censorship
If good intentions created good laws, there would be no need for congressional debate. I have no doubt the authors of this bill genuinely want to protect children, but the bill they've written promises to be a Pandora's box of unintended consequences. The Kids Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain harms associated with mental health, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. While proponents of the bill claim that the bill is not designed to regulate content, imposing a duty of care on internet platforms ...
Reason
Image by Giovana Fleck, used with permission. This story is part of Data Narratives, a Civic Media Observatory project that aims to identify and understand the discourse on data used for governance, control, and policy in El Salvador, Brazil, Turkey, Sudan, and India. Read more about the project here and see our public dataset for the full analysis covered in the text below. In recent years, the Indian government has been proactive in expanding its control over online spaces, and website blocking has been a strategic tool in its arsenal. A report last updated in March 2024 by digital rights or...
Global Voices
Image by Arzu Geybullayeva A woman identified as Dilruba Y, was arrested in the province of Izmir, Turkey, after criticizing the government's choice to block Instagram during a street interview with a local popular YouTube channel, Tuylu Mikrofon (furry microphone). She has been accused of “insulting the president,” and “inciting hatred and hostility among the public,” both common charges leveled against government critics in Turkey in recent years. Access to Instagram was blocked on August 2, after Turkish communications official Fahrettin Altun criticized the platform for censoring condolenc...
Global Voices
Image by Rezwan. Used with permission. For almost two centuries, Indian citizens were governed by criminal laws enacted by the colonial British government in the 19th century. These were the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC), the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973) (CrPC, originally from 1861), and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (IEA). In an effort to modernize and Indianize the legal frameworks governing citizens in independent India, the government decided in August 2023 to move past the ‘colonial legacy’ and revamp the nation’s criminal legislation. This legislative overhaul was a momentous one, g...
Global Voices
Virtually everyone agrees that social media is broken. On Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok, people fear out-of-control algorithms, fake news, state actor censorship, and propaganda. Google and Meta collect vast troves of personal information on their users and receive hundreds of thousands of requests every year from governments around the world to access that data. YouTube has become arguably "the most powerful media platform in the history of humanity," yet its algorithm is an ever-changing black box to the creators that populate the platform with videos. During the pandemic, federal offic...
Reason
As riots rock the streets of cities across Britain, some Members of Parliament (MPs) are trying to blame social media—they do not want government policy on issues such as immigration, policing, and social services to be at the center of the discussion about the country's civil unrest. Instead, they argue that these riots are primarily fueled by discussions happening on social media and are using the opportunity to advocate for restrictions on U.K. citizens' speech and access to information. MPs want social media companies to ban user accounts accused of inciting violence, and they have critici...
Reason
More than half of Americans believe the First Amendment can go too far in the rights it guarantees, according to a new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment–focused nonprofit. The survey, released on Thursday, asked 1,000 American adults a range of questions about the First Amendment, free speech, and the security of those rights. Fifty-three percent of respondents agreed with the statement "The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees" to at least some degree, with 28 percent reporting that it "mostly" or "completely" describ...
Reason
Photo of the Venezuelan flag by Joseph Remedor via Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0. This story was written by Laura Vidal for IFEX. It has been edited and republished on Global Voices under a media agreement. Venezuela’s presidential elections on July 28 resulted in the official declaration of Nicolás Maduro’s victory. However, the opposition, numerous international organizations, and some regional governments have questioned the legitimacy of the results, calling for a thorough review. The elections were marred by violations of voter rights, restrictions on freedom of expression, and severe limitations ...
Global Voices
In last Wednesday's newsletter, I discussed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), noting that this censorship bill disguised as a child protection measure was scheduled to move forward imminently. On Thursday, the Senate held a cloture vote—necessary to move a bill to a full-floor vote when unanimous consent to do so can't be reached—and voted 86 to 1 to move forward with the bill. Senators are now slated to vote Tuesday whether KOSA should become law. The one "no" in the cloture vote came from Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul. In a "Dear Colleague" letter, Paul urged his colleagues to reject t...
Reason
Imagine you're a prominent "disinformation expert" once hired to head a government board to fight alleged untruths but unceremoniously dumped from the position when the board was dissolved amidst public outcry. Smeared oh so cruelly as the would-be chief censor of a government body tasked with policing people's speech, you sue your critics for defamation to set the record straight. And then…the judge tosses out your case, saying you and your stillborn board really were created to engage in censorship, and descriptions to that effect are accurate. Ouch, Nina Jankowicz. Ouch. Sorry, Nina: Polici...
Reason
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