Following revelations about the extent of the federal government's pressure on social media companies to suppress dissenting opinions, the feds broke up with Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube. Cybersecurity experts now frequently complain about the lack of coordination between the government and the platforms, warning that social media users are vulnerable to misinformation about elections, foreign interference, and other woes. But the platforms might be receiving late-night "you up?" texts from federal agents once again. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D–Va.) told repo ..read more

A new law banning TikTok if it doesn't divorce its parent company is "obviously unconstitutional," TikTok Inc. and ByteDance argue in a new federal court filing. The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, passed and signed into law late last month, singles out ByteDance and its subsidiary TikTok Inc., requiring the former to divest itself of the latter within 270 days. If ByteDance doesn't, the TikTok app will be banned in the U.S. Congress is "silencing the 170 million Americans who use [TikTok] to communicate," and "crafted a two-tiered speech regime" that ..read more

Joanna Andreasson/DALL-E4 I'm always puzzled when I hear other parents say they're worried about the effects social media might be having on their children. My confusion only grows when I see that the federal government is considering a ban on kids using social media. Are teens acquiring their own mobile devices and paying the bills? Doubtful. It seems someone gave them tacit permission to be on those platforms and the tools to do so. Yet many parents feel like they have no options other than to surrender to their kids' desires or hate tweet their congressman to get the government to do somet ..read more

Free speech pessimism is on the rise among America's elites. "Free Speech Is Killing Us," read a 2019 op-ed in The New York Times. Recently, an article in The New York Times Magazine concluded, "It's time to ask whether the American way of protecting free speech is actually keeping us free." George Washington University Law School professor Mary Anne Franks has written two books arguing that the First Amendment is "deadly" and "eroding our democracy." This First Amendment rejection is often combined with envious praise for European-style speech regulations—rules seen as mature democracies tak ..read more

After the California Assembly's Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee recently voted 11-0 to support a far-reaching, speech-quelling, lawsuit-promoting bill in the name of protecting "the children," Assemblymember Joe Patterson (R–Rocklin) posted this on X: "The most simple bill ever and I was pleased to support it after a lot of heartburn. All the bill says is companies are liable if they don't 'exercise ordinary care or skill towards a child.' Do you disagree?" Well, yes, I disagree, but more on that in a moment. When asked by a reporter about his gut reaction, Patterson doubl ..read more

You have to respect anybody willing to tell powerful government officials to get stuffed, and tech titan Elon Musk is pretty good at doing exactly that. While sometimes thin-skinned himself and not always consistent in his free speech principles, the head of social media platform X (formerly Twitter) is the best of the bunch among his peers when it comes to facing down censors. His latest battle is with Australian officials who want to restrict the entire world's access to recordings of a crime. The dispute involves video of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at Good Shepherd Church in ..read more

In a recent newsletter, I fretted that disinformation experts keep failing upward into ever greater positions of prominence, even when their underlying research comes under serious scrutiny. This week, The New York Times commented on—and contributed to—the most compelling example of this phenomenon: Nina Jankowicz, who has returned from exile to launch a new disinformation-tracking organization called the American Sunlight Project. Jankowicz, readers will recall, was hired by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2022 to head its short-lived Disinformation Governance Board. The dystopi ..read more

You've probably seen footage and images of the January 6 riot at the Capitol captured by today's guest, videographer Ford Fischer. A decade ago, Fischer cofounded New2Share, a radical experiment in decentralized video journalism. He and his colleagues gather long-form footage from all sorts of breaking news events, including protests organized by radicals across the political spectrum. They upload it to YouTube and elsewhere, and then let viewers draw their own conclusions. His coverage has been licensed worldwide and appears regularly on networks ranging from CNN to Fox News to NBC. Fischer ..read more

Senate approves massive spending: Last night, the $95 billion aid package meant for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan passed the Senate. "The vote reflected resounding bipartisan support for the measure, which passed the House on Saturday by lopsided margins after a tortured journey on Capitol Hill, where it was nearly derailed by right-wing resistance," reports The New York Times. "The Senate's action, on a vote of 79 to 18, provided a victory for the president, who had urged lawmakers to move quickly so he could sign it into law." "When it matters most, will America summon the stre ..read more

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Eric Boehm lament a horrible weekend for freedom, as Congress passed a collection of bad bills concerning military spending for Ukraine and Israel, a TikTok ban, and a reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). 00:53—House of Representatives passes substantial bipartisan military spending aid package that includes Ukraine and Israel 22:50—New Title IX rules 34:00—Weekly Listener Question 41:03—House votes to reauthorize Section 702 of ..read more