The unelected European Commission is planning new laws and fines targeting Internet firms like Google, Twitter, and Facebook if they do not censor content they consider illegal within 24 hours.
President Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday to denounce Silicon Valley’s continuing censorship of conservative thought and media.
Democrats attempted to a derail a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday on social media censorship to discuss alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
People promoting “hostility” towards a religion or the transgendered online could get much harsher sentences, of up to six years in jail, especial if they have a large online audience, according to new proposals.
Communist China has shut down more than 13,000 websites in three years, according to a report.
Estonia, who lead the current European Union Presidency, has called upon other EU Member States to increase their Internet censorship, following in the footsteps of Communist China, according to a leaked document.
Chinese users of the messaging app WeChat are now subject to levels of censorship never seen before — images sent in a one-to-one conversation can be blocked mid-transit, presumably by an algorithm, ensuring the receiver never sees what was sent to them.
There have been more than 50 government shutdowns of the Internet in 2016, costing the respective countries hundreds of millions of dollars and choking citizen freedoms during crucial moments.
On Monday, China’s Parliament passed a cyber-security law that has foreign businesses and human-rights activists nervous, as it will place even more restrictions on China’s already tightly controlled Internet when its practices are implemented next June. Many of these restrictions apply extra security measures against non-Chinese interests.
BERLIN (Reuters) – German prosecutors are investigating Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, a spokesman for the Munich prosecutor’s office said on Friday, following a complaint alleging the company broke national laws against hate speech and sedition by failing to
Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), may face charges of “hate speech” as the Vienna prosecutor investigates whether he is responsible for posts made by other users on his Facebook page.
A German photographer has started a campaign to have “right wing propaganda” censored on Facebook, but pornographic images of women allowed. He’s calling it “nipples instead of incitement.” Photographer Olli Waldhauer kicked off his campaign by posting an image on
The Chinese government is censoring media and citizen coverage of the deadly explosion in Tianjin. Reports are circulating of Weibo accounts critical of Chinese media being shut down, and CNN’s Will Ripley was forced off the air by angry alleged relatives of victims.
The Russian government may ban the website community Reddit, it warned, after a thread informed readers how to grow narcotic plants.
Prime Minister David Cameron is demanding online pornographers either ‘voluntarily’ install effective age-restricted controls on their websites or risk legislation that could see them closed down altogether. In a move which will see the state assuming the role of parent in regulating children’s
As James T. Areddy at the Wall Street Journal tells it, the Chinese military was deeply troubled by the role a supposedly U.S.-dominated Internet played in destabilizing other despotic governments and warned Beijing could be next. The warning described the Internet as “a new form of global control” and the United States as a “shadow” hovering behind various uprisings.
First Nicki Minaj, now the Chinese government?
Ellen Pao has resigned as CEO of Reddit following the worst set of user and moderator revolts in the site’s history, but Redditors who hoped her departure marked the end of threats to free speech on the site are likely to be disappointed.
Has Twitter turned on its userbase? Desperate to develop a viable revenue model as investors start to lose confidence, the microblogging giant has begun to exert greater control over its users’ timelines. Originally presented as a means to tackle “trolling” and “abuse”, new
David Cameron’s measures to limit online pornography have come under attack – from the European Union. Despite its reputation for regulation and authoritarian measures, Brussels is currently considering proposals to make it illegal for mobile and internet firms to automatically block material.
The Kremlin will stop at nothing to fully control all forms of media in Russia. The latest step included threats to Google, Facebook, and Twitter from Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor.
A new poll from the Levada Center think tank shows that 59% of Russians believe America is a real threat to the sovereignty of Russia. The results come after a friendly meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian President Vladimir Putin with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Twitter has come under fire from its users after installing mandatory content filters that cannot be switched off. The new system censors the newsfeeds of users without their consent, causing messages from followers and strangers alike to be automatically hidden
Internet censors in Iran are no match for Kim Kardashian’s sultry lingerie photos on Instagram.
Over the weekend Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member Ajit Pai said he anticipates that, as a result of the passage of net neutrality regulations, federal regulators will attempt to control political websites – such as the Drudge Report – through the FCC or Federal Elections Commission (FEC).
Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media watchdog group, has updated a “personal data” law to allow for the government to regulate and ban memes using the likenesses of public personalities, including President Vladimir Putin.
A full quarter of Russian respondents to a poll by state-run pollster VTsIOM answered that jokes about President Vladimir Putin should be off-limits to comedians. 79 percent said religious jokes are inappropriate, with more than half answering the same for war and terrorism.
Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is firing back at President Obama for his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) led internet takeover.
The government of Turkey has banned French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s website from being accessed anywhere in the country along with a total of blocked websites in the tens of thousands.
Chinese Internet censors created and performed a rousing tribute to themselves earlier this week during a New Year celebration talent show, although efforts to remove the videos from the Internet prompted questions as to whether the censors are attempting to censor