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.
Carr and fellow FCC commissioners Anna Gomez and Olivia Trusty are set to testify before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on January 14th for an agency oversight hearing. The trio testified before the Senate Commerce Committee last month, where Carr doubled down on his threats to broadcasters.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) board voted to wind down the 58-year-old organization after Congress slashed its funding. CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said shutting it down would “protect the integrity of the public media system ... rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks.”
[Corporation for Public Broadcasting]
An era of digital authoritarianism has American free expression in a stranglehold.
The CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is suing Trump administration officials after they targeted him for deportation from the US because of his online content moderation work.
On Thursday morning, he announced that US District Judge Vernon Broderick granted a TRO and preliminary injunction blocking his arrest or detainment. A hearing has been scheduled for Monday.
[DocumentCloud]
The Trump administration just sanctioned five people, including Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) founder Imran Ahmed, over their work in content moderation and anti-disinformation. On Wednesday he filed a lawsuit (pdf) to stop their “unconstitutional attempt to arrest and expel him.”
Ahmed:
My life’s work is to protect children from the dangers of unregulated social media and AI and fight the spread of antisemitism online. That mission has pitted me against big tech executives – and Elon Musk in particular – multiple times. I am proud to call the United States my home. My wife and daughter are American, and instead of spending Christmas with them, I am fighting to prevent my unlawful deportation from my home country.
Bari Weiss killed a 60 Minutes story on CECOT, the El Salvador prison where the Trump administration has been deporting people. A senior correspondent noted that the story had been cleared by Standards and Practices, as well as the company’s lawyers, calling the decision “political.”
Why does this seem familiar? I feel like maybe someone predicted this?
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced a bill to sunset the law that shields social media platforms from being held liable for content moderation, and their users’ posts. Section 230 has long been a target of bipartisan tech critics, but reforming it has proved complicated.
A key committee scheduled a markup of 18 bills, including the revised Kids Online Safety Act, for Thursday. That’s just over a week since holding a hearing to first consider the package. After killing KOSA last year, the House may be trying to leave its mark before the holiday break.
[House Committee on Energy and Commerce]
The agency announced a new workshop on January 28th where it will host academics, industry reps, and advocates to discuss age verification. It comes as Congress and many states have weighed or passed laws meant to protect kids online that would require companies to adopt these kinds of technologies.
[Federal Trade Commission]
Some Democrats on the panel and one witness warn that a politicized and weakened Federal Trade Commission could undermine enforcement of any laws passed. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) recalls an earlier hearing derailed by the president’s firing of two Democratic commissioners — the subject of a Supreme Court hearing Monday.
Ahead of the hearing, global head of privacy Hilary Ware shared Apple’s guiding principles for any app store-based age assurance laws with subcommittee leaders. The company may see the writing on the wall as such laws that have swept states are now getting a shot in Congress.
That’s the message from E&C Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY), defending the gutting of the duty of care in KOSA. It’s also one of the central tensions playing out in today’s hearing: Could KOSA withstand judicial scrutiny with the duty of care? And can a version without it protect kids?
I’m in the hearing room where House lawmakers are discussing 19 bills they say will make kids safer online. Subcommittee Chair Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) begins by defending the massive rework of KOSA. “Don’t mistake durability for weakness,” he says. I’ll share more updates in the stream below.
Pinterest announced its endorsement of the federal version of a model that’s already passed in some states.
Fresh off a settlement with the DOJ over its software allegedly enabling landlord collusion to raise rents, RealPage is now suing the state of New York over a new law that bans algorithmic rent pricing, claiming it violates the company’s First Amendment rights.
RealPage is seeking a judgment and injunction against a recently adopted statute that seeks to prohibit the use of math and publicly available information to provide advice or recommendations to RealPage’s customers who own and manage rental housing properties. Among other things, the statute seeks to ban software that uses public data about rental or lease terms to advise or recommend market-appropriate rent prices for rental housing properties.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to discuss a new package of 19 internet-related bills at a hearing on December 2nd, Punchbowl News reports. The controversial duty of care in the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is set to be replaced with requirements for installing harm-mitigating procedures.
Over 100 parents whose children died after suffering online harms sent a letter to Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) urging him to quickly advance the Kids Online Safety Act. The House is expected to soon introduce a version weakening the centerpiece of the bill: the duty of care.
Lawmakers who passed the bill that should have banned TikTok by now are staying quiet about how it’s played out.
A good piece at The Barbed Wire on Ya’akub Vijandre, one of multiple non-citizen journalists punished by the Trump administration in its war on the press:
It’s becoming clearer to me that the government is attempting to lay a foundation for dissenting political beliefs as grounds for terrorism.
And people like Ya’akub — non-white, non-Christian — have been made its primary examples.
As the Oregon National Guard lawsuit proceeds, it’s become clear that right-wing content creators have a direct line to the federal government and are shaping national policy itself.
A centerpiece of the Kids Online Safety Act is rumored to be at risk in the new version.
A PSF proposal to address vulnerabilities in Python and PyPi was recommended for funding, but it was declined because the terms barred “any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.”
The PSF, which you can donate to here, says it’s committed to the “growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers.”
Sam O’Hara protested the deployment of the National Guard into DC by following soldiers around playing the Star Wars Imperial March on a bluetooth speaker, posting the videos he recorded of himself to TikTok. One guardsman was not amused and called the cops on O’Hara, who was handcuffed and (briefly) detained; the ACLU of DC is now suing.
The lawsuit opens with this sentence:
In the Star Wars franchise, The Imperial March is the music that plays when Darth Vader or other dark forces enter a scene or succeed in their dastardly plans.
You can read the rest below.
[ACLU-DC]
SB 2420 takes effect next year, but with app stores already complying, the First Amendment challenges are cropping up: one by trade group CCIA, another by a student advocacy group. California recently got its own app store verification law, so a legal showdown seems inevitable in America’s two most populous states.
The Verge has frequently quoted First Amendment experts from Columbia University’s Knight Institute, but Columbia hasn’t been doing great on the free speech front lately. This Guardian story is an interesting look at the tensions between the two organizations — and some reassurance the institute’s still worth trusting.
