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The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) likely violated federal antitrust laws when it used its tremendous market power in the advertising world to encourage the demonization of news websites, platforms, and podcasts it deems guilty of wrongthink, a new report published by the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday found.

Shortly after Rob Rakowitz co-founded GARM in 2019 with the World Federation of Advertisers, he complained that [p]eople are advocating for freedom of speech online and using a radical interpretation[] of freedom of speech. To curb this First Amendment phenomenon and prevent it from going global, he called for an uncommon collaboration to rise above individual commercial interest.

For an organization reliant on speech and persuasion in advertising, GARM appears to have anti-democratic views of fundamental American freedoms, the report warns.

GARM claims to safeguard the potential of digital media by reducing the availability and monetization of harmful content online using a Steer Team of four major advertisers (Proctor & Gamble, Mars, Unilever, and Diageo), the worlds largest media buying agency (GroupM), and three trade associations.

GARM also includes the so-called Big Six as members. In the advertising industry, the Big Six refer to the biggest ad agency holding companies around the world. Together, these companies hold nearly every major advertising agency, the report notes.

Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits organizations like GARM from conspiracy against commerce or restraint of trade. House Republicans, however, warned the ongoing collusion between GARM and the worlds largest advertisers inevitably results in unjust viewpoint censorship of popular dissidents over their First Amendment-protected speech.

When Elon Musk took over Twitter and turned it into X, GARM, at the behest of Rakowitz, organized a boycott among its members to prevent advertisers from spending their money there. Rakowitz denied his role in the coordinated campaign against Musks free speech efforts in a transcribed interview with Republican investigators, but documents obtained by the committee indicate he took credit for Twitters revenue decline.

Steer Team member Unilever also complained to Rakowitz about issues with the platforms overtly partisan takes (e.g., Hunter Biden laptop expos.)

GARM applied similar tactics against The Joe Rogan Experience in 2022 after Steer Team member Joe Barone of GroupM determined that advertisers and platforms like Spotify should be concerned about the alleged misinformation about Covid-19 shots touted by the top podcaster. The committee noted that GroupM knew there was no brand safety concern because it did not buy advertisements on Mr. Rogans podcast, but it still sought to silence Mr. Rogans views anyway by bringing their concerns to GARM.

Coca-Cola also approached GARM about Spotify and Rogans show. Rakowitz indicated he could not collectively tell every GARM member what to do because it gets us into hot water by way of anticompetitive and collusive behaviors, so instead, he advised GARM members individually what to do, effectively aligning all GARM members.

Mr. Rakowitzs power comes from the members of GARM and their advertising dollars. Because power lies with the members, when members communicate an opinion to Mr. Rakowitz, he is likely to communicate that opinion on to the platforms. Ultimately, when platforms receive the message from Mr. Rakowitz, the companies have the choice to cede to his demands or risk losing their advertising revenue, the report notes.

GARM doesnt simply use its own influence to convince companies to turn against dissenters. The organization also pushes companies to use rankings from government-backed censors like Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NewsGuard, which repeatedly blacklist conservative outlets such as The Federalist, to determine who bears the brunt of their coordinated boycotts.

News outlets like The Daily Wire, Breitbart, and even Fox News that might cross the line by offering what the committee called disfavored views were also heavily surveilled and scrutinized by Steer Team members like GroupM who used emails to discuss their hatred for the publications conservative roots.

The cherry on top of all of GARMs scheming was when the organization pushed Facebook for coordinated action around the upcoming elections similar to the actions the platform took during the COVID-19 pandemic to censor speech. Steer Team member Unilever even pressured Facebook to censor one of former President Donald Trumps 2020 campaign ads discussing Sleepy Joe.

GARM and its members weaponize their power to influence elections through pressuring platforms to label content as misinformation, the report notes.

Republican investigators said that GARMs collusive conduct to demonetize disfavored content is alarming.

The extent to which GARM has organized its trade association and coordinates actions that rob consumers of choices is likely illegal under the antitrust laws and threatens fundamental American freedoms, the report concludes.

The House Judiciary published the report the same day it hosted a hearing exploring collusion in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media and whether existing civil and criminal penalties and current antitrust law enforcement efforts are sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.

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Report: Globes Largest Companies Colluded In Likely Antitrust Violation To Censor Conservatives - The Federalist

The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, received criticism from researchers after it labeled a link by the investigative journalism group Bellingcat about Russias attack on a childrens hospital in Kyiv as potentially spammy or unsafe.

In their latest research, Bellingcat identified a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile that struck Ukraine's largest children's medical center, Okhmatdyt, during an attack on Kyiv over the weekend that killed 33 people, including 5 children.

Bellingcats investigation debunked claims from pro-Russian accounts that denied responsibility for the attack and sought to shift the blame for the incident onto Ukraine, researchers said.

Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based organization made famous for its use of open-source intelligence and crowdsourcing, has uncovered stories dealing with issues like the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Despite its reputation, X marked the link to the groups latest research as unsafe, saying that it could lead users to violent or misleading content or to a website that misleads people, disrupts their experience, or steals their personal information.

The platform did not reply to a request for comment.

Bellingcat said that it reported the problem to X but, as of the time of writing, the link is still labeled as spam. This hasn't been the case on other social media platforms, researchers added.

The groups founder, Eliot Higgins, said in a post on X that the latest article about the Russian bombing of a children's hospital is the only Bellingcat link that shows the warning.

You have to wonder if this is deliberate censorship from the so-proclaimed free speech absolutist, Higgins said.

According to him, this is not the first time Bellingcat has been censored on X in the Musk-era. Last year, X seemed to shadow-ban the group after their post saying that the alleged perpetrator of the Texas mass shooting had far-right leanings.

Musk questioned this statement, accusing the outlet, without evidence, of "specializing in psychological operations."

Following this standoff, X limited the reach of Bellingcat, as its main account temporarily didnt appear in the apps search tool.

Xs latest decision to label Bellingcats article as unsafe plays into Russian disinformation campaigns surrounding the hospital attack.

Following the strike, several Russian social media accounts, including that of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, began to claim that the missile that hit the hospital was American-made and that it had been launched from a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile system.

Russian propagandists have also tried to portray the attack as a legitimate response to alleged Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian facilities.

Russian media widely circulated footage and images of the missile seconds before it hit the hospital, and some local military bloggers even published misleading posts falsely claiming that it was a Ukrainian air defense missile and not an attacking Russian Kh-101 missile, according to a report by the U.S. nonprofit Institute for the Study of War.

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Daryna Antoniuk

is a reporter for Recorded Future News based in Ukraine. She writes about cybersecurity startups, cyberattacks in Eastern Europe and the state of the cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia. She previously was a tech reporter for Forbes Ukraine. Her work has also been published at Sifted, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.

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Bellingcat warns of censorship on X after research on Russian attack is labeled spam - The Record from Recorded Future News

If you dont live under a dictatorship, you expect to have certain rights and freedoms: to enjoy a Western Bacon Cheeseburger during any of Carls Jr.s posted business hours, to sing along to Chappell Roan as loud as you want in your own home and to express yourself however you want, as long as youre not hurting anybody (probably with Chappell Roan lyrics).

Still, supposedly free countries have ruled against artists rights to free speech, free song, free painting, etc.

When rapper BG was released from prison on weapons charges in 2023, one of the conditions of his parole was the submission of any song he intended to record or perform to the government to make sure it wasnt inconsistent with the goals of rehabilitation. Specifically, hesnot allowed to glorify gang life or violence, soooo hes supposed to just get a new job or something. His lawyers are challenging the requirements on First Amendment grounds, but they totally arrested him for performing such songs with Boosie and Gucci Mane, so yes, apparently, they can do that.

In 1989, 2 Live Crew released the albumAs Nasty As They Wanna Be, whose cover featured four nearly naked pairs of womens butts and whose contents upheld this thematic tone. There were probably 12 albums on the shelf just like it this was the 1980s, after all but a Florida judge declared the album obscene, and the group was arrested for performing the songs in a Broward County strip club. Yes, the boob store was deemed an inappropriate place for lyrics about boobs. They were eventually acquitted, but not before dealing with the only reason theyre known today.

Today,The Well of Loneliness would be considered a fairly standard historical romance whose love interests happen to be two women, but it was a pretty big deal in 1928. After it was declared obscene by the British government, author Radclyffe Hall rallied her famous friends to defend the books literary merit, butthey mostly noped out on her. Virginia Woolf herself wrote that she was relieved such a defense wouldnt be permitted because she thought the book kind of sucked. Hall had more luck getting the book published in America, where she gained famous supporters like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who Virginia Woolf also thought kind of sucked.

Naked people rubbing butts has been the most popular subject in art for as long as art has been made, but cave paintings be damned, you couldnt do it in 1966 England. Thats where Stass Paraskos wascharged with lewd and obscene conduct for a Leeds museum exhibit that depicted cartoonish figures in various states of sexy times. He became the last artist successfully prosecuted under those particular laws, but he did have to pay 25 pounds for the trouble, which was probably an artists entire annual income back then.

WhenThe Little Review began publishing James JoycesUlysses in serial form in 1918, the U.S. Post Office responded byburning every copy of the magazine featuring the story that entered the country. You might be thinking, Well, hey, its a little confusing, but its notthat bad, but the issue wasnt quality. In particular, a scene in which protagonist Leopold Bloom masturbates while a young woman exposes herself to him got its publishers arrested and eventually convicted on the grounds that the story could deprave and corrupt young minds.

The novel wasnt published in the U.S. again until 1933, when it was unbanned as a result of theUnited States v. One Book Called Ulysses. We really dont name our court cases sassily enough anymore.

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5 Times the Courts Chose Censorship - Cracked.com

University says project will continue research on 2024 election misinformation

The status of Stanford Universitys controversial Internet Observatory, a research group accused of participating in social media censorship, appears unclear after recent conflicting reports about its future.

A recent report by the tech newsletter Platformer suggested the observatory may be closing after several key staffers, including founding director Alex Stamos, left or did not have their contracts renewed.

Other news outlets reported the observatory was collaps[ing] under pressure, being wound down and closing. Some popular social media posts suggested it was being permanently shut down.

However, the university contradicted those reports in a recent statement on the observatorys website.

Stanford has not shut down or dismantled SIO as a result of outside pressure, it stated. SIO does, however, face funding challenges as its founding grants will soon be exhausted. As a result, SIO continues to actively seek support for its research and teaching programs under new leadership.

SIO will continue its critical work through the publication of the Journal of Online Trust & Safety, the Trust & Safety Research Conference, and the Trust & Safety Teaching Consortium, it stated.

Furthermore, the observatorys staff will be conducting research on misinformation during the 2024 election, according to the statement.

The observatory is a non-partisan, on-campus political research group that focuses on the misuse of social media, including issues related to elections and COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, according to its website.

But it has faced criticism for its role in a joint project called the Election Integrity Partnership with the University of Washington during the 2020 and 2022 elections. Its purpose was to defend our elections against those who seek to undermine them by exploiting weaknesses in the online information environment. However, reports allege the universities frequently collaborated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in order to censor what they viewed as misinformation online.

According to the Stanfords recent statement, its SIO project will continue under new leadership. It also stated Stanford remains deeply concerned about congressional and legal efforts to undermine the legitimacy of much needed academic research at universities across the country.

University spokesperson Mara Vandlik directed The College Fix to the statement in an email Wednesday in response to multiple inquiries about the observatorys future. Vandlik did not respond to a follow-up email asking for more details about the observatorys 2024 election research and the online censorship accusations.

Meanwhile, a receptionist at the university presidents office told The Fix on Wednesday to send its questions via email, but the office did not respond to the email.

Matt Taibbi, who has written extensively about online censorship as the publisher of Racket News, said he would not be too quick to celebrate if the Stanford Internet Observatory truly is closing.

Rumors persist that even more aggressive EIP-type programs are in development for use in this cycle, perhaps not under Stanfords roof, but somewhere, using some of the same personnel and making use of support from deep-pocketed funders of anti-disinformation programs, he wrote in a recent article on his substack.

Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project and former chief counsel for nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, said he also thinks censorship problems are more wide-spread.

College campuses are the central battlefield for Americans freedom to speak their mind. A culture of censorship is pervasive at college campuses, and theres no reason to believe this was an isolated incident, he told The Fix in a statement via email this week.

MORE: Universities get $3 million from feds after helping government censor election integrity stories

According to a Real Clear Investigations report, the Election Integrity Partnership surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts and collected from the cooperating government and non-governmental entities that it calls its stakeholders. According to the report, this could be a potential violation of social media platforms policies concerning election speech.

Team members of the partnership would highlight a piece of offending social media content, or narrative consisting of many offending posts, by creating a ticket, and share it with other relevant participants by tagging them, according to the report.

This would then prompt social media companies to take action by removing the content outright, reducing its spread, or informing users about dubious posts by slapping corrective or contextualizing labels on them, the report states.

During the 2020 election cycle, EIP generated a total of 639 tickets, covering some 4,784 unique URLs disproportionately related to the delegitimization of election results, according to the report.

Platforms such as Twitter, Google, and Facebook responded to tagged tickets at a response rate of 75 percent or higher; the platforms labeled, removed, or soft-blocked 35 percent of the URLs shared through EIP, the report states.

Taibbi wrote the EIP scheme occurred on as many as 10 different platforms, including Twitter, now known as X. However, Stanford has outright denied its actions of switchboarding and censorship, he wrote.

According to Taibbi, Stanford also wrongly claimed the Election Integrity Partnership did not receive direct requests from the Department of Homeland Securitys Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to eliminate or censor tweets and did not make recommendations to the platforms about what actions they should take.

According to Taibbi, a U.S. House committee investigation, led by Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, found 75 instances of the EIP ticketing system specifically using the words recommendation or we recommend.

Imagine the arrogance of denying that one makes concrete recommendations while sitting on a pile of documents doing exactly that, Taibbi wrote.

As for not receiving direct requests to eliminate or censor tweets, he wrote, a combination of emails Jordans team dug up and documents we ourselves either had in the Twitter Files or obtained via FOIA made it clear that the EIPs labyrinthine reporting system was designed so the government could deny it originated complaints, while EIP could deny it received complaints from the government.

Moreover, Taibbi wrote EIPs opinion on removing content had a large effect on whether a social media platform decided to remove the content.

The EIP even allegedly chastised sites like YouTube that expressed hesitancy about removing misleading content, according to Taibbi.

Additionally, the observatory is being sued. One case accuses the university of conspiracy with the federal government to violate the First Amendment rights of social media users, The Fix reported.

MORE: Stanford flagged thousands of election social media posts with Homeland Security

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Stanford insists Internet Observatory, which engaged in election-time censorship, will stay open - The College Fix

Turkey blocked 219,054 URLs (website addresses) in 2023, with corruption and misconduct-related news being the most frequently targeted, a report released on Wednesday revealed. The report was presented during a panel organised by the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA) and Free Web Turkey on Friday in Istanbul.

The Free Web Turkey 2023 Internet Censorship Report details that 14,680 news articles were blocked, primarily covering corruption involving public officials and individuals close to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Additionally, the report highlights that censorship extended to domain names, social media posts, accounts and even Google reviews.

Journalist Diren Yurtsever from Mezopotamya Agency stated, As our news gets censored, we produce even more. Yurtsever emphasised that 35 of their articles have faced access restrictions, mainly those addressing human rights violations and corruption involving government-appointed trustees.

Panellist Furkan Karabey underscored the gravity of media suppression, saying, No power can rule for long with such illegality. Journalists must persist in reporting the truth. He added that censorship infringes on the publics right to be informed, and journalists must steadfastly uphold their duty to report the truth.

Yiit Gnay, Chief Editor of Sol news portal, called for a more robust media presence and resistance against censorship. Despite years of pressure, Kurdish media continues to work. Those trying to stifle free press cannot break the chain surrounding it, he highlighted.

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Censorship report reveals extensive media suppression in Turkey - Medya News