- “To no one’s surprise, Hungary’s coronavirus emergency bill — which criminalizes fake news — has already resulted in police detaining and questioning social media users who criticize Orbán.” [Sarah McLaughlin] “Part of the powers granted to the government by the coronavirus authorization act is the ability to criminally prosecute the spreading of false news which inhibits the ability of authorities to defend against the pandemic. András recalled that the police arrived at his home at 6 a.m. with a search warrant.” [Insight Hungary 444]
- The more you know about past abuses under the former FCC public interest standard, the less sanguine you will be about inviting the government to regulate the fairness of social media platforms [John Samples and Paul Matzko]
- “China-Style Internet Control Is One of the Worst Ideas for Solving Coronavirus” [Ilya Shapiro] “China’s cybersecurity administration [earlier this year] implemented a set of new regulations on the governance of the ‘online information content ecosystem’ that encourage ‘positive’ content while barring material deemed ‘negative’ or illegal.” [Lily Kuo, The Guardian]
- San Antonio council’s anti-hate-speech resolution had a lot of ill-advised content but managed to stop short of overstepping the First Amendment itself [Taylor Millard, Hot Air]
- We reported on SEC gag orders last year (more: Robert McNamara) and now the New Civil Liberties Alliance is in court to challenge another one [Peggy Little, NCLA on SEC v. Romeril]
- Once censorship to regulate “online harms” gets its foothold the topics of its meddlesome ambition will expand [Charles Hymas on demands in Britain that “body shaming” in social media be subject to legal sanction]
Posts Tagged ‘social media’
Social media moderation and the First Amendment
Kristine Frazao of Sinclair Broadcasting interviewed me for this clip, which ran on many broadcast stations from coast to coast, and also in this associated news article:
“In America, we’ve got First Amendment that controls what a government can do and by the same token it does not control what a newspaper can do, a radio station can do or what a social media platform can do,” said Walter Olson, a Senior Fellow at the Libertarian Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
In other words, social media platforms are private companies, and can, therefore, choose how to label content. Still, there have been concerns raised about political bias among these independent fact-checkers, and others concerned that pushing things underground or offline may breathe new life into conspiracy theories.
“There has always been a strong argument that the way to refute bad ideas is to get them out there so people can shoot at them,” Olson said in an interview Monday. “Air them out, put some sunshine against them, it’s healthy against a virus too, and against the virus [of] a thought.”
Free speech roundup
- “New Puerto Rico law threatens jail time for spreading ‘false information’ about COVID-19” [Committee to Protect Journalists, earlier] Freedom for publishers and platforms to associate with whomever they want permits them to exclude quackery and health misinformation, and that’s a feature not a bug [Matthew Feeney]
- It takes the FCC all of one day to reject petition from absurdly named pressure group Free Press demanding broadcast limits on statements by Trump and his allies about the novel coronavirus [Robby Soave, Eugene Volokh] Obscure West Coast group sues Fox over its coronavirus coverage [Volokh] Meanwhile, Trump camp is at it again: “Trump Campaign Sues TV Station for Running ‘Defamatory’ Coronavirus Attack Ad” [C.J. Ciaramella, earlier]
- “A Teenager Posted About Her COVID-19 Infection on Instagram. A Deputy Threatened To Arrest Her If She Didn’t Delete It.” [Scott Shackford; Oxford, Wis.]
- Technical countermeasures, as opposed to calling in the cops, most practical way to fend off that new form of anti-social activity, “Zoom-bombing” [Eugene Volokh]
- “How the Telephone Consumer Protection Act Unconstitutionally Privileges Government Speech” [Trevor Burrus on Cato amicus brief in Supreme Court case of Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants]
- From before the crisis, hate speech mini-roundup: Connecticut state agency sees it as part of its mission to defend an unconstitutional “racial ridicule” law enacted in 1917 [Volokh] “Hundreds of Scots who tell ‘offensive jokes’ on social media are being secretly logged on police database” [Ruth Warrander, Scottish Sun] Bad proposal in U.K. to give communications regulator authority to address material that “is not illegal but has the potential to cause harm.” [Matt Kilcoyne] Social media regulation: “No one is saying freedom of speech must be limited,“ says New York lawmaker filing bill to limit the freedom of speech [Sen. David Carlucci]
Crow for them, Pai for us: American Internet policies outpace Europe’s in the crisis
As demand for videoconferencing and other online services soars in the pandemic emergency, European policymakers “are now eating crow and entreating video platforms to downgrade the quality of their streams, an about face from the regulatory dogma that ‘all data is equal'” You mean net neutrality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be? On dubious European concepts of data privacy, meanwhile: “The GDPR’s forced data minimization has dulled the effectiveness and granularity of data from mobile apps, devices, and networks which can help manage quarantine efforts and ideally lessen restrictions in uninfected zones.” [Roslyn Layton, AEI; Stewart Baker on the phone location app used in Singapore’s contact tracing efforts] Related: Alec Stapp thread (greater U.S. investment in broadband). More: Thomas Firey, Cato.
February 12 roundup
- Did the Supreme Court err in Employment Division v. Smith when it ruled that the Free Exercise Clause provides no exemption from burdens on religious conscience resulting from neutral and generally applicable laws? [Federalist Society Rosenkranz Debate with Michael McConnell and Philip Hamburger] Will the Court revisit Employment Division, as four Justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh) recently suggested? [Eric Baxter on Ricks v. Idaho Contractors Board]
- Maryland: “Don’t suspend drivers’ licenses over fines/fees unrelated to road safety” [my new Free State Notes]
- “A motley group of powerful companies have their knives out for Section 230, which shields platforms from lawsuits over content posted by users.” [David McCabe, New York Times; Gigi Sohn on Twitter]
- Did U.S. Customs destroy an African musician’s uniquely crafted instrument, or was it damaged in transit? Stories differ [Isobel van Hagen and Sarah Kaufman, NBC News; earlier here, here, here, etc.]
- R.I.P. David N. Mayer, emeritus professor at Capital Law and constitutional scholar who did important work on the views of the Founders and on the Contracts Clause [Roger Pilon, Cato]
- Another Emoluments suit fizzles for lack of standing, as I predicted three years ago [Megan Mineiro, Courthouse News (suit on behalf of individual members of Congress); sage advice from Grover Norquist]
Appeals court strikes down Maryland law regulating online political ads
I’m in the Baltimore Sun discussing a bad Maryland law passed in response to the furor over Russian trolling on social media. I wrote about it earlier when a federal district court struck the law down, and now a Fourth Circuit panel, in an opinion by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, has agreed that it is unconstitutional. Excerpt:
Exposing foreign governments’ meddling in U.S. politics is a worthy goal. Infringing on First Amendment freedoms is no way to go about it….
[After the law passed] Google immediately stopped hosting political ads in Maryland, a step particularly unhelpful to newcomer candidates, for whom advertising may be one of the few effective ways to boost name recognition. Other platforms, including some Maryland newspapers, also faced a tough position as the effective date of the law drew near. Rather than publish disclosures that might expose to competitors’ eyes confidential information about their ad rates and viewer reach, they might prefer just to immunize themselves by turning down political and issue ads in the future as a category.
December 11 roundup
- “Bad writing does not normally warrant sanctions, but we draw the line at gibberish.” And Judge Sykes had much more to say besides that [Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar]
- Man claiming to possess vast trove of secret Jeffrey Epstein data approaches two prominent lawyers. Episode sheds light on “extraordinary, at times deceitful measures” lawyers may employ “in an effort to get evidence that could be used to win lucrative settlements.” [Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Emily Steel, Jacob Bernstein and David Enrich, New York Times]
- “How Cloudflare Stood up to a Patent Troll – and Won” [Alex Krivit, CloudFlare]
- “By enacting government licensing of online speech, the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act would risk increasing censorship instead of preventing it.” [Diane Katz, Heritage]
- New Charles Blahous paper on where next for gerrymandering reform coincides with many of my own views [Mercatus, Mitch Kokai/Carolina Journal; more to say in a future article] “Roundtable: 3 experts on SCOTUS’ gerrymandering ruling” [Jerrick Adams, Ballotpedia, thanks for including me]
- Changes in American law (torts especially) have trained us to blame those with money when we suffer a harm. Should it be a surprise that the resulting attitudes might spill over into the political system? [Robin Hanson]
Social media law roundup
- Despite warnings that its “copyright small claims” format could call forth a new troll business model and trip up ordinary Internet users, U.S. House of Representatives votes lopsidedly in favor of CASE Act [Makena Kelly, The Verge; Jonathan Bailey, Plagiarism Today; Katharine Trendacosta and Ernesto Falcon, Electronic Frontier Foundation, here, here, here, and here; Mike Masnick, TechDirt; Copyright Alliance and ABA president Judy Perry Martinez (supportive of bill); earlier]
- A social media platform that proposes to vet political claims for truthfulness will inevitably be drawn into taking sides in favor of some political factions against others [John Samples, Cato] You’d think New Yorker writers and New York Times editors would know better: no, free speech is not “killing us.” [same]
- “Top Myths About Content Moderation” [Eric Goldman] And a Cato Daily Podcast about content moderation with Thomas Kadri and Caleb Brown;
- “Attorney Who Sued Grindr Responds Extremely Poorly To The Supreme Court’s Rejection Of Her Section 230 Lawsuit” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt, on “victims’ lawyer” Carrie Goldberg; Cathy Gellis in January]
- It must be campaign season because here come the DMCA takedown notices over fair use [Paul Alan Levy]
- “Facebook isn’t liable for algorithm that put terrorist content in news feeds, 2nd Circuit rules” [ABA Journal, earlier here, etc.]
October 30 roundup
- Under investigation and facing the same sorts of tactics he once used against Wall Street, Giuliani may now have reason to appreciate the sorts of principled civil libertarians who stand firm against prosecutorial excess [Ira Stoll]
- U.S. dominance in social media is the envy of the rest of the world. Politicians’ trustbusting zeal could change that [Amy-Xiaoshi DePaola, Cronkite News/Arizona PBS, thanks for quoting me]
- Walgreen’s had a tussle with Wegman’s over the trademark use of a big script “W,” but has not gone after with another well-known organization with such a letter symbol, the Washington Nationals [Richard Patterson, American University IP Brief back in 2011]
- British Columbia human rights tribunal rejects groin-waxing complaint, finding that complainant “engaged in improper conduct”, “filed complaints for improper purposes”, and gave testimony that was “disingenuous and self-serving,” along with having “targeted small businesses, manufactured the conditions for a human rights complaint, and then leveraged that complaint to pursue a financial settlement from parties who were unsophisticated and unlikely to mount a proper defense.” [Joseph Brean, National Post, Justice Centre, opinion in Yaniv v. Various Waxing Salons (No. 2), earlier]
- “University of Louisville Students Can’t Sue Escort for Exposing Prostitution in the Louisville Basketball Program” [Eugene Volokh]
- Intending no disrespect, Your Honor, you should think twice before doing this [Zachary Halaschak, Washington Examiner (“Two male judges shot after female judge gives middle finger during drunken night out”; Indiana)]
“The First Amendment does not depend on whether everyone is in on the joke.”
“…when it comes to parody, the law requires a reasonable reader standard, not a ‘most gullible person on Facebook’ standard. The First Amendment does not depend on whether everyone is in on the joke.” — Judge Amul Thapar, Sixth Circuit, writing on behalf of a unanimous panel that “an Ohio man who was acquitted of a felony after creating a parody Facebook page that mocked a suburban Cleveland police department can sue the city and two police officers over his arrest.” [Jonathan Stempel, Reuters]
Related: everyone has the right to call politicians idiots, and that goes for gun store owners too [Eugene Volokh; North Carolina gun store owner’s billboard likened by sitting member of Congress to “inciting violence”]