By Soutik Biswas [ . . . ] Before its launch two years ago, Musk had promised an edgy, unfiltered, ‘anti-woke’ AI chatbot unlike competitors like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google’s models. Much of Grok’s snarky tone is drawn from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, iconic for blending wit with sci-fi absurdity. “Grok has been around for […]
By Angele Latham The U.S. has fallen from third to ninth place in the global ranking for support of free speech rights since 2021, according to a new study published by The Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University. The annual study, titled “Who in the World Supports Free Speech?” surveyed over 52,000 people about their support […]
A new global survey by The Future of Free Speech, an independent U.S.-based think tank, has ranked India 24th out of the 33 countries surveyed on the question of support for free speech. Its report, titled ‘Who in the World Supports Free Speech?’ states that “while abstract support for free speech remains strong, commitment to protecting […]
A new survey released by the nonpartisan think tank Future of Free Speech found a 3-percentage-point drop in support for free speech in the U.S., which puts America’s rank at number 9 out of the 33 countries surveyed. The survey tracks global attitudes toward allowing controversial speech, criticism of the government, media freedom, and an […]
A loss for words Popular support for free speech has been eroding, to judge by a forthcoming study from The Future of Free Speech, a think-tank. Since the previous survey, in 2021, America had the third-largest decline in support for free speech among 33 countries, behind only Japan and Israel. America ranks 9th, after some […]
Misguided decisions and the superiority of crowdsourcing mean Zuckerberg was right to change direction. But he must also keep Trump at arm’s length. By Jacob Mchangama The Great American Vibe Shift, rapidly reshaping U.S. culture and politics, has landed at 1 Hacker Way—the gleaming Palo Alto headquarters of Meta. In a video this week, Meta founder and […]
By Jacob Mchangama via Eugene Volokh I’m delighted to pass along this book review by Prof. Jacob Mchangama (Vanderbilt), who is the author of Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media and other works on free speech; he is also the CEO of The Future of Free Speech and Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and […]
By Ashley Belanger Upholding the First Amendment, a senior US district judge has blocked California’s deepfakes law, AB 2839, which was designed to stop deceptive AI-generated content from impacting election outcomes. [ . . . ] A First Amendment scholar and senior fellow with the non-partisan think tank The Future of Free Speech, Jeff Kosseff praised […]
By Danielle Smith A recent study by Vanderbilt University found that Americans generally love free speech, but their views change occasionally. One instance of this occurred during the protests at U.S. universities about the Israel-Hamas war. John Geer, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, said the study replicated a 1939 poll that asked about […]
By Jacob Mchangama “The Left started it.” That was the common retort from right-wing X accounts like Libs of TikTok and their supporters, who attempted and often succeeded at getting people fired for making tasteless social media posts about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump back in July. Most of their victims weren’t public figures […]