In the News
EFF: State by State, We’re Making Progress Against Anti-Speech Lawsuits
By Joe Mullin
The First Amendment grants us all the right to say our piece. The government can’t shut down our rights to speak out, protest, and publish…
Government repression isn’t the only threat to free speech, though. Well-funded corporations and individuals have been able to abuse our court system to quash the constitutional rights of those they disagree with, by filing Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, otherwise known as SLAPPs. These lawsuits aren’t meant to win on the merits—they’re meant to put financial pressure on a defendant, thus quashing their constitutional rights.
EFF supports action to limit these harassing lawsuits, including passing strong anti-SLAPP laws at both the state and federal level… In 2020, the Uniform Law Commission published its Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA), a model anti-SLAPP bill for states to follow.
Now, EFF has joined with civil society groups from across the political spectrum to endorse UPEPA. These groups cover a wide range of interests, but we agree on this principle: our courts should be focused on resolving disputes, and should not be hijacked to stifle the right to free expression.
We’re joined on this letter by the ACLU, Institute for Justice, Public Participation Project, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and other free speech groups.
Ed. note: The Institute for Free Speech co-signed the letter in support of UPEPA.
FEC
Ars Technica: Gmail users “hard pass” on plan to let political emails bypass spam filters
By Ashley Belanger
Earlier this month, Google sent a request to the Federal Election Commission seeking an advisory opinion on the potential launch of a pilot program that would allow political committees to bypass spam filters and instead deliver political emails to the primary inboxes of Gmail users…
Out of 48 comments submitted as of July 11, only two commenters voiced support so far for Google’s pilot program, which seeks to deliver more unsolicited political emails to Gmail users instead of marking them as spam…
The worst-case scenario for some commenters is a future where political spam delivered to primary inboxes influences elections. A few commenters expressed fears that Google’s seemingly liberal political bias would influence Gmail users by delivering emails from Democrats to the primary inbox, while still marking Republican emails as spam…
The only other commenter to speak in favor of the proposal suggested that Gmail’s longstanding practice of diverting political emails to spam was a threat to protected political speech. By sending political emails to the primary inbox, it ensures that everyone’s messaging gets the same circulation.
Political Spending
By Madison Hall
Billionaires pumped just $31 million directly into 2010 federal-level midterm elections, the first national election conducted after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which loosened key political spending restrictions.
By 2016, billionaires contributed at least $611 million, according to the report from Americans for Tax Fairness, a coalition of predominantly center-left nonprofits, unions, and political advocacy organizations.
During the 2020 election, billionaires injected about twice that — $1.2 billion — into federal races. That figure that jumps to $2.6 billion when including contributions billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer made to their own, self-funded Democratic presidential campaigns, the report states.
Free Expression
Persuasion: Misinformation Is Here To Stay (And That’s OK)
By Isaac Saul
At various times throughout the history of humankind, our most brilliant scientists and philosophers believed many things most eight-year-olds now know to be false: the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, smoking cigarettes was good for digestion, humans were not related to apes, the planet was 75,000 years old, or left-handed people were unclean…
It is challenging to accept the fact that much of what we believe right now will, in 20, 100, 500, or 1,000 years, seem as absurd as some of the ideas above. But it would take a great deal of arrogance to believe anything else.
And yet, that arrogance persists. In fact, it is one of the most important elements of a greater struggle we are facing in the modern world: how to fight the plethora of “misinformation” now available to the public. Arrogance in what we believe now is precisely what creates confidence that we can accurately and productively root out misinformation…
It’s hard to overstate the risks of trying to root out misinformation from public discourse. Imagine, for hypothetical purposes, that the National Academy of Sciences still believed bloodletting was useful to fight infections. Now imagine the government coordinated with major social media platforms to identify and remove anyone questioning the efficacy of bloodletting. Where would we be today? How would we escape the practice? With no dissent, how many people would have to suffer from a lack of effective treatment for us to learn we were wrong?
National Review: Biden’s Disinformation Czar Breaks Silence after Would-Be Unit Crashes and Burns
By Isaac Schorr and Brittany Bernstein
While the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board was short-lived, its first and only executive director, Nina Jankowicz, continues to haunt the embattled president.
Appearing on Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources on Sunday, Jankowicz complained that the board, which she crashed into nonexistence less than a month after its introduction, had its purpose spun by “Republicans” and the “far-left,” calling the board itself a “victim of disinformation.”
Online Speech Platforms
Washington Post: Twitter went easy on Trump because it ‘relished’ the power, ex-employee says
By Drew Harwell and Naomi Nix
A former Twitter employee told the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that the company gave former president Donald Trump more lenient treatment because it enjoyed the “power” his stature lent to the social network.
The testimony Tuesday marked the first time a former Twitter insider has testified under oath about the company’s role in giving Trump the megaphone he used to marshal an angry mob to attack the Capitol.
The States
Bloomberg Government: Lawsuit Could Have Counterintuitive Result: Ballots & Boundaries
By Brenna Goth
Ballot Measures: “Dark money” campaign finance disclosures and election law changes have a shot at making Arizona’s general election ballot. The secretary of state and county recorders will determine whether each measure collected 237,645 valid signatures and decide by Aug. 30 if voters will get to consider them…
The Voters’ Right to Know Act would require new disclosures of the people and companies spending on campaign ads, even if the money goes through an intermediary.
