censorship – Page 6 – Hellbound and Down

UK City Council Launches Court Bid to Ban Union Jacks That ‘Intimidate Diverse Communities’

Brits are cheering on their team in the 2026 FIFA World Cup and showing their support by flying their country’s flag. And that’s problematic for Bristol City Council, which has voted to ban the flying of the St. George’s Cross.

Residents say Torrington Avenue in the Knowle West area of the city has become an iconic symbol of patriotism over the years – with photographs of flags draped across the street often pictured during big footballing moments.

But Bristol City Council’s Green leader Tony Dyer has released a statement forbidding people from flying flags “on lampposts or railings or any public property”.

Mr Dyer told residents: “please do not attach anything to lampposts – it causes health and safety issues”.

The council leader went on to say: “we are currently taking down flags in sensitive locations as a priority and will be reviewing our strategy for removing other flags on our property”.

LBC reports that Torrington Avenue is known as the U.K.’s most patriotic street because of its flag displays.

That’s aside from the headline to this piece, though. We’ve covered the “Raise the Colors” movement in the U.K., in which patriots hang flags from flagpoles and lightposts, only to have them taken down by authorities. Oxfordshire County Council is reported to have supercharged its legal battle to ban raising British flags on lampposts.

The council has applied for an injunction to block the Raise the Colours group from hanging the flag in a bid to “protect” its residents and “values,” reports GB News.

A council spokesman said on Wednesday: “Residents across Oxfordshire, from Adderbury to Wallingford, have complained to the council about safety risks, intimidation and distress linked to this activity.

“The ongoing scale and persistence of the behaviour by Raise the Colours has created safety risks, caused distress within communities, and led to abuse and intimidation directed at council teams and residents.”

Former England boss Harry Redknapp decried the anti-flag action in a major intervention last night.

“We are proud to be British – that is what we are. Fly your flags, be proud of your country. Don’t be ashamed to be British,” he said.

The county has so far spent £15,000 to remove more than 300 Union and St George’s Cross flags from lampposts.

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Starmer’s Social Media Ban, the Reinvention of the Surveillance State

Here is a fun fact to keep in your back pocket the next time a politician appears on the morning TV sofas to explain that the government’s new face-scanning and digital ID regime is really, deep down, about protecting your children.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, spent the first half of his career as a human rights lawyer and the second half running the Crown Prosecution Service.

He has argued for the individual against the state and he has aimed the full weight of the state at the individual. He has, in other words, seen this particular movie from both seats.

So when he tells you he has stumbled, blinking and innocent, into the most comprehensive surveillance apparatus in British peacetime history, do not extend him the courtesy of believing it. He spent twenty years learning precisely what these powers do to a person. He is not building this in his sleep.

And what he is building is a country in which you must ask permission to exist online. Not ask the platform. Ask the state. Before you read, post, store a photo, or send a message, you are expected to step up to the booth, show your papers, and prove you are a citizen the government has pre-approved.

The default setting of a free society, that you are left alone until you give the state a reason, is being flipped on its head. The new arrangement is that you are a suspect with a phone until you prove otherwise, and you prove it constantly, because proving it has been welded onto the act of going online and speaking at all.

That is the whole game. Everything else is set dressing.

Monday’s headline was a ban on under-16s using social media which, to some, sounds about as sinister as a wholesome ribbon-cutting until you ask the obvious question nobody in Downing Street wants asked aloud: how, precisely, do you stop a fourteen-year-old from opening Instagram without first checking the age of the forty-year-old?

You don’t. You can’t. So everyone gets carded. Britain is lifting the system wholesale from Australia, where a computer first scans your face and guesses your age from your cheekbones, then, failing that, surveils you to death, studies your browsing habits and the hours you keep, and then, when the algorithm throws up its hands, simply demands your passport.

The face scan is sold to you as the polite option, the velvet rope. It is, in fact, the funnel and, at the bottom of the funnel, sits the national identity check that three million people already told this government, in no uncertain terms, to scrap.

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Carney using kids’ safety as cover to strip Canadians’ freedom

The Liberal government is preparing to introduce a new digital safety bill that would ban social media for users under 16, but on Tuesday’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra said this new legislation has nothing to do with protecting children.

“Parents can limit what their kids watch with the push of a button,” he said. “This is really about everyone else. Again, using kids as the excuse.”

The bill, reported by the Globe and Mail ahead of its introduction, would create a new digital regulator to establish safety standards for social media platforms. It would also address artificial intelligence and chatbots.

But the mechanism required to enforce an under-16 ban, Ezra noted, is the problem. To determine who is under 16, every user would need to verify their age — meaning every Canadian would need to hand their personal identification to the government just to log on.

“Mark Carney wants to make everyone sign into the internet,” he said. “It’s not actually about kids, is it?”

Ezra drew a direct line to the Liberals’ past censorship efforts, noting that child protection and anti-terrorism provisions have repeatedly been used as packaging for speech regulation bills — provisions that already exist in the Criminal Code, added as a distraction from the bills’ real purpose.

“Governments use children as a cover for their plots,” he reminded viewers.

The timing raised eyebrows, as the day before Canada’s announcement, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivered an almost identical speech calling on tech companies to introduce device controls to prevent children from sending and receiving explicit images.

Ezra said the parallel is not a coincidence. “On everything from censorship and digital ID to environmentalism and mass immigration, I really think Keir Starmer is setting a lot of Canadian policy,” he said.

The irony, he noted, is that Starmer has refused to call a meaningful public inquiry into the U.K.’s rape gangs and even vigorously opposed one when he was the country’s chief prosecutor.

“What a laugh to pretend he cares about kids,” Ezra said.

Another provision in the bill would grant the Canadian government a security backdoor into any app it chooses. Ezra also pointed out that every major social media platform in Canada is American owned, meaning new fines and restrictions would amount to a tax on U.S. tech firms.

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China Begins Banning AI Videos That ‘Vulgarize’ Regime-Approved Media

China’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) announced on Monday that the state-run China Central Television (CCTV) has overseen the deletion of some 8,000 AI-altered videos from online platforms.

The videos were censored because they “distort, parody, or vulgarize classic Chinese films and television dramas and animated works.”

China’s state-run Global Times unironically relayed the triumphant announcement by two organs of the oppressive Communist government congratulating each other for doing a great job at censorship:

The NRTA has instructed major online audiovisual platforms to further strengthen their primary responsibility, enhance routine monitoring and screening efforts, and focus on removing non-compliant AI-altered videos that alter or distort classic film and television works based on the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, historical themes, revolutionary themes, and exemplary heroic figures.

Platforms have also been directed to remove various forms of disturbing or inappropriate animated content to continuously foster a healthy online audiovisual environment, CCTV reported.

According to the NRTA, the campaign specifically targets three categories of non-compliant videos including the AI-altered content that seriously distorts the original spirit and character portrayals of the source material, content that promotes graphic violence or vulgarity, and content that misappropriates or alters Chinese cultural elements in ways that lead to distorted historical understanding.

The Global Times gave the example of Lin Daiyu, the main character from an 18th-century romance novel called Dream of the Red Chamber, being inappropriately portrayed as a “violent combat character.”

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“It’s All So Tiresome”: UK’s Social Media Ban Trudges Ever Onward

The UK government’s “consultation” on social media harm is over, and – brace yourselves – it turns out they’re going to have to do something about it.

I know, I was shocked too.

The main talking point is that “social media is like cigarettes”. Everyone is saying that, it’s the meme of the day.

It’s a sentiment originally taken from a new report submitted to the consultation by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

Titled “Growing up in an online world”, it contains this hilarious line in the foreword:

…there is, I think, an overwhelming consensus that excessive screen time can harm children and young people and we need to call this out unflinchingly rather than passively wait for someone else to prove causation”.

Which is a pretty neat summary of how our political system works in general, and certainly in this case: We don’t know if there’s even a problem yet, but by God we’re gonna do something about it.

That the something they end up doing makes them rich and powerful is just one of the curious coincidences tyrants can always rely on.

{Sidenote: This morning the BBC had “Overwhelimg consensus” in their headline on this story, but at some point the absurdity of that quote was realised, and the headline changed. Now there’s this disclaimer near the end: “There is no consensus among the wider scientific community that screen time overall is harmful to children.” Funny stuff.}

Elsewhere, the report wails about “a wave of radicalized children” who pose “a real risk to society”, and calls social media “an incredibly powerful and uncontrolled commercial detriment to health”.

In a similar vein, The Guardian is warning of a “tsunami of harm”, and has assembled an all-star cast of interested parties to talk up the scariness of social media meanness.

After meeting with “bereaved parents” earlier today, Keir Starmer has “vowed to take action”.

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Farage Referred for Potential Prosecution over Manchester Airport Comments: Report

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been referred for potential prosecution over his public critiques of the British justice system amid the controversial Manchester Airport trial.

On Friday, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said that it would not be seeking a third re-trial against Muhammad Amaad, 26, and Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 21, over the alleged assault of Police Constable Zachary Marsden at Manchester Airport in July 2024, after two juries failed to come to a verdict. Amaaz was previously convicted of assaulting two female officers during the same incident, however.

The altercation initially sparked uproar after selectively edited footage was leaked to the press of PC Marsden apparently kicking one of the accused in the head. Further footage was later published, appearing to show a police woman having her nose broken during the incident, undercutting the initial public narrative, which had sparked unrest in the local Islamic community.

After months of public pressure, including Reform UK hiring attorneys to launch a private prosecution against the two brothers, the CPS charged Amaad and Amaaz over the incident.

However, the nearly five months taken before any prosecution, and the contrasting swift and unrelenting crackdown against the riots following the murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance party in Southport, sparked accusations of unequal justice.

Among those making the critique were Nigel Farage, who said at the time that there was a “system of two-tier policing, under two-tier justice, under two-tier Keir.”

“You only have to look at the reluctance to prosecute those violent thugs in Manchester Airport who beat up the police officers,” he added. “It took months and months for any prosecution to be brought, and I suspect the reason that it happened is because Reform said if they didn’t, we would take out our own private prosecution.”

For such public comments, Judge Neil Flewitt KC referred Mr Farage to Attorney General Lord Hermer for potential criminal prosecution, claiming the statements may have amounted to contempt of court.

“I took the view that the observation made by Nigel Farage was potentially a contempt of court as it implied the guilt of the defendants,” Judge Flewitt wrote, according to The Telegraph.

“As Nigel Farage is a well-known politician with a considerable following and whose public utterances attract a lot of attention, I decided to refer the matter to the Attorney General so that he could consider whether there should be a prosecution for contempt of court.”

However, the judge said that he did not believe that the Reform chief’s comments would “adversely affect the fairness of the trial”.

Responding to reports of the prosecution referral, Mr Farage said on Friday: “It’s quite clear that our judiciary is in an even worse state than I imagined. The politicisation of the courts will end under a Reform government.”

Reform UK shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf accused Judge Flewitt of presiding over a “historic miscarriage of justice” in the Manchester Airport trial and said that a Reform government would remove “this unfit judge from office”.

The judge said in his written judgment that Mr Farage’s intervention, “however unwelcome, would not adversely affect the fairness of the trial”.

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EU-Backed Appeals Center Accidentally Confirms the DSA Censorship Regime Is Unworkable

A body set up to make Europe’s content censorship regime work has accidentally documented why it doesn’t.

Appeals Centre Europe, an Ireland-certified dispute settlement outfit operating under the EU’s Digital Services Act, released its second transparency report this week.

The numbers it published describe a system failing in both directions at once, and they hand the case against laws like the DSA to anyone who wants it.

Let’s start with what the body found when it actually got to look at the disputed content. Across the year from April 2025 to March 2026, it disagreed with the platform’s call 59 percent of the time.

Break that down and the picture gets stranger. When users challenged content that platforms had deleted, the Appeals Centre sided with the user 52 percent of the time.

When users flagged content that the platforms had chosen to leave online, the body overturned that decision 63 percent of the time. The same companies are deleting things they shouldn’t and keeping up things the regime says they should remove, often in the same reporting period.

The machinery the DSA built to produce correct moderation outcomes is producing roughly a coin flip. Legitimate posts get censored. The body reviewing the censorship then has to tell the platform to put them back. More than half the time, when it can see the evidence, it concludes the platform got it wrong.

The Appeals Centre received more than 24,000 disputes over the year, with eligible cases arriving nine times faster in March 2026 than in April 2025.

That is the scale of disagreement a single dispute body is fielding from across the EU. It is also a fraction of the moderation decisions these platforms make every day, which run to millions.

The DSA’s underlying premise is that platforms can review this firehose of human expression and arrive at defensible, appealable judgments about each piece. The error rate on the small sample anyone actually checks suggests the premise was never sound.

Then there is the question of whether any of it gets enforced and here the report stops being merely damning.

Account suspensions are where the system collapses outright. The Appeals Centre received more than 14,000 suspension disputes.

It managed to fully review fewer than 150 of them, because platforms would not hand over the content needed to assess the bans.

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Belgian Remigration Activist Convicted of “Hate Speech” Over Factual Lecture on Migration, US State Slams Ruling

A controversial court ruling in Belgium is igniting outrage across Europe, after nationalist activist Dries Van Langenhove was convicted for delivering a lecture that cited crime statistics and criticized the impact of mass immigration—raising fresh concerns about the future of free speech on the continent.

The 33-year-old former member of parliament was found guilty by a Leuven court of “incitement to hatred” and “dissemination of ideas,” following a speech at KU Leuven in early 2024. Critics say the ruling sends a chilling message: even fact-based arguments can now be criminalized if they challenge the prevailing narrative.

Van Langenhove was fined €4,000 (approximately $4,300), adding to a growing list of legal penalties he has faced in recent years. He had previously been sentenced over content posted by others in a private group chat—an outcome his supporters say underscores a broader crackdown on dissent.

At the center of the case was a two-hour lecture that moved beyond its original topic to address migration, crime, and societal change. The speech touched on issues that millions of Europeans are increasingly concerned about—but which are often treated as taboo in official discourse.

Van Langenhove argued that mass immigration is linked to rising crime, housing shortages, and growing strain on public services. These claims, backed by statistics, formed the basis of the charges against him.

He also challenged the dominant explanation of inequality. Rather than accepting structural racism as the sole cause, he argued that differences between groups play a role—an argument widely debated but increasingly restricted in public forums.

“People are not equal, animals are not equal, plants are not equal,” he said during the lecture. The statement was seized upon by the court as evidence of wrongdoing.
Judges acknowledged that his statements were based on data and statistics. However, they ruled that presenting such facts in a way that could create a “hostile atmosphere” was sufficient to justify a conviction.

Crucially, the court made clear that direct incitement to violence was not required. It was enough, they argued, that speech could lead to a general sense of “intolerance.”

That standard, for critics, effectively dismantles meaningful free speech. It allows authorities to punish opinions based not on their truth, but on how they are perceived.

The ruling has reignited comparisons with the United States. Under the First Amendment, even controversial or offensive speech is protected unless it directly incites violence.

The U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Sarah B. Rogers, chimed in on the ruling, warning that policymakers worried about the rise of the so-called “far right” should stop criminalizing accurate, data-driven political speech about mass migration — as the Belgian court’s ruling against Dries Van Langenhove explicitly does. She argued that such prosecutions simply hand a monopoly on these issues to people willing to be labeled “racist,” giving them sole ownership of arguments that large segments of the public see as important and true.

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