First Amendment

TikTok users “absolutely justified” for fearing MAGA makeover, experts say

censorship, Donald Trump, First Amendment, Jeffrey Epstein, Policy, tiktok / Paul Patrick / January 27, 2026

Spectacular coincidence or obvious censorship?

TikTok’s tech issues abound as censorship fears drive users to delete app.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

TikTok wants users to believe that errors blocking uploads of anti-ICE videos or direct messages mentioning Jeffrey Epstein are due to technical errors—not the platform seemingly shifting to censor content critical of Donald Trump after he hand-picked the US owners who took over the app last week.

However, experts say that TikTok users’ censorship fears are justified, whether the bugs are to blame or not.

Ioana Literat, an associate professor of technology, media, and learning at Teachers College, Columbia University, has studied TikTok’s politics since the app first shot to popularity in the US in 2018. She told Ars that “users’ fears are absolutely justified” and explained why the “bugs” explanation is “insufficient.”

“Even if these are technical glitches, the pattern of what’s being suppressed reveals something significant,” Literat told Ars. “When your ‘bug’ consistently affects anti-Trump content, Epstein references, and anti-ICE videos, you’re looking at either spectacular coincidence or systems that have been designed—whether intentionally or through embedded biases—to flag and suppress specific political content.”

TikTok users are savvy, Literat noted, and what’s being cast as “paranoia” about the app’s bugs actually stems from their “digital literacy,” she suggested.

“They’ve watched Instagram suppress Palestine content, they’ve seen Twitter’s transformation under Musk, they’ve experienced shadow-banning and algorithmic suppression, including on TikTok prior to this,” Literat said. “So, their pattern recognition isn’t paranoia, but rather digital literacy.”

Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of technology ethics and internet law at the University of Colorado, Boulder, agreed that TikTok’s “bugs” explanation wasn’t enough to address users’ fears. She told CNN that TikTok risks losing users’ trust the longer that errors damage the perception of the app.

“Even if this isn’t purposeful censorship, does it matter? In terms of perception and trust, maybe,” Fiesler told CNN.

Some users are already choosing to leave TikTok. A quick glance at the TikTok subreddit shows many users grieving while vowing to delete the app, Literat pointed out, though some are reportedly struggling to delete accounts due to technical issues. Even with some users blocked from abandoning their accounts, however, “the daily average of TikTok uninstalls are up nearly 150 percent in the last five days compared to the last three months,” data analysis firm Sensor Tower told CNN.

A TikTok USDS spokesperson told Ars that US owners have not yet made any changes to the algorithm or content moderation policies. So far, the only changes have been to the US app’s terms of use and privacy policy, which impacted what location data is collected, how ads are targeted, and how AI interactions are monitored.

For TikTok, the top priority appears to be fixing the bugs, which were attributed to a power outage at a US data center. A TikTok USDS spokesperson told NPR that TikTok is also investigating the issue where some users can’t talk about Epstein in DMs.

“We don’t have rules against sharing the name ‘Epstein’ in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues,” TikTok’s spokesperson said.

TikTok’s response came after California governor Gavin Newsom declared on X that “it’s time to investigate” TikTok.

“I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content,” Newsom said. His post quote-tweeted an X user who shared a screenshot of the error message TikTok displayed when some users referenced Epstein and joked, “so the agreement for TikTok to sell its US business to GOP-backed investors was finalized a few days ago,” and “now you can’t mention Epstein lmao.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, the results of TikTok’s investigation into the “Epstein” issue were not publicly available, but TikTok may post an update here as technical issues are resolved.

“We’ve made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner,” TikTok USDS’s latest statement said. “However, the US user experience may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content. We’re committed to bringing TikTok back to its full capacity as soon as possible. We’ll continue to provide updates.”

TikTokers will notice subtle changes, expert says

For TikTok’s new owners, the tech issues risk confirming fears that Trump wasn’t joking when he said he’d like to see TikTok be tweaked to be “100 percent MAGA.”

Because of this bumpy transition, it seems likely that TikTok will continue to be heavily scrutinized once the USDS joint venture officially starts retraining the app on US data. As the algorithm undergoes tweaks, frequent TikTok users will likely be the first to pick up on subtle changes, especially if content unaligned with their political views suddenly starts appearing in their feeds when it never did before, Literat suggested.

Literat has researched both left- and right-leaning TikTok content. She told Ars that although left-leaning young users have for years loudly used the app to promote progressive views on topics like racial justice, gun reforms, or climate change, TikTok has never leaned one way or the other on the political spectrum.

Consider Christian or tradwife TikTok, Literat suggested, which grew huge platforms on TikTok alongside leftist bubbles advocating for LGBTQ+ rights or Palestine solidarity.

“Political life on TikTok is organized into overlapping sub-communities, each with its own norms, humor, and tolerance for disagreement,” Literat said, adding that “the algorithm creates bubbles, so people experience very different TikToks.”

Literat told Ars that she wasn’t surprised when Trump suggested that TikTok would be better if it were more right-wing. But what concerned her most was the implication that Trump viewed TikTok “as a potential propaganda apparatus” and “a tool for political capture rather than a space for authentic expression and connection.”

“The historical irony is thick: we went from ‘TikTok is dangerous because it’s controlled by the Chinese government and might manipulate American users’ to ‘TikTok should be controlled by American interests and explicitly aligned with a particular political agenda,’” Literat said. “The concern was never really about foreign influence or manipulation per se—it was about who gets to do the influencing.”

David Greene, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which fought the TikTok ban law, told Ars that users are justified in feeling concerned. However, technical errors or content moderation mistakes are nearly always the most likely explanations for issues, and there’s no way to know “what’s actually happening.” He noted that lawmakers have shaped how some TikTok users view the app after insisting that they accept that China was influencing the algorithm without providing evidence.

“For years, TikTok users were being told that they just needed to follow these assumptions the government was making about the dangers of TikTok,” Greene said. And “now they’re doing the same thing, making these assumptions that it’s now maybe some content policy is being done either to please the Trump administration or being controlled by it. We conditioned TikTok users to basically to not have trust in the way decisions were made with the app.”

MAGA tweaks risks TikTok’s “death by a thousand cuts”

TikTok USDS likely wants to distance itself from Trump’s comments about making the app more MAGA. But new owners have deep ties with Trump, including Larry Ellison, the chief technology officer of Oracle, whom some critics suggest has benefited more than anyone else from Trump’s presidency. Greene noted that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a key investor in Silver Lake. Both firms now have a 15 percent stake in the TikTok USDS joint venture, as well as MGX, which also seems to have Trump ties. CNBC reported MGX used the Trump family cryptocurrency, World Liberty Financial, to invest $2 billion in Binance shortly before Trump pardoned Binance’s CEO from money laundering charges, which some viewed as a possible quid pro quo.

Greene said that EFF warned during the Supreme Court fight over the TikTok divest-or-ban law that “all you were doing was substituting concerns for Chinese propaganda, for concerns for US propaganda. That it was highly likely that if you force a sale and the sale is up to the approval of the president, it’s going to be sold to President’s lackeys.”

“I don’t see how it’d be good for users or for democracy, for TikTok to have an editorial policy that would make Trump happy,” Greene said.

If suddenly, the app were tweaked to push more MAGA content into more feeds, young users who are critical of Trump wouldn’t all be brainwashed, Literat said. They would adapt, perhaps eventually finding other apps for activism.

However, TikTok may be hard to leave behind at a time when other popular apps seem to carry their own threats of political suppression, she suggested. Beyond the video-editing features that made TikTok a behemoth of social media, perhaps the biggest sticking point keeping users glued to TikTok is “fundamentally social,” Literat said.

“TikTok is where their communities are, where they’ve built audiences, where the conversations they care about are happening,” Literat said.

Rather than a mass exodus, Literat expects that TikTok’s fate could be “gradual erosion” or “death by a thousand cuts,” as users “likely develop workarounds, shift to other platforms for political content while keeping TikTok for entertainment, or create coded languages and aesthetic strategies to evade detection.”

CNN reported that one TikTok user already found that she could finally post an anti-ICE video after claiming to be a “fashion influencer” and speaking in code throughout the video, which criticized ICE for detaining a 5-year-old named Liam Conejo Ramos.

“Fashion influencing is in my blood,” she said in the video, which featured “a photo of Liam behind her,” CNN reported. “And even a company with bad customer service won’t keep me from doing my fashion review.”

Short-term, Literat thinks that longtime TikTok users experiencing inconsistent moderation will continue testing boundaries, documenting issues, and critiquing the app. That discussion will perhaps chill more speech on the platform, possibly even affecting the overall content mix appearing in feeds.

Long-term, however, TikTok’s changes under US owners “could fundamentally reshape TikTok’s role in political discourse.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, unfortunately, if it suffers the fate of Twitter/X,” Literat said.

Literat told Ars that her TikTok research was initially sparked by a desire to monitor the “kind of authentic political expression the platform once enabled.” She worries that because user trust is now “damaged,” TikTok will never be the same.

“The tragedy is that TikTok genuinely was a space where young people—especially those from marginalized communities—could shape political conversations in ways that felt authentic and powerful,” Literat said. “I’m sad to say, I think that’s been irretrievably broken.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

TikTok users “absolutely justified” for fearing MAGA makeover, experts say Read More »

DHS keeps trying and failing to unmask anonymous ICE critics online

censorship, DHS, First Amendment, ice, immigration and customs enforcement, Policy / Mike M. / January 23, 2026

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has backed down from a fight to unmask the owners of Instagram and Facebook accounts monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Pennsylvania.

One of the anonymous account holders, John Doe, sued to block ICE from identifying him and other critics online through summonses to Meta that he claimed infringed on core First Amendment-protected activity.

DHS initially fought Doe’s motion to quash the summonses, arguing that the community watch groups endangered ICE agents by posting “pictures and videos of agents’ faces, license plates, and weapons, among other things.” This was akin to “threatening ICE agents to impede the performance of their duties,” DHS alleged. DHS’s arguments echoed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who has claimed that identifying ICE agents is a crime, even though Wired noted that ICE employees often post easily discoverable LinkedIn profiles.

To Doe, the agency seemed intent on testing the waters to see if it could seize authority to unmask all critics online by invoking a customs statute that allows agents to subpoena information on goods entering or leaving the US.

But then, on January 16, DHS abruptly reversed course, withdrawing its summonses from Meta.

A court filing confirmed that DHS dropped its requests for subscriber information last week, after initially demanding Doe’s “postal code, country, all email address(es) on file, date of account creation, registered telephone numbers, IP address at account signup, and logs showing IP address and date stamps for account accesses.”

The filing does not explain why DHS decided to withdraw its requests.

However, previously, DHS requested similar information from Meta about six Instagram community watch groups that shared information about ICE activity in Los Angeles and other locations. DHS withdrew those requests, too, after account holders defended their First Amendment rights and filed motions to quash their summonses, Doe’s court filing said.

DHS keeps trying and failing to unmask anonymous ICE critics online Read More »

Lawsuit: DHS wants “unlimited subpoena authority” to unmask ICE critics

censorship, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, First Amendment, ice, Policy / Rejus Almole / January 13, 2026

Defending online anonymity

DHS is weirdly using import/export rules to expand its authority to identify online critics.

A Border Patrol Tactical Unit agent sprays pepper spray into the face of a protestor attempting to block an immigration officer vehicle from leaving the scene where a woman was shot and killed by a federal agent earlier, in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026. Credit: Star Tribune via Getty Images / Contributor | Star Tribune

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is fighting to unmask the owner of Facebook and Instagram accounts of a community watch group monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Pennsylvania.

Defending the right to post about ICE sightings anonymously is a Meta account holder for MontCo Community Watch, John Doe.

Doe has alleged that when the DHS sent a “summons” to Meta asking for subscriber information, it infringed on core First Amendment-protected activity, i.e., the right to publish content critical of government agencies and officials without fear of government retaliation. He also accused DHS of ignoring federal rules and seeking to vastly expand its authority to subpoena information to unmask ICE’s biggest critics online.

“I believe that my anonymity is the only thing standing between me and unfair and unjust persecution by the government of the United States,” Doe said in his complaint.

In response, DHS alleged that the community watch group that posted “pictures and videos of agents’ faces, license plates, and weapons, among other things,” was akin to “threatening ICE agents to impede the performance of their duties.” Claiming that the subpoena had nothing to do with silencing government critics, they argued that a statute regulating imports and exports empowered DHS to investigate the group’s alleged threats to “assault, kidnap, or murder” ICE agents.

DHS claims that Meta must comply with the subpoena because the government needs to investigate a “serious” threat “to the safety of its agents and the performance of their duties.”

On Wednesday, a US district judge will hear arguments to decide if Doe is right or if DHS can broadly unmask critics online by claiming it’s investigating supposed threats to ICE agents. With more power, DHS officials have confirmed they plan to criminally prosecute critics posting ICE videos online, Doe alleged in a lawsuit filed last October.

DHS seeking “unlimited subpoena authority”

DHS alleged that the community watch group posting “pictures and videos of agents’ faces, license plates, and weapons, among other things,” was akin to “threatening ICE agents to impede the performance of their duties.” Claiming that the subpoena had nothing to do with silencing government critics, they argued that DHS is authorized to investigate the group and that compelling interest supersedes Doe’s First Amendment rights.

According to Doe’s most recent court filing, DHS is pushing a broad reading of a statute that empowers DHS to subpoena information about the “importation/exportation of merchandise”—like records to determine duties owed or information to unmask a drug smuggler or child sex trafficker. DHS claims the statute isn’t just about imports and exports but also authorizes DHS to seize information about anyone they can tie to an investigation of potential crimes that violate US customs laws.

However, it seems to make no sense, Doe argued, that Congress would “silently embed unlimited subpoena authority in a provision keyed to the importation of goods.” Doe hopes the US district judge will agree that DHS’s summons was unconstitutional.

“The subscriber information for social media accounts publishing speech critical of ICE that DHS seeks is completely unrelated to the importation/exportation of merchandise; the records are outside the scope of DHS’s summons power,” Doe alleged.

And even if the court agrees on DHS’s reading of the statute, DHS has not established that unmasking the owner of the community watch accounts would be relevant to any legitimate criminal investigation, Doe alleged.

Doe’s posts were “pretty innocuous,” lawyer says

To convince the court that the case was really about chilling speech, Doe attached every post made on the group’s Facebook and Instagram feeds. None show threats or arguably implicit threats to “assault, kidnap, or murder any federal official,” as DHS claimed. Instead, the users shared “information and resources about immigrant rights, due process rights, fundraising, and vigils,” Doe said.

Ariel Shapell, an attorney representing Doe at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, told Ars that “if you go and look at the content on the Facebook and Instagram profiles at issue here, it’s pretty innocuous.”

DHS claimed to have received information about the group supposedly “stalking and gathering of intelligence on federal agents involved in ICE operations.” However, Doe argued that “unsurprisingly, neither DHS nor its declarant cites any post even allegedly constituting any such threat. To the contrary, all posts on these social media accounts constitute speech addressing important public issues fully protected under the First Amendment,” Doe argued.

“Reporting on, or even livestreaming, publicly occurring immigration operations is fully protected First Amendment activity,” Doe argued. “DHS does not, and cannot, show how such conduct constitutes an assault, kidnapping, or murder of a federal law enforcement officer, or a threat to do any of those things.”

Anti-ICE backlash mounting amid ongoing protests

Doe’s motion to quash the subpoena arrives at a time when recent YouGov polling suggests that Americans have reached a tipping point in ending support for ICE. YouGov’s poll found more people disapprove of how ICE is handling its job than approve, following the aftermath of nationwide anti-ICE protests over Renee Good’s killing. ICE critics have used footage of tragic events—like Good’s death and eight other ICE shootings since September—to support calls to remove ICE from embattled communities and abolish ICE.

As sharing ICE footage has swayed public debate, DHS has seemingly sought to subpoena Meta and possibly other platforms for subscriber information.

In October, Meta refused to provide names of users associated with Doe’s accounts—as well as “postal code, country, all email address(es) on file, date of account creation, registered telephone numbers, IP address at account signup, and logs showing IP address and date stamps for account accesses”—without further information from DHS. Meta then gave Doe the opportunity to move to quash the subpoena to stop the company from sharing information.

That request came about a week after DHS requested similar information from Meta about six Instagram community watch groups that shared information about ICE activity in Los Angeles and other locations. DHS withdrew those requests after account holders defended First Amendment rights and filed motions to quash the subpoena, Doe’s court filing said.

It’s unclear why DHS withdrew those subpoenas but maintained Doe’s. DHS has alleged that the government’s compelling interest in Doe’s identity outweighs First Amendment rights to post anonymously online. The agency also claimed it has met its burden to unmask Doe as “someone who is allegedly involved in threatening ICE agents and impeding the performance of their duties,” which supposedly “touches DHS’s investigation into threats to ICE agents and impediments to the performance of their duties.”

Whether Doe will prevail is hard to say, but Politico reported that DHS’s “defense will rest on whether DHS’s argument that posting videos and images of ICE officers and warnings about arrests is considered criminal activity.” It may weaken DHS’s case that Border Patrol Tactical Commander Greg Bovino recently circulated a “legal refresher” for agents in the field, reminding them that protestors are allowed to take photos and videos of “an officer or operation in public,” independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported.

Shapell told Ars that there seems to be “a lot of distance” between the content posted on Doe’s accounts and relevant evidence that could be used in DHS’s alleged investigation into criminal activity. And meanwhile, “there are just very clear First Amendment rights here to associate with other people anonymously online and to discuss political opinions online anonymously,” Shapell said, which the judge may strongly uphold as core protected activity as threats of government retaliation mount.

“These summonses chill people’s desire to communicate about these sorts of incredibly important developments on the Internet, even anonymously, when there’s a threat that they could be unmasked and investigated for this really core First Amendment protected activity,” Shapell said.

A win could reassure Meta users that they can continue posting about ICE online without fear of retaliation should Meta be pressed to share their information.

Ars could not immediately reach DHS for comment. Meta declined to comment, only linking Ars to an FAQ to help users understand how the platform processes government requests.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Lawsuit: DHS wants “unlimited subpoena authority” to unmask ICE critics Read More »

ICEBlock lawsuit: Trump admin bragged about demanding App Store removal

App Store, Apple, First Amendment, free speech, ice, iceblock, immigration and customs enforcement, Policy / Mike M. / December 8, 2025

ICEBlock creator sues to protect apps that are crowd-sourcing ICE sightings.

In a lawsuit filed against top Trump administration officials on Monday, Apple was accused of caving to unconstitutional government demands by removing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement-spotting app from the App Store with more than a million users.

In his complaint, Joshua Aaron, creator of ICEBlock, cited a Fox News interview in which Attorney General Pam Bondi “made plain that the United States government used its regulatory power to coerce a private platform to suppress First Amendment-protected expression.”

Suing Bondi—along with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons, White House “Border Czar” Thomas D. Homan, and unnamed others—Aaron further alleged that US officials made false statements and “unlawful threats” to criminally investigate and prosecute him for developing ICEBlock.

Currently, ICEBlock is still available to anyone who downloaded the app prior to the October removal from the App Store, but updates have been disrupted, and Aaron wants the app restored. Seeking an injunction to block any attempted criminal investigations from chilling his free speech, as well as ICEBlock users’ speech, Aaron vowed in a statement provided to Ars to fight to get ICEBlock restored.

“I created ICEBlock to keep communities safe,” Aaron said. “Growing up in a Jewish household, I learned from history about the consequences of staying silent in the face of tyranny. I will never back down from resisting the Trump Administration’s targeting of immigrants and conscripting corporations into its unconstitutional agenda.”

Expert calls out Apple for “capitulation”

Apple is not a defendant in the lawsuit and did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Aaron’s complaint called out Apple, though, for alleged capitulation to the Trump administration that appeared to be “the first time in Apple’s nearly fifty-year history” that “Apple removed a US-based app in response to the US government’s demands.” One of his lawyers, Deirdre von Dornum, told Ars that the lawsuit is about more than just one app being targeted by the government.

“If we allow community sharing of information to be silenced, our democracy will fail,” von Dornum said. “The United States will be no different than China or Russia. We cannot stand by and allow that to happen. Every person has a right to share information under the First Amendment.”

Mario Trujillo, a staff attorney from a nonprofit digital rights group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation that’s not involved in the litigation, agreed that Apple’s ban appeared to be prompted by an unlawful government demand.

He told Ars that “there is a long history that shows documenting law enforcement performing their duties in public is protected First Amendment activity.” Aaron’s complaint pointed to a feature on one of Apple’s own products—Apple Maps—that lets users crowd-source sightings of police speed traps as one notable example. Other similar apps that Apple hosts in its App Store include other Big Tech offerings, like Google Maps and Waze, as well as apps with explicit names like Police Scanner.

Additionally, Trujillo noted that Aaron’s arguments are “backed by recent Supreme Court precedent.”

“The government acted unlawfully when it demanded Apple remove ICEBlock, while threatening others with prosecution,” Trujillo said. “While this case is rightfully only against the government, Apple should also take a hard look at its own capitulation.”

ICEBlock maker sues to stop app crackdown

ICEBlock is not the only app crowd-sourcing information on public ICE sightings to face an app store ban. Others, including an app simply collecting footage of ICE activities, have been removed by Apple and Google, 404 Media reported, as part of a broader crackdown.

Aaron’s suit is intended to end that crackdown by seeking a declaration that government demands to remove ICE-spotting apps violate the First Amendment.

“A lawsuit is the only mechanism that can bring transparency, accountability, and a binding judicial remedy when government officials cross constitutional lines,” Aaron told 404 Media. “If we don’t challenge this conduct in court, it will become a playbook for future censorship.”

In his complaint, Aaron explained that he created ICE in January to help communities hold the Trump administration accountable after Trump campaigned on a mass deportation scheme that boasted numbers far beyond the number of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“His campaign team often referenced plans to deport ’15 to 20 million’ undocumented immigrants, when in fact the number of undocumented persons in the United States is far lower,” his complaint said.

The app was not immediately approved by Apple, Aaron said. But after a thorough vetting process, Apple approved the app in April.

ICEBlock wasn’t an overnight hit but suddenly garnered hundreds of thousands of users after CNN profiled the app in June.

Trump officials attack ICEBlock with false claims

Within hours of that report, US officials began blasting the app, claiming that it was used to incite violence against ICE officers and amplifying pressure to get the app yanked from the App Store.

But Bondi may have slipped up by making comments that seemed to make it clear her intentions were to restrict disfavored speech. On Fox, Bondi claimed that CNN’s report supposedly promoting the app was dangerous, whereas the Fox News report was warning people not to use the app and was perfectly OK.

“Bondi’s statements make clear that her threats of adverse action constitute viewpoint discrimination, where speech ‘promoting’ the app is unlawful but speech ‘warning’ about the app is lawful,” the lawsuit said.

Other Trump officials were accused of making false statements and using unlawful threats to silence Aaron and ICEBlock users.

“What they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations, and we’re going to actually go after them,” Noem told reporters in July. In a statement, Lyons claimed that ICEBlock “basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs” and that “officers and agents are already facing a 500 percent increase in assaults.” Echoing Lyons and Noem, Homan called for an investigation into CNN for reporting on the app, which “falsely implied that Plaintiffs’ protected speech was illegally endangering law enforcement officers,” Aaron alleged.

Not named in the lawsuit, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also allegedly made misleading statements. That included falsely claiming “that ICEBlock and similar apps are responsible for violent attacks on law enforcement officers, such as the tragic shooting of immigrants at an ICE detention facility in Dallas, Texas, on September 24, 2025,” where “no actual evidence has ever been cited to support these claims,” the lawsuit said.

Despite an apparent lack of evidence, Apple confirmed that ICEBlock was removed in October, “based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock,” a public statement said. In a notice to Aaron, Apple further explained that the app was banned “because its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.”

Apple never shared any more information with Aaron to distinguish his app from other apps allowed in the App Store that help people detect and avoid nearby law enforcement activities. The iPhone maker also didn’t confirm the source of its information, Aaron said.

However, on Fox, Bondi boasted about reaching “out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store—and Apple did so.”

Then, later during sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she reiterated those comments, while also oddly commenting that Google received the same demand, despite ICEBlock intentionally being designed for iPhone only.

She also falsely claimed that ICEBlock “was reckless and criminal in that people were posting where ICE officers lived” but “subsequently walked back that statement,” Aaron’s complaint said.

Aaron is hoping the US District Court in the District of Columbia will agree that “Bondi’s demand to Apple to remove ICEBlock from the App store, as well as her viewpoint-based criticism of CNN for publicizing the app, constitute a ‘scheme of state censorship’ designed to ‘suppress’” Aaron’s “publication and distribution of the App.”

His lawyer, Noam Biale, told Ars that “Attorney General Bondi’s self-congratulatory claim that she succeeded in pushing Apple to remove ICEBlock is an admission that she violated our client’s constitutional rights. In America, government officials cannot suppress free speech by pressuring private companies to do it for them.”

Similarly, statements from Noem, Lyons, and Homan constituted “excessive pressure on Apple to remove the App and others like it from the App Store,” Aaron’s complaint alleged, as well as unconstitutional suppression of Aaron’s and ICEBlock users’ speech.

ICEBlock creator was one of the first Mac Geniuses

Aaron maintains that ICEBlock prominently features a disclaimer asking all users to “please note that the use of this app is for information and notification purposes only. It is not to be used for the purposes of inciting violence or interfering with law enforcement.”

In his complaint, he explained how the app worked to automatically delete ICE sightings after four hours—information that he said could not be recovered. That functionality ensures that “ICEBlock cannot be used to track ICE agents’ historical presence or movements,” Aaron’s lawsuit noted.

Rather than endangering ICE officers, Aaron argued that ICEBlock helps protect communities from dangerous ICE activity, like tear gassing and pepper spraying, or alleged racial profiling triggering arrests of US citizens and immigrants. Kids have been harmed, his complaint noted, with ICE agents documented “arresting parents and leaving young children unaccompanied” and even once “driving an arrestee’s car away from the scene of arrest with the arrestee’s young toddler still strapped into a car seat.”

Aaron’s top fear driving his development of the app was his concern that escalations in ICE enforcement—including arbitrary orders to hit 75 arrests a day—exposed “immigrants and citizens alike to violence and rampant violations of their civil liberties” that ICEBlock could shield them from.

“These operations have led to widespread and well-documented civil rights violations against citizens, lawful residents, and undocumented immigrants alike, causing serious concern among members of the public, elected officials, and federal courts,” Aaron’s complaint said.

They also “have led some people—regardless of immigration or citizenship status—to want to avoid areas of federal immigration enforcement activities altogether” and “resulted in situations where members of the public may wish, when enforcement activity becomes visible in public spaces, to observe, record, or lawfully protest against such activity.”

In 2001, Aaron worked for Apple as one of the first Mac Geniuses in its Apple Stores. These days, he flexes his self-taught developer skills by creating apps intended to do social good and help communities.

Emphasizing that he was raised in a Jewish household where he heard stories from Holocaust survivors that left a lasting mark, Aaron said that the ICEBlock app represented his “commitment to use his abilities to advocate for the protection of civil liberties.” Without an injunction, he’s concerned that he and other like-minded app makers will remain in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, as the mass deportation scheme rages on through ongoing ICE raids across the US, Aaron told 404 Media.

“More broadly, the purpose [of the lawsuit] is to hold government officials accountable for using their authority to silence lawful expression and intimidate creators of technology they disfavor,” Aaron said. “This case is about ensuring that public officials cannot circumvent the Constitution by coercing private companies or threatening individuals simply because they disagree with the message or the tool being created.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

ICEBlock lawsuit: Trump admin bragged about demanding App Store removal Read More »

UCLA faculty gets big win in suit against Trump’s university attacks

education, First Amendment, Law, lawsuit, Policy, research funding, Science, Speech, University of California / Rejus Almole / November 17, 2025

Government can’t use funding threats to override the First Amendment.

While UCLA has been most prominently targeted by the Trump Administration, the ruling protects the entire UC system. Credit: Myung J. Chun

On Friday, a US District Court issued a preliminary injunction blocking the United States government from halting federal funding at UCLA or any other school in the University of California system. The ruling came in response to a suit filed by groups representing the faculty at these schools challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to force UCLA into a deal that would substantially revise instruction and policy.

The court’s decision lays out how the Trump administration’s attacks on universities follow a standard plan: use accusations of antisemitism to justify an immediate cut to funding, then use the loss of money to compel an agreement that would result in revisions to university instruction and management. The court finds that this plan was deficient on multiple grounds, violating legal procedures for cutting funding to an illegal attempt and suppressing the First Amendment rights of faculty.

The result is a reprieve for the entire University of California system, as well as a clear pathway for any universities to fight back against the Trump administration’s attacks on research and education.

First Amendment violations

The Judge overseeing this case, Rita Lin, issued separate documents describing the reasoning behind her decision and the sanctions she has placed on the Trump administration. In the first, she lays out the argument that the threats facing the UC system, and most notably UCLA, are part of a scripted campaign deployed against many other universities, one that proceeds through several steps. The Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism is central to this effort, which starts with the opening of a civil rights investigation against a university that was the site of anti-Israel protests during the conflict in Gaza.

“Rooting out antisemitism is undisputedly a laudable and important goal,” Judge Lin wrote. But the investigations in many cases take place after those universities have already taken corrective steps, which the Trump administration seemingly never considers. Instead, while the investigations are still ongoing, agencies throughout the federal government cancel funding for research and education meant for that university and announce that there will be no future funding without an agreement.

The final step is a proposed settlement that would include large payments (over $1.2 billion in UCLA’s case) and a set of conditions that alter university governance and instruction. These conditions often have little to no connection with antisemitism.

While all of this was ostensibly meant to combat antisemitism, the plaintiffs in this case presented a huge range of quotes from administration officials, including the head of the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, saying the goal was to suppress certain ideas on campus. “The unrebutted record in this case shows that Defendants have used the threat of investigations and economic sanctions to… coerce the UC to stamp out faculty, staff, and student ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ ‘anti-American,’ ‘anti-Western,’ and ‘Marxist’ speech,” Lin said.

And even before any sort of agreement was reached, there was extensive testimony that people on campus changed their teaching and research to avoid further attention from the administration. “Plaintiffs’ members express fear that researching, teaching, and speaking on disfavored topics will trigger further retaliatory funding cancellations against the UC,” Lin wrote, “and that they will be blamed for the retaliation. They also describe fears that the UC will retaliate against them to avoid further funding cuts or in order to comply with the proposed settlement agreement.”

That’s a problem, given that teaching and research topics are forms of speech, and therefore protected by the First Amendment. “These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what Defendants publicly said that they intended,” Lin concluded.

Beyond speech

But the First Amendment isn’t the only issue here. The Civil Rights Act, most notably Title VI, lays out a procedure for cutting federal funding, including warnings and hearings before any funds are shut off. That level of coercion is also limited to cases where there’s an indication that voluntary compliance won’t work. Any funding cut would need to target the specific programs involved and the money allocated to them. There is nothing in Title VI that enables the sort of financial payments that the government has been demanding (and, in some cases, receiving) from schools.

It’s pretty obvious that none of these procedures are being followed here. And as Lin noted in her ruling, “Defendants conceded at oral argument that, of the billions of dollars of federal university funding suspended across numerous agencies in recent months, not a single agency has followed the procedures required by Title VI and IX.”

She found that the government decided it wasn’t required to follow the Civil Rights Act procedures. (Reading through the decision, it becomes hard to tell where the government offered any defense of its actions at all.)

The decision to ignore all existing procedures, in turn, causes additional problems, including violations of the Tenth Amendment, which limits the actions that the government can take. And it runs afoul of the Administrative Procedures Act, which prohibits the government from taking actions that are “arbitrary and capricious.”

All of this provided Lin with extensive opportunities to determine that the Plaintiffs, largely organizations that represent the faculty at University of California schools, are likely to prevail in their suit, and thus are deserving of a preliminary injunction to block the federal government’s actions. But first, she had to deal with a recent Supreme Court precedent holding that cases involving federal money belong in a different court system. She did so by arguing that this case is largely about First Amendment and federal procedures rather than any sort of contract for federal money; money is being used as a lever here, so they ruling must involve restoring the money to address the free speech issues.

That issue will undoubtedly be picked up on appeal as it makes its way through the courts.

Complete relief

Lin identified a coercive program that is being deployed against many universities and is already suppressing speech throughout the University of California system, including on campuses that haven’t been targeted yet. She is issuing a ruling that targets the program broadly.

“Plaintiffs have shown that Defendants are coercing the [University of California] as a whole, through the Task Force Policy and Funding Cancellation, to stamp out their members’ disfavored speech,” Lin concluded. “Therefore, to afford Plaintiffs complete relief, the entirety of the coercive practice must be enjoined, not just the suspensions that impact Plaintiffs’ members.”

Her ruling indicates that if the federal government decides it wants to cut any grants to any school in the UC system, it has to go through the entire procedure set out in the Civil Rights Act. The government is also prohibited from demanding money from any of these schools as a fine or payment, and it can’t threaten future funding to the schools. The current hold on grants to the school by the government must also be lifted.

In short, the entire UC system should be protected from any of the ways that the government has been trying to use accusations of antisemitism to suppress ideas that it disfavors. And since those primarily involve federal funding, that has to be restored, and any future threats to it must be blocked.

While this case is likely to face a complicated appeals process, Lin’s ruling makes it extremely clear that all of these cases are exactly what they seemed. Just as members of the administration stated in public multiple times, they decided to target some ideas they disfavored and simply made up a process that would let them do so.

While it worked against a number of prominent universities, its legal vulnerabilities have been there from the start.

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

UCLA faculty gets big win in suit against Trump’s university attacks Read More »

Big Tech sues Texas, says age-verification law is “broad censorship regime”

1st Amendment, First Amendment, free speech, Policy, texas / Mike M. / October 17, 2025

Texas minors also challenge law

The Texas App Store Accountability Act is similar to laws enacted by Utah and Louisiana. The Texas law is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2026, while the Utah and Louisiana laws are set to be enforced starting in May and July, respectively.

The Texas law is also being challenged in a different lawsuit filed by a student advocacy group and two Texas minors.

“The First Amendment does not permit the government to require teenagers to get their parents’ permission before accessing information, except in discrete categories like obscenity,” attorney Ambika Kumar of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP said in an announcement of the lawsuit. “The Constitution also forbids restricting adults’ access to speech in the name of protecting children. This law imposes a system of prior restraint on protected expression that is presumptively unconstitutional.”

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP said the law “extends far beyond social media to mainstream educational, news, and creative applications, including Wikipedia, search apps, and internet browsers; messaging services like WhatsApp and Slack; content libraries like Audible, Kindle, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube; educational platforms like Coursera, Codecademy, and Duolingo; news apps from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, and The Atlantic; and publishing tools like Substack, Medium, and CapCut.”

Both lawsuits against Texas argue that the law is preempted by the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, which struck down a California law restricting the sale of violent video games to children. The Supreme Court said in Brown that a state’s power to protect children from harm “does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”

The tech industry has sued Texas over multiple laws related to content moderation. In 2022, the Supreme Court blocked a Texas law that prohibits large social media companies from moderating posts based on a user’s viewpoint. Litigation in that case is ongoing. In a separate case decided in June 2025, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law that requires age verification on porn sites.

Big Tech sues Texas, says age-verification law is “broad censorship regime” Read More »

4chan fined $26K for refusing to assess risks under UK Online Safety Act

4chan, censorship, FCC, First Amendment, free speech, Kiwi Farms, Ofcom, online safety act, Policy, united kingdom / Mike M. / October 13, 2025

The risk assessments also seem to unconstitutionally compel speech, they argued, forcing them to share information and “potentially incriminate themselves on demand.” That conflicts with 4chan and Kiwi Farms’ Fourth Amendment rights, as well as “the right against self-incrimination and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution,” the suit says.

Additionally, “the First Amendment protects Plaintiffs’ right to permit anonymous use of their platforms,” 4chan and Kiwi Farms argued, opposing Ofcom’s requirements to verify ages of users. (This may be their weakest argument as the US increasingly moves to embrace age gates.)

4chan is hoping a US district court will intervene and ban enforcement of the OSA, arguing that the US must act now to protect all US companies. Failing to act now could be a slippery slope, as the UK is supposedly targeting “the most well-known, but small and, financially speaking, defenseless platforms” in the US before mounting attacks to censor “larger American companies,” 4chan and Kiwi Farms argued.

Ofcom has until November 25 to respond to the lawsuit and has maintained that the OSA is not a censorship law.

On Monday, Britain’s technology secretary, Liz Kendall, called OSA a “lifeline” meant to protect people across the UK “from the darkest corners of the Internet,” the Record reported.

“Services can no longer ignore illegal content, like encouraging self-harm or suicide, circulating online which can devastate young lives and leaves families shattered,” Kendall said. “This fine is a clear warning to those who fail to remove illegal content or protect children from harmful material.”

Whether 4chan and Kiwi Farms can win their fight to create a carveout in the OSA for American companies remains unclear, but the Federal Trade Commission agrees that the UK law is an overreach. In August, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson warned US tech companies against complying with the OSA, claiming that censoring Americans to comply with UK law is a violation of the FTC Act, the Record reported.

“American consumers do not reasonably expect to be censored to appease a foreign power and may be deceived by such actions,” Ferguson told tech executives in a letter.

Another lawyer backing 4chan, Preston Byrne, seemed to echo Ferguson, telling the BBC, “American citizens do not surrender our constitutional rights just because Ofcom sends us an e-mail.”

4chan fined $26K for refusing to assess risks under UK Online Safety Act Read More »

Is it illegal to not buy ads on X? Experts explain the FTC’s bizarre ad fight.

antitrust, elon musk x, federal trade commission, First Amendment, online advertising, Policy, twitter ad boycott, x ad boycott / Mike M. / August 22, 2025

Here’s the “least silly way” to wrap your head around the FTC’s war over X ads.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

After a judge warned that the Federal Trade Commission’s probe into Media Matters for America (MMFA) should alarm “all Americans”—viewing it as a likely government retaliation intended to silence critical reporting from a political foe—the FTC this week appealed a preliminary injunction blocking the investigation.

The Republican-led FTC’s determined to keep pressure on the nonprofit—which is dedicated to monitoring conservative misinformation—ever since Elon Musk villainized MMFA in 2023 for reporting that ads were appearing next to pro-Nazi posts on X. Musk claims that reporting caused so many brands to halt advertising that X’s revenue dropped by $1.5 billion, but advertisers have suggested there technically was no boycott. They’ve said that many factors influenced each of their independent decisions to leave X—including their concerns about Musk’s own antisemitic post, which drew rebuke from the White House in 2023.

For MMFA, advertisers, agencies, and critics, a big question remains: Can the FTC actually penalize advertisers for invoking their own rights to free expression and association by refusing to deal with a private company just because they happened to agree on a collective set of brand standards to avoid monetizing hate speech or offensive content online?

You’re not alone if you’re confused by the suggestion, since advertisers have basically always cautiously avoided associations that could harm their brands. After Elon Musk sued MMFA—then quickly expanded the fight by also suing advertisers and agencies—a running social media joke mocked X as suing to force people to buy its products and the billionaire for seeming to believe it should be illegal to deprive him of money.

On a more serious note, former FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who joined fellow Democrats who sued Trump for ejecting them from office, flagged the probe as appearing “bizarrely” politically motivated to protect Musk, an ally who donated $288 million to Trump’s campaign.

The FTC did not respond to Ars’ request to comment on its investigation. But seemingly backing Musk’s complaints without much evidence, the FTC continues to amplify his conspiracy theory that sharing brand safety standards harms competition in the ad industry. So far, the FTC has alleged that sharing such standards allows advertisers, ad buyers, and nonprofit advocacy groups to coordinate attacks on revenue streams in supposed bids to control ad markets and censor conservative platforms.

Legal experts told Ars that these claims seem borderline absurd. Antitrust claims usually arise out of concerns that collaborators are profiting by reducing competition, but it’s unclear how advertisers financially gain from withholding ads. Somewhat glaringly in the case of X, it seems likely that at least some advertisers actually increased costs by switching from buying cheaper ads on the increasingly toxic X to costlier platforms deemed safer or more in line with brands’ values.

X did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

The bizarre logic of the FTC’s ad investigation

In a blog post, Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, picked apart the conspiracy theory, trying to iron out the seemingly obvious constitutional conflicts with the FTC’s logic.

He explained that “X and Musk, together with allies in high government posts, have taken the position that for companies or ad agencies to decline to advertise with X on ideological grounds,” that “may legally violate its rights, especially if they coordinate with other entities in doing so.”

“Perhaps the least silly way of couching that idea is to say that advertisers are combining in restraint of trade to force [X] to improve the quality of its product as an ad environment, which you might analogize to forcing it to offer better terms to advertisers,” Olson said.

Pointing to a legal analysis weighing reasons why the FTC’s antitrust claims might not hold up in court, Olson suggested that the FTC is unlikely to overcome constitutional protections and win its ad war on the merits.

For one, he noted that it’s unusual to mingle “elements of anticompetitive conduct with First Amendment expression,” For another, “courts have been extremely protective of the right to boycott for ideological reasons, even when some effects were anti-competitive.” As Olson emphasized to Ars, courts are cautious that infringing First Amendment rights for even a brief period of time can irreparably harm speakers, including causing a chilling effect on speech broadly.

It seems particularly problematic that the FTC is attempting to block so-called boycotts from advertisers and agencies that “are specifically deciding how to spend money on speech itself,” Olson wrote. He noted that “the decision to advertise, the rejection of a platform for ideological reasons, and communication with others on how to turn these speech decisions into a maximum statement are all forms of expression on matters of public concern.”

Olson agrees with critics who suspect that the FTC doesn’t care about winning legal battles in this war. Instead, experts from Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group partly funded by big tech companies, told Ars that, seemingly for the FTC, “capitulation is the point.”

Why Media Matters’ fight may matter most

Public Knowledge Policy Director Lisa Macpherson told Ars that “the investigation into Media Matters is part of a larger pattern” employed by the FTC, which uses “the technical concepts of antitrust to further other goals, which are related to information control on behalf of the Trump administration.”

As one example, she joined Public Knowledge’s policy counsel focused on competition, Elise Phillips, in criticizing the FTC for introducing “unusual terms” into a merger that would create the world’s biggest advertising agency. To push the merger through, ad agencies were asked to sign a consent agreement that would block them from “boycotting platforms because of their political content by refusing to place their clients’ advertisements on them.”

Like social media users poking fun at Musk and X, it struck Public Knowledge as odd that the FTC “appears to be demanding that these ad agencies—and by extension, their clients—support media channels that may spread disinformation, hate speech, and extreme content as a condition for a merger.”

“The specific scope of the consent order seems to indicate that it does not reflect focus on the true impacts of diminished ad buying competition on advertisers, consumers, or labor, but instead the political impact of decreased revenue flows to publishers hosting content favorable to the Trump administration,” Public Knowledge experts suggested.

The demand falls in line with other Trump administration efforts to control information, Public Knowledge said, such as the FCC requiring a bias monitor for CBS to approve the Paramount-Skydance merger. It’s “all in service of controlling the flow of information about the administration and its policies,” Public Knowledge suggested. And the Trump administration depending on “the lack of a legal challenge due to industry financial interests” is creating “the biggest risk to First Amendment protections right now,” Phillips said.

Olson agreed with Public Knowledge experts that the agencies likely could have fought to remove the terms as unconstitutional and won, but instead, the CEO of the acquiring agency, Omnicom, appeared to indicate that the company was willing to accept the terms to push the merger through.

It seems possible that Omnicom didn’t challenge the terms because they represent what Public Knowledge suggested in a subsequent blog was the FTC’s fundamental misunderstanding of how ad placements work online. Due to the opaque nature of ad tech like Google’s, advertisers started depending on ad agencies to set brand safety standards to help protect their ad placements (the ad tech was ruled anti-competitive, and the Department of Justice is currently figuring out how to remedy market harms). But even as they adapted to an opaque ad environment, advertisers, not their agencies, have always maintained control over where ads are placed.

Even if Omnicom felt that the FTC terms simply maintained the status quo—as the FTC suggested it would—Public Knowledge noted that Omnicom missed an opportunity to challenge how the terms impacted “the agency’s rights of association and perfectly legal, independent refusals to deal by private companies.” The seeming capitulation could “cause a chilling effect” not just impacting placements from Omnicom’s advertiser clients but also those at other ad agencies, Public Knowledge’s experts suggested.

That sticks advertisers in a challenging spot where the FTC seemingly hopes to keep them squirming, experts suggested. Without agencies to help advise on whether certain ad placements may risk harming their brands, advertisers who don’t want their “stuff to be shown against Nazis” are “going to have to figure out how” to tackle brand safety on their own, Public Knowledge’s blog said. And as long as the ad industry is largely willing to bend to the FTC’s pressure campaign, it’s less likely that legal challenges will be raised to block what appears to be the quiet erosion of First Amendment protections, experts fear.

That may be why the Media Matters fight, which seems like just another front with a tangential player in the FTC’s bigger battle, may end up mattering the most. Whereas others directly involved in the ad industry may be tempted to make a deal like Omnicon’s to settle litigation, MMFA refuses to capitulate to Musk or the FTC, vowing to fight both battles to the bitter end.

“It has been a recurring strategy of the Trump administration to pile up the pressure on targets so that they cannot afford to hold out for vindication at trial, even if their chances there seem good,” Olson told Ars. “So they settle.”

It’s harder than usual in today’s political climate to predict the outcome of the FTC’s appeal, Olson told Ars. Macpherson told Ars she’s holding out hope “that the DC court would take the same position that the current judge did,” which is that “this is likely vindictive behavior on the part of the FTC and that, importantly, advertisers’ First Amendment rights should make the FTC’s sweeping investigation invalid.”

Perhaps the FTC’s biggest hurdle, apart from the First Amendment, may be a savvy judges who see through their seeming pressure campaign. In a notable 1995 case, a US judge, Richard Posner, “took the view that a realistic court should be ready to recognize instances where litigation can be employed to generate intense pressure on targets to settle regardless of the merits,” Olson said.

While that case involved targets of litigation, the appeals court judge—or even the Supreme Court if MMFA’s case gets that far—could rule that “targets of investigation could be under similar pressure,” Olson suggested.

In a statement to Ars, MMFA President Angelo Carusone confirmed that MMFA’s resolve has not faded in the face of the FTC’s appeal and was instead only strengthened by the US district judge being “crystal clear” that “FTC’s wide-ranging fishing expedition was a ‘retaliatory act’ that ‘should alarm all Americans.'”

“We will continue to fight this blatant attack on our First Amendment rights because if this Administration succeeds, so can any Administration target anyone who disagrees,” Carusone said. “The law here is clear, and we are optimistic that the Circuit Court will see through this appeal for what it is: an attempt to do an end run around constitutional law in an effort to silence political critics.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Is it illegal to not buy ads on X? Experts explain the FTC’s bizarre ad fight. Read More »

Skydance deal allows Trump’s FCC to “censor speech” and “silence dissent” on CBS

brendan carr, CBS, dei, Donald Trump, FCC, First Amendment, freedom of the press, paramount, Policy, sky dance / Kris Guyer / July 27, 2025

Warning that the “Paramount payout” and “reckless” acquisition approval together mark a “dark chapter” for US press freedom, Gomez suggested the FCC’s approval will embolden “those who believe the government can—and should—abuse its power to extract financial and ideological concessions, demand favored treatment, and secure positive media coverage.”

FCC terms also govern Skydance hiring decisions

Gomez further criticized the FCC for overstepping its authority in “intervening in employment matters reserved for other government entities with proper jurisdiction on these issues” by requiring Skydance commitments to not establish any DEI programs, which Carr derided as “invidious.” But Gomez countered that “this agency is undermining legitimate efforts to combat discrimination and expand opportunity” by meddling in private companies’ employment decisions.

Ultimately, commissioner Olivia Trusty joined Carr in voting to stamp the agency’s approval, celebrating the deal as “lawful” and a “win” for American “jobs” and “storytelling.” Carr suggested the approval would bolster Paramount’s programming by injecting $1.5 billion into operations, which Trusty said would help Paramount “compete with dominant tech platforms.”

Gomez conceded that she was pleased that at least—unlike the Verizon/T-Mobile merger—Carr granted her request to hold a vote, rather than burying “the outcome of backroom negotiations” and “granting approval behind closed doors, under the cover of bureaucratic process.”

“The public has a right to know how Paramount’s capitulation evidences an erosion of our First Amendment protections,” Gomez said.

Outvoted 2–1, Gomez urged “companies, journalists, and citizens” to take up the fight and push back on the Trump administration, emphasizing that “unchecked and unquestioned power has no rightful place in America.”

Skydance deal allows Trump’s FCC to “censor speech” and “silence dissent” on CBS Read More »

X sues to block copycat NY content moderation law after California win

censorship, content moderation, elon musk, First Amendment, hate speech, new york, Policy, Social Media, Twitter, X, x corp / Rejus Almole / June 18, 2025

“It is our sincere belief that the current social media landscape makes it far too easy for bad actors to promote false claims, hatred and dangerous conspiracies online, and some large social media companies are not able or willing to regulate this hate speech themselves,” the letter said.

Although the letter acknowledged that X was not the only platform targeted by the law, the lawmakers further noted that Musk taking over Twitter spiked hateful and harmful content on the platform. They said it seemed “clear to us that X needs to provide greater transparency for their moderation policies and we believe that our law, as written, will do that.”

This clearly aggravated X. In their complaint, X alleged that the letter made it clear that New York’s law was “tainted by viewpoint discriminatory motives”—alleging that the lawmakers were biased against X and Musk.

X seeks injunction in New York

Just as X alleged in the California lawsuit, the social media company has claimed that the New York law forces X “to make politically charged disclosures about content moderation” in order to “generate public controversy about content moderation in a way that will pressure social media companies, such as X Corp., to restrict, limit, disfavor, or censor certain constitutionally protected content on X that the State dislikes,” X alleged.

“These forced disclosures violate the First Amendment” and the New York constitution, X alleged, and the content categories covered in the disclosures “were taken word-for-word” from California’s enjoined law.

X is arguing that New York has no compelling interest, or any legitimate interest at all, in applying “pressure” to govern social media platforms’ content moderation choices. Because X faces penalties up to $15,000 per day per violation, the company has asked for a jury to grant an injunction blocking enforcement of key provisions of the law.

“Deciding what content should appear on a social media platform is a question that engenders considerable debate among reasonable people about where to draw the correct proverbial line,” X’s complaint said. “This is not a role that the government may play.”

X sues to block copycat NY content moderation law after California win Read More »

FCC Democrat slams chairman for aiding Trump’s “campaign of censorship”

FCC, fcc news distortion, First Amendment, Policy / Kris Guyer / April 24, 2025

The first event is scheduled for Thursday and will be hosted by the Center for Democracy and Technology. The events will be open to the public and livestreamed when possible, and feature various speakers on free speech, media, and telecommunications issues.

With Democrat Geoffrey Starks planning to leave the commission soon, Republicans will gain a 2–1 majority, and Gomez is set to be the only Democrat on the FCC for at least a while. Carr is meanwhile pursuing news distortion investigations into CBS and ABC, and he has threatened Comcast with a similar probe into its subsidiary NBC.

Gomez’s press release criticized Carr for these and other actions. “From investigating broadcasters for editorial decisions in their newsrooms, to harassing private companies for their fair hiring practices, to threatening tech companies that respond to consumer demand for fact-checking tools, the FCC’s actions have focused on weaponizing the agency’s authority to silence critics,” Gomez’s office said.

Gomez previously criticized Carr for reviving news distortion complaints that were dismissed shortly before Trump’s inauguration. “We cannot allow our licensing authority to be weaponized to curtail freedom of the press,” she said at the time.

FCC Democrat slams chairman for aiding Trump’s “campaign of censorship” Read More »

Harvard sues to block government funding cuts

First Amendment, Harvard, lawsuit, Policy, research funding, Science, Title VI, trump administration / Paul Patrick / April 23, 2025

The suit also claims that the funding hold, made in retaliation for Harvard’s letter announcing its refusal to accept these conditions, punishes Harvard for exercising free speech.

Separately, the lawsuit focuses on Title VI, part of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the government from funding organizations that engage in racial discrimination. It’s Harvard’s alleged tolerance for antisemitism that would enable the government to put a hold on these funds. But the suit spells out the requirements for cutting funding—hearings, a 30-day waiting period, notification of Congress—that the law requires before funding can be cut. And, quite obviously, the government has done none of them.

Harvard also alleges that the government’s decision to hold research funds is arbitrary and capricious: “The Government has not—and cannot—identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen.”

Finally, the court is asked to consider an issue that’s central to a lot of the questions regarding Trump Administration actions: Can the executive branch stop the flow of money that was allocated by Congress? “Defendants do not have any inherent authority to terminate or freeze appropriated federal funding,” the suit claims.

Remedies

The suit seeks various remedies. It wants the government’s actions declared illegal, the freeze order vacated, and prohibitions put in place that will prevent the government from accomplishing the freeze through some other means. Harvard would also like any further reactions to allegations of antisemitism to follow the procedures mandated by Title VI and to have the government cover its attorney’s fees.

It also wants the ruling expedited, given the potential for damage to university-hosted research. The suit was filed in the District of Massachusetts, which is the same venue that has been used for other suits seeking to restrain the Trump administration’s attack on federally funded research. So far, those have resulted in rapid responses and injunctions that have put damaging funding cuts on hold. So, there’s a good chance we’ll see something similar here.

Harvard sues to block government funding cuts Read More »