The Trump administration and U.S. military captured accused narcoterrorist and dictator Nicolás Maduro, a long-time censorship enforcer, on Saturday, Jan 3.
There have been reports of Venezuelans celebrating Maduro’s removal, and it is not difficult to understand why. As the hand-picked successor of the infamous socialist dictator Hugo Chávez, Nicholás Maduro continued his predecessor’s policies, including censorship of free speech. Maduro crushed speech in many ways, including by arresting political dissidents and blocking political opponents from elections, but one particularly aggressive censorship push of his was online. Below are just three of the many ways Maduro aggressively crushed Venezuelan’s speech.
- In July 2024, even the Atlantic Council, which was part of the Censorship Industrial Complex in the United States, accused Maduro’s regime of turning Venezuela into “a model for digital authoritarianism.” The Atlantic Council’s report noted that “The Maduro regime blocks websites as a means of controlling access to information and censoring content.”
The report additionally noted that Maduro’s digital enforcer, Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission, has blocked over 100 URLs “including forty-six news sites[, p]olitical commentary and human rights defense websites.” The Atlantic Council report also highlighted that the commission cracked down on specific words and narratives online that were not approved by Maduro’s regime.
- One such website blocked by Maduro was X after Elon Musk breathed a few words of wrongthink. X owner Elon Musk labeled Maduro a dictator and “clown” for remaining in power despite evidence indicating he lost the 2024 Venezuelan election to Edmundo González.
Maduro responded by suspending access to X in Venezuela for 10 days, according to BBC News. Maduro reportedly asserted Musk was “inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death, confrontation of Venezuelans” as justification for temporarily shutting down X access.
- Following that controversial election, Maduro increased his government’s efforts to control online speech. An open letter signed by over two hundred civil society and human rights advocates and organizations accused Maduro’s regime of weaponizing technology tools to enforce “persecution of political dissent, particularly in the wake of the presidential elections of July 28.” This included using messaging app VenApp to identify dissidents, according to the letter. Government security forces also reportedly stopped citizens at random to check their phones and their messaging apps such as WhatsApp.
Notably, as a major reversal, Musk is providing Starlink's broadband service free for the next month in Venezuela following Maduro’s arrest “in support of the people of Venezuela,” he wrote in an X post. “Venezuela can now have the prosperity it deserves,” Musk added in another post on X in Spanish.
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 at the CensorTrack contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
