Tag: censorship

JAWBONE Act: FCC Democrat Backs Cruz Anti-Censorship Bill

FCC member Anna Gomez has been describing what happens when a federal regulator leans on broadcasters over programming it dislikes.

This month, she endorsed the JAWBONE Act, a Ted Cruz bill that would let the broadcasters and platforms on the receiving end of that pressure haul federal officials into court and collect money from them.

Punchbowl News reported the endorsement on July 14. The bill Gomez is backing, S. 4749, carries the name Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression, which nobody will ever say out loud, and it was introduced on June 11 by Cruz and Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden.

It would make it unlawful for any federal agency, or any officer or employee acting “under color or pretense of office or employment,” to coerce or attempt to coerce a broadcaster, an online platform or an AI provider into taking what the text calls a content action, meaning adding, altering or deleting speech.

Coercion is defined broadly as “to take a harmful, hostile, or unfavorable action, to imply the possibility of taking such action, or to threaten such action.”

The prohibition reaches conduct undertaken “for the purpose of, or if a reasonable person would understand the coercion or attempted coercion to be for the purpose of, incentivizing the broadcaster or provider to take a content action.”

The bill then lists eight factors a court should weigh in deciding whether something counts as coercion. Read them against the record built in Missouri v. Biden and the fit is almost exact.

Courts are told to consider the word choice and tone of the communication, whether the official had regulatory or enforcement authority over the recipient, whether the communication referred to adverse consequences, whether it was public or private, whether it carried a disclaimer saying it lacked legal force, and whether it led the recipient to act contrary to its own policies.

Two of the eight cut the government’s way, asking whether the communication carried “a factual statement without legal force that could be useful to the decision-making of the recipient” and whether it “was for the purpose of aiding compliance with existing law.”

The findings concede the point: “not all government communication to a private speech platform is coercive.” The government does not need a license over Facebook to have leverage over it. It has Section 230 and it has the antitrust division.

Consider what that leverage produced in the summer of 2021. Rob Flaherty, the White House director of digital strategy, ran a sustained campaign of emails and meetings aimed at Facebook’s moderation of COVID content.

The Fifth Circuit found he had demanded internal policy details at least twelve times, pressing the company on what content was being demoted, what interventions it was making, and what measurable impact any of it had.

He told the company the White House was “gravely concerned” that Facebook was “one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy,” accused it of running a “shell game,” and, when an answer was slow, wrote: “Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”

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UK’s Ofcom Seeks Wider Powers After American Forum Fine Fails

Ofcom wasted months chasing a website it cannot reach, came up empty, and has decided the fix is more power.

Britain’s speech regulator closed its investigation into an American suicide discussion forum this week, admitted it has hit the outer wall of what the Online Safety Act censorship law allows, and used the same announcement to ask the government for tools that reach further.

The forum, which Ofcom will only call an “online suicide forum,” has allegedly been linked with more than 130 deaths in the UK and named in coroners’ reports.

Ofcom fined it £950,000, roughly $1.3 million, under the Act. The forum is based in the United States, holds no assets in Britain, is protected by the First Amendment, and has not paid. So the regulator is holding a penalty against a company it has no clear way to bill.

Ofcom thinks there’s a chance the money is still coming. It says it has “initiated work regarding the pursuit of this debt, as we have done with all companies that have not paid their fines by their deadlines.”

A separate post, cheerfully titled “What happens when a company doesn’t pay a fine,” lays out the plan. For a company with no UK assets, obtaining a judgment debt “is more complex and challenging,” and Ofcom says “it is often necessary to engage with law enforcement agencies and private specialists in other countries to identify individuals and assets against which Ofcom can take action.”

Whether Ofcom recovers a penny “can also depend on whether a court in that country will recognise a UK court judgment, and whether we can identify individuals on whom we can serve proceedings.”

That means, a British regulator wants American help to collect a British censorship fine from Americans, and even Ofcom concedes an American court might throw it straight out.

Ofcom has tried this before. It floated the same approach while chasing a fine against 4chan, a strategy that Preston Byrne, the US lawyer representing both sites, called “legally illiterate.” Byrne was just telling it like it is about the forum case. “Censorship fines are anathema to our Constitution,” he said, adding that “if Ofcom attempts to enforce the fine in a US court, which we do not expect, American law is on our side. As far as we can tell, however, this enforcement action is functionally over.”

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Everyone Is a Foreign Agent Now

In a corner of the Saarland, a man ran a blog. It carried no advertising and charged nothing to read. It was funded the way a busker is funded, by whoever chose to drop something in the hat – €60,038.65 in voluntary donations over sixteen months. On four occasions in 2023 the blog embedded videos from RT, the Russian state channel the European Union had banned. That is the entire factual basis of a case that climbed to the Court of Justice of the European Union and produced, on 2 July 2026, a judgment that should frighten anyone in Europe who publishes anything.

The blog belonged to a writer who works under the name Traugott Ickeroth. German prosecutors in Saarbrücken charged him and two others under the country’s Foreign Trade Act, which turns a breach of EU sanctions into a criminal offence carrying three months to five years in prison. The regional court, to its credit, hesitated. The law bans “operators” from broadcasting listed Russian content. Was a private individual with a donation button an “operator”? The judges in Saarbrücken were not sure, and referred the question upward.

The Court’s answer removed every doubt, and with it every limit. An “operator,” the Fourth Chamber held, is any natural person who makes the banned content available to the public. Not a company. Not a professional. Not someone turning a profit. The word appears in thirteen language versions of the regulation without the adjective “economic” attached, and the Court seized on that absence to rule that commercial character is irrelevant. So is scale. So is duration. Four videos or one, for money or for nothing – the act of publishing is the crime.

There is a detail here worth pausing on, because it tells you which way the wind is blowing. The European Commission’s own guidance had said the ban applied only to those exercising a “commercial or professional” activity. The Court overruled the Commission – and overruled it against the citizen. The executive branch had read its own prohibition more narrowly than the judges were prepared to. Brussels asked for less reach than Luxembourg delivered. When a court strains to be harsher on the individual than the government that wrote the rule, the machine has acquired a momentum of its own.

The penalty is not theoretical. Under Germany’s Außenwirtschaftsgesetz the sentence runs from three months to five years, and a further amendment has added an aggravated tier reaching up to ten. Poland’s implementing statute prescribes a minimum of three years. And here the trap folds back on itself: the very donations that keep an independent site alive are what a court can treat as a “professional” income stream – which lifts the offender into the aggravated bracket. The reader-funded writer, the one with no corporate backing and no advertiser to please, draws the longer sentence precisely because he is independent. Independence is reclassified as aggravation.

Understand what this ruling plugs into, because the ruling alone is only half the apparatus. The European Union now runs two mechanisms against disfavoured speech, and this judgment welds them together. The first is a list. Under the hybrid-threats sanctions regime the Council of the European Union adds names by administrative decision – no trial, no charge, unanimity reached behind closed doors, with judicial review available only after the asset freeze has already bitten. The second is the criminal prohibition this case just widened, which reaches anyone who relays listed content whether or not they themselves are listed. The Council controls who goes on the list. The Court has now ruled that anyone who touches what the listed outlets produce is a criminal. The net expands every time the list does, and no further judgment is required to make it happen.

The reassuring official story is that all of this is aimed at the Kremlin. It is worth testing that story against the record, because the “Russia” label has already proven to be a wrapper rather than a wall.

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Deep State Media Censorship

Something has fundamentally changed in America, and it should concern everyone regardless of politics. The press was never supposed to decide what the public is allowed to hear. Their job was to report the news. Somewhere along the way, they decided their real job was deciding which information is acceptable and which information should be filtered before it ever reaches the public.

When President Trump delivered his address on the newly released election-related documents, several major television networks chose not to carry it in full. ABC and NBC declined to air the speech on their broadcast networks. CBS began airing it but cut away before it concluded, while other outlets focused immediately on commentary and fact-checking rather than simply letting viewers watch the entire address for themselves. Whether one agrees with the President or not is beside the point. The public should be able to hear a presidential address in full and make up its own mind. The editorial decisions themselves became part of the story.

The press increasingly tells people what to think before they have even been allowed to hear what was said. Every story arrives prepackaged with analysis, approved conclusions, and a warning label. The assumption seems to be that the public cannot be trusted to evaluate information on its own. Yet, as the press is refusing to broadcast an announcement from a sitting president, one can see that the legacy media’s loyalty is to the actors behind the curtain. The deep state is controlling the narrative—you’ve been warned.

ABC is no longer simply a television network. It sits inside one of the largest entertainment conglomerates on the planet. Disney acquired ABC decades ago, transforming what was once a standalone broadcaster into another division of a multinational corporation whose interests extend far beyond journalism. When news becomes one business unit among countless others, people naturally begin asking whether protecting the corporate brand becomes just as important as reporting the story.

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If a SIDS-vaccine study offends, remove it

In 2021 Toxicology Reports published Neil Miller’s results of his examination of VAERS reports of 2,605 SIDS deaths between 1990 and 2019:

The peer-reviewed paper found that 75% of SIDS reports occurred within seven days of vaccination, with the highest number on day two. [snip] The journal removed the paper April 9, 2026, citing “serious methodological flaws” and “potential implications for medical practice.” Miller said the journal never specified what those flaws were, despite repeated requests.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote a letter on June 29 demanding that “Toxicology Reports and its parent company Elsevier release all records related to the decision to remove the paper. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. HHS also wrote to the journal June 11 seeking clarification.”

Neil Miller is careful to say that his paper correlating vaccines with SIDS does not prove causation. But reclassifying ICD codes to remove vaccine-related deaths and purging papers that expose shocking statistics to the contrary smacks of the deliberate suppression of information unfavorable to the vaccine industry.

This is not to damn vaccines: in the first half of the 20th century alone, smallpox is credited with killing 254 million people. Vaccines eliminated that disease. Although tuberculosis can be treated by medicine, the scourge of that devastating disease was largely vanquished by vaccines.

Multi-billion-dollar industries engender powerful — some may say insurmountable — incentives to grow and continue to grow, continuously. The vaccine industry is no exception.

The CDC maintains that children need vaccines starting within 24 hours of birth through age 18, comprising approximately 15-17 vaccines across 26-30 doses. The CDC fails the public when they create the impression of stacking the deck in favor of the industry by “reclassifying” or withholding contradictory information. Absence of absolute proof of harm is no excuse when the degree of safety remains unproven. Parents are entitled to access to all available information regarding the risks as well as the benefits of vaccines.

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Brian Hooker’s paper showing vaccines increase mortality was REMOVED from preprints.org

They censored this paper as a danger to public safety. This means they know the paper is incorrect and can explain the observed data. But they are keeping their analysis a secret. From everyone, including the authors.

So Karl wrote the entire advisory board. Only ONE member bothered to respond with the reasoning. The rest ghosted him.

But the BIG problem is that the “reasoning” does not EXPLAIN what the study observed. At all. We are left clueless. If the vaccines didn’t increase the mortality, then what did? All we have is COMPLETE SILENCE.

In this article I’ll post what the Advisory Board member wrote and what I wrote back.

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Brussels Has Opinions About Your Social Media Feed

The European Commission wants the power to force a redesign of the apps on your phone. Regulators in Brussels said Friday that Instagram and Facebook break European law because the products are built to hold your attention. They are ready to fine Meta as much as 6 percent of its global revenue, more than $12 billion, until the company rebuilds the apps to Brussels’ liking.

The preliminary findings target the ordinary machinery of a modern feed, from infinite scroll and autoplay to push notifications and the recommendation systems that decide what you see next. The Commission’s proposed remedy seems like a product spec written by a government. It wants autoplay and infinite scroll switched off by default, real screen time breaks built in, and the algorithm retuned so it stops working so hard to keep you around.

The finding falls under the Digital Services Act, the law Brussels uses to police what Europeans can post and see online.

The machinery now aimed at button placement and video autoplay is the same machinery built to decide which content stays up and which comes down. Once a regulator can order how an app is designed, the distance between design and speech runs short.

Someone has to define “addictive,” and under this law that someone is the government. The Commission says Meta pushes users into “autopilot mode” and failed to weigh the risks its design poses to minors and what it calls vulnerable adults.

The behavior it describes, opening an app and scrolling longer than you meant to, is familiar to anyone with a phone. The question is who gets to name it a harm and prescribe the cure.

“Protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans must be a priority for social media platforms. The Digital Services Act provides a clear framework to hold platforms accountable for the addictive design and effects of their services. We are fully committed to enforcing our legislation in Europe,” said Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy.

The title alone shows how wide the mandate has grown. One official holds a brief that spans “tech sovereignty, security and democracy,” and from that chair rules that a scrolling feed threatens public health.

Meta rejects the finding. “We disagree with these preliminary findings, which don’t accurately take into account the significant steps we’ve taken to protect teens.

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Court rules Ontario violated Charter by censoring Covid criticism on billboard

The Ontario government tried to silence a citizen for criticizing its Covid-19 response. Now a court has ruled it broke the Constitution.

The Ontario Divisional Court has found the Ontario Ministry of Transportation violated the Charter rights of George Katerberg by preventing him from displaying a political billboard criticizing public officials over their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Katerberg was represented by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), whose constitutional lawyer Chris Fleury successfully argued that the Ministry’s actions violated section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects freedom of expression.

Katerberg’s billboard, erected along Highway 17 near Thessalon, featured photographs of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Doug Ford, former Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam and other officials above the messages, “They knowingly lied about safety and stopping transmission” and “Canadians demand accountability.”

The Ministry first demanded the sign be removed after claiming one image on the billboard was linked to white supremacy. Katerberg immediately removed the disputed image, explaining it was inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and submitted a revised version. The Ministry then shifted its reasoning, claiming the billboard promoted hatred.

When that justification failed, the government changed the rules instead.

After Katerberg launched his Charter challenge, the Ministry amended its Highway Corridor Management Manual in 2025 to broadly prohibit political messaging on billboards along certain northern Ontario highways. It then relied on that newly created policy to reject the sign once again.

The Divisional Court wasn’t persuaded.

Justice Schreck found there was “no rational connection” between prohibiting political speech while allowing commercial advertising on the very same highways. The Court declared the Ministry’s policy unconstitutional, quashed its decision, and ordered the application to be reconsidered.

The Court also criticized the Ministry’s “shifting justifications” throughout the dispute, making clear the case was never about whether Katerberg’s views on Covid-19 were right or wrong. It was about whether the government could censor political speech because it disliked the message.

Following the ruling, JCCF lawyer Chris Fleury called the decision “a welcome affirmation of the importance of political expression,” saying governments cannot ban political speech while allowing businesses to advertise beside the same roads.

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‘So Many Threats’: UK Outlines Plan to Control What Public Can See on YouTube

The U.K. is pushing a proposal that could give government officials unprecedented influence over what people see on YouTube and other digital platforms, medical commentator John Campbell, Ph.D., warned this week.

“My concern is that the state is going to mandate what videos are promoted on YouTube,” Campbell said. “That’s basically what this seems to be about.”

In a recent podcast, Campbell examined the U.K. government’s new media green paper, “Watch this space: a new strategic direction for UK media,” and what it could mean for online speech.

He said the proposal could fundamentally change how people discover videos. Instead of seeing content based primarily on their interests or what other viewers are watching, government-backed sources could receive preferential placement.

“It wouldn’t be popularity that determines what videos become top of the YouTube feed, therefore most likely to be watched,” Campbell said. “It’s going to be the ones that the state mandates as appropriate for you because you can’t judge for yourself. … At least that’s the threat from this paper.”

The green paper, published in June by the U.K. Department for Culture, Media & Sport, proposes exploring a “prominence regime” that would ensure public service broadcasters and other designated “trusted” news providers remain easy to find as audiences increasingly consume news online rather than through traditional television.

Campbell suggested the proposals go far beyond the U.K. media industry. “This is going to affect everyone,” he said.

‘If this doesn’t send a bit of a shudder down your spine … it certainly should’

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YouTube Warns Independent UK Creators of Impending Censorship Push From Labour Government

American video-sharing platform YouTube told users in Britain that, under pressure from the left-wing Labour Party government, independent creators will likely see their content suppressed.

The British government has been accused of attempting to silence political opposition, with YouTube telling UK creators that proposed new rules would include a “prominence regime” that would force sites like YouTube to give a “privileged position” to the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and other legacy media.

The notice said that artificially propping up establishment media would naturally result in independent media being downranked and obscured from view, as “pushing this group forward means pushing everyone else downward. Mandatory prioritisation of broadcasters would affect how your content reaches your audience, regardless of what your audience actually wants to see.”

“Mandating prominence for established media networks would push the UK’s diverse mix of independent journalists, educators, and digital-first businesses down the line,” YouTube added.

Creators were also told that this would impact their ability to grow their communities, generate views, and ultimately earn money as a business.

The government is said to have told the site that legacy broadcasters had the “trust” of the state to provide accurate reporting, which YouTube noted implies that “digital-first voices are less credible, damaging the foundational trust that sustains the creator economy.”

This comes despite the BBC recently facing significant scandals involving the accuracy of its reporting, including last year when it was forced to apologise to U.S. President Trump after a documentary produced by the public broadcaster deceptively spliced together different sections of his speech on January 6th 2021, to falsely give the impression that he had encouraged supporters to riot, when he did the exact opposite.

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