On today’s internet, the boundaries of acceptable speech are set by a few massive platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and a handful of others. If those companies find something unacceptable, it can’t travel far — a restriction that’s had a massive impact for everyone from copyright violators to sex workers. At the same time, vile content that doesn’t violate platform rules can find shockingly broad audiences, leading to a chilling rise in white nationalism and violent misogyny online. After years of outcry, platforms have grown more willing to ban the worst actors online, but each ban comes with a new political fight, and companies are slow to respond in the best of circumstances. As gleeful disinformation figures like Alex Jones gain power — and the sheer scale of these platforms begins to overwhelm moderation efforts — the problems have only gotten uglier and harder to ignore. At the same time, the hard questions of moderation are only getting harder.
That bill is being used as the vehicle for KOSA and COPPA 2.0. They’re basically tucked in as an amendment to this unrelated bill that deals with duplicative reporting requirements for federal agencies.
The Tennessee Republican, another of the bill’s lead sponsors, began her remarks with what KOSA doesn’t do. It doesn’t cover nonprofits, it doesn’t include rule-making, it doesn’t include news outlets, and it doesn’t give the government new authority, she said.
“There’s no censorship in this bill. None. Zero,” the Connecticut Democrat who’s the bill’s lead sponsor said on the Senate floor. “It is about product design. Much as it would be about a car that is unsafe and is required to have seatbelts and airbags.”
The Kentucky Republican said the bill “promises to be pandora’s box of unintended consequences.” He added that “there’s enough to hate this bill from the right and left,” describing, for example, how discussion of sexuality, climate change, and abortion could cause anxiety, which the duty of care mandates platforms try to mitigate.
Here’s what the SCOTUS decision might mean for everything from kids online safety laws to the TikTok ‘ban.’
The board previously said the policy “disproportionately restricts free expression” because while the term is “sometimes used by extremists to praise or glorify people who have died while committing violent terrorist acts,” there are also alternate meanings.
In a test, Meta said, removing the term when “paired with otherwise violating content” captured “the most potentially harmful content without disproportionality impacting voice.”
Correction: Meta said it’s implementing the Board’s recommendations, not seeking further guidance.
[transparency.meta.com]
The New York Times followed the harrowing journey of John Mark Dougan from his time as a deputy sheriff in Palm Beach County, Florida to his new residence in Moscow. From there, he reportedly he runs a vast network of largely AI-generated websites that spout disinformation. He’s apparently managed to build over 160 fake websites, according to The Times.
[The New York Times]
In a WhatsApp groupchat, prominent businessmen discussed how to use their “leverage” to persuade Columbia’s president to call in the NYPD.
Some members, including hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, attended a Zoom meeting with NYC mayor Eric Adams on April 26th. Some participants offered to pay for private investigators to help crack down on protesters, while others promised to donate to Adams’s campaign.
The top two lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ), proposed a new bill to sunset Section 230 protections for the tech industry. It would give Congress about 18 months to create a new framework to replace the legal liability shield for user-generated content, or lose the protection entirely.
Having lost its fight in Congress, TikTok faces a tough battle in US courts and with China’s own export controls.
Protestors wanted to expose Columbia, Columbia exposed its students.
What free speech, war zones, and Aristotle have to do with internet infrastructure.
The Free Speech Coalition, which represents the adult entertainment industry, has asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to keep the Texas age verification law from taking effect while it appeals it to the Supreme Court.
Pornhub disabled its site in the state earlier this month, displaying a message that said providing an ID for an adult website “is not an effective solution for protecting users online.”
The independent body funded by Meta recommended it change its approach to moderating the term “shaheed.” The word “is sometimes used by extremists to praise or glorify people who have died while committing violent terrorist acts,” says the board. But it says there are alternate meanings, not intended to glorify.
The group was finalizing the opinion before the October 7 Hamas attack, but paused publication. Further research confirmed the recommendation “held up.”
Legal blogger Eric Goldman covers a weird (and rightfully smacked down) attempt at getting Section 230 immunity for nonconsensually distributing nude pictures through the mail — including some brief, useful observations on the state of nonconsensual pornography law both on- and offline.
[Technology & Marketing Law Blog]
He explained that the veto was “because the Legislature is about to produce a different, superior bill.” The Florida governor added that he expects that new bill “will be signed into law soon.”
On X, Speaker Paul Renner later posted that the state Senate would hear a new bill, HB3, on Monday, which “will empower parents to control what their children can access online.”
[www.flgov.com]
Corbin Barthold at The Daily Beast has a good piece on Brett Kavanaugh’s role at yesterday’s Supreme Court arguments: the only one in the room (besides NetChoice’s own lawyer) treating government censorship as a unique and serious concern.
Kavanaugh called the states out for trying to turn the First Amendment upside down. “In your opening remarks,” he told Florida’s solicitor general, “you said the design of the First Amendment is to prevent ‘suppression of speech.’ And you left out…three words…, by the government.”
[The Daily Beast]
