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.
It’s planning to run full-page ads in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times on Thursday, according to NYT reporter Mike Isaac, on the heels of Meta’s $17 billion settlement with state AGs. Meta is using the settlement to urge its top competitors to take on similar restrictions.
It would have been the next bellwether in the group of cases tried in a Los Angeles state court. In the first, Meta and YouTube were ordered to pay $6 million total. After settling with TikTok, the teen’s lawyer told The New York Times, she wanted to “resume her life.”
[The New York Times]
The company laid out its defense in the trial against a coalition of state AGs, previewing that it will call on their own public health officials to combat claims of social media addiction, and claiming that the states have pulled public statements out of context to claim it misled parents.
In an opening statement, California deputy AG Megan O’Neill accused Meta of doing “too little, too late” to curb teens’ problematic usage of Facebook and Instagram, while misleading the public. She also laid out the states allegations that Meta knew — but didn’t remove – many kids under 13 on its platforms.
Beginning at 11 AM Eastern, you can stream opening arguments in a trial where 29 attorneys general allege Meta harmed consumers through addictive design. Meta denies this, and warned damages could reach $1.4 trillion — nearing its market cap. The AGs say they’d likely be closer to $200 billion.
President Donald Trump tapped Danielle Thumann Severs to join the Federal Communications Commission. If confirmed, it would bring the agency’s makeup to three Republicans and one Democrat, with room for one more non-Republican commissioner. Chair Brendan Carr praised the nomination, though he already has enough votes to pass his agenda.
A defamation lawsuit by Keith Bass over SpyTalk writer Jeff Stein’s report that Bass had been “effectively fired” from his post leading the CIA’s Office of Medical Services in 2021 has been dismissed with prejudice.
Axios reports it’s the second victory since the Defender program launched, “but the first major federal suit,” while noting that other platforms are adding access to legal resources as well.
The Senate Commerce Committee passed a version of the Kids Online Safety Act that includes the hallmark duty of care, which the House stripped from the version its committee passed. It’s a significant — but limited — step, since the bill got stuck in the House last time it passed the Senate.
The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on five kids safety bills including KOSA, which passed the chamber last Congress but didn’t get a vote in the House. This year, the House has pushed its own version of the bill that stripped the key duty of care, setting up a fight.
[U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation]
FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s unusual move demanding ABC renew its broadcast licenses early is part of a “broader pattern” in a “campaign to punish speech disfavored by the Trump administration,” over a dozen bipartisan former high-ranking officials charge. Several of them recently warned Carr was abusing the News Distortion Policy.
Executive agencies including the Department of Labor and Department of Transportation are joining the app once declared a national security threat. Following the close of the deal to bring TikTok US under a US entity, the Justice Department said government employees are free to download it.
Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocked a State Department policy restricting visas to foreign officials who “demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies.” Boasberg wrote that a group representing tech researchers could likely prove it violates the First Amendment by categorizing research as “foreign censorship” based on viewpoint.
[CourtListener]
DHS is accusing people of ‘doxing’ federal agents — and, a new lawsuit claims, trying to chill dissenting speech.
Agents walked into a polling place on primary Election Day to demand that one of the workers, Paigelynne Gonyea, delete her post, claiming she “may be in violation of federal law.” The post contains the name of Jonathan Ross, the agent who shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, who has been named by a number of media outlets, including The Verge.
On Friday, US Representative John Mannion wrote to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin requesting the agency “promptly review this incident and put a stop to any ICE activities that target protected speech under the First Amendment.”
[@turndapaigeofficial - Instagram]
The early decision found AI summaries are different from conventional search:
A regular search engine just points to outside websites. But AI overviews generate “independent, new, and substantive statements” by evaluating and combining content from various third-party sites. And only Google can check those statements, the court said, “at least by comparing the underlying third-party websites with its own statements based on them.”
In a brief order, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Texas to move forward with implementing its App Store Accountability Act while the case seeking to block it plays out. It’s an early test of a method that is being considered across several states, and in Congress.
[Bloomberg Law]
A bipartisan group of attorneys general wrote to congressional leaders that passing the House’s KIDS Act — which includes a weakened version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — would preempt state laws and “insulate Big Tech from appropriate oversight and accountability and imperil the young people it purports to protect.”
[Tennessee Attorney General’s Office]
A document posted to the federal register shows the administration is considering a new non-disclosure agreement barring government workers from sharing confidential information. It’s unclear what it would actually change, and agencies would have discretion to adopt it. If you’re a federal worker who wants to chat anonymously, I’m on Signal at laurenfeiner.64.
[The Washington Post]
Trump has already dug such a deep hole with his conduct that he’s invented new bolgias even Dante couldn’t have imagined. His latest posting crime is this AI-generated video which shows him throwing Stephen Colbert in a dumpster. The First Amendment is hanging on by a thread thanks to this administration, and, yes, Brendan Carr remains a dummy.
A Brooklyn courthouse unsealed criminal complaints against two men who allegedly posted “thousands” of nonconsensual intimate AI deepfakes, according to the US Attorney’s Office. The Take It Down Act’s criminal prohibitions have been in place for a year, but platforms’ obligation to remove such deepfakes just came into force yesterday.
[U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York]
The Federal Trade Commission launched a new website for consumers to report alleged failures to comply with the Take It Down Act, which went into full force today. Critics fear the law will be used to censor online speech, but the website also has resources for domestic violence survivors.
The Take It Down Act is in full force, but it could be a gift to government censors — not victims of image-based sexual abuse.
It joins a handful of other tech companies like Snap and Microsoft in supporting the bill, while major tech groups maintain opposition. The announcement comes as a key Senate committee prepares to move forward on its version of KOSA, after a House committee passed a largely overhauled version.
The Federal Trade Commission reminded more than a dozen companies that it can soon begin enforcing the new mandate for platforms to remove nonconsensual intimate images within 48 hours of a valid request. The provision is one that critics fear could be enforced selectively or used to limit speech.
[Federal Trade Commission]
