Tag: censorship

Newsom Vetoes Digital Censorship Law

California Governor Gavin Newsom managed to get something right. He just vetoed a bill that would have allowed people to sue social-media companies on the subjective and dubious basis of “hate speech.”

Newsom vetoed SB 771 on Monday, the last day he had to act. The legislature sent him the bill on September 22. If Newsom wouldn’t have rejected it, it would have become law anyway.

The governor called the bill “premature” in a short statement attempting to explain his decision. He said:

“I likewise share the author’s concern about the growth of discriminatory threats, violence, and coercive harassment online. I am concerned, however, that this bill is premature. Our first step should be to determine if, and to what extent, existing civil rights laws are sufficient to address violations perpetrated through algorithms.”

The Bill

The bill would have allowed people to sue social-media companies for up to $1 million per violation. If the litigant was a minor, the fine could’ve doubled.

However, critics suspected the proposal’s main goal was to coerce social-media companies into implementing censorious algorithms like the ones they did during the height of the Covid era. It was designed to pre-censor, to create an digital environment where certain views were forbidden.

The proposal included subjective and vague justifications for litigation. As we pointed out in a previous report, it included the feeling of “intimidation” as grounds for suing. In the United Kingdom, officers have justified arresting people for over social-media posts that caused others “anxiety.” It’s not hard to see that’s what SB 771 could’ve opened up.

Opposition and Support

The bill had strong opposition, including from NetChoice, the tech trade group made up of Google, Meta, and Snap. Elon Musk’s X and Parler also opposed it. Among the arguments they made was that SB 771 would have violated First Amendment protections.

Right-leaning pundits also bashed the proposal for its totalitarian potential. Tucker Carlson framed it as an attempt by California’s ruling class to quash online criticism of the policies that have destroyed the most populous and beautiful state in the Union. The proposal designated a protected class that would have censored those who spoke out against illegal immigration, the deviancy of the LGBTQ mob, and critics of Islam or Israel.  

On the other hand, George Soros’ Center for Countering Digital Hate was sold on the bill, the propagandists in the mainstream media did their best to frame it as nothing more than digital companion to already existing civil-rights protection law, and more than a dozen Jewish organizations supported it as well, according to reports.

Newsom’s Motivation

Newsom made a rare and good decision here. But it’s unlikely his intentions were well-motivated. After all, he did just sign a bill to create a reparations-administration agency.  

A common suspicion is that Newsom was hardly concerned about free speech and likely more worried about having to embark on future political campaigns without financial support from the tech gurus who’ve dumped millions into his previous campaigns, including executives from Google and Meta.

Whatever his motivation, the bottom line is that this is good news for Californians and anyone who believes that the digital world should be open to all ideas, not just those approved by the elites. As we pointed out in a previous report on this bill, social media, despite its many faults and foibles, has “democratized” the flow of information and loosened the elites’ long-held grip on the narrative. This is a major reason there have been so many efforts to restrict online speech. If you want to see what the goal for the United States is, just look at various parts of Europe. The European Union is bullying member states to muzzle their citizens and creating laws to target American tech companies that provide the platforms to exchange ideas that threaten the international oligarch class.

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A key psychiatric group censored our doctors for seeking to discuss the harm of child sex changes

You’d think child psychiatrists would want to help troubled children, and you’d be right. But the medical association that represents these doctors is suppressing open discussion of the best care for gender-distressed adolescents.

Respectful discourse among doctors regarding treatment of vulnerable children should trump emotions, personal opinions and politics. 

Yet our foiled attempt to invite physician input on gender interventions suggests that ideology is winning the day.

At first, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry approved a request by our organization, Do No Harm, to run a booth at its annual conference next week. But AACAP last month turned around and revoked that approval.

We simply wanted to give doctors a chance to discuss the dangers of transgender treatments for children, just as we did in May at the American Psychiatric Association conference.

These discussions are important because medical organizations like AACAP continue to trumpet support for gender interventions that mounting evidence shows are potentially harmful.

Meanwhile, the same organizations ignore the increasing number of patients who regret their transitions.

They offer no guidance on how to best treat those seeking to detransition, wean them off hormones or receive hormone replacement for surgically removed sex organs.

In fact, our health-care system treats patients who buck the gender-ideology narrative as nonexistent: The system has no diagnosis codes to allow for tracking and research of this poorly understood population.

They are a lost cohort with medical and psychological needs that have been shunned by the medical establishment.

And now we’ve been shunned too.

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After SCOTUS ignores ‘only two genders’ censorship, appeals court upholds ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ ban

Five months after Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas blasted their colleagues for refusing to review a ruling against a student punished for wearing an “Only Two Genders” shirt to school, a second federal appeals court has blessed another way for schools to clamp down on disfavored messages: the inference of vulgarity.

A divided 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a ban on “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts by Michigan’s Tri County Area Schools, ruling Tuesday that school administrators’ perception that the expression is code for “F— Joe Biden” renders it profane and thus exempt from students’ First Amendment rights in schools.

President Trump-nominated Judge John Nalbandian, who appeared to be the swing vote in oral argument, joined with President Clinton-nominated Judge Karen Nelson Moore to apply the SCOTUS precedent Fraser, which upheld a student’s discipline based on a “school assembly speech that had a rather elaborate sexual metaphor.”

This is despite the duo’s admission that “Let’s Go Brandon” has “a wide range of meanings” going back to its creation, when NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast falsely claimed crude chants against President Biden at a NASCAR race were support for driver Brandon Brown.

“Some saw it as merely a euphemism for what the crowd really said,” the majority said. “Others used it as a shibboleth to express antipathy” toward Biden and his policies, and yet others “used it to question what they perceived as liberal bias in the media—based on the theory that NBC had been trying to hide the anti-Biden sentiment on display at Talladega.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represents the anonymous students who wore the sweatshirts, told Just the News it plans to appeal but hasn’t decided yet whether to go straight to SCOTUS or seek a full-court 6th Circuit review.

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UK Speech Regulator Ofcom Claims First Amendment Doesn’t Protect Americans From Its Censorship Law

If you’re going to cross an ocean to tell Americans what speech they can and can’t allow, the least you can do is not trip over your own jurisdictional nonsense on the way in.

Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, which has lately decided to try and become an international speech cop, managed to do exactly that.

But when the regulator began sending enforcement letters to small US platforms under its sweeping online censorship law, the Online Safety Act, it probably didn’t expect to trigger a constitutional ambush.

But that’s exactly what it got.

Preston Byrne, one of attorneys representing 4chan, Kiwi Farms, and two other American companies, said Ofcom had been sending “frankly asinine letters under English law.”

His clients, he explained, “are entirely American. All of their operations are American. All of their infrastructure is American, and they have no connection to the UK whatsoever.”

Despite this, Ofcom threatened the companies with “a £20,000 fine plus £100 daily penalties for 60 days thereafter.”

Byrne responded to Ofcom’s pressure by filing a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit was designed not only to challenge Ofcom’s jurisdiction but to force a contradiction into the open.

Byrne said the purpose of the lawsuit was threefold. One, to show the global censors that the resistance in the United States is now prepared to fight back, and they don’t have freedom of action.

Two, to assert hims client’s claims and defenses in a US court, and make the argument in front of a US federal judge.

And the third one was to provoke Ofcom into “doing something stupid, which is exactly what they did.”

After the case was filed, Ofcom sent what Byrne called “a 40-page letter of tremendous length, which is deeply unserious.”

Ofcom’s written response delivered exactly what Byrne says was needed: an explicit admission that Ofcom doesn’t “think US law applies on US soil and that they’re going to use [the argument of] sovereign immunity.”

This was more than a legal contradiction; it was a political one that directly undercuts the British government’s public assurances.

“This rather undermines the British government’s assertions that it’s made time and again, including to the President, to his face, that the British government is not using its sovereign power to censor American citizens,” Byrne said.

In its official notice to 4chan, Ofcom made an extraordinary admission which, in trying to assert its authority, effectively undercut its entire legal position.

The regulator wrote: “We also note 4chan’s claim that it is protected from enforcement action taken by Ofcom because of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. However, the First Amendment binds only the US government and not overseas bodies, such as Ofcom, and therefore, it does not affect Ofcom’s powers to enforce the Act in this case.”

This reveals the fundamental flaw in Ofcom’s claim to authority over American companies.

By asserting that the First Amendment “binds only the US government,” Ofcom admits it stands entirely outside the US constitutional order, yet it simultaneously claims the right to enforce UK speech law against US entities operating solely on US soil.

Ofcom cannot have it both ways: it cannot disclaim the reach of US law while insisting that British law somehow extends across the Atlantic.

If the First Amendment has no force on Ofcom’s actions in the United States, then neither does the UK’s censorship law, the Online Safety Act, which has no legal effect beyond the UK.

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Ireland Rejects EU Hate-speech Dictate

The deadline to bow down to the European Union’s “hate speech” dictate has passed, and Ireland remains defiant. Last week, the country’s minister for justice, Jim O’Callaghan, said the government would not “reintroduce hate speech legislation previously rejected by parliament,” even though the EU continues to pressure them to do so.

“I’m fairly satisfied Ireland has transposed the European Council framework decision on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia in a manner appropriate and tailored to domestic law,” O’Callaghan said, according to reports.

In June, the EU told Ireland it had a two months left to comply with its censorship dictate or risk being dragged into international court. Ireland is accused of violating laws outlined in the EU’s 2008 EU Framework Decision, which requires member states to criminalize “hate speech” based on race, color, religion, descent, or ethnicity, as well as on Holocaust denial. Supposedly, the law is intended to prevent the incitement of violence.

But, as we recently reported, the idea of “hate speech” is a ploy for brainwashing people into believing that thoughts by themselves can be crimes.

Irish officials believe they already have sufficient laws to address the EU’s concerns without intruding on free speech. The “Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989” punishes those who incite hatred based on characteristics such as race, religion, or nationality. According to the Irish Courts Service, five convictions have been recorded under the act since 2017.

But EU officials say that the legislation is not good enough.

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Rumble is Restored in France After Court Rejects Government’s Censorship Demand

Rumble, the video-sharing and cloud services platform, has reopened access to its site for users in France following a decisive legal development.

A court ruled that a French official’s demand for content removal, delivered via email, held no legal authority.

In response, Rumble has restored full access to its platform across the country.

The dispute dates back to 2022, when a French government representative attempted to pressure the platform into censoring certain videos.

Rather than complying with the demand to erase content under threat of legal consequences, Rumble took the bold step of withdrawing service from France entirely.

That stand against political interference has now been vindicated by the court’s finding that the email in question could not be treated as an enforceable action.

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Canada’s Privacy Watchdog Not Consulted on Bill C-8, Enabling Secret Internet & Phone Shutdowns

Legislation that would allow federal ministers to secretly order telecom providers to cut off a Canadian’s phone or internet access is advancing without any input from the country’s top privacy authority.

Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne told a Commons committee that his office was never asked to review Bill C-8 before it was introduced.

The bill would authorize the cabinet to compel telecom companies to block services to individuals considered a security threat, without needing a judge’s approval or any public disclosure.

“The issue never came up,” Dufresne said during testimony before the House of Commons ethics committee. He confirmed, “We are not consulted on specific pieces of legislation before they are tabled.”

Bill C-8 would allow the federal cabinet to direct a telecom provider to deny all services to a specific person, based solely on the government’s assessment of a threat. No warrant would be required. No independent body would be tasked with reviewing the decision.

Conservative MP Michael Barrett raised an alarm over what he described as a dangerous overreach. He said the bill would allow the government to quietly seize control of individuals’ communications, with no transparency and no legal checks.

“Without meaningful limits, bills like C-8 can hand the government secret powers over Canadians’ communications,” said Barrett. “It’s a serious setback for privacy and for democracy.”

He pressed Dufresne on whether Parliament should be required to conduct privacy assessments before passing legislation with such broad surveillance potential.

“Isn’t Parliament simply being asked to grant sweeping powers of surveillance to the government without a formal review?” Barrett asked.

Dufresne responded, “It’s not a legal obligation under the Privacy Act.”

While acknowledging the importance of national security, Dufresne warned that such measures must not override core privacy protections. “We need to make sure that by protecting national security, we are not doing so at the expense of privacy,” he said.

A previous version of the idea, Bill C-26, failed in an earlier Parliament after concerns over its civil liberties implications.

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UK Regulator Ofcom Uses Online Censorship Law To Fine American Platform 4chan

The operator behind the American imageboard 4chan has been hit with a £20,000 ($26,650) fine by the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom, which, under the controversial censorship law, the Online Safety Act, has begun targeting online platforms.

The penalty comes after 4chan declined to provide details on how, or whether, it’s complying with the legislation that critics of censorship argue grants the UK government broad authority over digital platforms.

The fine had been anticipated since August. That decision has now been finalized, according to a statement issued by the regulator.

Beyond the lump sum, Ofcom will begin charging an additional £100 ($133) every day starting Tuesday, a compounding penalty that will continue for up to 60 days or until 4chan responds to its demands, whichever comes first.

Ofcom’s Director of Enforcement, Suzanne Cater, claimed the agency is serious about enforcing the new law.

“Today sends a clear message that any service which flagrantly fails to engage with Ofcom and their duties under the Online Safety Act can expect to face robust enforcement action.” She further asserted that some platforms are already adopting new safeguards following pressure from the regulator, while warning that services choosing to limit their availability to UK users rather than implement content filters remain under scrutiny.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall celebrated the action, calling it a model of the law in practice. “The Online Safety Act is not just law, it’s a lifeline. Today we’ve seen it in action, holding platforms to account so we can protect people across the UK.”

She went on to claim: “This fine serves a clear warning to those who fail to remove illegal content or protect children from harmful material. We fully back the regulator in taking action against all platforms that do not protect users from the darkest corners of the internet.”

Preston Byrne, who represents 4chan in the case, has previously condemned the action in unambiguous terms.

Byrne called it “an illegal campaign of harassment” against American tech firms, and added, “4chan has broken no laws in the United States – my client will not pay any penalty.”

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Telegram’s Durov: We’re “Running Out Of Time To Save The Free Internet”

Messaging app Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov warns that a “dark, dystopian world” is approaching, with governments worldwide rolling back privacy protections.

“I’m turning 41, but I don’t feel like celebrating. Our generation is running out of time to save the free internet built for us by our fathers,” said Durov in an X post on Thursday.

“Once-free countries are introducing dystopian measures,” said Durov, referencing the European Union’s Chat Control proposal, digital IDs in the UK and new rules requiring online age checks to access social media in Australia.

“What was once the promise of the free exchange of information is being turned into the ultimate tool of control.”

“Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. The UK is imprisoning thousands for their tweets. France is criminally investigating tech leaders who defend freedom and privacy.”  

“A dark, dystopian world is approaching fast — while we’re asleep. Our generation risks going down in history as the last one that had freedoms — and allowed them to be taken away,” Pavel added.

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Free Speech Advocates Warn EU’s Digital Services Act Enables Pan-European Censorship and Threatens Political Dissent

A controversial EU regulation is drawing fierce warnings from a global group of free speech advocates who argue it paves the way for widespread censorship in Europe and beyond.

The Digital Services Act (DSA), which allows European Union authorities to fine tech companies for hosting content deemed illegal or harmful, has caused concern among 113 public figures who say the law could crush political expression and dissent under an opaque system with vague rules.

In a letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the group accused the EU of eroding basic democratic freedoms by turning private platforms into enforcers of state-approved narratives.

The message, led by Alliance Defending Freedom International and sent to Reclaim The Net, warns that the DSA’s structure encourages governments and aligned institutions to police opinions in ways that would be unthinkable under traditional free speech protections.

“Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of democratic societies. It is through the exchange of ideas — including controversial ones — that societies evolve, and public officials remain accountable,” the letter states.

The DSA, passed under the pretext of regulating disinformation and online harm, is set to undergo formal review in November.

Its enforcement mechanisms enable both state actors and private organizations to flag material they believe violates EU or national law.

However, the term “illegal content” remains loosely defined, opening the door to subjective enforcement and political targeting.

The signatories highlighted real cases that reflect a growing intolerance for dissenting views in Europe.

One example is Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen, who is being prosecuted for expressing her religious views on marriage and sexuality through social media.

According to the letter, the DSA “introduces sweeping mechanisms” that not only allow but encourage cross-border enforcement of restrictive speech laws.

The group emphasized that one EU member state’s most rigid rules could effectively become binding across the entire Union, imposing a lowest-common-denominator standard for expression.

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