Tag

Free Speech

Articles and publications tagged Free Speech across the Atmosphere.

49articles10publications

Articles

Publications

TechdirtOct 14, 2026

MAGA Built The Censorship Machine It Spent Years Falsely Accusing Democrats Of Building

This is not a unique or new observation, but so many MAGA attacks on others are projection, claiming that Democrats were doing the very things that MAGA always knew they would do if they were in charge. We've certainly spent plenty of time talking about Donald Trump's myriad and non-stop attacks on free speech, and...

1st amendmentcensorship industrial complex

TechdirtOct 13, 2026

Trump Bans CNN, Then Has DOJ Investigate CNN For Not Covering Him

Remember when Elon Musk told advertisers to go fuck themselves... and then sued them (unsuccessfully) for not advertising on his personal propaganda and manipulation site? Well, it appears that Donald Trump is trying a government-backed variation on that abusive power play: claiming that news networks choosing not to cover him after he announced he was...

1st amendmentantitrust

The Emu Café SocialOct 11, 2026

Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 10-11-26

After a nine-day work/NLJ/newsletter-induced lull in the Pook-Emu Bee, I return with my sometimes-regularly-scheduled daily links. Speech 1 | Foul Call: New York Times Calls for Canceling Sophie Cunningham in The Athletic (Jonathan Turley. Oct. 11, 2026.) I largely agree with Mr. Turley. But more material to Ms. Cunningham's immediate future career prospects, I suspect...

2028 electionsai

brennan.dayOct 10, 2026

What Do You Stand For? What Do You Fall For?

Workers are being forced to choose between their ethics and their livelihoods—Coinbase employees fired for refusing AI tools, professor Kim Crawley pushed out for refusing genAI in her classroom, 50 Google workers fired over Project Nimbus sit-ins, EPA dissenters purged, a Mount Sinai social worker fired over a 'Gaza Must Live' postcard. On why silence is not neutrality, why those with the least to lose should speak first, and the small acts of solidarity left to us: sign the petition, join the union, say the true thing.

personal essaySocial Commentary

TechdirtOct 9, 2026

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Like Herding Chats

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation's Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on...

content moderationcsam

TechdirtOct 9, 2026

Alabama’s TikTok Settlement Comes With An Affiliate Program For Getting Other AGs To Go After TikTok

The big Meta multi-state settlement got most of the headlines, and there's been plenty of discussion about how it's a bad deal for kids and pretty clearly anti-competitive. That's thanks to a very strange clause that encourages Meta to make its own required feature changes the "industry standard" by convincing other platforms to cut similar...

1st amendmentalabama

brennan.dayOct 8, 2026

Wintering: On Hiatus, Bill C-22, and Why I Don't Block People

Why I'm putting folk.zone's social services on hiatus? 500 spam users, my embarrassing WriteFreely database blunder, and the legal weight of self-hosting in a Canada without Section 230. On Bill C-22 and Psiphon's planned exodus, slowing down to a wintering and a beginner's mind, sharpening the axe in public on Cosmic Voyage, and why I reach out instead of blocking.

personal essaySocial Commentary

TechdirtOct 7, 2026

How Copyright Is Being Abused To Censor Albania’s Flamingo Revolution

For the last couple of years, the copyright world has been grappling with the latest generation of AI, as numerous posts on Walled Culture attest. That’s hardly surprising, since AI is currently delivering the greatest challenge to the foundations of copyright since the arrival of the computer, which was discussed at length in Walled Culture...

albaniacensorship

TechdirtOct 2, 2026

Bricks & Minifigs Really Doesn’t Want You To Know About The BAM Map, Sues To Unmask Whoever Runs It

A few days ago I wrote about the anti-SLAPP motion filed by "Reckless" Ben Schneider against Bricks & Minifigs (BAM Franchising) over the ridiculous RICO suit they filed against him for his efforts to get BAM to pay back the money owed to Bryan Mansell. The original suit was based on the laughable claim that...

1st amendmentammon mcneff

TechdirtOct 1, 2026

The WSJ Never Retracted Its Bobby Kotick Story. His Lawyers Act Like It Did.

Every so often a piece of reporting is so thorough that I don't have much to add. So let me start with this: everyone should watch Mikhail Klimentov's comprehensive investigation, into how former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick appears to have used the infamous lawyers at Clare Locke to suppress negative reporting about himself. The...

bobby kotickchilling effects

TechdirtSep 29, 2026

Reckless Ben Finally Listens To Some Lawyers: Files Anti-SLAPP Motion Against Bricks & Minifigs

Last week, "Reckless" Ben Schneider did Wired's "Autocomplete Interview" which is always fun. At one point, one of the questions is "Does Reckless Ben have a law degree?" and his answer is amusing (for anyone who isn't one of Reckless Ben's current lawyers): Does Reckless Ben have a law degree? My whole thing with when...

anti-slappben schneider

TechdirtSep 28, 2026

Trump Orders The FCC To Punish A Reporter. Where Did All The ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Screamers Go?

Remember the Disinformation Governance Board? As we were quick to point out, this organization was named in the dumbest possible way by some incompetent people within the Biden administration, which only fed into the [ahem] disinformation around it. The program, a part of DHS, was an advisory group with no enforcement capabilities, and was tasked...

1st amendmentbari weiss

TechdirtSep 25, 2026

Judge Blocks White House Press Ban; White House Spends Thursday Testing How Much Of The Court Order It Can Violate

On Monday we wrote about Donald Trump's direct attack on the First Amendment and the free press by banning reporters from the White House. As we expected, a judge on Thursday morning issued a Temporary Restraining Order, blocking the White House from continuing this unconstitutional action, though (as happened the last time Trump tried this)...

1st amendmentdonald trump

TechdirtSep 24, 2026

Trump Easily Loses His Censorial SLAPP Suit Over A Poll Predicting He Might Lose

You may recall that after he had won the 2024 Presidential election, the sorest winner in the history of sore winners, Donald Trump sued retiring pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register for... having reported the — admittedly surprising and, in retrospect, wildly off — poll results suggesting that Kamala Harris actually had a...

1st amendmentann selzer

TechdirtSep 21, 2026

“Free Speech” President Admits He’s “Banning The Free Press” From The White House

Apparently autumn is when President Donald Trump feels free to admit to his anti-free speech, anti-free press ways. For a guy who constantly lied about being in support of free speech, despite regularly suing people and news organizations for their speech, he's been remarkably willing to admit to wanting to abuse power to suppress speech...

1st amendmentcensorship

taco 'bout itSep 21, 2026

surely, we shouldn’t be worried about this infringement… right? 😰

“We feel obliged to speak up about the injustice and violation of our rights by not being allowed to promote a feminist work, specifically a work by Virginia Woolf who was born in 1882. What can we do? As a theatre we have to publicise our activities … and we have to make use of...

creeping authoritarianismfeminism

TechdirtSep 18, 2026

Court Tells Imran Ahmed His First Amendment Claim May Be Real, Just Not Reviewable.

Well, this is unfortunate. Late last year, Marco Rubio's State Department declared that it had banned five people from entering the US because of their speech. Most of them work, in one way or another, on fighting hate speech online, including Imran Ahmed, the head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). As I've...

1st amendmentdue process

TechdirtSep 16, 2026

Court: The First Amendment Allows You To Tell The ICE Director He’s A ‘Sad, Despised Man’

You may recall that back in July we had the ridiculous story of how ICE decided to go all gestapo on its critics, including tracking down and threatening David Streever, who had emailed then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons back in January, after federal agents killed some peaceful protestors in Minnesota. Streever's email was pretty straightforward:...

1st amendmentcriticism

TechdirtSep 14, 2026

Elon Musk’s SLAPP Threat Over ‘Space Lasers’ Doc Sort Of Admits The ‘Space Lasers’ Part

By now, calling Elon Musk a "free speech absolutist" is a joke. We have so many stories of him suppressing speech, or threatening, or suing people for their speech. At this point, anyone who still claims that Musk supports free speech is either (1) lying, (2) stupid, or (3) employed by him. So, it's little...

alex gibneyalex spiro

TechdirtSep 11, 2026

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Duty Of Careful What You Wish For

aiartificial intelligence

TechdirtSep 10, 2026

Lawmakers Ask Lutnick To Blacklist Appin, The Hack-For-Hire Firm That Threatens Almost Anyone Who Prints Its Name

Remember Appin? It's the Indian "hack for hire" company that got so upset about Reuters' giant investigation — which detailed how Appin grew into a "leading cyberespionage firm" that "stole secrets from executives, politicians, military officials and wealthy elites around the globe" — that it convinced an Indian court to make Reuters take the story...

commerce departmententity list

TechdirtSep 10, 2026

Jimmy Kimmel Won’t Air James Talarico Interview On ABC For Fear Of FCC Reprisal

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel‘s planned Thursday interview with Texas Senatorial hopeful James Talarico didn't air on ABC broadcast TV because network lawyers were worried about Trump FCC censorship and reprisal. Instead, the interview will air on the late-night show’s YouTube channel, Kimmel stated during his latest late night Jimmy Kimmel Live monologue: https://youtu.be/gIbSEScdV2o?si=6ExUtVCBUK8oAEX_&t=534 "You know, for...

brendan carrcensorship

TechdirtSep 1, 2026

Trump Demands FCC Punish Media Companies For His Sagging Polling

Our full-diapered mad king is at it again, this time urging FCC boss Brendan Carr to go after media companies for the crime of....simply pointing out his terrible, crashing polling numbers: Trump last week also posted a long, rambling screed on his personal propaganda website, vowing that NBC News‘ Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker...

1st amendmentbrendan carr

TechdirtAug 28, 2026

Pete Hegseth And His Department Of Unconstitutional Revenge Lose Again In California

When Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a national security risk because it wouldn't agree to his dangerously unethical demands for what Claude should be able to do, Anthropic sued to challenge the directives. One of the challenges was brought in the Northern District of California, where Anthropic has now notched another significant win. While the previous...

1st amendmentadministrative procedure act