Tag: social media

France Just Redefined Global Speech on TikTok

TikTok’s decision to block the “SkinnyTok” hashtag across its entire platform followed direct intervention from the French government, revealing how national pressure is increasingly shaping global online speech, even when the content in question is not illegal.

French Digital Minister Clara Chappaz just claimed victory, celebrating the platform’s removal of the term often associated with extreme dieting and weight loss trends. “This is a first collective victory,” she wrote on X after TikTok confirmed the ban was now global.

A spokesperson for the platform stated the hashtag was removed as part of ongoing safety reviews and due to its“link to “unhealthy weight loss content.”

While the move has been portrayed as a step forward for user safety, particularly for young audiences, it also raises deeper concerns about the role of governments in controlling speech on private platforms.

The “SkinnyTok” content, though considered by some to be harmful, does not violate any laws. Still, the French government managed to pressure TikTok into removing it worldwide. This maneuver highlights a growing trend in which authorities seek to influence online content standards beyond their own borders, often using platforms as enforcers.

Rather than work through the European Commission or wait for outcomes from the ongoing investigation under the Digital Services Act (DSA), France chose to confront TikTok directly.

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BlueSky Is Just Another Weapon in Big Tech’s War Against Truth

Remember when Jack Dorsey left Twitter, claimed he had “seen the light,” and launched Blue Sky to “decentralize social media”? Yeah, turns out that was just another bait-and-switch by Big Tech’s elite. The same Silicon Valley players who censored the truth about COVID, vaccines, election fraud, and even the gospel, are now peddling “decentralization” like a cheap used car.

But here’s the reality: Blue Sky is a centralized con disguised as a digital rebellion.

On The Andres Segovia Show, @theandressegovia laid it bare: “This is the place I’ve received the most threats on any platform.” That includes X, Gab, even Instagram. But on Blue Sky? Threats. Not criticism. Not trolling. Threats. And the accounts issuing them? Still up. That tells you everything you need to know about how this platform operates.

Now enter @YossiShow—he tested the app, documented 37 screenshots, filed 9 reports on pornographic content, and was met with radio silence. “Ghosted my April 15th and 17th emails,” he said. Zero accountability. Zero action. But the most important quote? “Blue Sky’s a free speech fraud. Vague rules, ignored threats, rampant porn. They dodge accountability… Transparency is key, they’re allergic.”

Let’s cut to the chase. This isn’t about broken code or lazy developers. This is about control. Blue Sky doesn’t want to be a free speech platform. They want to appear to be one—just enough to bait the disillusioned and funnel us back into the surveillance state. They’re pulling from the same playbook we’ve seen over and over again: promise liberty, deliver tyranny.

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EU Tech Laws Erect Digital Iron Curtain

Over the past decades, Europe has created little of real relevance in terms of technological platforms, social networks, operating systems, or search engines.

In contrast, it has built an extensive regulatory apparatus designed to limit and punish those who have actually innovated.

Rather than producing its own alternatives to American tech giants, the EU has chosen to suffocate existing ones through regulations such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The DSA aims to control the content and internal functioning of digital platforms, requiring the rapid removal of content deemed “inappropriate” in what amounts to a modern form of censorship, as well as the disclosure of how algorithms work and restrictions on targeted advertising. The DMA, in turn, seeks to curtail the power of so-called gatekeepers by forcing companies like Apple, Google, or Meta to open their systems to competitors, avoid self-preferencing, and separate data flows between products.

These two regulations could potentially have a greater impact on U.S. tech companies than any domestic legislation, as they are rules made in Brussels but applied to American companies in an extraterritorial manner. And they go far beyond fines: they force structural changes to the design of systems and functionalities, something that no sovereign state should be imposing on foreign private enterprise.

In April 2025, Meta was fined €200 million under the Digital Markets Act for allegedly imposing a “consent or pay” model on European users of Facebook and Instagram, without offering a real alternative. Beyond the fine, it was forced to separate data flows between platforms, thereby compromising the personalized advertising system that sustains its profitability. This was a blatant interference in its business model.

That same month, Apple was fined €500 million for preventing platforms like Spotify from informing users about alternative payment methods outside the App Store. The company was required to remove these restrictions, opening iOS to external app stores and competing payment systems. Once again, this was an unwelcome intrusion and a direct attack on the exclusivity-based model of the Apple ecosystem.

Other companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and even X are also under scrutiny, with the latter particularly affected by DSA rules, having been the target of a formal investigation in 2023 for alleged noncompliance in content moderation.

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Retired UK Constable Detained for Social Media Post Receives Financial Compensation for Wrongful Imprisonment

Under leftist Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the United Kingdom is sinking ever deeper in the censorship quagmire, signaling an authoritarian future where free-speech will be completely criminalized.

But that is not to say there has been no pushback from the British society.

Now, a retired police constable has been awarded some measure of justice in the form of compensation of £20,000 [US$ 27,000] after a wrongful arrest over one social media post in which he warned about rising anti-Semitism.

The Telegraph reported:

“Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham, Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers after replying to a pro-Palestinian activist on X. Kent Police officers searched his home and commented on his ‘very Brexity’ book collection. The force detained the 71-year-old for eight hours, interrogated and issued him with a caution after officers visited his home on Nov 2 2023.”

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EU Commissioner Defends EU’s Censorship Law While Downplaying Brussels’ Indirect Influence Over Online Speech

As the European Union moves aggressively to shape online discourse through the Digital Services Act (DSA), EU Commissioner for Technology Henna Virkkunen has been deflecting scrutiny abroad, pointing fingers at the United States for what she describes as a more extensive censorship regime.

Relying on transparency data, she argues that platforms like Meta and X primarily remove content based on their own terms and conditions rather than due to DSA directives. But this framing misrepresents how enforcement works in practice, and downplays the EU’s systemic role in pushing platforms toward silence through legal design, not open decrees.

Virkkunen highlighted that between September 2023 and April 2024, 99 percent of content takedowns occurred under platform terms of service, with only 1 percent resulting from “trusted flaggers” authorized under the DSA. A mere 0.001 percent were direct orders from state authorities.

On paper, this paints a picture of platform autonomy. But in reality, the architecture of the DSA ensures that removals appear “voluntary” precisely because they are incentivized by looming regulatory consequences.

Under the DSA, platforms are held legally accountable for failing to remove certain types of content.

This liability drives a strong incentive to err on the side of over-removal, creating a culture where companies preemptively censor to minimize risk. Virkkunen frames these decisions as internal, but in truth, many of them reflect anticipatory compliance with European legal expectations.

The fact that content is flagged and removed “under T&Cs” does not indicate independence, it reflects a strategy of risk avoidance in response to EU enforcement pressure.

This dynamic is by design. The DSA doesn’t rely on high numbers of direct takedown orders from governments. Instead, it outsources content control to the platforms themselves, embedding speech restrictions in the guise of corporate policy.

The regulatory burden falls on private actors, but the agenda is shaped by Brussels. Delegating enforcement doesn’t dilute state influence; it conceals it. The veneer of decentralization does not remove the fact that the state has created the framework and exerts ongoing leverage over what platforms consider acceptable.

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Texas Ban On Social Media For Under 18s Fails To Pass Senate

Legislation that would have banned anyone under the age of 18 from using or creating social media accounts in Texas stalled in the Senate this week after lawmakers failed to vote on it.

House Bill 186, filed by state Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco), would have prohibited minors from creating accounts on social media sites such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and others by requiring the platforms to verify users’ age.

The measure previously passed the GOP-controlled state House with broad bipartisan support in April, but momentum behind the bill slowed at the eleventh hour in the state Senate this week as lawmakers face a weekend deadline to send bills to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

The legislative session ends on Monday.

In a statement on the social media platform X late Thursday, Patterson said the bill’s failure to pass in the Senate was “the biggest disappointment of my career,” adding that no other bill filed this session “would have protected more kids in more ways than this one.”

The Republican lawmaker said he believed its failure to pass meant “I’ve failed these kids and their families.”

“I felt the weight of an entire generation of kids who’ve had their mental health severely handicapped as a result of the harms of social media,”  the lawmaker said. “And then there’s the others – the parents of Texas kids who’ve died as a result of a stupid social media ‘challenge’ or by suicide after being pulled down the dangerous rabbit holes social media uses to hook their users, addict them on their products, and drive them to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.”

“Finally, there’s the perfectly happy and healthy teens in Texas today, who will find themselves slowly falling off the edge before the legislature meets again in 2027,” he stated.

Patterson suggested he would try and pass the measure again when the Texas Legislature meets in 2027.

House Bill 186 would have prohibited a child from entering into a contract with a social media platform to become an account holder and required platforms to verify that a person seeking to become an account holder is 18 years of age or older before allowing them to create an account.

The legislation would have also required social media platforms to delete accounts belonging to individuals under the age of 18 at a parent or guardian’s request.

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European Commission Launches €5.69M European Fact-Checking Funding Network to Advance “Democracy Shield” and Expand Censorship Infrastructure

The European Commission has launched a €5 million initiative presented as a fact-checking support program; but beneath the surface, it reads as yet another calculated step toward institutionalizing censorship across the European Union.

This call for proposals is marketed as a tool to “protect democracy” and combat “disinformation,” but the structure, goals, and affiliations of the program point clearly to the opposite: a top-down, publicly funded apparatus for narrative enforcement.

Slated to run until September 2, 2025, the project is open not only to EU Member States but also to candidate countries like Ukraine and Moldova; jurisdictions framed as highly vulnerable to “foreign interference,” especially pro-Kremlin disinformation.

This strategic framing serves a dual purpose: justifying increased surveillance of content and securing narrative dominance in geopolitically sensitive areas.

The program’s core deliverables; protecting fact-checkers from so-called “harassment,” creating a centralized repository of “fact-checks,” and building emergency “response capacity;” sound benign to some. But stripped of the euphemism, this is a blueprint for constructing a continent-wide content control grid.

The “protection scheme” offers legal and cyber assistance to fact-checkers, but more crucially it reinforces the narrative that opposition to these groups constitutes abuse rather than legitimate disagreement.

The “fact-check repository” enables centralized curation of what counts as “truth,” and the “emergency response” function gives the Commission a pretext to fast-track suppression efforts in politically sensitive moments.

Most telling is the program’s requirement that participating organizations be certified by either the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) or the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

Many of their members, such as AFP and Full Fact, already work directly with major social media platforms like Meta under third-party moderation schemes. This effectively means the EC is reinforcing an exclusive gatekeeper class, already aligned with corporate censorship programs, now endowed with taxpayer funds and the backing of the European bureaucracy.

At least 60% of the funding will go to third parties, who must co-finance their participation.

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Is your favorite influencer’s opinion bought and sold?

Your addictive doomscrolling on X, TikTok or Instagram may also be the latest nexus for millions of dollars in secret political corruption.

Over the last month, the problem has come into sharp relief. Newly surfaced documents show that more than 500 social media creators were part of a covert electioneering effort by Democratic donors to shape the presidential election in favor of Kamala Harris. Payments went to party members with online followings but also to non-political influencers — people known for comedy posts, travel vlogs or cooking YouTubes — in exchange for “positive, specific pro-Kamala content” meant to create the appearance of a groundswell of support for the former vice president.

Meanwhile, a similar pay-to-post effort among conservative influencers publicly unraveled. The goal was to publish messages in opposition to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to remove sugary soda beverages from eligible SNAP food stamp benefits. Influencers were allegedly offered money to denounce soda restrictions as “an overreach that unfairly targets consumer choice” and encouraged to post pictures of President Trump enjoying Coca-Cola products. After right-leaning reporter Nick Sortor pointed out the near-identical messages on several prominent accounts, posts came down and at least one of the influencers apologized: “That was dumb of me. Massive egg on my face. In all seriousness, it won’t happen again.”

In both schemes, on the left and the right, those creating the content made little to no effort to disclose that payments could be involved. For ordinary users stumbling on the posts and videos, what they saw would have seemed entirely organic.

In the influencers’ defense, they didn’t break any rules — because none exist.

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ADL Regional Director Calls for Government-Regulated Online Censorship

The Anti-Defamation League’s David Goldenberg is demanding a broad overhaul of how speech is governed on the internet, calling for both government intervention and intensified corporate censorship. In a recent appearance, Goldenberg, who heads the ADL’s Midwest operations, expressed frustration over what he sees as declining efforts by tech firms to suppress online content he deems hateful.

Citing Meta’s rollback of its fact-checking team in the United States, he argued that platforms must be forced to take action. “You have a platform like Meta that just gutted its entire fact-checking department…And so what we need to do is we need to apply pressure in a real significant way on tech platforms that they have a responsibility, that they have an absolute responsibility to check and remove hateful speech that is inciteful.”

Goldenberg advocated not just for voluntary moderation, but for legislative and regulatory measures, both at the federal and state level, that would compel platforms to act as speech enforcers. He pointed to efforts in states like California as examples of where local governments are already testing such models.

His concern centers around what he perceives as an ecosystem of radicalization made easily accessible by today’s digital infrastructure. He warned that extremist ideologies no longer require obscure forums or dark web communities to spread. “It used to be you had to fight going into the deep dark web… Now… it’s easier and easier to be exposed in the mainstream,” he said.

Framing the online environment as a catalyst for violence, Goldenberg argued that free access to controversial viewpoints must be curtailed. He called for social media companies to take a stronger stance by excluding users whose views fall outside accepted boundaries, adding that regulation should enforce this responsibility.

He zeroed in on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a critical piece of legislation that shields platforms from legal liability over user-posted content. “Congress needs to amend Section 230, which provides immunity to tech platforms right now for what happens,” Goldenberg said. He dismissed comparisons between modern platforms and telecommunications companies, referencing past remarks by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg about how phone providers were not liable for threats made over calls. Goldenberg’s view was blunt: “These tech platforms are not guaranteed under the Constitution. They’re just not.”

From his perspective, private companies should be free to “kick people off, to de-platform,” and if they fail to do so voluntarily, they must be pressured or regulated into compliance. He described accountability as a mechanism for shaping behavior, stating, “Accountability is a tool that can be incredibly effective in changing behavior.”

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FTC probes Media Matters over Musk’s X boycott claims, document shows

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has demanded documents from Media Matters about possible coordination with other media watchdogs accused by Elon Musk of helping orchestrate advertiser boycotts of X, according to a document seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The civil investigative demand seen by Reuters seeks information about Media Matters’ communications with other groups that evaluate misinformation and hate speech in news and social media, including a World Federation of Advertisers initiative called Global Alliance for Responsible Media. X has ongoing lawsuits against both organizations.

The probe marks an escalation in U.S. government scrutiny of whether groups like Media Matters helped advertisers coordinate to pull ad dollars from X after Musk bought the social media site formerly known as Twitter in 2022.

The demand seeks all documents Media Matters, a Washington, D.C.-based liberal advocacy group, has produced or received in the X lawsuit related to advertiser boycotts.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to run the agency, highlighted the potential for a probe in December.

“We must prosecute any unlawful collusion between online platforms, and confront advertiser boycotts which threaten competition among those platforms,” Ferguson said in a statement on an unrelated case.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Republican member Jim Jordan, accused the Global Alliance for Responsible Media last year of coordinating an illegal group boycott. The initiative was shut down in August.

A spokesperson for the FTC declined to comment.

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