Tag: free speech

Should the Government Restrict ‘Harmful’ Speech Online?

The First Amendment prohibits the federal government from suppressing speech, including speech it deems “harmful,” yet lawmakers keep trying to regulate online discourse.

Over the summer, the Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill to allegedly protect children from the adverse effects of social media. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took procedural steps to end the debate and quickly advance the bill to a floor vote. According to Schumer, the situation was urgent. In his remarks, he focused on the stories of children who were targets of bullying and predatory conduct on social media. To address these safety issues, the proposed legislation would place liability on online platforms, requiring them to take “reasonable” measures to prevent and mitigate harm.

It’s now up to the House to push the bill forward to the President’s desk. After initial concerns about censorship, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce advanced the bill in September, paving the way for a final floor vote.

KOSA highlights an ongoing tension between free speech and current efforts to make social media “safer.” In its persistent attempts to remedy social harm, the government shrinks what is permissible to say online and assumes a role that the First Amendment specifically guards against.

At its core, the First Amendment is designed to protect freedom of speech from government intrusion. Congress is not responsible for determining what speech is permissible or what information the public has the right to access. Courts have long held that all speech is protected unless it falls within certain categories. Prohibitions against harmful speech—where “harmful” is determined solely by lawmakers—are not consistent with the First Amendment.

But bills like KOSA add layers of complexity. First, the government is not simply punishing ideological opponents or those with unfavorable viewpoints, which would clearly violate the First Amendment. When viewed in its best light, KOSA is equally about protecting children and their health. New York had similar public health and safety justifications for its controversial hate speech law, which was blocked by a district court and is pending appeal. Under this argument, which is often cited to rationalize speech limitations, the dangers to society are so great that the government should take action to protect vulnerable groups from harm. However, the courts have generally ruled that this is not sufficient justification to limit protected speech.

In American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut (1986), Judge Frank Easterbrook evaluated the constitutionality of a pornography prohibition enacted by the City of Indianapolis. The city reasoned that pornography has a detrimental impact on society because it influences attitudes and leads to discrimination and violence against women. As Judge Easterbrook wrote in his now-famous opinion, just because speech has a role in social conditioning or contributes loosely to social harm does not give the government license to control it. Such content is still protected, however harmful or insidious, and any answer to the contrary would allow the government to become the “great censor and director of which thoughts are good for us.”

In addition to the protecting children argument, a second layer of complexity is that KOSA enables censorship through roundabout means. The government accomplishes what it is barred from doing under the First Amendment by requiring online platforms to police a vast array of harms or risk legal consequences. This is a common feature of recent social media bills, which place the responsibility on platforms.

Practically, the result is inevitably less speech. Under KOSA, the platform has a “duty of care” to mitigate youth anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and addiction-like behaviors. While this provision focuses on the covered entity’s design and operation, it necessarily implicates speech since social media platforms are built around user-generated posts, from content curation to notifications. Because platforms are liable for falling short of the “duty of care,” this requirement is bound to sweep up millions of posts that are protected speech, even ordinary content that may trigger the enumerated harm. While the platform would technically be the entity implementing these policies, the government would be driving content removal.

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California Content Law Design Code Faces Free Speech Clash

Efforts to implement California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code continue to face resistance from both the tech industry and digital civil liberties groups, who argue that the law’s restrictions violate constitutional protections and would compel sweeping surveillance and censorship online.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which represents companies including Google, Amazon, Meta, and eBay, recently filed an amicus brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case NetChoice v. Bonta.

Stephanie Joyce, the group’s senior vice president and director of its litigation center, condemned the legislation in blunt terms: “The Constitution prohibits the government from dictating what lawful content readers can see, and it extends that protection regardless of the reader’s age.

Though well-intentioned, California’s internet age restriction law is unconstitutional, and the court of appeals should affirm the decision to block it.”

The case marks the second time this legal clash has reached the Ninth Circuit. Previously, the court blocked only a portion of the law and returned the rest for further review.

Now, with renewed scrutiny, the court could determine whether the entire statute fails to withstand constitutional challenge.

NetChoice, an industry coalition that includes many of the same members as the CCIA, has led the charge against a wave of so-called “age assurance” laws.

These policies would require digital platforms to verify the ages of users and potentially restrict minors’ access to content deemed unsuitable. But free speech advocates warn the consequences would be broader and more dangerous than legislators admit.

Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) have also weighed in with their own amicus brief, arguing that the law’s age estimation mandates undermine essential First Amendment rights. “CDT and EFF’s brief argues that the appeals court should uphold the injunctions solely on the basis of its overbroad, unconstitutional age verification requirement because that requirement is not severable from other provisions and should doom the entire statute.” The brief warns that such mandates not only chill access to lawful speech but also erode online anonymity and place users’ personal data at risk.

They also emphasize that minors’ ability to engage freely online is a critical part of their development and civic participation. “Social media helps minors develop their own ideas, learn to express themselves, and engage productively with others in our democratic public sphere,” the brief states.

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X Slams Brazil for Censorship, Secret Orders, and Free Speech Crackdown in USTR Trade Investigation

As part of an ongoing investigation by the US Trade Representative (USTR) into Brazil’s treatment of American digital platforms, X has filed a stark warning about what it describes as intensifying threats to freedom of expression and the rule of law in Brazil.

The USTR probe, focused on policies that may harm US companies, closed its comment period on August 18, with a hearing scheduled for September 3.

We obtained a copy of the comments for you here.

X’s submission outlines a series of aggressive measures by Brazilian authorities that the company says are undermining internet freedom and imposing extraterritorial censorship demands.

Among the most concerning developments, according to the platform, is a ruling from Brazil’s Supreme Court in June 2025 that gutted a core protection in the country’s 2014 internet law, the Marco Civil da Internet (MCI).

By declaring Article 19 partially unconstitutional, the ruling opened the door for tech platforms to be held legally responsible for user-generated content, without requiring judicial oversight.

This, X argues, has increased operational burdens and incentivized preemptive content removals.

The platform also warned that Brazil’s judiciary, particularly under Justice Alexandre de Moraes, has been issuing covert content removal orders targeting journalists, politicians, and even US users.

These directives are often enforced without any notice or opportunity to appeal, a practice X says raises serious concerns about due process and transparency.

Further, the company expressed alarm over Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice asserting jurisdiction beyond its borders. According to X, the court has ordered content to be removed globally, even when such content is legal in countries like the United States. The court has described this overreach as a “natural consequence” of the internet, a justification X contends disregards international legal norms.

X also highlighted what it sees as the Brazilian judiciary’s disregard for the US-Brazil Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).

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Court Rules New York County Denied Free Speech Rights to Pro-Life Advocates

A federal court has ruled that Westchester County, New York, violated the First Amendment rights of pro-life sidewalk counselors, marking a significant victory for free speech in a legal challenge brought by Thomas More Society attorneys. The decision in Hulinsky v. County of Westchester found the County liable for enacting an unconstitutional provision in its 2022 “Reproductive Health Care Facilities Access Act,” or Chapter 425, which restricted peaceful pro-life advocacy near abortion facilities.

The decision awards plaintiffs Oksana Hulinsky and Regina Molinelli nominal damages for the chilling of their life-saving sidewalk counseling for over two-and-half years as a result of the unconstitutional law, even though the County attempted to avoid liability by repealing the offending provision earlier this year.

This ruling builds on a March 14 decision that rejected the County’s attempt to dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims against part of Chapter 425 prohibiting so-called “interference” with abortion access “by deceptive means or otherwise”—a sweeping and unprecedented restriction adopted as part of the County’s furor over the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs.The Court rightly held the provision “criminalized large swaths of protected speech” on pain of jail, fines, and civil liability, flagrantly violating the First Amendment.

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The Israeli flag just became the only national flag illegal to burn in the United States. Yeah. I’m dead serious.

The Flag America Protects

This week in Washington, D.C., a federal judge made a ruling so shocking, so unprecedented, that it flips the First Amendment on its head. Judge Trevor N. McFadden declared that the Israeli flag — with the Star of David at its center — is not a political symbol at all, but a racial one.

He ruled that tearing it, grabbing it, desecrating it, even in the heat of protest, is not free expression but racial discrimination.

Think about that. In the United States, you can burn the American flag — the Supreme Court has said so for decades. But now, according to this ruling, burning or tearing the Israeli flag could make you guilty of racial hatred. The one national flag protected in American law today isn’t our own. It’s Israel’s.

You can burn the flags of all 50 states. You can torch the American flag all you want. You can burn the flags of the UK or France or Brazil or China.

But not Israel.

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President Trump’s War on “Woke AI” Is a Civil Liberties Nightmare

The White House’s recently-unveiled “AI Action Plan” wages war on so-called “woke AI”—including large language models (LLMs) that provide information inconsistent with the administration’s views on climate change, gender, and other issues. It also targets measures designed to mitigate the generation of racial and gender biased content and even hate speech. The reproduction of this bias is a pernicious problem that AI developers have struggled to solve for over a decade.

A new executive order called “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government,” released alongside the AI Action Plan, seeks to strong-arm AI companies into modifying their models to conform with the Trump Administration’s ideological agenda.

The executive order requires AI companies that receive federal contracts to prove that their LLMs are free from purported “ideological biases” like “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” This heavy-handed censorship will not make models more accurate or “trustworthy,” as the Trump Administration claims, but is a blatant attempt to censor the development of LLMs and restrict them as a tool of expression and information access. While the First Amendment permits the government to choose to purchase only services that reflect government viewpoints, the government may not use that power to influence what services and information are available to the public. Lucrative government contracts can push commercial companies to implement features (or biases) that they wouldn’t otherwise, and those often roll down to the user. Doing so would impact the 60 percent of Americans who get information from LLMs, and it would force developers to roll back efforts to reduce biases—making the models much less accurate, and far more likely to cause harm, especially in the hands of the government. 

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Mocking Elected Officials Is a Sign of a Healthy Democracy

There’s little question that President Donald Trump and his MAGA devotees can dish it out. Few things epitomize this populist movement more than its irreverence toward established institutions and its willingness to obliterate traditional standards of civility as it targets political enemies (and erstwhile friends during some internecine squabble). Trump’s social-media posts and statements are filled with invective and merciless mocking.

Trump’s schoolyard taunts rarely are sophisticated, as they frequently zero in on personal appearance. “He’s got the smallest neck I’ve ever seen. And the biggest head. We call him watermelon head. How can that big fat face stand on a neck that looked like this finger?” Trump said about Sen. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.). OK, I laughed when he called him “Adam Schifty Schiff,” but that’s only because it was so childishly stupid. That’s its appeal, I suppose.

One of Trump’s ugliest insults—dating to his first election—was when he mocked a disabled reporter by imitating his hand motions. The Wall Street Journal published a piece called, “The Art of the Insult.” We know this is how Trump operates. You can find hundreds of examples with a Google search or on his Truth Social account. Even the official White House account does this—when it’s not portraying Trump as a Kim Jong Un-style superhero.

It’s so very funny. Whenever anyone calls them out on this, Trump defenders act as if they are just so above it all. “Don’t you know the president is just trolling?” “Get a sense of humor.” “You must be suffering from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome).” Yadda, yadda. In full disclosure, I greatly value humor and have mocked my share of politicians over the years. But I find bullying taunts to be crass and the sign of those displaying low human capital.

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DIGITAL ID: The Shocking Plan to Kill Free Speech Forever

The U.S. is on the verge of launching a dystopian online surveillance machine—and disturbingly, Republicans are helping make it law.

The SCREEN Act and KOSA claim to protect kids, but they’re Trojan horses. If passed, every American adult would be forced to verify their ID to access the internet—just like in Australia, where “age checks” morphed into speech policing. In the UK, digital ID is already required for jobs, housing, and healthcare.

This is how they silence dissent: by tying your identity to everything you read, say, or buy online.

The trap is nearly shut. Once it locks in, online freedom vanishes forever.

Will Americans wake up before it’s too late? Watch Maria Zeee expose the full blueprint—and how little time we have left.

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UK Government Emails Reveal Push to Pressure Tech Platforms to Remove Lawful Speech on Immigration and Policing

A series of internal emails from the UK government has revealed an aggressive push to monitor and suppress online posts deemed “concerning,” sparking alarm over creeping censorship under the banner of combating misinformation and community unrest.

The documents, shared by US Rep. Jim Jordan, paint a picture of state officials flagging lawful speech, pressuring tech companies to remove content, and targeting what they described as “concerning narratives about the police and a ‘two-tier’ system.”

One of the most widely circulated videos under scrutiny featured a street celebration in Manchester where participants waved Pakistani flags. Captioned “It looks like Islamabad but it’s Manchester,” the video, posted by Radio Genoa on X, amassed over 14 million views.

Government emails described this kind of footage as misleading or dangerous, with one note labeling it an example of content that is “shared out of context in order to incite fear of the Muslim community.”

Another email, dated August 3, 2024, acknowledged “significant volumes of anti-immigrant content” online and pointed to “concerning narratives about the police and a ‘two-tier’ system that we are seeing across the online environment.”

The correspondence shows government officials not only monitoring speech but actively collaborating with platforms to address posts, even ones not violating the law or even the platform’s terms of service.

Officials were asking for direct intervention. One message requested clarity from platforms about “what content you are seeing across your platform; and b) any measures you have taken in response.” A follow-up email urged platforms to act quickly, stating, “We’d be grateful if you could come back to us on those two points as soon as you are able to.”

In one particularly troubling exchange dated August 4, government officials flagged a video showing someone scrolling through a freedom of information request that referred to asylum seekers as “undocumented fighting age males.”

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Supreme Court Urged to Halt Mississippi’s Online Digital ID Law Over Free Speech and Privacy Concerns

NetChoice has filed an emergency application with the US Supreme Court to halt the enforcement of Mississippi’s online age verification digital ID law, House Bill 1126, after the Fifth Circuit stayed a preliminary injunction without explanation. The group is urging the Court to reinstate the district court’s ruling and protect First Amendment rights, which it argues are under immediate threat.

The Mississippi law compels every person, regardless of age, to verify their identity before creating accounts on social media platforms, and requires minors to obtain explicit parental consent.

NetChoice argues that this framework “unconstitutionally imposes content-based parental-consent, age-verification, and monitoring-and-censorship requirements for vague categories of speech on social media websites.”

The emergency filing warns of far-reaching consequences, asserting that “the Act will prevent access to that expression for some users entirely—including those unwilling or unable to verify their age and minors who cannot secure parental consent.”

We obtained a copy of the filing for you here.

Adults would also be subject to this regime, required to share private information in order to access constitutionally protected online spaces.

According to the brief, “the Act would require adults and minors to provide personally identifying information to access all manner of fully protected speech.”

NetChoice compares this level of state control to a dystopian system where “stationing government-mandated clerks at every bookstore and theater to check identification before citizens can access books, movies, or even join conversations” would be the norm.

The brief continues, “This Act thus presents far different issues from pornography laws… it ‘directly targets’ a staggering amount of fully protected speech.”

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