censorship – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Elon Musk’s ExTwitter Regularly Caves To Censorship Demands; Way More Than Old Twitter

from the surprising-no-one-who-has-been-paying-attention dept

Among the key reasons Elon Musk insisted he had to buy Twitter were (1) that it was too political in how it was managed and how content moderation was done, (2) the company was not as transparent as it should be, and (3) it was too quick to censor.

Since taking over, Elon has been worse on all three of those things. He’s turned the site into a one-sided MAGA campaign platform, he’s been significantly less transparent than the old regime, and he’s been much faster to cave to government demands.

I guess as a silver lining, he’s at least trying to be a bit more transparent, though only more transparent than he’s been (it’s still way less than what old Twitter was). We can only confirm how much more willing to censor he is because he finally released a transparency report. Twitter had been among the first internet companies to regularly release transparency reports, talking about content moderation, copyright takedown demands, and (of course) government demands for both information and content/account removals. Every six months, like clockwork, Twitter would publish detailed, thorough transparency reports.

Indeed, old Twitter was so committed to transparency on those things that it fought the US government in court for the right to publish more details of the demands it received from the government, after the rest of the big internet companies caved.

Then Elon came along and the transparency reports literally disappeared. This was despite Musk repeatedly claiming that “transparency is the key to trust.”

The last of the six-month transparency reports that Twitter published was the one that was published in July 2022, covering the last six months of 2021. And then, until this week, silence. It took two years, but ExTwitter finally got its act together to publish a transparency report for the first half of 2024 and… it shows that for all of Elon’s bluster about standing up for free speech, he’s way, way, way more willing to pull down content when governments demand removals than the old regime.

The site acted on 71 percent of the legal requests it received to remove content in the first half of this year, up 20 percent from the last time it reported the figure in 2021 and more than double the rate in preceding years

I mean, we’ve pointed this out multiple times in the past two years. Elon keeps changing his definition of free speech. Sometimes he claims it’s following the laws of each country.

That definition allows him to justify removing content as soon as governments request it. And boy does he ever seem willing to remove content when governments he likes request removals. These tend to come from right-wing authoritarian regimes in places like Turkey, where the new report reveals they removed 68% of requested content.

But, then, of course, when there are countries that are more left-leaning, like Brazil or Australia, he’ll make a big show of how he’s “standing up for free speech” in fighting them. As I’ve said, in both those cases, I think it was good that he was willing to stand up to over-aggressive government demands. But it’s hard to see it as any strong commitment to free speech when he’s so quick to comply elsewhere. Indeed, he’s already backed down in Brazil, to much less fanfare.

Separately and importantly, Elon has been way more willing to hand over user data to governments upon request. This was another thing that old Twitter was aggressive in fighting back against, but Elon seems quite willing to roll over on.

X has also complied more frequently this year with government requests for users’ personal data than in the years immediately before Musk’s takeover, at 53 percent, according to the report. X received the most such requests in the U.S. and complied with 76 percent of them.

For all of Elon’s misleading talk about how the “old” Twitter was really an extension of the FBI, it seems notable that (1) old Twitter sued to reveal details of DOJ requests and (2) Elon’s way more willing to comply with them.

So, hey, it’s great that Elon is finally releasing (much simpler, less detailed) transparency reports (though we’ll see if they actually keep coming). But, it also underscores just how much Elon has done the opposite of what he’s promised. He’s made ExTwitter way more political in its moderation and focus, he’s made the site way less transparent, and he’s way more willing to cave to governments in takedown demands and requests for user info.

Filed Under: bias, censorship, content removals, elon musk, government demands, transparency, transparency report
Companies: twitter, x

Court Shuts Down Tennessee’s Attempt To Ban People From Talking About Abortion Options

from the get-bent,-censors dept

Tennessee’s government cranks out a lot of stupid laws. It’s been doing it for years, but things have accelerated recently as the state’s legislators seek to curtail rights for, well, pretty much everyone but white men. It has enacted book bans, anti-trans laws, and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision triggered its long-dormant anti-abortion law.

But it wasn’t enough to simply forbid women from getting abortions in the state. The government felt it must prevent residents from traveling to state where abortions are still legal to have the procedure performed. And that still wasn’t enough. The state also enacted an “abortion trafficking” law that forbade people from discussing out-of-state abortion options with minors. Fuck free speech, said the state. We simply can’t allow an unregulated marketplace of ideas, not when there are females to oppress.

Fortunately, that law is now dead, thanks to two tenacious plaintiffs (social services consultant Rachel Welty, state legislator Aftyn Behn) and their equally tenacious lawyer, Daniel Horwitz, who has done more than his fair share of dismantling unconstitutional rulings and laws. The federal court decision [PDF] opens up with an explanation of the “abortion trafficking” law, highlight exactly where the law goes wrong when it comes to regulating speech.

Recently, Tennessee enacted a so-called “abortion trafficking” law (“Chapter 1032”) that purports to forbid certain actions taken in connection with access to an abortion by an unemancipated minor—including, specifically, “recruit[ing]” such a minor “for the purpose of . . . procuring” an abortion. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-15-220(a). If Tennessee had chosen to limit that prohibition to abortions performed illegally in Tennessee, then that enactment would likely have been within the tradition of prohibitions on speech facilitating unlawful acts. The Tennessee General Assembly, however, chose to take the extraordinary step of attempting to outlaw any “recruit[ment] . . . [of] a pregnant unemancipated minor within this state for the purpose of . . . [p]rocuring an act that would constitute a criminal abortion [in Tennessee] for the pregnant unemancipated minor, regardless of where the abortion is to be procured.” Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-15-220(a)(1) (emphasis added). Tennessee, in other words, has chosen to outlaw certain communications made in the furtherance of abortions that are, in fact, entirely legal.

That’s a big problem. It’s big enough the legislators pushing the bill must have been aware of it. Almost certainly they were. The court says this is an extremely easy call for it to make. The next paragraph opens up very bluntly.

It cannot do so.

Here’s why:

Tennesseans are Americans, and, as Americans, every state in the nation is presumptively open to them. It is, therefore, a basic constitutional fact—which Tennessee has no choice but to accept—that, as long as there are states in which abortion is permissible, then abortion will be potentially available to Tennesseans. Because obtaining an abortion out of state is a lawful option, moreover, Tennessee cannot make it a crime to communicate freely about that option.

This isn’t the legislative equivalent of rocket science. But the legislators chose to ignore these obvious facts because they thought they might get away with it, at least for a little while. And a little oppression is better than no oppression.

Intolerance and hate make people stupid. This stupidity is most notable when it involves people with enough power to make their stupidity plainly apparent.

No one associated with Chapter 1032 seems to have a particularly clear picture of what the provision is supposed to prohibit—not the prosecutors who will be called on to enforce it; not the state attorneys called on to defend the statute in court; and, it seems, not even the individuals who drafted the provision itself, who appear to have simply pulled the recruitment-focused language from other, preexisting statutes in which that language makes more sense. Whatever it means to “recruit” a person to receive a lawful abortion, however, such recruitment would inherently involve First Amendment-protected speech, meaning that the recruitment provision is subject to the ordinary restrictions that the First Amendment imposes.

And so it goes for several more pages. The law is simply indefensible. It cannot possibly be constitutional, no matter how much time and other people’s money the state is willing to throw away trying to defend it. However, they couldn’t be bothered to personally confront the potential outcomes of this abhorrent law. Almost all of the government’s defense was done via filings and court appearances by the state’s lawyers. Even when given a chance to avoid the lawsuit by simply stating in writing the law would not be enforced in the manner the plaintiffs sued over, they refused to respond.

Of course, the DAGs could simply explain that they are not, in fact, planning to enforce Chapter 1032 in the manner that Welty and Behn fear. That brings the court to the fourth Frisch factor—a refusal to disavow enforcement—which, in this instance, strongly supports a finding of standing. The defendants have had an unusual number of opportunities to explain how they will or will not enforce the statute. Welty sent them letters, and she gave them plenty of time to respond—so much time that it ultimately interfered with her ability to obtain a temporary restraining order. Nevertheless, the defendants completely ignored her. The defendants could have explained that refusal at the court’s hearing, but not one defendant even attended, let alone testified. At the hearing, the court made very clear that its consideration of the case would benefit from some shred of evidence regarding the defendants’ intentions—even simply signed declarations confirming that the lawyers representing them are accurately representing the defendants’ understanding of the statute. Still, however, they provided nothing.

That’s pretty ugly. That’s an extremely shitty blend of arrogance and cowardice. The government officials don’t like being challenged and appear to believe responding directly to the court and/or the plaintiffs is beneath them. Their refusal to make personal appearances also strongly suggests they’re not willing to be directly confronted by the likely victims of their unconstitutional law.

This inaction doesn’t help the state. It only makes it easier for the court to find in favor of the plaintiffs and issue an injunction.

The court finds that Welty and Behn are entitled to, and will receive, an injunction against all enforcement of the recruitment provision by the defendants against any party. The court does not reach that conclusion simply because this is an overbreadth challenge, but because such relief is necessary to prevent Welty’s and Behn’s own irreparable injuries. This is a case about the free flow of information, and it would be naive to think that the plaintiffs’ injuries can be addressed simply by preventing the application of the recruitment provision to them and them alone, while leaving their messages to die on the vine because no one else can pass them along.

The closing paragraphs forcefully drive the point home:

The freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment is not simply a special protection that the Constitution grants to a few, high-profile speakers so that those speakers can hear themselves talk; it is a protection available to everyone, for the interconnected benefit of everyone, because messages do not gain their fullest power by being uttered, but by being spread.

Welty and Behn do not just have a right to speak their message; they have a right to live in a state where that message can be repeated by all who find it valuable to all who wish to hear it. Otherwise, there would be no actual freedom of speech—just freedom of a few speakers to address a silenced populace.

The law is blocked, but it’s as good as dead. Most likely, the state will appeal this decision. But this ain’t the Fifth Circuit so it’s unlikely to fall into the lap of a judge who thinks the First Amendment only applies to speech they agree with. The other option the state has to do the fastest, cheapest thing: strike the law from the books. But legislators who like wielding power more than they like respecting rights never take the easy way out. They just delay the inevitable since it costs them nothing to do so.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, abortion, censorship, daniel horwitz, free speech, tennesee

MAGA World’s Belief In Their Made Up Claim That Biden Is ‘Censoring’ Conservatives On Social Media May Kill KOSA

from the well,-if-that's-what-it-takes dept

MAGA world’s false belief that Joe Biden is “censoring conservatives” on social media may actually kill the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). As we mentioned earlier this week, while KOSA has already passed the Senate and advanced in a different form out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, there were still big concerns among House leadership that likely prevented the bill from moving forward.

Some of those concerns were legit and some were not. It appears that House Leadership is leaning in on the concerns based on a myth that they made up and apparently now believe to be true.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise made it clear that House leadership has some problems with the bill, in an interview with the Washington Times:

Mr. Scalise said there would not be action on the legislation before the Nov. 5 election and declined to predict whether it could advance later this year before the current Congress ends. He said he’s provided feedback to Energy and Commerce members leading the bills, and “everybody’s going to keep working,” but the concerns raised by various ideological GOP caucuses are “important to note.”

Among the outstanding concerns is that the bills, particularly KOSA, give too much power to the executive branch to regulate online content.

“You want to protect kids, but you don’t want to give more ability to the Biden administration to censor conservatives. And unfortunately, they’ve abused these powers in the past,” Mr. Scalise said. “And so you got to narrow it. You got to focus it just on kids.”

This is somewhat hilarious and stupid. Yes, KOSA could be used for censorship, which is why we’ve spent years calling out its many flaws. But the claim that the “Biden administration” has “abused these powers in the past” to “censor conservatives” is a myth. It’s a myth made up by the MAGA world.

We’ve gone over this before. Multiple studies have found no evidence to support the claims that social media companies engaged in politically biased content removals. Indeed, many of the studies have found that sites actually adjusted the rules to give Trump supporters more leeway in breaking the rules to avoid even the false appearance of bias.

Then there are the false claims that the Biden administration, in particular, engaged in censorship of conservatives. But that’s made-up fantasyland nonsense based on a misunderstanding of reality. It is true that the administration requested that social media companies do a better job dealing with COVID and election misinformation. However, the companies basically all either pushed back on those requests or ignored them entirely.

As the Supreme Court made clear in its Murthy ruling, there’s a huge difference between using the bully pulpit of the Presidency to encourage certain activities (perfectly legal and expected) and illegally coercing speech suppression (which would violate the First Amendment). The Supreme Court noted that the lower courts had mixed those things up, as had the plaintiffs in that case.

As the majority of the Court noted, all of the moderation scenarios presented in the lawsuit seemed perfectly normal content moderation decisions that platforms always make, exercising their own editorial discretion. The scenarios showed no signs of interference or coercion from the administration.

We reject this overly broad assertion. As already discussed, the platforms moderated similar content long before any of the Government defendants engaged in the challenged conduct. In fact, the platforms, acting independently, had strengthened their pre-existing content-moderation policies before the Government defendants got involved….

This evidence indicates that the platforms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exercised their own judgment.

Yet, MAGA world still wants to insist that this myth is true. They made up the myth whole cloth based on a cluelessness with trust & safety.

And now that myth might kill KOSA. Yay?

To be clear, there are all sorts of reasons that KOSA should go away. It includes problematic censorial powers that could be abused by any administration seeking to remove content for ideological reasons. And there are principled reasons why Republicans should reject KOSA. Senator Rand Paul recently laid out a compelling argument for why KOSA is bad that had nothing to do with culture war nonsense or made up fairy tales.

But here, it appears that the GOP’s leadership may have played themselves into making the right call for the right underlying reasons (the censorship powers), but based on a near total misunderstanding of how the world actually works.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-conservative bias, censorship, content moderation, kosa, murthy v. missouri, steve scalise

KOSA Advances Out Of House Committee, But Cracks Are Showing

from the it's-a-bad-bill,-stop-it dept

This morning, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a pretty long markup about KOSA, COPPA 2.0, and other bills. The quick summary is that both of those bills passed out of committee and could be taken to the House floor this session.

The longer version, though, is that cracks in the coalition pushing these bills are showing. It’s not clear that there’s a comprehensive vision that gets KOSA over the finish line, and that’s good for protecting kids, protecting privacy, and protecting speech. Because all of these versions of KOSA are an attack on all three of those things (while pretending not to be).

As we’ve described, the new versions discussed today are different from the version that passed the Senate earlier this year. The House leadership doesn’t much like the Senate version, and the new versions don’t seem likely to fix that. Any changes made to shore up support of House leadership seems likely to lose plenty of Democrats.

And while backers of the bills complained that they were voting on a “weakened version,” they also admitted that there were concerns about “unintended consequences” creeping into the bill. This statement from Rep. Kathy Castor, one of the key backers of the bill, is the sound of someone who knows they have a shitty bill on their hands, but wants to pass it anyway:

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), the Democratic co-lead on Bilirakis’s House version, acknowledged the version is a “weakened version” from what passed in the Senate, but urged her colleagues to advance the bill with hopes the language will be changed before going to the full House.

“We can’t allow unintended consequences to creep in, because there were politics played with KOSA here at the eleventh hour,” she said. “I think it’s important today to move it forward with the promise and acknowledgment that we…I don’t know that I could support this version if it comes to the House floor in this manner, but I trust Chair [Cathy] McMorris Rodgers [R-Wash.] and her leadership.”

Throughout the hearing, certain concerns were raised about the bills. It sounds as though many offices, both Republican and Democrat, are concerned about how they will allow the opposing party tremendous leeway in potentially pressuring internet companies to take down speech they dislike.

Thus, Democrats are realizing that KOSA is a bill targeting LGBTQ and abortion info, whereas some Republicans are now calling out how it could be used to pressure companies to remove pro-life content and/or religious content. With folks on both ends realizing that at its heart, KOSA is a censorship bill and will cause problems when “the other side” is in power, hopefully the bill won’t have enough momentum to keep going.

It’s almost amusing to see the opposing sides highlighting how their opposites would abuse the bill. The left-leaning Chamber of Progress is calling out how the Heritage Foundation would use KOSA to censor abortion info:

Meanwhile, some House Republicans are warning their colleagues of the reverse happening:

If both parties are worrying about how the other side might use KOSA to censor content, perhaps everyone can meet in the middle and admit that this is an unconstitutional, First Amendment-ignoring censorship bill, and dump the whole thing in the trash?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, censorship, coppa 2.0, democrats, free speech, kathy castor, kosa, privacy, protect the children, republicans

Settlement In Florida Book Ban Lawsuit Means A Bunch Of Books Are Headed Back To School Libraries

from the unburning-books dept

Florida’s legislative antipathy towards free speech and general overall bigotry has generated plenty of bad laws and plenty of fully justified lawsuits. Earlier this month, the state’s quasi-book bans became the defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by multiple big-name publishers. But that was just the latest lawsuit, and the first to actually sue the state itself.

Plenty of other litigation is underway, targeting individual counties that have removed books from schools due to book challenges (over-)enabled by the state’s anti-speech laws. But there’s finally a little bit of good news to report. A lawsuit filed on behalf of two authors and two parents against Nassau County and its school board has resulted in a win for the plaintiffs. As Politico reports, lots of books that should have been removed under the (extremely loose) standards of the law are being placed back on the shelves of school libraries.

A northeast Florida school district this week agreed to restore 36 books that were challenged and previously pulled from campus libraries in a settlement of a federal lawsuit fighting how local officials carried out the state’s policies for shielding students from obscene content.

The settlement reached by Nassau County school officials and a group of parents, students and the authors of the removed children’s book “And Tango Makes Three” marks a significant twist in the ongoing legal battles surrounding Florida’s K-12 book restrictions, which have been derided as “book bans” by opponents. Under the agreement, that book and others such as the “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and the “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean Auel will once again be available to students after being removed last year.

None of these fit the legal standards for obscenity. If they did, they would have been removed under existing obscenity laws, rather than only recently removed because some bigoted jackasses, enabled by the new law, applied the pressure needed to remove content they don’t like.

Nope, this is just codified hatred that allows people to decide no one should have access to books they don’t personally care for. The dumbest part of this is probably the removal of “And Tango Makes Three,” which contains nothing even remotely resembling “obscene” material. This is from law firm Selendy Gay’s statement on the lawsuit settlement:

Significantly, the Board acknowledges in the settlement that Tango has pedagogical value, is appropriate for students of all ages, and contains no “obscene” material—facts that another Florida School Board—in Escambia County—is still contesting. The Board’s acknowledgement makes good sense: since its publication in 2005, Tango has been a highly awarded children’s book and has been lauded by educators and childhood development experts. Tango, which tells the true story of a same sex penguin couple who form a lasting pair bond and together adopt, hatch, and raise a happy and healthy chick, conveys important themes about family responsibility, adoption, LGBTQIA+ families, and natural science to which all students should have access.

Just the same old bigotry, but with a new law to abuse. No one contesting this book truly believed the material was “obscene.” They just don’t believe any student of any age should have access to a book that contains a positive depiction of a same-sex relationship.

And it’s just blatant racism driving some of the other book removals:

These 35 [challenged] books include significant works by Toni Morrison, Jonathan Safran Foer, Alice Sebold, Jodi Picoult and Erika Sanchez, which address racism in America, as well as the life experiences of immigrants, first-generation Americans, trans Americans and other underrepresented communities and individuals.

It’s also the same old bigots. The statement from the law firm points out that all 35 of the books removed were challenged by a of collective censorial asshats calling themselves “Citizens Defending Freedom.” Of course, there’s little about the group that indicates any actual desire to defend freedoms.

Citizens Defending Freedom (CDF) is the latest organization to establish a spoke-and-wheel structure to centrally manage local politicking on a range of hot button conservative issues. Its promise to “PROVIDE materials for home school families” is what first drew my attention, but CDF also claims that chapters in 100 counties will address corruption, school curricula, and “breaches of constitutional liberty.” It’s at 20 active chapters, so it’s got a way to go.

Nevertheless, the organization — just a couple of years old at this point — already takes credit for Nueces County, TX ending its sex education classes, Miami-Dade County introducing a Day of Prayer in public schools, and Lake Wales, FL for creating “Responsible Fatherhood Month.” Its chief opponents, not surprisingly, seem to be the NAACP, George Soros, and Walt Disney.

Yes, nothing says “defending freedom” like removing books from school libraries and forcing public schools to host days of prayer. Or, you know, implicitly threatening Nassau County school officials with arrest for agreeing to return these books to school libraries, as CDF does in its statement in response to the lawsuit settlement:

In response to this settlement, CDF has also made the Nassau County Sheriff aware, highlighting the district’s own admission of the presence of obscene materials in schools and shared the district’s own findings as evidence that they are distributing materials in violation of Florida’s child obscenity laws. “By their own words, the Nassau School District has determined these books violate state law. Yet, rather than take corrective action, they’ve chosen to put them back in the hands of our children. We intend to hold them accountable,” said Sarah Calamunci, CDF Florida State Director.

Keep crying, haters. People who actually care about freedom will continue to combat efforts like these, as well as the unconstitutional laws that enable them. Here’s wishing you loss after loss after loss in the coming months, as federal judges (for the most part) continue to recognize these efforts for what they are: government-enabled censorship of views those in power don’t agree with.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, censorship, florida, free speech, justin richardson, lawsuit, peter parnell, sara moerman, toby lentz
Companies: selendy gay

Hong Kong’s Puppet Government Convicts Two More Journalists On Sedition Charges

from the saying-mask-off-suggests-there-was-a-mask-to-begin-with dept

The Chinese government wants the money that flows through Hong Kong. It has no desire to put up with the freedom and democracy Hong Kong has enjoyed since being freed of its colonialist overlords.

The UK government exited Hong Kong only to see the Chinese government replace it as the new colonialists. The Chinese government agreed to take a hands-off approach for 50 years after the UK’s exit, but almost immediately violated this agreement to shut down dissent while it siphons off the wealth.

Pro-democracy protests that received worldwide coverage resulted in hastily-written, extremely draconian national security laws that expanded the Chinese government’s direct control of Hong Kong. Since then, the Chinese government has ousted pro-democracy politicians and replaced them with hand-picked hardliners willing to exchange their humanity for just a little bit more power.

Controlling the government is one thing. Controlling the population is a bit more difficult. But it’s been made much easier with new laws that treat dissent as a threat to national security. This has resulted in censorship — something usually enforced by arrests and jail sentences for critics, dissenters, and even pop artists who chose to speak up against the Chinese government.

Hong Kong’s new national security law was used to arrest Jimmy Lai, a prominent pro-democracy media tycoon, making it clear to everyone that while the Chinese government’s version of capitalism might allow people to become rich, it will never allow citizens to become powerful — not if they’re unwilling to fully bend the knee.

Two more journalists are now facing criminal charges for publishing articles critical of the Chinese government. And while the Chinese government has conveniently forgotten its promise to exiting UK colonialists to take a hands-off approach to governing Hong Kong, it’s more than happy to use laws written by UK colonialists to punish its critics.

A Hong Kong court on Thursday convicted two former editors of a shuttered news outlet in a sedition case widely seen as a barometer for the future of media freedoms in a city once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia.

The trial of Stand News former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam was Hong Kong’s first involving the media since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

[…]

Chung and Lam had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications — charges that were brought under a colonial-era sedition law used increasingly to crush dissidents. They face up to two years in prison and a fine of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $640) for a first offense.

The judicial system is just as compromised by Chinese government sympathizers as the rest of the Hong Kong government. Judge Kwok Wai-kin stated in his order that the two journalists — along with the paper’s holding company (Best Pencil LTD) — “smeared” the Hong Kong and Chinese governments during the 2019 pro-democracy protests. The offices of the paper were raided in 2021 by the Hong Kong government, setting up this inevitable prosecution of the publication’s top editors.

As the AP report notes, press freedom is in a free fall in Hong Kong, dropping from 80 (of 180 territories) in 2021 to 135th place in 2024. That’s exactly what the Chinese government wants. And it will continue this deterioration of freedom in Hong Kong until another powerful world government is willing to do something more than issue a statement condemning its ritualistic violation of human and civil rights.

That being said, at the statement issued by the US State Department reminds the Chinese government of the agreement it began ignoring almost immediately after the Hong Kong handover.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller wrote on X that the convictions were a “direct attack on media freedom” and undermined the city’s international reputation for openness.

“We urge Beijing and Hong Kong authorities to restore and uphold rights guaranteed in the Basic Law,” he said, referring to the mini-constitution which adopted by China to govern Hong Kong after its handover from Britain in 1997 and which was aimed at preserving the territory’s capitalist system and way of life until 2047.

All well and good, but the Chinese government is engaged in actions. The rest of the world seems to think words are sufficient. Try telling that to the journalists who are well on their way to seeing their words converted into actions that will see them robbed of their livelihood and their freedom.

Filed Under: censorship, china, chung pui ken, hong kong, journalism, patrick lam, press freedom

Florida The Latest State To Be Sued By Big Name Publishers Over Unconstitutional Book Bans

from the do-they-still-have-a-1st-amendment-in-florida? dept

Far too many states have decided to engage in censorship, urged on by an alarmingly large voting bloc that truly appears to be on the side of fascism, so long as that fascism appears to be on their side.

Since this is, for the moment, still the United States of America, home of several enshrined rights, most of these efforts have been scaled back, dismantled, or blocked completely following challenges in federal courts. Most, but not all. Some laws have survived, and those that have are likely going to be reviewed by a Supreme Court that has been deliberately stocked with the sort of people who think rights should be subservient to their favorite flavor of “conservatism.”

Fortunately, the burden of displacing these laws hasn’t been placed solely on residents of states run by bigoted lawmakers. Major publishers have stepped into the judicial breach. But this time, they’re using their litigation powers for good, rather than attempting to control access to literature by wielding their copyright law cudgels.

Multiple publishers have banded together once again to sue Florida over its censorial book-targeting laws. While not technically a book ban, the law accomplishes the same ends through slightly different means. But, at the end of the day, it’s still just censorship. And it’s still just as unconstitutional. Here’s Richard Luscombe, reporting for The Guardian from Miami, Florida.

“Florida HB 1069’s complex and overbroad provisions have created chaos and turmoil across the state, resulting in thousands of historic and modern classics, works we are proud to publish, being unlawfully labeled obscene and removed from shelves,” Dan Novack, vice-president and associate general counsel of Penguin Random House (PRH), said in a statement.

[…]

PRH is joined in the action by Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks. The 94-page lawsuit, which also features as plaintiffs the Authors Guild and a number of individual writers, was filed in federal court in Orlando on Thursday.

The suit contends the book removal provisions violate previous supreme court decisions relating to reviewing works for their literary, artistic, political and scientific value as a whole while considering any potential obscenity; and seeks to restore the discretion “of trained educators to evaluate books holistically to avoid harm to students who will otherwise lose access to a wide range of viewpoints”.

The lawsuit targets “book removal provisions” that mainly target books kept in classes by teachers for access by their students, rather than school or other public libraries. Not that those entities aren’t affected. Books present in school libraries are also subject to challenges by state residents. But that’s the pretense that allows state government spokespeople to claim “book removal” mandates are not the same as “book bans.” After all, it’s not the government ordering removal. It’s simply schools and teachers responding to book challenges from other citizens.

“This is a stunt,” Florida Department of Education spokesperson Sydney Booker said in an email to The Hill. “There are no books banned in Florida. Sexually explicit material and instruction are not suitable for schools.”

In retrospect, I’m being far too fair to this government official. He doesn’t really respond to the lawsuit’s allegations. Instead, he crafts a new narrative that suggests the new law changes nothing about the long-held status quo. Sexually explicit material has never been suitable for schools. Therefore, the law being sued over is just… a redundancy?

Except that if it was the same as everything that’s come before it, librarians wouldn’t be pulling tons of books they’ve almost always felt comfortable giving students access to. And teachers wouldn’t be purging their classroom bookshelves of titles they’ve historically used for assigned reading or classroom instruction.

Since it went into effect last July, countless titles have been removed from elementary, middle and high school libraries, including American classics such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Contemporary novels by bestselling authors such as Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume and Stephen King have also been removed, as well as The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank’s gripping account of the Holocaust, according to the publishers.

The law prohibits books that “describe sexual content” from being made accessible to any student, whether they’re five or eighteen (the law regulates everything from kindergarten to 12th grade). It does not define the term “sexual content” with any specificity and the wording makes it clear that the context of the sexual content does not matter. Then it goes on to equate “sexual content descriptions” with pornography, which is already regulated and forbidden to be distributed to minors. And it goes without saying, no classroom or school library contains any actual pornography.

The first part of the law is so vague as to allow something as innocuous as the phrase “made love” to trigger the book removal process. The second part is redundant in the most stupid way — making something already illegal more illegal?

That’s the basis of the legal challenge [PDF] raised by the publishers, who note the poorly written, purely censorial law has already resulted in the removal of books long considered to be acceptable for most school-age readers. The plaintiffs want these two sections invalidated.

And they should be. They were clearly written by people blinded by their own bigotry — legislators who hope to purge the state’s schools of anything they don’t personally agree with. And they appear to be completely fine with the collateral damage caused by the badly written, unconstitutionally vague law — the disappearance of classic literature they’ve possibly even read and enjoyed themselves — so long as it definitely harms the stuff they hate.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, censorship, florida, free speech, lawsuit, ron desantis
Companies: harpercollins, hatchette, macmillan publishers, penguin random house, simon & schuster, sourcebooks

Judge Grants City Restraining Order Blocking Researcher From Accessing Ransomed Gov’t Files

from the stop-doing-things-anyone-can-do! dept

Having completely shit the bed in its handling of a recent ransomware act, the city of Columbus, Ohio has decided the person who must be silenced — and, hopefully punished — should be the person who informed city workers and residents their PII was available on the dark web.

The messenger hasn’t been shot quite yet, but it’s almost an inevitability at this point, as Bill Bush reports for the Columbus Dispatch.

A Franklin County judge on Thursday granted the city of Columbus a temporary restraining order against a cybersecurity expert who has been telling the media about the public impact of the ransomware attack on city government.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Andria C. Noble approved the temporary restraining order, which bars cybersecurity expert David L. Ross Jr., who goes by “Connor Goodwolf,” “from accessing, and/or downloading, and/or disseminating” any of the files stolen from the city that were posted to the dark web.

This order makes no sense. If Ross/Goodwolf has access to these files, plenty of other people do as well. No, this is an attempt to silence someone who has repeatedly embarrassed the city by exposing its unwillingness to fully inform the multiple victims of this ransomware attack and release of the ransomed data.

And there’s a lot at stake. Not only was drivers license and social security information about citizens and city employees released, but the ransomed data also included personal info about domestic violence victims and (allegedly) undercover police officers.

Goodwolf’s exposure of the extent of the breach has already resulted in two lawsuits against the city for failing to protect this information. City Attorney Zach Klein was more than happy to express his agreement with this clearly unconstitutional injunction since it gives him something else to talk about rather than the city’s botched attempt to downplay the severity of the incident.

In a series of disclosures, Ross has shown [Mayor Andrew] Ginther’s statements to be incorrect about the extent of damage done after Rhysida, a foreign cybercrime organization, hacked the city’s server farm and demanded a $1.7 million or 30 bitcoins to keep the information off the dark web. The hack was discovered in July by the city, which refused to pay the ransom.

Ross’ investigation has provided many more details about the risks to city employees and the general public — and has proven more accurate — than what the city has divulged, even prompting Ginther to correct himself about the extent of the damage.

The city has decided the person informing the public about the ransomware attack is the real villain here, rather than city officials who tried and failed to keep this under wraps. This was the warning shot. There’s possibly more to come — something hinted at by the language used in the court order.

The order is in effect for 14 days, and also orders Ross not to destroy or alter any information he has downloading, suggesting the city may try to indict him.

There’s the true extent of the city’s pettiness. It wants revenge for being exposed as reckless caretakers of persona info, as well as misleading the public about the extent of the data exposure. Even with all of this going on, city representatives continue to dodge direct questions about the attack — such as when it was actually first discovered. They won’t have this luxury for much longer, not when it’s the subject of at least two potential class-action lawsuits.

For the time being, the city seems satisfied with trying to silence the security researcher who was far more informative about the extent of the breach and far more responsible in terms of answering questions raised by city employees and residents.

In the end, all the city really has accomplished is the generation of more negative press and securing a truly absurd court order — one that the person requesting it (city attorney Zack Klein) won’t even attempt to explain.

Asked if Ross would potentially become the only person in the world prohibited from downloading the stolen city files for purposes of forensics, Klein said he didn’t want to discuss potential litigation and the ongoing criminal investigation.

Hopefully, Ross/”Goodwolf” will get this order rescinded in the near future. Once that happens, the city is going to have to actually deal honestly with the repercussions of this attack. Trying to scapegoat the person who speaks up about incidents like these is, unfortunately, the expected response when there’s an imbalance in power. But it rarely works out as well as those with power believe it will.

Filed Under: andria noble, censorship, columbus, connor goodwolf, david ross jr, franklin county, kim brown, ohio, ransomware, shooting the messenger, zach klein

Robert Reich’s Ridiculous Response To Elon Reminds Us That Censorial Instincts Have Infected Both Parties

from the can-we-not? dept

Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s a good thing when political leaders go around calling for the arresting or punishing of people for their speech, even when that speech is terrible. But apparently, former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich feels differently.

Indeed, it would be nice if the leadership of either major political party in the US didn’t think that censoring people they disagreed with was a great idea, but it seems to keep happening. Republicans love to censor all sorts of speech they dislike. But Democrats are similarly super quick to push for the silencing of all kinds of speech they dislike. Tragically, neither party has any sort of moral superiority here.

Sometimes it gets beyond stupid. For example, former Secretary of Labor (under Clinton), Robert Reich’s latest angry screed in the Guardian freaking about Elon Musk and suggesting a host of ridiculous ways to “rein in” Musk. Half of his suggestions are either obviously unconstitutional censorship, or just disgustingly censorial.

The column first calls out Musk for his partisan shift (which hasn’t actually been much of a shift at all), though it makes it clear that Reich thinks part of the reason why Elon is “out of control” is because of his political views. I may agree that Musk is out of control, but not because of his political views.

As ridiculous a character as Musk may be these days, and as silly and cynical his support of Donald Trump may be, calling for silencing someone over their political views is pretty fucking authoritarian. Yes, Trump himself does it, but that doesn’t mean others should follow Trump’s lead.

After spending a bunch of words to basically say that Musk’s support of Trump and other right-wing causes means he’s “out of control,” Reich then suggests “six ways to rein in Musk.” The first two are pretty straightforward versions of boycotting his businesses like ExTwitter and Tesla. And, sure, yeah, those are perfectly fine ideas, but as I write this, I see Reich himself has posted ten times to ExTwitter himself in the past 24 hours.

Be the change you want to see in the world, Robert.

But then the column goes completely off the rails with two obviously nonsense ideas. First, threats of jailtime:

3. Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.

Global regulators may be on the way to doing this, as evidenced by the 24 August arrest in France of Pavel Durov, who founded the online communications tool Telegram, which French authorities have found complicit in hate crimes and disinformation. Like Musk, Durov has styled himself as a free speech absolutist.

So, technically, this might not be a First Amendment violation, as he’s asking regulators “around the world” to do this, and outside of the US, they are obviously not bound by the First Amendment. But, also, holy shit, is this an authoritarian nonsense suggestion.

Note that Reich does not outline any actual crimes from around the world for which Musk should be threatened with arrest. He just compares it to Telegram and Durov, where the actual details still remain unclear, but from what’s been revealed so far, they appear to suggest actions that are not at all similar to what Musk is doing with ExTwitter (e.g., refusing to even respond to law enforcement requests regarding child sexual abuse material).

That is, potentially (again, details are not fully known!) very, very different than “complicit in hate crimes.” Threatening to arrest social media CEOs because “hate crimes” happen on their platforms is a very, very stupid and dangerous idea. It would lead to much less speech allowed online overall as the risk of criminal liability for speech you had no say in appears on your site.

Even worse, note that Reich includes at the end of this that “Like Musk, Durov has styled himself as a free speech absolutist.” Neither are actually free speech absolutists. We’ve written many words on Musk’s free speech hypocrisy (which, I guess, is similar to the politicians mentioned above). Durov just seems like he doesn’t care, not that he’s taking any sort of principled stance.

But either way, Reich seems to be implying that styling yourself a free speech absolutist is an arrestable offense. What the actual fuck is he thinking?

While the conservative media has (for once) rightly gone apeshit over this part of Reich’s column, I think his second suggestion is potentially even worse:

4. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission should demand that Musk take down lies that are likely to endanger individuals – and if he does not, sue him under Section Five of the FTC Act.

Musk’s free-speech rights under the first amendment don’t take precedence over the public interest. Two months ago, the US supreme court said federal agencies may pressure social media platforms to take down misinformation – a technical win for the public good (technical because the court based its ruling on the plaintiff’s lack of standing to sue).

While the “rest of the world’s” regulators aren’t bound by the First Amendment, US officials absolutely are. And, no, the FTC cannot (under the First Amendment) demand that Elon remove “lies” from ExTwitter. Reich tries to cover himself with “lies that are likely to endanger individuals,” and there is a very narrow exception in extreme cases, but most lies that are likely to endanger individuals are still protected speech.

And, while some will likely disagree, this remains important. Because lots of people will falsely claim that any sort of speech is a “lie that endangers individuals.” In this very column, Reich is lying in a way that some could argue could “endanger” Elon Musk. Should the FTC be able to order it be taken down?

Would Reich be okay with a Donald Trump-controlled FTC ordering websites to take down content it deems likely to “endanger” people? That could include information on diversity, equity, and inclusion. It could include information on LGBTQ rights and medical support. It could include information on climate change. Or abortion. And Reich is suggesting that the FTC should have the ability to order the removal of it all.

Reich then is also pointing to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Murthy case, though it’s clear he has no idea what that case was about or what the court actually said. He claims that it made it okay for federal agencies to “pressure social media platforms to take down information,” but that’s not fully accurate. It does say they can try to persuade. “Pressure” is a bit amorphous, as pressure could violate the First Amendment if it crosses over into coercion.

And, um, demanding content be removed with a threat of a Section Five lawsuit very much crosses the very, very, very obvious line beyond persuasion into coercion. Apparently, in Reich’s skimming of First Amendment cases from the Supreme Court, he completely skipped over the Vullo case that was heard the same day as Murthy and was decided a few weeks earlier. The Vullo case made it clear that outright threats of legal action over speech clearly violate the First Amendment.

Reich’s next suggestion is that the US government should terminate its contracts with SpaceX. There are many actual reasons to consider doing this, though it’s a lot more complicated than Reich makes out, in part because SpaceX is simply way further advanced than any other option.

But, the fact that Reich is suggesting that this be done in response to Musk’s political activity reveals that he wants it done for unconstitutional reasons. There are legitimate reasons to look for alternatives, around national security and redundancy. But since this whole column is about how the real problem with Musk is his support of right wing causes, Reich is saying the quiet part aloud: he wants to punish Musk for his political speech.

And that shouldn’t be how any of this works, no matter your feelings on Musk, Trump, or the current MAGA GOP.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, arrests, censorship, donald trump, elon musk, free speech, ftc, robert reich
Companies: spacex, twitter, x

School President Throws Library Dean Under The Bus After Florida College’s LGBTQ-Books-In-A-Dumpster Dumpster Fire

from the both-a-coward-and-a-liar dept

The fallout came fast and hard for New College of Florida and its administrators after multiple videos were posted of books dealing mainly with sexual identity and race found filling a dumpster behind the school library.

The immediate reaction from the school’s spokesperson, Nathan Marks, was nonsensical. Marks claimed two things, neither of them believable. The first was that this was just routine periodical “pruning” of books that were too damaged or otherwise unneeded by the school. The second was that it was illegal to notify students, staff, or other entities that this purge was happening so that they might be able to rescue some of the books slated for destruction.

As to the first part of his claim, it was immediately apparent most books were neither damaged or old. Instead, they were books retained by the school’s now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center — something that was axed as soon as Governor DeSantis stocked the school board with his personal picks.

The second part was blatantly false. The school was permitted by law to sell or give away the books to anyone interested in them. In this case, it simply chose not to because the far right school board saw the books as garbage and treated them as such.

Now, the flailing is even worse. A steady stream of criticism has forced the college to react. And it has reacted in the worst way possible. The worst way is personified by school president Richard Corcoran, who has decided to pin all of the blame on someone who likely had no control over the purge pushed by the school board.

A New College of Florida library administrator has been placed on leave after thousands of books were found in a dumpster on campus, a university spokesperson confirmed to News Channel 8.

Shannon Hausinger, dean of the library, was placed on leave after “the library did not follow all of the state administrative requirements while conducting the routine disposition of materials,” the spokesperson said.

Maybe Hausinger agreed with the purge. Maybe she didn’t. Either way, Corcoran has made her the scapegoat.

But that’s not all he did. He claimed the public was too stupid to recognize what happened here. As is almost always the case when public leaders get caught doing things they shouldn’t, Corcoran has chosen to blame the media and anyone else who might have disagreed with this move.

“Unfortunately, much of the coverage has been sensationalized, catering to the narratives of our critics,” Corcoran wrote in the letter. “While the optics of seeing thousands of books in a dumpster are far from ideal, it is important to understand the disposition of materials is a necessary process in libraries, and ensures that our collection remains relevant, up-to-date, and in good condition for our community’s use.”

To put this politely, that’s bullshit. The school board — the same one that shut down the Gender and Diversity Center — had a hand in this. We know this because at least one board member has admitted as much. Christopher Rufo — a board member personally appointed by Ron DeSantis — took to ExTwitter to crow about this purge of LGBTQ content, saying the quiet part as loudly as he could.

If you can’t see/read the screenshot, it features several shots of these books in the dumpster, accompanied by Rufo’s statement:

We abolished the gender studies program. Now we’re throwing out the trash.

And here’s what Rufo said after taking the college board position:

Earlier this year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis appointed a new board majority, including me, to New College of Florida and tasked us with a simple, but audacious, mission: take over the failing school, bring in new leadership, and transform the institution into a liberal arts college in the classical tradition.

The move caused a firestorm. Conservatives cheered it on as an essential step in recapturing democratic institutions. Progressives denounced it as a violation of some principle or another. But, whatever your opinion, one thing is certain: the takeover of New College has changed the dynamics of America’s culture war and, if successful, will provide a model for conservatives across the nation.

None of this is addressed in the school president’s letter to the college’s staff. This unfortunate truth is simply ignored and spun to make it appear as though it’s just a misunderstanding that has been inflamed by careless reporting.

But that was never the case. This was always about a conservative-majority board inflicting its preferences on the college, starting with the gender studies program and culminating in the shocking display of contempt that is hundreds of gender and race-related books being consigned to a dumpster and hauled away before any collective effort could be made to rescue literary works DeSantis’ hand-picked board considers trash.

Filed Under: book bans, censorship, chris rufo, free speech, new college of florida, richard corcoran, ron desantis, shannon hausinger, stop woke act