The X Corp. Shutdown in Brazil: What We Can Learn

The feud between X Corp. and Brazil’s Supreme Court continues to drag on: After a month-long standoff, X Corp. folded and complied with court orders to suspend several accounts, name a legal representative in Brazil, and pay 28.6 million reais...

Canada’s Leaders Must Reject Overbroad Age Verification Bill

Canadian lawmakers are considering a bill, S-210, that’s meant to benefit children, but would sacrifice the security, privacy, and free speech of all internet users. First introduced in 2023, S-210 seeks to prevent young people from encountering...

EFF and Partners to EU Commissioner: Prioritize User Rights, Avoid Politicized Enforcement of DSA Rules

EFF, Access Now, and Article 19 have written to EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton calling on him to clarify his understanding of “systemic risks” under the Digital Services Act, and to set a high standard for the protection of...

In These Five Social Media Speech Cases, Supreme Court Set Foundational Rules for the Future

The U.S. Supreme Court addressed government’s various roles with respect to speech on social media in five cases reviewed in its recently completed term. The through-line of these cases is a critically important principle that sets limits on...

Victory! D.C. Circuit Rules in Favor of Animal Rights Activists Censored on Government Social Media Pages

In a big win for free speech online, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that a federal agency violated the First Amendment when it blocked animal rights activists from commenting on the agency’s social media pages. We filed an...

To Sixth Circuit: Government Officials Should Not Have Free Rein to Block Critics on Their Social Media Accounts When Used For Governmental Purposes

Legal intern Danya Hajjaji was the lead author of this post.The Sixth Circuit must carefully apply a new “state action” test from the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure that public officials who use social media to speak for the government do not have...

U.S. Supreme Court Does Not Go Far Enough in Determining When Government Officials Are Barred from Censoring Critics on Social Media

After several years of litigation across the federal appellate courts, the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion has finally crafted a test that lower courts can use to determine whether a government official engaged in “state action” such...

Lawmakers: Ban TikTok to Stop Election Misinformation! Same Lawmakers: Restrict How Government Addresses Election Misinformation!

In a case being heard Monday at the Supreme Court, 45 Washington lawmakers have argued that government communications with social media sites about possible election interference misinformation are illegal.Agencies can't even pass on information...

Access to Internet Infrastructure is Essential, in Wartime and Peacetime

We’ve been saying it for 20 years, and it remains true now more than ever: the internet is an essential service. It enables people to build and create communities, shed light on injustices, and acquire vital knowledge that might not otherwise be...

Platforms Must Stop Unjustified Takedowns of Posts By and About Palestinians

Legal intern Muhammad Essa Fasih contributed to this post.Social media is a crucial means of communication in times of conflict—it’s where communities connect to share updates, find help, locate loved ones, and reach out to express grief, pain,...

EFF to D.C. Circuit: Animal Rights Activists Shouldn’t Be Censored on Government Social Media Pages Because Agency Disagrees With Their Viewpoint

Intern Muhammad Essa contributed to this post.EFF, along with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit urging the court to reverse a lower court ruling that upheld...

ISPs Should Not Police Online Speech—No Matter How Awful It Is.

Entrusting our speech to multiple different corporate actors is always risky. Yet given how most of the internet is currently structured, our online expression largely depends on a set of private companies ranging from our direct Internet service...

International Rights Groups to Thierry Breton: You Need to Make Clear That Under the DSA States Can’t Shut Down the Internet as Punishment for Hateful Content on Platforms

EFF and 66 human rights and free speech advocacy groups across the globe today called on EU Internal Commissioner Thierry Breton to clarify that the Digital Services Act (DSA)—new regulations aimed at reining in Big Tech companies that control the...

A Year Since Dobbs, The Fight For Reproductive Privacy and Information Access Continues

A year ago this Saturday, the Supreme Court's Dobbs abortion ruling overturned Roe v. Wade. This decision deprived millions of people of a fundamental right. As we wrote then, it also underscored the importance of fair and meaningful protections...

This Texas Bill Would Systematically Silence Anyone Who Dares to Talk About Abortion Pills

Texas State Representative Steve Toth recently introduced a bill that targets the most viable form of safe and effective abortion access today—medication abortion.House Bill (HB) 2690 seeks to prevent the sale and distribution of abortion pills...

We Need to Talk About Infrastructure

Essential internet infrastructure should be content-neutral. These services should not make editorial decisions that remove content beyond the scope of the law. This is in part because history shows that any new censorship methods will eventually...

General Monitoring is not the Answer to the Problem of Online Harms

Even if you think that online intermediaries should be more proactive in detecting, deprioritizing, or removing certain user speech, the requirements on intermediaries to review all content before publication—often called “general monitoring” or...

Abortion Information Is Coming Down Across Social Media. What Is Happening and What Next.

Reports have surfaced about the removal of information about abortion from social media. Unfortunately, none of it is unprecedented. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram have long maintained broad and vague community standards that allows them to...

EFF Statement on the Declaration for the Future of the Internet

The White House announced today that sixty one countries have signed the Declaration for the Future of the Internet. The high-level vision and principles expressed in the Declaration—to have a single, global network that is truly open, fosters...

UN Human Rights Committee Criticizes Germany’s NetzDG for Letting Social Media Platforms Police Online Speech

A UN human rights committee examining the status of civil and political rights in Germany took aim at the country’s Network Enforcement Act, or NetzDG, criticizing the hate speech law in a recent report for enlisting social media companies to...