Labour’s war on free speech is just getting started

So it begins. The UK’s new Labour government has been in power for less than a month, and it is already training its guns on freedom of speech.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson announced yesterday in a written statement to parliament that the government will block the commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which was due to come into force next week. Under the Free Speech Act, which was passed last year with cross-party support, universities and students’ unions could face fines if they failed to uphold free speech – and students, speakers and academics could seek redress if their free-speech rights were found to be infringed.

Make no mistake, free speech is in crisis in British universities. Cancel culture runs amok. Expressing unwoke views can lead to extreme harassment and even excommunication from campus. The Free Speech Act is a fairly modest attempt to remind university chiefs of their duty to ensure free debate and free inquiry.

Yet Phillipson, writing in the bloodless language of the arch bureaucrat, fears that the Free Speech Act would be ‘burdensome’ on education providers and on the Office for Students, the quango tasked with enforcing it. Certainly, the rough and tumble of free speech may well be ‘burdensome’ to university managers and administrators, but it remains the lifeblood of academic and student life. A university without free speech is a university in name only – a centre for indoctrination, rather than education.

Labour’s keenness to shelve the act, so soon into its term, confirms what we already knew – that this is a party that is hostile to free speech and enthusiastic about woke censorship. It’s a party that sees the cruel harassment of academics like Kathleen Stock – who was hounded out of the University of Sussex for the thoughtcrime of believing in biological sex – and wants to join in on the side of the harassers.

If Labour is prepared to block the Free Speech Act in its first month in office, just imagine what damage it can do to free speech over the course of the next parliament. Last week’s King’s Speech contained plans for a ‘trans inclusive’ conversion-therapy ban, which could criminalise parents and therapists who question a child’s trans identity. Last year, Labour floated plans to turn ‘misgendering’ into a hate crime. There are also fears that ‘Islamophobia’ could be outlawed, which would criminalise not only outright bigotry against Muslims, but also criticism of Islam and Islamism – it would be an Islamic blasphemy law, in other words.

With Labour in power, backed by a huge parliamentary majority, our freedom to think and speak has rarely been so imperilled.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/27/labours-war-on-free-speech-is-just-getting-started/#google_vignette

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Trustees approve policy strengthening IU’s commitment to free speech

The Indiana University Board of Trustees has strengthened the university’s longstanding commitment to protecting and supporting the right to free speech by affirming IU’s existing First Amendment Policy and ratifying a complimentary Expressive Activity Policy. The new policy supports protests and demonstrations that don’t materially and substantially disrupt university operations or hinder the expressive activity of another individual or group.

The policy will go into effect and be enforced starting Aug. 1.

The Board of Trustees’ vote during a special meeting Monday came after a recent independent report by Cooley LLP assessing the April events in IU Bloomington’s Dunn Meadow. The report included several recommendations, including implementing a new Expressive Activity Policy.

“The Dunn Meadow report validated the need to update policies that were outdated, unclear and inconsistent across IU’s campuses,” Trustees Chair W. Quinn Buckner said. “Indiana University has a longstanding commitment to advancing free speech. In order for free speech for all to flourish, we needed to clarify our policies so people clearly understand the allowable time, manner and place for free expression. We can’t let one person or group’s expression infringe on the rights of others, disrupt learning experiences for our students or interrupt regular university business.”

The Expressive Activity Policy continues to encourage freedom of expression for all, while also setting clear expectations for how members of the IU community and visitors to IU campuses must behave.

More here:  

https://news.iu.edu/live/news/37662-trustees-approve-policy-strengthening-ius

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New Leftist British government to roll back free speech laws

Controversial new powers for universities and student unions to be fined for failing to uphold freedom of speech have been put on hold by the government.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that would allow time to consider whether the law, which was due to come into force next week, would be repealed.

In the statement to parliament, Ms Phillipson also said the regulator, the Office for Students (OfS) should be “more sharply focused” on the financial stability of universities.

A review of the OfS, also released on Friday, says the government and regulator should offer support and guidance to universities struggling financially.

The Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act, which was passed last year, said universities had a duty to "secure" and "promote the importance of" freedom of speech and academic expression.

It would have allowed the OfS to fine or give sanctions to higher education providers and student unions in England from next week.

It also included a new complaints scheme for students, staff and visiting speakers, who could seek compensation if they suffer from a breach of a university's free- speech obligations.

But a government source told the BBC the legislation would have opened the way for Holocaust deniers to be allowed on campus, and was an “anti-semite charter”.

Under pre-existing legislation, universities will still have a legal duty to uphold freedom of speech.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv2gj1x11nmo

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Family Fights for First Amendment Rights of 6-Year-Old

The Pacific Legal Foundation has asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a lower court ruling in California that said elementary school students have no First Amendment rights.

A 6-year-old nicknamed “B.B.” in the Capistrano Unified School District in Southern California was introduced to the phrase “Black Lives Matter” in her first-grade class during a lesson about Martin Luther King Jr. After the lesson, the child drew a picture and wrote “Black Lives Mater” (sic), added “any life,” and gave the picture to a classmate.

The classmate put the picture in her backpack. It was later found by her parents, who became concerned their daughter was being singled out for her race, and asked the school about it.

The school forced B.B. to apologize for her “racist” drawing, banned her from recess for two weeks, and even banned her from drawing pictures for friends. B.B.’s parents were never informed about the incident—and found out a year later.

Pacific Legal attorney Caleb Trotter joined “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the case, filed July 15.

“You can see in their just gross overreaction to the innocent, inclusive use of ‘any life’ that they were teaching this through only one viewpoint, which is the progressive-accepted racial ideology viewpoint, and that’s deeply troubling,” Trotter said.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/26/law-firm-defends-first-amendment-rights-6-year-old-punished-any-life-matters-drawing/

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British Labour party to downgrade free speech protections

The Office for Students (OfS) has faced growing scrutiny over its newly implemented free speech duties, with Labour now proposing sweeping reforms to the higher education landscape.

The OfS’s controversial mandate, introduced in 2021, requires universities to uphold freedom of speech within their campuses. While proponents argue it safeguards academic freedom and encourages diverse perspectives, critics point to concerns about potential misuse.

The fear is that the regulations could be exploited to stifle dissenting voices, particularly on sensitive topics like race, gender, and sexuality. Critics worry that the focus on individual speech could overshadow the need for creating inclusive and respectful learning environments for all.

Labour’s proposed reforms aim to tackle these concerns head-on. The party plans to review the OfS’s mandate, potentially leading to its revision or outright removal. Instead, Labour proposes a focus on fostering a culture of respect and inclusivity within universities, ensuring all students feel safe and supported.

This shift reflects a broader debate about the role of universities in contemporary society. While the importance of free speech is undeniable, striking a balance between academic freedom and the need for fostering an inclusive and welcoming environment remains a complex challenge.

The outcome of this debate will have significant implications for the future of higher education in the UK. Labour’s proposed reforms, if implemented, could usher in a new era of university governance, prioritizing inclusivity over free speech as a guiding principle. However, the question of how to effectively balance both remains a critical issue that must be carefully addressed by policymakers and educators alike.

https://pedagogue.app/ofs-new-free-speech-duties-questioned-as-labour-plans-reforms/

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Hate speech or censorship? Queensland to give more power to activists

What began as a worthy goal to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace has been hijacked by activists seeking to shut down and censor debate ahead of a critical state election.

The Queensland government’s Respect at Work and Other Matters Amendment Bill 2024 was tabled in Parliament last month seeking to amend the state’s anti-discrimination laws. Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath has sought to justify the changes in the belief it will better the lives of women. However, in practice, the bill threatens free expression through its expanded ‘vilification’ provisions, which make unlawful speech that could be considered ‘hateful’.

Existing legislation already renders it unlawful to ‘incite hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of’ a person based on their race, religion, sexuality, or gender identity. While this is already a vague standard, the current bill lowers the standard even further by making unlawful a public act that a ‘reasonable person’ would consider ‘hateful’. Worryingly, there is no definition of ‘hateful’ in the bill.

Take, for example, last year’s Voice to Parliament referendum. Countless ‘Yes’ campaigners regularly accused their opponents of ‘hate’. The co-chair of the Referendum Council lamented, ‘The hate is raining down on us. This is not new, but it is in such a concentrated form, and it is nasty and malevolent.’ Activist Thomas Mayo decried the ‘sheer volume of hatred, lies, and misinformation’ in the lead-up to the vote.

Had this lower standard of hate in relation to speech been applied at the time, how many of the 68 per cent of Queenslanders who voted ‘No’ would have been targeted by this legislation for simply seeking to have a free and honest debate about the proposal?

‘Hateful’ is not an objective standard; it means different things to different people. In a recent article for The Spectator, American author Lionel Shriver wrote, ‘Deeming a statement hateful is a supremely subjective exercise. Britain characterises as a hate crime anything the ostensible victim claims is a hate crime, which is legally absurd, relying as it does on no objective, statutorily specific standard. This eye-of-the-beholder definition is a formula for the pursuit of frivolous litigation and petty personal vendetta.’

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/hate-speech-or-censorship-queensland-to-give-more-power-to-activists/

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The left love twisting words

Has conservative thinking been too complacent about important English words being hijacked to obfuscate their meaning? After all, George Orwell warned that an attack on language is an attack on the truth of things. With his extraordinary prescience, he also said that the further society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.

A prime example is the nonsense of transgenderism, the claim that given drastic medication or physical mutilation – or even because an individual simply claims this –he/she has now changed sex. Those pointing out this is biologically impossible are berated by our hierarchies  and accused of hate speech – indicative of a great madness permeating the West.

Penalties also come swiftly for brave individuals who refuse to misuse the English language by endorsing grammatically wrong pronouns – simply because some deluded or mischievous individual has decided to hijack them. Teachers can lose their jobs and pupils be suspended from schools because of declining to support this perverseness.

Orwell pointed out, too, that political language is designed to twist the meaning of words. Among a cluster of these is the word ‘progressive’, from its Latin origin meaning to advance, to proceed, to go forward. But to what? Why have we allowed a word with a positive-sounding meaning to be captured by what is basically regressive – cultural Marxism, i.e. communism, changing its modus operandi  to a pretence of social progress. Its pervasive attack on all our institutions has the truth of things as its chief target – and it is dedicated to undermining the family, the most important nucleus of any society.

Very much part of this is the heavy promotion of the LGBT community now recruiting in our schools, and demanding drag queens  be allowed to propagandise children in our libraries, where children’s areas now prominently display books persuading them that same-sex relationships are fine and normal. In my home city, a grandmother recently pointed out to an irate librarian that, in her view, such books were unsuitable for children. The police were immediately called, but refused to lay any charges. One such children’s book, titled Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships has a crude sketch of a face seemingly abandoned to ecstasy.

Our long-infiltrated Ministry of Education, responsible for the shocking decline in standards of education, has helpfully provided for teachers a series of videos to be shown to school children. These feature adolescents their own ages invoking their first sexual intercourse, urging their peers not to worry, but just to go for it. For anal penetration, they suggest using a suitable lubricant. This advice was also followed at a local college where the girls said they had to offer anal penetration because the boys were unwilling to risk pregnancy, or use condoms. Social progress?

Why today’s continual infliction of so-called sex education classes throughout every successive year in our schools? How different from the one-only, sex education class once thought necessary to teach the actual facts of enabling a child to be conceived, previously offered by schools in mother/daughter or father/son classes – or, alternatively – where parents were invited to attend beforehand to give their consent. Parents are now denied this right, finding it almost impossible to preview what their child will have inflicted on them.

Although there is still the right for a child to be withdrawn from sex education lessons, this is not widely known, and even denied in some schools. No wonder oversexualised children are now so much at risk. At school balls, the plunging neckline of some girls’ dresses must make it very difficult for their partners – similarly to young women’s provocative G-string bikinis or thongs now attracting complaints from parents taking children to swimming pools.

Perhaps no greater example of the lack of respect now granted to families is the shocking move to compel women who have just given birth to leave hospital within three or four hours. I recall from some time back that mothers who gave birth in Wellington hospital were offered a box of groceries – if they would leave hospital the same day. How appalling, after those often wearying nine months, with now no chance to rest – and often other children needing to be looked after at home.

I also recall my mother’s experience, when it was common for women to remain in hospital for up to a fortnight to rest, to recover from difficult births and receive support before leaving with wearying, even if rewarding, months ahead. Later it was acceptable for willing women to go home in a few days, but with consideration given when more time was needed to recuperate. Can we regard it as progressive in the real meaning of the word that exhausted mothers are now discharged shortly after giving birth?

As for the childless, former New Zealand Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark boasting about making it possible for more women to get out into the workforce. Many women today grieve because after six months of home support, the financial pressures of trying to maintain a family home – difficult now even with two breadwinners – means tired babies and toddlers must be woken and driven to often understaffed daycare facilities before a mother has to turn up for work, collecting them at the end of the day. So much for ‘progressive’ care.

The lazy hijacking of other words, such as élites – now leaving no alternative to describe those genuinely deserving to be described as the best in their fields – can be easily avoided by naming what they really are: hierarchies of dominating individuals. Similarly with gay, as a substitute for homosexual, although there is little evidence that today’s vociferous minorities who deviate from heterosexual relationships show evidence of being particularly happy. While their individual choices must be respected, why these should be regarded as a source of pride – so that we have the Gay Pride banner to seemingly salute – is questionable.

Equally problematic is the word woke, its meaning unintelligible to so many. Abandoning it and substituting groupthink – left-wing identity politics – would provide more transparency about the real attack on the values which traditionally underpinned our society. Instead, by embracing what Orwell called Newspeak, we are arguably helping the regressive Left to cloud our social decline.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/whats-progressive-about-social-decline/

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Inside the EU’s War on Free Speech

BY TOBY YOUNG

Elon Musk has been accused of hypocrisy for publicly defying the EU’s demands that he comply with the Digital Safety Act, while also flagging or removing posts that fall foul of the new DSA rules. Nevertheless, says Thomas Fazi in UnHerd, at least Musk is drawing attention to the EU’s censorship programme.

Complying with these requests is often the only way that the company can continue to operate — and at least Musk, unlike the other major platform owners, has brought online censorship into the open. The publication of the groundbreaking Twitter Files, remember, revealed the shocking level of collusion between the US administration and social media companies.

More to the point, though, X, despite the censorship, remains the only platform where information is allowed to flow relatively freely. Indeed, it remains the single biggest threat to the establishment’s desire for full-spectrum information control — and that is why they are coming down on it so hard. But one man, no matter how rich or powerful, cannot be expected to single-handedly stand up to some of the most powerful governments in the world — let alone to the European Union, the world’s most influential supranational institution.

There’s also another factor to consider. The global attack on free speech isn’t just the whim of out-of-control, power-hungry politicians and bureaucrats. It’s a systemic problem that relates to the structural decay of liberal-democratic institutions, particularly in the West. As our societies degenerate into de facto oligarchies controlled by increasingly delegitimised political-economic elites, this manipulation of public opinion — not only through propaganda delivered via traditional mass media channels but also, increasingly, by policing and micromanaging the public conversation taking place on social media platforms — has come to be seen as an imperative for keeping the status quo safe from the threat of democracy. This is compounded by the growing militarisation of the geopolitical context, which requires an even more compliant populace given its political and economic consequences.

It’s no coincidence that the censorship-industrial complex started emerging in the second half of the 2010s. This was the time when the West was rocked by an unprecedented “populist” backlash against globalisation and the neoliberal order — Trump, Brexit, the Yellow Vests, and the rise of Eurosceptic parties and movements across Europe.

It was also when the path of future confrontation with Russia was being laid in Ukraine — and when Nato started developing the hybrid or cognitive warfare doctrine, which conceptualises the management of Western public opinion as an integral part of warfare. As Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s former Secretary General, put it in 2019: “Nato must remain prepared for both conventional and hybrid threats: from tanks to tweets.”

The Covid-19 pandemic, which saw the first mass deployment of online censorship, bought Western elites some time. But not for long. Today, a “populist” backlash is once again engulfing the West: Right-populist parties are surging across Europe, and Trump is on course to winning the next US election. Meanwhile, escalating tensions in Ukraine have detonated into a no-longer-so-proxy war between Nato and Russia. From the perspective of Western elites, this all calls for a doubling down on the censorship regime, with a major difference: online censorship used to occur behind closed doors, extra-legally and in a context of plausible deniability of behalf of governments; today it is being institutionalised and constitutionalised through tools such as the Digital Services.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/07/21/inside-the-eus-war-on-free-speech/

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'Apartheid' fury in India over new rule that stall holders must post up their names

Putting your name to something is hardly apartheid

The chief minister of India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, backed a plan on Friday requiring restaurants and roadside eateries to display the names of their owners.

Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-robed Hindu monk who heads the northern Indian state, said the order would be enforced along a route taken by thousands of Hindu pilgrims during the holy month of Shravan every year.

Local media quoted an order from the chief minister's office asserting that the measure was intended to maintain the 'purity of the faith' of the pilgrims, known as "kanwarias."

Devotees must follow dietary restrictions, such as no meat, during their journey - a practice that has been cited by police officers to justify the directions given.

The restaurant order has since drawn sharp criticism, with critics condemning it as an act of religious apartheid.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13652105/Apartheid-fury-India-new-rule-aimed-ensure-Hindus-not-buy-food-Muslim-owned-restaurants.html

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Free speech in Australia

Toby Young

I was rather pleased to be pulled aside by Australian Border Force when I arrived in Brisbane as a guest of the Free Speech Union of Australia. I was in the country to give a series of talks, and the organisation’s previous invitee, Graham Linehan, who is second only to J.K. Rowling in the trans activists’ pantheon of hate figures, had caused no end of controversy. Not only had it taken him six weeks to get a visa, but several of his speaking events had to be reorganised at the last minute after activists persuaded the venues not to ‘platform’ him. I was looking forward to comparing notes with Graham on my return to England, boasting about all the attempts to cancel me, and being interrogated by Border Force seemed like a good start.

Alas, the officer stared blankly at me when I told him I was the founder and general secretary of the British Free Speech Union and didn’t seem remotely worried that I might be a dangerous rabble-rouser. His only concern was that I might be paid to give after-dinner speeches, something my visa didn’t allow. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘No one’s going to pay to listen to me drone on about free speech.’ He eyed me up and down and, with unseemly haste, decided I must be telling the truth.

I have only been to Australia once before when my late father, who was about the same age as I am now, brought me along for a two-week lecture tour of his own – and he was paid

The first thing that strikes a British visitor to Australia is how much more prosperous the country is. Your GDP per capita is about 40 per cent higher than ours, but that doesn’t quite capture the difference since if you take London out of the equation our GDP per capita is lower than that of Mississippi, America’s poorest state. This really hits home when you visit our smaller cities – places like Plymouth, Peterborough and Hull  – and I was expecting Australia’s less well-known state capitals to be similar. But not a bit of it. Hobart, for instance, reminded me of Kentish Town, an affluent part of North London that our current Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, hails from. Wherever I went, from Adelaide to Perth, I noticed how there were far fewer homeless people compared to London. It was also a relief to be able to wander around Sydney checking Google Maps on my iPhone, something Londoners have learned not to do thanks to an epidemic of mobile phone theft.

After two weeks here, I was glad I hadn’t brought any of my children with me. One look at this land of opportunity and they would have refused to come home.

The Australian people seem more exuberant and self-confident than the British, too. We seem to be permanently in the grip of a national identity crisis, with most young people having been taught that slavery was an invention of the British Empire, which was an unalloyed evil. You have your fair share of guilty white liberals, of course, and your schoolteachers seem to be as mesmerised by critical race theory and ‘decolonising the curriculum’ as ours. But the woke mind virus doesn’t seem to have infected quite as many people here as it has in Britain, one reason why the Yes side in the Voice referendum got less than 40 per cent.

But those Australians who still place some store in the values of Western civilisation need to wake up if they’re to preserve them from the progressive left. Take free speech, for instance. In the past five years, it has come under serious assault, particularly with the passing of the Online Safety Act, which resulted in the creation of the e-Safety Commissioner and the appointment of Julie Inman Grant as your censor-in-chief. Her attempts to cleanse social media of any opposition to radical woke dogma need to be vigorously resisted – and the Australian Free Speech Union is leading the way on that front. It’s particularly important that Anthony Albanese’s government is stopped from passing an anti-misinformation bill, which would give the e-Karen carte blanche to start throwing ‘takedown notices’ around like confetti. To give you a clue of what content she would order X and Facebook to remove, the Yes side in the Voice referendum blamed their loss on ‘misinformation’.

I met some heroic defenders of liberty on my tour of Australia, but few more impressive than Ron Manners, the 88-year-old mining magnate and long-standing libertarian who has supported a plethora of free market think tanks. On my last night in Australia, I spent a lovely evening with Ron and his friends at Chez Pierre in Perth. I don’t know if I succeeded in persuading him to give some money to the Free Speech Union of Australia – it needs to raise enough to hire a CEO who can build it up into a national powerhouse – but it was a fine way to end my two-week tour. I left convinced that the spirit of liberty is still strong in your marvellous country.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/australian-diary-73/

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Controversial British author Toby Young unloads at 'woke' Australia: 'Crocodile Dundee would be in jail'

A right-wing British author has claimed Australia is surrendering its larrikinism to the 'woke mind virus' and argued free speech is under threat in the country.

Toby Young, 60, made the comments after wrapping up a nationwide speaking tour of Australia last week.

Young authored 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People' - which was turned into a 2008 Hollywood movie starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst and Megan Fox.

Young, the founder of the Daily Sceptic which runs pieces challenging government positions on climate change and Covid, also founded the Free Speech Union.  

He says the union, which has chapters in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, protects the right to express opinions - across the political spectrum - from attempted restrictions by the 'radical progressive left'.

Young told Daily Mail Australia the country was losing its famed free-spirit and anti-authority bravado - and had become more closed-minded than it was decades ago.

'These days it is as if Crocodile Dundee is languishing in a prison cell waiting for trial,' he said. 'He’s awaiting trial for hate speech somewhere in Victoria.

'The emergence of wokeism has introduced a puritanical intolerance into the left which has meant a downgrading of how much they value free speech.'

Young argued free speech was in 'dire straits across the western world' because America had 'exported the woke mind virus'.

'We’re seeing the gradual spread of the woke religion, the great awokening, across the media, universities, governments, officials, the museums and heritage sector, the arts and that’s all been deeply depressing,' he said.

'And here you don’t seem to have much at all to protect you.'

Young said Australia's Online Safety Act 'has empowered your eSafety Commissioner to effectively run amok'.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant recently made an unsuccessful bid to force X to take down images of the Wakeley Church stabbing from its platform worldwide.  

'That was an extraordinary over-reach on the part of the eSafety Commissioner to demand not just a video be removed from X in Australia but globally,' Young said.

'That is indicative of just how unlimited the censorious ambitions of people like Julie Inman Grant are.

'They want to cleanse social media of any dissenting or heretical content that challenges their radical progressive views, under the guise of protecting people.'

'What does she think gives her jurisdiction, the authority to make a demand like that?'

Young also took aim at the Albanese government's proposed laws to curb misinformation and disinformation online.

He argued 'we all know' what misinformation and disinformation 'really means'.

'It is any opinion that members of the radical progressive left disagree with,' he said.

'The fact that the losing side in the Voice referendum blamed misinformation and disinformation gives you a clue as to what a chilling effect the anti-misinformation Bill would have on free speech in Australia.'

Young said he was a victim of cancel culture in 2018 when then-British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed him as a non-executive director of the Office for Students regulator.

Young's education credentials were established when he set up the West London Free School, a first-of-its-kind school independent of the educational authority but which received government funding.

Young said the board position was a 'nothing burger of a job' which was not paid and only required he meet with other directors four times a year.

'That was the invitation to offence-archeologists to go back through everything I had ever said or written from 1987,' Young said.

'Because I have been a professional journalist all my life, it didn’t take long to find a Tutankhamun tomb’s worth of offensive content.

'After eight days of leading the news on 'resignation watch' I stood down and apologised for some of the more sophomoric things I had said on X late at night.

'I thought that would draw a line under it but it was just the opposite effect. It was like throwing raw beef to a shoal of piranha fish, there was blood in the water.

'They came for me in four other jobs so I ended up having to stand down from five other positions. So, I was well and truly cancelled.'

It was that sequence of events that inspired to launch his Free Speech Union, which takes up the cause of other people who have been cancelled, fired or banned for expressing an opinion.

'When I recovered I thought what I really needed when that was happening to me to was a professional organisation who could provide me with really good advice, should I apologise or will that make things worse?' Young said.

'Should I get out and defend myself or will that just prolong the story?

'Is there anyone else this has happened to and you can put me touch with and give me a few pointers for support?

'But there was no organisation like that so that’s why I decided to start the Free Speech Union.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13637635/Toby-Young-Australia-Crocodile-Dundee.html

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Elon Musk accuses the European Commission of a secret censorship deal

Elon Musk set the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons yesterday when he alleged via tweet:

‘The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not.’

It was written in reply to a tweet by Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission EU Fit for Digital Age and Commissioner for Competition.

They wrote:

‘In our view, X doesn’t comply with the DSA in key transparency areas. It misleads users, fails to provide adequate ad repository, and blocks access to data for researchers. It’s the first time we issue preliminary findings under the Digital Service Act.’

For those who actually use social media, rather than pick apart its database, X (formally Twitter) is easily the most transparent and responsive platform on the market. Competitors such as Facebook are opaque creations that engage with customers via AI bots inspired by Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

Trust me, I am still traumatised from the last experience with Facebook where they all-but destroyed The Spectator Australia account after an AI bot translated the text on a Hamas headband (in a stock image) and accused us of spreading hate speech. At least there are humans at X and a boss who sorts out accidental censorship failings himself.

When it comes to the allegations and claims made by the European Commission, the community notes section under the post points out many failings and apparent mistakes.

The bigger and more important question is, do we really want the European Commission dictating the terms of engagement to X? It seems no more or less absurd than Australia’s eSafety Commissioner attempting to extend her censorial demands across the globe.

In response to the European Commission’s post, Elon Musk replied: ‘The DSA IS misinformation.’

Commentator Michael Shellenberger added, (to the Commission), ‘You are a totalitarian menace.’

Shellenberger had a more involved discussion about the European Commissioner Thierry Breton and the AI Pact in late 2023. In particular, Shellenberger took issue with Mr Breton’s comment, ‘I am the enforcer. I represent the law, which is the will of the state and the people.’

For context, at the same time as that comment was made, Mr Breton was discussing the voluntary misinformation code which, like all things voluntary, was about to be made mandatory.

‘It’s a voluntary basis, so we don’t force anyone to join the code of practice on disinformation, Breton said. ‘I just reminded (Musk and Twitter) that by August 25, it will become a legal obligation to fight disinformation.’

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/elon-musk-accuses-the-european-commission-of-a-secret-censorship-deal/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Censorship Via Revenue Strangulation

The biggest battle facing conservatives right now is the suppression of free speech by the leftists who control the public square — i.e., social media platforms.

I began an article on July 2 with those same words, though that analysis was about the Supreme Court’s free speech decision in a combined case regarding laws in Florida and Texas. This time, I mention the big battle because of congressional hearings on the suppression of conservative speech via strangulation of ad revenue.

Yesterday’s testimony from Daily Wire cofounder Ben Shapiro got a lot of the attention, and for good reason, as his takedown of Democrat Eric Swalwell should go down in the annals of congressional hilarity. One example came when Swalwell produced a poster of a 2018 Shapiro quote about homosexuality: “Yes, I’m a religious Jew. You found me out,” Shapiro said. “I agree with me. Yes, that’s true.” Pure gold.

But that amusement ride is not the point here. In fact, Swalwell’s entire intent was to distract from the point, which is that his fellow “progressive” radical leftists are speech suppressors of the first order.

The House Judiciary Committee’s hearing focused on its 39-page report on the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM. The report’s Executive Summary explains, “Through GARM, large corporations, advertising agencies, and industry associations participated in boycotts and other coordinated action to demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets, and other content deemed disfavored by GARM and its members. This collusion can have the effect of eliminating a variety of content and viewpoints available to consumers.”

Put more simply, leftists are using censorship to cut off revenue sources for conservative media sites that depend on advertising — which is virtually all of them. Here, I feel compelled to toot our own horn: Since 1996, we have not taken advertising, instead relying on the voluntary support of readers like you. That decision was more prescient than we realized.

Here’s how GARM works. In 2019, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), of which roughly 90% of global advertisers are a part, established GARM, which the House report says “includes every major advertising agency holding company in its ranks.” The World Economic Forum also adopted GARM, extending the reach of this collusion.

NewsGuard, one of our least favorite “fact-checking” outfits, is a part of this operation by virtue of “grading” news sites for meeting Approved™ standards. The Patriot Post and a host of other conservative sites don’t get high grades — often lower than ChiCom propaganda outlets, in fact — though habitual purveyors of fake news like CNN, USA Today, and BuzzFeed do quite well. In a recent video, PragerU CEO Marissa Streit explains NewsGuard’s operation quite well.

GARM works to achieve “brand safety” by ensuring that companies “don’t inadvertently support” unapproved viewpoints. In fact, the report says, “Colluding to suppress voices and views disfavored by the leading marketers at the world’s largest companies and advertising agencies is core to GARM’s founding principles.” As Shapiro put it in an article almost a year ago, “If you publish content that violates [GARM’s] guidelines, you will be blacklisted from 90% of the advertising revenue in the marketplace.”

According to the House report, that’s exactly what’s happening: “GARM’s monetization work has the effect of influencing what content appears online,” and GARM has a decidedly anti-American, anti-Liberty approach. The report demonstrates this through specific examples of demonetization of various websites or podcasters because of particular things they wrote or said.

You won’t be surprised by the triggers for this army of “fact-checkers” and gatekeepers. Statements of fact or even opinion can be demonetized if they diverge from the Left’s Narrative™ on COVID vaccines, the virus’s origin, and Hunter Biden’s laptop, as well as a range of cult issues from climate change to gender.

I mentioned that we don’t take advertising, but that doesn’t inoculate us from this censorship. For example, Facebook relies on “independent third-party fact-checkers” to determine its algorithmic content suppression. Its suppression of our content to 750,000 followers has severely squelched Patriot Post website traffic and subscriptions coming from Facebook. It’s a similar story with email delivery because sometimes Big Tech companies simply don’t allow our emails to get to your inbox. (Check your spam folder and follow these steps to help ensure delivery.)

Less traffic, fewer subscribers, and undelivered emails almost certainly mean reduced revenue, though it’s awfully hard to quantify what might have been. Throw in Joe Biden’s economy, and our fundraising has gotten tougher.

The Judiciary Committee’s report concludes that the problem isn’t that left-wingers don’t want to fund right-wingers. Consumers and companies alike are free to make those decisions, and they do every day. “Unilateral actions are not illegal,” says the report. The legal issues arise because of the collusion.

“Collusion in the advertising space is … the only way to guarantee that no individual conspirator takes advantage of the artificial changes in what would otherwise be a free market for advertising space to reach consumers,” the report says. “Twenty years ago, the Supreme Court described collusion as ‘the supreme evil of antitrust[.]’ Today, this description remains true. If collusion among powerful corporations capable of collectively demonetizing, and in effect eliminating, certain views and voices is allowed to continue, the ability of countless American consumers to choose what to read and listen to, or even have their speech or writing reach other Americans, will be destroyed.”

That, of course, is the point. Leftists are no longer liberal defenders of free speech but are instead virtual jackbooted thugs stifling the free exchange of ideas. This collusion includes the White House, which the Judiciary Committee notes leaned on Facebook regarding algorithmic suppression. The Supreme Court whiffed on stopping that collusion.

In any case, make no mistake: The biggest threat to Liberty in America today is left-wing censorship.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/108377-censorship-via-revenue-strangulation-2024-07-11


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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Search-blocking revisited

When Google delete posts by me that are hosted on their servers, I am reasonably philosophical about it. The major reason why I am so relaxed is that I back up everything I write on two servers not run by Google. But putting text online is only a first step. The next step is to make it possible for people to find it. And people researching a paticular topic will normally do a Google serch for it.

But what if Google does not index all sites that might be relevant to that search? The searcher will never find the non-indexed writings.

So why do Google not index eveything on the internet? One reason could be that they do not index sites that have few links leading to them. But that does not seem to be a major factor. Some sites with very few links leading to them do get indexed.

Another reason, and the one affecting me, is search-blocking. They do not index sites that they disagree with politically. They gloss that by saying that they do not index "misinformation"

My blogs were once heavily search-blocked but Google seem to have eased off some the blocking recently. Both "Political Correctness Watch" and "Greenie Watch" seem to be regularly indexed at the moment. So if some comment by me on either of those blogs is relevant to your search, Google will normally direct you to it.

A curious exception is posts on my "Australian Politics" blog. You will never find anything written there via a Google search. It seems to be thoroughly search-blocked. No idea why.

So unless the backups of my writings are indexed by Google, I might as well not have put them up. They will be largely non-findable. As it happens, they do sometimes seem to index my backup blogs and return relevant material on them in response to a search. That is however very sporadic. Normally they do NOT refer to material on my backup sites in response to a search.

So if you want to find my comment on something, you may or may not find it via a Google search. But is there another way of finding my comments on some subject? There is. I have a subject index to my comments on a site that covers all my blogs and is not hosted by Google:

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html

or

http://johnjayray.com/short/short.html

I have been blogging since 2002 so there are a lot of comments there

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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I have been censored yet again

The last time I put up on my "Dissecting" blog a post about Covid was on 7th and now Google have deleted that too.  It is however still up on my COVID WATCH blog

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html

I will be putting up on "Dissecting Leftism" no more posts about Covid

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Billboard Chris

Billboard Chris is a father of two girls from Canada who has developed a prominent global profile since 2020 by traveling the world wearing a sandwich board in stating basic truths such as: “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers.”

Billboard Chris is also active on Twitter/X, where he posts videos of the conversations he has. In March this year, Australian authorities ordered X to take down one of his posts. The post shared a link to a news article and criticized the appointment of a gender activist to a World Health Organization ‘panel of experts’ set to advise on global transgender policy.

Considering that X is a free speech platform, and Billboard Chris’ post did not incite violence, we want the world to ask why?

Without free speech, there can be no freedom. Once the state starts censoring “unpopular” speech, there is no logical stopping point.

With the support of ADF International and the Human Rights Law Alliance, he is taking his case to court in defense of the basic human right to free speech. On 1 July, legal submissions were filed with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Melbourne and we now await a hearing date from the Tribunal.

https://adfinternational.org/campaign/supportbillboardchris

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Wow! Really big censorship

Google have blocked all access to my "Western Heart" blog.  It was where I put up what I thought were the best of what I had posted on my other blogs -- so it does not in fact make anything completely unavailable. I can live with that

But keep an eye on my backup sites in case something else mysteriously disappears

http://jonjayray.com/  or http://johnjayray.com/

An escape from censorship

I have stopped posting about Covid on "Dissecting Leftism"

The change is the result of the fact that Google, who host that blog, have got very energetic in deleting my posts so I need to put them up on a site that is out of their reach.

There are a LOT of skeptical reports coming out now about Covid and the responses to it so I want to be able to refer to them.

My posts about Covid are now going up on a special new blog for that purpose called COVID WATCH

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html

The new blog includes some posts that Google have censored in the past

I have a backup for the new blog as under

https://johnjayray.com/covidwatch.html

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My "Dissecting Leftism" blog seems to be in trouble

These days I use that blog entirely for Covid-related posts. And Google have stepped up their censorship of such posts. And the last email I got from them included the words:

"We encourage you to review the full content of your blog posts to make sure that they are in line with our standards as additional violations could result in termination of your blog"

So given the frequency of deletions lately it seems rather likely that I could inadvertently commit "additional violations", which would cause my blog to disappear. I always put up posts that are statistically well-grounded so I am at some loss about why some of them are so offensive. So I really have no choice but to continue on as before and see what happens.

But following are links that lead to copies of ALL my blogs, including "Dissecting Leftism". So to avoid censorship, maybe keep a note of them while you can:

http://jonjayray.com/ and http://johnjayray.com/ and

https://jonjayray1.typepad.com/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Another Google puzzle

Is Google search-blocking my "Australian Politics" blog? Maybe they just don't index it at all because it has few links to it but it is actually hosted on their servers so it is definitely in their database. Very strange.

They seem to be indexing "Political Corectness Watch" now so I would have thought that all my blogs would now be indexed. They all have links to one-another so one would have thought that indexing one would lead to the others.

The term I tested to see if they were indexing "Australian Politics" was:

"Was footballer Jarryd Hayne the victim of a false rape accusation?"

It appears here:

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2024/06/was-footballer-jarryd-hayne-victim-of.html

I tested another excerpt:

"Coles and Woolworths are big because they are good"

It occurs here:

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2024/07/craziness-coles-and-woolworths-are-big.html

Neither post on "Australian Politics" is returned by Google in response to a search but, rather crazily, Google delivers you to the second post on my blog of draft posts:

https://jonjayray1.typepad.com/blog/

All rather crazy. They fail to deliver you to a post that is on their own servers but deliver you to a post that is hosted by someone else. And that blog has almost no links leading to it

And their deletion of critical posts about Covid is still going strong. My post of 4 July on "Dissecting Leftism" has vanished. You can however still read it on either of my backup sites:

http://jonjayray.com/ or http://johnjayray.com/

The post concerned is a report of an academic journal article so nothing is sacred to Google. Some things may not be said.

They are clearly one part of the great network of Leftist political organizations -- no longer just a search engine. Their old slogan "Don't be evil" seems to have been replaced by "Evil is good for you"

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US supreme court boosts NRA in unanimous free speech ruling

The US supreme court issued opinions on Thursday relating to free speech and the death penalty, in one case clearing the way for a National Rifle Association (NRA) lawsuit against a former New York state official.

The court gave a boost to the influential gun rights group that has accused the official of coercing banks and insurers to avoid doing business with it and, in the process, violating the NRA’s free speech rights.

The justices, in a unanimous decision from the nine-member bench, threw out a lower court’s ruling that dismissed the NRA’s 2018 lawsuit against Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York’s department of financial services.

The NRA, in the case NRA v Vullo, claimed that Vullo unlawfully retaliated against it following a mass shooting in which 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

The NRA was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Biden administration argued some of its claims should go forward, an unusual alliance between often opposing parties considering the NRA is a strongly Republican-aligned organization.

Meanwhile, the supreme court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down an appeals court ruling giving Danny Lee Jones a new sentencing hearing in a death penalty case in Arizona. The conservative supermajority decided that errors in Jones’s legal defense, in the case Thornell v Jones, did not justify him having a chance at resentencing.

He was convicted in a murder case in 1993 and claims that he was deprived of his right to appropriate counsel during the sentencing phase of his case.

Justice Samuel Alito issued the opinion for the majority, disagreeing with Jones. The justice is currently at the center of a scandal involving flags flown outside residences of his and his wife’s that have most recently been embraced by rightwing groups and associated with Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, for which the former president is being prosecuted. Alito has refused to recuse himself from cases that have a bearing on Trump and the 2024 presidential election.

The three justices who lean liberal, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.

The opinions issued on Thursday were important but not the focus of the nation’s attention ahead of what is expected to be a busy June where the court will announce key decisions on issues affecting US democracy, presidential power, abortion and gun rights.

The court is expected to announce more opinions from next week, with the public not told in advance which cases are being announced on any given day.

In the NRA opinion, at issue was whether Vullo had wielded her regulatory power to coerce New York financial institutions into cutting ties with the NRA, in violation of protections under the US constitution’s first amendment against government restrictions on free speech.

Vullo called upon banks and insurers to consider the “reputational risks” of doing business with gun rights groups following the 2018 Parkland shooting, where a 19-year-old former student armed with an AR-15 rifle, killed 17 people and sparked a youth movement for greater gun safety, led by survivors of the massacre. NRA officials lashed out at gun control advocates, arguing that Democratic party elites were politicizing the shootings to erode America’s liberal gun rights.

Vullo later fined Lloyd’s of London and two other insurers more than $13m for offering an NRA-endorsed product called Carry Guard that Vullo’s office found was in violation of New York insurance law. The product provided liability coverage for policyholders who caused injuries from gunfire, even in cases involving the wrongful use of a firearm, sometimes known as “murder insurance”.

The insurers agreed to stop selling NRA-endorsed products that New York considered illegal.

The NRA’s lawsuit accused Vullo of unlawfully retaliating against it. The case did not involve the constitution’s second amendment right to keep and bear arms.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/may/30/us-supreme-court-nra-free-speech

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Supreme Court kicks cases about tech companies’ First Amendment rights back to lower courts − but appears poised to block states from hampering online content moderation

Any laws reducing ANYBODY'S free speech seem to me a clear case of "abridging  freedom of speech", which is what the 1st amendment forbids.  So the States should get out of the matter

The U.S. Supreme Court has sent back to lower courts the decision about whether states can block social media companies such as Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, from regulating and controlling what users can post on their platforms.

Laws in Florida and Texas sought to impose restrictions on the internal policies and algorithms of social media platforms in ways that influence which posts will be promoted and spread widely and which will be made less visible or even removed.

In the unanimous decision, issued on July 1, 2024, the high court remanded the two cases, Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, to the 11th and 5th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, respectively. The court admonished the lower courts for their failure to consider the full force of the laws’ applications. It also warned the lower courts to consider the boundaries imposed by the Constitution against government interference with private speech.

Contrasting views of social media sites

In their arguments before the court in February 2024, the two sides described competing visions of how social media fits into the often overwhelming flood of information that defines modern digital society.

The states said the platforms were mere conduits of communication, or “speech hosts,” similar to legacy telephone companies that were required to carry all calls and prohibited from discriminating against users. The states said that the platforms should have to carry all posts from users without discrimination among them based on what they were saying.

The states argued that the content moderation rules the social media companies imposed were not examples of the platforms themselves speaking – or choosing not to speak. Rather, the states said, the rules affected the platforms’ behavior and caused them to censor certain views by allowing them to determine whom to allow to speak on which topics, which is outside First Amendment protections.

By contrast, the social media platforms, represented by NetChoice, a tech industry trade group, argued that the platforms’ guidelines about what is acceptable on their sites are protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of speech free from government interference. The companies say their platforms are not public forums that may be subject to government regulation but rather private services that can exercise their own editorial judgment about what does or does not appear on their sites.

They argued that their policies were aspects of their own speech and that they should be allowed to develop and implement guidelines about what is acceptable speech on their platforms based on their own First Amendment rights.

A reframe by the Supreme Court

All the litigants – NetChoice, Texas and Florida – framed the issue around the effect of the laws on the content moderation policies of the platforms, specifically whether the platforms were engaged in protected speech. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court preliminary injunction against the Florida law, holding the content moderation policies of the platforms were speech and the law was unconstitutional.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came to the opposite conclusion and held that the platforms were not engaged in speech, but rather the platform’s algorithms controlled platform behavior unprotected by the First Amendment. The 5th Circuit determined the behavior was censorship and reversed a lower court injunction against the Texas law.

The Supreme Court, however, reframed the inquiry. The court noted that the lower courts failed to consider the full range of activities the laws covered. Thus, while a First Amendment inquiry was in order, the decisions of the lower courts and the arguments by the parties were incomplete. The court added that neither the parties nor the lower courts engaged in a thorough analysis of whether and how the states’ laws affected other elements of the platforms’ products, such as Facebook’s direct messaging applications, or even whether the laws have any impact on email providers or online marketplaces.

The Supreme Court directed the lower courts to engage in a much more exacting analysis of the laws and their implications and provided some guidelines.

First Amendment principles

The court held that content moderation policies reflect the constitutionally protected editorial choices of the platforms, at least regarding what the court describes as “heartland applications” of the laws – such as Facebook’s News Feed and YouTube’s homepage.

The Supreme Court required the lower courts to consider two core constitutional principles of the First Amendment. One is that the amendment protects speakers from being compelled to communicate messages they would prefer to exclude. Editorial discretion by entities, including social media companies, that compile and curate the speech of others is a protected First Amendment activity.

The other principle holds that the amendment precludes the government from controlling private speech, even for the purpose of balancing the marketplace of ideas. Neither state nor federal government may manipulate that marketplace for the purposes of presenting a more balanced array of viewpoints.

The court also affirmed that these principles apply to digital media in the same way they apply to traditional or legacy media.

In the 96-page opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote: “The First Amendment … does not go on leave when social media are involved.” For now, it appears the social media platforms will continue to control their content.

https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-kicks-cases-about-tech-companies-first-amendment-rights-back-to-lower-courts-but-appears-poised-to-block-states-from-hampering-online-content-moderation-233607

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Supreme Court Overturns Finding of Illegal Censorship on COVID-19 and More; Dissenters Stand Up for Free Speech

Relying on "standing" as a reason not to defend free speech is a real cop-out. As a matter of great public interest, I would have thought that EVERYONE had standing

Once upon a time, it was liberals such as those at the ACLU who stood up for free speech under the First Amendment. In a June 26 ruling by the Supreme Court in Murthy, et al. v. Missouri et al., the script has flipped, with conservative justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch defending free speech, albeit in the dissent.

The Murthy opinion overturns the federal Court of Appeals decision which had banned government agencies from telling social media firms what they should, or should not, allow to be published. The majority opinion by Justice Barrett ruled that the plaintiffs did not have “standing,” legalese for the requirement to show that they have personally suffered, or will suffer, from the actions of defendants. In addition to the standing issue, this lengthy opinion makes every effort to downplay the effects of, or deny the reality of, undisputed efforts by the US government to limit free speech relating to COVID-19, election integrity, and more.  Aren’t the attorney generals there to represent their state’s residents?

We know from firsthand experience about the censorship ongoing during the Biden administration. From Facebook to YouTube factual news posted by TrialSite was routinely flagged or censored despite 100% factual news accounts.  TrialSite was even censored for “mal-information” involving the Gardasil lawsuit. We simply reported on the litigation against Merck by persons claiming injury due to the HPV vaccine.  YouTube censored declaring because the World Health Organization had not commented on the lawsuit they considered any reporting on the topic “mal-information.”

But back to the case.

Injury traceable to government?

Barrett recounts how during, “the 2020 election season and the COVID–19 pandemic, social-media platforms frequently removed, demoted, or fact checked posts containing allegedly false or misleading information. At the same time, federal officials, concerned about the spread of ‘misinformation’ on social media, communicated extensively with the platforms about their content-moderation efforts.” The plaintiffs include two states as well as five users of social media. They sued dozens of Executive Branch agencies and officials for violation of the First Amendment. In key language, Barrett posits that as to the prior ruling, “The Fifth Circuit was wrong to do so. To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”

Lab-origin of COVID-19 suppressed

Topics of “misinformation” at issue included “the efficacy and safety of mask wearing and the COVID–19 vaccine, along with posts on related topics.” Notably, all the evidence shows that face masking does not stop the spread of respiratory viruses. So here is a case where the truth was censored. Likewise, a lab origin for COVID-19 was deemed a “conspiracy” theory, despite being the likeliest explanation for the pandemic. Also, the Hunter Biden laptop revelations were effectively halted by false claims by our government that the story was “Russian hacking” related. The truth is Hunter, a drug addict, left his computer at a repair shop and never picked it up. This one example of censorship could well have impacted the 2020 presidential election.

Officials “peppered” Facebook with questions

The opinion admits that “officials peppered Facebook (and to a lesser extent, Twitter and YouTube) with detailed questions about their policies, pushed them to suppress certain content, and sometimes recommended policy changes. Some of these communications were more aggressive than others. For example, the director of Digital Strategy, frustrated that Facebook had not removed a particular post, complained: ‘[L]ast time we did this dance, it ended in an insurrection.’” Barrett also concedes that officials, “perhaps as motivation, raised the possibility of reforms aimed at the platforms, including changes to the antitrust laws and 47 U. S. C. §230.” Despite the opinion’s efforts to minimize the government’s actions, it notes that “Because we do not reach the merits, we express no view as to whether the Fifth Circuit correctly articulated the standard for when the Government transforms private conduct into state action.”

A “right to listen”?

While the plaintiffs alleged standing both on direct censorship on their views and of their “right to listen” to the then censored voices. Barrett offered that “together, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the near future, at least one platform will restrict the speech of at least one plaintiff in response to the actions of at least one Government defendant.” While the Fifth Circuit focused on the general First Amendment violation of agencies telling the broad social media community what to say, Barrett focused on the difficulty of discerning which government actions may have led to which suppressions of speech based on content.   

Dissent stands up for First Amendment

According to the dissent by Justice Alito, who along with two others would have upheld the lower appeals court decision: “In sum, the officials wielded potent authority. Their communications with Facebook were virtual demands. And Facebook’s quavering responses to those demands show that it felt a strong need to yield. For these reasons, I would hold that [one plaintiff] is likely to prevail on her claim that the White House coerced Facebook into censoring her speech.” Alito closed his dissent with the following: “For months, high-ranking Government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the Court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent.”

We can’t be certain on impact but likely federal meddling in the communications of its citizens will ensue. Especially so if new emergencies are declared.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/supreme-court-overturns-finding-of-illegal-censorship-on-covid-19-and-more-dissenters-stand-up-for-free-speech-5e3ba99d

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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‘Hate Speech’ laws and the murder of justice

Anyone keen on hate speech laws, needs to spend a year in Pakistan living under their Islamic blasphemy laws.

It’s heart-breaking stuff. I’ve been writing about its victims for a few years now, and it hits me hard every time.

Two Christian teens are set to be hanged over cartoons sent to their mobile phones by a Muslim, who authorities let off.

Their lawyer, has rightly called their sentencing, ‘the murder of justice.’

Nouman Asghar, and Sunny Mushtaq, are from the Punjab province, and have been in prison since 2019.

Their alleged crime was ‘blaspheming the prophet Muhammad’ after allegedly receiving cartoon drawings of the warlord on their mobile phones through WhatsApp.

Notably, authorities didn’t take any action against the Muslim, who allegedly sent the so-called ‘blasphemous’ images.

In June 2023, Asghar, now 25, was sentenced to death by hanging.

Mushtaq awaits the same grim sentencing.

He’s also been accused of printing the cartoons, and distributing them.

International Christian Concern, quoting from Agenzia Fides, said the men were arrested for ‘violating article 295-c of the Penal Code, which punishes contempt for the Prophet Muhammad’.

Lawyer, Aneeqa Maria Anthony, said the ‘magistrate ignored all the procedures and dismissed all the evidence’.

‘He only wanted to complete his “sacred duty” to punish an alleged blasphemer.’

Legal defence team member Lazar Allah Rakha, told Catholic Herald:

‘There was no proof against Nouman, and none of the witnesses produced by police could corroborate the blasphemy allegation.

‘This is murder of justice.’

Speaking about the weaponisation of blasphemy legislation, Jeff King, ICC’s president remarked, these kinds of laws are ‘often used to settle personal scores or persecute minorities’.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), explained that it’s aware of at least ‘80 individuals in Pakistan who remain imprisoned on blasphemy charges’.

The majority face the death penalty.

According to USCIRF,

‘Under sections 295 and 298 of Pakistan’s Penal Code, individuals are prohibited from verbal and nonverbal actions deemed insulting to religious belief and practice.’

All that’s required to enact these laws is an accusation.

Legal justification for arrest is ambiguous.

Listing them, USCIRF said, reasons include:

Inflicting physical damage on the Qur’an or other Islamic religious text, even if unintentional.

Sending and receiving text messages, sometimes unsolicited, which are later deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad or the Islamic faith.

Making comments in personal conversations that witnesses attest to be blasphemous in nature.

The Islamist version of ‘hate speech laws’ even come with their own eSafety overwatch.

Criticism is banned, and social media use regulated.

Reasons for incarceration also includes:

‘Translating and uploading content to personal blogs and non-Muslim websites, or writing Facebook posts deemed to be insulting to the Islamic faith.’

These anti-free speech laws are a licence to murder justice.

They serve a subjectivist dystopia.

As I’ve shown, the lessons are clear: ‘hate speech’ laws are easily weaponised, and just as easily abused.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/hate-speech-laws-and-the-murder-of-justice/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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