Michael Shellenberger Sounds the Alarm: Leftists Are Pushing for Global Speech Censorship

The Democratic Party, and the global Left in general, spent the last five years crying about "mis/disinformation" and the need for more oversight of social media platforms and the Internet in general. It is anathema to the people who think they are our moral and intellectual superiors that we might say, write, or think things with which they disagree.

In moves that would make George Orwell turn over in his grave, the Biden administration tried to force the "Disinformation Governance Board" on America. Turns out that board was born after a 2022 speech given by former President Barack Obama at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center — a speech that pushed for broad censorship of the Internet.

Michael Shellenberger is now sounding the alarm that global censorship is coming unless we stop it.

In 2022, Obama gave a speech at Stanford Cyber Policy Center advocating sweeping censorship of the Internet. Now, Public has discovered the same Center last month hosted a secret meeting with EU, UK, Brazil, & Australia officials to plot global censorship — including of the US. pic.twitter.com/Zr03Wj2OxE
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) October 28, 2025

Here's more from Shellenberger:

In the spring of 2022, former President Barack Obama gave a major policy address at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, where he laid out a sweeping proposal for government censorship of social media platforms through the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act. Six… pic.twitter.com/dBfnJrZhWX
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) October 28, 2025

The entire post is long, but we'll highlight the most salient (and alarming) points:

But now, foreign governments, including Europe, the UK, Brazil, Australia, and others are demanding censorship, including of the American people. The risk is that US tech companies will find it significantly less expensive to have a single global censorship regime and just go along with foreign censorship requests. Facebook complied with Biden administration demands to censor because it needed Biden’s help in dealing with European censorship officials. And the Brazilian government forced Elon Musk to continue censoring the Brazilian people after it froze Starlink’s assets.
And Public has discovered that the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, which is led by Obama’s former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, is at the heart of a new, secretive, and possibly illegal censorship initiative that appears even more ambitious than the one Obama proposed in 2022.
On September 24, the Cyber Policy Center hosted a secret dinner between its leaders and top censorship officials from Europe, UK, Brazil, California and Australia. The meeting was titled “Compliance and Enforcement in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape.” Frank McCourt, the same person behind the Stanford Internet Observatory, financed the gathering through his “Project Liberty Institute,” (PLI), toward which he gave $500 million to “strengthen democracy” and “foster responsible technology.”
...
All of this is happening in a context of global censorship intensifying. The UK government arrests 30 people per day for “offensive” social media posts, is attempting to censor 4Chan, which has no servers in the UK, and will mandate digital IDs for employment, which may give unprecedented control to politicians and bureaucrats to censor. The Brazilian government has, for years, been censoring journalists and policymakers, incarcerating people for legal social media content, and threatening prosecution of journalists, including this author. And several European nations are censoring and arresting their citizens, preventing opposition political candidates from running for office, and preparing to implement digital IDs.
Why did Stanford Cyber Policy Center hold this meeting, what is its strategy for global censorship? Who leaked the agenda to Public and why? And what can be done to stop Stanford, Brazil, Australia, the EU and others from realizing their totalitarian censorial vision?

Earlier this year, 60 Minutes ran a glowing story about Germany and its anti-free speech laws, praising the nation for confiscating phones and arguing that free speech "needs boundaries." This came right after CBS anchor Margaret Brennan bizarrely claimed Hitler "weaponized" free speech to justify the Holocaust. The opposite, of course, was true. The oppressive speech restrictions imposed by the Weimar Republic gave Hitler power precisely because his speech was — to quote the Germans — verboten.

Many Democrats are on record opposing free speech. Kamala Harris objected to Elon Musk (and, presumably, the rest of us) being able to talk to millions on social media "without oversight." Her running mate, Tim Walz, wanted a Minnesota "hate speech" registry where supporting author J.K. Rowling would be enough to get you listed for thought crimes. Hillary Clinton lamented that Leftists "lose control" when social media isn't regulated (even Cenk Uygur called her out for it) and demanded prison time for those who spread "propaganda" online.

But the most relevant and revealing is John Kerry admitting the First Amendment is a "roadblock" to the globalists who are just itching to silence us.

And that's what this is all about: the Left hates the free exchange of thought, ideas, and speech precisely because they can't control it. So they return to authoritarianism and a push for worldwide censorship. We must not, cannot, allow them to succeed.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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