Tag: censorship

This Hollywood-Backed Bill Would Give Government Power To Block Websites

Lawmakers in Washington are once again attempting to give the United States a legal pathway to block websites, a power the federal government has never officially held on a broad scale.

The latest push comes in the form of the Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors Act, better known as “Block BEARD,” introduced in the Senate by Thom Tillis, Chris Coons, Marsha Blackburn, and Adam Schiff.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

On its face, the bill targets foreign websites accused of piracy. But the mechanism it creates would establish something far more significant: a formal, court-approved process that could be used to make entire websites vanish from the American internet.

Under the proposal, copyright owners could go to federal court to have a site labeled a “foreign digital piracy site.” If successful, the court could then order US service providers to block access to that site.

The reach is broad. The term “service provider” here mirrors the broad definition in the DMCA, potentially covering everything from ISPs and search engines to social media platforms, and perhaps even VPNs.

Proponents say this is about protecting the entertainment industry. In reality, it’s about setting a precedent. Once the government has a tool to block certain sites, history shows the definition of “unacceptable” content can expand. Piracy today could easily become something else tomorrow.

The ramifications go beyond the music and movie business. If courts can order an ISP to make a site disappear from view, the same logic could eventually apply to other types of content deemed problematic.

And because the bill has no public transparency requirements, the public could be kept entirely in the dark about which sites are blocked, why they’re blocked, or how long the blocks remain in place.

Supporters in the entertainment industry, including the RIAA and Motion Picture Association, are openly cheering the bill, pointing to similar measures overseas they claim have worked without harming free speech.

But the US is not the same as other countries. The First Amendment’s protection of speech and access to information means this kind of censorship tool carries far more constitutional baggage here than it does elsewhere.

What Block BEARD really represents is a milestone. If passed, it would be the first time the US creates a standing legal process for cutting off access to entire websites at the network level.

Keep reading

Irish High Court Rejects X’s Challenge to Online Censorship Law

The Irish High Court has thrown out a legal challenge by X, dealing a blow to the company’s pushback against Ireland’s new censorship rules for online video-sharing services.

X had taken aim at Coimisiún na Meán, the country’s media watchdog, accusing it of stepping beyond legal limits with its Online Safety Code.

The rules demand that platforms hosting user-generated videos take active steps to shield users from “harmful” material. The company had described the regulator’s actions as “regulatory overreach.”

Mr Justice Conleth Bradley, delivering judgment on Wednesday, found no merit in X’s application for judicial review. The court concluded that the regulator’s code was lawful and that its provisions fell within the scope of both the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) and Ireland’s 2009 Broadcasting Act.

According to the ruling, the code does not clash with the Digital Services Act and can function in tandem with EU law.

Responding to the outcome, Coimisiún na Meán said it welcomed the decision and intended to examine the ruling closely before offering more detailed comment.

The case comes as X begins rolling out new age verification systems to meet obligations under the Irish code, alongside compliance efforts aimed at satisfying UK and wider EU digital censorship regulations.

The ruling marks a significant moment in the ongoing struggle over who decides the boundaries of online speech and content moderation.

Keep reading

House probes whether EU, Biden administration pushed Spotify to censor podcasters including Joe Rogan, Steve Bannon

The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday launched an investigation into whether the EU and Biden administration pressured Spotify to censor free speech, The Post has learned.

Censorship has been a point of tension for Spotify, which has faced heated backlash for flagging COVID-19 information from podcaster Joe Rogan and banning Steve Bannon from the platform.

“More relevantly, it’s the pressure we are seeing the EU put on companies to censor more,” a source familiar with the probe told The Post.

In a letter sent to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) slammed recent laws from the EU and UK that require social media platforms – even those based in the US – to censor “disinformation” and “harmful content” or face massive fines.

“These foreign laws, regulations, and judicial orders may limit or restrict Americans’ access to constitutionally protected speech in the United States. Indeed, that appears to be their very purpose,” Jordan wrote in a copy of the letter obtained by The Post.

Keep reading

Steam Purges Games Under Pressure from Visa and Mastercard’s Unseen Censorship

Somewhere between your mouse click and a purchase, a private boardroom full of executives quietly decided what you’re allowed to see, support, or sell. They don’t run your favorite website. They’re not elected lawmakers. But if Visa or Mastercard doesn’t like the look of a transaction, that transaction ceases to exist. That piece of content, that creator, that platform: gone.

There are a lot of complaints in tech circles about who’s getting deplatformed by YouTube this week. Meanwhile, the most consequential censorship in the digital economy has nothing to do with social media and everything to do with whether a little plastic rectangle will greenlight your purchase. And there’s no appeals process. No trial. Just a silent ax falling from a credit card duopoly that nobody elected and nobody seems able to challenge.

Take the recent purge of over 50 adult-themed games from Steam, the dominant digital PC game store. No new law had passed. It was a threat from Visa and Mastercard, quietly relayed like an old-school mafia warning. Valve, Steam’s parent company, made it clear: “We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks.”

In other words: “We’d like to keep making money.”

Valve didn’t wake up with a sudden newfound sense of moral hygiene. It was the payment processors. They pulled the fire alarm, and Steam complied like any rational hostage trying to keep the electricity on.

That’s what happens when the pipes of global commerce are guarded by a pair of unaccountable financial institutions that somehow got into the censorship business without anyone noticing.

Visa and Mastercard are no longer just companies. They’re gatekeepers of moral acceptability.

One day your art is fine, the next it’s too spicy for the algorithms; or worse, for the boardroom optics team. And if they decide your platform has crossed some invisible line? That’s it. No explanation required. No appeals offered. The economic oxygen gets cut off and there’s no recourse.

It’s one thing to be beholden to government regulations. It’s another when your business is held hostage by a pair of logos with an embossed hologram.

Keep reading

SEE the Videos and Images CENSORED by the UK Government As They Implement The Draconian Online Safety Act

Footage is being censored in the UK featuring the heavy-handed police crackdown on citizens showing up to hotels to protest the illegal migrant invasion, as many grow fed up after a 38-year-old Ethiopian migrant sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl.

The videos are being censored under the controversial new “Online Safety Act,” which was promoted as a way to prevent children from being exposed to graphic content on the internet… but now it’s being used to hide the tyranny of the state, the massive public uproar, and the ongoing invasion.

Keep reading

Federal surveillance of Jews, Trudeau critics was part of larger plot to censor the internet

Federal surveillance of pro-Israel social media accounts was part of a larger Canadian Heritage project to find “promising regulatory avenues to curb online content,” according to Access To Information records. The specific accounts monitored were not disclosed, as reported by Blacklock’s.

In 2023, the Liberal government, led by Justin Trudeau, explored international internet censorship practices, backed by groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and the NCCM.

“We’ve seen great progress,” said former Justice Minister Arif Virani in December 2023, who provided no examples of legal content they would censor when asked by reporters.

Since 2021, Cabinet has introduced two bills, C-36 and C-63, to censor legal internet content. Both failed due to opposition from Conservative MPs, academia, and free speech advocates.

Despite professing support for free speech, Trudeau repeatedly stated that legal internet content requires regulation, as he testified at the Emergencies Act inquiry in September 2022.

The now-former prime minister believes social media, a “petri dish” for “anger” and “hate,” is “destabilizing our democracy” in an unprecedented and challenging way.

On April 10, Prime Minister Mark Carney publicly stated his intent to address “online pollution” through censorship. As of now, no new legislation has been introduced.

However, a federal consultant’s memo detailed a project to engage policymakers and law enforcement on digital regulation, drawing from European models, to curb online content threatening Canadian communities.

Keep reading

CNN Caught in Shameful Act of Censorship as Tulsi Exposes How Far Obama Went to Create the Russia Collusion Hoax

Something ridiculous just happened. Just as Tulsi Gabbard was speaking about Obama’s crimes of staging a hoax to steal an election, CNN decided to censor her and mute her mic, so you couldn’t hear it.

But the more you try to take away someone’s voice, the more people want to hear what they have to say. I searched for and found the audio elsewhere, so you can listen to and judge what Tulsi said for yourself.

Happy Wednesday. It’s July 23, 2025, and we’ve just experienced another wild news day. Here are the top 10 essential and buried stories I found in my daily news hunt.

#10 – CNN abruptly CUTS AWAY as Tulsi Gabbard exposes how far Obama went to create the Russia collusion hoax.

They MUTED her mic and put words in her mouth. Unbelievable.

Here’s what they didn’t want you to hear:

“Multiple intelligence community assessments released in the months leading up to the November 2016 election concluded that Russia had neither the INTENT nor CAPABILITY to impact the outcome of the US election. On December 5 of 2016, the FBI and ODNI gave the House Intelligence Committee its first post-election classified briefing in which there was no mention of Putin aspiring to elect Trump by either agency.

“The Presidential Daily Brief drafted on December 8th of 2016 stated that NO Russian or criminal actors impacted vote counts. This document was pulled just hours before it was to be published due to quote, unquote, ‘new guidance.’ If it had been published, it would have been briefed to both President Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump.

“On December 9, 2016, a National Security Council meeting was called to gather President Obama’s senior national security officials, which included CIA Director Brennan, then-Obama DNI James Clapper, Susan Rice, and others. Following that secret meeting, DNI Clapper’s assistant sent an email to the intelligence community with the subject line ‘POTUS Tasking on Russia Election Meddling.’

“Tasking ODNI leaders to create a NEW assessment per the PRESIDENT’S request. The House Intelligence Committee Oversight Report that we released today reveals that, quote, ‘unlike routine intelligence community analysis, the intelligence community assessment was a high-profile product ORDERED by the President, PRESIDENT OBAMA.’

“It directed senior intelligence community agency heads and created an intelligence community assessment limited to just FIVE analysts using ONE principal drafter. This is NOT SOMETHING that occurs in the normal path of producing an intelligence community assessment that reflects the views across the intelligence community.”

No wonder CNN muted her mic. She just exposed how Obama handpicked analysts to craft a hoax—and sold it as fact to undermine Trump’s presidency for years.

Keep reading

YouTube Eliminates Thousands of Chinese and Russian Propaganda Channels

Google said on Monday it has taken down almost 11,000 channels on YouTube for spreading propaganda. It allegedly linked 7,700 of them to China, and another 2,000 to Russia.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said the Chinese YouTube channels distributed content in English and Mandarin that promoted China’s interests, glorified dictator Xi Jinping, and criticized America’s positions on international affairs. Some of the Chinese channels were also highly critical of the Philippines, which is engaged in maritime territorial disputes with China.

The Russian channels allegedly employed various languages to criticize Western governments, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Ukraine. Some of the Russian channels also spread information supportive of China and Iran.

TAG’s latest quarterly report also announced the termination of YouTube influence channels linked to Turkey, Romania, Iran, Ghana, Azerbaijan, and Israel.

The 43 channels linked to Turkey were “sharing content in Turkish that was supportive of the Turkish Victory Party.”

The Victory Party, known by its Turkish acronym ZP, is a nationalist party strongly critical of the Turkish government for taking in large numbers of refugees from Syria. It also opposes the government’s efforts to negotiate with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a violent separatist organization.

ZP leader Umit Ozdag was arrested in January for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and “inciting hatred against migrants.”

TAG said the 12 terminated Romanian channels were “sharing content in Romanian that was supportive of a specific Romanian political party,” but did not name the party.

Keep reading

The Biden Admin Stole Your Data to Rig Elections and Censor Speech

Jason Chaffetz has delivered a devastating exposé that should terrify every American who values his or her constitutional rights. Writing in the New York Post, the former House Oversight Committee chairman pulls back the curtain on what may be the most comprehensive assault on American democracy we’ve witnessed in our lifetime—and it’s happening with our own tax dollars.

Chaffetz revealed that the Biden administration didn’t just weaponize federal agencies against political opponents; it orchestrated an elaborate data-theft operation that would make authoritarian regimes jealous. As Chaffetz explains, “Federal entities outsourced unlawful data collection to politically sympathetic partners. Rather than directly amassing data, they procured or exchanged it from or with nonprofits and technology firms.”

This isn’t some conspiracy theory cooked up by partisan critics. This is documented reality, backed by Freedom of Information Act requests and congressional testimony that the mainstream media has conveniently ignored.

The scope of this operation is breathtaking. Chaffetz exposes how the Small Business Administration—an agency supposedly focused on helping entrepreneurs—was transformed into a partisan voter registration machine. The SBA “proactively reached out to states, especially battleground states like Arizona and Georgia, to seek recognition as voter-registration organizations, despite federal law stipulating that states must initiate this process under the National Voter Registration Act.”

When SBA Associate Administrator Jennifer Kim was pressed during a 2024 hearing about whether the agency conducted events in non-Democrat-leaning regions, she couldn’t provide a straight answer. The evidence speaks for itself: “documented evidence of partisan bias in these efforts” reveals an administration that viewed federal resources as tools for electoral manipulation.

But voter manipulation was just the beginning. The Biden administration’s data dragnet extended into financial surveillance that targeted Americans based on their political beliefs. Christian nonprofits, gun manufacturers, conservative protesters—even members of the Trump family—found their accounts terminated without justification. As Chaffetz notes, “This initiative ultimately targeted Christian nonprofits, gun manufacturers, conservative demonstrators — even Melania and Barron Trump — shutting down their accounts without justification.”

Keep reading

Welcome To The Land Of The Free… Until You Express An Opinion

Britain’s cancel culture is a purposely designed social credit system.

Say the wrong thing, and you’re done for. One ‘offensive’ tweet? Straight to prison.

Say a silent prayer? You’re nicked.

Point out that men don’t have wombs, or that climate change hysteria is exaggerated? You’re sacked and shunned.

Post a meme that contradicts a government orthodoxy or expresses concerns about illegal immigration? Congrats, you’re now persona non grata and at risk of being given a holiday at His Majesty’s pleasure.

Welcome to the land of the free… until you express an opinion…

Great Britain, 2025, where the air is thick with sanctimonious twaddle, and our inalienable rights are under attack from the self-proclaimed elite. Those pompous, hypocritical overlords of ‘correct’ thinking have decided our words, thoughts, and even our chickens need their approval. Free speech? In the U.K., members of the public are in prison for sending a single tweet. And just wait until they roll out digital ID (the so called BritCard) and the Stasi levels of censorship which will follow.

The Establishment has closed its grip harder than Keir Starmer on free Arsenal tickets. Wielding censorship like a sledgehammer and telling us what constitutes ‘approved truth’ as though we’re living in Orwell’s 1984.

But fear not, because there’s a growing rebellion. Increasing numbers of Brits simply aren’t having it anymore. They see through this dystopian farce, preferring instead to give it the middle finger. Our great nation isn’t China or North Korea (though they’d like it to be). Britain is the crucible of free speech and has long championed open expression across literature, the arts and politics.

Amidst the madness, we salute a titan of liberty: John Milton, whose Areopagitica in 1644 stands as a blazing beacon for free speech. With a poet’s fire and a rebel’s heart, Milton faced down Parliament’s suffocating book licensing laws, daring to proclaim that truth thrives only when it wrestles openly with falsehood. “Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” he thundered, crafting a vision of Britain as a place for ideas, where no censor’s pen could silence the quest for truth. His words, a clarion call against tyranny, sowed the seeds for our nation’s proud claim as a bastion of free expression.

Keep reading