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Big Tech and Censorship blog
TikTok v. Garland and the Hard Clash of Free Speech and National Security The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the TikTok divestment law in January 2025, and the case shows where conservatives divide on speech and a foreign adversary. An AI Chatbot Rewrote History in 2024, and That Is a Speech Problem Too Google's 2024 Gemini image pause showed that AI carries its builders' values into every answer, which argues for transparency over government rules. Europe's Digital Services Act and the First Amendment, Side by Side Europe and Britain regulate online speech with statutes the First Amendment would not allow, and comparing them shows what American law protects. Misinformation Is Not a Legal Category, and Government Should Stop Pretending Government cannot police misinformation because false speech is generally protected, and the narrow exceptions and the record of official error explain why. The Disinformation Governance Board Lasted Four Months, and That Was Too Long A federal board meant to referee disinformation was paused in weeks and dissolved in months, and it shows why government must never referee true speech. The Twitter Files Showed a Process, Not a Plot, and That Is Worse The released documents showed routine machinery for filtering visibility and handling government contacts, and routine machinery is harder to fix. Publisher or Platform, Eight Myths About Big Tech and the Law Eight popular claims about Section 230, the First Amendment and the tech companies, tested against the statute and the cases, with a verdict on each. The 1995 Prodigy Lawsuit That Accidentally Created Section 230 Two early rulings punished the online service that tidied up and spared the one that did not, and Congress wrote Section 230 to end that perverse result. Moody v. NetChoice and the Unfinished Question of Who Owns the Feed The Court treated feed curation as editorial judgment but sent the Texas and Florida laws back, leaving conservatives split on common carriage versus property. NRA v. Vullo and the Unanimous Rule Against Government Jawboning Nine justices agreed that an official may not use regulatory leverage to make businesses shun a disfavored group, and the rule protects every viewpoint. Murthy v. Missouri Lost on Standing, Yet the Record It Built Still Stands The Court ruled on who may sue, not on whether federal pressure on platforms is lawful, and the record the case built still matters. Why the Fact-Check Became Its Own Genre and How to Check the Checkers Fact-checking grew from a newsroom chore into a branded genre with its own rating scales. Here is how it works and a method for testing any check. From Banned Claim to Live Hypothesis, How the Lab-Leak Debate Was Framed Newsrooms say they simply follow the evidence. The lab-leak record shows how a question was labelled a conspiracy theory before the evidence was in. The Laptop Story Twitter Blocked and the Letter That Gave It Cover In October 2020 Twitter blocked a New York Post story and 51 ex-officials suggested a Russian hand. The record shows why platforms should not edit elections.