If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Elon Musk’s X has initiated legal action against the state of California, seeking to prevent the enforcement of a new statute mandating that major online platforms either remove or label deepfake election-related content, as a violation of the First Amendment, particularly for its impact on memes and satire. We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here. The legal challenge was presented in a federal court earlier this week, focusing on legislation designed to curb the influence of artificially altered videos, images, and sounds, collectively known as deepfakes. The legislation is poised to become effective on January 1. The law in question, Assembly Bill 2655, was signed as part of California’s efforts to safeguard the integrity of the upcoming 2024 US presidential election from the risks posed by technological manipulation. Governor Gavin Newsom, having clashed with Musk following Musk’s sharing of a parody video of Vice President Kamala Harris, aims to mitigate these alleged risks. The legislation has sparked concerns among tech giants and free speech supporters, who understand that it suppresses user engagement and stifles free discourse and satire under the guise of curbing misinformation. X’s legal challenge raises critical questions about the boundaries of free speech in the digital age, arguing that the law violates the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from liability for user-generated content. By requiring platforms like X to preemptively label or remove content, the law, as X contends, “will inevitably result in the censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary.” “AB 2655 requires large online platforms like X, the platform owned by X Corp. (collectively, the ‘covered platforms’), to remove and alter (with a label) — and to create a reporting mechanism to facilitate the removal and alteration of — certain content about candidates for elective office, elections officials, and elected officials, of which the State of California disapproves and deems to be ‘materially deceptive,’” the complaint reads. The complaint also states that “this system will inevitably result in the censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary and will limit the type of ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ ‘debate on public issues’ that core First Amendment protections are designed to ensure.” It goes on to say, “AB 2655 imposes a prior restraint on speech because it provides, pursuant to Sections 20515(b) and 20516, expedited causes of action under Section 35 of the California Code of Civil Procedure through which political speech can be enjoined before there occurs a ‘final judicial determination’ that the ‘speech is unprotected.'” Finally, it states, “AB 2655 violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 2, of the California Constitution, both facially and as-applied to X Corp. AB 2655 imposes a prior restraint on speech that forces platforms to censor only certain election-related content of which the State of California disapproves and also directly and impermissibly interferes with the constitutionally protected content-moderation speech rights of covered social media platforms, like X.” The implications for satire are particularly severe, as highlighted by the case of the parody Harris videos. Although Governor Newsom’s office insists that AB 2655, also known as the Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024, says it exempts parody and satire, the practical application of this exemption is murky at best since it was a parody video that was the impetus for Governor Newsom to push for the introduction of the law. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Elon Musk’s X Sues California Over Deepfake Law Seen as Threat to Free Speech appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. As the new administration is preparing to take over in the US, the speaker of the House of Representatives is working to ensure that the Biden-Harris administration doesn’t take evidence of the censorship collusion with Big Tech with it when it leaves. Speaker Mike Johnson and a group of prominent Republican members of the House and committee chiefs have penned a letter to Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, recalling that during the transition of power, the Federal Records Act and other relevant rules, in terms of record retention, must be complied with. We obtained a copy of the letter for you here. The signatories “expressly direct” Su to make sure her own department’s records are preserved as well. The letter goes on to explain that House committees have conducted “robust oversight” related to a number of key and contentious issues and mention the outgoing government’s censorship collusion with social platforms as one of these. The Congress that is about to finish its term will continue to work to secure compliance with “many subpoenas with which you largely declined to cooperate,” Speaker Johnson and his colleagues note. At the same time, they add that the incoming Congress and its committees will continue with the oversight, and decide if some of the subpoenas need to be reissued. As for Johnson himself, his efforts around supporting free speech and exposing violations undermining it – that was happening during the Biden-Harris administration – have been praised by free speech groups. Johnson this week secured his party’s support, which has the majority in the House, to continue as speaker for another two years. Among the efforts of the previous Congress to shed light on suspected government violations of freedom of expression is the House Judiciary Committee Staff report titled, “The Censorship Industrial Complex: How Top Biden While House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Americans, True Information and Critics of the Biden Administration,” issued in May, and cited in the letter now sent to Acting Labor Secretary Su. Recently, lawsuits, including Murthy v. Missouri, but also the release of Twitter and Facebook Files, offered an unprecedented glimpse into the mechanics behind the mass-scale online censorship in the US. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Biden Era To End With a Showdown Over Big Tech Censorship Evidence appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

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New York Times columnist and author of the not very subtly titled book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, David Wallace-Wells, joined MSNBC’s Alex Wagner on her Friday show to react to some of Donald Trump’s cabinet selections. In the midst of his gloomy climate assessments, Wallace-Wells would claim Trump’s victory has shown that China has surpassed the U.S. “in its imperial place in the world.” While some of Trump’s cabinet picks have gotten lots of scrutiny from the media, some, like EPA Administrator and Secretary of the Interior nominees Lee Zeldin and Doug Burgum have gotten less attention. Wagner sought to change that, “This week we learned that Trump’s going to be appointing Doug—or is aiming to appoint Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior, and the chairman of a newly formed National Energy Council. The focus of which is to increase oil and gas production in the United States. And he's appointing Lee Zeldin, a climate change skeptic, to head the EPA. I'm sure you have thoughts on both of these. Which do you think is most damaging to the climate movement?”     Wallace Wells claimed, “I think the EPA position is the bigger deal,” before turning back to Trump and the international picture: But I think in the global picture, especially as we deal with COP, it is important to note what we're seeing right now is the abandonment of pretense to American leadership on climate the world over. Now, people looking around the world have looked at America with some skepticism for years now, we are, you know, the biggest producer of oil and gas in the world, we’re the biggest exporter of it, too. But the re-election of Donald Trump has really sent a clear signal to people worried about climate everywhere around the globe that this fight is not going to be won with American leadership.  Yes, we export oil and gas so other countries don’t have to turn to Russia for them. Why does MSNBC want to help Putin? Still, Wallace-Wells added, “And it is quite striking to me as someone who’s been following this stuff for so long, you know, if you said to me five or ten years ago that the clearest sign that China might have passed America in its imperial place in the world would be on climate, I would not have believed you, but I think that is where we are now.” Since 2000, American carbon dioxide emissions have steadily decreased 20 percent regardless of the president and his energy policies. At the same time, Chinese emissions have gone 245 percent in the opposite direction. Here is a transcript for the November 15 show: MSNBC Alex Wagner Tonight 11/16/2024 9:55 PM ET ALEX WAGNER: This week we learned that Trump’s going to be appointing Doug—or is aiming to appoint Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior, and the chairman of a newly formed National Energy Council. The focus of which is to increase oil and gas production in the United States. And he's appointing Lee Zeldin, a climate change skeptic, to head the EPA. I'm sure you have thoughts on both of these. Which do you think is most damaging to the climate movement? DAVID WALLACE-WELLS: I think the EPA position is the bigger deal, but I think in the global picture, especially as we deal with COP, it is important to note what we're seeing right now is the abandonment of pretense to American leadership on climate the world over. Now, people looking around the world have looked at America with some skepticism for years now, we are, you know, the biggest producer of oil and gas in the world, we’re the biggest exporter of it, too. But the re-election of Donald Trump has really sent a clear signal to people worried about climate everywhere around the globe that this fight is not going to be won with American leadership.  And it is quite striking to me as someone who’s been following this stuff for so long, you know, if you said to me five or ten years ago that the clearest sign that China might have passed America in its imperial place in the world would be on climate, I would not have believed you, but I think that is where we are now.

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