By Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff A heavy-handed new law forced TikTok to announce that it would shut down operations “within days.” Although the law left people without a popular forum to share and access information, a government official brushed off free speech concerns, saying that the ban did not mean “doom and gloom” for the […]
By Shirleen Guerra The Liberty Justice Center filed an emergency petition alongside some TikTok creators, asking the court to halt the Jan. 19 ban until the U.S. Supreme Court gives its final ruling on the legal challenge. The emergency petition argues that the act violates the First Amendment because it bans all speech on TikTok, even […]
By Cristiano Lima-Strong and Drew Harwell TikTok asked a federal appeals court Monday to temporarily halt a law that could close down the app in the United States next month so the Supreme Court can review the matter. [ . . . ] Jeff Kosseff, senior fellow at The Future of Free Speech, a think tank […]
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 Gillian Brassil California’s new law that allows people to sue over election deepfakes was temporarily blocked by a federal judge. The judge, in granting a preliminary injunction on Wednesday, wrote that the law likely violates the First Amendment given its broad scope, even if digitally-altered media such as by artificial intelligence poses “significant” risks. […]
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 Ray Fernandez 19 U.S. states have enacted laws regulating the use of generative AI in election communications, and seven more are considering bills. With no federal mandate, more than half of American states have enacted or are exploring laws designed to criminalize the creation and distribution of deepfakes in election-related content. [….] Deepfake laws […]
By Jacob Mchangama Democracy, California Gov. Gavin Newsom warns, is on the brink. The culprit? A wave of “disinformation powered by generative AI,” poised to “pollute our information ecosystems like never before.” With the 2024 election looming, Newsom and California Democrats argue that artificial intelligence-generated content threatens to warp public perception. In response, the Golden State has swiftly enacted two bold […]
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 […]