Comments on the Ruling Declaring California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Unconstitutional–NetChoice v. Bonta
[Sorry it’s take me this long to get this blog post off my desk. I hope it was worth the wait.] We’ve seen a flood of terrible Internet laws in the past few years, including the California Age-Appropriate Design Code…
Does California’s Anti-Discrimination Law Ban Ad Targeting?–Liapes v. Facebook
This opinion indicates that Facebook–and by implication, every other ad network–could violate California’s Unruh Act (an anti-discrimination law) by targeting third-party ads based on age, gender, or other protected criteria. The court reaches this shocking conclusion by cutting several analytical…
Laura Loomer Loses Litigation (Again)–Loomer v. Zuckerberg
Loomer produces trash content, which got her banned at Facebook and Twitter. In response, she has brought several trash lawsuits, which have gone as well as you’d expect. Her latest trash lawsuit claimed that social media, the government, and Procter…
I Filed an Amicus Brief Against New York’s Editorial Transparency Law
Earlier this week, TechFreedom (led by Corbin Barthold and Andy Jung) and I filed an amicus brief with the Second Circuit against N.Y. General Business Law Section 394-ccc, the 2022 law that requires social media platforms to disclose their editorial…
Two Separate Courts Reiterate That Online Age Authentication Mandates Are Unconstitutional
[I will blog the NetChoice v. Bonta ruling very soon.] Many state legislatures draft Internet regulations without any genuine concern for whether or not the laws violate the First Amendment. This isn’t a partisan thing; both Democrats and Republicans do…
Sixth Circuit Dismisses Online Jawboning Case–Changizi v. DHHS
[Note: this post does NOT cover the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Missouri v. Biden, which also addressed government jawboning regarding COVID misinformation. Missouri v. Biden, 2023 WL 5821788 (5th Cir. Sept. 8, 2023). The Fifth Circuit ruled that some government…
Facebook Can Reject Unwanted Ads–Newton v. Meta
This is yet another online content removal lawsuit, and it reaches the obvious and inevitable result that dozens of cases have reached before it. The plaintiffs sought to run Facebook ads for the movie “Beautiful Blue Eyes,” a movie about…
Anti-Vaxxer’s Lawsuit Over Channel Removal Fails–Mercola v. YouTube
Joseph Mercola ran a YouTube channel with 300k subscribers and 50M views. YouTube removed the channel for violating its medical misinformation policy (Mercola apparently peddled anti-vax views). Mercola sued YouTube for the usual things and got the usual outcomes. Mercola…
Lawsuit Over Twitter Suspension Fails Again–Zhang v. Twitter
A Twitter user sued over his account suspension. The court dismissed the case without prejudice. Blog post coverage of that ruling here. The user tried again. Same result. Section 230. Twitter qualifies for the standard three-element test for 230: Twitter…
Preemptive Challenge to California’s Mandatory Editorial Transparency Law Lacks Standing–Minds v. Bonta
The plaintiffs in this case are Minds, Inc., Tim Pool, the Babylon Bee, and National Religious Broadcasters, which are (respectively): “a social networking app, an active social media content creator, a satirical news website, and a nonpartisan association of Christian…