Tag: free speech

Germany Tightens Grip on Online Speech as Vice Chancellor Defends Arrest of Online Critic

Germany’s authorities continue to double down on their crusade against all manner of free speech on the internet: from the right of citizens to criticize them, to satirical content like memes.

Instead of considering apologizing to a pensioner whose home was recently raided by law enforcement for an online post unflattering of his person, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck is now urging even stricter regulation of social media.

And it’s clear what kind of regulation Habeck – who was referred to as “an idiot” in the post that got 64-year-old Stefan Niehoff in hot water with the prosecution – wants to see more of.

The Green Party politician cited the EU’s controversial, sweeping censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), as a tool that could be used to “regulate” algorithms used by social media.

According to the German press, Habeck told the ARD broadcaster not only that he wouldn’t apologize but went on to try to explain – or, justify – why he filed a criminal complaint against the pensioner in the first place.

Habeck suggested that being called an “idiot” was just the straw that broke the camel’s back; his grievance supposedly originates from a previous “racist” post by Niehoff.

Keep reading

Push to Pass KOSA Spurs Fears Over Privacy and Free Speech

Attorneys general from 32 jurisdictions — including 31 states and the District of Columbia — have signed an open letter urging Congress to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) before the looming conclusion of the current session early next year. This legislation, although primarily aimed at protecting minors from digital harms, introduces significant implications for online privacy and freedom of speech through proposed mechanisms for age verification and potential censorship.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

KOSA itself doesn’t mandate direct implementation of online age verification but tasks the Secretary of Commerce, along with the FTC and FCC, with exploring “options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.” This move toward digital identification could fundamentally alter the landscape of internet privacy, linking social media accounts and other online activities directly to real-world identities.

Keep reading

Germans Being German: “You Can’t Say I Hate Free Speech! I’ll Have You Arrested!” Minister Says

As the left loses power worldwide, they are turning to increasingly authoritarian measures. In Germany, Antifa-allied Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is filing charges against conservative journalist David Bendels – ironically for calling Faeser an enemy of free speech.

In the UK, Tommy Robinson and dozens of patriots are in prison for posting on social media or screening a documentary, in Tommy’s case. Police in Essex showed up at the door of Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson because of a post on social media.

In Australia, the leftist government is seeking to pass a law requiring all Australians to register with ID to be able to post on social media.

In Germany, as the Scholz government collapses and faces pressure from the patriotic AfD party, the German government is going full Stasi and raided a retired Army vet for calling Green econ minister and vice-chancellor Robert Habeck an “idiot” (Gateway reported).

In July, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser tried to shut down right-wing Compact magazine but was defeated in court.

YouTuber Shlomo Finkelstein is currently in prison for videos showing a burning Koran.

Violent attacks on AfD politicians are the norm in Germany and are rarely prosecuted because the leftist government views the Antifa street thugs as their street muscle. AfD politicians are virtually banned from mainstream media and are subjected to vile and defamatory reporting by “investigative” journalists, often with intel support.

Now, Interior Minister Faeser is pressing charges against conservative journalist David Bendels, editor-in-chief of the AfD-aligned DeutschlandKurier, for making fun of her in a meme showing Faeser holding a sign that reads “I hate free speech” (photo above).

Yes, you read that right: The Antifa-aligned Homeland Security minister of Germany wants to prove she doesn’t hate freedom of speech by going after a journalist’s freedom of speech.

As our President says, “They’re not sending their best.”

Elon Musk commented on a video by Gateway contributor Naomi Seibt, saying, “This is crazy.”

Keep reading

G20’s Online Speech Clampdown Calls Set To Ignite Free Speech Fears

G20 leaders convened in Rio de Janeiro have called for enhanced responsibility and transparency from digital platforms to tackle the growing challenges of “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “hate speech,” and others on their long list of supposed online “harms.”

The summit’s final declaration highlighted the transformative role of digital platforms in global communication but noted the adverse effects of digital content’s rapid spread. It called for increased accountability from platforms to manage speech, which should raise eyebrows among free speech advocates who’ve heard all this before.

We obtained a copy of the declaration for you here.

During the summit, the leaders highlighted the transformative impact of digital platforms in communication and information dissemination across the globe. However, they also alleged negative ramifications of unchecked digital spaces, where “harmful” content can proliferate at an unprecedented pace and scale.

Keep reading

Ireland’s New Online Censorship Rules Face Showdown With X in Court

X has initiated a High Court challenge against Ireland’s media authority, Coimisiún na Meán, over a newly introduced censorship code that imposes stringent regulations on video-sharing platforms.

The contentious safety code, finalized in October, emerged following the enactment of Ireland’s Online Safety and Media Regulation Act. Rooted in the European Commission’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), the code obliges platforms under Irish jurisdiction to implement measures shielding users—particularly children—from harmful content. Platforms found non-compliant could face severe penalties, including fines of up to €20 million or 10% of annual revenue, whichever is greater.

For platforms like X,  Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and more, the code signals a dramatic shift away from self-regulation and gives Ireland’s regulators more control over online speech.

According to Coimisiún na Meán, the rules are designed to curtail the dissemination of “harmful” material. Criminal content, such as child exploitation or terrorism-related media, also falls within the prohibited categories but was already covered by previous laws.

Keep reading

Free Speech: The Sine Qua Non of Democracy

One of the strangest developments in the recent history of Western democratic states has been the heartfelt call by duly elected officials for government censorship of citizens’ speech. This trend has emerged simultaneously across various nations, including the United Kingdom, Australia, and, oddly enough, the United States of America. No one is surprised that tyrants throughout history, who seize power by force, have retained their positions primarily through silencing dissenters and political opponents. The very foundation of democratic states, however, is what the nineteenth-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill, a great champion of liberty, called “the marketplace of ideas.”

In a public square conducive to open discourse among free people, individuals with diverse interests and opinions hash out ideas and prospective policies in order to determine which ones should prevail. In effect, this competition among ideas reflects the very process used to elect government officials in democratic states. The candidates are permitted to express their views and what they plan to do, and the voters then choose between the available options, however dismal, at the voting booth.

Just as candidates who do not stand to represent and promote the interests of the people are to be defeated through the electoral process itself, in a free marketplace of ideas, bad ideas and flagrant falsehoods will eventually be rejected. This takes longer in some cases than others, above all, when powerful lobbies have significant financial interests at stake, a salient example of which is war and what has become a military-industrial-congressional-media-academic-pharmaceutical-logistics-banking complex. But at some point, eventually, free thinkers come to believe that the policies of their government, which they formerly condoned, are in fact misguided, counter-productive, and even immoral. When many people change their view, concluding that practices such as slavery, or withholding the right to vote from women, have no rational basis whatsoever, then they press their representatives to alter the laws of the land.

Keep reading

Missouri v. Biden UPDATE: Judge Orders ‘Jurisdictional Discovery’ to Settle Govt’s Bad Faith Arguments

Experts have said that the Missouri v. Biden case is “the most important free speech case in a generation.”

The case involves the federal government wholesale deleting and deplatforming millions of Americans from social media based entirely on their truthful political statements.

Just this past week, the trial court has issued a new order in the case, after an appeal to the Supreme Court was successful for the Biden administration, which sought to undo a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the censorship regime.

Now, the trial court is ordering the two sides to conduct “jurisdictional discovery” so that it can prove one issue critical to the case moving forward: whether the Plaintiffs on the side of free speech have enough legal ‘standing’ to move forward. What this means is that the parties are now going to fight about whether the specific Plaintiffs in the case can prove that they were specifically harmed.

You can read the court order here.

Whereas previously the parties could show the massive censorship regime and show that they were deplatformed, now the parties must show the connection and demonstrate that the specific Biden speech suppression complex deplatformed these specific Plaintiffs.

Thus the court is allowing both parties to issue ‘discovery’ to primarily third parties right now, meaning demand evidence, documents, and depositions from people, organizations, and companies, in order to build the record of evidence both parties need to make their arguments.

The claims in the case cannot rest on mere speculation, the parties need to be able to get tangible evidence to back up their claims. Lawyers involved in the case say the critical issue at this juncture is: proving that the federal government targeted a specific Plaintiff, and that the Plaintiff’s speech was harmed as a result.

Keep reading

A License to Censor? The Fierce Fight Over the GEC’s Renewal

What happens when an agency meant to protect Americans from foreign propaganda starts tiptoeing over the line into the realm of domestic censorship? Enter the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a charming creation of the US State Department that was originally tasked with combating foreign disinformation. It sounds like something out of a spy novel: shadowy entities sowing chaos through whisper campaigns and disinformation dumps. But now, the real drama lies in how this agency has extended its reach beyond foreign threats and into the murky waters of the internet’s free speech landscape.

Of course, the GEC would prefer to be seen as a benevolent referee, helping social media giants like Facebook and YouTube play the good guys in the battle against digital deception. In theory, this agency is all about countering Russian bots and Iranian trolls. But somehow, along the way, its mission stretched to a point where the average American scrolling through a feed can almost feel the government’s fingers tapping on their shoulder, cautioning them about what’s “trustworthy.” It’s no wonder people are starting to worry.

Keep reading

MIT suspends student and bans magazine for article opposing Gaza genocide

Last Friday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) issued an immediate “interim” suspension of graduate student Prahlad Iyengar for penning an article titled “On Pacifism” in an MIT student magazine, Written Revolution, opposing Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza. The publication itself has been banned from campus.

Zionist groups and the MIT administration have falsely claimed the article incites violence and have attempted to paint Iyengar as a terrorist. The article, which appeared in the fifth edition of the magazine, which is an American Sociological Association-recognized publication, does nothing of the sort as is obvious from the text of the article itself which is academic in character.

The World Socialist Web Site opposes this flagrant attack on free speech and academic freedom and calls on workers, students and youth to demand the immediate rescinding of all administrative measures against Iyengar.

As Iyengar wrote in a statement opposing the ban, “The administration has also banned Written Revolution outright, meaning students who disseminate or read this publication on campus may face discipline.” Some students reading the magazine were approached by the police. According to a recording of the call made to police, it was to stop the handing out “banned pamphlets.” Students face Orwellian disciplinary actions for distributing or merely reading the article on campus. 

The suspension and ban represent an escalation of the bipartisan campaign led by the Biden administration and Democratic Party against opposition on the campuses to the Gaza genocide. It takes place after over 186,000 people in Gaza have been massacred by Israel, according to an estimate by The Lancet from July. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that everyone in northern Gaza “is at imminent risk of dying,” while there is a massive and unprecedented amount of photographic and video evidence both from the victims and killers themselves on social media documenting the genocide, which could correctly be described as the first live-streamed genocide in history.

Iyengar, a second-year electrical engineering Ph.D. student, was summarily banned from campus under the bogus justification that he presented an immediate risk of violence, with the administration falsely claiming his article supports “terrorism.” This was done solely on the basis of anonymous allegations by Zionist students’ claims that statements in the article “could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT.” The rule for interim banning of students is ostensibly aimed only at those who actually present a risk of violence, like those suspected of rape, murder or assault. This is clearly not the case.

Essentially no evidence has been presented beyond a People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine poster being used as an illustration in Iyengar’s article. The administration falsely used this to claim that the article supported terrorism. The banning opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of avenues for censorship, meaning all manner of media from textbooks and dictionaries which have pictures of real or supposed “terrorist” organizations to documentaries and non-fiction books and even news articles in the mainstream press could be banned.

Keep reading

Smith urges Poilievre to amend Canadian Bill of Rights for broader civil liberties 

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called on federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to promise further free speech and other rights protections at the national level as her government prepares to amend the Alberta Bill of Rights.

Smith encouraged Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to amend the Canadian Bill of Rights to strengthen protections that may be missing in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“I think that we should stop looking at the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as the full, comprehensive expression of all rights and freedoms we are endowed with,” said Smith.

The premier said she believed Poilievre could make these amendments if he’s elected prime minister without having a huge constitutional discussion. 

“I think we’re entering an era now where people are demanding that their governments respect them and not treat them the way they were treated during that terrible Covid era,” said Smith. 

Smith made the comments at True North Nation in Calgary on Saturday.

Keep reading