TLDR: This week’s podcast is up. Governments across the US, UK, EU, India, the Gulf states, Iran, Tanzania and China are pressuring platforms to remove or restrict content, mostly without ever passing a law to make them do it. It is called jawboning. One story, Canada’s Bill C-9, cuts the other way entirely. Full breakdown below, video embedded, all seventy-plus sources linked on the site.
Also: Monday, MONDAY INFLUENCER® is opening up beyond paid subscribers for one issue only, so look out for a special email from me.
They Are Watching. That is not me being dramatic for the sake of it, it is genuinely where this week’s research led me.
Somewhere right now, an official is on the phone with someone inside Facebook, or YouTube, or X, deciding whether something you posted, or something you were about to see, gets to exist tomorrow. No judge, no law, no vote. It has already happened this year, in your country or one very close to it.
I went deep this week. Two independent AI research passes scanned thousands of web pages between them, hunting down every credible thread across a dozen countries, and everything that survived was checked again, directly, before it made it into the video. Where something is disputed, I say so on camera.
The full story covers the White House pressuring Facebook and YouTube on COVID content, the UK’s own Counter Disinformation Unit running daily contact with platforms, a European Commissioner’s letter to Elon Musk that ended his career within weeks, and a hacktivist group turning the exact same tactic back on the EU itself.
Then it goes further than I have gone before: India’s three-hour takedown rule, Gulf states admitting on their own transparency reports that they removed content which broke none of their platform rules, and Iran shutting its own internet down twice in under a year. I also cover the actual formal laws now shaping all of this in the UK, the EU and the US, including a brand new bipartisan bill in the US Senate genuinely called the JAWBONE Act.
And I end on Canada deliberately, because it cuts the other way. A viral claim about Bill C-9 being used retroactively simply does not hold up once you check it properly. Worth knowing, in a week full of governments overreaching, that sometimes the overreach story itself is the exaggeration.
I also give genuine, practical guidance near the end on what is safe to say and what is not, because anger is exactly when people post things they come to regret.
Watch here:
The full written breakdown, with every source linked and organised by region, lives here: https://www.natschooler.com/jawboning-exposed-how-governments-secretly-pressure-social-media-without-passing-a-law/
If this concerned you, do not just sit with it. Send it to one friend.
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