On Saturday, Twitter disabled a tweet from sitting Congressman, Representative Thomas Massie who questioned the efficacy of getting a COVID vaccine if you’ve already previously contracted the virus. The tweet read: “Natural immunity >> vaccine immunity So why force or coerce those with natural immunity from prior infection into taking the vaccine?” Retweeting because it's…
The Biden administration confirms it aggressively works with Big Tech “…to flag ‘problematic’ posts “that spread disinformation on Covid-19” on the internet. George Orwell would call such activity propaganda. Historians characterize such a close working relationship between government and big business as fascism. To the Biden administration, it’s merely cleaning up “misinformation”. Whatever the American…
Conservative politicians rage over Big Tech’s use of its monopoly powers and reliance on Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act (“Section 230”) to censor speech on social media. Their rhetoric is full of sound and fury but achieves nothing. Moreover, with significant help from Big Tech, Democrats gained control of Congress and the White…
Readers of the political press are familiar with the actions of Big Tech to censor the social media speech of former President Trump, several Republican Congressman, and purges of thousands of conservative social media accounts. Since these actions were taken by private parties against private parties, it is generally assumed the Constitution does not apply…
Part I, “Unity Is Not Possible When Government is in Overdrive” discusses the 52 executive orders and memorandums issued by President Biden in his first few weeks in office, and how these wide-ranging directives will substantively change our legal system without any statutory changes or constitutional amendments. Part II explores how Democrats and their friends…
In the frenzied days after Democrats won control of Congress, the presidency, and rioters invaded the Capitol, Big Tech, relying on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, for immunity from civil suit, launched a surprise attack on web content they deemed objectionable. Twitter permanently banned President Trump’s account, wiping out his contact with 88…
The disaster that was 2020 is finally over. Now it’s time for the inevitable post-mortems. First and foremost, the COVID-19 pandemic posed enormous challenges to American institutions, and continues to do so. Frankly, we were not prepared. We need to diagnose what went wrong, so that we are never caught unaware like this again. Fortunately,…
In 2020, many of us have become accustomed to terms and concepts we never thought we’d be discussing: “social distancing,” mask requirements, and Zoom parties all come to mind. We can add Section 230 to that list, an obscure provision of the Communications and Decency Act (1996) that was previously unknown to most. Section 230…
In what might be the latest example of censorship by a large tech company, the email marketing company Mailchimp adopted a new policy this week to remove certain content. Mailchimp determined it will use its “sole discretion” to determine whether messages are misleading and can be removed. In a customer message obtained by The Daily…
The next several years may be among the most important for the future of free speech since the United States’ founding. The parameters of the United States’ centuries-old debate on the First Amendment are undergoing rapid and irreversible change driven by an explosion in information and communication technology. Before the widespread adoption of social media,…