A newly empowered government oversight official just promised to uphold free speech.
Beth A. Williams, currently the only member of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Board addressed the 2025 State of the Net Conference, making clear that the era of debanking and government collusion to censor free speech is over. “I’m committed to moving forward rapidly in our current investigation into the government’s efforts to counter speech it labels mis-, dis- and malinformation,” she said.
The U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Board’s stated mission “is to ensure that the federal government’s efforts to prevent terrorism are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.” In this case, that includes preventing unconstitutional government censorship.
Williams continued, “We’ve already seen substantial evidence that the government pressured social media and other companies to censor Americans’ free speech in the name of combating domestic terrorism. Tying disfavored speech to counter-terrorism paves the way for censorship under the guise of national security.”
Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the government put pressure on Facebook to censor content related to Hunter Biden scandals and COVID-19. The Twitter Files have exposed that the government also pressured Twitter to censor a host of COVID-19-related topics.
Researchers have repeatedly found numerous federal agencies involved in censorship. MRC Free Speech America, The Twitter Files, the Murthy v. Missouri lawsuit and the House Judiciary Committee together have exposed no fewer than nine federal agencies that colluded with Big Tech to censor speech. One such censorship program included the Department of Homeland Security’s Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Program which gave $700,000 to push censorship. This came from the same department that created Biden’s infamous Disinformation Governance Board, which Williams called a “public embarrassment.”
In her remarks, Williams promised to investigate behavior like this and work to prevent it in the future. “I am hopeful that our renewed efforts with the current administration will yield more transparency and I hope that we will be able to recommend safeguards to prevent improper government coercion to suppress speech in the future,” she said.
Williams went on to warn of other excesses, including that she hoped to investigate government efforts to pressure banks to debank “disfavored customers.”
Also in attendance at the conference was Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who once again pushed for the imposition of a “duty of care” upon social media companies. Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) used part of his time to go after Big Tech executives who have moved away from censorship and biased fact-checkers over the last few years. Rep. Jay Obernalte (R-CA) discussed artificial intelligence regulation and the pros and cons of former President Joe Biden’s AI executive orders.
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.
