Tag: censorship

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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Australia’s Top Censor Wants Power Over The “Ratio”

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner wants legal power to order social media companies to shield favored users from criticism and to suspend everyone piling on against them. Julie Inman Grant made the pitch on July 2, testifying to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, the government probe set up after the Bondi Beach terror attack.

She calls the tool a “notification power.” What it does is let her office tell a platform that a particular Australian account is under heavy criticism and demand that the platform punish the accounts responsible.

Her own description of the trigger runs to “insulting” and “ugly” comments stacking up beneath someone’s posts. “If there’s a pile-on, if there’s a brigade, if it’s meant to be an avalanche of online hate, we put the onus back on the platform to say, this Australian is being targeted,” she told the commission.

“We expect you to protect their account and take action against all of those people that you can see… whether it’s you just suspend them or you take them away.”

Watch the video here.

She wants the power to reach across platforms, too. The current adult cyber-abuse rules frustrate her because they force her office to “look at that specific tweet” rather than the whole swarm of replies beneath it. The fix she wants hands platforms a standing order to police disapproval on her behalf.

Grant does not think of this as censorship, of course. Asked about companies that frame their resistance as free speech, she said “it’s easy to slip a censorship label on just about anything,” and offered a softer account of her own work. “What we’re trying to do is minimize harm. Encourage as much speech as possible, but when it veers into the lane of hurting individuals, hurting communities, hurting society and undermining democracy, I think we all need to band together and take more of a stand.”

The regulator asking for authority to suspend users in bulk says her goal is more speech.

Who defines the harm that flips speech from protected to punishable? She does. Phrases like “hurting communities” and “undermining democracy” stretch far enough to cover most heated political argument, and the office reaching for them writes the definition.

Much of her testimony was a complaint that the companies keep winning. eSafety has eight cases running against X Corp, and Grant said six of them were “led by X.” She cast the legal pushback as commercial greed dressed up in principle, accusing platforms of fighting “to be able to serve, share and monetize horrific content.”

Asked whether she had actually seen platforms fight to monetize such material, she answered “I can’t imagine any other reason they would want to put it up there.”

The clearest example she offered cuts against her. After the Wakely church stabbing of Assyrian bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, eSafety sent formal removal notices to Meta and X. “Meta applied within the hour, and then of course, X Corp said, ‘We’re not taking it down, we’ll see you in court,’” Grant said.

X won the legal challenge. And the bishop whose stabbing she cited as the reason to censor went on to back Elon Musk and defend free speech from the pulpit in his first sermon after surviving the attack.

The person eSafety said it was protecting did not want her protection.

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Turkish comedian Deniz Göktaş detained at Istanbul airport over political satire

Turkish stand-up comedian Deniz Göktaş was detained at passport control at an Istanbul airport on Thursday while returning to Türkiye from abroad. Since June 24, Göktaş had been targeted by pro-government media and right-wing circles, with open calls for his arrest over his widely acclaimed political comedy special “Ölü Deniz” (Dead Sea). His detention marks a dangerous escalation of attacks on art and freedom of expression in Türkiye.

The World Socialist Web Site and the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International) demand the immediate release of Deniz Göktaş, the dropping of the investigation against him and a halt to all attacks on art and freedom of expression.

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office had launched an investigation into Göktaş on the baseless charge of “publicly denigrating the religious values embraced by a section of the population” over jokes in the show, which was staged on June 1 at the Harbiye Cemil Topuzlu Open-Air Theatre and released on YouTube on June 24. The prosecutor’s office publicly announced the investigation, describing Göktaş as a “suspect” in whose social media content “elements of a crime” had been identified. Earlier, posts on X containing excerpts from the show had been blocked by court order on the grounds of “protecting national security and public order.” In a statement before his detention, Göktaş said that “no official information” had reached him and that he had no plans to live outside Türkiye.

The roughly 90-minute show was viewed more than 1 million times within 24 hours of its release and had surpassed 8.5 million views as of July 2. Notably, Göktaş made the show freely available to everyone on YouTube rather than on a paid digital platform, with monetization turned off and no ads. Reaching millions of workers and young people, the show became “dangerous” in the eyes of the ruling elite. At the same time, this immense public interest was itself a mass response to the attempt to suppress Göktaş.

“Ölü Deniz” is a satire directed not at individuals but at the political and media establishment as a whole. Göktaş’s subjects included the 32-year political career of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; the revocation of the university diploma of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the jailed Istanbul metropolitan mayor from the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP); the police raid on the CHP’s headquarters following a court’s “absolute nullity” ruling against the party; the mass protests that erupted against İmamoğlu;s arrest; the ensuing widespread arrests; and mainstream media figures. While directing his sharpest political barbs at Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), in power since 2002, he did not spare the CHP, and he also satirized Turkish nationalism and its contradictions on the Kurdish question.

One of the most striking features of the show was that censorship is itself its subject. Göktaş recounts that the legal opinion he received from lawyers on “Selam Selam,” his first show, was: “Never release it.” On stage, he satirizes a nightmare in which he sees himself on the gallows, and the ranks of the “intellectuals” in his family—the intellectual in exile, the intellectual in prison, the dead intellectual. He is fully aware of the historical price of being a dissident artist in Turkey.

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4Chan trolls UK government with another AI hamster as fines hit $800k

4Chan has continued to troll the UK government and Ofcom after they hit the website with fines of over $800,000, and they’re answering with more AI hamsters.

Over the last year, a number of governments have been cracking down on what online content can be accessed by children under the age of 18. That includes the United Kingdom, which is working on a social media ban similar to the one that Australia implemented. 

The UK has implemented age safety verification checks for certain material too and has hit a number of websites with takedowns, as well as fines. 4Chan has been caught up in the latter, being issued with fines that now total over $800,000.

While Ofcom, the UK regulator, is still seeking payment from 4Chan, their lawyer has once again responded with an AI hamster.

4Chan hits back at UK government’s latest fine

“Ofcom wrote. Again. Demanding that 4chan pay its fine. Sent us bank details and everything. Oh no. Super scary. We replied with a hamster. Again,” Preston Byrne, the website’s lawyer, posted on X. 

Byrne also showed off the email response he sent to the regulator. “You want money, huh? Come get it,” he started, with an AI hamster wearing a Thug Life hate being surronded by mountains of dollar bills.

“As 4Chan has no assets in the United Kingdom (given that it has no connection to the United Kingdom), that would require you to show up in a US court as a platiff, waive soreign immunity, and overcome existing U.S. doctrine regarding the non-enforcement of foreign regulatory penalties. 

“We suspect that isn’t going to happen. We suspect you know it isn’t going to happen, too.”

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‘Citizen Vigilante’ broadcast on X to combat censorship

The controversial new film “Citizen Vigilante” received a free-to-stream debut on X in the wake of reports that some European nations would not approve the action flick for distribution.

German Director Uwe Boll spoke about the film’s journey in an interview with The Telegraph, noting that “Citizen Vigilante” was banned by his home country due to its violence and “anti-migrant” content, which displays the struggles of current culture clashes between peaceful European natives and the violence brought through mass migration from incompatible cultures like Islam.

He detailed how distribution rights have been delayed in Britain, blocking a film release there as well. Boll explained that the film was based on a true case of migrant violence, which entailed the gang-rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old girl by migrants in Hamburg ten years ago, and flips the script, where a vigilante punishes the perpetrators, after the legal system allowed them to walk free (as it did in real life).

“It’s as if we’re living in a completely insane and absurd political environment, especially in Europe, where people have completely lost track,” Boll stated during his interview. “There is a huge difference between so-called ‘hate speech’ and stabbing people in the neck. But facts don’t matter any more.”

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Government’s latest attempt to censor online discourse is grave threat to free speech

The government’s latest censorship Bill C-34 is framed as legislation necessary to protect children. However, it incorporates some of the worst elements of Bill C-63 – the government’s previous “Online Harms Act” that failed to pass – and adds new censorship powers.

The bill proposes regulating social media, online services, and AI chatbots through the creation of a Digital Safety Commission. The Commission will have broad discretionary power to force compliance from online services and compel the removal of any harmful or “hateful” material.

Controversially, the bill weakens the legal definition of hatred presently used by the courts, reducing the requirement from both vilification and detestation to only one of either vilification OR detestation. The result will be increased censorship and a substantial chill on controversial speech.

Importantly, existing laws capture almost all of the conduct outlined in the bill. This includes cyberbullying and non-consensual distribution of intimate images, terroristic or violent threats, hate speech under the Criminal Code, counselling self-harm (Criminal Code s.241), and possession and distribution of CSAM material.

The bill requires online service providers to create an age verification system. Though the bill doesn’t specify age verification methods, it will undoubtedly require service providers to collect biometric and/or behavioural information from both adults and children, engaging privacy rights and raising fears of security breaches. The effect will be to create a database of personal identifying information and to destroy online anonymity 

Digital services that fail to comply with directives of the Digital Safety Commission will face substantial fines based on a percentage of global revenue.

“Laws protecting children from online harm and abuse are vital. However, for the most part, they already exist. All digital services like YouTube, X, Facebook, and TikTok have reporting and takedown policies and mechanisms for illegal or egregiously harmful material. Criminal charges for hateful or threatening posts are already commonplace. Of course, laws should be enacted to address any gaps, but online age verification for children will require age verification for everyone. So while the government frames the bill as a law to protect children, its effect will be to control digital access, comprehensively surveil and punish adults for online dissent. Together with Bill C-22, it establishes an online surveillance architecture that will negatively impact every Canadian’s right to free expression. Parliament should pursue targeted child-protection measures without undermining privacy, anonymity, and freedom of expression.”

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How Facebook Has Censored My Account Over Criticism of Israel

Over the past few weeks, META’s censorship of my account has reduced my Reel Views by 68%, regular views by 27%, followers by 52%, and engagement by 21%.

I am by no means the greatest victim of META censorship, but I am in a position to document how and why they are censoring/limiting my reach on META platforms, all because of my objections to Israeli policies. This is a key reason as to why I am transitioning my work and output to Substack.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is what happened.

A few weeks ago, I was notified by META that my account would be limited going forward. My account will still be visible – at least for now – but “people will have to scroll longer,” and it won’t be “suggested” to people who aren’t my friends.

According to META, this censorship is because they claim my profile’s “content is unoriginal” and that it “has some issues.” (?!)

Anyone who follows me on META knows that my content is either me posting my own interviews with various outlets (by definition, that is original), my own opeds and commentary (also original), or pictures of my Samoyeds (admittedly, credit here goes to my dogs).

META’s “rules” define “unoriginal” as content that already exists on Facebook if you had no meaningful role in creating it,” “compiling and posting videos from multiple pages,” or “posting videos that you didn’t film or produce.”

Again, my postings really don’t violate these rules. My analysis is original, and most of the videos I post are my own interviews.

But I think we are getting closer to the real problem. I think META’s problem is not the posting of my own interviews (which constitute the majority of my posts), but rather the videos I post from Gaza. The problem, of course, is not that these videos are not my original content – META couldn’t care less about that.

It’s because it is videos documenting Israeli war crimes. Videos that have prompted Israel’s standing among Americans to plummet. Videos that are causing pro-Israeli lawmakers to lose their primary elections. Videos that have been censored from mainstream media and now TikTok, but that have still circulated on social media, partly thanks to accounts like mine.

Indeed, when I dug deeper, the only justification META provided for their censorship was that they had removed two videos of graphic violence I had posted on July 16 and July 30, 2025. That is, a year ago. At the height of the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.

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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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Telegram Founder Warns UK Social Media Ban Is Digital Iceberg About To Sink The Free Internet

Telegram founder Pavel Durov told the Freedom Forum audience in Oslo that Western societies have already struck the iceberg and started sinking – yet most citizens remain in their cabins, convinced the ship of personal freedoms is unsinkable.

His remarks arrive precisely as Keir Starmer’s government rams through a social media ban for under-16s that functions as the perfect pretext for mandatory digital ID, device-level scanning on every phone, and the practical elimination of anonymous speech online.

The policy is dressed in the familiar language of child protection. In practice it requires every major platform to verify ages with facial scans, passports or credit card data. What starts as a restriction on minors rapidly becomes a national system of internet passports.

Encrypted messaging apps currently sit outside the ban, but the same Online Safety Act framework already contains the levers to demand backdoors later. Tech executives who refuse to turn every smartphone into a government scanner face up to five years in prison.

Durov drew on two decades running major platforms and direct experience with state pressure in Russia, the EU and France. The core message was unmistakable.

“Our ship has already hit the iceberg. We have already started to sink without even realizing it. And I’m talking about the ship of our personal freedoms.”

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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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