Censorship

The Online Harms Act, expected to be introduced by the federal government on Monday, will include the creation of a new regulator that would hold online platforms accountable for harmful content they host, CBC News has confirmed.

The new regulatory body is expected to oversee a digital safety office with the mandate of reducing online harm and will be separate from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), sources say.

Two sources, including one with the federal government, with knowledge of Monday’s legislation confirmed the creation of the office, saying it will require Canadian websites to uphold a “duty to reduce harm” and comply with federal law. CBC News is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter before the bill is tabled in Parliament.

The Media Research Center has the receipts to show that artificial intelligence poses a grave danger to media critical of the Biden administration.

OpenAI, one of the largest artificial intelligence companies in America, is propping up two extremely partisan media ratings firms—Ad Fontes and NewsGuard—both of which MRC Free Speech America has exposed as being nothing but tools used by the left in an attempt to destroy right-leaning media.

On Tuesday I wrote about how the White House pressured Amazon to censor its book selections based on the argument that the company was spreading misinformation.

Amazon, after some grumbling, complied with many of the demands made upon them.

This tidbit was released by Jim Jordan and the House Weaponization of Government Committee.

There aren’t many platforms left on the internet that protect free speech and encourage the exchange of ideas. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have all de-platformed and demonetized users they believe hold extremist views, so when the Atlantic took aim at Substack back in November, accusing the platform of making money off of Nazi newsletters, everyone expected it to cave to the accusations.

But Substack didn’t.

The MRC Censorship Investigation Project has uncovered the Biden administration’s latest effort to silence Americans. Utilizing FOIA, state public records laws and other investigative tools, MRC has learned that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have funded a censorship effort that trains teachers to “inoculate” students against conservative ideas and American ideals. It also trains educators to turn children into activists and to use censorship tools in classrooms across the nation.

Michael Shellenberger’s first brush with social-media censorship came in 2020 when he was censored by Facebook for sharing accurate information about climate change.

In the years since, Shellenberger has reported extensively on what he calls the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” a network of government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, government contractors, and social-media platforms that conspired to censor ordinary Americans and elected officials for holding disfavored views.

You better watch out, you better not try, to voice your own thoughts, Big Tech is telling you why … you can’t have free speech online.

While most Americans are celebrating Christmas and the coming new year, there’s not much to celebrate when it comes to Big Tech’s handling of free speech.

Inside the silo of the “legacy media,” they are alarmed that left-tilting government bureaucrats are being discouraged from telling social-media platforms what speech they should suppress…in the name of “democracy.”

In a recurring sketch from a popular early 2000s U.K. comedy show called Little Britain, a bank clerk listens to customers’ queries, randomly types on a keyboard, and then deadpans the catchphrase: “computer says no.” Whatever the follow-up questions, no matter how angry or upset customers become, the response remains the same: “computer says no.” This skit lives on in Britons’ collective psyche mainly because it is funny, but also because it points to a familiar sentiment: the frustration of finding oneself stonewalled by an intransigent bureaucracy.

The left likes to whine about alleged “book bans,” which are no more than decisions by wise educators and librarians to keep pornographic and sexually explicit materials out of the hands of minors. In their twisted world, kids should have access to anything and everything they demand. No child should be shielded from materials that could harm their development or pervert their innocent minds. Their ideas about “censorship” are bizarre, to say the least, and often seem more focused on scoring political points and virtue-signaling than protecting children.

How the establishment Left embraced government control of digital speech

On March 9, in the bowels of the Capitol building, a gathering took place of a type that might be possible only in Washington, D.C. The host was Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, chair of the curiously named House Select Committee on the Weaponization of Government. The guests: Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, semi-famous for revealing, in the “Twitter Files,” the deeply tangled relationship between the social-media platform and the federal government. The subject was freedom of speech in the digital age.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has been resistant to the idea of banning TikTok despite clear evidence that the company is run for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party which is allowed to spy on its users.

But she’s threatening Twitter with the FTC unless the company brings back the censorship.