The State of Domestic Surveillance in China
Plus our take on mergers, content moderation, age verification, and more
Surveillance and the CCP: On the latest Tech Policy Podcast, Corbin hosted Liza Lin, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and co-author of Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control. They discussed the oppression of China’s Uyghur minority, the rise of Chinese smart cities, the resurgence of CCP censorship, and more.
Rule of Law: Corbin’s latest essay in The Bulwark discusses the GOP “weaponization” subcommittee’s attempt to scour “ongoing criminal investigations” for political bias—a violation of the separation of powers that conservative icon Antonin Scalia would have stood squarely against.
Antitrust: Global Competition Review (paywall) quoted Bilal on the Northern District of California Court’s decision to deny the FTC’s motion to block Meta’s acquisition of VR fitness startup Within.
Content Moderation: PC Magazine quoted Ari’s statement on how the NTIA’s report on “Competition in the Mobile App Ecosystem” failed to address the risk that competition bills would be weaponized against content moderation.
Content Moderation & Competition: How those two things intersect was a key issue at Silicon Flatirons’ conference on the Internet’s Midlife Crisis—or rather, it was the elephant in the room that was almost never acknowledged. Live-tweeting from the live audience, Berin provided a running commentary of what should have been said by the panelists.
Age Verification: In an interview with Reason, Ari panned an unconstitutional bill introduced in Congress that would force social media platforms to verify every user’s identity and ban anyone younger than 16.
Child Protection: Addressing the Biden Administration's call for legislation to “protect kids” online, MediaPost quoted our coalition letter explaining why the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is both unconstitutional and unworkable. For more on the subject, checkout Ari’s Twitter thread.
Legal Foundations: Last week, RealClearBooks published a condensed version of Corbin’s Law & Liberty essay on Richard Posner.
SCOTUS: Next Thursday, February 16, Corbin will discuss Gonzalez v. Google, NetChoice v. Paxton, and more at High Court Halftime: The U.S. Supreme Court’s October Term 2022 at Midpoint, hosted by Washington Legal Foundation. Register to watch online.
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