By Glen Weyl, Audrey Tang and Jacob Mchangama [ . . . ] We believe, therefore, that it’s time to relearn some of the commission’s lessons and adapt them to our pluralistic, digital age. With a deeply polarizing U.S. election fresh in our minds, the need to redesign platforms that bridge divides has never been more urgent. In a paper this […]
By Jacob Mchangama How one Dane views free speech in America. wo years ago, I moved to the United States to found a think tank devoted to defending global free expression. What better place to launch than America, which is, according to the law professor and First Amendment expert Lee Bollinger, “the most speech protective of any nation on […]
By Dan McKay A federal prosecutor’s letter to a medical journal skeptically asking about its commitment to nonpartisan debate is an unusual intrusion into editorial decision-making and may interfere with the publication’s First Amendment rights, free speech experts say. In a letter last week, Edward R. Martin Jr., interim U.S. attorney for the District of […]
By Paulo Silva Pinto and Leo Garfinkel Joan Barata, a freedom-of-expression scholar at Vanderbilt University in the United States, says the right to voice an opinion must be preserved even when it makes others uncomfortable. “The right to freedom of expression includes the right to shock, disturb, and offend—three very strong verbs. You have the […]
By Jacob Mchangama The battle of the airwaves was vital for promoting freedom during the Cold War. Trump abandons it at our peril. On February 21, 1990, Václav Havel, the Czechoslovakian dissident turned president, received a rapturous welcome from a packed U.S. Congress. In his speech, Havel recalled that just months earlier he had been arrested by […]
By Jacob Mchangama In February, 50-year-old Hamit Coskun was charged with causing “harassment, alarm or distress” to the Islamic faith after burning a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London. A KC told the National Secular Society that the charges were “plainly defective”, while the NSS accused prosecutors of reintroducing a blasphemy law “by the back door”. […]
By Catharine Li Federal immigration enforcement will begin screening non-citizens’ social media accounts for “antisemitic activity” as grounds for denying visa and green card applications, according to an April 9 announcement from the Department of Homeland Security. . . . Ashkhen Kazaryan, fellow for the First Amendment at the Freedom Forum and senior legal fellow at the Future of Free […]
Rough English Translation. Original in Spanish. By José Cáceres SANTO DOMINGO.- Joan Barata, an international expert on freedom of expression and social media, and a world-renowned university professor, proclaimed that today’s world is fraught with “major challenges” regarding the management of freedom of expression and social media. He asserted that many believe that social media […]
By Prithvi Iyer Social media platforms have redefined communication by shifting the role of content curation from traditional editorial gatekeepers to largely algorithmic systems that reward content based on engagement metrics. Scholars have argued that algorithms optimized for engagement inadvertently reward content that elicits strong emotions, exacerbating polarization and, in some instances, amplifying disinformation. Platforms […]
By Abhishek Saha . . . Over the Christmas break, I read Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media, Jacob Mchangama’s magnificent chronicle of free speech through the ages. What struck me most was how the debates we face today—about academic freedom, censorship, and the limits of expression—are far from new. The same […]