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Jan 17, 2025 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Owen O’Brien-Powers
The old sales pitch hollered by baseball game vendors was “you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.” Something similar rings true today about not only knowing the litigants but also their theories in more than 1,000 lawsuits wending their way through numerous courts and blaming social media platforms for addicting and harming minors. The plaintiffs range from minors and parents to public school districts, local governments, and more than 40 states.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Kate Beinkampen
Much ink is being spilled over Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s January 7 announcement and a related statement by executive Joel Kaplan about the company replacing its platforms’ prior content-moderation efforts with a more laissez-faire, free-speech-friendly approach. The changes were likely influenced not only by a desire to please incoming President Donald Trump but also by the outgoing Biden administration’s efforts to squelch content that conflicted with its preferred narratives. Changes.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Kate Beinkampen
More than 16 months after I wrote about the defamation-by-chatbot case of Walters v. OpenAI, the groundbreaking battle pitting radio show host Mark Walters against the company behind ChatGPT is reaching a pivotal point. Following Georgia Superior Court Judge Tracie Cason’s refusal last January to dismiss Walters’ claim that OpenAI is civilly liable for defamatory output generated about him by ChatGPT, the parties conducted discovery.
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Dec 11, 2024 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Owen O’Brien-Powers
If ever a First Amendment challenge to a statute constraining minors’ access to social media platforms was inevitable, it’s surely the one filed in late October by trade associations Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice targeting a vastly overbroad Florida law, House Bill 3. As explained here, the complaint in CCIA v.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Owen O’Brien-Powers
To better understand issues affecting governance over (and guardrails for) the development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, it’s essential to step outside of one’s own research niche and listen to diverse and distinguished experts from the United States and abroad debate the matters.
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Nov 19, 2024 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Owen O’Brien-Powers
The US Supreme Court declined last month in National Press Photographers Association v. Higgins to hear a First Amendment challenge to a Texas law that restricts journalists’ newsgathering abilities by criminalizing using drones to take and display images “of an individual or privately owned real property.” Property owners and tenants also may file civil actions under the statute.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Kate Beinkampen
Can a law violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech because it does too little or regulates too few actors to substantially mitigate the harms and advance the interests it’s designed to address? The answer sometimes is yes, and that’s a problem for lawmakers regulating social media platforms due to the injuries they allegedly cause minors. The phenomenon is called underinclusivity, and it’s a longstanding statutory concern.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Owen O’Brien-Powers
It’s an all-too-predictable, rinse-and-repeat pattern: (1) a state adopts a statute to protect minors from the supposedly deleterious effects of social media; (2) the law is challenged on First Amendment grounds; (3) a judge sides with the challenger, blocking the law’s enforcement; and (4) lawmakers elsewhere, unfazed by that outcome and untethered from constitutional realities, adopt a similar measure, with another lawsuit following.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Owen O’Brien-Powers
Arriving at the polls on November 5, some voters will be tempted to capture and post a selfie with their completed ballot, perhaps to let followers know who they voted for or maybe because it’s nobler than foodstagramming. Motivations aside, questions arise about the practice’s legality and whether the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech bars states from blocking ballot selfies.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Owen O’Brien-Powers
The US Supreme Court’s 2024 rulings involving social media platforms and First Amendment issues provided fodder for earlier posts drilling into matters such as the right to listen and Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s prominent role as a tech-savvy jurist. This post, concluding my review of Lindke v. Freed, Murthy v. Missouri, and Moody v. NetChoice, offers three observations.
