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Thursday, September 18, 2025

Category: 1A
November 14, 2024
William Upton
1A
TECH

Center for Countering Digital Hate Deletes X Account After Musk Declares ‘War’ & Trump’s Victory.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a United Kingdom-based nonprofit group that purports to combat online hate and misinformation, has joined the growing ranks of far-left media figures and organizations that have deleted their X (formerly Twitter) accounts. Following President-elect Donald J. Trump’s landslide victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election—in part aided by a Super PAC funded by X owner Elon Musk—several high-profile Democrat-aligned media personalities, including Joy Reid and Don Lemon, have left the platform.

CCDH has long been at the center of a network of radical progressive activists and organizations pushing to censor the voices of populists and conservatives online under the guise of countering political misinformation and hate speech. In 2020, the group was partially responsible for Google’s decision to ban The Federalist and ZeroHedge from generating revenue through Google Ads. “We found that lots of those companies are inadvertently funding through their advertising content that is outright racist in defense of white supremacism and contains conspiracy theories about George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement,” the CEO of CCDH, Imram Ahmed, said at the time. Ahmed has also deleted his personal X account.

More recently, CCDH was responsible for the AI image generator Midjourney’s decision to block users from creating images featuring either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Using language often employed by CCDH, the company claimed the decision was to prevent the spread of “misinformation.”

The National Pulse reported in October that Musk declared “war” on the Britain-based censorship group after internal documents surfaced showing CCDH intended to launch an effort to destroy his social media platform. According to the files, CCDH has set “Kill Musk’s Twitter” as a top priority heading into 2025.

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The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a United Kingdom-based nonprofit group that purports to combat online hate and misinformation, has joined the growing ranks of far-left media figures and organizations that have deleted their X (formerly Twitter) accounts. Following President-elect Donald J. Trump's landslide victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election—in part aided by a Super PAC funded by X owner Elon Musk—several high-profile Democrat-aligned media personalities, including Joy Reid and Don Lemon, have left the platform. show more
November 13, 2024
1A
UK

Police Visit Telegraph Journalist Over Year-Old Tweet in ‘Hate Incident’ Inquiry.

A journalist from The Telegraph, Allison Pearson, reports that British police officers visited her home on Remembrance Sunday in connection with a “non-crime hate incident.” The Essex Police force visit related to a tweet she posted a year ago.

Police informed her that the investigation is under section 17 of the Public Order Act 1986, which addresses material allegedly likely or intended to incite racial hatred. She reports she asked, “What did this post I wrote that offended someone say?” but the officers told her they could not tell her. They also refused to answer when she asked who her accuser was—and informed her, “It’s not ‘the accuser.’ They’re called ‘the victim.’”

Pearson described the situation as “Kafkaesque” and proof of two-tier policing in Britain. “We are living through an epidemic of stabbings, burglaries and violent crime… which is not being adequately investigated by the police, yet they had somehow found time to come to my house and intimidate me,” she complained.

Figures reveal a growing number of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), with reports rising from 119,934 incidents between 2014 and 2019 to an estimated 250,000 since then, according to the Free Speech Union, which is defending Pearson.

X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk slammed the investigation into Pearson, saying, “This needs to stop.”

Image by Joshua Hayes.

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A journalist from The Telegraph, Allison Pearson, reports that British police officers visited her home on Remembrance Sunday in connection with a "non-crime hate incident." The Essex Police force visit related to a tweet she posted a year ago. show more
November 12, 2024
Jack Montgomery
1A
TECH

Foreign Misinformation Bill Could Impact U.S. Platforms.

New misinformation laws could impact free speech online worldwide, pressuring social media platforms to censor supposedly “harmful” content under threat of punishing fines. Brian Marlow, Executive Director of the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, warns an Australian draft Misinformation Bill extends beyond Australia’s borders, “allowing unelected bureaucrats to regulate social media companies outside Australia if they provide services to Australians.”

This would include U.S. platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter), which has adopted a more pro-free speech approach to online discourse under Elon Musk‘s ownership.

“[C]ontent doesn’t even need to be false to be removed—it just has to be deemed ‘harmful’ by authorities,” Marlow says of the Misinformation Bill, noting: “If platforms don’t comply, they risk massive fines, pressuring them to enforce Australian censorship globally to avoid penalties.”

“This will set a dangerous precedent, creating a global standard that pressures platforms to censor content across borders, ultimately killing free speech worldwide,” he adds.

RECOURSE.

Recently, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance hinted that supposed U.S. allies in the European Union (EU) may see the protections extended to them by the U.S. military curtailed if they try to undermine the First Amendment with pro-censorship regulations.

“I forget exactly which official it was within the European Union, but [they] sent Elon [Musk] this threatening letter that basically said, ‘We’re going to arrest you if you platform Donald Trump,’” Vance said in September. “So what America should be saying is, if NATO wants us to continue supporting them and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance, why don’t you respect American values and respect free speech?”

While Australia is not a NATO member, the U.S. is still a major trade and security partner. Similar threats could discourage legislation like the Misinformation Bill.

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New misinformation laws could impact free speech online worldwide, pressuring social media platforms to censor supposedly "harmful" content under threat of punishing fines. Brian Marlow, Executive Director of the Australian Taxpayers' Alliance, warns an Australian draft Misinformation Bill extends beyond Australia's borders, "allowing unelected bureaucrats to regulate social media companies outside Australia if they provide services to Australians." show more
October 17, 2024
Christopher Tomlinson
1A
Religion
UK

Veteran Convicted for Praying Silently Near Abortion Clinic.

A court has convicted a man for praying silently within the vicinity of an abortion clinic in Britain. Prosecutors argue he broke a law banning all praying, protesting, and demonstrating near facilities that abort babies. Adam Smith-Connor has been sentenced to a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay court costs of £9,000 (~$11,700). He silently prayed outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, England, in November 2022.

Smith-Connor, a military veteran and physiotherapist, stood silently with his hands clasped together, praying for his unborn son, a victim of abortion 22 years prior. “Today, the court has decided that certain thoughts—silent thoughts—can be illegal in the United Kingdom,” he said of his conviction. “That cannot be right. All I did was pray to God, in the privacy of my own mind, and yet I stand convicted as a criminal?”

Previously, pro-life Christian activist Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was awarded compensation this year after police wrongfully detained her for silently praying near a Birmingham abortion clinic in late 2022. Christian groups have sounded alarms over laws that prohibit even silent prayer near abortion clinics. Groups have worked to overturn legislation and court rulings, arguing they violate freedom of religion.

British politicians appear adamant about enforcing and expanding bans on prayer near abortion clinics.

Bans on prayer within 150 meters (~492 feet) of clinics come into force by the end of October in England and Wales. The bans coincide with the Roman Catholic feast of All Souls’ Day, in which Catholics pray for the dead.

In Scotland, prayer is prohibited 200 meters (~656 feet) from abortion clinics. Christian and pro-life groups warn the law could also criminalize prayers in private homes within “no-prayer zones.”

Image by NIAID.

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A court has convicted a man for praying silently within the vicinity of an abortion clinic in Britain. Prosecutors argue he broke a law banning all praying, protesting, and demonstrating near facilities that abort babies. Adam Smith-Connor has been sentenced to a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay court costs of £9,000 (~$11,700). He silently prayed outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, England, in November 2022. show more
October 11, 2024
Jack Montgomery
1A
Election 2024
Lawfare

Kamala Harris Threatened to Weaponize DOJ Against Platforms That Don’t Censor Her Opponents.

Footage of Vice President Kamala Harris threatening to weaponize the Department of Justice (DOJ) against social media platforms failing to censor supposed “hate” and “misinformation” to her liking in 2019 is going viral. In a speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Detroit, Michigan, while she was running for the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination, then-Senator Harris said she would “put the Department of Justice of the United States back in the business of justice.”

“We will double the Civil Rights Division, and direct law enforcement to counter this extremism,” Harris declared, vowing: “We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms, because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy. And if you profit off of hate, if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyber warfare, if you don’t police your platforms, we are going to hold you accountable as a community.”

Weaponizing the DOJ in this way would likely lead to a significant abridgment of Americans’ First Amendment rights, with “hate” being subjective and the authorities’ definition of “misinformation” previously including accurate information on Hunter Biden’s laptop and vaccine side effects.

Harris, presenting herself as a moderate for her snap 2024 presidential run, campaigned much further to the left during her run at the 2020 nomination, endorsing the decriminalization of unlawful border crossings and taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for criminals and illegal aliens, for instance.

She pushed far-left policies as a state-level politician in California, sponsoring a handgun ban later overturned by the courts and arguing for the authorities to be able to enter lawful gun owners’ homes, among other authoritarian policies.

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Footage of Vice President Kamala Harris threatening to weaponize the Department of Justice (DOJ) against social media platforms failing to censor supposed "hate" and "misinformation" to her liking in 2019 is going viral. In a speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Detroit, Michigan, while she was running for the Democrats' 2020 presidential nomination, then-Senator Harris said she would "put the Department of Justice of the United States back in the business of justice." show more
September 27, 2024
1A
Education

This College Just Got an Anonymous $100 Million for Defending Free Speech.

A whopping $100 million donation from an anonymous benefactor found its way into the coffers of the University of Chicago this week, intended to help the university bolster free speech on campus following a case in which a student claims an academic tried to get him expelled over controversial remarks.

This gift is intended to support the ongoing work of the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. The forum, which was inaugurated a year ago, is spearheaded by Tom Ginsburg, the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law.

He stated, “We want the Chicago Forum to build on the University’s traditions as the place for cutting-edge thinking to address today’s challenges. We also want every student to have the experience of speaking their mind and the possibility of changing it in conversation with others. This transformative gift will allow us to build upon what we’ve started and have a much larger impact.”

David Rubenstein, the chair of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees and a 1973 alumnus, echoed Ginsburg’s sentiments.

During its first year, the Chicago Forum actively engaged with contentious subjects, hosting over a dozen events, including those on the conflict between Israel and Gaza and the ramifications of significant Supreme Court decisions.

The gift comes after a high-profile case involving student Daniel Schmidt, who stated last year that a professor at the University of Chicago was trying to get him expelled for highlighting an anti-white class called “the problem of whiteness.” The professor claimed the student, who has tens of thousands of social media followers, was bullying her.

Earlier this week, the president of the university said Schmidt was free to talk about controversial topics like race and IQ, as Schmidt has previously claimed low IQs are the reason ” black people are murdering and mugging my classmates.”

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A whopping $100 million donation from an anonymous benefactor found its way into the coffers of the University of Chicago this week, intended to help the university bolster free speech on campus following a case in which a student claims an academic tried to get him expelled over controversial remarks. show more
September 26, 2024
William Upton
1A
TECH

How Facebook Trained CDC Employees to Censor Americans.

Newly released documents from America First Legal (AFL) provide new details on how Facebook trained government employees with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to use the social media platform’s censorship portal to target so-called ” COVID & Vaccine Misinformation.” The legal group engaged in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation against the CDC published the Facebook onboarding documents on its website on Wednesday.

Following constant pressure from the Biden-Harris government—including current Kamala Harris presidential campaign senior staffer Rob Flaherty—Facebook created an “end-to-end workflow” portal for government officials to submit links for the social media platform to remove. The links in question were posted by Americans on the Facebook platform.

According to AFL, this process “dramatically increased the efficiency of the censorship machine by allowing up to twenty links at a time to be referred for censoring.” Allegedly, only approved government officials and law enforcement had access to the portal, though there are significant concerns that some may have shared access with non-authorized users.

Among the other revelations in the FOIA’ed documents are that “[e]ach censorship request automatically generated a ticket number so that the government could track if Facebook complied with its censorship demands.” Additionally, the trove of communications acquired by AFL shows that “Facebook explained precisely what content it would remove and what it needed from the CDC in order to censor certain narratives within the bounds of its ‘community standards.'”

The social media company, co-founded by tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, walked government employees through a series of slides that provided an almost paint-by-numbers explanation of how to report content to be censored. In August, The National Pulse reported that Zuckerberg admitted Facebook interfered in the 2020 presidential election and censored Americans at the behest of the Biden-Harris government.

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Newly released documents from America First Legal (AFL) provide new details on how Facebook trained government employees with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to use the social media platform's censorship portal to target so-called " COVID & Vaccine Misinformation." The legal group engaged in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation against the CDC published the Facebook onboarding documents on its website on Wednesday. show more
September 18, 2024
Jack Montgomery
1A
Election 2024

Hillary Wants Americans Spreading Pro-Trump ‘Propaganda’ to Be ‘Criminally Charged.’

Hillary Clinton is suggesting American citizens should be “criminally charged” for repeating so-called Russian propaganda “boosting Trump.” Kamala Harris‘s running mate, Tim Walz, has similarly claimed the First Amendment does not apply to alleged “misinformation.” The comments suggest free speech could be under threat if the Democrats win in November.

“I think it’s important to indict the Russians, just as Mulluer indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016,” the failed Democratic presidential candidate told Rachel Maddow.

“But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged, [that] is something that would be a better deterrence, because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States,” she said.

Clinton appeared to be referencing two alleged Russian shell companies—Concord Management and Concord Consulting—which the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged following Muller’s flawed investigation. However, these charges were dropped once the firms began defending themselves in court.

WALZ. 

Clinton’s comments echo those of Tim Walz, the controversial Governor of Minnesota and running mate to Kamala Harris.

“There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy,” the Democrat said in December 2022.

Walz displayed similarly authoritarian attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic, taking a hands-off approach towards Black Lives Matter rioters but having the National Guard shoot paintballs at suburban women standing outside their front doors to enforce curfews.

Harris, too, during her run at the Democrats’ 2020 nomination, threatened government action against social media platforms that do not censor content to her liking, saying: “If you profit off of hate, if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyber warfare, if you don’t police your platforms, we are going to hold you accountable.”

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Hillary Clinton is suggesting American citizens should be "criminally charged" for repeating so-called Russian propaganda "boosting Trump." Kamala Harris's running mate, Tim Walz, has similarly claimed the First Amendment does not apply to alleged "misinformation." The comments suggest free speech could be under threat if the Democrats win in November. show more
September 4, 2024
Christopher Tomlinson
1A
Culture
World

Podcasters Face Over $276k Fine for Misgendering.

Two podcasters have been forced to remove an episode of their show from the Internet by court order after they used male pronouns to describe a balding transgender “woman.” They also face massive fines or even prison.

German podcasters ‘Hoss and Hopf’—said to be sympathetic to the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party—referred to Laura Holstein, formerly Nicholas, as a man following several stories about his attempts to access women’s spaces.

Kiarash “Hoss” Hossainpour described the pair’s legal troubles on X (formerly Twitter), writing that the Frankfurt am Main Regional court demanded the removal of the podcast episode in an “expedited procedure” without any oral arguments at all. The court claimed that the “misgendering” is a violation of Holstein’s rights.

“It is noteworthy that the court saw an ‘extraordinary urgency’ here—as if using biologically correct terms represented an immediate danger that could not be delayed. One inevitably wonders whether other, perhaps genuinely urgent cases had to take a back seat for this,” Hossainpour wrote.

The podcasters now face a possible €250,000 ($276,414) fine and up to six months in prison if they cannot pay it. They face two years in jail if they repeat the supposed offense.

Germany is not the only European country with laws against “misgendering.” Last year, Britain’s Labour Party, which is now in government, promised to make misgendering a crime carrying a prison term of up to two years.

In the United States, Michigan’s House of Representatives also passed “misgendering” laws last year, proposing sentences of up to five years for violators despite constitutional free speech protections.

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Two podcasters have been forced to remove an episode of their show from the Internet by court order after they used male pronouns to describe a balding transgender "woman." They also face massive fines or even prison. show more
August 29, 2024
Christopher Tomlinson
1A
Immigration
Religion

Blasphemy: Sweden Prosecuting Quran-Burning Protesters.

Swedish prosecutors are charging two men with agitation against an ethnic or national group after they set copies of the Quran on fire in four separate locations, including outside a mosque. Salwan Momika and Salwan Najem both face charges for burning copies of the Islamic holy book, which led to Sweden heightening its terrorism alert system last year.

In the multicultural city of Malmo, Momika, a Christian Iraqi refugee, burned a Quran last year, sparking riots in the notorious no-go suburb of Rosengard as Muslims set dozens of cars on fire and threw missiles at police.

Sweden previously insisted that burning the Quran is not illegal, refusing to bring charges against anti-Islam activists like Momika or Rasmus Paludan. The country briefly considered outlawing Quran burning last year but ultimately ruled out any significant changes to the current laws on freedom of expression. A permit for a Quran-burning protest was granted as recently as May 2024.

The Quran protests strained Sweden’s relationship with Turkey amid its bid to join NATO, with Turkey demanding the European Union (EU) country make it illegal to burn the book.

Neighboring Denmark also caved to Turkey, passing de facto blasphemy laws in August 2023 banning burning the Quran, calling such protests uncivilized.

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Swedish prosecutors are charging two men with agitation against an ethnic or national group after they set copies of the Quran on fire in four separate locations, including outside a mosque. Salwan Momika and Salwan Najem both face charges for burning copies of the Islamic holy book, which led to Sweden heightening its terrorism alert system last year. show more