Tag: censorship

‘Citizen Vigilante’ broadcast on X to combat censorship

The controversial new film “Citizen Vigilante” received a free-to-stream debut on X in the wake of reports that some European nations would not approve the action flick for distribution.

German Director Uwe Boll spoke about the film’s journey in an interview with The Telegraph, noting that “Citizen Vigilante” was banned by his home country due to its violence and “anti-migrant” content, which displays the struggles of current culture clashes between peaceful European natives and the violence brought through mass migration from incompatible cultures like Islam.

He detailed how distribution rights have been delayed in Britain, blocking a film release there as well. Boll explained that the film was based on a true case of migrant violence, which entailed the gang-rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old girl by migrants in Hamburg ten years ago, and flips the script, where a vigilante punishes the perpetrators, after the legal system allowed them to walk free (as it did in real life).

“It’s as if we’re living in a completely insane and absurd political environment, especially in Europe, where people have completely lost track,” Boll stated during his interview. “There is a huge difference between so-called ‘hate speech’ and stabbing people in the neck. But facts don’t matter any more.”

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Government’s latest attempt to censor online discourse is grave threat to free speech

The government’s latest censorship Bill C-34 is framed as legislation necessary to protect children. However, it incorporates some of the worst elements of Bill C-63 – the government’s previous “Online Harms Act” that failed to pass – and adds new censorship powers.

The bill proposes regulating social media, online services, and AI chatbots through the creation of a Digital Safety Commission. The Commission will have broad discretionary power to force compliance from online services and compel the removal of any harmful or “hateful” material.

Controversially, the bill weakens the legal definition of hatred presently used by the courts, reducing the requirement from both vilification and detestation to only one of either vilification OR detestation. The result will be increased censorship and a substantial chill on controversial speech.

Importantly, existing laws capture almost all of the conduct outlined in the bill. This includes cyberbullying and non-consensual distribution of intimate images, terroristic or violent threats, hate speech under the Criminal Code, counselling self-harm (Criminal Code s.241), and possession and distribution of CSAM material.

The bill requires online service providers to create an age verification system. Though the bill doesn’t specify age verification methods, it will undoubtedly require service providers to collect biometric and/or behavioural information from both adults and children, engaging privacy rights and raising fears of security breaches. The effect will be to create a database of personal identifying information and to destroy online anonymity 

Digital services that fail to comply with directives of the Digital Safety Commission will face substantial fines based on a percentage of global revenue.

“Laws protecting children from online harm and abuse are vital. However, for the most part, they already exist. All digital services like YouTube, X, Facebook, and TikTok have reporting and takedown policies and mechanisms for illegal or egregiously harmful material. Criminal charges for hateful or threatening posts are already commonplace. Of course, laws should be enacted to address any gaps, but online age verification for children will require age verification for everyone. So while the government frames the bill as a law to protect children, its effect will be to control digital access, comprehensively surveil and punish adults for online dissent. Together with Bill C-22, it establishes an online surveillance architecture that will negatively impact every Canadian’s right to free expression. Parliament should pursue targeted child-protection measures without undermining privacy, anonymity, and freedom of expression.”

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How Facebook Has Censored My Account Over Criticism of Israel

Over the past few weeks, META’s censorship of my account has reduced my Reel Views by 68%, regular views by 27%, followers by 52%, and engagement by 21%.

I am by no means the greatest victim of META censorship, but I am in a position to document how and why they are censoring/limiting my reach on META platforms, all because of my objections to Israeli policies. This is a key reason as to why I am transitioning my work and output to Substack.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is what happened.

A few weeks ago, I was notified by META that my account would be limited going forward. My account will still be visible – at least for now – but “people will have to scroll longer,” and it won’t be “suggested” to people who aren’t my friends.

According to META, this censorship is because they claim my profile’s “content is unoriginal” and that it “has some issues.” (?!)

Anyone who follows me on META knows that my content is either me posting my own interviews with various outlets (by definition, that is original), my own opeds and commentary (also original), or pictures of my Samoyeds (admittedly, credit here goes to my dogs).

META’s “rules” define “unoriginal” as content that already exists on Facebook if you had no meaningful role in creating it,” “compiling and posting videos from multiple pages,” or “posting videos that you didn’t film or produce.”

Again, my postings really don’t violate these rules. My analysis is original, and most of the videos I post are my own interviews.

But I think we are getting closer to the real problem. I think META’s problem is not the posting of my own interviews (which constitute the majority of my posts), but rather the videos I post from Gaza. The problem, of course, is not that these videos are not my original content – META couldn’t care less about that.

It’s because it is videos documenting Israeli war crimes. Videos that have prompted Israel’s standing among Americans to plummet. Videos that are causing pro-Israeli lawmakers to lose their primary elections. Videos that have been censored from mainstream media and now TikTok, but that have still circulated on social media, partly thanks to accounts like mine.

Indeed, when I dug deeper, the only justification META provided for their censorship was that they had removed two videos of graphic violence I had posted on July 16 and July 30, 2025. That is, a year ago. At the height of the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.

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UK City Council Launches Court Bid to Ban Union Jacks That ‘Intimidate Diverse Communities’

Brits are cheering on their team in the 2026 FIFA World Cup and showing their support by flying their country’s flag. And that’s problematic for Bristol City Council, which has voted to ban the flying of the St. George’s Cross.

Residents say Torrington Avenue in the Knowle West area of the city has become an iconic symbol of patriotism over the years – with photographs of flags draped across the street often pictured during big footballing moments.

But Bristol City Council’s Green leader Tony Dyer has released a statement forbidding people from flying flags “on lampposts or railings or any public property”.

Mr Dyer told residents: “please do not attach anything to lampposts – it causes health and safety issues”.

The council leader went on to say: “we are currently taking down flags in sensitive locations as a priority and will be reviewing our strategy for removing other flags on our property”.

LBC reports that Torrington Avenue is known as the U.K.’s most patriotic street because of its flag displays.

That’s aside from the headline to this piece, though. We’ve covered the “Raise the Colors” movement in the U.K., in which patriots hang flags from flagpoles and lightposts, only to have them taken down by authorities. Oxfordshire County Council is reported to have supercharged its legal battle to ban raising British flags on lampposts.

The council has applied for an injunction to block the Raise the Colours group from hanging the flag in a bid to “protect” its residents and “values,” reports GB News.

A council spokesman said on Wednesday: “Residents across Oxfordshire, from Adderbury to Wallingford, have complained to the council about safety risks, intimidation and distress linked to this activity.

“The ongoing scale and persistence of the behaviour by Raise the Colours has created safety risks, caused distress within communities, and led to abuse and intimidation directed at council teams and residents.”

Former England boss Harry Redknapp decried the anti-flag action in a major intervention last night.

“We are proud to be British – that is what we are. Fly your flags, be proud of your country. Don’t be ashamed to be British,” he said.

The county has so far spent £15,000 to remove more than 300 Union and St George’s Cross flags from lampposts.

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Telegram Founder Warns UK Social Media Ban Is Digital Iceberg About To Sink The Free Internet

Telegram founder Pavel Durov told the Freedom Forum audience in Oslo that Western societies have already struck the iceberg and started sinking – yet most citizens remain in their cabins, convinced the ship of personal freedoms is unsinkable.

His remarks arrive precisely as Keir Starmer’s government rams through a social media ban for under-16s that functions as the perfect pretext for mandatory digital ID, device-level scanning on every phone, and the practical elimination of anonymous speech online.

The policy is dressed in the familiar language of child protection. In practice it requires every major platform to verify ages with facial scans, passports or credit card data. What starts as a restriction on minors rapidly becomes a national system of internet passports.

Encrypted messaging apps currently sit outside the ban, but the same Online Safety Act framework already contains the levers to demand backdoors later. Tech executives who refuse to turn every smartphone into a government scanner face up to five years in prison.

Durov drew on two decades running major platforms and direct experience with state pressure in Russia, the EU and France. The core message was unmistakable.

“Our ship has already hit the iceberg. We have already started to sink without even realizing it. And I’m talking about the ship of our personal freedoms.”

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Starmer’s Social Media Ban, the Reinvention of the Surveillance State

Here is a fun fact to keep in your back pocket the next time a politician appears on the morning TV sofas to explain that the government’s new face-scanning and digital ID regime is really, deep down, about protecting your children.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, spent the first half of his career as a human rights lawyer and the second half running the Crown Prosecution Service.

He has argued for the individual against the state and he has aimed the full weight of the state at the individual. He has, in other words, seen this particular movie from both seats.

So when he tells you he has stumbled, blinking and innocent, into the most comprehensive surveillance apparatus in British peacetime history, do not extend him the courtesy of believing it. He spent twenty years learning precisely what these powers do to a person. He is not building this in his sleep.

And what he is building is a country in which you must ask permission to exist online. Not ask the platform. Ask the state. Before you read, post, store a photo, or send a message, you are expected to step up to the booth, show your papers, and prove you are a citizen the government has pre-approved.

The default setting of a free society, that you are left alone until you give the state a reason, is being flipped on its head. The new arrangement is that you are a suspect with a phone until you prove otherwise, and you prove it constantly, because proving it has been welded onto the act of going online and speaking at all.

That is the whole game. Everything else is set dressing.

Monday’s headline was a ban on under-16s using social media which, to some, sounds about as sinister as a wholesome ribbon-cutting until you ask the obvious question nobody in Downing Street wants asked aloud: how, precisely, do you stop a fourteen-year-old from opening Instagram without first checking the age of the forty-year-old?

You don’t. You can’t. So everyone gets carded. Britain is lifting the system wholesale from Australia, where a computer first scans your face and guesses your age from your cheekbones, then, failing that, surveils you to death, studies your browsing habits and the hours you keep, and then, when the algorithm throws up its hands, simply demands your passport.

The face scan is sold to you as the polite option, the velvet rope. It is, in fact, the funnel and, at the bottom of the funnel, sits the national identity check that three million people already told this government, in no uncertain terms, to scrap.

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MINISTRY OF TRUTH: Government To BLOCK ‘False Information’ During ‘Crisis Events’

Vague new rules will allow UK regulators to pressure platforms over “legal but harmful” content whenever government ministers declare a crisis, while the same government ploughs ahead with mandatory phone scanning, digital ID lockdowns, and jail threats for tech bosses who refuse to spy on every device.

The latest move from Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn makes explicit what privacy campaigners have long warned: the Online Safety Act is being weaponised far beyond any child-protection claim.

Benn confirmed that the internet regulator will now wield enhanced powers to tackle “false information” online during “times of crisis,” directly tying the recent Belfast unrest to this framework. The regulator has already contacted platforms, with ministers asserting that violence “appears to have been incited online.”

Benn stated that if people put online ‘false information,’ “it is not acceptable and it may well be a criminal offence depending on the circumstances as the chief constable made clear yesterday.”

When asked how a “time of crisis” would be defined, Benn said it “will be set out in due course.”

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Carney using kids’ safety as cover to strip Canadians’ freedom

The Liberal government is preparing to introduce a new digital safety bill that would ban social media for users under 16, but on Tuesday’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra said this new legislation has nothing to do with protecting children.

“Parents can limit what their kids watch with the push of a button,” he said. “This is really about everyone else. Again, using kids as the excuse.”

The bill, reported by the Globe and Mail ahead of its introduction, would create a new digital regulator to establish safety standards for social media platforms. It would also address artificial intelligence and chatbots.

But the mechanism required to enforce an under-16 ban, Ezra noted, is the problem. To determine who is under 16, every user would need to verify their age — meaning every Canadian would need to hand their personal identification to the government just to log on.

“Mark Carney wants to make everyone sign into the internet,” he said. “It’s not actually about kids, is it?”

Ezra drew a direct line to the Liberals’ past censorship efforts, noting that child protection and anti-terrorism provisions have repeatedly been used as packaging for speech regulation bills — provisions that already exist in the Criminal Code, added as a distraction from the bills’ real purpose.

“Governments use children as a cover for their plots,” he reminded viewers.

The timing raised eyebrows, as the day before Canada’s announcement, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivered an almost identical speech calling on tech companies to introduce device controls to prevent children from sending and receiving explicit images.

Ezra said the parallel is not a coincidence. “On everything from censorship and digital ID to environmentalism and mass immigration, I really think Keir Starmer is setting a lot of Canadian policy,” he said.

The irony, he noted, is that Starmer has refused to call a meaningful public inquiry into the U.K.’s rape gangs and even vigorously opposed one when he was the country’s chief prosecutor.

“What a laugh to pretend he cares about kids,” Ezra said.

Another provision in the bill would grant the Canadian government a security backdoor into any app it chooses. Ezra also pointed out that every major social media platform in Canada is American owned, meaning new fines and restrictions would amount to a tax on U.S. tech firms.

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China Begins Banning AI Videos That ‘Vulgarize’ Regime-Approved Media

China’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) announced on Monday that the state-run China Central Television (CCTV) has overseen the deletion of some 8,000 AI-altered videos from online platforms.

The videos were censored because they “distort, parody, or vulgarize classic Chinese films and television dramas and animated works.”

China’s state-run Global Times unironically relayed the triumphant announcement by two organs of the oppressive Communist government congratulating each other for doing a great job at censorship:

The NRTA has instructed major online audiovisual platforms to further strengthen their primary responsibility, enhance routine monitoring and screening efforts, and focus on removing non-compliant AI-altered videos that alter or distort classic film and television works based on the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, historical themes, revolutionary themes, and exemplary heroic figures. 

Platforms have also been directed to remove various forms of disturbing or inappropriate animated content to continuously foster a healthy online audiovisual environment, CCTV reported. 

According to the NRTA, the campaign specifically targets three categories of non-compliant videos including the AI-altered content that seriously distorts the original spirit and character portrayals of the source material, content that promotes graphic violence or vulgarity, and content that misappropriates or alters Chinese cultural elements in ways that lead to distorted historical understanding. 

The Global Times gave the example of Lin Daiyu, the main character from an 18th-century romance novel called Dream of the Red Chamber, being inappropriately portrayed as a “violent combat character.”

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“It’s All So Tiresome”: UK’s Social Media Ban Trudges Ever Onward

The UK government’s “consultation” on social media harm is over, and – brace yourselves – it turns out they’re going to have to do something about it.

I know, I was shocked too.

The main talking point is that “social media is like cigarettes”. Everyone is saying that, it’s the meme of the day.

It’s a sentiment originally taken from a new report submitted to the consultation by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

Titled “Growing up in an online world”, it contains this hilarious line in the foreword:

…there is, I think, an overwhelming consensus that excessive screen time can harm children and young people and we need to call this out unflinchingly rather than passively wait for someone else to prove causation”.

Which is a pretty neat summary of how our political system works in general, and certainly in this case: We don’t know if there’s even a problem yet, but by God we’re gonna do something about it.

That the something they end up doing makes them rich and powerful is just one of the curious coincidences tyrants can always rely on.

{Sidenote: This morning the BBC had “Overwhelimg consensus” in their headline on this story, but at some point the absurdity of that quote was realised, and the headline changed. Now there’s this disclaimer near the end: “There is no consensus among the wider scientific community that screen time overall is harmful to children.” Funny stuff.}

Elsewhere, the report wails about “a wave of radicalized children” who pose “a real risk to society”, and calls social media “an incredibly powerful and uncontrolled commercial detriment to health”.

In a similar vein, The Guardian is warning of a “tsunami of harm”, and has assembled an all-star cast of interested parties to talk up the scariness of social media meanness.

After meeting with “bereaved parents” earlier today, Keir Starmer has “vowed to take action”.

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