Mastodawn

NY Orders Apps To Lie About Social Media ‘Addiction,’ Will Lose In Court

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/01/05/ny-orders-apps-to-lie-about-social-media-addiction-will-lose-in-court/

NY Orders Apps To Lie About Social Media ‘Addiction,’ Will Lose In Court

New York Governor Kathy Hochul just signed a law that’s going to get expensive fast. The state’s new social media labeling requirement—S4505, courtesy of state Senator Andrew Gounardes—forces…

Techdirt

cathill Dec 15

In case I travel to the USA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection wants to check my social media posts, I now make this declaration:
We paean the USA.
We paean their great leader Donald Trump.
#usa #travel #visawaiverprogram #esta #cbp #dhs #tourism #privacy #personaldata #socialmedia #socialmediahistory #donaldtrump #compelledspeech #usspueblo #puebloincident #northkorea

Techdirt Nov 13

Furloughed Employees Sue Administration For Adding Partisan Wording To Their Out-Of-Office Messages

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2025/11/13/furloughed-employees-sue-administration-for-adding-partisan-wording-to-their-out-of-office-messages/

Furloughed Employees Sue Administration For Adding Partisan Wording To Their Out-Of-Office Messages

Here comes more pathetic, childish bullshit from an administration that has made petty bullshit its brand. The just completed government shutdown caused problems everywhere. The Trump administratio…

Techdirt

alecm Dec 22, 2023

Is Compelled Decryption Heading to the Supreme Court?

Orin Kerr says “maybe.” — we in the UK have got the power to lock people up for not providing (forgetting?) a password, but it’s not exactly a popular piece of legislation.

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/12/14/is-compelled-decryption-heading-to-the-supreme-court/

#compelledSpeech #encryption

https://alecmuffett.com/article/108646

Is Compelled Decryption Heading to the Supreme Court?

Unlocking phones may reach SCOTUS, but there's a potential catch.

Reason.com

Show thread

Caroline Mala Corbin Jul 5, 2023

Here's my blog post elaborating on the absurdity of the Supreme Court comparing the requirement that a business open to the public provide their services on an equal basis (303 Creative) with forcing a child in public school to say the Pledge of Allegiance (Barnette)

https://www.dorfonlaw.org/2023/07/303-creative-is-no-barnette-there-is.html

#SupremeCourt #SCOTUS #LGBTQ #equality #discrimination #FreeSpeech #law #lawfedi #lawprof #Fedilaw #CompelledSpeech

303 Creative Is No Barnette

There is much to unpack in the Supreme Court’s decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis , which held that compelling a web designer to create ...

Caroline Mala Corbin Jun 30, 2023

I am sorry, but equating a business providing services on an equal basis with forcing students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance is a travesty.

#303Creative #SCOTUS #Supremecourt #law #lawFedi #LGBTQ #discrimination #compelledspeech

alecm Mar 9, 2023

“Mercury Shrugged” — how can it be that end-to-end encrypted messenger platforms threatening to take their ball home, is a threat to the Westphalian nation state? #MercuryShrugged @SignalApp @WhatsApp

I detest Rand, but the pun is just too fun…

Over the past two weeks we have seen both Signal, and now WhatsApp, threaten to withdraw their service from the UK because (and let’s be precise about this) the Online Safety Bill, as drafted, empowers OFCOM to demand that client-side-scanning technologies must be deployed in the client applications, which breaks the end-to-end security promise that literally defines the value proposition of the software.

And then you see tweets like this, from the former policy guy at NSPCC who clearly is still attempting to grind an axe:

Secondly, are we comfortable watching a clearly co-ordinated industry push to assert, through threats, their primacy over nation states? Nuanced, independent regulatory safeguards are legitimate & necessary to uphold fundamental human rights. Tech accountability is long overdue.

— Andy Burrows (@_andyburrows) March 9, 2023

are we comfortable watching a… industry push to assert… their primacy over nation states

The thing is: it’s not an “industry push” — end to end security in communications software has been coming since 1991 (with the publication of PGP) if not 1975/ish with the paper which kicked-off the development of public key encryption.

And the notion that Signal is somehow a huge corporation, defies both belief and reality.

But here’s a question for you: is Meta / WhatsApp / Facebook — or any other company — obligated to offer a service within a country on anything other than their own terms? Should they be forced not merely to submit to the surveillance whims of each and every nation? Should they be forced to adopt particular protocols in order to support those nations whims?

From where in the nation state primacy handbook, comes the power to require a corporation – or a federated community, or an individual – to offer a service within their jurisdiction, and be forced to offer it on terms which the particular state at hand considers to be desirable?

With the exception of some arguable “anti-tipping-off” statutes (re: ongoing investigations) – I cannot think of any. And I aver that this is because code is speech, and compelled speech is generally revolted-against in all democratic societies.

In any case: it’s food for thought, not least “if some people are presenting this pejoratively, as an argument in favour of the online safety bill, at precisely what point will they stop telling people what they should do and how they should do it?”

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