What's Behind India's 'Record' Social Media Takedowns in India? with Palki Sharma

Rising government censorship in India? A controversial issue not only for India!

(230) What's Behind India's 'Record' Social Media Takedowns? | The Palki Sharma Show | India Global Review - YouTube

Von der Leyens Marsch in die digitale Diktatur: Wie die EU alle Bürger kontrollieren will

Eine hysterische Schlagzeile oder was ist dran?

Wenn es so schlimm ist werden die Bürger der EU hoffentlich protestieren!

Von der Leyens Marsch in die digitale Diktatur: Wie die EU alle Bürger kontrollieren will "Die Zeit ist gekommen: Von der Leyen legt die Axt an das freie Internet. Ihre Alters-App zwingt jeden Bürger zur Identifizierung und errichtet die technische Infrastruktur einer digitalen Diktatur, in der Brüssel über Zugang und Ausschluss entscheidet. Das Ende von Anonymität, Meinungsfreiheit und Privatsphäre ALLER Bürger im Netz."

China News Network (CNN)

CNN [Cable News Network founded by Ted Turner in 1980] was the only major Western news service not censored by the Great Firewall in China mainland as far as I could tell during my most recent long stay in China.

CNN was widely available in central China.

What would Ted Turner [1938-2026] say if he was still alive.

Ted Turner

The Chinese Great Firewall is absolutely horrible, worse than or comparable to the Great Wall of ancient times

On my very recent long stay in China, I was again deeply shocked by how much of the Internet/Web is heavily censored/inaccessible in China!

What are the communists afraid of or what do they have to hide?

E.g. all my favorite news websites like Walls Street Journal, BBC and many others were not accessible to me on any device when living in central China.

There was one glaring exception: CNN was widely available in China. Since then I call it Chinese News Network!

Of course, I had a VPN installed on my laptop before the trip to China, but due to some error of mine I happened to accidentally uninstall it.

They say history repeats/rhymes!

Here is an article that also covers this subject: When is the Internet Not the Internet? "China’s intranet is so separated from the global Internet that it is more accurately described as a national intranet." Caveat: I did not read the entire article.

Von der Leyens Kinderschutz-Lüge: EU startet den Ausweiszwang im Netz

Wird endlich jemand die Flintenuschi in Rente schicken!

Kinderschutz ist wohl vornehmlich Aufgabe der Eltern und nicht der Obrigkeit!

Von der Leyens Kinderschutz-Lüge: EU startet den Ausweiszwang im Netz "Heute meldet die EU-Kommission unter hehren Floskeln den Vollzug: Die EU-Altersnachweis-Anwendung ist technisch fertig, bald im Einsatz, eingerichtet mit Ausweis oder Pass. Kinderschutz, so heißt es. Gemeint ist das Ende der Anonymität aller und der Zensur-Griff nach dem Netz."

Ihr Plan: Zensur | Merz und von der Leyen (EU) gehen systematisch vor mit Roland Tichy

Empfehlenswert!

Hinweis: Ich habe nicht das ganze Video angesehen!

(147) Ihr Plan: Zensur | Merz und von der Leyen gehen systematisch vor | Lage der Nation mit Roland Tichy - YouTube

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Warns Apple Over leftist News Bias on News app. Really!

I am not sure that was necessary or a smart move! There are plenty of other news outlets to choose from even from an Apple device.

"Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent a letter Wednesday to Apple CEO Tim Cook, warning that the company’s popular News app may be violating consumer protection laws by systematically suppressing conservative news outlets.

The letter followed a study by the Media Research Center, which analyzed 620 stories featured on Apple News in January and found that none came from right-leaning outlets.

Of the total, 440 were from left-leaning sources and 180 from centrist ones, with zero articles from the New York Post or Fox News. ..."

Friday, February 13, 2026 - Join The Flyover

Andrew Ferguson (official photo)

Russia Blocks Meta's WhatsApp as Moscow Pushes for State App Max with Palki Sharma

Putin the Terrible at work! When will the lethargic and apathetic Russian people finally get rid of Putin the Terrible!

(258) Russia Blocks Meta's WhatsApp as Moscow Pushes for State App Max | Vantage with Palki Sharma - YouTube

Image of the day

Neue Werbung aus der Bananenrepublik D!

US Secretary of State Rubio says Americans could one day be detained in Europe for social media posts

Me too? 😊

"Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a warning to American citizens about a potential threat to U.S. free speech in Europe. 

U.S. citizens traveling in Europe could one day be detained over social media posts made years earlier due to European speech laws, Rubio said.

“Are we going to live in a world where some American puts up a social media post and then gets to some airport somewhere and is arrested?” Rubio asked, according to Fox News. ..."

Rubio says Americans could one day be detained in Europe for social media posts | Just The News "The Trump administration has criticized several European policies that require platforms to remove certain categories of speech, saying they undermine freedom of expression."

EU Fines Platform X €120 Million: What’s Behind the Clash?

If this fine against X is indeed a form of disguised censorship, this fine will most likely backfire on the EU!

Imported Authoritarian Threats to Campus Free Speech in the US or the risks of selling higher education abroad

Food for thought! This subject or similar subjects have been exposed in Western countries for decades (e.g. during the Cold War).

When appeasement becomes weakness! When ignorance becomes intolerable!

Beware The Open Society and Its Enemies (by Karl Popper, published in 1945) are everywhere!

Caveat: I have not read McLaughlin's book nor the article, but I believe I am somewhat familiar with the subject.

"... You could probably guess what a lot of these cases were about. Speech about abortion, guns, race, and Israel—the standard starting points of censorship and controversy. But over time, I began hearing more and more about people who felt like they couldn’t speak freely about foreign authoritarian governments. Most often, the Chinese government, but there were also problems arising from universities’ relationships with the Gulf States.

When an industry becomes global, it also becomes vulnerable to pressure from foreign governments. Viewers have probably seen stories about the sometimes-outlandish apologies that companies have issued to the Chinese government because they accidentally mentioned Tibet or Hong Kong. But when higher education is a global industry, there are really unique concerns that emerge. ..."

"A revealing exposé on how foreign authoritarian influence is undermining freedom and integrity within American higher education institutions.

In an era of globalized education, where ideals of freedom and inquiry should thrive, an alarming trend has emerged: foreign authoritarian regimes infiltrating American academia. In Authoritarians in the Academy, Sarah McLaughlin exposes how higher education institutions, long considered bastions of free thought, are compromising their values for financial gain and global partnerships.

This groundbreaking investigation reveals the subtle yet sweeping influence of authoritarian governments. University leaders are allowing censorship to flourish on campus, putting pressure on faculty, and silencing international student voices, all in the name of appeasing foreign powers. McLaughlin exposes the troubling reality where university leaders prioritize expansion and profit over the principles of free expression. The book describes incidents in classrooms where professors hesitate to discuss controversial topics and in boardrooms where administrators weigh the costs of offending oppressive regimes. McLaughlin offers a sobering look at how the compromises made in American academia reflect broader societal patterns seen in industries like tech, sports, and entertainment." (Source)

Authoritarian Threats to Campus Free Speech

Sarah McLaughlin (Source)

YouTube will reinstate conservative accounts banned for allegedly spreading misinformation

Good news! Google/YouTube admits censorship! Is the tide turning or is the pendulum of politics in democracies swinging in the other direction?

"... Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” Alphabet’s legal counsel Daniel F. Donovan wrote. “YouTube values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse.” ..."

YouTube will reinstate accounts banned for spreading misinformation | TechCrunch

What the hell is this?

This link to this article (Title: "Anti-Trump 'No Kings' protests underway in cities and towns throughout U.S.") was in my email inbox today. I am a subscriber to Just the News!

I am not authorized to access this page???? I think I never had this experience with any other of many Just the News articles that I have accessed before. I used to different Google accounts and tried several times with the same result.

Seizure of Sally Mann’s photographs in Texas revives old debates about obscenity and freedom of expression. Really!

Recommendable! Yes, Americans still tend to be more prudish than some  other Westerners! 😊

Given that these photo examples presented by the author are from the late 1980s and around 1990, I have some doubt whether these photos really caused such a skandal or controversy as suggested by this article.

Seizure of Sally Mann’s photographs in Texas revives old debates about obscenity and freedom of expression

Sally Mann’s ‘Holding the Weasel’ [her daughter] 1989

The Perfect Tomato [her daughter] 1990

Her son (unknown title and date)

More Speech and Fewer Mistakes | Meta

Good news! Mark Zuckerberg is 40 years old now! Maybe he is getting bolder and wiser! 😊

His last name translates to mountain of sugar! 😊

"Takeaways

• Starting in the US, we are ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to a Community Notes model.
• We will allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations.
• We will take a more personalized approach to political content, so that people who want to see more of it in their feeds can.

 ..."

More Speech and Fewer Mistakes | Meta

Giant 'Vote for Trump' sign towers over New York city from Amsterdam, NY

Google search produces only one photo (see below). Bing search fails completely! Despite the fact that a New York judge ruled on Monday 10/7/2024 that this sign was legal!

Stanford University: Covert Racism in AI: How Language Models Are Reinforcing Outdated Stereotypes. Really!

I am so sick and tired of this often repeated propaganda and demagoguery of biased and racist language models! These are obvious attempts at censorship and taking control of AI by ideologists!

Of course, the output of LLMs is biased. What else do you expect! That is a given! These models are trained on huge public and private corpora like the Web etc. loaded with biases and racist content. Bias and racism is an unfortunate human condition mutually affecting all skin colors!

What does the author mean by "outdated stereotypes"? Is she not herself using some very strange stereotypes like "African American English" (AAE)?, whatever that is. Probably, if you ask any black American about whether he or she speaks AAE he/she would think you are a weirdo! 

The ivory tower of Stanford University and other racism obsessed elite universities! Ivory tower another one of those cliches or stereotypes with African connotation?

Caveat: I did not read the article.

"... But in a new study, Stanford researchers find that these models still surface extreme racist stereotypes dating from the pre-Civil Rights era. ..."

Covert Racism in AI: How Language Models Are Reinforcing Outdated Stereotypes "Despite advancements in AI, new research reveals that large language models continue to perpetuate harmful racial biases, particularly against speakers of African American English."

Credits: Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence newsletter

Venezuela: AI Anchors to Report Maduro Government's Crackdown

Very clever way to circumvent censorship and persecution in a dictatorship like Venezuela! Bravo!

EU wird X verbieten, wenn Musk keine Zensur einführt, behauptet führender EU-Abgeordneter Sandro Gozi (Italien)

Ohne Worte! Unglaublich! 

Dieser Gozi hat auch gerade mal die US Democratic Party’s National Convention besucht!

"Die Europäische Union wird Elon Musks X verbieten, wenn die Plattform nicht zensiert wird, so einer der führenden EU-Abgeordneten. Sandro Gozi, ein ranghoher EU-Vertreter von Emmanuel Macrons Ensemble-Koalition, hat darauf bestanden, dass die US-Plattform die sogenannten „Hassreden“-Kontrollen des Digital Services Act (DSA) umsetzen muss, wenn sie weiterhin in der EU tätig sein will. ..."

EU wird X verbieten, wenn Musk keine Zensur einführt, behauptet ein führender EU-Abgeordneter "„Wenn Elon Musk die europäischen Regeln für digitale Dienste nicht einhält, wird die EU-Kommission die Betreiber auf dem Kontinent auffordern, X zu blockieren, oder im extremsten Fall die vollständige Demontage der Plattform auf dem Gebiet der Union durchsetzen“, so der ranghohe EU-Abgeordnete von Renew Europe."