A new strategy has emerged for the censorship industry, spearheaded by the Knight-Georgetown Institute. What emerges from Institute’s own materials is not a call for blunt censorship, but something more methodical—and, in some ways, more ambitious. The project it is advancing, in partnership with the Tech Justice Law Project and others, is to use litigation as…
Read article
SUMMARY Established in 2024, the Knight-Georgetown Institute is laser-focused on pushing design changes to social media platforms to limit “toxicity,” “polarization,” and “disinformation.” Its steering council includes James Baker, the FBI’s Russiagate lawyer and formerly chief counsel for Twitter, as well as Alondra Nelson, who oversaw the Biden Administration’s whole-of-government initiative to suppress disfavored online…
Read article
SUMMARY The Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) is a “counter-extremism” research institute housed at American University, founded by Professors Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Brian Hughes In its own words, PERIL was conceived as a political indoctrination project; to “develop an empirically-tested, nationally-scalable intervention to prevent youth from radicalizing to white supremacist extremism” According…
Read article
SUMMARY The Parliament of Wales in the UK passed a law that would make it illegal for political candidates to lie during elections An “independent judicial process” would determine if the Welsh candidate is guilty of lying and therefore should be banned from holding office The law would empower officials to pursue criminal offenses for…
Read article
SUMMARY The Department of Justice has announced the settlement of Missouri v. Biden and Children’s Health Defense v. Biden, two landmark cases that alleged the Biden administration pressured social media companies to suppress disfavored speech by American citizens The settlement continues the Trump administration’s efforts to unwind federal support for online censorship The United States…
Read article
SUMMARY Meta and Tiktok have dropped support for end-to-end encryption, which provides for increased security and privacy, to automated content scanning, AI-powered moderation, and easier compliance with law enforcement TikTok believes that dropping end-to-end encryption makes it easier the spread of illegal material When Meta drops support for end-to-end encryption, it will be able to…
Read article
SUMMARY In March, 405 cybersecurity and privacy experts from 30 countries signed an open letter warning about how mandating age verification could break the internet’s security model. Countries across the world and many states in America have pushed for mandatory age verification at the device, app, or website level. Free speech groups have argued that…
Read article
A European nonprofit that was supported by American taxpayers via the Biden Administration’s office of Public Diplomacy at the State Department, credited civil society for convincing the European Commission to issue its $140 million fine against X, the first such penalty levied under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). “Civil society” is shorthand for the…
Read article
The United Kingdom government is seeking to expand its draconian Online Safety Act without oversight from elected MPs, through legislative amendments that would allow ministers to change key internet laws without passing new primary legislation through Parliament. This would give the government virtually unlimited powers to expand online censorship laws. The proposed changes come as…
Read articleSUMMARY Many American states and foreign countries have moved to age-gate online services, or ban under-16s accessing social media. Most of the proposals have come from countries in Europe, where regulators usually have a more active role in regulating technology. They coincide with the German Chancellor’s call to end online anonymity for political speech. Although…
Read article