freespeech
Federal prosecutors are recommending a 20-year prison sentence for Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey, who was found guilty last fall of one count of international concealment of money laundering. It's an insane ask for someone whose only conviction is for one nonviolent crime, especially considering the circumstances of that conviction. Concealment?"The context for the international concealment money laundering conviction is critical," writes Lacey's lawyers in a motion seeking a less severe sentence. "This is not a case where the defendant went off on his own to hide an asset. Instead, in the...
Reason
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
American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, by Michael Willrich, Basic Books, 480 pages, $35 The lawmaking and policing powers of late 19th and early 20th century America did not think anarchist agitators deserved the protective penumbra of our Constitution. After Emma Goldman immigrated to the United States in 1885 from czarist Russia, she became a dynamic and hugely popular traveling lecturer on anarchism and other rebellious causes, such as draft resistance and contraception. Consequently, she was arrested a lot—...
Reason
Thierry Breton is the European Union's commissioner for internal market. His responsibilities include overseeing the government's policies relating to online speech. In effect, this makes him the European Commission's would-be censor in chief—and he is eager to wield his power against unruly dissenters. Case in point: On Monday, Elon Musk interviewed former President Donald Trump live on X, the social media site previously known as Twitter. Millions of people listened to at least part of that conversation, which covered a range of newsworthy topics: everything from the recent attempt on Trump'...
Reason
The San Francisco city council is smashing the mirror because it doesn't like the face staring back at it. The council just approved a ban on websites that offer data about local rental markets and help landlords set their rents. The council blames these tools for exploding housing costs. It's a classic case of killing the messenger that will do nothing to fix a problem of the city council's own creation—and it violates the First Amendment. Landlords often use websites like RealPage and Yardi that suggest rent prices based on local market data. Recently, activists have started blaming such web...
Reason
Charles Gasparino is a senior correspondent for the Fox Business Network and a columnist for the New York Post. He's also the author of the new book Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America. Gasparino analyzes major missteps by companies such as Anheuser-Busch, Target, and Disney and explores how CEOs and top management become entranced by things like stakeholder capitalism; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and environmental, social, and governance plans to the detriment of customer satisfaction, public relations, and the bottom line. Four years ...
Reason
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
In February, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that declared a "national emergency" in response to "high levels of extremist settler violence" in the West Bank and imposed economic sanctions on "persons undermining peace, security, and stability" there. Although he emphasized the threat posed by attacks on Palestinian civilians, his order extended much further, encompassing "any foreign person" whom the secretary of state or the secretary of the treasury deems "complicit" in actions that "threaten the peace, security, or stability of the West Bank." Because the order prohibits "the...
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
A California first-grader was punished for a drawing she made at school, resulting in a federal lawsuit that probes whether the First Amendment extends to the first-grade classroom. In March 2021, the elementary school student, referenced in legal filings as "B.B.," drew a sketch depicting several individuals of different races, representing "three classmates and herself holding hands," the family's complaint states. Above the drawing, B.B. wrote "Black Lives Mater" [sic] with the words "any life" transcribed below the slogan. B.B. then gave the drawing to one of her classmates, who is black, ...
Reason
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