And let us not single out only Trump. At the Pentagon, since March, reporters have been required to have escorts in areas where they previously moved freely. At the Department of Justice, journalists from the *Washington Post*, *Wall Street Journal*, and *New York Times* received subpoenas compelling them to testify about their sources in investigations into leaks of classified information, thereby making investigative journalism nearly impossible. Looking back, in 2009, the Obama administration attempted to exclude Fox News from an interview with a U.S. Treasury representative. In 2021, it was revealed that the Biden administration had explicitly asked social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to immediately remove certain posts or accounts.

The issue extends beyond US borders. In France, journalist Ariane Lavrilleux’s “Egypt Papers” investigation—which exposed a French intelligence operation in Egypt—prompted the Public Prosecutor’s Office to seek the reopening of her case and the removal of already published material from the internet. In the UK, the proscription of the organization Palestine Action means that publicly expressing support for the group can now result in a prison sentence. Across the EU, access to 27 Russian media outlets is restricted due to the “risk of manipulation” and the “destabilization” of the Union. And in Romania, there is no need to recount the uproar over Russian manipulation surrounding the 2024 election annulment, the dozens of exorbitant fines issued by the CNA—which threaten to drive media outlets into bankruptcy—or the *Dăruiește Viață* case, in which Liviu Alexa, Victor Ciutacu, Ioan Korpoș, and Iosefina Pascal faced combined penalties totaling hundreds of thousands of euros. In the first six months of 2026, Media Freedom Rapid Response recorded 736 incidents of censorship, violence, or intimidation affecting 1,174 journalists across Europe.

What links all these cases on both sides of the Atlantic is the reflex to sideline press freedom in the name of public safety. It involves the very same citizen whom the state appears to deem incapable of discerning—on their own—what is real and what is false, what is right and what is wrong. Censorship thus becomes a noble cause for a state that still claims to be democratic. When the designated enemy is sufficiently dangerous, and concepts like “manipulation” and “disinformation” are invoked without restraint, many citizens gladly accept restrictions on press freedom. In doing so, they can demonstrate that they are the smart ones—standing on the right side of history, having known from the start how to uphold the “acceptable” truth. The polarization fostered by media institutions—with the complicity of the politicians and billionaires who fund them—has created an atmosphere of unease and entrenched opinion: the more people access information carefully curated by algorithms, the more evident it becomes that they are, in fact, missing out on what truly matters.

I am not claiming that things are better in authoritarian countries; clearly, they are worse. However, the gap between the practices of democratic governments and authoritarian ones is narrowing. And what is most troubling—at least to me—is that as private companies enter this arena, the curtailing of freedom is also becoming a means of enrichment for the billionaires we have grown accustomed to over recent decades.

An almost perfect example is Objection AI, launched on April 15, 2026, with funding from Peter Thiel (of Palantir and PayPal) and Balaji Srinivasan (of Coinbase)—both proponents of a techno-feudal future where nation-states cease to exist and power is assumed by their technological products (I explain this concept in detail in the book *The Geopolitical Power Barometer and the New World Order* or in the article “Geopolitics Today (34): What is Techno-feudalism and How Did It Spark the US Protests?” – *Solid News*). The story stems from an earlier move by Thiel: between 2012 and 2016, he secretly provided $10 million in funding for the lawsuit filed by wrestler Hulk Hogan against the publication *Gawker*, which had released an intimate recording of him and his mistress. Hogan won the case, and *Gawker* went bankrupt. Objection AI seeks to industrialize the process of challenging published media content: for a fee ranging from $2,000 to $15,000, anyone can subject a published statement to scrutiny, hoping to inflict damage on the media outlet involved. An AI model extracts verifiable claims, a human investigator—often a former CIA or FBI agent—validates them, and a jury of language models, including ChatGPT, Claude, Mistral, and Grok, casts a vote: true, false, or insufficient evidence.

To demonstrate its mechanism, Objection fabricated its own test cases and issued private verdicts on media controversies. For instance, it declared CNN’s portrayal of the ivermectin taken by Joe Rogan as a veterinary product to be false, and it rejected Candace Owens’ claim that Brigitte Macron was biologically male. However, these decisions lacked the force of court rulings. The first real case paid for by a client—Michael Sackler, an heir to the family behind Purdue Pharma (the maker of OxyContin!!), acting against journalist Gary Baum—never even reached a verdict; the platform suspended its mechanism and pivoted, without explanation, to a different product: Primary.

Primary aims to build a permanent reputational rating for journalists and publications. The company describes it as an “IMDb for journalists”: each article is analyzed by AI models, and the journalist receives a score between 0 and 1,000 based on criteria such as source quality, expertise, tone, transparency, accuracy, and the granting of a right of reply. At its launch, Primary claimed to have analyzed over two million articles and more than 20,000 journalists. The company’s ambition extends beyond fact-checking: the scores could eventually be used by readers, publications, researchers, AI systems, and advertisers to determine the level of trust the press deserves. Furthermore, the system explicitly penalizes the use of anonymous sources—without which many investigative reports would not exist. In practice, only official sources are deemed “the most accurate”—similar to the mechanism used by the CNA, for instance—at a time when trust in official sources is at an all-time low and the demand for alternative media is at an all-time high.

This is where the assault on press freedom, the curtailing of access to diverse opinions, and the highly profitable future envisioned by tech moguls converge. Why choose for yourself which journalist to read if AI can decide who is telling the truth? Why figure out for yourself who to vote for if ChatGPT or Grok already know you well enough to determine who would appeal to you? Objection and Primary may seem like extreme examples, but we are at the dawn of a major global shift. The IMF estimates that, over the next decade, 60% of jobs in advanced economies will be affected by AI, while 41% of employers surveyed by the WEF expect to reduce staff in areas where AI can replicate existing roles. This shift is already being felt in the media: major companies are developing AI editors capable of producing more content, much faster. This content will bring its own set of problems, given that we are all aware of the errors AI models can make and how the biases of those at parent companies can find their way into algorithms. If serious analysts are censored, driven into bankruptcy, or blackmailed without any reaction from the very people whose democracy they defend, we will end up with a hollow, insipid imitation of democracy—a population that has lost the habit of thinking for itself, and the perfect environment for the techno-feudal world of tech billionaires.

By Daria Gusa

www.solidnews.ro