Censorship

Five strikes and you’re permanently banned. So sayeth the Twitter monarchs, who discreetly promulgated a new policy to muzzle users who spread so-called COVID-19 “misinformation.”

Censorship is bad, but the irony is rich when a liberal gaming outlet like Kotaku called gaming streamer Hasan Piker’s ban from Twitch for using the term “cracker” a “bizarre moderation decision.”

YouTube is not only censoring conservatives, but recently, it has reportedly become a platform for something perhaps just as sinister: Western influencers who paint positive pictures of Communist China, even repeating Chinese propaganda along the way.

It’s Episode Sixteen of MRC’s newest video series, CensorTrack with TR. This week we’re talking about how Big Tech censored a video lecture about the evils of socialism.

On Tuesday, the video platform Rumble announced that it was terminating its business relationships with the Unruly Group and Tremor International over its censorship of Fox News, podcast, and radio talk show host Dan Bongino.

Veteran Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth told Axios, “If your democracy can’t tolerate the speech of people, I’m not sure what kind of democracy it is … [Facebook is] a fundamentally democratic technology.” This is paradoxical considering how much Facebook has engaged in biased censorship in the past year.

The new CEO of Twitter acted immediately upon his publicly stated dislike for the First Amendment by banning two groups threatening to the rich and powerful elite while allowing Chinese Communist propaganda free reign on that site.

A new analysis reveals the extraordinary left-wing bias of website ratings firm NewsGuard, which should concern every American given that it is expanding its reach into cable and broadcast TV news. Liberal outlets were rated 27 points higher on average than news organizations on the right.

Meta is doubling down on its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to detect alleged “harmful content,” even though AI algorithms have been shown to be biased or error-prone in censoring content.

A leftist figurehead blatantly told lawmakers on Thursday that social media companies should treat woke elites and ordinary people differently. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said social media companies should sanitize their platforms of “misinformation” and “hate speech” in testimony for a House Energy and Commerce Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee hearing.

Twenty-four members of Congress are urging Google to stop its suppression of pro-life voices and reinstate…

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) repeatedly praised U.K. regulation of social media platforms and called for the U.S. to adopt the U.K. model at a Dec. 8 Senate hearing on Instagram. Both the U.K. government and Blumenthal tend to support increased censorship and restrictions of online speech, however.

During an appearance on Tuesday’s CNN Tonight with Chris Cuomo’s temporary replacement, Michael Smerconish, veteran Olympics broadcaster and sports commentator Bob Costas called out the International Olympic Committee for their “affinity for authoritarian nations” and their snubs against the U.S. He also surprised viewers by calling out “the likes of Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James…

Snap CTO Bobby Murphy is the latest tech executive who announced he is all in on augmented reality (AR), which is a key piece in how some envision the metaverse. Murphy said Snap is developing its own AR Spectacles and hoping to have applications to run on other tech companies’ AR devices in the future.