Freedom of speech is one of the most slippery concepts in political philosophy. John Stuart Mill pronounced it absolute but qualified it, as he did all liberties, where it causes “harm” to others. On that tenuous footing has grown an edifice of laws on slander, libel, incitement and, more recently, the causing of offence.
Canadian writers, publishers and literary figures doubled down on the right to freedom of thought and expression on Saturday, one day after an attack in the U.S. on award-winning author Salman Rushdie that has left him on a ventilator in hospital.
The World Economic Forum is becoming a little concerned. Unapproved opinions are becoming more popular, and online censors cannot keep up with millions of people becoming more aware and more vocal. The censorship engines employed by Internet platforms, turned out to be quite stupid and incapable. People are even daring to complain about the World Economic Forum, which is obviously completely unacceptable.
Twitter announced in a blog post that it was implementing its civic integrity policy concerning the midterm elections, which will ban users from “manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes.” The policy will punish and diminish the reach of content that Twitter believes could have a detrimental effect on the election. This includes posting misleading information about how to participate, discouraging voters by making false claims about the state of voting sites or law enforcement, making false claims about the outcomes of the election, and creating accounts that falsely claim to be affiliated with a particular political organization.
Here’s what you can expect to see on Twitter as election day approaches in the US:
Prebunks
In the lead up to election day, we’ll share prompts with information about how and where to vote, directly to people’s timelines.
We’re also bringing back prebunks — in English, Spanish, and all other languages supported on Twitter — to get ahead of misleading narratives on Twitter, and to proactively address topics that may be the subject of misinformation. Over the coming months, we’ll place prompts directly on people’s timelines in the US and in Search when people type related terms, phrases, or hashtags.
Week before last, I told you about a lawsuit brought by the state Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration for colluding with Big Tech to censor free speech on COVID, the 2020 election, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and mail-in voting, among other things. The case is getting interesting because the judge is allowing the plaintiffs to proceed with discovery and because people who were censored – the Gateway Pundit and scientists and doctors who criticized the COVID lockdowns – have joined the suit.
So keep your eye on that one, but understand the move to silence the political Right in this country is not confined to the Biden administration. Every corner of the Left is jumping in.
The British left’s silence on state censorship is shameful – and revealing.
The British left – or what passes for it today – briefly pretended to care about free speech this week. Which was kind of cute. It was all sparked by Tory leadership no-hoper Rishi Sunak’s bonkers suggestion that people who ‘vilify’ Britain should be put on the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme, alongside all the Islamists and fascists. ‘Who are the real snowflakes?’, thundered one left-wing commentator. ‘Fascism creeps ever closer’, warned Richard Murphy, a one-time adviser to Jeremy Corbyn, as he wondered out loud if he might soon end up in ‘some camp of Sunak’s choosing for “re-education”’.
Professor Shmuel Shapira MD MPH (Colonel), who served as Director of the Israel Institute for Biological Research between 2013 and 2021, claimed the monkeypox outbreak was connected to mRNA vaccines.
h/t Mauser 98
“The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) considers IMVE to have four sub-categories—“xenophobic, gender-driven, anti-authority and other personal grievance-driven violence,” the report outlines.
Anti-authority– to be interpreted as anti-government? Talk about a wide berth for legal interpretation. How will government define “anti-authority” behaviour? How about “any behaviour Justin Trudeau does not like.” Will actual violence have to take place? Or is this an incremental step toward what George Orwell wrote of as “thought-crimes?”
The term groomer describes adults who form inappropriate friendships with children in order to prime them for sexual abuse, and it has been used by some commentators to refer to those who expose young children to sexual content through drag shows and lessons on gender identity and sexuality.
Chinese censors are removing videos, posts and hashtags related to protests over mortgage payments from Chinese social networking sites such as Douyin and Weibo, according to Reuters.
Videos taken by protestors and their sympathizers in the Chinese regional capitals of Wuhan, Nanchang, and Zhengzhou, have been taken down by Douyin, a Chinese TikTok-like app, citing a failure to “pass scrutiny,” according to Reuters. Protestors are upset about being forced to pay mortgages and other loans on houses that won’t be completed on schedule, according to The Wall Street Journal, as construction delays have hindered the completion of housing.
Canadian bookstore giant Indigo is refusing to sell The Freedom Convoy: The Inside Story of Three Weeks that Shook the World in its stores – despite the book being a best-seller.
Written by True North senior journalist Andrew Lawton, the book combines Lawton’s reporting and exclusive interviews with organizers and strives to tell the whole story of what happened in Ottawa during the convoy.
In a statement to the National Post, Indigo said it is not selling the book in its stores because they have limited shelf space for books.
The great American conservative thinker Thomas Sowell once said “the word ‘racism’ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything — and demanding evidence makes you a ‘racist’.”
Woke pro-LGBTQ group GLAAD just gave five Big Tech platforms a failing score on LGBTQ “safety” online.
“They don’t have enforcement,” GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis claimed July 14 on CBS Mornings.
Radical LGBTQ+ organization GLAAD published a report giving five major social media companies failing grades for “safety” related to LGBTQ+ users. Ironically, GLAAD complained that Big Tech is censoring LGBTQ+ people online, while the organization simultaneously demanded a massive increase in censorship of supposedly bothersome content.
“Bill C- 11 all internet content as subject to the same CRTC regulation as CBC. I can’t believe I read it correctly. The bill is couched in all this diversity, inclusivity and equity terminology.”
“It’s unconscionable in a western democracy. Government are clamping down more viciously than any other developed country. Canadians won’t even know what content is hidden from them.”
— Dr. Jordan Peterson
Two European Commission bills, which regulate online content as never before, were approved by the Commission.
Protocol has reported that the Digital Services Act, (DSA), and Digital Markets Acts (DMA) will take effect in 2019. The DSA will target “illegal” content online, while the DMA will focus on regulating Big Tech giants.
