Latest news with #freeexpression
Associated Press
2 days ago
- General
- Associated Press
Federal judge blocks Florida from enforcing social media ban for kids while lawsuit continues
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge has barred state officials from enforcing a Florida law that would ban social media accounts for young children, while a legal challenge against the law plays out. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued the order Tuesday, blocking portions of the law from taking effect. The measure was one of the most restrictive bans in the U.S. on social media use by children when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law in 2024. The law would ban social media accounts for children under 14 and require parental permission for their use by 14- and 15-year-olds. In his order granting the preliminary injunction sought by the groups Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, Walker wrote that the law is 'likely unconstitutional,' but acknowledged that parents and lawmakers have 'sincere concerns' about social media's effects on kids. Walker wrote that the prohibition on social media platforms from allowing certain age groups to create accounts 'directly burdens those youths' rights to engage in and access speech.' While siding with the industry groups' claims that the law limits free speech, Walker allowed a provision to go into effect requiring platforms to shut down accounts for children under 16, if their parent or guardian requests it. Parents — and even some teens themselves — are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media use on young people. Supporters of the Florida law have said it's needed to help curb the explosive use of social media among young people, and what researchers say is an associated increase in depression and anxiety. Matt Schruers, the president and CEO of the industry association CCIA, praised the judge's order blocking the law. 'This ruling vindicates our argument that Florida's statute violates the First Amendment by blocking and restricting minors — and likely adults as well — from using certain websites to view lawful content,' he said in a statement. 'We look forward to seeing this statute permanently blocked as a violation of Floridians' constitutional right to engage in lawful speech online.' A spokesperson for Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier defended the law and the state's efforts to insulate kids from social media at a time when platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat seem almost impossible to escape. 'Florida parents voted through their elected representatives for a law protecting kids from the harmful and sometimes lifelong tragic impacts of social media. These platforms do not have a constitutional right to addict kids to their products,' Uthmeier's press secretary Jae Williams said in a statement. 'We disagree with the court's order and will immediately seek relief in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.' ___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
WIRED
7 days ago
- Business
- WIRED
Meta's ‘Free Expression' Push Results In Far Fewer Content Takedowns
May 29, 2025 7:09 PM Meta says loosening its enforcement policies earlier this year led to fewer erroneous takedowns on Facebook and Instagram—and didn't broadly expose users to more harmful content. An aerial view of Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Photograph:Meta announced in January it would end some content moderation efforts, loosen its rules, and put more emphasis on supporting 'free expression.' The shifts resulted in fewer posts being removed from Facebook and Instagram, the company disclosed Thursday in its quarterly Community Standards Enforcement Report. Meta said that its new policies had helped reduce erroneous content removals in the US by half without broadly exposing users to more offensive content than before the changes. The new report, which was referenced in an update to a January blog post by Meta global affairs chief Joel Kaplan, shows that Meta removed nearly one third less content on Facebook and Instagram globally for violating its rules from January to March of this year than it did in the previous quarter, or about 1.6 billion items compared to just under 2.4 billion, according to an analysis by WIRED. In the past several quarters, the tech giant's total quarterly removals had previously risen or stayed flat. Across Instagram and Facebook, Meta reported removing about 50 percent fewer posts for violating its spam rules, nearly 36 percent for child endangerment, and almost 29 percent for hateful conduct. Removals increased in only one major rules category—suicide and self-harm content—out of the 11 Meta lists. The amount of content Meta removes fluctuates regularly from quarter to quarter, and a number of factors could have contributed to the dip in takedowns. But the company itself acknowledged that 'changes made to reduce enforcement mistakes' was one reason for the large drop. 'Across a range of policy areas we saw a decrease in the amount of content actioned and a decrease in the percent of content we took action on before a user reported it,' the company wrote. 'This was in part because of the changes we made to ensure we are making fewer mistakes. We also saw a corresponding decrease in the amount of content appealed and eventually restored.' Meta relaxed some of its content rules at the start of the year that CEO Mark Zuckerberg described as 'just out of touch with mainstream discourse.' The changes allowed Instagram and Facebook users to employ some language that human rights activists view as hateful toward immigrants or individuals that identify as transgender. For example, Meta now permits 'allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.' As part of the sweeping changes, which were announced just as Donald Trump was set to begin his second term as US president, Meta also stopped relying as much on automated tools to identify and remove posts suspected of less severe violations of its rules because it said they had high error rates, prompting frustration from users. During the first quarter of this year, Meta's automated systems accounted for 97.4 percent of content removed from Instagram under the company's hate speech policies, down by just one percentage point from the end of last year. (User reports to Meta triggered the remaining percentage.) But automated removals for bullying and harassment on Facebook dropped nearly 12 percentage points. In some categories, such as nudity, Meta's systems were slightly more proactive compared to the previous quarter. Users can appeal content takedowns, and Meta sometimes restores posts that it determines have been wrongfully removed. In the update to Kaplan's blog post, Meta highlighted the large decrease in erroneous takedowns. 'This improvement follows the commitment we made in January to change our focus to proactively enforcing high-severity violations and enhancing our accuracy through system audits and additional signals,' the company wrote. Some Meta employees told WIRED in January that they were concerned the policy changes could lead to a dangerous free-for-all on Facebook and Instagram, turning the platforms into increasingly inhospitable places for users to converse and spend time. But according to its own sampling, Meta estimates that users were exposed to about one to two pieces of hateful content on average for every 10,000 posts viewed in the first quarter, down from about two to three at the end of last year. And Meta's platforms have continued growing—about 3.43 billion people in March used at least one of its apps, which include WhatsApp and Messenger, up from 3.35 billion in December.
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
US will refuse visas to foreign officials who block Americans' social media posts
The United States has said it will refuse visas to foreign officials who block Americans' social media posts, as Donald Trump's administration wages a new battle over free expression. Marco Rubio – the secretary of state who has controversially rescinded visas for activists who criticize Israel and ramped up screening of foreign students' social media – said on Wednesday he was acting against 'flagrant censorship actions' overseas against US tech firms. He did not publicly name any official who would be denied a visa under the new policy. But last week he suggested to lawmakers that he was planning sanctions against a Brazilian supreme court judge, Alexandre de Moraes, who has battled X owner and Trump ally Elon Musk over alleged disinformation. The administration of Trump – himself a prolific and often confrontational social media user – has also sharply criticized Germany and Britain for restricting what the US allies' governments term hate and abusive speech. Rubio said the United States will begin to restrict visas to foreign nationals who are responsible for 'censorship of protected expression in the United States'. 'It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on US citizens or US residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on US soil,' Rubio said in a statement. 'It is similarly unacceptable for foreign officials to demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activity that reaches beyond their authority and into the United States,' he said. 'We will not tolerate encroachments upon American sovereignty, especially when such encroachments undermine the exercise of our fundamental right to free speech.' Rubio has said he has revoked the US visas for thousands of people, largely students who have protested against Israel's offensive in Gaza. Among the most visible cases has been Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University who had written an opinion piece in a student newspaper criticizing the school's position on Gaza. Masked agents arrested her on a Massachusetts street and took her away. A judge recently ordered her release. Rubio on Tuesday suspended further appointments for students seeking visas to the United States until the state department drafts new guidelines on enhanced screening of applicants' social media postings. Social media regulation has become a rallying cry for many in the US on the right since Trump was suspended from Twitter, now X, and Facebook, on safety grounds after his supporters attacked the US Capitol following his defeat in the 2020 election to Joe Biden. In Brazil, where supporters of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro similarly stormed the presidential palace, Congress and the supreme court in 2023 after Bolsonaro's election loss, Moraes has said he is seeking to protect democracy through his judicial power. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Moraes temporarily blocked X across Brazil until it complied with his order to remove accounts accused of spreading disinformation. More recently he ordered a suspension of Rumble, a video-sharing platform popular with conservative and far-right voices over its refusal to block the account of a user based in the United States who was wanted for spreading disinformation. Germany – whose foreign minister met Wednesday with Rubio – restricts online hate speech and misinformation, saying it has learned a lesson from its Nazi past and will ostracize extremists. JD Vance in a speech in Munich in February denounced Germany for shunning the far-right. In an essay Tuesday, a state department official pointed to social media regulations and said Europeans were following a 'similar strategy of censorship, demonization and bureaucratic weaponization' as witnessed against Trump and his supporters. 'What this reveals is that the global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy,' wrote Samuel Samson, a senior advisor for the state department's human rights office. 'Rather, it is trampling democracy, and Western heritage along with it, in the name of a decadent governing class afraid of its own people.'
Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Times
Self-appointed anti-disinformation groups threaten freedom of speech
The Global Disinformation Index is not a name that rolls off the tongue. Neither is it one many readers will have heard of. Yet it is a powerful organisation that has risen quietly in the shadows, awarding itself the dubious task of censoring what it decides is 'misinformation'. A non-profit founded in 2018, the GDI has helped to clamp down on free expression by targeting publications and individuals that dare to question current orthodoxy, often meaning official orthodoxy. Partly funded at one time by the British government, the GDI engages in 'shadow banning'. Sir Paul Marshall, the hedge fund manager and owner of The Spectator, highlighted the dangers of what he termed the 'misinformation industry' in a lecture on Tuesday. Sir Paul's targets were the
New York Times
12-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Harvard Argues It Has ‘Common Ground' With Trump Administration
Harvard University shares the same aims as the Trump administration, its president, Alan M. Garber, wrote in a respectful but firm letter on Monday — the latest exchange in an extraordinary back-and-forth between the school and the federal government in recent weeks. The letter was sent a week after the Trump administration said it would stop giving Harvard any research grants. Last month, the university took the government to court over what it says has been the government's unlawful intrusion into its operations. On Monday, however, Dr. Garber struck a respectful tone, arguing that Harvard's efforts to combat antisemitism and other bigotry and foster an environment for free expression were hurt by the government's intrusion into higher education. He said he otherwise agreed with some of the Trump administration's concerns about higher education. Dr. Garber said he embraced the goals of curbing antisemitism on campus; fostering more intellectual diversity, including welcoming conservative voices; and curtailing the use of race in admissions decisions. Those goals 'are undermined and threatened by the federal government's overreach into the constitutional freedoms of private universities and its continuing disregard of Harvard's compliance with the law,' Dr. Garber said in the letter to Linda McMahon, the education secretary. The university's response came one week after Ms. McMahon wrote to Harvard to advise the university against applying for future grants, 'since none will be provided.' That letter provoked new worries inside Harvard about the long-term consequences of its clash with the Trump administration. 'At its best, a university should fulfill the highest ideals of our nation, and enlighten the thousands of hopeful students who walk through its magnificent gates,' Ms. McMahon wrote. 'But Harvard has betrayed its ideal.' Rolling through a roster of conservative complaints about the school, Ms. McMahon fumed about the university's 'bloated bureaucracy,' its admissions policies, its international students, its embrace of some Democrats and even its mathematics curriculum. Ms. McMahon referred to Harvard as 'a publicly funded institution,' even though Harvard is private and the vast majority of its revenue does not come from the government. She suggested that the university rely more on its own funds, noting that Harvard's endowment, valued at more than $53 billion, would give it a 'head start.' (Much of Harvard's endowment is tied up in restricted funds and cannot be repurposed at will.) 'Today's letter,' Ms. McMahon wrote, 'marks the end of new grants for the university.' In Dr. Garber's letter on Monday, he said that the university had created a strategy to combat antisemitism and other bigotry, and had invested in the academic study of Judaism and related fields. But he said the university would not 'surrender its core, legally-protected principles out of fear of unfounded retaliation by the federal government.' He denied Ms. McMahon's assertion that Harvard was political. 'It is neither Republican nor Democratic,' he said of the university. 'It is not an arm of any other political party or movement. Nor will it ever be. Harvard is a place to bring people of all backgrounds together to learn in an inclusive environment where ideas flourish regardless of whether they are deemed 'conservative,' 'liberal,' or something else.' Although Harvard is the nation's wealthiest university by far, officials there have warned that federal cuts could have devastating consequences on the campus and beyond. During Harvard's 2024 fiscal year, the university received about $687 million from the federal government for research, a sum that accounted for about 11 percent of the university's revenue. The government can block the flow of federal money through a process called debarment. But the procedure is laborious, and the outcome may be appealed. Experts on government contracting said Ms. McMahon's letter indicated that the administration had not followed the ordinary procedure to blacklist a recipient of federal funds. Harvard officials are aware that, even if they challenge the administration's tactics successfully in court, Mr. Trump's government could still take other steps to choke off money that would be harder to fight. The federal government often sets priorities for research that shape agencies' day-to-day decisions about how and where federal dollars are spent. Some academics worry that the government might pivot away from fields of study in which Harvard has deep expertise, effectively shutting out the university's researchers. Or the administration could simply assert that Harvard's proposals were incompatible with the government's needs. Jessica Tillipman, an expert on government contracting law at George Washington University, said that it can be difficult to show that the government is using a back door to blacklist a grant recipient. 'You basically have to demonstrate and point to concrete evidence, not just a feeling,' she said. Still, she said, Ms. McMahon's letter could offer Harvard an opening to contest a protracted run of grant denials. 'It's not as hard to prove,' Ms. Tillipman said, 'when you have a giant letter that said, by the way, we aren't giving you these things anymore.'
