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We have been a leading voice on explaining how government over-regulation of online speech threatens free expression, free association, and the open Internet. We’ve explained how increased, and more arbitrary regulation could chill free speech and increase the ability of politicians to manipulate the media, both old and new.
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Opinion Piece
California’s Social Media Bill Flies In The Face Of The First Amendment
California has officially joined the growing list of states attempting to regulate how social media companies run their platforms. The state’s proposed legislation, however, faces a major legal obstacle: the Constitution. California lawmakers are marching ahead with AB 2408, the Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act. On June 28, the Judiciary Committee unanimously ...
Andy Jung
July 19, 2022
Opinion Piece
The Quest for a Better Online “Community”
Remember Justine Sacco? In December 2013, while sitting in Heathrow Airport, she tweeted: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” She had ...
Corbin K. Barthold
May 16, 2022
Opinion Piece
Musk’s Free Speech Crusade
For Elon Musk, coming up with $44 billion was the easy part. What comes next, less so. To the delight of many conservatives, Musk has purchased Twitter and announced that ...
Corbin K. Barthold
April 26, 2022
Opinion Piece
Musk Makes the Mask Slip
Though he has just offered to buy Twitter for around $40 billion, it’s far from clear that Elon Musk knows how to run a social media platform. Speaking about his bid at ...
Corbin K. Barthold
April 17, 2022
Tech Policy Podcast
#322: Noah Phillips
FTC Commissioner
Commissioner Noah Phillips joins the show for a wide-ranging discussion about the Federal Trade Commission. ...
June 2, 2022
Latest Articles
Podcast
The Right and Social Media
Evolving technology—not to mention evolving norms in Silicon Valley—has sparked fierce debate about online speech. Are social media platforms too powerful? Do their content moderation policies strike a good balance between free speech and healthy conversation? Should the government get involved in policing disinformation? In this episode, we home in on how the American Right views these issues. Nate Hochman, an ISI fellow at National Review, and Rachel Altman, TechFreedom’s director of digital ...
May 17, 2022
Opinion Piece
The Quest for a Better Online “Community”
Remember Justine Sacco? In December 2013, while sitting in Heathrow Airport, she tweeted: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” She had 170 Twitter followers. No one reacted to her crude crack at her own entitlement. She boarded her flight. Eleven hours later, she landed in Cape Town and turned on her phone. The first thing she saw was a text message from an old friend: “I’m so sorry to see what’s happening.” While Sacco had been airborne, her tweet ...
Corbin K. Barthold
May 16, 2022
Appearance
Section 230 and Elon Musk
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Andy Jung
May 15, 2022
Opinion Piece
Musk, Twitter, Bluesky & The Future Of Content Moderation (Part II)
What Objectives Should Guide Content Moderation? Even existing alternative social media networks claim to offer the kind of neutrality that Musk contemplates—but have failed to deliver. In June 2020, John Matze, Parler’s founder and then its CEO, proudly declared the site to be an “a community town square, an open town square, with no censorship,” adding, “if you can say it on the street of New York, you can say it on Parler.” Yet that same day, Matze also bragged of ...
Berin Szóka and Ari Cohn
May 4, 2022
Opinion Piece
Musk, Twitter, Why The First Amendment Can’t Resolve Content Moderation (Part I)
Musk wants Twitter to stop making contentious decisions about speech. “[G]oing beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people,” he declares. Just following the First Amendment, he imagines, is what the people want. Is it, though? The First Amendment is far, far more absolutist than Musk realizes. Remember Neo-Nazis with burning torches and screaming “the Jews will not replace us!”? The First Amendment required Charlottesville to allow that demonstration. Some ...
Berin Szóka and Ari Cohn
May 4, 2022
Opinion Piece
Musk’s Free Speech Crusade
For Elon Musk, coming up with $44 billion was the easy part. What comes next, less so. To the delight of many conservatives, Musk has purchased Twitter and announced that he will make the platform “an arena for free speech.” One can almost picture him storming into Twitter HQ, marching downstairs, and kicking in the rusty door to the content-moderation boiler room. Steam blows and bells ring as, with a mighty tug, he dislodges a giant iron lever from the “Less Speech” setting and wrenches ...
Corbin K. Barthold
April 26, 2022
Opinion Piece
Musk Makes the Mask Slip
Though he has just offered to buy Twitter for around $40 billion, it’s far from clear that Elon Musk knows how to run a social media platform. Speaking about his bid at an event last week, Musk mused that people should be “able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.” But a social media product that came to be dominated by anti-Semitism, porn, coordinated abuse, virulent racial animus, and bot-generated foreign propaganda—all forms of speech “within the bounds of the law”—would ...
Corbin K. Barthold
April 17, 2022
Letter
Letter Responding to Commissioner Carr on First Amendment and Section 230
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