Censorship

Early Friday, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s stooges in parliament (known as the Duma) passed a law criminalizing accurate reporting about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a possible sentence of 15 years in jail. When it came to this actual and genuine attack on free, independent journalism, NBC’s Today omitted it from their Friday morning show.

The infamous podcast host and mega free-speech advocate Joe Rogan interviewed former Islamist turned counter-extermism activist, Maajid Nawaz.

Twitter locked Rep. Vicky Hartzler’s (R-MO) personal Twitter account for a tweet denouncing transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports. Hartzler tweeted: “Women’s Sports are for Women, not men pretending to be women,” according to a screenshot tweeted by her campaign manager Michael Haufner.

The Media Research Center and more than 40 other conservative leaders warned governors about the left-wing bias of ratings firm NewsGuard. The joint letter, signed by MRC founder and President Brent Bozell and dozens of other free speech advocates, sounded the alarm both on NewsGuard’s leftist bias and the ratings firm’s dangerous and growing influence in the educational arena.

The YouTube oligarchs on Mount Censorlympus targeted one of its popular users An0maly for daring to post a clip of comments on masking by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). The video that sent the YouTube censors off showed DeSantis telling Middleton High School students at the University of South Florida: “You do not have to wear those masks.”

“‘Fact checking’ is just a euphemism for the Ministry of Truth. It is not about 'facts,'” journalist Kyle Becker tweeted about biased NewsGuard.

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.

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.

Joe Rogan is amazing. Five years ago, I left Fox to start Stossel TV. I left because I was frustrated by live TV. Guests talked so much but said little. I now produce videos like the ones I used to do on “20/20.” I like having a month or more to do research and then more time to edit the video into a short clip that explains complicated things but is also fun to watch. This edited model…

In the latest censorship effort to demonize self-defense tools, five Democratic Party senators are pressuring YouTube to remove “ghost gun” videos.

If an establishment-challenging journalist receives a death threat, does Big Tech take the side of the victim or the victimizer? Journalist Andy Ngo said Twitter censored him with the claim that he violated the platform’s private information policy after he posted purported screenshots of a death threat against him.