@jkbjournalist.bsky.social making trouble with @postbaron.bsky.social at #kmf26 @knightfoundation.org

When I wrote Section 230 I did so knowing it would be critical for protecting free speech online. 30 years later and it’s one of the last things standing in the way of Republican censorship of the internet. Here’s to many more years of defending this vital safeguard of free speech.

From the bestskeeting author of the Bluesky-famous six-week Bad Bunny 101 comes this essential close reading of the halftime show! 🧵

I was really hoping that halftime show from a stellar Peurto Rican artist would have beem more political. Bad Bunny should have looked at the camera and said loudly in English "End the Jones Act Now"

Unpredictable Head-turning Majestic...

Great week to thaw out at #kmf26. Looking forward to seeing everyone! 😎 @knightfoundation.org

Holy cow. This 5th Circuit ruling on U.S. copyright overriding other countries' copyright laws, while a little arcane in its details, is a huge mess for everything from basic commercial licensing to national sovereignty and comity.

The biggest threats to journalism in this country, and to the possibility of an informed and empowered electorate, stem from the political economy of the media. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...

Troublemaker is my middle name.

@philorch.bsky.social and @nezetseguin.bsky.social in top form tonight. Breathtakingly perfect Ravel.

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college: 1. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Derrida 2. Music & Cognition 3. Modern Political Thought 4. 20th C. Architecture History 5. Southern Literature

In 2025, as Bluesky grew from 25M to 42M users, we took actions to keep it welcoming, using proactive design to reduce toxic content by 79%.  Our 2025 Transparency Report shares how we're building a safer platform while keeping a transparent and human-centered approach: bsky.social/about/blog/0...

For more than a century, scientific journals have been the pipes through which knowledge of the natural world flows into our culture, Ross Andersen writes—now they’re being clogged with AI slop: www.theatlantic.com/science/2026...

The right move. And an excellent, forceful statement: "We have asked the court to order the immediate return of all seized materials and prevent their use. Anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant.” wapo.st/4jUxQEe

New course, new blog post: "Where Should We Live?" - Will Climate Change Alter Where Americans Choose to Live? ethanzuckerman.com/2026/01/21/w...

Please share - multiple summer 2026 in-person undergrad internship opportunities at @pewresearch.org! - religion - digital - social trends - data journalism - global - news - internet - AI - admin - race - science - methods - politics Apply soon! pewtrusts.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Center...

Needed this today. Thank you cow.

We just published the methodology behind CoPE, our 9B parameter model that matches GPT-4o at content classification at 1% the size! The model is already open source, but now we're sharing our training technique. blog.zentropi.ai/how-we-built... 🧵 1/6

Apple and Google have previously removed apps providing nudify services from their app stores. So why havent they taken action against X and Grok? @carolinehaskins.bsky.social reports

Bill Siemering, founding program director of NPR, author of its mission statement, has asked me to inquire if any profs might be interested in a Zoom class visit? No honorarium necessary. Bill founded All Things Considered, Fresh Air, won a MacArthur, etc.

We underestimate how impactful harassment and threats of violence are on politicians. Clear, large uptick in the number of major incumbent politicians not running/retiring specifically due to harassments and threats of violence. The harassers are like 0.1% of the population but hugely impactful.

Has a court ruled on whether, under Section 230, a web site’s AI generating content based on a user prompt is treated as the web site’s speech? Seems to me it should be, just as if the site operator published speech answering someone’s question. BWEPRA

“Major platforms are already experimenting with ads embedded in conversations where…there’s no way to distinguish neutral information from paid influence. AI companions will nudge users toward purchases, beliefs, and behaviors that serve the interests of the highest bidder.”

THREAD: I'll fact-check all the viral misinformation about the US military operation in Venezuela in this thread This image, purporting to show the US military arresting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, is AI-generated. According to Google's SynthID detector, it was created using Google AI.

Remember when tech companies vowed to do more to stop the flow of disinformation on their platforms? Instead, courtesy of genAI and lax moderation, it's never been harder to discern what's real from what isn't -- especially during breaking news events like today. From @davidgilbert.bsky.social

Having Grok issue an “apology” is not just insulting and stupid (obviously Grok cannot actually “regret” anything, deeply or otherwise) but cowardly: It asks us to assign responsibility to an unconscious piece of software rather than the humans and institutions who should actually be blamed.

Most read from Tech Policy Press in 2025: "We must never confuse function for purpose. We must not mistake what AI can do with whom AI should serve. The purpose of this power should be to benefit humanity." — Alondra Nelson.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

Requested a correction from @princetonupress.bsky.social. Let's see what happens.

A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty: My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media. Huh? When did I say that?!

merry christmas, my gf got us a print sub to @theonion.com and gave it to me like this

The internet is revolutionary to free speech because it empowers individuals and citizens to route around censorship in all its forms—even a captured “free” press. This is why private platform governance; law on internet access or online content, and anonymity online will always matter.

Runaway supermassive black hole? Did not know this could be a thing. It’s moving at 2.2M mph and “is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized ‘bow-shock’ of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it”. [space.com]

Mitt Romney: “I long opposed increasing the income level on which FICA employment taxes are applied (this year, the cap is $176,100). No longer; the consequences of the cliff have changed my mind.”

My second post about researchers’ rights to scrape data under DSA Article 40.12 is up! This is dense with legal arguments for researchers to use if they get sued. Or to show their lawyers before that. www.techpolicy.press/how-the-mean... verfassungsblog.de/dsa-fine-x-r...

Can crucial political conversations be friendly? CSPAN’s new show “Ceasefire” thinks so. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/0ZlT8v

@pewresearch.org: "Partisans differ sharply on which news sources they trust"

To grow its ad biz in China, Meta has relied on ad agency partners given the power to create special enforcement-protected ad accounts and share them with resellers. The system produces so much fraud that Meta internally calls China its top “scam exporting nation.” www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Yet another example of what happens if we allow LLMs to become a form of epistemic grounding for society.

Bleakest 2 paragraphs about (c), free speech, and what (whether) we actually want education to be I've seen in a while www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...

US policy on artificial intelligence is caught between flamboyant, fantastical claims and government leaders deferring to industry without the imagination to drive toward real societal progress, write Arati Prabhakar and Asad Ramzanali. There is a better way forward, they say.

NYU’s Center on Technology Policy has released its 2025 State Technology Policy Report.

The EU fined X for lying to users about blue checks, failing to disclose basic info about ads, and impeding researchers from studying publicly available info. "This is not about censorship," says @daphnek.bsky.social, who'd be the first to call it out if it were. www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-fine...

Florida #AIBillofRights meets the Blueprint for an #AIBillofRights 🤝 Safe and Effective Systems 🤝 Algorithmic Discrimination Protections 🤝 Data Privacy 🤝 Notice and Explanation bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/ostp/ai-bill...

X isn’t being penalised for hosting lawful speech. It is being penalised for business practices that make fraud easier and transparency harder. In any other sector, a product that enables impersonation or conceals the identity of advertisers would be recalled.

(3)Preventing researchers to scrutinize what is going on on its platform. X imposed unnecessary barriers and rejected valid applications from eligible researchers. A platform that calls itself a champion of transparency shouldn’t be afraid of independent scrutiny. What is there to hide?

Today’s 120 million euro fine against X under the Digital Services Act (DSA) will be spun as a decision against “free speech.” It’s not. (1/7) #digitalservicesact #dsa #dsa ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Don't let anyone tell you that the Commission's DSA enforcement against X is about speech or censorship. That would, indeed, be interesting. But this is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring laws that would get bipartisan support in the U.S. (I bet similar bills *have* had that support.) 1/