Meta Oversight Board’s Latest Policy Opinion a Step in the Right Direction

EFF welcomes the latest and long-awaited policy advisory opinion from Meta’s Oversight Board calling on the company to end its blanket ban on the use of the Arabic-language term “shaheed” when referring to individuals listed under Meta’s policy on...

Protect Yourself from Election Misinformation

Welcome to your U.S. presidential election year, when all kinds of bad actors will flood the internet with election-related disinformation and misinformation aimed at swaying or suppressing your vote in November. So… what’re you going to do about...

As India Prepares for Elections, Government Silences Critics on X with Executive Order

It is troubling to see that the Indian government has issued new demands to X (formerly Twitter) to remove accounts and posts critical of the government and its recent actions. This is especially bears watching as India is preparing for general...

International Threats to Freedom of Expression: 2023 Year in Review

2023 has been an unfortunate reminder that the right to free expression is most fragile for groups on the margins, and that it can quickly become a casualty during global conflicts. Threats to speech arose out of the ongoing war in Palestine. They...

Digital Rights Groups Urge Meta to Stop Silencing Palestine

In the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing backlash on Palestine, Meta has engaged in unjustified content and account takedowns on its social media platforms. This has suppressed the voices of journalists, human rights...

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's Comment to the Meta Oversight Board on United States Posts Discussing Abortion

This post was co-authored with EFF legal intern Virginia Kennedy.EFF recently submitted comments to the Meta Oversight Board’s call for submissions last month about posts in the United States discussing abortion that were removed under the...

As Platforms Decay, Let’s Put Users First

The net’s long decline into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four” isn’t a mystery. Nor was it by any means a forgone conclusion. Instead, we got here through a series of conscious actions by big businesses and...

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...

Amidst Invasion of Ukraine, Platforms Continue to Erase Critical War Crimes Documentation

When atrocities happen—in Mariupol, Gaza, Kabul, or Christchurch—users and social media companies face a difficult question: how do we handle online content that shows those atrocities? Can and should we differentiate between pro-violence content...

Facebook’s Secret “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals” List Creates Problems for the Company—and Its Users

Along with the trove of "Facebook Papers" recently leaked to press outlets was a document that Facebook has, until now, kept intentionally secret: its list of "Dangerous Organizations and Individuals." This list comprises supposed terrorist...

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...

Why Is PayPal Denying Service to Palestinians?

For many years, Palestinian rights defenders have championed the cause of Palestinians in the occupied territories, who are denied access to PayPal, while Israeli settlers have full access to PayPal products. A recent campaign, led by Palestinian...

Facebook’s Attack on Research is Everyone's Problem

Facebook recently banned the accounts of several New York University (NYU) researchers who run Ad Observer, an accountability project that tracks paid disinformation, from its platform. This has major implications: not just for transparency, but...

Right or Left, You Should Be Worried About Big Tech Censorship

Claiming that “right-wing voices are being censored,” Republican-led legislatures in Florida and Texas have introduced legislation to “end Big Tech censorship.” They’re right. Conservatives are being censored. But it’s not just conservatives who...

Article 17 Copyright Directive: The Court of Justice’s Advocate General Rejects Fundamental Rights Challenge But Defends Users Against Overblocking

The Advocate General (AG) of the EU Court of Justice today missed an opportunity to fully protect internet users from censorship by automated filtering, finding that the disastrous Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive doesn’t run afoul of...