The Biden administration announced this week that it was putting its “Disinformation Governance Board” on ‘pause’ for the time being, with another report noting its goofy director, Nina Jankowicz, would be resigning.
But on Thursday, a new report noted that the Department of Homeland Security, under which the board will serve, announced the names of two new successors to Jankowicz who are expected to manage the new agency during the pause.
CRTC Chair Ian Scott appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage yesterday and Bill C-11 proved to be a popular topic of discussion. The exchanges got testy at times as Scott seemingly stepped outside of his role as an independent regulatory by regularly defending government legislation, even veering into commenting on newspapers, which clearly falls outside the CRTC’s jurisdiction. With respect to Bill C-11, most newsworthy were two comments regarding the regulation of user content and the timelines for implementing the bill if it receives royal assent.
US tech giant Google has blasted the Trudeau government over a federal plan to regulate online news, calling it a sweeping attempt to impose government control over the web.
Vice President and Managing Director of Google Canada Sabrina Geremia warned in a lengthy post on Monday that Bill C-18 – also known as the Online News Act – would give the federal government “sweeping new powers” to regulate news content.
“The bill gives the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) unprecedented, sweeping new powers to regulate every aspect of the Canadian news industry,” wrote Geremia.
The Trump Media and Technology Group has announced a major access expansion for the company’s first offering, Truth Social.
As of now, the platform can only be reached via an app, and only for Apple products, as there is no app for Android devices yet. But that is about to change.
According to Just the News, very soon the platform will be reachable via the Web, like Twitter, which will open it up to millions more users.
As Revolver and others have covered, Nina “Moaning Myrtle” Jankowicz is a joke. The Harry Potter superfan-turned-propagandrix is now the Biden Administration’s chosen head for the “Disinformation Governance Board.” Among many other embarrassing videos in circulation is the following clip of Nina Jankowicz bizarrely and emphatically dismissing the notion of the so-called “deep state.”
Free speech on the internet endangers democracy, Barack Obama told Stanford University.
The widely hailed speech at Big Tech’s favorite university claimed that autocrats are “subverting democracy” and that democracies have “grown dangerously complacent”. In the slow parade of teleprompter clichés he even warned that “too often we’ve taken freedom for granted.”
To Obama, the threat to democracy doesn’t come from government power, but the lack of it.
“Is it a great success that a multi-billionaire would be now deciding what is appropriate for people to exchange by way of discourse? I think it can hardly be described as anything other than a manifestation of an incredible and dangerous narcissism,” the 5’3″ octogenarian opined at what was supposed to be a climate change conference at Dublin City University, clearly referring to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter but declining to identify the South African entrepreneur by name.
Is there any corner of our government bureaucracy that isn’t overrun with woke, partisan operatives seeking to enact their political agendas? I think we all know the answer to that, and the latest example comes via the FTC moving to “investigate” Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter on…anti-trust grounds?
This comes after Democrats and their media allies have spent the last few weeks absolutely losing their minds over the fact that conservatives might have a single platform that doesn’t bias their policies against them.
Some of the most high-profile liberal figures have joined together to encourage advertisers to boycott Twitter if Elon Musk brings in his promised policy of unfettered ‘free speech.’
It has become depressingly common to read unrelenting attacks on free speech in the Washington Post and other newspapers. The anti-free speech movement has been embraced by Democratic leaders, including President Joe Biden, as well as academics who now claim “China was right” on censorship. However, a Time magazine column by national correspondent Charlotte Alter was still shocking in how mainstream anti-free speech views have become. Alter denounces free speech as basically a white man’s “obsession.”
Voices from racialized communities, anti-racism activists and the political left are saying that restrictions must be maintained on those voices that use the platform to propagate hate, xenophobia and disinformation. Many on the political right, free-speech extremists and far-right voices are rejoicing at the prospect that Twitter under Musk’s ownership will become a space for unrestricted speech, where anything one can say is acceptable.
That is a lie: Musk has stated very clearly that he intended to allow all legal speech.
Has anyone else noticed a growing obsession on the left these days wherein the government, the tech oligarchs, and a growing swath of mainstream media outlets have taken to openly mocking the idea of free speech? This was already a serious problem on Twitter and Facebook long before Elon Musk came along and appeared to light a fuse under the discussion, but it’s really kicked into high gear since then.
For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has revealed how terrified the elites are of freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is the ‘dread of tyrants’. That’s how Frederick Douglass, the American abolitionist, statesman and former slave, put it in his seminal 1860 speech, ‘A Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston’ – taking aim at a racist mob who had shut down an abolitionist meeting and the authorities that had refused to protect it.
The battle lines in America’s free-speech wars are very different today, as of course are the stakes. ‘Slavery cannot tolerate free speech’, thundered Douglass. He saw open discussion as the means to liberation. Today, those who might consider themselves his heirs think you can censor your way to utopia. But one thing at least remains stubbornly the same: more than 160 years later, free speech still fills the American elites with dread.
“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” The entrepreneur Elon Musk asked in a Twitter poll on March 25, 2022. The answer was 70% no, 30% yes.
On April 25, 2022, Musk struck a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, reportedly to build “arena for free speech”. He has described himself as a free speech absolutist and has thankfully sparked a wider public discussion about free speech in a democracy. There are instances — such as child-pornography, falsely “shouting fire in a crowded theater,” or, to safeguard national security during a war (see Brandenburg v. Ohio for some of the legal reasoning) — where there are and need to be constraints on free speech. Regarding false information, such as propaganda, Australian writer Caitlin Johnstone cautions against turning a free society into some kind of totalitarianism to fight an adversary
