Murthy v. Missouri: Leave Orwell Out of It
Murthy v. Missouri: Leave Orwell Out of It
Plus FTC meeting remarks, content moderation, age verification and more . . .
Jawboning: On ABC7 San Francisco, Corbin discussed Murthy v. Missouri and government “jawboning” of social media platforms. He explained why the government has a right to express its opinions, and why it is not “Orwellian” for it to do so.
FTC: At today’s FTC Open Meeting, Berin (at 11:58) lamented how far the FTC has drifted from the apolitical “body of experts” the Supreme Court described in Humphrey’s Executor and suggested reforms that might help the agency defend its independence.
Andy (at 1:06) discussed how the Commission's proposed impersonation rule overlooks questions on the applicability of Section 230 to generative AI.
Bilal (at 20:48) encouraged the Commission only to apply its UMC statement outside the scope of the Sherman Act when competitive harm can be presumed with high confidence.
Content Moderation: In Techdirt, Santana explored the challenges faced by social media platforms in moderating eating disorder-related content, and why there's no way to eliminate such content without broadly shutting down entire parts of the Internet. Her article was also quoted in Reason.
Earlier this week, Corbin was a judge in both semifinals at the Harlan Institute Virtual Supreme Court, a nationwide high school moot-court competition. The subject case was Moody v. NetChoice.
First Amendment: The Washington Post quoted Corbin on last week’s bill banning Tik Tok. He argued that targeting children’s exposure to specific ideas is content-based censorship—which falls right into the strictest First Amendment scrutiny.
Age Verification: Reason quoted Ari’s piece in The Daily Beast after the Fifth Circuit upheld a Texas law mandating age verification for pornography. He explained why the government can’t sidestep content filtering and parental controls as a less restrictive means.
Is the sun rising or setting on free speech rights?