Tag: online censorship

Federal ‘Censorship Nerve Center’ Likely to Shutter, but State Would ‘Realign’ Staff for Same Work

Just the News
Global Engagement Center website

The State Department is planning to change how it engages with the globe as it braces for unified Republican government that promises to gut the so-called censorship-industrial complex, the subject of a four-part Just the News series this fall.

But like the evolution of the broader global public-private partnership to label, throttle, remove and defund purported misinformation, disinformation and “true but inconvenient” malinformation (MDM) on tech platforms, State’s change may only be in name.

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Microsoft Promotes Media Literacy as ‘Inoculation’ Against ‘Disinformation’

Foundation for Freedom Online
Robots reading newspapers

Microsoft has staked a claim in the growing field of “media literacy” and “digital literacy,” which aims to instruct members of the public – especially schoolchildren – in what types of digital media they ought to trust and distrust. As FFO has previously reported, media and digital literacy is the latest in a long string of pretexts by the ideologically biased censorship industry to prevent the public from accessing disfavored information sources.

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Tennessee U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn Thanks Elon Musk, X CEO for Help Updating Kids Online Safety Act

Tom Pappert
Sen Marsha Blackburn, Elon Musk

A new version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), created by Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), was announced on Saturday by Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, who said she collaborated with the senators to create legislation that would prioritize youth safety while preserving the First Amendment.

Revealing the new legislation in a post to X, Yaccarino noted the company, which was formerly known as Twitter, vowed it would help Congress establish new laws to protect children during a January appearance in Congress alongside Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Chew.

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Trump’s Likely FCC Chair Demands Answers from Big Tech over Alleged ‘Censorship Cartel’

Tom Pappert
Brendan Carr

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner who activist groups claim could be selected to chair the FCC by President-elect Donald Trump sent a letter to Big Tech industry leaders demanding details about their censorship practices, and seeking specific information about their relationship with the controversial, for-profit fact checker NewsGuard.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr on Friday posted to the social media platform X a letter he sent to Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram; Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, as well as Tim Cook of Apple and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, warning their businesses “played significant roles” in “an unprecedented surge in censorship,” which he called “improper conduct.”

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Democrats Pressure Big Tech to Censor Hurricane ‘Misinformation’ amid Public Scrutiny of Response

Tom Pappert
Hurricane Helene

Four Democrats in the U.S. House sent a letter to Big Tech executives on Friday demanding increased censorship and scrutiny on their platforms after Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, arguing they must censor posts to protect users from potential scams and “misinformation” about federal agencies.

Representatives Deborah Ross (D-NC-02), Kathy Castor (D-FL-14), Nikema Williams (D-GA-05), and Wiley Nickel (D-NC-13) urged tech executives to “do substantially more” to combat social media “misinformation” that purportedly began in the wake of Hurricane Helene, in a letter first reported by Axios.

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The Advertising Industry’s Deepening Role in Online Censorship

Foundation for Freedom Online
X User

In the arsenal of the censorship-industrial complex, few weapons have been more effective than advertiser boycotts. Long before online censorship reached its peak in 2020 and 2021, advocates of online censorship had identified online advertisers as the most important source of pressure on social media companies to restrict free speech. When direct appeals to social media platforms fail, pro-censorship campaigners use the threat of advertiser boycotts to produce the desired result.

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