Free Speech Online - Page 24

A majority of Americans believe that social media platforms are politically biased in the way they deliver news stories to their users, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.

Europe’s top court ruled this week that Facebook can be ordered by police to remove content illegal in Europe from its worldwide platform.

PragerU has announced that its case against Google and YouTube over claims of online censorship will be heard in court on Tuesday.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently published a column in the Washington Post in which he outlines how he believes the government should regulate the Internet, including censoring speech that his platforms finds “harmful.”

Free speech at Google is long since dead. But it didn’t go down without a fight. As the tech giant embarked on its self-described “shift towards censorship”, many employees inside the company spoke out against it — and were rewarded with harassment and discrimination for remaining true to Google’s founding values.

The White House is reportedly planning an executive order that would give the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a role in determining what gets censored on big tech platforms.

Ticketing service Eventbrite has blacklisted an event featuring conservative commentator Pamela Geller over supposed violations of the platform’s “community guidelines.” The ticketing service then warned the group planning to host Geller that any further attempts to create an event listing featuring the conservative commentator and free speech activist could result in the group’s account being banned from the platform.

Tech giant Google has blacklisted the free-speech focused social media app Gab from the Google Play Store, joining Apple in banning Gab users from accessing the platform using Gab-branded smartphone apps.

Free speech activist Lindsay Shepherd has been banned from Twitter after having an argument with a transgender individual. Shepherd says, “your instincts should not be to celebrate” when someone who does not share the same political views is banned from a social media platform.

Conservative radio host, author, and co-founder of PragerU Dennis Prager is set to testify before the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution about Big Tech’s on July 16.

In an unprecedented move mid-June, the foundation that owns Wikipedia banned one of the site’s long-time administrators for one year over unspecified complaints of harassment. Many of the site’s most influential users accused the Wikimedia Foundation of undermining the editorial independence of the traditionally self-regulating online encyclopedia and called for the ban to be lifted, including by attempting to remove the ban themselves.

A conservative software engineer at Google recently published a blog post claiming that the tech giant has become dominated by “outrage mobs and witch hunts.”

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes stated in a recent op-ed that he wants the government to regulate speech on the Internet. Hughes believes it is the government’s job to define “acceptable speech” on social media.

Both Google and Mozilla have banned Gab’s Dissenter.com extension from their browsers’ extension stores. Dissenter’s mission is to bring a free speech comment system to every site on the Internet.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has said the UK must not “become a country that polices thought” and speech, and Muslims who say potentially “extreme” things should be forgiven.

Free speech social media platform Gab.ai has rebranded as Gab.com and aims to become a tech hub for “liberty-minded tech startups” that wish to avoid connections to leftist Silicon Valley groups.