‘We the People’ — real Floridians across the Sunshine State — are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites,” said DeSantis in a release. “Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela. If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”

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Silicon Valley Tech Platforms Receive Failing Grades on Quarterly Censorship Report

Peter D'Abrosca

According to a the most recent quarterly censorship report card from the Media Research Center (MRC), most of the major Silicon Valley tech titans are failing to protect freedom of expression.

“By almost any measure, the first three months of 2021 were the worst ever for online freedom. Amazon, Twitter, Apple, Google, Facebook, YouTube and others proved to the world that the Big Tech censorship of conservatives is a reality,” the group said. “And they did so in disturbing, authoritarian ways that highlight their unchecked power over information and our political process.”

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Bill Thwarting Big Tech Censorship Headed to Florida Senate Floor

Peter D'Abrosca
Florida Senate

A bill that would limit the ability of Big Tech platforms like Facebook and YouTube to ban political candidates passed the Senate Appropriations Committee Monday, and will head to the Senate floor.

SB 7072, which according to its summary is aimed at “prohibiting a social media platform from knowingly deplatforming a candidate,” along with establishing civil liability guidelines  for companies that do deplatorm candidates, passed the Committee with a 10-9 vote.

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Facebook Bans Story About BLM Co-Founder Buying Expensive Real Estate

Peter D'Abrosca
Patrisse Khan-Cullors

In the latest example of Silicon Valley censorship, Facebook has banned the sharing of a story about a high-profile Black Lives Matter member purchasing expensive real estate.

“Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the leader of Black Lives Matter and a self-described Marxist, recently purchased a $1.4 million home in an exclusive Los Angeles neighborhood where the vast majority of residents are white, according to reports,” The New York Post originally reported last weekend. 

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A Study Touted as a Blow to Conservatives’ Complaints About Big Tech Censorship Was Funded by a Major Biden Donor

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A study from New York University released on Monday that dismisses conservative allegations of Big Tech bias and calls for President Joe Biden to establish a Digital Regulatory Agency was funded by Craig Newmark, a billionaire tech titan who donated $100,000 to Biden’s campaign victory fund.

The study, entitled “False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives,” also defends decisions by Facebook and Twitter to both ban President Donald Trump from their platforms last month, and to limit circulation of a story from The New York Post weeks before the election about emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

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Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles Calls for Tennessee to Dump Any State-Held Equity in Big Tech Companies Over Censorship

Jason M. Reynolds

Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles is calling on the Tennessee General Assembly to dump any state-held equity and debt in the Big Tech companies over their “war on freedom of speech.”

Ogles made the announcement on his Facebook page Wednesday, available here. It is addressed to Governor Bill Lee, Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge), House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) and the other members of the Legislature.

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Facebook Bans Virginia Senator Amanda Chase from Posting for 30 Days

Eric Burk

State Senator Amanda Chase (R-Chesterfield) said Friday that she has been banned from posting to her public Facebook page for 30 days, with an additional ban on posting live video for another 30 days. In addition to the ban, Facebook removed some of her posts, including a video showing a woman being shot in the U.S. Capitol and flagged as false Chase’s claims of Antifa involvement in the Wednesday Capitol riot.

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Conservative Facebook Users Upset Over Censorship Take Alternative Social Media Site Parler Out for a Test Drive

Jason M. Reynolds

Facebook seems to be presenting a “Catch-22” for conservatives who are fed up with censorship: In order to leave Facebook yet let contacts know how to find them, they must risk Facebook’s censorship to let those contacts know.

Project Veritas has often documented Facebook’s bias against conservatives and its deletions of their posts.

Some who say they are tired of that bias are trying microblogging/social networking site Parler. They say they see Parler as a free-speech alternative to Twitter. Forbes in June ran an interview with Parler founder John Matze and how the site has grown to be a conservative presence in only two years.

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Student Sues School for Banning Biblical Shirt While Allowing LGBTQ Speech

Corinne Murdock

A Tennessee high school student has filed a lawsuit against Overton County School District (OCS) for banning her Biblical shirt while allowing other free speech. The shirt read: “HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN – 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.” 
OCS claimed that the student’s shirt violated Livingston Academy dress code policy. Although the policy doesn’t define “offensive messages” or “sexual connotations,” Principal Richard Melton determined that the student’s shirt fell under those criteria.

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