Hey guys, is punishing human rights activists the government disagrees with good for free speech? Asking for a friend. www.state.gov/releases/off...

Friday news dump: Sen. Blackburn has released a section-by-section for an upcoming AI framework bill that is apparently designed to break the logjam on AI legislation and preemption. www.blackburn.senate.gov/services/fil...

Sharing the incredible work @freepress.bsky.social and @attorneynora.bsky.social have done in writing this report documenting the Administration's attacks on free expression. This is essential reading, galvanizing and clear. www.freepress.net/attack-on-fr...

Think of the most private thing you've ever looked up or done online. Now imagine it linked to your driver's license in a database for anyone to access. As age assurance spreads to more and more services, this will keep happening.

This story is evidence that Meta isn’t living up to its lofty commitments when it comes to free expression. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

@nullset.bsky.social is right. Also, imposing age verification on the internet faces significant First Amendment challenges because it places burdens on access to speech.

This.

Gave a talk today on nudify apps. Got a Q: “wouldn‘t AV fix it?” No! AV is non-responsive to the problem (the age of the user making NCII machine go brrr is not the issue), and also, of all the entities online to entrust with a copy of folks’ IDs, nudify apps rank somewhere between DPRK and the Com.

Best thing to come out of this Eagles/Cowboys game are these images of Jake Elliott on the sidelines

Cowboys Eagles is coming down to who kicks themselves in the groin last

👇🏻

I wanted to share probably the most important sermon I’ve given and it’s while I’m being arrested. It’s torture pure and simple what happens at #Broadview. I’m ok, though I was thrown to the ground and choked with my pectoral cross. A review of the video shows I was peaceful - did I deserve this?

“Providing tech services to supercharge ICE operations while blocking tools that support accountability of ICE officers is entirely backwards." - @kateruane.bsky.social www.404media.co/google-has-c...

The Future of Speech Online Conference starts tomorrow! Join us and many incredible experts to talk about jawboning, the First Amendment, and government efforts to shape private speech. @cdt.org standtogether.swoogo.com/foso25/9611110

“If we’re a country that values free speech, ​​then we should value it for everyone who’s here,” Cope says. “Otherwise, it doesn’t really mean very much.” www.theverge.com/policy/80111...

Are people wearing inflatable frog costumes doing the Cha Cha Slide as part of protests outside of ICE detention centers in Portland "domestic terrorists"? Of course not. cdt.org/insights/wha...

A gentle reminder that Wikipedia is a global treasure and that if you dislike what you see on there the door is open to you to contribute to the community. Radical transparency and cooperation is how Wikipedia works: medium.com/freely-shari...

#TechPromCDT is back this October! It’s a night of connection, conversation, and celebration of 30+ years of tech policy. Can’t wait to see this incredible community come together again. Oct 23 | 📍 The LINE DC @CDT.org cdt.org/event/2025-t...

A series of short posts from leading scholars about the constraints the First Amendment imposes on the government's authority to impose conditions on federal funding. Seems relevant! This is a @knightcolumbia.org series from earlier this year. knightcolumbia.org/research/fed...

It says something about Trump’s all-out war on free speech that the New York Times couldn’t find a more credible person than “presidential historian” Craig Shirley to defend it. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/u...

Go Birds.

Our own study of multilingual AI finds that these systems are trained on mostly English-lang data, machine translated speech, or data scraped from the web which doesn't represent how people speak. Translation is an art form. AI is creating six-fingered mimicry of language: cdt.org/insights/los...

I have lost all patience with the apparently unshakeable conviction that striking a reasonable, moderate pose means assuming the sincerity of transparently pretextual horseshit. Donald Trump does not care about reducing crime in DC. He is testing and normalizing paramilitary deployments in cities.

This.

I was honored to join this conversation with @knightcolumbia.org about federal funding the the First Amendment and to write this piece, in which I ask, what if Congress decided to exercise its power in this moment to protect our First Amendment rights?

I want #40MoreYearsofEvanGreer giving us essential security lesson via pop song covers! We sing this one in my house constantly. @evangreer.bsky.social youtu.be/EJW7v_Emw8k?...

CDT’s @beccabranum.bsky.social in the @nytimes.com on the unconstitutionality of the TAKE IT DOWN Act that recently passed in the House this Monday. www.nytimes.com/2025...

Much more than six times

Imagine seeing the Venus de Milo for the first time and thinking “filth.” How broken and sad.

Wikipedia is the ground truth of the internet. It has over 260000 dedicated people engaged in radically transparent content moderation and that’s why it’s the last best thing on the Internet. Targeting it says more about the one doing the targeting. www.theverge.com/news/656720/...

Leading us off, CDT CEO @alexreevegivens.bsky.social: “We’re convening this event because the U.S. is facing a crisis moment for the future of free speech."

Join CDT for this important discussion tomorrow!

A bop.

I think Mel Brooks once said something like: Tragedy is when I stub my toe, comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die. By extension, "censorship" is when I can't use racial slurs on a private social media platform; "free speech" is when you get abducted off the street for political opinions.

From CDT’s @kateruane.bsky.social: “Automated tools are error-prone & guaranteed to improperly categorize an unknown number of applicants’ viewpoints as violent, terroristic, or antisemitic, even by the Administration’s broad definitions of those terms.” www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

From CDT’s @kateruane.bsky.social: “DHS is targeting people based on nothing more than their First Amendment-protected expression, which is wrong in the first place. To make matters worse, it will almost certainly use error-prone automated tools to detect disfavored speech.” bsky.app/profile/npr....

Just me banging on again that BROADWAY employs more people than coal.

It’s also lazy. It doesn’t actually take that long to understand how social media can benefit kids and everyone. Or how censorship is bad and anti-democratic!! ::Gestures wildly at everything::

I mean… who among us

Gutting Section 230 won't punish Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. It will just kill Bluesky and Wikipedia

Honest to god what is wrong with people

I hope people see how blatantly hypocritical it is for the U.S. to complain about EU "censorship" right now. I have plenty of quibbles with the DSA, and with EU platform regulation generally. If the U.S. currently had any leg to stand on at ALL in this area, I would be talking about those. 1/

Always a good day to listen to @evangreer.bsky.social but especially today: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2QK...

Indeed. Thank you, @wyden.senate.gov

Esha is absolutely right. It doesn't matter if you agree with Mr. Khalil, the constitution protects his advocacy from punishment by the state. We must protect his constitutional right to ensure that the constitution protects all of us.

Yesterday the 4th Circuit held that the fed gov can begin enforcing provisions in 2 anti-DEI exec orders that Trump signed on his 1st and 2d days in office that a district court had enjoined bc it thought the provisions didn’t actually *do* anything. 1/ storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I will say this for them. They fully understand how important access to information is to freedom.

Arresting and threatening to deport students because of their participation in political protest is the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world’s most repressive regimes. It’s genuinely shocking that this appears to be what’s going on right here. 1/

I wrote section 230 to protect the little guys and the upstarts like Bluesky. Repealing section 230 only helps Meta, Musk, and Donald Trump.