All Talk No Game? Musk Caves After Pledging to Protect Free Speech

Tech mogul Elon Musk has folded in his so-called defense of free speech in his recent battle with a Brazilian court. On Monday, Musk's attorneys informed Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) will comply with all of the censorship demands targeting accounts accused of spreading misinformation, according to Reuters. "As already communicated to the federal police, X Brasil informs that all orders issued by this Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court will continue to be fully complied with by X Corp," Musk’s legal counsel reportedly wrote in the letter addressed to Moraes. Musk’s compliance marks a stark departure from his vehement threats to ignore the orders. “We are lifting all restrictions,” Musk declared on April 6, accusing the Moraes of threatening X with fines and imprisonment. “As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there. But principles matter more than profit.” Related: UPDATE: Are You Paying Attention? Brazil Escalates Major Free Speech Assault The battle between X and de Moraes stems from an inquiry by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court that centers on the spread of what the government deemed to be misinformation amid federal elections. In court rulings, Moraes accused X of allowing some popular Brazil-based users to spread so-called misinformation. In turn, he demanded Musk censor them. In court decisions, Moraes accused X of being a major driver of alleged misinformation and demanded Musk censor these users. Amid Musk’s initial refusal to comply with such demands, Moraes threatened to impose daily fines of $20,000 for each account not banned. Last week, the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court declined to respond to MRC’s request for comment on Musk’s refusal to comply with the orders. Instead, a court spokesperson directed MRC to a criminal referral directing the county’s attorney general to investigate Musk for potential obstruction of justice. Before Monday, Musk had hurled scathing comments at the Brazilian assault against its citizens’ free speech. “The severity of the censorship and the degree to which Brazil’s own laws are being broken, to the detriment of their own people, is the worst of any country in the world in which this platform operates,” he wrote on April 10. Hours earlier that same day, Musk declared that X respected the Brazilian laws but said the company “must refuse” to comply with orders that break the law. His remarks likely refer to earlier characterizations of Morae’s orders as lacking legitimate legal basis.  𝕏 respects the laws of Brazil and all countries in which we operate. When given an order to break the law, we must refuse. https://t.co/vLuFUP9gN8 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 10, 2024 Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

UPDATE: SEE IT! Cruz Offers Thoughts on ‘Major Legislation’ Against TikTok

Editor’s Note (4/23/24): This article has been edited to include Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) exclusive comments to MRC Free Speech America regarding House Republicans’ legislation protecting Americans from potential communist Chinese influence. A Republican senator spoke against Chinese influence on a major social media platform. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) hailed House Republicans for passing a provision seeking to force TikTok’s infamous parent company, ByteDance, to divest its social media platform ownership. “Everyone appears to be very concerned about what the Chinese Communist government is doing with TikTok,” Cruz told MRC Free Speech America in exclusive comments on Monday evening. “I support what the House accomplished when it comes to TikTok, which is forcing China to divest TikTok and I think if and when that bill comes to the Senate, I expect that the Senate will agree,” the Texas senator added. Speaking on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures on Sunday, hosted by Maria Bartiromo, Cruz had called the bill “very important” and “a major step forward” to protect Americans from Chinese propaganda and potential espionage. “I have deep, deep concerns about TikTok, controlled by the Chinese communist government,” Cruz told Bartiromo, voicing his support for the TikTok ultimatum bill.  The Texas senator accused the Chinese communist government of exploiting TikTok for the “surveillance and espionage of American citizens.”  Expanding on his concerns, Cruz added: “They use it right now, aggressively, to push propaganda, anti-America propaganda, to our young people.” Flashback! WATCH: Sen. Ted Cruz Blasts TikTok as Communist Chinese Gov’t ‘Espionage’ Tool Cruz’s comments came a day after the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a massive $95 billion foreign aid package. The package includes a provision that gives the president the authority to compel ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok or else face a ban in the United States. The bill is set to be passed by the Senate on Tuesday. President Joe Biden is also expected to sign the bill into law. The bill gives ByteDance 270 days to sell its ownership. “This bill is a major step forward in that it forces China to divest of TikTok,” Cruz added, echoing the sentiments of the Media Research Center, which came in support of the initial TikTok bill in March. You May Also Like: ‘Consistent from the Start’: Bozell Says TikTok Must Divest from Communist Chinese Gov’t “It is absolutely correct and necessary for TikTok to divest itself of any control from the communist Chinese government in China if it wants to do business in the United States,” said MRC President and Founder Brent Bozell in a video statement.  “I support this bill. I support reining in TikTok. I support stopping the communist Chinese from influencing the United States subversively,” Bozell added.  In response to the ultimatum, TikTok has deployed a multi-million dollar marketing campaign in a failed attempt to persuade lawmakers against backing the legislation.  Related: TikTok’s Last-Ditch Effort Amid US Ban: Recruiting Nuns, Veterans and Ranchers Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

MRC’s Brent Bozell with Levin on Staggering Facebook Election Interference: ‘It’s Systematic’

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell called out yet another Big Tech company for interfering in U.S. elections — and he has the receipts to prove it. During a Tuesday interview with nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin on The Mark Levin Show, Bozell lambasted Facebook following an MRC Special Report detailing how the Meta-owned social media platform interfered in U.S. elections 39 times since 2008.  Bozell minced no words in his response to the MRC findings, stating, “We looked at Facebook since 2008. We found 39 examples of Facebook directly interfering with political campaigns.” Bozell said, “This is, it’s systematic. … These Big Tech companies have got to stop interfering.” The MRC president referred to a bombshell report published by MRC Free Speech America on Monday. READ IT: 39 Times Facebook Interfered in US Elections Since 2008 The report found that while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has publicly embraced the First Amendment and the freedom of expression, his companies’ censorship acts have directly interfered with the democratic process in American elections.  The evidence shows that while censorship was not exclusively directed toward Republicans, a large proportion of it was aimed at non-Democrat candidates, ultimately reaching its height in the lead-up to, and shortly after, the 2020 election. “In 2020, [Facebook] censured Trump ads; Trump super PAC ads; Hunter Biden suppression is what exploded in 2020; and then you have the anti-COVID posts, which were all taken down,” Bozell told Levin.  Tellingly, Facebook censored Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), then a Democratic presidential candidate, for launching an ad “calling for breaking up Big Tech companies,” Bozell added, before saying in jest, “I love it.” The censorship was vast and rampant, Bozell continued. “They also removed an anti-Antifa ad that was run by [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). In 2021, they officially suspended Donald Trump from their platform.” The MRC report on Facebook’s election interference comes just weeks after it published a similar report on Google's election interference tactics. The Google report found at least 41 times the tech giant used its power to interfere in U.S. elections. Related: 41 Times Google Has Interfered in US Elections Since 2008 “Their algorithms are being tinkered with so that they can advance the left in America. … Google has the power to define what is and what isn’t truth,” Bozell said of Google at the time. You May Also Like: MRC President Bozell Details Startling Reality About Google: It Has ‘Power to Define’ Truth Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

MRC’s Bozell Condemns Facebook Election Interference, Unveils Its No. 1 ‘Target’ for Censorship

MRC President Brent Bozell once again condemned Facebook's repeated election interference detailed in a bombshell MRC Free Speech America’s Special Report. During a Thursday morning interview with WMAL-FM’s Larry O’Connor, Bozell reiterated the findings featured in the report: Facebook has interfered in U.S. elections a whopping total of 39 times since 2008.  Bozell suggested that the censorship was vast and overwhelmingly biased, including “candidates,” “political action committees” and “organizations that either support a Republican or criticize a Democrat.” ICYMI! See MRC Free Speech America’s Harrowing Findings on Facebook “Target number one was Trump, and he was the target in two different ways,” Bozell said, detailing how Facebook banned the then-sitting president in 2021, while coincidentally strangling “any coverage of anything that would hurt Joe Biden.” Earlier in the interview, an appalled O'Connor asked Bozell to describe the implications of the MRC findings, which he described as “insidious interference.”  To this, the MRC president replied that election interference by way of censorship leaves Americans without knowledge “about the issues of the day” because of the deliberate actions “by these massive monopolies.” Must Read! Bozell and Levin on ‘Systematic’ Nature of Facebook’s Election Interference During the WMAL-FM interview, co-host Julie Gunluck asked Bozell to break down some of the examples found in the report. Bozell was well-prepared and did not hold back.  “Let's take 2016: Facebook partnered with this left-wing organization funded by Soros, the Poynter Institute, to create a network of left-wing fact-checkers,” Bozell said. But there was more, Bozell warned, asking rhetorically, “What did they then do? Over and over again, they suspended numerous pro-Trump Trump pages. They elevated liberals in their trending news, giving them preference over conservatives. They blacklisted [Sen.] Ted Cruz; they blacklisted [Sen.] Rand Paul.” Bozell’s remarks come a little over a month after a similar MRC Free Speech America report found that Google, like Facebook, interfered in U.S. elections 41 times. “Corporations can't be involved in political action at the federal level. Yet, you've got Big Tech that is picking winners and losers in elections, and when they do it the way they're doing it, it becomes a very serious threat to democracy itself,” Bozell said on April 17, alluding to the MRC report on Google’s election interference. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

EXCLUSIVE: Unearthed Emails Show Legacy Media Cozying Up to Disgraced Censorship Group

FIRST ON MRC: Never-before-seen emails reveal how several legacy media outlets closely aligned themselves with a disgraced censorship entity, accused of leading the censorship of Republicans and conservatives on social media. Documents reviewed by MRC Free Speech America indicate that certain leftist, legacy media outlets — including The Washington Post, The Guardian, ABC News, NBC News, Vice and others — collaborated closely with the anti-free speech Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a now-defunct consortium of researchers and universities with ties to government agencies and embroiled in censorship controversies. Stanford University’s Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), along with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, led the effort to launch the EIP.  Tellingly, the EIP was created “at the request of” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and “worked directly with” the DHS and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center to “monitor and censor Americans’ online speech” before the 2020 elections, according to the House Judiciary Committee. In response to these emails, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) called on the federal government to defund the massive web of anti-free speech entities, infamously known as the Censorship Industrial Complex. “We’ve obtained the secret reports showing how the Election Integrity Partnership worked closely with Big Tech to censor thousands of Americans,” Jordan said. “Other documents confirm that the EIP was created ‘at the request of’ the federal government. In other words, Big Tech, Big Academia, and Big Government teamed up to censor Americans before the 2020 election.” The emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request investigation by government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), suggest that the legacy media blindly relied on the EIP to reinforce their anti-free speech narratives. “It’s disappointing and, frankly, a little frightening that media outlets have taken up full membership in the Censorship Industrial Complex,” PPT President Michael Chamberlain told MRC Free Speech America. Little has been reported or known about the extent of the media’s involvement with the disgraced censorship group — at least until now. The Washington Post Calls Anti-Free Speech Researchers ‘My Fave People’ In one instance, Elizabeth Dwoskin, a Silicon Valley correspondent for The Washington Post, referred to EIP leader Alex Stamos, a former chief security officer at Facebook, and Stanford researcher Renée DiResta, as her “fave people” in an email dated April 1, 2022. According to the email, Dwoskin contacted EIP to propose “a potentially powerful collaboration” concerning alleged “disinfo” in the 2022 midterm elections.  The proposed collaboration, dubbed "The Megaphone Project," aimed to track individuals who raised questions about the 2020 elections and whether they still had platforms in the 2022 midterm elections. “What platforms are they using? Do they still have the megaphones they had in 2020? What are they saying in the run-up to 2022?” Dwoskin asked Stamos and DiResta.  Whether “The Megaphone Project” was initiated remains unknown. However, the proposal raises concerns about the impartiality of The Post's reporter, said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. “It is sickening that The Post sought to create a hit list against people who simply wanted to exercise their free speech rights,” Schneider said. “In the past, leftists have also done the same thing. Did The Post ever produce a similar blacklist? We doubt it. This only proves the legacy media are nothing but arms of the Democrat Party.” Dwoskin did not immediately respond to MRC Free Speech America’s request for comment. ABC News Mourns Rise of Parler: ‘Will We Ever Stop Misinformation?’ In another instance showcasing how legacy media outlets leaned on EIP to promote their anti-free speech agenda, ABC News reporter Laura Romero emailed professor and EIP mastermind Kate Starbird on Nov. 11, 2020, seeking comment regarding Parler, a pro-free speech platform. Rather than simply requesting Starbird's expert analysis on Parler, Romero, in a 257-word email, voiced her concerns that while Facebook and Twitter were cracking down on the “Big Lie,” Parler allowed Americans to freely express their views on the 2020 election. “Is this a cat and mouse chase?” Romero asked Starbird, alluding to Big Tech’s crackdown on free speech. The ABC News reporter pondered, “Will we ever stop misinformation from spreading?” without specifying who the “we” in her email referred to. In the same email, Romero suggested that she preferred “to hop on the phone to discuss this,” citing her busy schedule. Tellingly, Romero did not promptly respond to MRC’s repeated requests for comments or clarification. Romero ultimately published an ABC News article on Nov. 17, 2020, headlined: “‘Free speech’ social media platform Parler is a hit among Trump supporters, but experts say it won't last.” In the article, Romero accused Parler of disseminating “misinformation.” She supported her anti-free speech assertions by citing “experts.” Did The Guardian Rely on EIP for Legal Advice Following Project Veritas Threat? Amid a legal dispute between media activist group Project Veritas and EIP, attorneys representing then-Project Veritas President James O’Keefe filed a complaint against The Guardian. The newspaper had previously covered an EIP blog that labeled O’Keefe as a “repeat spreader” of “election misinformation” a year prior. Faced with a potential legal challenge regarding its coverage of O’Keefe, Eline Gordts, a West Coast editor at The Guardian, reached out to EIP, apparently seeking guidance on how to respond to Project Veritas. Project Veritas had initiated a lawsuit against EIP over an EIP blog published on Sept. 29, 2020 (and later covered by The Guardian). “O'Keefe's lawyers mention that they have filed litigation against EIP for defamatory content,” Gordts wrote to EIP researcher DiResta and Communications Director Michael Grass.  Gordts added, “As we're crafting our response, it would be very helpful to get a sense of your thinking around his allegations, what exactly they are suiting [sic] over and whether Project Veritas is suing or James O'Keefe.” Later in the email, she asked to “discuss this over the phone." In response, Stamos confirmed that Project Veritas had initiated legal action against EIP. He then offered Gordts access to EIP’s attorneys and provided communications advice for further comment. In response, Stamos confirmed that Project Veritas had initiated legal action against EIP. He then offered Gordts access to EIP’s attorneys, deferring to them for further comment. In statements to MRC, The Guardian spokesperson Matt Mittenthal vehemently denied that the newspaper had reached out to EIP for potential advice.  “An editor for the Guardian contacted the Election Integrity Partnership to verify Project Veritas's claim that it had sued EIP, a fact that could have bearing on our own reporting,” he claimed in an email on Wednesday. “Any suggestion of ‘coordination’ would be a gross mischaracterization of an editor doing her job.” Mittenthal said that Project Veritas did not threaten to sue The Guardian for its reporting of the EIP blog. He clarified that Gordst did not engage with EIP’s attorneys past Stamos’s comment. MRC’s Schneider said that such a coordination would have been highly unusual for a media outlet. “Not only did the media peddle EIP’s work blindly, but they seemed to be so entangled with EIP that they even wanted to secretly coordinate their dissembling in the courthouse. Their corruption does not end with election interference. It might also include obstruction of justice.” VICE News and The Post Ask: First Amendment Worse Than Russian ‘Disinformation’? One of the accusations raised by House Republicans against the EIP and its government ties is that the EIP conflated constitutionally-protected speech with alleged foreign “disinformation,” occasionally prioritizing the targeting of Americans’ free speech. VICE and The Post suggested that Americans’ ability to freely speak posed a greater threat to the nation than foreign interference. In September 2020, Vice commissioned a “big/special” election documentary with HBO, as indicated by Graham Brookie, an aide at The Atlantic Council’s Digital Foreign Research Lab (also part of the EIP, according to House Republicans). In an email to Starbird, Brookie forwarded a note, purportedly from Vice News, that stated, “While foreign interference is continuing in similar fashion to 2016, the primary issue is domestic misinformation.” It isn’t immediately clear whether such a documentary was ever videotaped or finalized. Not to be outdone by Vice, The Post's Dwoskin (mentioned earlier in this report) reached out to EIP about a briefing related to the 2020 election. In the email dated Nov. 4, 2020, Dwoskin posed the highly cynical question of whether Trump declaring himself winner was “a bigger test for the platforms than Russian disinfo, in terms of protecting threats to democracy?” On the same day, Dwoskin published a write-up for The Post headlined “Trump’s early victory declarations test tech giants’ mettle in policing threats to the election.” In it, she used a quote from Stamos to accuse Big Tech platforms of failing to act against so-called “repeat offenders” of “misinformation.” Neither Brookie, Vice nor Dwoskin immediately responded to MRC’s request for comment. NBC News to EIP: ‘Why YouTube Isn’t Adjusting’ In an email to Starbird, NBC News Correspondent Jake Ward whined about YouTube's alleged reluctance to follow the lead of other major Big Tech platforms in censoring Americans in the days leading up to the 2020 election. The subject line of Ward’s email, dated Oct. 26, 2020, read, “Why YouTube Isn't Adjusting.” Ward sought to interview Starbird to gain a “big-picture” perspective on how YouTube “handles itself.” Ward declared his intent to write a story on YouTube. “I'm putting a story together about why it is that YouTube has adjusted so little of how it handles misinformation as compared to Twitter and FB,” he wrote, extending an invitation to continue the conversation on Zoom. Ward, who has since left NBC News, did not immediately respond to MRC's request for comment. Ward’s concerns seemingly prompted action from YouTube, as the platform undertook a significant purge of content that allegedly violated the platform’s COVID-19 policies, resulting in the removal of over 500,000 videos. YouTube also moved to ban former President Donald Trump’s account for over three years, a decision ultimately reversed in March 2023. Despite Ward’s assertions about YouTube’s perceived inaction on censorship, its parent company, Google, faced scrutiny nearly four years later, following the release of an MRC Free Speech America report. The MRC report revealed that the tech giant intervened in U.S. elections at least 41 times, every time in favor of the most left-wing candidates. EIP to Fox News: No, Thank You? In contrast to EIP’s engagement with other media outlets, the organization appears to have been less receptive to a Fox News reporter’s inquiry about an EIP fact check of a Project Veritas video on alleged voter fraud. In an email dated Oct. 5, 2020, Fox News reporter Audrey Conklin reached out to Dr. Joe Bak-Coleman, one of the authors of an EIP blog that targeted Project Veritas. Such a blog was at the center of a now-settled lawsuit between Project Veritas and EIP. Bak-Coleman forwarded the email to Starbird and Stamos seeking advice. “Thoughts on how/if I should respond? My instinct is to just ignore it but I figured better to ask y'all,” Bak-Coleman wrote that same day. Starbird advised against responding, warning, “I wouldn't respond. I'm curious as to why they reached out to you and not Alex or me. Something to chat about at our next meeting.” Bak-Coleman chose not to respond to Conklin. Instead, Stamos intervened, stating, “I believe our post speaks for itself and we are going to decline further comment.” Legacy Media, Enemies of Free Speech? Reacting to these revelations, PPT’s Chamberlain criticized the legacy media’s role in endorsing EIP’s controversial work and, even worse, failing to uphold the principles of the First Amendment. “I’m old enough to remember when they would be the staunchest defenders of free speech, the First Amendment, and the search for truth,” Chamberlain told MRC. “Now it appears that instead of defending those principles they are more interested in defending the narratives they advance and defending themselves against upstarts and alternative outlets.” Chamberlain concluded with a sobering assessment: “There's profit and prestige in being an approved information gatekeeper.” But not all hope is gone, as Jordan and the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government are calling for legislation to defund these censorship-tied tools. “Our investigation continues but it’s clear that Congress must pass legislation that ends the censorship-industrial complex in all its forms, including the EIP,” Jordan told MRC. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

MRC Backs Religious Lawsuit Against NPR-Favoring Government Rate Scheme

The Media Research Center is calling on the federal government to stop discriminating against religious broadcasting companies and right-leaning talk radio. On Monday, MRC filed an amicus brief this week in support of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)’s petition for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case pertaining to religious broadcasting companies challenging the Biden-led Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which is a federal entity responsible for regulating royalties and copyright licenses. In the brief, MRC argued that the CRB violated the First Amendment religious liberty and free speech rights by not providing the same deal to religious broadcasters it entered into with leftist National Public Radio (NPR). The legal battle began in 2021 after the CRB inexplicably refused to extend a favorable NPR deal, including low fees, to the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee (NRB), a non-profit representing various religious communicators and broadcasting companies. The ADF wrote in February that the CRB established a statutory license for companies, including NPR and NRB, to pay royalties to the copyright holders of songs played on their stations. Instead of offering the same rates granted to NPR, the CRB demanded that religious broadcasting companies pay 18 times the royalty fees of NPR if they have over 200 listeners. This was in contrast to the CRB's deal with NPR, a secular, taxpayer-funded company at the center of controversy for bias. Related: Here Are the Best & Worst Moments From the House NPR Hearing with MRC’s Graham “Here, the Board created a content-based, tiered rate structure that required religious broadcasters to pay far more than NPR stations to communicate with an audience above a mere 218 people,” the MRC brief read, alluding to the notable discrepancies in the deals offered to NPR and the NRB. Further addressing the court, the MRC wrote that this discriminatory practice “forces religious broadcasters to pay royalty rates 18 times higher than those to which NPR will be subject.” The religious broadcasting companies took the CRB to court in 2021. Regrettably, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the federal government. “This unlawful discrimination forces some noncommercial religious stations to stay small and restrict their listener reach so they can afford to stream online,” the ADF added. “The Copyright Royalty Board is violating federal law and the U.S. Constitution, and so we are urging the Supreme Court to take this important case and rule on the side of religious liberty and free speech.” Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

MRC’s Bozell Warns of Soros-Funded ‘Fascistic’ Plot Amid 2024 Election

Leftist billionaire George Soros is “behind an all-out effort to shut down” free speech in the United States, MRC President Brent Bozell declared on Thursday. Bozell’s scorching remarks came in response to an MRC report that exposed Soros as one of the financiers of an anti-free speech cartel beseeching Big Tech platforms to censor Americans ahead of the 2024 presidential election. “I think Americans really need to be worried about this man,” Bozell said during an interview on Fox Business’s Varney & Co. “I think he's the greatest threat to democracy — not just in this country, but worldwide — and the things he's doing are frightening.” Read the Bombshell! George Soros Fueled $80M Into Groups Calling for Big Tech Censorship in Lead-Up to 2024 Elections At the center of Bozell’s warning is a media group’s letter pressuring social media platforms to censor content under the auspice of “implement[ing] election-integrity policies to protect democracy worldwide.” The letter, which Bozell lambasted for its “really fascistic attitude toward democracy,” was signed by over 200 groups and was led by the Soros-funded media group Free Press (not to be confused with journalist Bari Weiss’s The Free Press). In it, these groups pressed for “swift action” to allegedly protect democracy by keeping a “safe and healthy” environment for users. That is, by suppressing content that goes against their ideologies. But here’s the kicker: MRC research found that a large portion of these anti-free speech cartel non-profits have been bankrolled by none other than Soros.  “Of those 200 organizations, 45 of them were funded by George Soros … to the tune of $80 million — 45 that we know of. It’s probably more than that,” Bozell declared.  Reiterating the MRC’s findings, Bozell warned that these left-wing organizations “went to everybody in Big Tech whether it was Meta, TikTok, Google, YouTube” to call for the censorship of “conservatives, censor faith-based groups, censor Donald Trump yet again, shut down any, any debate over climate change.” More on Soros: Is He Buying Universities’ Silence on Anti-Semitic Agitators? Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

MRC UnCensored: Erik Prince Unveils Solution to Unplug Big Tech’s ‘Pervasive Surveillance’

As Big Tech companies continue to expand their control over Americans’ cellphone data, one businessman has stepped up, providing an alternative and delivering a powerful message: enough! This was the sentiment of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, former NAVY Seal and owner of the Unplugged tech startup, during an exclusive interview on MRC UnCensored with host and MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. In the interview, Prince touted his one-of-a-kind Unplugged Smartphone, which he said is designed to combat Big Tech’s censorship and what he described as the “pervasive surveillance of Big Brother." Referring to the “enormous power” of Big Tech companies, Prince mentioned that Americans have become the “product” of Big Tech, as these companies control “everything you do digitally, every call you make, everywhere you go, what you browse, what you buy [and] who you interact with.” He recounted witnessing the rampant censorship conducted by Big Tech during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, when censors “were canceling certain voices that they didn't like that were opposed to their big government narrative.” But Prince had enough, he told Schneider, recalling the launch of UP Phone, which, unlike any other device, does not rely on Google software. Similar: MRC President Bozell to Patrick Bet-David: Google Is Picking Winners and Losers Taking matters into his own hands, Prince explained, “I basically had an angry phone call with a couple of friends of mine saying, ‘What the hell are we going to do? We're not going to change Big Tech by b****ing about it. We're only going to change it by competing.’” Prince suggested that the smartphone, launched in 2022, is even more relevant nowadays after Congress re-authorized controversial portions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) Section 702. “With Congress just a couple weeks ago passing not just a FISA extension, but a massive FISA enlargement, because what the federal government has been doing is have a very cozy relationship with Big Tech, all too cozy,” he said. The infamous spying tool allows the federal government to collect a massive trove of emails from U.S. persons to foreign countries of interest without a warrant.  “It basically allows the federal government, any agency can go to Big Tech and demand they turn over that data,” he continued. “Any messages, photos, anything they have without a warrant and without probable cause.” Expanding on his remarks, Prince added, “Just one federal investigator … with a bone to pick wants to go on a fishing expedition to dig into your life. They have carte blanche to do it. This is the only thing that protects that kind of digital sovereignty.” Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.