By Jeremy Schulman In December, Trump adviser Kash Patel set off alarm bells when he said that if the former president returns to the Oval Office, his new administration might prosecute media figures and others “who lied about American citizens.” “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” Patel told Steve […]
By J.D. Tuccille It’s appropriate that, days after the French government arrested Pavel Durov, CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram, for failing to monitor and restrict communications as demanded by officials in Paris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that his company, which owns Facebook, was subjected to censorship pressures by U.S. officials. Durov’s arrest, […]
By Tim Keary Key Takeaways Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski has left Europe following the arrest of the Telegram CEO by French authorities. Pavlovski said French authorities have “crossed a red line”. The arrest of Durov has sparked a significant backlash from free speech advocates. Prominent figures like Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin have criticized the […]
By Tim Keary The risk of AI systems being used to enable censorship is often overlooked. On the vendor side, so much focus is placed on safety and content moderation that the output of these tools often displays ideological biases, often outright blocking legitimate outputs. [ . . . ] How AI Vendor’s Content Moderation […]
By J.D. Tuccille Earlier this month, European Union Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton raised eyebrows when he publicly warned Elon Musk to respect the E.U.’s censorship laws during a then-pending interview with U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. Even for the E.U., which has been slipping not-so-slowly towards soft totalitarianism, the attempt to extend E.U. jurisdiction […]
By Julia Tar Civil society groups and academics have criticised European Commissioner Thierry Breton’s recent letter to Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X, arguing that it misinterprets the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and threatens free expression. The Open Letters In one of the letters, dated Wednesday (21 August), signed by The […]
By Jackson Walker The free speech advocates on Wednesday rebuked Breton for appearing to “disregard” free expression in favor of enforcing DSA. “Your letter reflects an alarming disregard for freedom of expression,” the letter reads. “It is inconsistent with the design of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and, indeed, with the very spirit of a […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NASHVILLE, Tenn. August 21, 2024 — Today, The Future of Free Speech, TechFreedom, Institute H21, and 15 other signatories issued an open letter to Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, raising serious concerns about the potential misuse of the Digital Services Act (DSA) to curtail freedom of expression in the […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NASHVILLE, Tenn. August 20, 2024 — The Future of Free Speech is thrilled to announce Sir Salman Rushdie and Masih Alinejad—two of the world’s leading advocates for freedom of expression—for our inaugural Global Free Speech Summit this fall, hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Dialogue Vanderbilt. Sir Salman Rushdie will have […]
By Jacob Mchangama and John G. Geer Americans’ views on free speech change directions every so often. One of those times was during the protests at U.S. universities about the Israel-Hamas war. As scholars of free speech and public opinion, we set out to find out what happened and why. The Supreme Court itself, as […]