Tag: social media

Court Says UW-Madison Social Media Censorship Illegal

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s attempt to suppress an animal rights advocate’s comments on its social media pages has been declared unconstitutional by a federal appeals court, reinforcing the limits of government control over public discourse online.

Madeline Krasno, a UW-Madison graduate and former lab worker who spoke out against the school’s animal research practices, brought a lawsuit in 2021 after discovering that her posts were either blocked or hidden from the university’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in her favor on August 1, concluding that the university violated her First Amendment rights by silencing her viewpoint.

We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.

Now faced with the ruling, UW-Madison must decide whether to revise its moderation policies, disable comment functions on its social platforms, or try to escalate the case to the US Supreme Court. University officials have not indicated which direction they plan to take.

Krasno’s criticism comes from her time spent inside the university’s primate lab, where she worked as an undergraduate. She described disturbing conditions, saying she witnessed monkeys kept in isolation, sometimes escaping, and often displaying stress or aggression after being subjected to research. When she later tried to express these concerns publicly through university-run social media, her posts disappeared.

At one point, the university placed an account-level restriction on her Instagram profile, preventing any of her comments from being seen by the public. Even after that restriction was lifted, the school relied on automated filters that blocked posts containing words such as “lab,” “monkeys,” “torture,” “animal testing,” and “primate.”

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“Chat Control” – EU Proposal To Scan All Private Messages Gains Momentum

A controversial European Union proposal dubbed “Chat Control” is regaining momentum, with 19 out of 27 EU member states reportedly backing the measure.

The plan would mandate that messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, must scan every message, photo and video sent by users starting in October, even if end-to-end encryption is in place, popular French tech blogger Korben wrote on Monday.

Denmark reintroduced the proposal on July 1, the first day of its EU Council presidency. France, once opposed, is now in favor, Korben said, citing Patrick Breyer, a former member of the European Parliament for Germany and the European Pirate Party.

Belgium, Hungary, Sweden, Italy and Spain are also in favor, while Germany remains undecided. However, if Berlin joins the majority, a qualified council vote could push the plan through by mid-October, Korben said.

A qualified majority in the EU Council is achieved when two conditions are met. First, at least 55 percent of member states, meaning 15 out of 27, must vote in favor. Second, those countries must represent at least 65% of the EU’s total population.

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Judge Strikes Down California Deepfake Censorship Law

California’s attempt to regulate political speech on major social media platforms has been blocked in federal court, with a judge ruling the state’s latest “deepfake” law clashes with protections already established by Congress.

Assembly Bill 2655 attempted to compel certain large platforms to track down and delete “materially deceptive content” about candidates, election officials, and officeholders.

Supporters described it as a safeguard against manipulated media. The companies targeted, including X and Rumble, argued it was an attempt to turn them into agents of government censorship.

Senior US District Judge John Mendez sided with the platforms and did not even need to reach the argument of constitutional free speech questions to strike down the measure.

He found the federal Communications Decency Act [CDA] already shields online services from punishment over third-party content.

“No parts of this statute are severable because the whole statute is preempted,” Mendez said in court. “No parts of A.B. 2655 can be salvaged.”

The ruling applies to the companies in the lawsuit, and his earlier order freezing enforcement of the law remains in effect statewide until he issues a formal opinion.

For Mendez, the law punished companies for doing something they are “clearly protected by [the CDA] from doing.”

The court also cast doubt on another state law, Assembly Bill 2839, which prohibits false or misleading digital communications aimed at election workers, officials, voting equipment, or candidates in the months leading up to an election. That measure is also on hold, and Mendez signaled he doubts it will survive judicial review.

“Anybody can sue,” he said. “I can sue. If I see the video, under this law, I can sue.” He warned that such a rule chills protected speech and noted the state had not shown it was using the least speech-restrictive approach possible.

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Democrats Plan to Spend Tens of Millions of Dollars to Fund Hundreds of Content Creators

Democrats are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to spin narratives on social media as part of a $110.5 million fundraising effort, according to images of slides from a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) donor event obtained by Breitbart News.

Under a heading “Urgent Off-Year Funding Needs” on one slide, it states the DCCC looks to raise $10 million for social media and content creation, $20 million for “Accountability work,” $15 million for “Voter Registration,” $5 million for “Recruitment” and “Primary Engagement,” and $2 million for “Research” and a “Rapid Response Infrastructure.”

One goal is to enlist at least 667 content creators, with the aim of reaching 83 million Americans and drawing 6.6 million engagements, per another slide that focuses on content creation. The program aims to engage at least 167 “Non-Political Creators” and 8 “Vetted Creators for ads in every target state.”

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Jasmine Crockett Sees Congress As The Side Hustle To Her Full-Time ‘Influencer’ Gig

When Democratic firebrand Jasmine Crockett agreed to be profiled by The Atlantic, she probably expected just another boot-licking puff piece that would add to her leftist street cred and fundraising numbers. What she got was a surprisingly balanced account of her background and meteoric rise in a collapsing political party, which is why she reportedly tried to spike the article.

Perhaps Crockett was incensed by the embarrassing anecdote that staff writer Elaine Godfrey related at the very beginning of the piece. During her quixotic effort to be named the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee last month, Crockett whined that she was “[feeling] a little used” by her colleagues. When Godfrey asked her about her failure to get the post, she said, “It’s like, there’s one clear person in the race that has the largest social-media following,” as if that explained why she should be handed power and responsibility on a plate.

Godfrey’s journalistic honesty has accidentally revealed an inconvenient truth about the new blood on the American left. Crockett and her ilk aren’t true public servants, but social media influencers who see representing the American people as a mere side hustle. This narcissistic approach to their duties makes them dangerous to the body politic.

A Lack of Substance

One of the more disturbing aspects of social media is how it grants unscrupulous users the ability to craft a false identity for themselves. For Crockett, this persona is the “tough black girl from the Dallas streets.” She regularly hurls viral insults at people such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, or Hispanics who voted for Donald Trump.

Though she wrongly characterizes these antics as “forthrightness,” Godfrey refuses to buy fully into Crockett’s charade. She reminds her readers that Crockett hails from St. Louis, where she attended a private high school before going to Rhodes College, a small liberal arts school in Tennessee. The closest Crockett ever got to life on city streets was a role in the musical “Little Shop of Horrors” in her college days.

Crockett credits her entry into law and then politics to an incident at Rhodes in which she and a few other black students received threatening and racist letters from an anonymous source. According to this tale, the black female attorney hired by the college to look into the matter became Crockett’s “shero” and inspiration. Oddly, Godfrey could not fully confirm any of these details; Crockett could not even remember the name of this “sheroic” attorney. All in all, this origin story sounds like a social justice warrior’s Instagram fantasy.

When it comes to Crockett’s policy goals, Godfrey is at a loss; apart from mentioning her law firm’s defense of Black Lives Matter demonstrators and a vague reference to her support for “criminal justice reform” while in the Texas state legislature, the reader gains no insight into what issues concern her or those she represents. Instead, we are treated to a description of her “unofficial leadership” of more than 50 Texas Democrats who fled their state to D.C. in 2021 in order to stymie legislation meant to tighten and clarify voting rules, a stunt that guaranteed Crockett a career on the national level while frustrating more moderate Democrats.

But Crockett clearly knows how to get clicks and likes. Godfrey explains, “On TikTok and Instagram … she monitors social-media engagement like a day trader checks her portfolio,” which is strange behavior for a legislator. The lack of substance behind Crockett’s style reveals that for her, government is not a sacred trust between her and her constituents, but a stage on which she can strut and receive applause.

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Why Parents Are Suing Snapchat Over Fentanyl Deaths

Over and over, Amy Neville forces herself to tell people what happened to her 14-year-old son.

“I relive it. … I’m out there sharing the hardest thing that’s ever happened in my life,” she said. “It’s worth it, because I know we’re saving lives.”

Neville, 52, wiped away tears as she spoke those words during an interview with The Epoch Times on June 23. That day marked five years since her son, Alexander Neville, unknowingly ingested fentanyl and died—a tragedy that could easily befall any family, she said.

Through the nonprofit Alexander Neville Foundation, the grieving mother shares her personal pain with other parents. By her estimation, Amy Neville has given a couple hundred presentations in person and online; about 300,000 people have heard her warnings about the dangers that lurk on social media, leading to deaths such as Alex’s.

Neville also serves as the lead plaintiff in a groundbreaking court case that could affect the way Big Tech operates in the United States.

She believes that changes are needed to prevent many deaths among young people who, like Alex, flock to Snapchat and other online platforms.

Neville and her husband are among 63 fentanyl victims’ families suing Snapchat. They allege that the platform is a defective product and a public nuisance and that it should be held responsible for fentanyl overdose deaths, poisonings, and injuries.

Snap Inc., parent company of Snapchat, “vehemently denies” the allegations, a judge noted.

In the suit, the Social Media Victims Law Center represents dozens of families whose children “died of fentanyl poisoning from contaminated drugs purchased on Snapchat,” Matthew Bergman, the Seattle-based center’s founding attorney, told The Epoch Times.

Snap did not respond to a request for comment.

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And There It Was — One Sentence in Declassified Docs Proves We All Were Censored to Protect Hillary

It’s hard to fathom the evil that led to creating fake intelligence to frame then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as a Russian spy and traitor to his country. We’ve seen in recently declassified documents that Hillary Clinton didn’t do this alone. She commanded dozens, if not hundreds, of willing participants, including the George Soros foundation, President Barack Obama, the FBI, the weaponized intelligence agencies, and others, to bring Donald to his knees. 

Buried deep in the latest tranche of declassified documents called the Durham annex report, however, a deep state hawk has found something that is equally or more evil than changing intelligence to manipulate one election’s outcome. They created a way to take over elections in perpetuity. 

Mike Benz, a former State Department official in the Trump 45 administration who now runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, found what is tantamount to the Rosetta stone for the Censorship Industrial Complex. 

And it’s right here: “The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue. Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel menace [sic] since both POTUS and VPOTUS have acknowledged the fact [that] IC would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable.”

In a series of posts on X, Benz laid out why this sentence from an email from a Soros Open Society Eurasian official told the story of how they planned to get Trump even after they’d lost the election. They magic’d up a system whereby elections would now become “critical infrastructure” run by the feds.

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Extremist influencers ‘weaponizing femininity,’ warns Canadian intelligence report

Women’s workout routines that devolve into anti-government rhetoric. Makeup tutorials with anti-feminist commentary. Personal finance videos that blame immigrants for stealing jobs.

According to a Canadian government intelligence report obtained by Global News, extremist movements are “weaponizing femininity” on social media to attract more women into their ranks.

Prepared by Canada’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC), the report warns that female “extremist influencers” are using popular online platforms to radicalize and recruit women.

Their strategy: embed hardline messages within “benign narratives” like motherhood and parenting, allowing them to draw in women who weren’t intentionally seeking out extremist content online.

“A body of open-source research shows that women in extremist communities are taking on an active role by creating content specifically on image-based platforms with live streaming capabilities,” it said.

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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.

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UK Government Emails Reveal Push to Pressure Tech Platforms to Remove Lawful Speech on Immigration and Policing

A series of internal emails from the UK government has revealed an aggressive push to monitor and suppress online posts deemed “concerning,” sparking alarm over creeping censorship under the banner of combating misinformation and community unrest.

The documents, shared by US Rep. Jim Jordan, paint a picture of state officials flagging lawful speech, pressuring tech companies to remove content, and targeting what they described as “concerning narratives about the police and a ‘two-tier’ system.”

One of the most widely circulated videos under scrutiny featured a street celebration in Manchester where participants waved Pakistani flags. Captioned “It looks like Islamabad but it’s Manchester,” the video, posted by Radio Genoa on X, amassed over 14 million views.

Government emails described this kind of footage as misleading or dangerous, with one note labeling it an example of content that is “shared out of context in order to incite fear of the Muslim community.”

Another email, dated August 3, 2024, acknowledged “significant volumes of anti-immigrant content” online and pointed to “concerning narratives about the police and a ‘two-tier’ system that we are seeing across the online environment.”

The correspondence shows government officials not only monitoring speech but actively collaborating with platforms to address posts, even ones not violating the law or even the platform’s terms of service.

Officials were asking for direct intervention. One message requested clarity from platforms about “what content you are seeing across your platform; and b) any measures you have taken in response.” A follow-up email urged platforms to act quickly, stating, “We’d be grateful if you could come back to us on those two points as soon as you are able to.”

In one particularly troubling exchange dated August 4, government officials flagged a video showing someone scrolling through a freedom of information request that referred to asylum seekers as “undocumented fighting age males.”

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