Tag: censorship

Pentagon Wants It to Be Illegal for Reporters to Ask “Unauthorized” Questions

A judge last week struck down the Pentagon’s restrictions on journalists seeking “unauthorized” information, siding with the New York Times in its lawsuit against the government. In response, the Pentagon on Monday added some meaningless window dressing and essentially reissued the same restrictions. The administration pledged to “immediately” appeal the decision on the original policy, and on Tuesday, the Times filed a motion to compel the administration to comply with the judge’s order. 

As alarming as the Pentagon’s antics are, the Times’ lawsuit is not the only case about whether reporters have the right to ask questions. It’s not even the only one in the news this week. 

In 2017, police in Laredo, Texas, arrested citizen journalist Patricia Villarreal under an obscure and never previously used law making it a felony to ask government employees for nonpublic information for personal benefit. Her supposed crime was asking a police officer about two local tragedies — a suicide and a deadly car wreck.

Her arrest was widely ridiculed, and a judge quickly threw out the charges. When Villarreal sued over her arrest and mistreatment by officers, the legal question wasn’t whether the charges against her were permissible but whether they were so obviously bogus that she could overcome qualified immunity, the unjust and expansive legal shield that protects government employees from liability for all but the most blatant violations. That issue went to the Supreme Court twice, but on Monday, the Court declined to review a federal appellate court’s ruling that the officers were shielded from liability. 

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Settlement Stops Government From Using Social Media As ‘Speech Police’

The government censorship machine took a huge hit Tuesday in a historic win for First Amendment rights. 

What is being billed as an “unprecedented” agreement will bar the three government agencies central to killing speech the Biden administration didn’t like from pressuring social media platforms from doing so in the future. 

“This case began with a suspicion, that blossomed into fact, that led to Congressional hearings and an Executive Order that government censorship of Americans’ social media posts should end,” said John Vecchione, Senior Litigation Counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the nonprofit civil rights group that has battled in courts for years to bring justice to victims of government-led speech suppression. 

Also celebrating, Sen. Eric Schmitt, who, as Missouri’s attorney general, sued the Biden administration for “brazenly colluding with Big Tech to silence Missourians.” 

“This is a massive win for the First Amendment and for every American who believes in free speech,” the Missouri Republican said in a press release, adding that President Biden’s tenure in office brought “the most aggressively liberal and antiliberty excesses of government that America has ever seen.”

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Government Agencies BANNED From Pressuring Big Tech to Censor Americans for 10 Years

In a historic win for free speech, the U.S. Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been legally restricted from pressuring social media companies to silence Americans for the next decade. This comes from a formal Consent Decree in Missouri v. Biden, one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in modern history.

The agreement itself is striking. It acknowledges that, in recent years, federal officials “exerted substantial coercive pressure” on social media companies to suppress speech they did not approve of. This case began after physicians, journalists, and everyday Americans—especially those dissenting on COVID and elections—were systematically censored online. This was confirmed through discovery: a coordinated, government-backed effort to pressure Big Tech into silencing alternative viewpoints.

Now, under this decree, these entities are prohibited from threatening, coercing, or directing platforms like Facebook, X, YouTube, and others to remove or suppress lawful speech—including through algorithmic means. These restrictions will remain in place for 10 years.

Perhaps most important, the agreement explicitly states that labeling speech as “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation” does not strip it of First Amendment protection.

This is one of the most significant blows yet to the censorship regime.

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School used AI to purge library of ‘inappropriate’ books including Orwell’s 1984 and Twilight, with librarian branded ‘safeguarding risk’

A school used artificial intelligence to censor books in its library including George Orwell’s 1984 and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, campaigners claim.

An investigation by Index on Censorship found a secondary school in Greater Manchester earmarked almost 200 books for removal from its library that were deemed ‘inappropriate’.

These also included Michelle Obama‘s autobiography, Becoming and The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks.

The charity, which campaigns for free expression, says the school got AI to generate summaries justifying why each book was not suitable for pupils.

Incredibly, the school librarian was also put under a ‘safeguarding’ investigation – leading to her resignation – for allowing the books in the library.

Index said it would not reveal the name of the librarian or the school, due to her being vulnerable.

Although many of the books were initially removed, it is not known if all of those on the list remain banned from the library.

The case was exposed this week by the school librarian, who spoke to the organisation on condition of her anonymity.

She said the purge began in November 2025, when the headteacher demanded the removal of Laura Bates’ nonfiction title Men Who Hate Women, which is an exposé of incel culture.

The head thought the book was inappropriate due to ‘exposure of misogynistic beliefs’, even though it was kept in a special section for older pupils.

Off the back of this incident, the school then launched an ‘investigation’ into the librarian, and closed the library as a ‘temporary safeguarding measure’.

She was then asked to remove any book that was ‘not written for children’, had ‘themes that could be upsetting to children’ and those that were ‘inappropriate or constitute a safeguarding risk’.

She told Index: ‘I was absolutely gobsmacked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.’

The school also reported her to the council as a safeguarding risk due to introducing ‘inappropriate’ books – and there was also a threat of gross misconduct proceedings.

The school shared with her a list of 193 books which it deemed might be inappropriate, seen by Index.

Index said it had seen another document in which the school admitted the reasons given for the censorship had been written by AI.

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Brussels Launches Brazen Election Interference in Hungary: Activating ‘Disinformation’ Censorship Machine to Silence Anti-Globalist Camp Ahead of April 12 Vote

A full-scale assault on Hungarian sovereignty is underway as unelected bureaucrats in Brussels crank up their censorship apparatus just weeks before Hungary’s crucial parliamentary election on April 12, 2026.

According to a report from Brussels Signal, European Commission has shamelessly activated the so-called “rapid response” mechanism under the oppressive Digital Services Act (DSA), a naked attempt to meddle in Hungary’s internal democratic affairs and tilt the playing field against the nationalist government of Viktor Orbán.

This heavy-handed measure will stay in place until a full week after Hungarians cast their ballots, supposedly to fight “disinformation” and foreign meddling. In reality, it’s a blatant power grab by Brussels elites who cannot stomach a sovereign nation refusing to bow to their federalist agenda.

Critics rightly call it outright election interference—giving faceless EU commissars the power to dictate what Hungarian citizens can read, share, and debate online in the heat of a national campaign.

Major platforms like Meta and TikTok are now forced to team up with so-called “fact-checkers” and “civil society” groups—many fattened by EU cash handouts—to hunt down and suppress content Brussels dislikes. This creates a corrupt echo chamber: Brussels funds the watchdogs, sets the rules, and then enforces them through Big Tech. No wonder impartiality has gone out the window.

The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) in Brussels, via its Democracy Interference Observatory, has exposed this sham as anything but neutral. They warn it’s a politically motivated intervention designed to pre-emptively delegitimize the election if the Hungarian people dare to re-elect their patriotic leadership. The funding ties make it crystal clear: these are not independent guardians of truth, but paid extensions of the same Brussels machine targeting Hungary.

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Blackburn’s TRUMP AMERICA AI Act Repeals Section 230, Expands AI Liability, and Mandates Age Verification

Senator Marsha Blackburn has introduced a 291-page legislative discussion draft that would reshape how information is allowed to exist online.

The TRUMP AMERICA AI Act, officially titled the “The Republic Unifying Meritocratic Performance Advancing Machine intelligence by Eliminating Regulatory Interstate Chaos Across American Industry” Act, bundles together Section 230 repeal, expanded AI liability, age verification mandates, and a stack of additional bills that have been circulating separately for years.

All of it is wrapped in a national AI framework that claims it is tied to President Trump’s December Executive Order. The bill is framed as pro-innovation, pro-safety, designed to “protect children, creators, conservatives, and communities” while positioning the US to win the global AI race.

What the actual 291 pages describe is a system that centralizes regulatory authority, removes the legal protections platforms currently rely on, and hands new enforcement tools to federal agencies, state attorneys general, and private litigants simultaneously.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The legal foundation of the modern internet is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It shields platforms from being sued for the content that users post. Without Section 230, platforms could become legally responsible for what their users post, which could mean anything controversial, contested, or legally ambiguous becomes a liability they’ll quietly remove rather than defend.

Blackburn’s bill repeals it entirely, after a two-year transition period.

Platforms and AI developers could face lawsuits for “defective design,” “failure to warn,” or deploying systems deemed “unreasonably dangerous.”

AI platforms would be incentivized to heavily monitor users.

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Court backs city censorship: Ontario appeal ruling blocks ‘Woman = Adult Female’ ad

The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled against the Christian Heritage Party of Canada (CHP) in a high-profile free speech case, siding with the City of Hamilton’s decision to reject a controversial bus shelter ad.

The case stems from a 2023 attempt by CHP to purchase advertising space on Hamilton transit shelters. The proposed ad featured a smiling woman alongside the message: “Woman: An Adult Female.”

City officials blocked the ad, arguing it could offend transit users, a decision CHP challenged through judicial review before ultimately appealing to Ontario’s top court.

That challenge has now failed.

In its decision, the Court of Appeal upheld the city’s authority to control messaging in public advertising spaces even where that control intersects with constitutionally protected expression.

The ruling effectively shuts down CHP’s argument that a political party has the right to publicly promote what it describes as the biological, biblical, and dictionary definition of a woman in a public forum.

CHP leader Rod Taylor blasted the decision, calling it a blow to fundamental freedoms.

He argued that the ruling undermines core Charter protections, including freedom of speech, press, conscience, and association, and warned that ideological pressure is now influencing both legislatures and the courts.

The party says it will continue advocating for what it calls “truth and freedom,” despite the setback.

In today’s Canada, even defining a word can land you in court — and still lose.

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Blocking the Internet Archive Won’t Stop AI, But It Will Erase the Web’s Historical Record

Imagine a newspaper publisher announcing it will no longer allow libraries to keep copies of its paper. 

That’s effectively what’s begun happening online in the last few months. The Internet Archive—the world’s largest digital library—has preserved newspapers since it went online in the mid-1990s. The Archive’s mission is to preserve the web and make it accessible to the public. To that end, the organization operates the Wayback Machine, which now contains more than one trillion archived web pages and is used daily by journalists, researchers, and courts.

But in recent months The New York Times began blocking the Archive from crawling its website, using technical measures that go beyond the web’s traditional robots.txt rules. That risks cutting off a record that historians and journalists have relied on for decades. Other newspapers, including The Guardian, seem to be following suit. 

For nearly three decades, historians, journalists, and the public have relied on the Internet Archive to preserve news sites as they appeared online. Those archived pages are often the only reliable record of how stories were originally published. In many cases, articles get edited, changed, or removed—sometimes openly, sometimes not. The Internet Archive often becomes the only source for seeing those changes. When major publishers block the Archive’s crawlers, that historical record starts to disappear.

The Times says the move is driven by concerns about AI companies scraping news content. Publishers seek control over how their work is used, and several—including the Times—are now suing AI companies over whether training models on copyrighted material violates the law. There’s a strong case that such training is fair use. 

Whatever the outcome of those lawsuits, blocking nonprofit archivists is the wrong response. Organizations like the Internet Archive are not building commercial AI systems. They are preserving a record of our history. Turning off that preservation in an effort to control AI access could essentially torch decades of historical documentation over a fight that libraries like the Archive didn’t start, and didn’t ask for. 

If publishers shut the Archive out, they aren’t just limiting bots. They’re erasing the historical record. 

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UK Regulator Ofcom Has Fined 4chan £520,000 Under a Law That Doesn’t Apply in the US

Ofcom has now fined 4chan £520,000 ($691,572) under the Online Safety Act. The platform hasn’t paid a penny and isn’t intending to. Its lawyer replied to the latest demand with a picture of a hamster.

That’s the state of UK online speech regulation in 2026: a regulator issuing fines to American websites, receiving rodent-themed correspondence in return, and collecting almost nothing.

The breakdown: £450,000 for failing to put age verification in place, £50,000 for failing to assess the risk of illegal material being published, and £20,000 for failing to set out in its terms of service how it protects users from criminal content. Ofcom says 4chan must comply by April 2 or face daily penalties on top.

But this confrontation and push for 4chan to start checking IDs didn’t start with a £520,000 fine. It started with an email sent across the Atlantic to a company that owes the UK government nothing.

4chan is an American platform. Its registered in Delaware. Its servers are in the United States. It has no employees in Britain, no offices in Britain, no legal registration in Britain, and no business presence of any kind in Britain. It is, in every meaningful sense, none of Ofcom’s business.

And what good would the First Amendment be if it could be overridden by foreign demands?

When the Online Safety Act came into full force, Ofcom declared that any site with “links to the UK” had duties to protect UK users, regardless of where in the world it was based.

That phrase, “links to the UK,” is intentionally vague, allowing British authorities to demand compliance from virtually any website. Under that logic, any American platform that a British person can visit is subject to UK speech law. No presence required. No UK operations required. Ofcom thinks it has jurisdiction over planet Earth.

Beginning in April 2025, Ofcom sent a “legally binding information notice” to 4chan’s corporate services company, by email, demanding compliance with the Online Safety Act and threatening that failure could “constitute a criminal offence” resulting in a fine of £18 million or 10% of 4chan’s worldwide turnover, arrest, and imprisonment for up to two years.

The notice was sent to a company not authorized to accept service on 4chan’s behalf. No UK court had issued it. No treaty process had been followed. It was, legally speaking, a strongly worded email.

Preston Byrne, the attorney representing 4chan, described the regulator’s actions as “an illegal campaign of harassment” directed at American tech firms, and made clear his client would not comply: “4chan has broken no laws in the United States, my client will not pay any penalty.”

By June 2025, Ofcom had opened a formal investigation.

Byrne’s reply was characteristically direct: “Increasing the size of a censorship fine does not cure its legal invalidity in the United States.” He continued: “After an entire year of your agency’s spectacular failure to get the memo, my only suggestion is that you take a first-year course on U.S. constitutional law.”

In August 2025, 4chan and Kiwi Farms took the fight to the US federal courts. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that the Online Safety Act is not only an unlawful extraterritorial power grab but a direct attack on foundational American liberties. The complaint states: “Where Americans are concerned, the Online Safety Act purports to legislate the Constitution out of existence.”

The platforms argue that Ofcom’s demands, including written “risk assessments,” content moderation systems, removal of speech deemed “illegal” by UK standards, and user identity verification, would require violating the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Byrne told reporters: “American citizens do not surrender our constitutional rights just because Ofcom sends us an email.”

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Court Backs First-Grader in Suit Over School Reaction to ‘Any Life’ Matters Drawing

Can a “schoolyard dispute” warrant federal court intervention? Do first-graders have First Amendment rights? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit just gave a resounding yes to both questions.

The case centers on a first-grader identified in court documents as B.B. After her teacher read a story about Martin Luther King Jr., B.B. drew a picture of her and her multiracial friend group. “Black Lives Mater [sic] any life,” it said. Sweet, right?

Apparently not to the administrators at Viejo Elementary School in California’s Capistrano Unified School District. The school’s principal, Jesus Becerra, spoke with B.B. about her drawing, allegedly telling her that it was inappropriate. According to B.B., she was also barred from recess for two weeks.

B.B.’s mother, Chelsea Boyle, sued, alleging that her daughter’s First Amendment rights had been violated.

A federal district court sided with the school and Becerra, holding that B.B.’s drawing was not protected by the First Amendment. “This schoolyard dispute—like most—does not warrant federal court intervention,” wrote U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in the court’s 2024 opinion.

Now, the 9th Circuit has weighed in and reversed course. “We hold that elementary students’ speech is protected by the First Amendment,” the appeals court ruled, vacating the lower court’s decision and sending the case back for reconsideration.

“Schools may restrict students’ speech only when the restriction is reasonably necessary to protect the safety and well-being of its students,” the 9th Circuit judges wrote.

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