Florida’s “Transparency” Rules for Social Media Violate the First Amendment
Plus multiple FTC comments, a coalition letter, and a whole lot more
NetChoice v. Moody: Last week, we told the Supreme Court that Florida’s social media “transparency” law can’t survive First Amendment scrutiny with a new amicus brief. You can also read Berin’s Twitter thread.
Privacy: If all digital privacy in general sounds like a major question, that could be because it is—and the FTC can’t decide to regulate all digital privacy just because it’s tasked with addressing unfairness. That’s the gist of our recent FTC comments on privacy and data protection. For more, see our press release.
On the latest Tech Policy Podcast, Corbin was joined by Jane Bambauer, a law professor at the University of Arizona College of Law, to talk about facial recognition technology. They discussed the need to proceed thoughtfully and cautiously regarding the rules we set around its use, focusing on facial recognition by law enforcement.
KOSA: The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is likely to have damaging unintended consequences; it imposes burdensome obligations on any website reasonably likely to be used by minors, and that’s nearly all of them. That’s why TechFreedom signed onto a coalition letter opposing it.
FTC: Advertising funds the creation of content directed at children. It always has (back to the early days of radio and television), and it always will (the Internet). Take the ads away and the programming goes too—as we said in comments to the FTC. Worse, the last time the FTC tried to restrict ads aimed at kids, Congress responded by nearly abolishing the agency. Here’s a quick summary.
On Tuesday, Bilal discussed the proposed Kroger–Albertsons grocery store merger on Bloomberg Market’s The Close (skip to 1:55:41). To see more of Bilal’s work on this topic, you can read our comments to the FTC and DOJ on merger enforcement.
USF: The FCC delegated some power to the Universal Service Fund—and the Universal Service Fund delegated some more power—including the power to tax—to a private corporation. In an amicus brief, we told the Eleventh Circuit that that isn’t right.
Content Moderation: “If anyone can get inside [Elon Musk’s] head, I’d love to hear it,” said Corbin in the New York Times (paywall). Online moderation is a hard problem, he said, and simply following the First Amendment won’t solve it to anyone’s satisfaction—not even the world’s richest man.
The ball is now in their court.