Marco Rubio is confused about "censorship" and a lot of people inside and outside the United States are paying a high price for it. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/u...
10.03.2026 11:23
👍 37
🔁 15
💬 0
📌 0
Marco Rubio is confused about "censorship" and a lot of people inside and outside the United States are paying a high price for it. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/u...
This is a vitally important issue for the future of global Internet research—really, for all research. Delighted to see @knightcolumbia.org, @protectdemocracy.org, and @thecoalition.bsky.social taking on this fight.
ICYMI, @thecoalition.bsky.social @knightcolumbia.org & @protectdemocracy.org filed a new First Amendment lawsuit earlier today challenging the Trump admin's denial of visas to tech researchers, tech workers, fact-checkers. Here's a post explaining why we're suing. mailchi.mp/knightcolumb...
Researchers in the US live in "pervasive fear" of immigration enforcement.
It has “chilling effects" on independent research and advocacy.
Now the researchers are suing 💪🏽
www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...
Excellent news: people are fighting back.
The @knightcolumbia.org and @protectdemocracy.org (via @thecoalition.bsky.social) just sued the Trump administration for using visa revocations and deportation threats to silence researchers and academics.
This is how you respond to abuse of power. 🧵
It's pathetic that the Trump administration thinks it can frame research, regulatory inquiry & content moderation by private companies as censorship. Yet here we are. Good lawsuit to defend free speech principles globally @knightcolumbia.org @protectdemocracy.org: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/u...
The Coalition for Independent Technology Research is standing up for free speech and against a government Censorship Policy that is threatening every American’s right to understand how technology impacts them, their children, and so much more.
www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...
Thanks to @knightcolumbia.org and @protectdemocracy.org for the support to bring this case, and to the very brave Coalition members who spoke up about how this is impacting them and their families in this complaint: knightcolumbia.org/content/tech...
Their research is more important now than ever, and when the government censors it, they are helping big tech companies leave people in the dark.
Our coalition is asking the court to declare the Censorship Policy unconstitutional & order the government to stop implementing the policy against the public interest research community, so that scientists, students and non-profit workers across the country can continue to do their jobs.
The Censorship Policy is part of a larger effort to silence people doing work to help the public understand social media and AI’s impact on kids, digital surveillance, biased algorithms, and more. Those ppl now fear that they could be detained or deported from the US any day because of their work.
We @thecoalition.bsky.social sued the US State Department today. The govt's Censorship Policy, which it is using to revoke and deny visas of technology researchers, students, fact-checkers and trust & safety workers, is clearly aimed at punishing those whose speech the government doesn't like.
It arrives in the middle of a solidarity action: we (3000 French academics) just published an op-Ed in @liberation.fr newspaper in solidarity with @standupforscience.bsky.social, highlighting how French academia faces very similar issues if less spectacularly.
"It's not a legal story, but a question of political attitude," Thierry Breton told the European Parliament yesterday.
He said he’d spent years explaining the law to platform CEOs and US govt officials, that they understood it, and that their current posture was a deliberate political choice.
New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance
1/
The biggest threats to journalism in this country, and to the possibility of an informed and empowered electorate, stem from the political economy of the media. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...
really excellent assessment of House GOP claims about EU fine of X, showing just how seriously hollow the claims of censorship are.
jordan & musk & friends overreach when they put out such patently tendentious reports, which could be boiled down to: don't you ever touch american platforms!
Interesting next step:
@democracyreporting.bsky.social taking X to court again over researcher data access. (In Hungarian elections)
@jakubjaraczewski.bsky.social
www.politico.eu/article/hung...
hear that? it's the silence of Republican lawmakers who spent the last bunch of years pretending to be "First Amendment absolutists" when they got mad about specific content moderation decisions made by private platforms
The arrests of Lemon and Fort are intended to deter journalists from doing work we need them to do, and that the First Amendment was meant to protect. DOJ should drop these prosecutions or the courts should throw them out. knightcolumbia.org/content/knig...
CITR's @geurkink.bsky.social on @techpolicypress.bsky.social podcast breaking down why researchers need #BetterAccess to public platform data to better understand our digital information environment
🎟️ Sign up for the Better Access webinar next Weds January 28: kgi.georgetown.edu/events/bette...
The Trump admin's sanctions on researchers and regulators who work on content-moderation, fact-checking, and disinfo are part of an effort to protect the tech ecosystem that has allowed the the far right to flourish. Good piece from @davidakaye.bsky.social. www.techpolicy.press/the-trump-li...
It doesn’t fix things, but it really does bring me comfort to know how miserable some of the worst people are. Donald Trump tweeting over 200 times on Christmas. Billionaires fighting with strangers online during the holidays. Everything about Elon Musk
And Merry Christmas to everyone except Marco Rubio and his cronies.
3/3
Solidarity with my colleagues and friends, today and forever. If you are able to, please join me in adding your name to this statement: docs.google.com/document/d/e....
2/3
Four public-interest researchers have been barred from the US for holding tech companies accountable. When governments target researchers, journalists and watchdogs, it is an assault on free speech and we should call it out as such.
Researchers are not censors. They are being censored.
1/3
The US has sanctioned European researchers and policymakers studying misinformation, framing independent inquiry as a free speech violation. The Trump admin's refusal to allow regulation of platforms is US tech policy by other means—now being enforced through sanctions. Scholars must pay attention.
NEW: last night, the US govt launched an assault on the ‘global censorship industrial complex’, aka European tech researchers/campaigners.
It’s a deeply chilling move & speaks as to why we need international solidarity more than ever.
open.substack.com/pub/broligar...
My second post about researchers’ rights to scrape data under DSA Article 40.12 is up! This is dense with legal arguments for researchers to use if they get sued. Or to show their lawyers before that.
www.techpolicy.press/how-the-mean...
verfassungsblog.de/dsa-fine-x-r...
Per usual, @mmasnick.bsky.social offers astute analysis of the Bullshit Industrial Complex’s claims, this time regarding new H1B visa vetting policies.
This sentence is 🌟: “This policy censors non-censors for not doing the thing that the White House and MAGA folks are actively doing every day.”
