The plaintiff FAN allegedly is part of a Russian government agency, Internet Research Agency, that undermined the integrity of our 2016 presidential elections. In other words, FAN apparently was a Russian troll operation. As part of its post-2016 election cleanup,…
Privacy * Gullen v. Facebook, Inc., 2019 WL 2486566 (9th Cir. June 14, 2019): No reasonable jury could conclude that Facebook subjected the photo uploaded to the Glenview Patch organizational Facebook page (which is the only photo at issue in this appeal) to…
This ruling doesn’t break any new ground, so I’m blogging it mostly for completeness. The pro se plaintiff sued Facebook for violating his free speech rights by blocking his account. He alleged: It’s not the first time that I get…
Censorship * Fortune: The Splinternet Is Growing * NY Times: India Proposes Chinese-Style Internet Censorship * South China Morning Post: No smoking, no tattoos, no bikinis: inside China’s war to ‘clean up’ the internet * NY Times: In China, an…
The same day as the Second Circuit’s Knight First Amendment v. Trump ruling, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was sued for blocking accounts on Twitter. See Hikind v. Ocasio-Cortez, 1:19-cv-03956 (E.D.N.Y. complaint filed July 9, 2019). The same-day turnaround on the complaint suggests…
by guest blogger Tanya Forsheit, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC [Eric’s note: it takes super-human dedication to watch a 12+ hour hearing on CCPA amendments. Though I’m willing to do a lot for blog readers, I didn’t have that level…
Section 230 * Historical archive of Section 230 case materials (with Jeff Kosseff) * Some Congressmembers are developing a letter asking the State Department to delete the Section 230-like immunity from the USMCA. Background. * Cunningham v. Montes, 2019 WL…
Yesterday, I posted a 2,300 word takedown of Sen. Hawley’s anti-Section 230 bill. That post took me at least 6 hours of drafting time, and 3 weeks of chronological time, to prepare. I separately wrote a deconstruction of the UK…
![Comments on Sen. Hawley's "[Ending] Support for Internet Censorship Act"](https://blog.ericgoldman.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/censorship-meme-150x150.jpg)
Sen. Josh Hawley’s “[Ending] Support for Internet Censorship Act” (S. 1914) would require large(ish) Internet companies to prove to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that they publish user content in a politically neutral way–or categorically lose Section 230 immunity. In…
In the Knight Foundation’s First Amendment lawsuit against President Trump for blocking Twitter users, the Second Circuit says that his blocking of users based on their viewpoints violates the First Amendment. This is a resounding loss for the President. (Our…