It’s no secret that our news and information sources have become overwhelmingly controlled by a handful of powerful corporations. These tech giants make their fortunes by monetizing your data, tracking your every click, and crafting search algorithms that shape how you see the world. In the process, your privacy vanishes, and your choices shrink. But what if it didn’t have to be this way? A new player, Freespoke, is offering an alternative, taking a stand against Big Tech with a bold vision for a fairer, more private internet.

Freespoke is one company offering solutions to these problems and pioneering a path away from Big Tech/Google’s monopoly on information. Return sat down with Kristin Jackson of Freespoke to discuss her company’s solutions to these problems in today’s online information environment.

'Every dictator in our history has known that if they can control information, they can control their people.'

The people at Freespoke noticed a considerable amount of media bias in mainstream search engines like Google. It is most likely impossible to eradicate this issue, so Freespoke does the next best thing: It labels media bias while also highlighting “multiple viewpoints.” Freespoke labels content “left, right, and middle,” but it also has alternative labels such as a “faith label” and an “independent label.” Freespoke seeks to level the media bias when you search for your news: “We've added an element to make sure you're getting different viewpoints in your search results.”

It also makes it easy to find controversial topics on the search engine since the developers know that those topics may be the most skewed to one point of view. For example, they've made it very easy to find stories surrounding elections: “We focus [on election information] because we know election-related information is an area where people aren't sure Google is telling them the full story.”

Another hallmark of Freespoke is that it “prioritizes American-made businesses” to give it a chance to fight against its biggest competitors. The developers want to support “that American ideal of a small business owner being the backbone of an economy.” They see this as a key to revitalizing the American economy from the bottom up: “We don't have strong national supply chains because we just haven't been supporting our small business owners and haven't been making sure they can get in front of a population and sell their goods.” This part of the search engine is beneficial for bringing American businesses to more people’s attention.

That’s not all Freespoke has to offer. It is also a pornography-free search engine, making it safe for all ages. Jackson said they weren’t initially sure how they would make this a reality, but then they just decided, “Let's just not show pornography.” From “day one,” they did not have porn on their search engine.

While these are all great search engine features, Freespoke “built a search engine based on privacy.” Privacy was the defining element of their vision for an alternative search engine.

“I will tell you that as a company, we believe protecting your privacy is important to you — it’s important to us and should be important to you. And in Freespoke, you can know from day one, as long as we exist, that we are going to stand by that principle of protecting your privacy.”

What sets Freespoke apart from other third-party search engines that offer privacy? Not only is it fully committed to protecting your privacy, but it also offers a bias labeling service that provides a more even playing field (not to mention being porn-free and emphasizing American companies). You get the best of both worlds with its service, as the website says: “Freespoke is here to show you what other search engines won’t and protect your privacy in ways they refuse.”

Freespoke is offering an alternative vision for the future of search engines. It must offer bias labeling and data protection since both issues are important to address in today’s media environment. There is also a more pressing issue that the developers are trying to combat. Freespoke understands what happens when one person or group controls the information for a person, and it never ends well:

“Every dictator in our history has known that if they can control information, they can control their people. And so we have to make sure one organization does not control our information.”

Google, Gavin Newsom, and a woke university will partner on news and journalism. What could go wrong?

Last Wednesday, California’s state legislature announced a $250 million deal to partner with the big tech giant Google to fund local journalism and artificial intelligence research. In a draft summary released to Politico, the bill aims to “strengthen democracy and the future of work in an Artificial Intelligence future through a public-private partnership between Google and the state of California. Canada, France, and others have passed similar legislation to fund newsrooms in their countries, but California’s marks the first of these public-private partnerships in America.

Amidst declining demand for journalists and increasing layoffs in the industry, Google will contribute $55 million and California’s taxpayers will contribute $70 million toward the University of California, Berkeley, School of Journalism’s “News Transformation Fund” to provide financial resources to local newsrooms over the course of five years.

Instead of being charged for utilizing local news outlets’ content, Google acts as a quasi-investor, allowing the company to potentially advocate for its big tech agenda by shaping the direction of journalism to fit its narrative.

Google will also continue to provide $10 million annual grants to newsrooms, in addition to millions more for an AI accelerator program that proponents of the legislation claim will allow journalists to use and adapt to new technologies.

In a statement, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) wrote, “This agreement represents a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and bolstering local journalism across California — leveraging substantial tech industry resources without imposing new taxes on Californians," and added that "the deal not only provides funding to support hundreds of new journalists but helps rebuild a robust and dynamic California press corps for years to come, reinforcing the vital role of journalism in our democracy."

However, others worry that the current iteration gives too much power to Google and that the added funding for the AI program will do more harm than good to journalists.

Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit advocating for aggressive antitrust and anti-monopoly policies, threw shade at the deal, calling it a “backroom deal” that “is bad for journalists, publishers, and all Californians.”

Union leaders, including leaders of the Media Guild of the West, the NewsGuild-CWA, and others also released a statement titled, “California's journalists do not consent to this shakedown” to voice their opposition to the bill since “the future of journalism should not be decided in backroom deals.”

“After two years of advocacy for strong antimonopoly action to start turning around the decline of local newsrooms, we are left almost without words,” they stated. “The publishers who claim to represent our industry are celebrating an opaque deal involving taxpayer funds, a vague AI accelerator project that could very well destroy journalism jobs, and minimal financial commitments from Google to return the wealth this monopoly has stolen from our newsrooms.”

Previously, Google staunchly opposed iterations of the bill and claimed that it would “put support of the news ecosystem at risk.” The original bill would have forced Google and other big tech giants to contribute a portion of their advertising revenues to local journalists and newsrooms in exchange for their content, whereas the current bill relies on a public-private partnership.

Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s vice president of global news partnerships, said that the previous bill would “create a ‘link tax’ that would require Google to pay for simply connecting Californians to news articles. … If passed,” Zaidi added, the bill “may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers.”

So Google decided to retaliate and temporarily blocked and blacklisted local outlets’ content from appearing in its searches, emulating its own tactics in response to similar legislation in other countries.

Later, California gave up and stripped the bill of its tax and replaced it with the current public-private partnership. As a result, Google and other big tech giants cheered for the bill’s success since the current iteration essentially grants Google access to influence local news outlets’ content in exchange for some funding, further expanding the company's monopoly power.

Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, praised California lawmakers and the tech and news industry for collaborating to support local journalism. “This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy,” Walker said.

Similarly, Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer for OpenAI, stated, “A strong press is a key pillar of democracy, and [OpenAI] is proud to be part of this partnership to utilize AI in support of local journalism across America.”

How Google's newest Orwellian censorship tool will destroy democracy

Google really cares about your safety, or that’s the narrative we are being sold.

Its latest initiative,Altitude, marks a significant step in the fight against online “extremism.” Developed by its subsidiary Jigsaw, in partnership with Tech Against Terrorism and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, Altitude is promoted as a cutting-edge solution for monitoring and removing violent extremist content from the internet. While Altitude is presented as a neutral and comprehensive tool for addressing online threats, the reality of this initiative raises significant concerns.

As Google’s influence continues to grow, so does the potential for misuse of its technologies. The company's track record of privacy invasions, data exploitation, and narrative suppression highlights a troubling trend: the control of information is becoming increasingly centralized and biased.

After all, this is Google we are talking about, a company that is as problematic as it is powerful. In fact, it could be argued that Google is the most powerful force on the planet. Its pervasive presence shapes not only how we access information but also how we perceive and understand it. A U.S. judge recently ruled that Google breached antitrust laws by investing billions of dollars to establish an illegal monopoly. Ultimately, it has become the world's default search engine. This is rather alarming, especially if you happen to lean right on the political spectrum.

Speaking of dangerous extremism, Google's AI chatbot Gemini evenavoids answering questions about the shooting of former President Donald Trump, citing its policy on election-related issues. When asked to give details on the assassination attempt, Gemini responded, "I can't help with responses on elections and political figures right now." One wonders what it might have said if the target had been President Biden. One needn’t wonder very hard, of course.

These issues are emblematic of a broader trend within Google. The company's approach to content moderation and news dissemination has repeatedly come under scrutiny for its lack of transparency and potential for manipulation. For instance, in 2020, at the height of the pandemic-related pandemonium, Google was reported to have removed several conservative news outlets from its search results and YouTube recommendations. This was not merely a technical oversight but a deliberate act of censorship that distorted the flow of information. Similarly, Google has faced criticism for altering its search algorithms in a way that promotes certain left-leaning viewpoints while suppressing others. These actions underscore an ongoing pattern of selective information management that reflects a broader ideological bias.

Which brings us back to the aforementioned Altitude, which centralizes the power to flag and remove content deemed too extreme. While the tool is being sold as a means of enhancing online safety, it also opens the door to potential abuse. The criteria for what constitutes extremist content are not transparent, perhaps by design, thus creating opportunities for political and ideological enforcement. Given Google's demonstrated biases, there is a very real risk that Altitude could reinforce existing prejudices rather than address extremism impartially. This centralization of power could easily be repurposed to suppress dissenting voices and control public discourse, exacerbating the very issues it aims to address.

Google’s history of collusion with governments further amplifies these concerns. The company has faced criticism for cooperating with state censorship requests, particularly in authoritarian regimes. Moreover, Google’s removal of the “Don’t Be Evil” clause from its code of conduct — swapping in the motto “Organizing the World’s Information” — only adds to the skepticism surrounding its commitment to ethical practices.

By centralizing content moderation under the Altitude umbrella, Google is amplifying its role as a gatekeeper of information, suppressing viewpoints that challenge prevailing narratives. This centralization could transform tools designed to combat extremism into instruments for enforcing political and ideological conformity. Also, it’s important to remember that the word “extremist” no longer applies to crazed Islamic terrorists. It now applies to respectable individuals who dare question the overarching, pre-approved narrative. Extremism has never looked so bland.

The broader implications of these developments are profound. As Google’s influence continues to grow, so does the potential for misuse of its technologies. The company's track record of privacy invasions, data exploitation, and narrative suppression highlights a troubling trend: The control of information is becoming increasingly centralized and biased. The stakes for privacy and free expression are high, and the need for transparency and accountability is critical.

Maintaining democratic values and safeguarding individual freedoms requires vigilance and a commitment to transparency. As powerful technologies continue to shape public discourse and influence societal beliefs, advocating for a more balanced and accountable approach to information control is paramount. But advocacy can only go so far. It is the responsibility of lawmakers to take real action. Specifically, lawmakers with a conscience.

If Kamala Harris, adarling of Silicon Valley, were to become president, the consolidation of power within tech giants like Google would only deepen. Don’t forget that its parent company, Alphabet, is anavid supporter of Democrats and regularly pumps tens of millions of dollars into the political party. As November draws closer, Americans on both sides of the political divide would do well to remember that Google is not your friend. Its desire to paint itself as an unbiased teller of truth is little more than a pernicious lie. Altitude will harm us, not help us.

BIG CHANGE COMING: Facebook, Google, and X announce they will ELIMINATE their news divisions, but Blaze Media has some changes of its own…

There’s a big change coming in the news media industry, and according to Glenn Beck, conservative platforms like Blaze Media will most likely not benefit from these changes.

Nothing surprising there. However, there’s a silver lining.

Platforms like Facebook, Google, and X “look for the big stories of the day, and then they give you a rundown of them. They put them and push them into people’s threads, and people get their news that way,” says Glenn.

But that’s all going away apparently.

Over the weekend, Facebook announced that it would be eliminating its news division, and it looks like Google, X, and Instagram are planning to follow suit.

“That means that they’re not gonna be pushing stories out from the mainstream media from corporate,” says Glenn.

“That’s going to hurt the mainstream media a great deal,” he continues.

But before you celebrate, there’s a downside to consider.

“If I understand this correctly,” says Glenn, “they are going to let people repost news” instead.

What’s unclear is whether these mega corporations “are going to stop organizations like Blaze from actually publishing our news,” says Glenn, adding that as of now, “we’re not really sure what this means.”

“I don’t think it means anything really good for our side because it never does,” he laments.

Granted that Blaze Media has been “battling with these media groups forever” — groups that “have so many different tools that they use to silence stories and voices that they don’t like” — it’s unlikely these coming changes will benefit conservative media outlets.

“Even now, my Facebook page is throttled more than we’ve seen in a very long time,” adds Glenn, meaning that “the things that I’m posting to Facebook and other platforms are not getting to you.”

You may be wondering what exactly the silver lining is.

Well, let’s just say Blaze Media has been making some changes of its own.

“We have a big announcement, ... and tomorrow we’ll let you know what we’ve been working on,” teases Glenn.

Come back tomorrow to learn about the exciting changes Blaze Media has in store! See you then.

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Google censors searches for Kyle Rittenhouse in the same way it bans Adolf Hitler and the Taliban

A unanimous jury found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty on all of the counts that he had been facing. Rittenhouse was acquitted of first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, and attempted first-degree intentional homicide. Despite his proven innocence in a court of law, Google censors Kyle Rittenhouse in the same manner it withholds certain searches for Adolf Hitler and the Taliban.

As of Sunday evening, when you do a Google search of "Kyle Rittenhouse shirt" on the tech platform's shopping tab, you receive a message that states: "Your search — Kyle Rittenhouse shirt — did not match any shopping results."

Oddly enough, right below the message was a paid advertisement from a company selling 20 different Kyle Rittenhouse shirts.

Google Screenshot

It turns out that all of big tech's major search engines are banning Kyle Rittenhouse shirts on their shopping marketplaces, including Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Bing.

However, there is no shortage of the product. A quick Google search finds 29,600 results for the search of "Kyle Rittenhouse shirt."

Google has no issues selling shirts with serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal sex offender who killed at least 17 men in Wisconsin, John Wayne Gacy, who was convicted of murdering at least 33 young men and boys, and Ted Bundy, who raped and murdered at least 20 young women and girls.

On Google shopping, you can purchase clothes featuring Che Guevara, a homophobic and racist Marxist revolutionary; Pol Pot, leader of the Marxist Khmer Rouge that killed more than 1.7 million people through work, starvation, and torture in four years; Joseph Stalin, the Russian communist despot believed to have killed 20 million; and Chairman Mao, the Chinese communist tyrant that killed 45 million in four years.

The big tech shopping platform has no problem selling shirts celebrating Antifa, which contributed to the record-high damages in the 2020 riots. Google also has no issues with apparel praising Rene Boucher, the convicted neighbor of Rand Paul who attacked the Republican senator and broke his ribs in 2017.

Besides Kyle Rittenhouse, the only other search terms that were found to be seemingly banned from Google shopping were "Adolf Hitler," "Nazi," "Taliban," "QAnon," and "Proud Boys."

Joe Rogan says Google is 'hiding information' about vaccine-related deaths — and he stopped using Google as a search engine

Mega-popular podcaster Joe Rogan said that Google is "hiding information" about vaccine-related deaths — and that he's ceased using Google as a search engine.

What are the details?

In an interview last week with former New York Times writer Alex Berenson — who's taken heat for raising red flags about COVID-19 vaccines and America's response to the pandemic — Rogan revisited the false narrative from the likes of CNN that he was taking "horse dewormer" to cure his COVID infection when a doctor legitimately prescribed him ivermectin, the Daily Wire said.

"What is the source of all this? What's the epicenter of bulls**t?" Rogan asked, according to the outlet, adding, "Specifically in my case, where they're saying, 'horse dewormer.' Like why? Who's doing that?"

Berenson replied that pollsters are looking at focus groups and that "when they're talking about 'horse dewormer,' there's somebody out there who's spending a couple million dollars a month or whatever it is to make sure ... 'Oh, this is not for humans, it's for animals.' They are testing all that language, and that is one reason why it sounds so similar," the Daily Wire said.

Rogan replied with a doozy of a claim concerning Google and his use of it:

It's one of the reasons I stopped using Google to search things, too. They're doing something to curate information. Where, like, if I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to DuckDuckGo. I wasn't finding them on Google. And I'm like, "OK, well this is crazy." Like, "you guys are hiding information." I'm looking for very specific people and very specific cases, and I'm getting CDC websites, and I'm getting articles on the disinformation attached to vaccines, and vaccines being safe and effective, which for the most part they are — just like peanuts are safe and effective for the most part, you know?

Joe Rogan says he stopped using Google to search things because they are hiding information https://t.co/BzNzi70kop
— An0maly (@LegendaryEnergy) 1634531479.0

Rogan on the warpath

Rogan also has been counterpunching quite a bit of late:

A day after his interview with Berenson, he brutally took to task CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta over his network's "lie" that Rogan took "horse dewormer" to battle his COVID-19 infection.

"Does it bother you that the news network you work for out-and-out lied?" Rogan asked him. "Just outright lied about me taking horse dewormer?"

Gupta confessed, "They shouldn't have said that."

Yet later on Wednesday, CNN's Don Lemon interviewed Gupta about his chat with Rogan, and the pair completely glossed over Rogan's assertion that network 'lied' about him taking horse dewormer, as Lemon put on a spin-and-semantics clinic.

Even CNN contributor Mary Katharine Ham ripped the cable network Friday for its "dishonest" reporting on Joe Rogan and ivermectin.

"Rogan is right that it's dishonest to say he took horse dewormer when he did not. It was irresistible to dunk on him for a lot of people, so they went with that instead of sticking to 'hey, this anti-parasitic isn't recommended for COVID treatment,' which would've been credible," Ham wrote on social media, adding that CNN's inaccurate "horse dewormer" framing was "horses**t."

Google and YouTube will remove monetization and prohibit ads from content that questions global warming

Google and YouTube announced that they will take measures to strip online content of revenue producing opportunities if they express skepticism about global warming.

In a statement from Google's ad team on Thursday, the massive online company said they would deny ad revenue from content that contradicts "well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change."

Google says the new policy is in response to advertisers expressing frustration that their ads are appearing on content they disagree with.

"Advertisers simply don't want their ads to appear next to this content," the company said. "And publishers and creators don't want ads promoting these claims to appear on their pages or videos."

The new policy will be implemented through a mix of human review and automated tools.

The company appeared to claim that not all skeptical content will be demonetized, but that they will carefully distinguish "between content that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim."

Big tech companies have come under fire for what some say is selective enforcement of their censorship policies to police those on the right while allowing left-leaning speech free rein.

"There is a huge risk, I mean, for one they're not particularly accountable except through your ability to sign off of the platform or sign on," said Kate Klonick, a law professor at St. John's University, to CNBC.

"There's no kind of vote, there's no type of representative, there's no way to weigh in on what the rules should be or shouldn't be. There are not even a lot even a transparency around the rules or how they're enforced, this is something that has just started developing in the last five years at all these companies," she continued.

"And so it's really dangerous when you think about the control that private companies have," Klonick concluded, "but at the same time it's really dangerous to think about what would happen if private companies weren't doing this type of work, and everything that would be going on in these platforms without them."

Axios called the new policy "one of the most aggressive measures any major tech platform has taken to combat climate change misinformation."

Here's more about censorship by big tech companies:

Is the YouTube crackdown censorship?www.youtube.com

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Tired of Big Tech spying? A new search engine, Freespoke, offers unbiased search results

Google, Gavin Newsom, and a woke university will partner on news and journalism. What could go wrong?

How Google's newest Orwellian censorship tool will destroy democracy