Tag: censorship

EU Pushes Meta Toward Digital ID and Age Verification Under DSA, Threatens 6% Revenue Fine

Brussels has decided Meta isn’t monitoring its users hard enough.

The European Commission issued a preliminary finding on April 29 that Facebook and Instagram violate the Digital Services Act because the company can’t reliably stop children under 13 from creating accounts, opening Meta to fines that could reach 6 percent of its global annual turnover, a sum potentially north of $12 billion.

The official complaint is clearly a regulator demanding more identity checks, more verification, more friction at the door.

Meta’s existing approach, which mostly involves asking users to type in their birthday, lets minors lie their way onto the platform. The Commission says the tool available for reporting underage users requires up to seven clicks to access, is not pre-filled with user information, and frequently results in no follow-up action.

The Commission also pointed to evidence that around 10 to 12 per cent of children under 13 were accessing Instagram and/or Facebook, contradicting Meta’s own internal numbers.

What the Commission wants Meta to do instead carries a cost most of the coverage skipped over. Self-declared birthdays are inadequate, so something stronger has to fill the gap.

That means age estimation systems that infer how old you are from how you behave or age verification that links your account to a government-issued document. Either path turns the basic act of opening a social media account into either a behavioral surveillance event or an identity verification event. There is no third option being seriously proposed.

The implications reach well beyond the under-13 question. Once a platform knows who you are with legal certainty, the entire premise of online speech changes.

Anonymity has historically protected dissidents, whistleblowers, abuse survivors, journalists communicating with sources, and ordinary people who simply don’t want their employer reading their political opinions.

Strip that away and you lose the conditions under which a great deal of valuable speech actually happens. People self-censor when they know they are being watched and a verified internet is a watched internet by definition.

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Censorship in Disguise? Congress Introduces Antisemitism Resolution

Two congressmen introduced a resolution this week that appears to include pressure on tech companies to censor people.

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) have co-sponsored a resolution “condemning antisemitic rhetoric from prominent online personalities.” At four pages long, it urges “social media platforms and public leaders to denounce and address” antisemitism.

The resolution blames online platforms for the recent rise in anti-Jewish bigotry. It claims antisemitic incidents have “significantly increased, including a 344 percent increase over the past 5 years, and [an] 893 percent increase over the past 10 years.” And the reason is because online platforms have served as “a major vector for the spread of such hatred.”

Piker and Owens

Two influencers are targeted in the resolution, Hasan Piker and Candace Owens, both of whom have intensely criticized the Israeli government’s military operation in Gaza. “Piker has openly applauded Hamas’ terrorism, downplayed the mass rape of civilians on October 7th, and dehumanized Orthodox Jews as ‘inbred,’” Lawler said in a statement. “Owens has trafficked in vile conspiracy theories, promoted blood libels, and platformed Holocaust deniers.”

“Hatred is hatred, period,” Gottheimer said. “We must stand up and speak out. I get that speaking up is not easy, but our constituents didn’t elect us to always take the easy path. That’s what principled leadership is all about.”

Piker denied being an antisemite. “They are once again conflating legitimate critics of Israel with actual antisemites,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, according to reports. “They would rather complain about fake antisemitism in defense of Israel than call out the real sources of Jew hatred with a full chest. I have spent my entire career combating all forms of bigotry including antisemitism and will continue to do so in spite [of] this cynical ploy to satisfy donors.”

Owens has called the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza a genocide. So has another popular podcaster, Tucker Carlson. The Israeli human-rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel agree. As do millions of people around the world. And, if polls are to be believed, most American Jews believe Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, with about four in 10 saying it’s guilty of genocide.

Israel and Gaza

Reports say 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza, most of them civilians, thousands of them children. Most of the Gaza Strip has been carpet bombed, leaving a majority of people homeless. A few months back, U.S. President Donald Trump admitted people were starving in Gaza. Understandably, people have spoken out against that.

Israel has justified its severe response as a proper way to address the October 7 massacre during which Hamas brutally killed 1,200 Israelis. While it goes widely unreported, it should not be overlooked that Israeli defense officials reportedly ignored several warnings from within its own defense apparatus of what was coming. Nevertheless, this has all inflamed tremendous criticism toward the Israeli government. In some cases, it has ginned up genuine anti-Jewish bigotry.

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House Bill Cuts Federal Funds for Online Censorship

A new House appropriations bill does something unusual for Washington legislation. It tells federal agencies they cannot spend money pressuring platforms, advertisers, or foreign governments to silence speech that Americans are legally allowed to make.

H.R. 8595, the national security and State Department appropriations bill, runs hundreds of pages and buried throughout are provisions that would shut off federal funding to a wide range of speech-suppression activities.

The restrictions cover direct platform pressure, ad boycott campaigns aimed at US media companies, blacklists, and cooperation with foreign censorship regimes that target American tech firms.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The headline provision is on page 252. It bars the use of any appropriated funds to “deplatform, deboost, demonetize, suppress, or otherwise penalize” online speech, social media activity, or news outlets producing content that would be lawful under US law. The language is deliberately wide and it catches the obvious things, like government agencies asking a platform to take a post down, and the less obvious ones, like funding research projects that pressure advertisers to abandon publishers.

That second category has been doing real damage for years. Brand “safety” programs, hate speech classifiers built with federal grant money, “disinformation” tracking outfits that exist primarily to attach scary labels to inconvenient reporting.

Federal money cannot flow to programs designed to impose “legal, regulatory, financial, reputational, commercial, or political costs” on American tech companies, social media platforms, online intermediaries, or digital publishers for hosting First Amendment protected speech.

There is also a prohibition on funding work that pushes foreign governments to do the censoring instead. American agencies cannot use these appropriations to support foreign laws, regulations, codes, or enforcement mechanisms that punish US platforms for carrying speech that would be lawful here.

The whole architecture of routing American speech restrictions through Brussels or London or Canberra, then importing the results back home through global compliance regimes, runs into a federal funding wall.

Blacklists are out. Censorship cooperation with supranational bodies is out. Inducing advertisers to “cut off, reduce, redirect, or otherwise interfere with advertising, sponsorship, payment, or other revenue on the basis of lawful online speech” is out.

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UK Gov’t Promises More Social Media “Restrictions”

While embattled PM Sir Keir Starmer takes a pointless grilling on the even more pointless existence of Peter Mandelson, other members of his cabinet were busily paving the way for the next construction phase of our increasingly dystopian society.

Speaking to Sky News earlier today, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson promised…

“more action to keep young people safe online, including around social media”.

Which is delightfully vague.

Education Minister Olivia Bailey kept her cards similarly close to her chest, whilst trying to sound forceful:

“It is a question of how we act, not if, but to put this beyond any doubt, we are placing a clear statutory requirement that the Secretary of State ‘must’, rather than ‘may’, act […] We are clear that under any outcome, we will impose some form of age or functionality restrictions for children under 16.”

So we know they’re going to do something…we just don’t know what. And, if I had to guess, neither do Bridget or Olivia. Neither seems like the kind of people that get kept in the loop, and that flavour of waffle is usually the reserve of those who have no idea what’s going on.

Many commenters – both for and against – have interpreted this promised action as an Australia-style social media ban for children. Certainly, that’s what Conservative MP Laura Trott seems to think in her champagne-popping tweet:

…but the signs might be pointing in another direction.

After all, the Social Media Ban is practically on the books. It was introduced as an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools bill, and has already passed the Lords four times. It could have become law already, but Ministers and MPs have repeatedly overturned the vote, declaring the need for further consultation.

Then, earlier today and coinciding with this government pledge to take action, the Independent published a report that suggests Australia’s social media ban doesn’t work.

Two thirds of Australian teens still using social media despite under-16s ban

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UK Police Arrest a Pastor for Preaching the Gospel: A Disturbing Sign for Christian Free Speech

On April 18, 2026, in the town of Watford just outside London, British police handcuffed a Christian pastor for preaching the Gospel in public. Pastor Steve Maile, a 66-year-old minister with decades of experience, was standing in the town centre doing what has long been a normal part of British life—open-air preaching—when officers moved in, restrained him, and led him away in front of his wife and children. As he was being handcuffed, Maile continued to address the crowd, insisting, “You cannot arrest me. I am a preacher of the Gospel… There is no offense being committed here.” It was a striking moment, not only for those present but for the thousands who later watched the footage online.

What makes the incident particularly troubling is what followed. No charges were ultimately brought against Maile. The allegations, whatever they were, did not stand. Yet he was still detained for hours and placed on bail. In other words, a man engaged in peaceful religious expression was treated as a criminal, only for the legal basis of that treatment to evaporate shortly afterward. For many observers, that raises a fundamental question: if no crime was committed, why was such force deemed necessary in the first place?

Pastor Maile is not an unknown figure or a fringe agitator. He has spent more than 35 years in ministry, preaching in over 50 countries and working to establish churches and support Christian communities. Alongside his wife Karina, he founded Oasis City Church in Watford in 1999, raising a family and building a reputation rooted in outreach and evangelism. This background matters because it underscores the nature of the incident—this was not disorderly conduct or confrontation, but a continuation of a long-standing and peaceful religious practice.

Nor is this an isolated case. In November 2025, Pastor Dia Moodley was arrested in Bristol after engaging members of the public in a discussion about theology. He was detained for eight hours and subsequently banned from the city centre during the Christmas season. As with Maile, the circumstances involved speech rather than violence, yet the response from authorities was significant. Taken together, these incidents point to a broader pattern rather than a one-off misjudgment.

Across the United Kingdom, Christian street preachers—once a familiar and largely accepted presence—are increasingly being treated as potential public order concerns. Complaints from passers-by, even when based on disagreement rather than genuine harm, can trigger police intervention. Meanwhile, other forms of public expression, including those that are equally or more provocative, often appear to receive a more permissive response. Whether intentional or not, the perception of unequal treatment is growing, and perceptions like that can be as consequential as policy itself.

At the heart of the issue is the legal framework governing speech in the UK. Unlike the United States, Britain does not have a single, entrenched constitutional protection equivalent to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Instead, it relies on a range of statutes, including the Public Order Act 1986, which grant authorities discretion to act when speech is considered offensive or disruptive. While such laws are intended to maintain public order, their broad wording leaves significant room for interpretation—and, critics argue, for inconsistent enforcement.

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The Left’s War on Comedy Is No Laughing Matter

If pure-hearted laughter is divine, the suppression of it is demonic. This could come to mind with our Left’s war on comedy, which really is happening. It also really is a campaign common to leftists.

Just ask USSR-born comedian Yakov Smirnoff, a man popular during the late Cold War period (the 1980s). As he quipped in an old Miller beer commercial, smiling, “In America, there’s plenty of lite beer and you can always find a party!”

“In Russia, the Party always finds you!”

He was joking, but not kidding. The Soviet Union practiced authoritarian censorship, and jokes had to be approved by a de facto “Department of Humor.” That was a colloquial name for a unit within the USSR’s Ministry of Culture. The latter’s job was to ensure the culture was communist.

And with socialism and communism gaining favor in the United States, so is their its penchant for suppressing good comedy. Writing about this Tuesday, commentator Armando Simon laments left-wing humorlessness. Citing Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez, he writes that she

stated that one of the things that first helped her to break through the indoctrination received at school of the cult of personality of Fidel Castro was her observation that Castro never joked, highly unusual for a Cuban.

Simon then continues:

We are in the midst of a Marxist upheaval going full throttle towards turning America into a Communist utopia. The symptoms are all there: self-censorship, censorship (aka “cancel culture”), political indoctrination of the military, indoctrination in the schools, network news deliberately becoming propaganda outlets, Balkanizing the population, etc.

Another symptom is the slow strangulation of comics and comedy.

Comedians are complaining of the toxic air that is stifling comedy. “Cancel culture” is being waged by insufferable, self-righteous fanatics always lurking in the background, ready to pounce on the slightest transgression. Cancel culture has gone after comics because of the hypersensibility of the chronically offended — in other words, the leftists. It is a type of censorship. Some of the people who partake of the cancel culture also do so for the sheer exercise of power at ruining other people’s lives and livelihood, amazed that it is so easy to do nowadays. The range of punishment varies. Just ask Andrew Dice Clay and Dave Chapelle.

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Elon Musk Is a No-Show for Questioning in French Court Hearing Into X Social Media Platform and Grok Chatbot

France is scrambling to censor free-speech X.

We have been reporting on how France is waging lawfare against free-speech X platform, and how US authorities refused to aid in the nefarious lawsuit, as you can read in DOJ Refuses Cooperation, Warns France to Back Off Censorship Probe Targeting X Platform.

Today (20), it arose that the platform owner, tech billionaire Elon Musk did not appear at a summons for questioning in a French probe into X and its AI ‌chatbot, Grok.

The investigation began looking into alleged abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.

Reuters reported:

“The investigation, which has been expanded in past months to include suspected complicity in the distribution of child pornography and the creation of sexual deepfakes by Grok, has added to strains in relations between the U.S. and Europe over Big ​Tech and free speech.”

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DOJ Refuses Cooperation, Warns France to Back Off Censorship Probe Targeting X Platform

The U.S. Justice Department has flatly refused to help French authorities investigate Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

In a letter sent Friday obtained by The Wall Street Journal , the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs said the French probe is an attempt to regulate a U.S. company through criminal law.

“This investigation seeks to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas and opinions in a manner contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the letter states.

The department added that France’s requests “constitute an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform.”

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Big Advertisers Settle Case with FTC over Leftist Censorship in Advertising and Suspected Collusion Against Breitbart, Other Conservatives

Three of the world’s largest advertising companies settled Wednesday with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over claims that they colluded on policies to combat alleged misinformation that denied advertising revenue to conservative publishers such as Breitbart News.

The FTC said in a complaint filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas that WPP, Dentsu, and Publicis coordinated on policies that limited the number of ads that ran on sites with content that the industry had identified as misinformation. The policy resulted in fewer ads running on media outlets such as Breitbart News, punishing outlets that ran content that was “lawful but disfavored.” The filing explained that these advertisers sought to impose common “brand safety” standards across the digital advertising industry. The FTC stated that the ad agencies, with their primary competitors, Omnicom and IPG, operated through their trade associations to establish a “Brand Safety Floor” to combat “misinformation.”

“The ad agencies’ brand-safety conspiracy turned competition in the market for ad-buying services on its head,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a written statement. “The antitrust laws guarantee participation in a market free from conduct, such as economic boycotts, that distort the fundamental competitive pressures that promote lower prices, higher quality products and increased innovation.”

“As we explain in our complaint, the brand-safety agreement limited competition in the market for ad-buying services and deprived advertisers of the benefits of differentiated brand-safety standards that could be tailored to their unique advertising inventory,” the FTC chairman said.

Ferguson continued:

This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor. The proposed order remedies the dangers inherent to collusive practices and restores competition to the digital news ecosystem.

A spokesman for WPP said in a statement that the agreement “reflects our existing and ongoing commitment to provide our clients with unbiased advice as they decide where to place their media.” A spokesman for Dentsu said the company was “fully committed to operating transparently, with integrity, and in strict compliance with all applicable laws.” Publicis had not responded to a request for comment from the New York Times.

The FTC said in its filing that the ad agencies “coordinated” through the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), an entity created by the World Federation of Advertisers, of which the three advertisers are members.

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UK Southport Inquiry Pushes Mass Surveillance and VPN Restrictions

On July 29 2024, a teenager walked into a children’s Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England, and murdered three young girls with a knife. He injured ten others.

It was, by any measure, one of the most horrifying attacks on British soil in recent memory, and what followed should have been a reckoning with the catastrophic state failures that let it happen.

Instead, the British government looked at the smoldering aftermath and decided the real enemy was the internet, and the solution just so happens to be the mass surveillance censorship proposals the government is already working on.

After the attack, outrage on social media turned to protests. Protests became riots. And the state’s response landed with a speed and ferocity that it had never managed to direct at, say, the agencies that let a known danger walk free for years.

A former childcarer named Lucy Connolly was jailed for 31 months for a single post on X. That is three months longer than the sentence given to a man who physically attacked a mosque during the same period of unrest.

The UK was already a country where arrests for “offensive” social media posts had nearly doubled in seven years, climbing from 5,502 in 2017 to 12,183 in 2023. The overall conviction rate for those arrests was falling at the same time. Police were locking people up for what they typed at a rate that was going up, while the number of convictions that actually stuck was going down.

The Southport riots became the accelerant. A House of Commons Home Affairs Committee report used the unrest to call for a “new national system for policing” with enhanced capabilities to surveil social media activity, framing public anger as a problem of online “misinformation” rather than a consequence of the state’s own failures.

The state was dodging accountability by demanding censorship and surveillance and blaming the internet for unrest.

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