Censorship

Browsing app and search engine DuckDuckGo, formerly a go-to for free speech advocates sick of Big Tech censorship, is now going to downrank sites it deems connected to “Russian disinformation.”

A new bill introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) could drive censorship online. Klobuchar said the NUDGE Act would help address so-called “misinformation.”

NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill claimed that NewsGuard’s goal is “not to block anything,” but “just [to] give people straight information.” However, in a recent interview, he revealed NewsGuard’s real game of demonetizing anything the “credibility” arbiter deems “misinformation.”

It’s Episode 28 of CensorTrack with TR. This week we talked about how YouTube censored The Hill for reporting on the news, and censored Media Research Center for posting about the shift of national COVID-19 conversation.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called upon his fellow justices to rethink how a 1996 law protects Big Tech companies from liability on their platforms. Thomas may have opened Pandora’s Box for Big Tech CEOs by calling to take a fresh look at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Live-streaming platform Twitch is reportedly instituting stricter bans on “misinformation,” including supposed COVID-19 “misinformation.”

Without question,  the free press in America is under assault. In his recent speech at CPAC, former President Trump felt compelled to speak up for One America News. Why? The Associated Press has headlined this: "DirecTV drops Trump-friendly One America News." And then there is the targeting of Newsmax, another pro-Trump conservative TV outlet. Atlantic Broadband, now called Breezeline, has…

After NBC’s Today skipped on Friday morning the frightening news that Russia had criminalized reporting basic facts about their war on Ukraine, NBC Nightly News gave the story 55 seconds of muted coverage hours later, possibly due to the fact that they were still reporting from Moscow as other western networks ceased reporting there and not risk prison sentences of up to 15…

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.