Somewhere in our archive is a video that might get us arrested one day.

I don’t know which one. Neither does anyone on my team. We have published hundreds of videos at Kuest, the independent media organization I founded in Istanbul. Some have reached millions of people. We researched them, checked the facts, argued over the wording, and published them. At the time, nothing happened.

Occasionally, someone on the team will bring up an old video and joke that it might finally be the one that sends us to prison.

We laugh. Then someone asks whether we should take it down.

That part isn’t always a joke.

Publishing in Turkey is a never-ending cortisol roller coaster. You never know which word will cross the red line, well, because the red lines constantly keep moving.

For years, Turkish journalists have learned to live with censorship, lawsuits, investigations, and the occasional knock on the door. But something about the past two years feels different. The danger has spread beyond what we publish now, what we published years ago, and sometimes even what we didn’t publish and weren’t planning to do.

An example is the peculiar case of Murat Ağırel.

Ağırel, a prominent investigative journalist known for his reporting on corruption and organized crime, was working on a story involving allegations about a politically connected family. He received documents, examined them, tried to verify the story with the sources, and then decided not to run it because he believed he did not yet have enough evidence to publish. In other words, he did what journalists are supposed to do when they cannot verify a story. In October 2026, authorities arrested him in a case arising from that investigation.

Prosecutors accused him of assisting a criminal organization through his handling of information. Ağırel maintains that the communications in question were part of his attempts to verify the allegations. The courts will have to determine the legal merits of the case. But for the rest of the ecosystem, he became an example: You can be arrested even for a story you didn’t publish.

And the funny thing is, he was arrested while already under house arrest for reporting on the newest financial scandal that impacted some 500,000 investors and tanked the Istanbul Stock Exchange about $100 billion since last month.

Apparently, staying home wasn’t enough.

A few days later, another journalist offered an equally crazy illustration of how this system works.

İsmail Arı had been summoned to give a statement to the police. He went voluntarily, accompanied by his lawyer. He was detained and then arrested pending trial because they thought he might flee. A man who had walked into a prosecutor’s office of his own accord was considered a flight risk.

Another interesting challenge for Turkey’s speech environment is that the country’s political priorities are hardly fixed. In fact, what power holders deem acceptable can change significantly, even between two election seasons.

Consider the Kurdish question. During the 2023 presidential campaign, Erdoğan showed a manipulated video montage to suggest a direct association between his political opponent and the PKK. Today, the government is in direct talks with their jailed leader.

Governments are entitled to change policies. In fact, sometimes they should. But the problem, for journalists, or even ordinary citizens, is that what they posted without consequence yesterday may become dangerous tomorrow.

And the internet remembers everything. In August 2026, retired admiral Türker Ertürk was arrested after a video of remarks he made years earlier resurfaced online. The comments were old. The investigation was new. A year earlier, journalist İsmail Saymaz was detained in a case involving his reporting and social media activity during the 2013 Gezi Park protests. He was placed under house arrest. Thirteen years is a long time to keep a social media post in reserve.

This is why our jokes about old Kuest videos are not entirely jokes. We are not only assessing the risks of tomorrow’s reporting. We are trying to reassess yesterday’s reporting in the light of today’s newly emerging rules and acceptabilities.

Trying to figure out what the authorities dislike and how to avoid saying it is bad enough. Yet, in Turkey, the uncertainty itself has become part of the pressure. We cannot simply draw a line around forbidden subjects and continue working outside it. This particular uncertainty is the point. The line is constantly moving. Sometimes we can see when it moves. Sometimes we discover it has moved only after someone has been arrested.

And while journalists are busy trying to avoid crossing these invisible boundaries, the infrastructure of independent journalism is being squeezed from another direction: the newsrooms.

In October 2026, Halk TV — one of Turkey’s most prominent critical broadcasters — was placed under the management of the state-controlled Savings Deposit Insurance Fund, or TMSF, interrupting its e live broadcast. It was the 10th television channel to come under TMSF management in approximately 20 months.

A journalist can survive a prosecution and continue reporting. A newsroom can sometimes survive a colleague’s arrest. But what happens when the newsroom itself loses control of its broadcasting operation?

A similar question applies to online outlets when authorities ban their entire website.

In September 2026, authorities ordered an access block to T24, a major independent news website, as part of a newly launched operation called “My Family is Safe,” which targeted LGBTQ+ organizations and LGBTQ+ related coverage. Over 118 pieces of content that they alleged promoted LGBTQ+ identities and undermined the family. Some of the disputed material dated back many years, far before the operation began.

There it was again: the archive.

For an individual journalist, the worry becomes whether an old article can become grounds for prosecution. For an entire news organization, old articles can become the basis for an order affecting access to years of reporting.

And for readers, the consequences extend far beyond the disputed material. Someone searching for an investigation into public spending, an interview about inflation, or reporting on a political scandal may find that an entire source of information has been placed beyond reach. The memory is gone.

This is what makes the present moment so consequential. The pressure is not concentrated at a single point where journalists can resist it, challenge it, or learn to navigate around it.

It follows information through its entire life cycle. Before, during, and even years after the publication! And even when a story survives all that, the institution carrying it may face a takeover or an access restriction to its entire database for years because of its old reporting.

From where I sit, the cumulative intensification in the last two years has an unmistakable direction.

Turkey is approaching its next scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections in 2028. Much will be written about the parties, candidates, alliances, polls, and campaign strategies. There will be endless discussion of who might win and what the result might mean. That is precisely the kind of information independent journalism is supposed to provide. And the conditions for producing and accessing that information are becoming increasingly impossible.

The question is: what will voters still be able to know?

I cannot tell you how many stories have been abandoned, softened, or delayed across Turkey because of these pressures. Stories that never appear are, by definition, difficult to count. But I know what has happened in my own experience. I know how much time we spent navigating risks that have little to do with whether our reporting is accurate.

That is the danger of Turkey’s increasingly uncertain boundaries of expression. It is not only that the authorities can punish what has been published.

It is that the possibility of punishment can reach backward into the archive, forward into an unfinished investigation, and outward into the institutions that allow independent information to reach the public.

By the time Turkey votes in 2028, the most consequential stories may not be the ones that were censored but the ones nobody ever dared to publish.

Medeni Sungur is a media entrepreneur and freedom advocate from Turkey. He uses digital storytelling to make complex democracy and policy debates accessible to the next generation in TikTok era.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

• 🇺🇲 FCC Chair Warns Broadcasters Over “Fake Polls”

• 🇧🇷 Lula Promises to Regulate Social Media

• 🇬🇷 Greece Bans Social Media for Under-15s

• 🇫🇷 France Reportedly Prepared Social Media Shutdowns Amid Protests

• ⚽ China Retaliates Against Kylian Mbappé for speech

First of All 🇺🇲

» FCC Chair Warns Broadcasters Over “Fake Polls”

• Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr warned broadcasters to avoid “amplifying or airing” fake polls.

• Details:

  • President Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted “fake polls.”

  • Carr signaled a possible prohibition on airing “fake” polls, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • A group called Wedgewood Polls published fake midterm polls to test whether media outlets would report them.

  • Carr then issued his warning, saying broadcasters’ licenses bar news distortion and hoaxes. The FCC’s lone Democrat, Anna Gomez, said these rules don’t apply to stations that report data in good faith.

Our Take: Ashkhen Kazaryan argued that as Americans head into the midterm elections, “They have a right to know what their fellow Americans think — and even the flaws in how the media might report those opinions — without a federal regulator chilling the press and deciding what polling numbers are allowed.”

» Maryland Judge Blocks Book Removal

• A Maryland judge struck down a school board’s removal of “Flamer” from Harford County high schools, the first court test of the state’s Freedom to Read Act.

• Details:

  • “Flamer” explores masculinity and homophobia in a 1990s coming-of-age story.

  • In 2024, a parent accused the book of planting “seeds in the minds of children” and sought its removal. The county’s reconsideration committee decided against removing it.

  • In 2025, the county school board overrode the committee’s decision, making “Flamer” the first book to be removed after the district created a book review process.

  • Parents appealed the board’s decision to the state board of education, which sided with the reconsideration committee, calling the decision arbitrary.

  • The county school board filed for an administrative appeal before a circuit court judge.

  • Judge Yolanda Curtin said the board violated Maryland’s Freedom to Read Act, which prohibits library removals for political, religious, or personal views.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Newly Reelected President Lula Vows to Regulate Social Media

• Reelected Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to regulate social media in his Oct. 25 victory speech.

• Details:

  • He said online crime must be treated like offline crime, and accused tech giants of paying no taxes in Brazil and trying to manipulate elections.

  • He has not announced a draft law or timetable.

» Florida AG Proposes Online Age Restrictions

• Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the Safe Screens Act to restrict app downloads, AI chatbots, and social media for minors.

• The Act:

  • Requires age determination and parental consent for minors to download or buy apps.

  • Imposes protective design features on accounts for users between 14 and 17 years old.

  • Prohibits chatbots from “providing minors features that simulate companionship, encourage harm, generate sexual content, or claim to be human.”

  • Relies on the age-range model Apple and Google already deploy at the operating system level.

  • Imposes fines of up to $50,000 per violation.

• Context:

  • The proposal comes after a court stayed an injunction against Meta demanding the removal of what the state considers “addictive features” that contribute to body-image problems.

  • The state rejected the $17 billion multistate settlement Meta agreed to in August, choosing to pursue further litigation.

  • Uthmeier said the Act goes further than HB 3, the current law banning social media accounts for under-14s.

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The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» Greece Bans Social Media for Under-15s

• Greece’s parliament passed a ban on social media for under-15s, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2027.

• Details:

  • Digital Governance and Artificial Intelligence Minister Dimitris Papastergiou said lawmakers cannot wait for Brussels to pass “the perfect European law.”

  • “Let’s send the message that the problem of uncontrolled internet use — which leads children to addiction at the expense of their mental health — cannot continue,” he added.

  • He also backed the state’s “Kids Wallet,” an age-verification app, assuring it “does not provide any personal data whatsoever about children or users other than whether they are over or under 15 years of age.”

» France Reportedly Prepared Social Media Shutdowns

• French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu reportedly asked four telecom providers to prepare for a temporary shutdown of TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and X ahead of planned Oct. 24 and 25 protests, per investigative outlet Blast.

• Details:

  • In a letter on Oct. 22, Lecornu asked Orange, SFR, Free, and Bouygues Telecom to prepare domain name system (DNS) filtering to suspend access to the platforms for several hours.

  • Lecornu cited concerns about the coordination of violence on social media.

  • The shutdown was never activated. Operators reportedly questioned feasibility and warned about VPN workarounds.

  • Separately, the government confirmed submitting more than 100 reports to platforms ahead of the demonstrations, with around half resulting in account suspensions.

» ECtHR Rules San Marino Violated a Facebook User’s Speech Rights

• The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that San Marino violated a woman’s free expression rights when a judge revived her criminal conviction for a Facebook comment.

• Context:

  • In 2021, Ingrid Casali commented on a news article about San Marino’s health minister receiving a domestic violence award.

  • Casali said she was “astonished” the award went “to a man who was on trial for violence against a woman.”

  • Court records revealed the minister had no prior cases involving violence against women but had faced criminal proceedings for brawl and bodily harm.

  • Casali was convicted of damaging the honor of a public official and given a suspended four-month sentence, which was upheld on a January 2024 appeal.

  • San Marino’s Third Instance Judge overturned the conviction in June 2024, finding the post was political criticism with a sufficient factual basis.

  • The minister petitioned the Judge for Extraordinary Remedies, who annulled the acquittal in October 2024 without remanding the case, reinstating the conviction.

• The Ruling:

  • The ECtHR ruled the extraordinary judge was not a “tribunal established by law.”

  • Because that court revived the conviction, the interference with freedom of expression was not “prescribed by law” and violated Article 10 of the Convention.

  • San Marino must pay Casali 5,000 euros in damages and 19,000 euros in costs.

Free Speech Recession 🌍

» China Retaliates Against Kylian Mbappé, Real Madrid and La Liga

• The government-owned China Media Group (CMG) vowed to stop broadcasting soccer matches with Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé after he referred to Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China and leader of the Chinese Communist Party, as a “dictator.”

• Details:

  • On a podcast, Mbappé referenced an online meme of his face on an image that resembled Mao, saying “it’s the one where there’s a video of a guy, I think it’s a Chinese dictator.”

  • Mbappé also commented on the meme in an interview, saying it was partly funny, and partly not, “because we know the damage this genre of people have caused throughout history.”

  • Three major Chinese brands cut ties with the athlete, and the state broadcaster suspended coverage of La Liga matches, as well as advertisements with Mbappé.

  • CMG said Mbappé’s comments “exceeded the scope of freedom of speech,” rejecting Real Madrid’s explanation.

  • Mbappé, Real Madrid, and the president of La Liga all issued apologies.

  • The Chinese market reportedly accounts for about 15% of the team’s global sales.

Our Take: At our 2026 Global Free Speech Summit, Ge Chen explained how China exports censorship beyond its borders, pointing to backlash from Chinese broadcasters and sponsors after an NBA executive tweeted support for Hong Kong protesters. China rarely needs to export law, Chen argued, because companies relying on its market access absorb its speech restrictions.

» UK Arrests 3,850+ Since Palestine Action Ban

• More than 3,850 people have been arrested for publicly backing Palestine Action since it became a proscribed terrorist organization in the United Kingdom in July 2025.

• Details:

  • Palestine Action is a direct-action group protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza.

  • In June, the Court of Appeal overturned a High Court ruling that found the proscription unlawful, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • On Nov. 4 and 5, Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori will appeal to the UK Supreme Court.

  • The government argues the group’s history of break-ins and criminal damage at defense sites, as covered in a previous Free Flow, warrants the proscription.

» Thousands Protest Turkey’s Media Crackdown

• On Oct. 24, thousands rallied in Istanbul and Ankara to protest growing pressure on journalists in Turkey.

• Details:

  • The Turkish Journalists’ Union reported 11 journalist arrests in the past two months and the shuttering of several media outlets.

  • Police also raided Halk TV earlier this month, and the social media accounts of T24 news were blocked over “LGBT propaganda,” as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • According to a police count, at least 3,000 protesters gathered in Istanbul and Ankara.

» Tajik Activist Gets 17 Years After German Deportation

• A Tajik court sentenced opposition activist Asadullo Boboev to 17 years on three charges including “extremism through the internet,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported.

• Details:

  • Boboev, who lived in Germany, belonged to the Reforms and Development of Tajikistan movement, which is critical of President Emomali Rahmon.

  • A court sentenced him on Sept. 21 over social media posts criticizing Tajik authorities, according to a media report. Tajik authorities haven’t published information on the case.

  • Germany deported him prior to its July 1 deadline to prove there is a case against him in Tajikistan.

  • Germany has deported three other activists since 2023. All were imprisoned in Tajikistan for 7 to 10 years, HRW said.

» Azerbaijan Requests Sentences of 11+ Years for Journalists

• Azerbaijan prosecutors requested prison sentences of 11 years or more for Meclis.info reporters over alleged violations of foreign funding laws.

• Details:

  • The prosecutors requested 12 years for founder Imran Aliyev and 11 years for data analyst Elgiz Gahraman.

  • The trio was charged with illegal entrepreneurship and money laundering, tax evasion, document forgery, and use of forged documents.

  • Authorities say the outlet failed to comply with a law that requires pre-approval of foreign grants.

  • Meclis.info is among four leading independent media outlets targeted over alleged unlawful funding.

  • The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Azerbaijani laws permit fines in similar cases, but not criminal sanctions.

  • Aliyev was arrested in April 2024 on currency smuggling charges alongside a wave of other journalists. He said he was beaten and electrocuted.

  • A verdict is expected on Nov. 3.

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Ashley Haek is a Communications Manager at The Future of Free Speech.

Ajdin Muratovic is the Director of Communications at The Future of Free Speech and the Managing Editor of The Bedrock Principle.

On a cursory glance, the latest controversy over French soccer star Kylian Mbappé’s remark about Mao Zedong, and the string of obsequious apologies that followed it, might seem like just that: an ideological controversy, a fight over claims of offensive speech, or an absurd blip in the endless string of culture wars.

But treating this as another eye-roll-inducing dustup would be a mistake. That’s because the fallout from Mbappé’s mild comment offers an insightful window into one of the most effective and widespread censorship campaigns today: the pervasive influence over how anyone, anywhere talks about China’s sensitive political issues.

Authoritarians control how they are spoken about in life. And, apparently, even in death.

Mbappé’s Mao misstep

It began, as it often does these days, with a viral video. In an interview, Mbappé said his favorite meme is “a video someone made of a guy…I think he was a Chinese dictator,” with Mbappé’s face superimposed on Mao Zedong’s body (fans have jokingly used the nickname “The Dictator” for Mbappé). French football podcast The Bridge, which posted the video, has since taken it down.

That’s all that happened. Mbappé didn’t even say Mao’s name.

But in reality, the details in these controversies don’t actually matter very much — neither does the context, the truth or falsity, or the intent. All that matters is that someone, somewhere, said something that runs counter to the Chinese government’s official political line.

Predictably, the punishment was sudden and severe. At least three Chinese companies canceled their brand sponsorships with Mbappé, each voicing their opposition to “any words and actions that hurt national sentiment.” State broadcaster CCTV cut streams of the Spanish professional football league La Liga and any games including Mbappé. China’s Ambassador to Spain, Yao Jing, met with La Liga President Javier Tebas to discuss whether the league could repair its many deals with Chinese partners after the insult.

“I am sincerely sorry.”

Swift apologies followed swift consequences. “My comment was ill-judged, and I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world,” Mbappé said in a statement. “I have deep respect for the Chinese people and their history, and I am sincerely sorry.”

His team, Real Madrid, also issued a statement, offering “its apologies to the Chinese people for any discomfort caused by the recent words ​of our player Kylian Mbappé.” Further, Real Madrid “maintains a deep respect for China, its history, its culture ​and its citizens, as well as for the millions of Chinese fans who feel affection and admiration” for the team. La Liga, too, said it “deeply regrets the offence caused to Chinese fans by Kylian Mbappé’s recent comments.”

Chinese authorities have not even confirmed yet whether they accept the apologies.

It’s no mystery why organizations associated with Mbappé, and the athlete himself, are rushing to distance themselves from that remark: The financial punishments coordinated by the Chinese government and corporations can be harsh, long-lasting, and implicate a complex web of interconnected companies and organizations that risk retaliation in the fallout. Free speech can be quite expensive, in fact, and in this latest case, it’s already cost millions in lost sponsorships and deals.

Less than a decade ago, a similar saga unfolded after then-Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong’s protests. The NBA lost hundreds of millions of dollars amidst the retaliation. Such stories have unfolded in other industries like gaming and fashion and, as I’ve written about for years, even in higher education institutions in democracies around the world.

If you want access to China’s market, you’d better, well, play ball.

This is about much more than just apologies and ‘hurt’

It can be tempting to see this as primarily a story of self-censorship, of groveling apologies for a mild remark about one of the most notorious figures of world history, and of insincere claims of hurt and offense as a means to shut up political speech. But the veins of real censorship run much deeper.

Even more telling than the Spanish league’s apology is the promise it made: “We are working with our partners and institutional counterparts in China to address this situation. Furthermore, in collaboration with clubs and players, we will introduce an awareness and communication protocol aimed at promoting respect for different cultures and helping to prevent similar situations in the future.”

There’s the root of it: La Liga suggests not just atonement for past expression, but an intent to limit the future speech of its athletes and clubs so costly comments don’t plague the league again. This is how threats of financial and other retaliation from abroad can encode censorship into the rules of organizations thousands of miles away. Will players be warned against privately expressing any opinion about any political matter that could upset fans — or government officials — somewhere? About Putin, or Trump, or Netanyahu, or Modi, or Xi?

What a victory for the Chinese government. And while those outside China rush to make amends over perceived political slights for their own financial benefit, those within the country suffer a much harsher fate just for speaking their minds about the very same subject.

Just look at Gao Zhen, a Chinese artist and U.S. resident sentenced to three years in prison in a secret, one-day hearing this year. Gao’s crime? Violating China’s Law on Protection of Heroes and Martyrs with satirical sculptures criticizing Mao — ones he crafted years before the 2018 law even passed.

What’s a self-serving apology for some is a jail sentence for others.

“Sleepless nights, tossing and turning, memories drift like clouds and smoke,” Gao recently wrote to his wife in a poem sent from prison. “Once a dragon slayer, now imprisoned, he has no regrets for mocking the wicked.”

Rather than offering groveling apologies, those outside China should reject these efforts to threaten and pressure while firmly asserting their right to “mock the wicked,” whoever they may be.

Sarah McLaughlin is Senior Scholar, Global Expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and author of Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech.

I’m back . . . well, sort of.

In 2025, as Director of Communications for The Future of Free Speech, I helped launch The Bedrock Principle. Our idea was simple: Give our scholars a place to speak directly to readers about the latest developments affecting freedom of expression worldwide.

But we also wanted something bigger. We envisioned a publication that would bring together global legal experts, scholars, journalists, activists, and free speech defenders to share their insights, challenge conventional wisdom, and explore what it takes to protect free expression.

Since then, we’ve published guest contributions from voices writing about threats to free speech in Australia, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, France, and many other jurisdictions, as well as researchers and experts from think tanks, foundations, and academic institutions.

Now, as our readership grows and new challenges to free expression emerge worldwide, we’re ready to build on that foundation.

I’m excited to announce that I’m returning to The Future of Free Speech in a new capacity as the dedicated managing editor of The Bedrock Principle.

My goals are twofold: First, to bring more of our scholars’ research and expertise to readers through timely, accessible commentary. And second, to make The Bedrock Principle a go-to destination for outside contributors with compelling ideas about free expression.

We want to publish more original perspectives, rigorous analysis, and firsthand accounts of what happens when governments and other powerful institutions restrict people’s ability to speak freely.

And we want to hear from people who can help us understand not only the threats to free expression, but also the ideas, arguments, and approaches that might help us overcome them.

That includes you.

If you’ve been following developments in free speech and have an argument worth making, an experience worth sharing, or research that deserves a wider audience, we’d love to hear from you.

Below are our submission guidelines and more on what we’re looking for.

Submission Guidelines

What We’re Looking For

The Bedrock Principle publishes commentary, analysis, and original perspectives on freedom of expression in the United States, Europe, and around the world.

We welcome submissions from scholars, researchers, legal experts, journalists, advocates, and anyone with meaningful expertise or firsthand experience relevant to free expression.

Our editorial perspective is grounded in a commitment to robust free speech protections, applied consistently and without partisan favoritism. We welcome contributors from different political and intellectual traditions, including those who disagree about the best ways to protect and advance free expression.

We’re particularly interested in submissions that:

• Offer an original argument or perspective. Tell us something readers might not already know, challenge a familiar assumption, or provide a fresh way of understanding a free speech controversy.

• Bring expertise to current debates. Help readers understand the legal, political, historical, technological, or cultural dimensions of an issue affecting free expression.

• Examine free speech fights beyond the United States. We want to hear from people who can shed light on developments in countries and regions that receive less international attention.

• Explore the intersection of technology and free expression. From artificial intelligence and social media to internet regulation, Section 230, and emerging technologies, we’re interested in how technological developments shape freedom of expression, and how laws, policies, and cultural attitudes toward free speech shape the technologies we use.

• Tell compelling human stories. The consequences of censorship are often best understood through the experiences of people who have faced it. We welcome firsthand accounts that illuminate broader questions about free expression.

• Explore ideas and solutions. Identifying threats to free speech is important. We also want thoughtful analysis of the principles, policies, legal protections, and cultural practices that can help defend it.

Guidelines on Voice and Tone

Before submitting, we encourage prospective contributors to familiarize themselves with our published work. While there is no single formula for a successful essay, the following principles guide our editorial decisions.

• Make an argument, not just an observation. We want pieces that give readers something to think about. A strong submission should have a clear thesis and explain why it matters.

• Write for an informed but general audience. Our readers are interested in free speech, but they aren’t necessarily lawyers, academics, or specialists in your field. Explain technical concepts, avoid unnecessary jargon, and make your work accessible without sacrificing intellectual rigor.

• Support your claims. Ground arguments in verifiable facts, credible research, sound reasoning, or clearly identified firsthand experience. We value intellectual honesty and expect contributors to engage fairly with evidence that might complicate their conclusions.

• Be principled, not partisan. Free speech controversies cross ideological, cultural, and political lines. We’re interested in arguments that apply consistent principles regardless of who benefits from them. Criticism of government officials, political movements, institutions, and ideas is welcome, but partisan point-scoring is not our purpose.

• Challenge ideas without resorting to personal attacks. Strong criticism is welcome, including criticism that some readers may find provocative or uncomfortable. Arguments are more persuasive when they engage opposing positions seriously rather than caricaturing them.

• Give readers a reason to care. A free speech controversy may be interesting on its own, but the strongest submissions explain its broader significance. What does it reveal about the state of free expression, and why should readers pay attention?

Submission Process Basics

• Length: We generally seek essays of 800 to 1,200 words, although we may consider longer submissions when the subject warrants additional depth.

• Format: Google Docs is preferred. Please share your document as a link and grant editing access to “Anyone with the link.” We will return suggested edits through Google Docs so authors can review and discuss proposed changes before publication.

• Sources: Hyperlinks are the preferred way to document sources. Please link directly to relevant research, court decisions, legislation, official documents, or other primary materials whenever possible.

• Author information: Please include a short biography (approximately 50–100 words) with your submission, along with any relevant professional affiliations. Contributors should also disclose financial, professional, or other relationships that could present a conflict of interest.

• Substack account: Accepted contributors will need an active Substack account with their real name and a profile photograph so they can be credited as byline authors. Requests to publish anonymously or under a pseudonym will be considered on a case-by-case basis, particularly when identifying an author could expose them to retaliation or other serious consequences.

• House Style: We generally follow the Associated Press Stylebook (AP style), with a few exceptions, including our preference for the Oxford comma. We favor clear, concise writing; spell out acronyms on first reference; and encourage subheadings to break up longer essays. We may make additional edits for clarity, consistency, and house style during the editorial process.

• Originality: Submissions should represent the author’s original work. Please disclose if an essay has been published elsewhere or is under consideration by another publication.

Review and Editorial Process

All submissions will receive editorial consideration, and we aim to respond as promptly as possible.

Submissions selected for further consideration may undergo substantive editing, fact-checking, and copyediting. We will share proposed changes with authors and work collaboratively to reach agreement on the final text.

Acceptance is at the discretion of the editor and leadership of The Future of Free Speech. We reserve the right to decline submissions that do not fit the publication’s editorial mission, standards, or needs, and to consult confidentially with other members of The Future of Free Speech when making editorial decisions.

Nonprofit and Political Activity

As a nonprofit organization, The Future of Free Speech does not endorse political candidates or parties. We welcome rigorous, nonpartisan analysis of political developments, legislation, and public policy, including criticism of government officials and their decisions.

Submissions must comply with applicable nonprofit restrictions on political campaign activity and lobbying. We may request revisions or decline pieces that raise concerns under these requirements.

How to Submit

Please send a Google Docs link to your completed draft or a short pitch outlining your proposed argument to Justin Hayes, Managing Editor, at justin@futurefreespeech.com.

If you’re unsure whether an idea would be a good fit, feel free to reach out before writing a full draft.

I look forward to reading your submissions and working with more of the people who make the global free speech community so interesting and important.

The floor is yours.

Justin Hayes is the managing editor for The Bedrock Principle.

Last week, Michigan State Senate senator and US Senate primary candidate Mallory McMorrow learned that the poll that nearly ended her campaign was made up. A group called Wedgewood Polling said that almost all of its midterm surveys were fabricated and called the whole thing “a social experiment.”

The fake June poll of the Michigan primary showed support for McMorrow in the single digits. When the poll was released, she claims donations dried up and reporters started calling to ask when she would drop out.

In response, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr posted a warning to broadcasters about a surge in “Fake Polls and Suppression Polls.” Carr called on broadcasters to remember that their licenses bar news distortion and broadcast hoaxes, and advised them to avoid airing polls that would violate those obligations.

As I wrote in March, the First Amendment has no fake news exception, even for broadcasters regulated by Carr’s agency. “Fake and suppression polls” would fall under that rule too. In United States v. Alvarez, the Supreme Court refused to carve out a general exception for false statements. A federal judge applied this precedent when he dismissed President Trump’s lawsuit targeting the Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer for the 2024 Iowa Poll for “creating a false narrative” about the presidential election.

The rules that Carr has thinly threatened to wield against broadcasters don’t regulate “fake polls” either. The news distortion policy, enforced in just eight cases in the past 60 years, regulates cases where a broadcaster deliberately falsifies the news. The hoax rule targets broadcasters that knowingly disseminate false reports of crimes or catastrophes that cause “direct” public harm.

In 2020, when the advocacy group Free Press asked the FCC to punish stations over COVID claims, the agency refused, saying that “the Commission does not—and cannot and will not—act as a self-appointed, free-roving arbiter of truth in journalism.”

Put yourself in the shoes of a broadcaster eight days before an election. The FCC chairman, whose agency ordered every ABC-owned station into early license renewal less than 24 hours after the president demanded ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel, is now warning that some polls could put your license at risk. The rational business decision is to avoid the risk and air fewer polls; that is the exact chilling effect the First Amendment exists to prevent.

Even if the FCC does not take immediate action, “reminding” broadcasters that it wields power over them for reporting “fake” polls constitutes government jawboning—or informal pressure designed to chill speech with veiled threats of legal action.

That’s why the FCC’s latest move on this issue echoes a long line of cases. It started with Bantam Books v. Sullivan, where a Rhode Island commission didn’t directly ban books, but “reminded” book publishers what would happen if they kept selling “objectionable” books. Two years ago, in NRA v. Vullo, the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed that government officials cannot use regulatory leverage to coerce private parties into suppressing views disfavored by the government. Since September, shortly after President Trump explicitly called out “fake polls,” Chairman Carr has signaled that formal guidance on this issue may follow.

Notice how the FCC doesn’t actually need to fine anyone or revoke a single license to punish speech it doesn’t like. This is part of a larger pattern of the current administration that I call the First Amendment Tax. Rather than using constitutionally questionable methods to punish disfavored speech, government officials only need to make speech more expensive and risky. Chairman Carr’s latest warning is no different.

On November 3, 2026, Americans will vote. They have a right to know what their fellow Americans think—and even the flaws in how the media might report those opinions—without a federal regulator chilling the press and deciding what polling numbers are allowed.

Ashkhen Kazaryan is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Future of Free Speech, where she leads initiatives to protect free expression and shape policies that uphold the First Amendment in the digital age.

In 2024, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) released an alarming report documenting hate-filled attacks on members of the LGBTQ+ community.

The survey found a significant increase in the number of LGBTQ+ individuals who reported experiencing hate-motivated harassment, from 37% in 2019 to 55% in 2023. The rate was even higher for intersex respondents (74% in 2023 compared with 42% in 2019) and for trans respondents (69% in 2023 compared with 47% in 2019).

And yet these substantial increases in discrimination, harassment, and hostility against the LGBTQ+ community are happening despite a decade of expansion of hate speech laws across the European continent.

In the Council of Europe, 35 of its 46 member states explicitly criminalize hate speech on the grounds of sexual orientation, 18 on the grounds of gender identity, and 6 on the grounds of gender expression and sex characteristics. Within the European Union, a 2021 study commissioned by the European Commission found that all 27 Member States criminalize public incitement to hatred and/or violence, with 20 explicitly covering sexual orientation and 17 regarding sex or gender.

On a Council of Europe level, as well as the European Court of Human Rights’ rich body of hate speech cases — which has arguably diluted the freedom of expression — there is the Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime, concerning the criminalization of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems. On an EU level, there is the 2008 Framework Decision on Racism and Xenophobia, the Digital Services Act and the revised Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online +.

Even though there has been an ever-expanding, multi-jurisdictional effort to combat hate speech across Europe, hate-motivated attacks on minority populations like the LGBTQ+ community continue to rise. And yet, policymakers in Europe appear to think the problem is that efforts to criminalize hate speech have not gone far enough.

In September 2026, the Council of Europe released a new report, Combating Hate Speech Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) in Europe, which examines the growing hostility toward this community and proposes a range of measures to address it.

While some of the report’s proposals are welcome, others raise serious concerns about the increasing reliance on criminal law to regulate expression and omit a proper evaluation of the well-documented unintended consequences of such efforts.

The Council of Europe’s Report: The Good and The Concerning

The Council of Europe’s report contains several constructive proposals. Its recommendations on education, including whole-school approaches to preventing bullying and promoting digital and media literacy, deserve particular attention. So do its calls for better victim support, more accessible reporting mechanisms, specialist training for police and prosecutors, and sustained support for civil society organizations. Such measures can address the practical barriers that prevent members of the LGBTQ+ community from seeking protection and participating fully in public life.

Criminalization may also have a legitimate role where expression meets the high threshold required under international human rights law. Although the Rabat Plan of Action was developed specifically in relation to incitement to national, racial or religious hatred, its six-part threshold test provides a valuable framework that can also be applied to assessing incitement based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex characteristics. The test considers the context, the speaker, intent, the content and form of expression, its extent of dissemination, and the likelihood, including imminence, of harm.

Criminal law, however, is no panacea. Its application must remain necessary and proportionate, with criminal sanctions reserved for the most serious cases, and must be accompanied by broader educational, institutional and social measures addressing the underlying conditions that allow hostility and discrimination to persist.

More troubling are the report’s recommendations concerning criminalization and prosecution. It encourages states to strengthen criminal hate speech provisions and reconsider evidentiary requirements for establishing discriminatory intent.

In particular, the report proposes allowing courts to draw on objective indicators of hatred, including the language used, the nature of the conduct, and the circumstances surrounding an alleged offense. For example, racist remarks made during an assault may help establish discriminatory motivation, while the timing or location of an incident may provide relevant contextual evidence. Such indicators can help courts determine intent but should not automatically be treated as proof.

The report also highlights Norway’s approach, under which Section 185 of the Penal Code criminalizes certain discriminatory or hateful statements made intentionally or with gross negligence. Under Norwegian law, criminal liability does not always require proof that the speaker deliberately intended to express hatred.

These approaches raise important questions about criminal responsibility and freedom of expression. Using contextual evidence to establish intent is a familiar and legitimate feature of criminal proceedings. Allowing such evidence to substitute for proof of the required mental element, or lowering that requirement, raises different concerns about legal certainty and the risk of criminalizing expression without sufficient justification.

Similarly, a victim’s perception of hostility may justify recording and investigating an incident as potentially hate-motivated, but cannot, by itself, establish criminal guilt. These safeguards are particularly important where the expression concerns contested political, religious or social issues, and where the distinction between offensive speech and criminal conduct must remain clear.

The report itself provides a compelling reason to question the assumption that more criminalization will produce greater protection. Acknowledging that most Council of Europe member states have already criminalized hate speech on at least some SOGIESC grounds, it observes that “formal legal protection does not necessarily translate to safety in lived experience.” This is one of its most important findings. It should encourage a closer examination of the effectiveness of existing laws, the reasons people remain reluctant to report incidents, and the institutional failures that prevent legal protections from delivering meaningful results.

The Limits and Risk of Criminalizing Speech

The Council of Europe report lacks a serious evaluation of historical, real-world application and unintended consequences of laws that criminalize expression on the basis of hate.

Legislation ostensibly designed to combat hatred has sometimes been deployed against the very minority groups such laws are intended to protect. Recent examples include Black liberation campaigners prosecuted under British racial hatred laws and the arrest of LGBTQ+ activists at Glasgow Pride for displaying a slogan intended to express solidarity and resistance to fascism.

Such examples expose a fundamental vulnerability of broadly framed speech restrictions: their enforcement depends on authorities whose understanding of offensive or hateful expression may reflect prevailing social attitudes and power structures. Freedom of expression has been indispensable to minority emancipation precisely because it allows marginalized communities to contest those structures, challenge dominant beliefs, and demand political and social change.

Hate speech can produce serious, real-world harms that merit effective responses. Research has documented the psychological and social harms of hate speech, including its capacity to undermine individuals’ sense of security, reinforce discrimination and, in certain contexts, contribute to violence.

But showing a link between hateful expression and harm does not justify broader criminal prohibitions as an effective way to prevent these harms. As such, the Council of Europe’s report fails to assess seriously how its proposals will meaningfully prevent harm and does not explain why existing legal frameworks have failed to deliver the protection they promise.

Despite decades of hate speech legislation, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia and other forms of anti-LGBTQ+ hostility remain pervasive across Europe. As such, the effectiveness of criminal prohibitions cannot simply be presumed. Moreover, their application may also discourage legitimate expression, suppress counterspeech, and expose minority communities to selective enforcement.

Beyond Criminalization: Building the Conditions for Equality

The Council of Europe’s recommendations on education, victim support, civil society participation and counterspeech offer a valuable foundation for addressing anti-LGBTQ+ hostility. These measures deserve greater attention, especially given the limitations and risks of expanding criminal prohibitions. Effective protection requires policies that confront prejudice, strengthen institutions and promote equality in everyday life.

Counterspeech also plays an important role. Through factual correction, appeals to empathy, humor, personal testimony and collective campaigns, it can challenge discriminatory narratives, contest stereotypes and encourage reflection. Empirical research provides some grounds for optimism.

A large-scale field experiment found that empathy-based counterspeech reduced subsequent xenophobic hate speech among users who had previously posted hostile content. However, its effectiveness depends on the intervention’s nature, context, and intended audience. Findings concerning xenophobic expression cannot automatically be extended to anti-LGBTQ+ hostility, making further research essential.

Counterspeech also has limitations. Confronting hateful expression can impose significant emotional and practical burdens on those targeted, potentially exposing them to further harassment. LGBTQ+ individuals should not be expected to bear responsibility for challenging the prejudice directed against them.

Counterspeech alone cannot secure substantive equality. It should be deployed as part of a broader framework of effective anti-discrimination policies, institutional accountability and accessible remedies that address inequalities in education, employment, healthcare and public services.

Education is particularly important. Inclusive school environments, anti-bullying policies, teacher training and human rights education can challenge prejudice and foster respect for diversity. Research has found an association between supportive school policies and improved experiences of safety among LGBTQ+ students, reinforcing the importance of educational interventions. Digital and media literacy, accessible reporting mechanisms, and meaningful victim support can further strengthen protection and help translate formal rights into lived realities.

What Should The Council of Europe Do?

The Council of Europe should therefore prioritize developing and evaluating these interconnected measures, assessing their effectiveness in reducing hostility and advancing equality. Success must be measured by whether LGBTQ+ people are safer and better able to exercise their rights, rather than by the breadth of criminal prohibitions.

Throughout this process, freedom of expression must remain firmly protected. It is fundamental in its own right and has been indispensable to the LGBTQ+ community’s struggle for recognition, equality and social change. Weakening its protection risks undermining one of the very freedoms through which that community has challenged discrimination and secured its rights.

Natalie Alkiviadou is a Senior Research Fellow at The Future of Free Speech. Her research interests lie in the freedom of expression, the far-right, hate speech, hate crime, and non-discrimination.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

• 🇺🇲 White House Official Threatens Politico Over Wiles Stories

• 🇮🇳 India’s Top Court Rejects Blanket Internet Restrictions on Children

• 🇦🇺 Australia to Sue Platforms Over Social Media Ban Enforcement

• 🇬🇪 Georgia Jails TV Anchor Over Posts

• 📱 Meta Faults AI Tool for ‘No Kings’ Suspension

First of All 🇺🇲

» White House Official Threatens Politico Over Wiles Stories

• In an Oct. 19 letter, White House Counsel Will Scharf warned Politico it had 48 hours to retract or correct three stories about Chief of Staff Susie Wiles or face “legal remedies.”

• The Letter:

  • Scharf said the stories ran despite “on-the-record refutations” or contrary evidence from senior staff and President Trump.

  • He demanded Politico retract the stories and issue a public apology to the president and Wiles.

  • If Politico refuses, Scharf wrote the White House would review its relationship with the outlet and consider all available legal remedies. The deadline expires Oct. 22.

• Context:

  • Independent reporter Andrew Feinberg also received notice he is barred from serving as the designated representative for the out-of-town print pool for Trump’s Oct. 22 Iowa trip.

  • The letter comes days after the Trump administration appealed the preliminary injunction against the White House’s ban on journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.

  • U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted an injunction on Oct. 13, finding that the revocations likely violated the First Amendment and that the government did not offer evidence that national security drove them, last week’s Free Flow noted.

  • The injunction remains in effect until Kelly issues a final judgment, unless an appeals court lifts it.

  • CNN gave the White House until 5 p.m. ET Oct. 22 to lift its exclusion of the network from Air Force One press coverage or face further legal action.

» Court Says School Board Can Be Deposed Over Book Removals

• A federal appeals court ruled that school board members in Escambia County, Florida, may be deposed about why they removed library books and classroom materials, rejecting their claim of legislative privilege.

• Details:

  • According to a 2023 lawsuit, the board voted to remove books deemed to have “‘extreme sexual content,’ ‘LGBTQ agenda,’ ‘race-baiting,’ ‘graphic rape scenes,’ and ‘language,’” at a teacher’s and the superintendent’s request.

  • A divided 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel agreed with the trial judge that board members acted as administrators, not legislators, when removing the books.

  • Judges Jill Pryor and Andrew Brasher wrote that the decisions resembled “nothing about” what a legislator does, namely “the ‘proposal, formulation, and passage of legislation.’”

  • Chief Judge William Pryor dissented, writing that because board members “exercise discretion over a matter of public policy when voting to remove books from school libraries, the majority wrongly strips them of their privilege to avoid testifying about those votes.”

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Appeals Court Revives Georgia Social Media Law

• On Oct. 15, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a lower court’s injunction on a Georgia law restricting minors from creating social media accounts.

• The Law:

  • SB 351 requires platforms to verify users’ ages, bars under-16s from opening accounts without parental consent, and limits the personal data used to show them ads.

  • A federal judge blocked it in June 2025, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

• The Ruling:

  • The court found NetChoice, a tech trade group, failed to show that the law violated its members’ First Amendment rights.

  • Judge Kevin Newsom wrote that not all social media sites engage exclusively in “fully protected speech,” and some “do host at least some pornography,” which is not protected for minors.

  • “Even if most expression on most social media platforms is protected by the First Amendment, not all of it is, at least not with respect to all users,” he wrote.

  • The court agreed the law’s applications raise First Amendment questions, but said different types of speech may draw different levels of scrutiny, leading to different outcomes.

• Context:

  • A day earlier, the 11th Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against Florida’s law banning social media for children under 14 and requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds.

  • A judge blocked that law in June 2025, as covered in a previous Free Flow, before the circuit let it take effect pending appeal, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • NetChoice has challenged similar laws in nearly a dozen other states; most remain blocked on a preliminary or permanent basis.

» India’s Top Court Rejects Blanket Internet Restrictions on Children

• India’s Supreme Court rejected a social media ban for children and other age-based restrictions, holding that children have a fundamental right to access and use the internet.

• The Ruling:

  • The court called age-based restrictions an overreach and cited a disproportionate risk of misuse and surveillance.

  • It also set out a proposed framework for detecting, removing, and reporting child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM), and sought the central government’s response.

• The CSEAM Framework:

  • A national database of perpetual hashes and URLs of reported and identified CSEAM content, potentially built on the Sahyog portal, India’s government takedown tool.

  • Standard operating procedures for building and running the database, a reporting format, and designated authorities to receive reports.

  • A dedicated grievance mechanism and designated officials for CSEAM content, with monthly compliance reports.

  • Financial penalties beyond intermediary liability, and stricter enforcement against CSEAM behind paywalls.

• What’s Next: The framework is not yet in effect. The government must file an affidavit before the next hearing on Dec. 10 regarding steps taken to comply, including progress on the database and procedures.

• The ruling comes after an Oct. 10 Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) advisory to Meta, asking it to ensure its recommendation systems do not expose users to “a single or limited set of narratives.”

» Australia to Sue Platforms Over Under-16 Ban Enforcement

• Australia plans to sue Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube for allegedly failing to comply with its under-16 social media ban.

• Details:

  • In March, the eSafety Commissioner opened investigations into whether the platforms took “reasonable steps” to keep underage users off.

  • In April, the regulator faulted platforms for poorly deploying age-assurance products, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • A July eSafety report also found most underage users kept their accounts or created new ones.

  • Communications Minister Anika Wells said she expects legal action to proceed.

• Context:

  • Since the ban first took effect, the government doubled the maximum penalty to A$109.2 million ($76 million).

  • It also granted eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant power to demand documents and summon current or former employees.

  • “She’s now using those powers to prepare her case,” Wells said.

Our Take: Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff warned that youth social media bans and age-verification mandates “carry serious implications for the freedoms of speech and access to information, as well as the right to privacy, for children and adults alike.” Jeff also argued that when most children circumvent the ban, “the policy primarily succeeds in increasing surveillance rather than reducing access.”

» Australia Introduces Digital Duty of Care Bill

• Australia’s Labor government introduced its digital duty of care bill Oct. 15, amending the Online Safety Act to require online service providers to protect users from harmful material.

• The Bill:

  • Covers everything from messaging and gaming apps to social media platforms. Providers must protect Australians from seriously harmful material and conduct, and protect children from harmful material, conduct, and algorithmic design features.

  • The minister could require platforms to give users tools to manage design features and offer recommendation controls.

  • Harmful material for adults includes “the encouragement, promotion or incitement of gender-based violence,” nonconsensual fake nude material, and posting or threatening to post intimate images without consent.

  • Material that is a Commonwealth criminal offense falls under the duty only if it is likely to cause serious harm.

• What’s Next:

  • The Liberal-National Coalition, the main opposition bloc, remains critical and is unlikely to support it.

  • Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens, an environmentalist party, said her party supports the bill in principle but wants steeper penalties for big tech and a right for Australians to sue companies directly.

  • The bill goes to a Senate inquiry, with a findings and recommendations report expected by year’s end.

» Meta Faults AI Tool for ‘No Kings’ Suspension

• Meta said an automated security system suspended the No Kings coalition’s Instagram account for about 90 minutes during the group’s nationwide day of action.

• Details:

  • Meta said the system was triggered after a Claude tool read profiles, posts, and hashtags at high volume.

  • The suspension hit as nearly 3,000 events took place across the U.S. on Oct. 17 to encourage early voting in the November midterms.

  • Administrators lost backend access for about four hours even after the account was restored, organizers said.

  • Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the “intense bursts” of reading activity resembled automated bot traffic, causing the system to “incorrectly take the No Kings Instagram account offline.”

Our Take: Our 2024 research on removals in France, Germany, and Sweden found that platforms “largely rely on algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI)” to flag content, that more than 99 percent of removed comments were first flagged by AI, and that the overwhelming majority of deleted comments were legal speech, concluding “over removal of legal content may be a bigger problem than under removal of illegal content.”

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» French Presidential Candidate Urges Selective Social Media Blackouts to Quell Riots

• French presidential candidate Gabriel Attal called for government power to selectively block social media platforms to quell riots.

• Details:

  • Hundreds of thousands of students and demonstrators protested across France on Oct. 18, demanding better study conditions, more teachers, more funding, and relief from the cost of living.

  • Fires, looting, and clashes with riot police occurred.

  • Attal said young people watching friends loot online “gives them the impression they’re getting away with it … and then they go out too.”

  • He said any blocks must be “temporary” and “limited to the area where the riots are taking place.”

  • When Attal was prime minister in 2024, France blocked TikTok in New Caledonia, a French territory, during protests. France’s highest administrative court later ruled the suspension “disproportionate.”

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» India’s Top Court Weighs Police-Press Guidelines

• India’s Supreme Court sought responses from the central government and Delhi Police on a plea to set guidelines for how police treat journalists during protests.

• Context:

  • The plea follows reports that journalists were mistreated while covering demonstrations against changes to India’s voter rolls.

  • Senior advocate Indira Jaising, representing a female journalist who says a senior Delhi police officer molested her, told the court police refused to register her complaint.

  • She added that the officer instead sought an atrocity case against her for alleged casteist remarks. The court barred coercive action against her and ordered police to complete an inquiry.

  • Jaising said several women journalists were pushed and assaulted. Other advocates said police seized several journalists’ electronic devices.

• The Plea:

  • Jaising asked for an independent committee to review complaints. The bench suggested a panel of retired judges or police officers, predominantly or exclusively women.

  • Solicitor General Tushar Mehta argued, “The problem is we don’t know who is a reel-maker and who is an independent journalist.”

» Publisher Pulls Sally Rooney Books in UK

• Irish novelist Sally Rooney said her e-books were withdrawn from sale in the United Kingdom because of her public support for Palestine Action, a group the UK designated as a terrorist organization.

• Details:

  • The UK outlawed Palestine Action in July 2025 after activists broke into an air base and sprayed red paint on two aircraft to protest Britain’s military support for Israel’s war in Gaza, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • Membership or support is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

  • Her publisher, Faber, said Oct. 14 that the withdrawal stemmed from “circumstances where Faber cannot pass on UK earnings to Sally Rooney for her work.”

  • Rooney told BBC News that further publication of her work could constitute a “serious criminal offense.”

  • E-book editions have been removed from sale in the UK; some physical copies remain in shops.

  • Rooney has said she would use earnings from her novels and adaptations to support the group. In September 2025, she skipped a UK award ceremony for fear of arrest.

» Georgia Jails TV Anchor Over Posts

• A Georgian court sentenced opposition TV anchor Vakho Sanaia to 30 days in jail for online posts criticizing ruling-party Georgian Dream politicians.

• Details:

  • This marks Sanaia’s second detention and third penalty connected to a string of posts containing vulgarities directed at politicians.

  • Sanaia served 14 days in July for similar posts, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

• Context:

  • In June, the government created a hate speech monitoring body that has referred hundreds of social media posts to courts, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

  • The Constitutional Court will hear a Georgian Dream lawsuit next week seeking to ban the largest opposition parties outright.

Our Take: Natalie Alkiviadou analyzed the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling that Georgia did not violate Irakli Miladze’s rights by fining him for a TikTok video criticizing officials, arguing the court’s approach weakens protections for online political expression across Europe.

» Philippine Police Attack Reporter at Farmers’ Protest

• Quezon City police used force against Bulatlat reporter Ernest Cruz as he covered an Oct. 19 farmers’ protest.

• Details:

  • Video from the College Editors Guild of the Philippines shows at least five officers restraining Cruz and pulling at his clothing and bag.

  • Cruz displayed identification and repeatedly shouted he was from the media.

  • The farmers called for land reform and protested environmental harms.

• Context:

  • The incident marks one of several cases of Philippine police aggression against journalists.

  • During September 2025 anti-corruption protests, police grabbed and hit photojournalist Zedrich Xylak Madrid, while other media workers were exposed to tear gas.

  • In July, police attempted to arrest photojournalists Bullit Marquez and Rene Dilan at a Pasay City protest.

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Ashley Haek is a Communications Manager at The Future of Free Speech.

Ajdin Muratovic is the Director of Communications at The Future of Free Speech and the Managing Editor of The Bedrock Principle.

On October 18, I participated in a Battle of Ideas Festival debate in London titled “Free speech for me and not for thee? The red lines in free expression.”

The discussion addressed a familiar paradox: the politicians, commentators, and activists who passionately defend free speech when their own views are threatened often have remarkably little difficulty justifying censorship of their opponents. This affliction crosses ideological and partisan divides, and its roots stretch back centuries.

In Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media, I called this phenomenon “Milton’s Curse,” after one of the most celebrated—and contradictory—champions of free expression in history. During the debate, I argued that Frederick Douglass offers a very different model: a universal commitment to liberty that refuses to distinguish between friends and enemies.

Below is a lightly edited and hyperlinked version of my remarks.

In 1644, John Milton published Areopagitica, one of the most stirring and eloquent defenses of press freedom ever written.

It’s a magnificent attack on prepublication censorship and a passionate defense of the pursuit of truth through open debate.

But read Milton a little more closely, and you discover that his commitment to free speech came with some rather significant ifs and buts.

Catholics, for instance, were not entitled to the same freedom. Nor did Milton believe that blasphemous or seditious publications should necessarily escape punishment.

And the ultimate irony?

Milton himself later worked as a government press licenser for the Commonwealth regime he served.

That’s why I call this phenomenon “Milton’s Curse”: the tendency to defend free speech passionately when it protects ideas we cherish, only to abandon those principles when confronted with ideas we loathe.

Almost four centuries later, Milton’s Curse is alive and well in Britain.

Let me offer a few examples.

Earlier this week, I debated a barrister at an event organized by the Free Speech Union.

We quickly discovered that we agreed on something fundamental: the government has no legitimate business policing opinions merely because they are offensive, hateful, or deeply unpopular.

We therefore agreed that Britain’s hate-speech laws should be repealed.

So far, so good.

But then we turned to Palestine Action, which the government proscribed under counterterrorism legislation in 2025.

Since then, thousands of protesters who have expressed support for the group have been arrested, many for simply holding placards. According to the Home Office’s latest figures, 3,630 arrests were linked to suspected support for Palestine Action in the year ending June 2026.

Here’s where our agreement on freedom of opinion suddenly evaporated.

According to my opponent, when the government decides that an opinion constitutes support for terrorism rather than stirring up hatred, suppressing it becomes not only legitimate but necessary.

“Terrorism” was the magic word that made censorship acceptable.

Never mind that the protesters merely supporting the banned organization may have no intention of committing or inciting terrorism and that their expressions of support are aimed at challenging government policy.

Of course, vandalism, violence and other criminal acts should be prosecuted.

But expressing a political opinion is not the same as committing or inciting a criminal act.

And this selective approach is hardly confined to one barrister.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has forcefully defended press freedom and rightly criticized the arrest of Graham Linehan over his social media posts about transgender issues.

Yet earlier this year, Badenoch called for pro-Palestinian marches to be banned while defending the right of Tommy Robinson’s supporters to march.

Apparently, some protests are legitimate expressions of fundamental freedoms, while others are so dangerous that the government should prevent them from taking place.

But Milton’s Curse is by no means confined to the right.

Consider Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green Party.

Polanski has been one of the most vocal critics of the proscription of Palestine Action.

At the Green Party conference earlier this month, he condemned the arrests of peaceful protesters, invoked free speech and civil liberties, and demanded that the government drop the charges.

I agree with him.

But when Graham Linehan was arrested over his social media posts, Polanski defended it.

He told BBC Newsnight, “I think it was proportionate to arrest him.”

The police subsequently dropped the investigation, apologized and agreed to pay Linehan £25,000 in compensation.

Then, a few days after Cambridge professor Jason Arday resigned from his position, citing the “unrelenting level of public scrutiny” from media coverage over serious and well-documented accusations of plagiarism, he was found dead in his home.

Immediately following Arday’s tragic death, Polanski demanded greater government intervention against the press. His message was blunt:

“Media regulation. Now.”

And when challenged by prominent British journalist Andrew Neil, Polanski warned:

“Change is coming.”

And change certainly came.

At this month’s Green Party conference, the party Polanski leads updated its platform in support of allowing regulators to force media organizations to cease operating if they failed to prevent racist or other discriminatory content.

The Greens even abandoned their previous categorical opposition to censorship of adult media and cultural activities.

So apparently, holding up a cardboard sign supporting Palestine Action is a fundamental exercise of free speech.

But arresting someone over controversial posts about transgender issues can be justified, while shutting down a newspaper for publishing material deemed discriminatory becomes a legitimate regulatory option.

For the barrister in my debate, “terrorism” was the magic word. For Polanski and his party, it’s “hate” or “racism.”

They’re distorted mirror images of each other. But both risk surrendering the same fundamental principle: That the government should not be able to suppress political opinions simply by attaching a sufficiently alarming label to them.

And those who cheered the suppression of their opponents may suddenly discover that the same powers are being used against themselves.

Every power you hand the censor to silence hatred today can be used to silence your extremism tomorrow. Every rule you write against terrorism today can be turned against your “disinformation.”

Welcome to Milton’s Curse, twenty-first-century edition.

And this goes to the heart of our wider problem.

The tendency to be outraged by the suppression of people and ideas we agree with, while ignoring or even celebrating the suppression of those we despise, poisons a robust, resilient, and principled conception of free speech.

It turns free speech into a political prop to be wielded for partisan and tribal purposes; a shield for our allies and a weapon against our enemies.

And the consequences are predictable.

We see them in Britain and across Europe today.

As research by The Future of Free Speech has documented, an ever-expanding collection of laws and regulations restricts speech deemed hateful, extremist, misleading, harmful, or otherwise unacceptable.

And instead of a principled public backlash, we get selective outrage.

But in a democracy, the ultimate beneficiaries of free speech are the people.

And the power politicians exercise to restrict that freedom ultimately derives from those very people.

We need to end this era of free speech LARPing. Because unless we abandon this tribal and partisan approach, the free-speech recession will continue and short-term partisan glee will eventually give way to long-term democratic woe.

Fortunately, we have another tradition to draw upon. In 1852, the great American abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass warned that suppressing discussion of the rights of Black Americans would eventually endanger the rights of white Americans as well.

As I explored in my recent essay, “Douglass and the Betrayal of Freedom,” Douglass understood that we cannot safeguard our own liberty by allowing the government to suppress the liberty of others:

“If, to-day, these parties can put down the right of speech on one subject, to-morrow they may do so on another. If they can prohibit the discussion of the rights of black men, they may also, bye and bye, prohibit the discussion of the rights of white men.”

In other words, the freedom of our political opponents is inseparable from our own. And he distilled that universal principle into a few unforgettable words that should serve as the North Star for any serious defense of free speech:

“Liberty for all, or chains for all.”

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (with Jeff Kosseff).

This Week at a Glance 🔎

• 🇺🇸 DOJ Probes TV Networks Over Boycott

• 🇹🇷 Turkey Bans Social Media for Under-15s

• 🇬🇷 Greece Unveils Under-15 Social Media Ban

• 🇮🇳 India Detains Thousands Before Election Protest

• 🇮🇱 Netanyahu Orders Prosecution of Documentary Sources

First of All 🇺🇲

» DOJ Probes TV Networks Over Boycott

• The Justice Department (DOJ) is investigating whether TV networks violated antitrust laws by suspending their coverage in solidarity with outlets banned from the White House.

• The Investigation:

  • A DOJ spokesperson said the Department is investigating whether boycotts by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC violate the Sherman Act, a federal antitrust law that aims to curb agreements amongst competitors.

• Context:

  • The five networks suspended coverage in solidarity after President Donald Trump banned MSNOW, Politico, and CNN from the White House Sept. 18, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • On Oct. 13, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a preliminary injunction, finding that the revocations likely violated the First Amendment and that the government did not offer evidence that national security drove the revocation.

Our Take: Ashkhen Kazaryan told GB News’ The Late Show Live that launching the investigation alone could have a chilling effect on the press, and carries serious concerns about government jawboning.

» Military Officer in Solitary After Trump Criticism

• Air Force Maj. Jason Watson has been held in solitary confinement since Aug. 18, after publicly calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment, his attorney says.

• Details:

  • Watson was arrested July 1 for “crowding, obstructing and incommoding” during a demonstration at the U.S. Capitol.

  • Watson called for the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Trump and Vice President JD Vance, demands he repeated during an interview Aug. 17.

  • He faces charges under three articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including the rarely used Article 88, which bars officers from using “contemptuous words” against the president.

  • The Air Force referred the charges to a general court-martial, the military’s most serious trial level.

  • Military law bars punishing service members before trial and requires confinement to be no more rigorous than the circumstances demand.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Turkey Bans Social Media for Under-15s

• Turkey is banning social media for under-15s as rights groups urge platforms to resist court orders to block journalists’ and activists’ accounts.

• The Ban:

  • Platforms must verify users’ ages through a government-issued “token” starting Nov. 1.

  • The law also prohibits platforms from offering minors over 15 services that could have an “addictive effect.”

• Account Blocks:

  • 21 human rights groups urged platforms to resist Turkish orders to block accounts of independent media, academics, LGBTQ+ groups, and NGOs.

  • The statement says the government has targeted more than 1,270 accounts over the past few weeks, citing public safety.

  • X has said refusing could lead to throttling the whole platform in the country and that it challenges such orders in court.

  • The groups said they were especially concerned about the blocking of independent news site T24, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

» Brazilian Court Orders Campaign Videos Removed

• On Oct. 8, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court ordered President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, first lady Janja, and two congressional allies to pull videos targeting opposition Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro.

• Days earlier, it also ordered Bolsonaro to remove AI-generated content linking Lula to organized crime.

• Details:

  • The court gave Janja 24 hours to remove a video claiming Bolsonaro would impose a seven-day workweek and dismantle the free-medicine program.

  • It gave Lula’s campaign three hours to pull a clip with the slogan “If Flávio wins, you lose.”

  • The videos said Bolsonaro would raise the retirement age, weaken pension protections, and privatize the state oil company — claims the court found unsubstantiated by his official platform.

  • The court said parts of the videos were constitutionally protected criticism, but claims about cuts to social programs had no grounding in his plan.

  • The court also ordered Bolsonaro to delete three X posts: one using AI to simulate Lula in a fabricated scenario, and two linking Lula to the PCC and Comando Vermelho criminal organizations without evidence.

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» Greece Unveils Under-15 Social Media Ban

• Greece’s government presented legislation that would ban under-15s from social media starting Jan. 1, 2027.

• Details:

  • The legislation would initially cover Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram, with other platforms added gradually.

  • Violations would trigger oversight and sanctions under the EU’s Digital Services Act.

  • The bill went to a parliamentary committee Oct. 13, with a vote targeted for Oct. 22.

  • Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the plan in April, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

» Montenegro Expels Russian War Blogger

• Montenegro expelled Mikhail Zvinchuk, founder of the Russian pro-war blog Rybar, and four other Russian citizens on national security grounds, police said.

• Details:

  • Rybar posts daily frontline updates from Ukraine and is linked to the Russian military.

  • Authorities said they detained Zvinchuk, his wife, and associates to prevent “potentially harmful actions” in the country.

  • Zvinchuk is under British and EU sanctions, and the U.S. has offered $10 million for information on him and other Rybar figures over alleged election interference.

  • Rybar posted on Telegram that the group was in Montenegro legally to film a documentary.

  • Montenegro has increasingly fraught relations with Russia, after accusing it of trying to stage a coup in 2016.

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» India Detains Thousands Before Election Protest

• Police in New Delhi detained more than 2,000 people ahead of a scheduled Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest demanding the election chief’s resignation.

• Details:

  • The CJP leads a youth movement challenging the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which it accuses of rigging voter lists.

  • Authorities sealed off the designated protest site, suspended mobile internet, and shut dozens of metro stations to foil the planned Oct. 10 protest.

  • Three CJP leaders were arrested when their plane landed in New Delhi. A court ordered their release the next day, their lawyers said.

  • Representatives of two digital outlets said police briefly detained four of their reporters, and a Reuters journalist was also detained.

» Netanyahu Orders Prosecution of Documentary Sources

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the attorney general and the head of the Shin Bet security service to identify and prosecute military personnel interviewed in the NAZA documentary.

• Details:

  • Netanyahu’s letter called for an investigation into “serious information security offenses, criminal defamation, and harming Israel’s diplomatic and security interests.”

  • Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir had earlier ordered military and legal officials to identify soldiers in the film.

  • Military advocate general Itai Ofir said prosecution would require evidence of security violations or disclosure of classified material, but disciplinary measures remained possible.

• Context:

  • The film, which won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival, examines howIsrael’s military selects and strikes targets in Gaza, using AI tools.

  • The IDF has published a 17-page response rejecting its claims. Culture Minister Miki Zohar had asked officials to examine revoking the directors’ citizenship, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

» Turkey Jails Journalists for ‘Disinformation’

• An Istanbul court ordered two journalists jailed pending trial and placed two more under house arrest after police questioned them, reportedly over coverage of an investment fund scandal, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

• Details:

  • An Istanbul court ordered Mustafa Balcı of Sözcü and freelancer Şaban Sevinç jailed on suspicion of “publicly spreading disinformation.”

  • İsmail Saymaz, also of Sözcü, and Murat Ağırel of Cumhuriyet and Onlar were placed under house arrest.

  • The journalists covered the liquidation of 131 investment funds, which had grown to more than $20 billion in assets amid market manipulation allegations.

  • The arrests follow a threat from an official of the ruling AKP against journalists who “peddle slander.”

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Ashley Haek is a Communications Manager at The Future of Free Speech.

Ajdin Muratovic is the Director of Communications at The Future of Free Speech and the Managing Editor of The Bedrock Principle.

This article was originally published on Jacob Mchangama’s Substack on September 24, 2026

This is the fourth installment of my series on Frederick Douglass’ free speech philosophy, drawn from the Frederick Douglass Free Speech Corpus. The first examined his defense of wartime dissent; the second, press freedom and defamation; the third, the mobs that enforced slavery’s code of silence.

The first three installments followed Douglass’ fight for freedom and equality through words, even as that struggle culminated in war. This installment examines a more difficult issue. Douglass spent two decades insisting that free speech would defeat slavery and secure freedom. Then emancipation came, constitutional amendments passed and for a short while it looked as if Douglass’ vision of ‘a reform absolutely complete’ had triumphed. But soon Reconstruction was being dismantled. Free speech had helped win the argument, but the “sacred right” was once again overawed. What does a man do with his first principles when the victory they helped secure proved fleeting rather than permanent?

The question is relevant even today. A growing share of Americans have become skeptical of the value of free speech. In our 2025 Future of Free Speech Index, the United States recorded the third-largest decline in support for free expression of the 33 countries surveyed. Among Americans aged 18 to 34, only 47% said speech offensive to minority groups should be permitted, against 70% of those over 55. Douglass belonged to the most despised minority in the country, was slandered, mobbed and nearly killed for speaking, and watched the constitutional settlement he had fought for be dismantled in his lifetime. His answer is worth knowing.

“A Reform Absolutely Complete”

On February 6th, 1863, Frederick Douglass celebrated the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation as perhaps “the greatest event of our nation’s history, if not the greatest event of the century”. With Lincoln’s momentous proclamation, Douglass declared: “At last the out-spread wings of the American Eagle afford shelter and protection to men of all colors”.

The Emancipation Proclamation, the defeat of the Confederacy and the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments prohibiting slavery and promising equal protection and the right to vote for the recently emancipated Black population seemed to fulfill Douglass’ life’s mission as an abolitionist and human rights defender. Yet over the following decades, Douglass’ joy at emancipation was mixed with bitter disappointment at the stark contrast between the fine principles enshrined in these documents and their practical nullification through oppressive laws, racist terror and mob action in the South.

Douglass had often insisted that the practical protection of freedom of speech throughout the Union would defeat slavery. Free speech was the foundation of individual freedom and democratic self-government, the great moral renovator of society, the precondition for the triumph of truth and reason over error and falsehood and the antidote to fanaticism and orthodoxy.

But would Douglass’ faith in freedom of speech survive the bloody and bitter disappointment of a failed Reconstruction in the South where former rebels “who deliberate with daggers and vote with revolvers” were emboldened by a prejudiced public opinion and given a pass by the federal government?

In “Reconstruction”, published by The Atlantic Monthly in 1866, Douglass offered his blueprint for a new America repudiating President Andrew Johnson’s conciliatory attitude to White Southerners and indifference to the Black freedmen. Douglass’ prescription for a “government consistent with itself” was to “render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature.”

This would not be achieved by vesting “despotic power” in the federal government, but by enfranchising “every loyal citizen”. The right to vote, Douglass expected, would “form a wall of fire” for the protection of all citizens, Black or White. The resounding Republican victory in the midterm elections of 1866 gave him hope that this bold vision for a republic which no longer would “den[y] to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them” could be realized:

“In every considerable public meeting . . . the subject has been discussed, and the people have emphatically pronounced in favor of a radical policy. . . . they have everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is now the popular passport to power.”

In other words, open discussion and free elections would open the South “to the light of law and liberty”. For a while, this policy won support in the Republican-controlled Congress and charted a hopeful course for Black Americans in the South who were being reshackled by Black Codes and terror.

In 1870, Douglass gave a short speech at the final meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, where it triumphantly disbanded, its mission accomplished. Douglass hailed the occasion as marking “a reform absolutely complete”. He noted how different everyday life had become for the combative abolitionist long accustomed to being greeted by mobs, epithets and rotten eggs. But now: “The old elements of malice and hate and contempt that I once saw written in the faces of men, seem mostly to have disappeared.”

Douglass, normally an unstoppable fountain of speech, declared himself at a loss for words to “express my sense of the great triumph of justice and liberty” achieved by the rapid succession of emancipation, equal protection and the right to vote ensured by the 13th–15th Amendments.

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“Reconstruction a Failure”

Alas, the spirit of radical zeal gradually lost its grip on Congress, and what had seemed like a reform absolutely complete by 1870 looked more and more like a dilapidated halfway house as Reconstruction unravelled.

As early as 1871, Douglass sounded the alarm about “Liberty of Speech South”, or what I called the “Segregationist’s Veto” in Douglass versus the Mobocrats. He painted a hagiographic image of Northern commitment to free expression. Nothing had so aroused the North’s “hatred” against slavery in the South as “the absolute denial of freedom of speech”. Yet ex-slaveholders and rebels were once again denying this freedom to Northerners and others who—he claimed—were murdered in their thousands for daring to express their commitment to equality or declare themselves Republicans. Douglass’ conclusion struck a very different tone than the triumphalist speech in New York the previous year:

“Until a man can express his opinion upon all possible subjects as freely and as safely at the South as he does at the North, freedom is the merest farce, and reconstruction a failure.”

In May 1878, Douglass delivered a Memorial Day address in New York’s Union Square. His assessment of Reconstruction had grown even darker than his early warning seven years earlier. Freedom of speech and the ballot had “fallen before the shot-guns of the South”. Yet he insisted that “we need bate no jot of heart or hope”. Even as he acknowledged the destruction of the protections on which his earlier optimism rested, he continued to profess his belief in their resurrection.

But restoring life to the protections that had been dangled before Southern Blacks, only to be cruelly snatched away, required confronting something constitutional amendments had failed to eradicate. In “The Color Line” in 1881, Douglass described the prevalent anti-Black racial prejudice as a moral disorder that “fortifies itself by refusing all contradiction”. Slavery had given its beneficiaries “a thousand reasons for painting the black man as fit only for slavery”. The former Slavocracy’s wealth and influence had enlisted the press, pulpit and politicians in spreading that picture. Emancipation had abolished human ownership while leaving much of its ideological justification intact. Yet Douglass rejected the claim that racial prejudice was an immutable feature of human nature. His essay itself was an attempt to expose its origins and reason his readers out of it.

That diagnosis gave him ample reason to distrust public opinion. His longstanding warning about suppressing discussion nevertheless still held. Back in 1852, he had explained how censorship directed against one group could endanger the liberties of others:

“If they can prohibit the discussion of the rights of black men, they may also, bye and bye, prohibit the discussion of the rights of white men. Liberty for all, or chains for all.”

“The Gates of Reason Are Still Open”

Strikingly, his later defense of free expression rested on extolling the immense benefits of this freedom, even as he decried the way it was exercised by the power and wealth of Southern segregationists and their Northern apologists. In an April 1883 address, Douglass condemned a press that “usually tries him in advance of the courts”, preparing the way for juries to convict Black defendants. Yet the persistence of public discussion remained a ground for hope:

“There is no modern Joshua who can command this resplendent orb of popular discussion to stand still.”

The country was “governed by ideas as well as by laws”. Despite the violence and exclusion, he insisted: “The gates of reason are still open to us; and, while we may speak and vote, we need not despair.”

Addressing the National Colored Convention in Louisville that September, Douglass developed the argument further. Conventions airing grievances, “whether real or fancied”, were “the safety-valves of the Republic, a wise and safe substitute for violence, dynamite, and all sorts of revolutionary action”.

Even unfounded grievances could be exposed through public scrutiny. Employed as such, free speech was the antithesis of violence: a means of transforming anger and dissatisfaction into public argument, collective action and the pursuit of peaceful change through the ballot rather than the gun.

By 1888, the distance between constitutional promises and practical freedom had become intolerable. At an emancipation anniversary in Washington, Douglass described Black Americans in the South as “in law free, in fact a slave”. Citizenship brought obligations without adequate protection; voting rights coexisted with disfranchisement. An occasion normally devoted to celebration demanded an alarm: “There are times when neither hope nor fear should be allowed to control our speech.”

His appeal joined public exposure to concrete reform. He denounced Southern exploitative payment practices as a “villainous swindle” and urged the Black press to expose it, legislators to prohibit it and Black voters to withhold support from politicians who refused. Speech was part of the remedy needed to expose and reform a system built on the pillars of injustice and fraud.

The following year, in “The Nation’s Problem”, Douglass confronted the wave of opinion, laws and violence that made a mockery out of the freedoms and protections that Blacks had been promised after the War. His response supplies perhaps the clearest answer to whether the shattered promises had also shattered his faith in first principles:

“I do not regard discussion as an evil in itself. I regard it not as an enemy, but as a friend. It has served us well at other times in our history, and I hope it may serve us well at this time.”

However, he took no pleasure in the intense discussion of “The Negro problem.” That the question dominated public discourse at all was “a bitter disappointment” to him. He had believed Reconstruction would settle Black Americans’ membership in the political community for good and consign demands for legally enforced color lines to the dustbin of history. Now that settlement was being reopened. Yet his answer was not to shy away from the controversy or let his detractors speak unopposed: “Our business is to answer back wisely, modestly, and yet grandly.”

That commitment also extended to criticism within the Black community, where he defended the importance of identifying mistakes and harmful errors as essential for the progress and improvement needed to make equality a practical reality.

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“The Light of Truth”

Nor did this commitment blind Douglass to the relationship between racist speech and physical violence. In “Lynch Law in the South” in 1892, discussed in a previous installment, he assigned responsibility beyond the men who carried out the killings. The mobs acted on a public sentiment cultivated “by wealth and respectability, by the press and the pulpit”. Northern prejudice helped sustain the same violence. His proposed response was to enlist these influential institutions in condemning lynching and changing the public sentiment that licensed it.

By “Lessons of the Hour” in 1894, his assessment of the national retreat was devastating: “The cause lost in the war, is the cause regained in peace, and the cause gained in war, is the cause lost in peace.” His faith in the nation’s conduct had been shaken, and he highlighted the culpability of “newspapers and magazines” for “increasing hate and dark suspicion” that fed the mob violence against Blacks and the spread of lynch law to the North. But his remedies continued to combine public argument with the enforcement of constitutional rights. He demanded honest elections, protection from exploitation and an end to the evasion of equal citizenship. And he again summoned the institutions capable of shaping public opinion:

“Let the great Northern press and pulpit proclaim the gospel of truth and justice against war now being made upon the negro.”

Two years earlier, Douglass—already in his seventies—had found hope in a younger generation taking up the struggle that this “Prophet of Freedom” had inspired but would not live to see completed. The fearless civil rights and women’s rights advocate Ida B. Wells demonstrated what independent reporting could accomplish. Wells believed that “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them”. In the pursuit of truth, she travelled the South exposing fabricated rape allegations, including cases involving consensual interracial relationships, and killings for supposed offenses as trivial as being “sassy” towards whites. Her investigative reporting and commentary were considered a scandalous affront to the “honor” of White women and subjected her to extreme danger. In May of 1892, a White mob—incited by local newspapers to torture and burn “the black wretch”—destroyed her Tennessee newspaper, The Memphis Free Speech, and Wells went into exile. Yet her investigation of lynching reached readers through her pamphlet Southern Horrors, which recounted dozens of stories of lynchings throughout the South and documented the racist logic behind this practice.

In an October 1892 letter to Wells endorsing Southern Horrors, Douglass wrote enthusiastically about the pamphlet’s content and impact:

“There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.”

Douglass acknowledged that repeated atrocities had hardened American moral sensibility. The evidence might encounter indifference as well as hostility. Yet even at a time of despair and hopelessness, silence was not an option: “we must still think, speak and work”.

“Liberty for All, or Chains for All”

Future generations of Americans did indeed continue to think, speak and work.

From the late 1950s, the civil rights movement won a series of landmark First Amendment cases that expanded protection for speech, press, assembly and association. Those victories gave protesters, organizers and journalists greater freedom to challenge segregation. In 1965, the legal scholar Harry Kalven Jr. captured the contrast with the repression of the Cold War years: “We may come to see the Negro as winning back for us the freedoms the Communists seemed to have lost for us.”

Yet these freedoms still had to be defended. On April 3, 1968, less than twenty-four hours before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “Mountaintop” speech in Memphis. A federal judge had issued an injunction preventing another march in support of the city’s striking sanitation workers. In language that echoed Douglass, King called upon America to honor its own professed ideals:

“If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand . . . the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges. . . . But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly . . . the freedom of speech . . . the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.”

The following year, the Supreme Court demonstrated how far those protections extended. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, it overturned the conviction of Clarence Brandenburg, a local Ku Klux Klan leader. The Court held that advocacy of violence was protected unless directed to inciting imminent lawless action and likely to produce it. Brandenburg’s legal team included Eleanor Holmes Norton, a young Black lawyer. Among the justices who voted unanimously to overturn his conviction was Thurgood Marshall, a civil-rights icon and the first Black member of the Supreme Court.

While the immediate beneficiary of that outcome was a hardened racist, it enshrined a principle Douglass had advocated more than a century earlier: “Liberty for all, or chains for all.” The freedoms that enabled Black Americans to challenge white supremacy also protected a Klansman’s right to express his repugnant beliefs. Douglass understood free speech and equality as mutually reinforcing. His response to the betrayal of emancipation’s promises was to insist on the freedom to expose injustice, organize and answer back. Those who now treat free speech and racial equality as mutually exclusive should reckon with that history.

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Jacob Mchangama is the founder and CEO of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (with Jeff Kosseff).

Thank You! Thanks to everyone who joined us in Nashville Oct. 2-3 for the 2026 Global Free Speech Summit, hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University. Session videos are coming soon to the Summit website and our YouTube channel.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

• 🇺🇲 Judge Extends White House Press Access

• 🇮🇳 India Restricts Access to Bitchat Messaging App

• 🇭🇺 Shuttered Hungarian Daily Relaunches After Decade

• 🇪🇬 Egyptian Authorities Detain Entire Newsroom

• 🇹🇷 Turkey Blocks News Site Over ‘LGBTQ+ Propaganda’

First of All 🇺🇲

» Judge Extends White House Press Access

• A federal judge extended White House access for CNN, MS NOW and Politico by two business days and will decide by Oct. 13 whether to protect it longer.

• Press Pool Restrictions:

  • The White House barred CNN from TV pool duties on President Donald Trump’s visits to Texas and Oklahoma.

  • It also barred Politico from Air Force One as the primary print pooler — the rotating print outlet that covers the president’s movements for the whole press corps.

• Details:

  • Trump banned the three outlets from the White House Sept. 18, calling them “fake news,” as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly restored their passes for two weeks Sept. 24.

  • The administration has argued access is a privilege and the outlets pose national security risks, but Kelly raised due process concerns at the Oct. 8 hearing.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» India Restricts Access to Bitchat Messaging App

• India ordered Apple to remove Bitchat, the offline messaging app, from its App Store, Jack Dorsey, the app’s creator, said Oct. 3.

• Details:

  • The order cites Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, India’s main law for blocking online content.

  • The app was unavailable on Google Play, and its website was inaccessible across several internet providers. It is unclear whether Google or the providers received orders.

• Context:

  • Bitchat’s code, hosted on GitHub, lets users communicate amid internet shutdowns and bypass centralized networks.

  • In July, Indian authorities ordered GitHub to take the code down, saying the app’s design makes it hard for police to intercept messages or trace users, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • The removal comes as youth-led protests over changes to India’s voter rolls continue. In July, when protesters reportedly turned to the app, India accounted for about 85% of its global downloads.

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The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» Shuttered Hungarian Daily Relaunches After Decade

• Népszabadság, a once-popular Hungarian daily, relaunched online Oct. 8, exactly 10 years after its owner abruptly shut it down.

• Details:

  • The paper, founded in 1956, frequently reported on corruption allegations involving then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government.

  • Owner Mediaworks closed the paper in October 2016, shortly before selling to Lőrinc Mészáros, a businessman close to Orbán.

  • Much of the staff comes from Népszava, which had hired many former Népszabadság journalists.

» Ofcom Probes Instagram ‘Instants’ Launch

• Ofcom is investigating whether Meta breached the Online Safety Act by launching Instagram’s “Instants” feature without proper risk assessments.

• Details:

  • Instants lets users share photos with close friends that disappear after viewing.

  • Ofcom will examine whether Meta failed to carry out a “suitable and sufficient illegal content risk assessment and children’s risk assessment before the launch.”

  • Meta said it conducted a risk analysis and briefed Ofcom about the feature multiple times before launching.

  • Meta also said the feature includes protections for Teen Accounts, including blocking screenshots, reshares, and forwarding.

Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Egyptian Authorities Detain Entire Newsroom

• Security forces arrested all six journalists from the independent outlet Matsadaash and charged one with joining a terrorist group.

• Details:

  • Authorities accused Matsadaash of operating without a license and publishing false news on behalf of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

  • Egypt designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organization in 2013 after President Mohamed Morsi, a senior Brotherhood figure, was ousted in a coup.

  • Journalist Mohamed Ashraf was charged with joining a terrorist group and spreading false news. He is being held for 15 days pending investigation.

  • The other five’s whereabouts are unknown. Co-founder Abdelrahman Mansour denies any Brotherhood ties.

  • The arrests came just over a week after the U.S. waived human rights conditions on $320 million in military aid to Egypt, citing Cairo’s “helpful role” after the U.S.-Iran war.

  • The U.S. provides about $1.3 billion annually, part of which is contingent on human rights requirements.

» Hong Kong Arrests Journalist for Sedition

• Hong Kong police detained journalist Tang Ho-wing on “suspicion of incitement by spreading disinformation,” local media reported. He was released on bail early Oct. 2.

• Details:

  • Tang is the first known journalist to be arrested for sedition under the 2024 security law, according to the Hong Kong Journalists Association.

  • Tang covered an Aug. 31 gathering marking the seventh anniversary of police storming Prince Edward station during 2019 protests.

  • Police said they arrested eight people from Sept. 3 to 30 for “doing an act that has a seditious intention” after they stood outside the station “holding bouquets and shouting seditious slogans.”

  • Tang founded Boom News, which was one of at least six outlets subjected to random tax audits in the past three years.

  • Sedition carries up to seven years in prison, or 10 if authorities find “collusion with external forces.”

» Turkey Blocks News Site Over ‘LGBTQ+ Propaganda’

• A Turkish court blocked access to news site T24 and its social media accounts for allegedly publishing 118 pieces with “LGBTQ+ propaganda” over the past year.

• Details:

  • The decision is part of the “My Family Is Safe” campaign, which the government says protects family values.

  • Courts have repeatedly blocked websites and social media accounts of LGBTQ+ groups, activists and media.

  • Turkish police detained at least 63 people in raids on gay bars and activists’ homes in September, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

» Cuba Convicts Influencer for Recording Agent

• A Havana court sentenced content creator Anna Sofía Benítez and her mother, Caridad Silvente, to two years of “restricted freedom” for violating the privacy of an Interior Ministry agent.

• Details:

  • The pair filmed the agent, citing security concerns, as he delivered a summons over Benítez’s video criticizing the government.

  • Prosecutors initially shelved the case after the agent withdrew his complaint. He refiled in July for unknown reasons.

  • The charges are under Article 393 of Cuba’s Penal Code, which punishes obtaining or sharing recordings of another person’s “image, voice, data, or identity” without consent.

  • Under “restricted freedom,” the women face conditions such as a ban on leaving Cuba, their lawyer said.

  • Journalists reported that State Security agents prevented them from leaving their homes to attend the verdict.

» Russia Sentences Critics in Absentia

• Russian courts sentenced an animator and an Indigenous activist in absentia over anti-war and pro-independence activity.

• Oleg Kuvaev:

  • A St. Petersburg court sentenced “Masyanya” series creator Oleg Kuvaev to four years and one month in prison for calling for action against state security and violating “foreign agent” obligations. It also barred him from publishing online for four years.

  • Investigators said a 2023 “Masyanya” episode urged soldiers to surrender, desert and disobey commanders.

  • Case materials described the cartoon as expressing “ideological hatred and hostility” toward the government.

• Marina Khankhalaeva:

  • A military court sentenced Marina Khankhalaeva, founder of the Buryat independence movement Tusgaar Buryad-Mongolia, to 20 years in prison for organizing an extremist group and participating in a terrorist organization.

  • In 2024, Russia designated the movement as “terrorist,” along with 171 other ethnic, Indigenous rights and decolonial groups.

  • Authorities accused Khankhalaeva of “active anti-state activities” aimed at Buryatia’s secession and inciting “social and ethnic discord.”

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Ashley Haek is a Communications Manager at The Future of Free Speech.

Ajdin Muratovic is the Director of Communications at The Future of Free Speech and the Managing Editor of The Bedrock Principle.

Research indicates that hate speech, online or offline, can significantly affect the individuals and groups it targets. Such harms may include psychological distress, trauma, and fear, which can discourage people from speaking freely and contribute to self-censorship. Studies have also identified an association between online hate speech and hate crimes. Evidence of these harms does not, in itself, establish that prohibiting hate speech is an effective or proportionate response, particularly given the cost to freedom of expression. Hate speech restrictions are open to misuse as a way of suppressing dissenting or unpopular viewpoints, and have been invoked against the very minority and vulnerable groups such regulation is intended to protect. Legal and policy responses have increasingly emphasized content removal, stronger platform moderation, and automated enforcement. Yet these approaches carry significant free speech costs. Regulatory pressure can encourage precautionary over-removal, while automated moderation continues to struggle with context, irony, dialect, and culturally specific forms of expression.

Counterspeech offers another way of responding, one that can challenge harmful expression while leaving room for public contestation. Its potential also reaches beyond persuading the person responsible for the original message. Counterspeech can influence those watching the exchange, including the so-called “movable middle,” support those targeted by hostility, and undercut the impression that hateful or false claims are widely accepted.

The evidence, however, is mixed. At The Future of Free Speech, we have explored this in practice, training more than 400 people worldwide and translating our counterspeech toolkits on hate speech and disinformation into more than 11 languages. This October, we will continue this conversation with Mina Dennert at our Global Free Speech Summit.

This piece examines the promise of counterspeech alongside its limits. Rather than asking whether counterspeech works in the abstract, it asks a more useful question: what forms of counterspeech work, for whom, in which contexts, and toward what ends?

What Do We Mean by Counterspeech?

Counterspeech encompasses responses to hateful or harmful expression that seek to challenge its influence through further expression. The Dangerous Speech Project describes it as “any direct response to hateful or harmful speech which seeks to undermine it.” Its methods include factual correction, principled disagreement, empathy, humor, alternative narratives, amplification, and expressions of solidarity. Counterspeech can arise spontaneously from individual users or through organized and coordinated campaigns.

Benesch and colleagues identify four patterns of interaction: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many. Their research identifies strategies ranging from correcting factual claims and pointing out hypocrisy to denouncing hateful or dangerous expression.

Buerger’s research found that most counterspeakers she interviewed regarded spectators as their principal audience. Many considered attempts to change committed hateful speakers a poor use of their time. Their attention instead turned to those reading the discussion, who often considerably outnumber those actively participating in it—the “movable middle” among them, people whose views are neither extreme nor entrenched and who may therefore be receptive to competing arguments.

Effectiveness therefore has to be assessed against the purpose of the intervention. A response may leave the original speaker unmoved while correcting false information for those following the discussion, encouraging others to intervene, challenging an apparent consensus, or supporting those targeted by hostility.

Does Counterspeech Work?

Studies have examined different platforms, audiences, and forms of intervention, using different measures of success. One example comes from research by Miškolci, Kováčová and Rigová on anti-Roma speech on Facebook in Slovakia. The study examined 60 Facebook discussions containing more than 7,500 comments and tested interventions based on factual information and personal experience. The interventions did little to alter the behavior of those expressing anti-Roma attitudes. They did, however, draw other participants with pro-Roma views into the discussion. The significance lies less in converting those expressing hostility than in changing who participates and which perspectives become visible.

Audience composition also matters. Schieb and Preuss, using a computational simulation model, found that two factors mattered the most: the relative size of the groups involved, and the influence counterspeakers could exert on undecided participants.

Scale presents a further difficulty. Individual dialogue is poorly suited to coordinated harassment, organized propaganda campaigns, automated accounts, or networks whose participants have no interest in genuine exchange. Counterspeakers confronting organized disinformation have adapted their objectives accordingly. The Lithuanian Elves, for example, do not attempt to persuade coordinated trolls associated with Russian disinformation operations. Their efforts focus on ordinary readers, placing corrective information into the discussion so that those encountering propaganda can recognize it as false.

How counterspeech is delivered also affects the response it receives. Bartlett and Krasodomski-Jones, examining content that challenged extremist and populist right-wing material on Facebook, found that form and tone mattered. Posts framed as questions generated particularly high levels of interaction, and humorous and satirical content also drew strong engagement. Their research called for more constructive counterspeech and more specific arguments. Frenett and Dow reached a related conclusion in their pilot study of one-to-one online interventions. Antagonistic messages failed to generate responses, while a more casual, sentimental, and personalized approach was considerably more successful in initiating and sustaining engagement.

Large-scale research provides further evidence of the potential of organized counterspeech. Garland and colleagues analyzed 131,366 political conversations on German Twitter over four years, examining interactions involving the far-right network Reconquista Germanica and the organized counterspeech group Reconquista Internet. Following the emergence of Reconquista Internet, the relative frequency of counterspeech increased while hate speech decreased, and organized counterspeech appeared better able to steer subsequent conversations toward further counterspeech. The authors avoid causal claims but conclude that organized counterspeech may help curb hateful rhetoric and produce a more balanced public discussion. The paper was subsequently corrected to revise several dataset figures, including the number of conversations analysed, without changing its substantive conclusions.

There are costs for the people doing the responding as well. Counterspeech often relies on individuals volunteering their time and exposing themselves to hostile online environments. Research with young people has identified uncertainty about what to say, concern that intervention could make the situation worse, and anxiety about the reactions of others as barriers to speaking up. Collective initiatives can alleviate some of this hesitation, as the examples below suggest.

The limits extend beyond the online conversation itself. Counterspeech cannot address structural discrimination, power asymmetries, or offline violence on its own, nor can it reliably alter the behavior of committed ideologues or provide an adequate response to every form of coordinated harassment. These problems may require legal, institutional, technological, or social responses beyond speech.

Taken together, the research suggests that effectiveness depends heavily on what an intervention is trying to achieve. Persuading a committed speaker sets a particularly demanding standard. Influencing undecided readers, encouraging supportive voices to participate, shifting the tone of a discussion, or keeping hateful expression from going uncontested are different measures of success. The evidence also points toward the importance of tone, messenger, audience, and organization.

From Evidence to Practice

Real-world examples show how varied these interventions can be. They range from thousands of people coordinating responses in a Facebook thread, to sustained conversations between individuals, to campaigns that deliberately take online hatred into public spaces.

One of the most developed examples of collective counterspeech is #iamhere, founded by Swedish journalist Mina Dennert in 2016. Dennert began responding to xenophobic comments on Facebook and soon recruited others to join her. The initiative developed into an international network in which participants collectively enter comment threads containing hate or misinformation, post factual and civil responses, and support constructive comments already present in the discussion. Members follow rules that emphasize factual accuracy, respectful language, and avoiding personal attacks. They are also encouraged to amplify constructive contributions rather than repeatedly engaging with hateful comments in ways that could increase their visibility.

The collective dimension serves another purpose. Buerger found that counterspeakers often felt hesitant or vulnerable when responding to hostility alone, and that acting as part of a group gave some members greater confidence to participate and reduced the isolation.

A very different example comes from Megan Phelps-Roper, who grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church and promoted its messages online. On Twitter she came into sustained contact with people who challenged her beliefs. Some responded with insults; others engaged through argument and conversation. Particularly significant were people who questioned Westboro’s interpretation of scripture from within a religious framework that she recognized. More personal exchanges gradually complicated her understanding of the people she had been taught to condemn. She left the church in 2012 and has subsequently described how these interactions led her to question its teachings.

The example is unusual and should not be taken as evidence that respectful engagement routinely transforms deeply entrenched beliefs. It illustrates the importance of engagement that the recipient regards as credible, and shows how counterspeech can work over time rather than through a single corrective message.

Brazil’s “Mirrors of Racism” campaign used amplification in a much more public way. In 2015, after journalist Maria Júlia Coutinho was subjected to racist abuse online, the Black women’s civil rights organization Criola partnered with advertising agency W3haus to reproduce racist social media comments on large billboards in the neighborhoods where those who posted them lived. The billboards carried the message, “Virtual racism, real consequences.” Criola’s Lúcia Xavier explained that the strategy sought to take racism out of the online environment and expose it in the real world.

Humor offers another strategy. German journalist Hasnain Kazim, after receiving sustained xenophobic and anti-Muslim abuse, began responding to many of the messages sent to him, often through deliberate exaggeration. For example, when asked whether he ate pork, he replied that he ate only elephant and camel. Kazim has reported that some correspondents reconsidered their language, explained what lay behind their anger, or apologized. He has also described the considerable emotional cost of responding repeatedly to abuse, eventually abandoning the attempt to answer every message.

The Capacity to Speak Back

Counterspeech deserves a larger place in debates about online hate speech and disinformation. The evidence shows its potential to influence wider audiences, encourage bystanders to participate, support those targeted by hostility, and, in some cases, change the tenor of online discussions. Its effectiveness, however, varies considerably according to context, audience, messenger, tone, and objective.

Its limits should remain part of the conversation. Some speakers have little interest in dialogue; some interventions risk amplifying the content they challenge; and coordinated disinformation, harassment, and structural discrimination require responses beyond counterspeech.

For too long, debates about harmful online expression have concentrated on what should be removed, who should remove it, and how quickly. The harder question is how to strengthen the ability of citizens and communities to challenge what they encounter.

A resilient culture of free speech depends on protecting our ability to speak and strengthening our capacity to speak back.

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Natalie Alkiviadou is a Senior Research Fellow at The Future of Free Speech. Her research interests lie in the freedom of expression, the far-right, hate speech, hate crime, and non-discrimination.

This article was originally published on Jacob Mchangama’s Substack on September 11, 2026

This is the third installment of my series on Frederick Douglass’ free speech philosophy, drawn from the Frederick Douglass Free Speech Corpus, which is now live and freely searchable and even includes an audio player. The first installment examined Douglass’ defense of wartime dissent; the second, press freedom, defamation and journalistic ethics. Here I turn to the mobs that enforced slavery’s code of silence in the North and South—and to Douglass’ lifelong struggle against a form of censorship that survived emancipation. His insistence that using force to silence honest sentiments results in a “double wrong” remains a powerful message a year after the killing of Charlie Kirk and the wave of institutional and cultural censorship this political assassination unleashed.

The Sunday School Mob

When Frederick Douglass learned how to read on the streets of Baltimore, the speeches in the Columbian Orator gave “tongue to many interesting thoughts” that previously were mere flashes which “died away for want of utterance”. Douglass was eager to help pass on this newfound power to enslaved children at an improvised Sunday school in rural Maryland. But Douglass’ stint as a teacher was swiftly shut down by his own master and two Methodist lay leaders:

“we had scarcely got at work—good work, simply teaching a few colored children how to read the gospel of the Son of God—when in rushed a mob … who, armed with sticks and other missiles, drove us off, and commanded us never to meet for such a purpose again.”

Douglass was told he was trying to be a Nat Turner - the leader of a bloody slave revolt in 1831 - and was warned that if he persisted, “I should get as many balls into me, as Nat did into him”. A fifteen-year-old boy teaching illiterate children to read and understand the word of God was treated as an instigator of violent insurrection and threatened with death.

Douglass later acknowledged the twisted logic behind this strict proscription:

“The plea for this outrage was then, as it is now and at all times—the danger to good order. If the slaves learnt to read, they would learn something else, and something worse. The peace of slavery would be disturbed; slave rule would be endangered…. I do not dispute the soundness of the reasoning. It is perfectly sound; and, if slavery be right, Sabbath schools for teaching slaves to read the bible are wrong, and ought to be put down.”

This experience did not deter Douglass from successfully starting another and more clandestine Sunday school later on. But the brutal crackdown on the unshackling of the minds of Black children likely helped shape his lifelong opposition to what we might call “The Slave Power’s Veto”. This Veto would keep haunting Douglass even after he escaped slavery and supporters purchased his freedom. What Douglass called “Mobocracy” would even survive slavery and obstruct the efforts to ensure freedom, equality and voting rights to the emancipated.

The Veto Reaches Yankeedom

Though slavery rested on racial hierarchy and was concentrated in the South, the Slave Power’s Veto crossed the color line, and its tentacles reached far beyond the Mason-Dixon line and into Yankeedom.

In 1837, the white abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy was shot and killed while defending his printing press against a mob in Alton, Illinois. Two years earlier, the white theological student Amos Dresser had received twenty lashes on his bare back in Nashville, Tennessee, for possessing abolitionist literature and allegedly circulating it. A self-appointed vigilance committee ordered the whipping even though Dresser had violated no law. According to the local newspaper the Nashville Republican, Dresser should be grateful for this extrajudicial whipping, since only “the prudence and firmness of the Committee” had saved Dresser’s life from a lynch mob. That same year, Douglass’s future friend and mentor, William Lloyd Garrison, was dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his waist. In May 1838, the white abolitionist Angelina Grimké addressed an audience in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hall as a mob hurled stones through its windows. The very next day, a mob burned the hall down.

In August 1845, a mob seized the printing press of the antislavery editor Cassius M. Clay in Lexington, Kentucky. Douglass repeatedly invoked these attacks to expose the Slave Power’s reach. He could think of “no occurrence of mobocratic violence against the anti-slavery cause which sent such a chill over my hopes” as the seizure of Clay’s press, which, operating in a slaveholding state, had been “a star shining in darkness, beaming hope to the almost despairing bondman.” But, he despaired, “the mob has triumphed, and the star apparently gone out.”

The mobs that Douglass faced down in person used methods of intimidation that ranged from heckling to violence. In 1842, The Liberator reported Douglass condemning racial prejudice for “exciting mobs against the colored people” and “preventing them from taking their places in society as equal members”. The Nantucket convention at which he spoke had itself faced people throwing brickbats and other missiles. In 1843, an abolitionist meeting in Pendleton, Indiana, nearly cost Douglass his life. A frenzied mob ordered the speakers to “be silent”, tore down their platform and attacked them. Douglass fought back with a stick before being beaten unconscious only to be saved by an intervening friend. Douglass’ broken right hand never fully recovered.

Salt-Water Mobocrats

Mobs not only attempted to prevent Douglass from speaking in churches, assembly halls, and outdoor meetings. He was even confronted with The Slave Power’s Veto on the Atlantic. In 1845, Douglass travelled to Britain on the steamship Cambria. American passengers threatened to throw Douglass overboard when he attempted to deliver an invited lecture on slavery. The captain’s threat to put the “salt-water mobocrats” in irons brought them to order.

The attack also demonstrated how suppression could backfire. The controversy was widely reported in the British press, which was much more hostile to slavery than in the United States. The Cambria affair introduced Douglass to a sympathetic British public eager to hear the man whom Americans had tried to silence. As we saw in the previous installment, his enemies sometimes became unwitting publicists for his cause. In a subsequent letter to the newspaper editor Thurlow Weed, Douglass exposed the double standard:

“But then, it will be said, the subject of slavery is not open to discussion. Who say so? The very men who are continually speaking and writing in its favor.”

The passengers had a right to ask about slavery, Douglass insisted, and he had a corresponding right to answer “so as to be understood by those who wished to hear”. Offending slaveholders could not extinguish either right.

In Britain, Douglass used his growing fame to expose how slavery corroded American liberty. Speaking in Paisley, Scotland, in 1846, he described the Northern states as “the tools of slaveholders”. A visitor from a free state could be “hung at the first lamp post” for proclaiming human equality in the South.

Yet abolitionists, quick to adopt modern communications technology, were making headway. More than a hundred newspapers now spread their doctrines, and speakers previously denied a meeting hall could take their arguments into the statehouse. Douglass and fellow abolitionists were once shunned by civil society, but “now we can hold meetings with men standing round to protect us.”

In Troy in 1855, Douglass placed “the suppression of all anti-slavery discussion” first among the Slave Power’s objectives. Its determination to silence opponents amounted to an admission of guilt: “Innocence has nothing to fear from discussion.”

The following year, in Rochester, he explained why free expression posed such a threat. Slaveholders understood that “the slave cannot be safely chained while the lips of freemen are unlocked.” Laws against abolitionist speech were reinforced by a public intolerance ready to erupt into violence:

“Look at the whole South. You have only to drop a word against slavery, to set a whole community in a blaze, and bring down upon you the violence of the mob.”

Free Speech for an Enemy

As in the previous installments, the harder test is whether Douglass extended his principles to his enemies. Did an antislavery crowd get a pass when it silenced a defender of human bondage?

Douglass’s defense of free speech extended to one of slavery’s most powerful political allies. In an October 1854 speech in Chicago, he addressed the recent shouting down of Senator Stephen A. Douglas (no relation and no ally), the architect of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. But before considering the senator’s grievances, Douglass described the people excluded from his promises of “Popular Sovereignty”:

Every right of human nature, as such, is denied them—they are dumb in their chains! To utter one groan, or scream, for freedom in the presence of the Southern advocate of Popular Sovereignty, is to bring down the frightful lash upon their quivering flesh. I know this suffering people; I am acquainted with their sorrows; I am one with them in experience; I have felt the lash of the slave driver, and stand up here with all the bitter recollections of its horrors vividly upon me.

This experience gave Douglass a particular obligation to exercise the freedom denied to those still enslaved:

There are special reasons, therefore, why I should speak and speak freely. The right of speech is a very precious one, especially to the oppressed.

He then turned to the senator’s wounded feelings:

“I understand that Mr. Douglas regards himself as the most abused man in the United States, and that the greatest outrage ever committed upon him, was in the case in which your indignation raised your voices so high that his could not be heard. No personal violence, as I understand, was offered him. It seems to have been a trial of vocal powers between the individual and the multitude; as might have been expected, the voice of one man was not equal in volume to the voice of five hundred.”

The mockery came with an explicit reaffirmation of principle:

I do not approve it; I am for free speech as well as for freemen and free soil.

Douglass recognized the senator’s right to speak while putting the interference he had suffered in perspective. Being drowned out by non-violent political opponents scarcely compared with the enforced silence of millions living under the lash. Yet the senator had no problem with systematic suppression when slavery was decided in elections where those wielding the whip cast ballots but those being whipped did not. Douglass could condemn the crowd’s conduct and ridicule the senator’s self-pity in the same breath. Indeed, he hoped the experience might teach the senator to respect the rights of those whose oppression he defended.

Douglass’s opposition to the heckler’s veto did not demand reverential silence from the audience. In 1862, Douglass gave a speech that viciously attacked both President Lincoln and General McClellan’s war efforts. A member of the audience got so vocally upset at Douglass’ remarks that he was about to get expelled and “handled roughly”, yet Douglass intervened and insisted that his critic be “heard patiently by the audience”. In Self-Made Men, Douglass observed that speakers could be as indebted “to the men who hiss, as to those who applaud”. Hostility could sharpen arguments and amplify a speaker’s message. Read alongside his denunciations of suppression, this suggests a distinction between opposition that leaves room for an answer and disruption that prevents a hearing altogether. Once again, Douglass resisted Milton’s Curse — free speech for me, but not for thee — while retaining the moral high ground and conceding nothing of his powerful argument.

A Mob of Gentlemen

On December 3, 1860, abolitionists gathered at Boston’s Tremont Temple to commemorate John Brown and discuss how slavery could be abolished. A hostile crowd of Bostonians took over the meeting, which devolved into a fight in which Douglass gave as good as he received. Instead of protecting the meeting against the mob, the mayor ordered its dispersal.

Six days later, Douglass delivered his famous speech, A Plea for Free Speech in Boston, at the city’s Music Hall and aimed an accusatory finger at the Athens of America. Here was a city proud of its revolutionary heritage and supposed devotion to liberty. Yet the meeting had been captured by a “mob of gentlemen”—men who proclaimed their respect for law and order while trampling the rights of their opponents:

“Theirs was the law of slavery. The law of free speech and the law for the protection of public meetings they trampled under foot, while they greatly magnified the law of slavery.”

Douglass also confronted the more sympathetic observers who condemned the mob but regretted the meeting’s timing and choice of participants. Their advice would make the exercise of a right depend on the tolerance of those threatening it. Douglass insisted that “the time to assert a right is the time when the right itself is called in question”.

The protection of a handful of eminent speakers could not vindicate Boston’s freedom. The test was whether the same protection extended to the poor, the unpopular and the despised:

“There can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up or however humble, however young or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments.”

And the injury extended beyond the person on the platform:

“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

This was the principle Douglass had defended aboard the Cambria, now expressed with exceptional clarity. A willing audience had rights of its own. The mob could not claim to speak for everyone present simply because it possessed the determination or physical force to overpower them.

As in his account of press freedom, Douglass’ understanding of free speech demanded more than the absence of censorship and suppression. It required institutions and a civic commitment capable of protecting the actual exchange of ideas in the public sphere. Officials who surrendered a meeting to its attackers helped make intimidation an effective instrument of censorship.

The Segregationist’s Veto

Emancipation would abolish the slaveholder’s legal ownership of other human beings. It would not abolish the power to silence them. In 1871, Douglass wrote an editorial titled “Liberty of Speech South” asserting that nothing had aroused the North’s “hatred” against slavery more than the South’s “absolute denial of the freedom of speech” on this topic. Yet, even after defeat Douglass claimed that Southern recalcitrants had “murdered not less than ten thousand loyal men” for exercising this freedom. His verdict on what was supposed to be a triumphant status quo was damning:

“until a man can express his opinion upon all possible subjects as freely and as safely at the South as he does at the North […] freedom is the merest farce, and reconstruction a failure.”

By 1878, Douglass lamented that “freedom of speech and of the ballot have for the present fallen before the shot-guns of the South”. The Slave Power’s Veto was becoming the Segregationist’s Veto: political violence could defeat the equal protection of rights and franchise that constitutional amendments had formally secured.

In Lynch Law in the South (1892), Douglass again looked beyond the men carrying out the violence. The “men who break open jails and with bloody hands destroy human life” acted on the public sentiment of the South created by “wealth and respectability, by the press and the pulpit”. The resemblance to Boston’s “mob of gentlemen” was unmistakable. Men did not have to wield a weapon themselves to help determine whose voice could safely be heard, when they could depend on the “ignorant mob” to do it for them with the promise of impunity from the state and approval from the public.

Two years later, in Lessons of the Hour, Douglass described the finality of the mob’s censorship:

“When the will of the mob has been accomplished, when its thirst for blood has been quenched, when its victim is speechless, silent and dead, his mobocratic accusers and murderers of course have the ear of the world all to themselves, and the world generally approves their verdict.”

More than sixty years separated this indictment from the dispersal of Douglass’ Sunday school. Progress had been made, but the dreams of true freedom and equality had yet to be realized. Despite Douglass’ herculean efforts, the mob’s infliction of the Double Wrong continued to sustain racial domination.

The Veto’s Afterlife

Fortunately, the Slave Power’s Veto has been soundly defeated; shot-guns no longer silence dissent in the South, nor do Southern sensibilities padlock lips in the North. Nonetheless, modern America has yet to fully internalize Douglass’ vision of a public sphere that cherishes free speech and cultivates tolerance of dissent as civic virtues.

A year ago, the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while answering student questions at Utah Valley University. The reaction to Kirk’s assassination was not to double down on free speech. Instead it unleashed a “wave of censorship” at many American colleges, with faculty sanctioned for Kirk-related comments and students disciplined for what they posted. This points to a deeper problem of intolerance. According to FIRE’s most recent College Free Speech Rankings, 30% of college students say using violence is acceptable to prevent controversial campus speakers in some instances, 69% think shouting down a speaker can be justified, and 50% think blocking other students from attending a speech on campus can be justified. For the second year running, a majority of students opposed allowing each of six hypothetical controversial speakers on campus—three liberal and three conservative. Both sides have red lines they believe should be off limits, and both draw them from their own ideological and moral commitments.

College campuses are not the only arena where Mobocracy still lingers. Three months before Kirk’s murder, in June 2025, Minnesota’s former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were shot dead in their home by a gunman specifically targeting Democratic lawmakers. In 2022 Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage at Chautauqua by a religious fanatic offended by Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

Clearly, even today many are tempted to use force to compel fellow citizens to hide their honest sentiments. That was exactly what Douglass learned at fifteen, when his Sunday school was violently dispersed. Douglass saw clearly that the answer to violent intolerance was not to silence opponents in turn, but to preach and practice the principle of free speech. We would do well to follow his example today.

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Jacob Mchangama is the founder and CEO of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (with Jeff Kosseff).

Editors’ Note: Next week, The Free Flow will be on a hiatus as our team finalizes preparations for the 2026 Global Free Speech Summit, taking place October 2-3 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. At this year’s Summit, renowned global experts will discuss solutions to the most pressing free speech challenges in the digital era.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

• 🇺🇲 Judge Blocks White House Media Ban

• 📵 Meta Blocks Ads for Virginia Woolf Play

• 🇮🇱 Israeli Election Panel Bars Arab Parties

• 🧑‍⚖️ Judge Calls Montana Deepfake Law Unconstitutional

• 🇬🇪 Georgia Jails Critics Over Online Speech

First of All 🇺🇲

» Judge Blocks White House Media Ban

• A federal judge ordered the White House to restore press access for MS NOW, CNN, and Politico, ruling that President Donald Trump’s ban on the outlets likely violates the First Amendment. Hours later, reporters from all three were denied entry.

• Context:

  • Trump announced the ban Sept. 18, accusing the outlets of spreading “fake news.”

  • The following day, three reporters from each outlet had their credentials confiscated or disabled.

  • The outlets sued Monday, citing their free speech, free press, and due process rights.

• The Ruling:

  • US District Judge Tim Kelly ordered the administration to return the outlets’ press passes immediately and blocked enforcement of the ban for 14 days.

  • Kelly said precedent entitles journalists to due process before their passes are revoked and rejected the government’s claim that the ban protected national security.

• The Aftermath:

  • Politico and CNN said their staff were turned away. An MS NOW reporter said it was unclear whether the White House was defying the order or its entry system had failed.

Our Take: Ashkhen Kazaryan argues the policy likely violates the First Amendment. “The President has discretion over access to specific events, but that does not give him authority to punish reporting he doesn’t like by excluding outlets from ordinary press access.”

» Judge Limits UC Deadnaming and Misgendering Policy

• A federal judge barred the University of California (UC) from punishing members of the grassroots organization Defending Education (DE) for deadnaming and misgendering.

• Context:

  • Deadnaming is the intentional use of a transgender person’s former name.

  • DE’s lawsuit alleged the school’s sexual violence and harassment policy, which lists deadnaming as potential harassment, violated students’ free speech.

  • Deadnaming was also presented as harassment during the school’s mandatory anti-discrimination training and in its website FAQ, according to the group.

  • UC said it removed the example from its training materials.

• The Ruling:

  • U.S. District Judge Fred W. Slaughter issued a preliminary injunction, finding the policy “compels speech and is viewpoint-based.”

  • The injunction bars UC from punishing DE members for deadnaming temporarily while the case proceeds.

  • Slaughter declined DE’s request for a broader injunction, which means UC can continue enforcing the policy on other students.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Meta Blocks Ads for a Virginia Woolf Play

• Meta blocked a Barcelona theatre from promoting its adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own because the work includes “social topics.”

• Context:

  • The play adapts a series of Woolf’s 1928 talks on women’s access to education.

  • In July 2025, Meta announced it would block political, electoral, and social issue ads in the EU in response to the Regulation on the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

• Details:

  • Meta told Teatre Raval its automated system blocked the content because it usually flags any mention of “civil rights, feminism or social reform” as “social topics” and filters them out.

  • Meta recommended removing “key words” so the text wouldn’t appear to encourage activism.

  • Actress Clara Sanchis said it was unclear whether the ad was rejected “because of the name of Virginia Woolf or because of the word feminism, or both.”

  • A Meta spokesperson later said the ad “was removed in error and quickly restored.”

» Judge Rules Montana Deepfake Law Unconstitutional

• U.S. District Judge Susan Watters said a Montana law regulating the use of AI deepfakes in elections violates the First Amendment.

• The Case:

  • A political action committee (PAC) sent mailers containing AI images of candidates, some altered to show Pride flags and buttons.

  • Rep. Eric Albus, House candidate Jennifer Carlson, and Senate candidate Llew Jones filed complaints against the committee.

  • Judge Watters ruled in favor of the PAC, saying the plaintiffs are likely to show viewpoint discrimination.

  • Although plaintiffs asked for an injunction, the state pointed to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. CASA, which limits federal court judges’ use of broad injunctions to strike down laws.

  • Judge Watters said the court lacked authority to issue a “universal injunction,” and tailored the ruling to the plaintiffs.

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The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» UK Launches Center to Fight “Information Warfare”

• UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced a new National Centre for Information Defense to detect, attribute, and disrupt information attacks by foreign powers.

• Details:

  • He told world leaders that Russian agencies have “spread lies and disinformation” through bots, fake websites, and falsified news articles.

  • He added that AI will multiply cyber threats to companies and institutions.

  • The UK will use its experience to help other countries, having already assisted Moldova curb alleged Russian electoral interference.

  • Big Brother Watch warned that the center must be limited to foreign threats and subject to safeguards and oversight, noting existing counter-disinformation units have flagged lawful criticism of the government by journalists and lawmakers.

Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Netanyahu Eyes Stripping Critics of Citizenship

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a bill that would allow the revocation of citizenship from people who defame the country’s soldiers abroad.

• Context:

  • The announcement comes after Israel’s Culture Minister asked the government to revoke “NAZA” filmmakers’ citizenship, as mentioned in last week’s Free Flow.

  • The film on Israel’s actions in Gaza sparked backlash, with protesters outside one director’s home chanting “death sentence for traitors.”

  • Intruders also broke into the offices of +972 Magazine, which co-published investigations used in the film.

  • Netanyahu called out the film’s creators and announced a bill to allow higher defamation payouts.

» Israeli Election Panel Bars Arab Parties

• Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted to disqualify all majority-Arab parties from the Oct. 27 election.

• Context:

  • Israeli law allows the committee to bar parties and candidates that support armed struggle against Israel or reject Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

  • The committee is made up mostly of politicians from Knesset parties, and the governing coalition holds a majority.

  • The Supreme Court must approve any disqualification; it will review the decisions next week.

• Details:

  • The committee voted 18-5 to bar both the Joint List — an alliance of the Balad, Hadash, and Ta’al parties — and Ra’am, the first Arab party to join a governing coalition.

  • The Joint List said the decisions would disenfranchise more than 1 million voters, about 20% of Israel’s citizens.

  • The committee also voted 19-5 to bar Hadash lawmaker Ofer Cassif, who is Jewish. The Supreme Court overturned a similar ban on him in 2019.

  • In a separate 30-4 vote, the committee disqualified Balad leader Sami Abu Shehadeh over an article he published calling Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack “an important historic event militarily, politically and strategically.”

  • Unlike the other bans, his drew support from all opposition parties, the attorney general, and the committee’s chair, a Supreme Court justice. Abu Shehadeh denies supporting violence.

» Guinea Bans France 24

• Guinea’s media regulator banned France 24 over “remarks deemed to undermine the dignity of the head of state.”

• Details:

  • The High Authority for Communications (HAC) issued a warning after a presenter described President Mamady Doumbouya as a “putschist president.”

  • France 24 posted an online correction below the video broadcast that it “mistakenly labelled” Doumbouya.

  • The day prior, Guinea also withdrew a Jeune Afrique correspondent’s press accreditation, alleging “professional misconduct.”

• France 24 and other French media have been banned across the Sahel region, as mentioned in previous Free Flows.

» Georgia Jails Critics Over Online Speech

• Since June, Georgia’s Division for Combating Hate Speech has referred hundreds of social media posts to courts on speech-related charges.

• Context:

  • A 2025 amendment made “verbal abuse, swearing, persistent insult and/or other offensive actions” toward officials over their work punishable by fines of 1,500–4,000 lari (about $550–$1,500) or up to 45 days of detention.

  • Repeat offenses carry fines of 2,500–6,000 lari (about $920–$2,200) or 5–60 days detention.

  • Enforcement intensified after the Ministry of Interior created a Division for Combating Hate Speech in June, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

  • By August 1, the division had sent about 300 cases to courts, and judges had ruled on about 130.

• Notable Cases:

  • In July, a court jailed journalist Vakho Sanaia for 14 days over a Facebook post about the parliament speaker and a lawmaker, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • Physician and activist Giorgi Akhobadze received 25 days of detention in July, for statements about officials and a police officer.

  • In September, police opened a profanity case against blogger Tornike Razmadze over a Facebook post comparing the prime minister’s statements to those of Russian propagandists.

Our Take: Natalie Alkiviadou analyzed a European Court of Human Rights’ ruling that Georgia did not violate Irakli Miladze’s rights by fining him for a TikTok video criticizing transit reforms and officials. She argued the court’s approach weakens protections for online political expression across Europe.

» Canadian Court Faults University’s Lecture Cancellation

• A federally appointed Canadian judge ruled University of Lethbridge’s (U of L) cancellation of a lecture by academic Frances Widdowson was “fatally flawed.”

• Context:

  • Widdowson was invited by a U of L faculty member to give a talk called “How ‘Woke-ism’ Threatens Academic Freedom” in 2023.

  • Two petitions with 4,000+ signatures pressured the university to cancel the event.

  • The school first planned to allow the talk, citing its free expression policy and saying it did not share her views, but later reversed course.

  • Widdowson and student Jonah Pickle argued the cancellation violated their free expression and assembly rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

  • The University said it is reviewing the ruling.

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Ashley Haek is a Communications Manager at The Future of Free Speech.

Ajdin Muratovic is the Director of Communications at The Future of Free Speech and the Managing Editor of The Bedrock Principle.

This article was originally published on Jacob Mchangama’s Substack on September 3, 2026.

This is the second in a series on Frederick Douglass’ free speech philosophy, drawn from the Frederick Douglass Free Speech Corpus—a growing collection of close to two hundred speeches, editorials, letters and interviews I’m currently curating. In Part 1, I found that during the Civil War Douglass defended the right to attack Lincoln and cheer for Jefferson Davis, an astonishing position for a man who had given his life to a cause that only Union victory could secure, and that the Confederacy waged all-out war to prevent.

This installment takes up another test—what did Douglass do when what was at stake was not sedition or criticism of the government but lies and attacks aimed at himself? It is a test that has undone many a great champion of free expression, in what I’ve called Milton’s Curse: free speech for me, but not for thee. Douglass spent half a century embroiled in often bitter and deeply personal wars of words. Yet as far as I can tell, he initiated legal action for defamation only once.

Frederick Douglass was a frequent target of vilification and smears—not to mention hostile mobs, stones and rotten eggs. His enemies—and sometimes even erstwhile allies—used the press and the pulpit to counter the growing influence of his oratorical genius and editorial prowess. Douglass’ primary weapon consisted of words—but what to do when opponents turned this weapon against him? Was counterspeech a sufficient remedy, or should legal redress also be an option? What rules—legal or moral—should guide newspaper editors with power to shape public opinion? And as Douglass became an influential speaker, editor and publisher himself, did he practice what he preached?

Douglass the Defamed

“Nigger” and other racial epithets were routinely hurled at Douglass. But far more damaging than crude racist attacks were various allegations of sexual depravity, of lying about his life story, of being a paid anti-American agitator and of being a cowardly co-conspirator in the attack on Harper’s Ferry.

In August 1841, Douglass gave a speech at Nantucket’s Atheneum that made him an immediate sensation in abolitionist circles and launched his career as a peripatetic orator and relentless freedom fighter. William Lloyd Garrison vividly described Douglass’ impact:

“I shall never forget his first speech at the convention—the extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind—the powerful impression it created upon a crowded auditory … I think I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment.”

The enthusiastic response to Douglass’ speeches prompted the idea for his first autobiography, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” (1845), which in turn transformed Douglass into an international celebrity. But as his fame increased, so did the scrutiny, criticism and hostility he faced.

In late 1845, the Delaware Republican published a letter—“Falsehood Refuted”—from an A.C.C. Thompson who had lived in Maryland and knew the “runaway slave” (Douglass). Thompson insisted that the Narrative was a “catalogue of lies” composed by “some evil designed person or persons” to “excite the indignation of public opinion against the slaveholders of the South”. Thompson also defended Douglass’ previous owners and a brutal overseer named in the Narrative, claiming that he was “intimately acquainted with most of the gentlemen whose characters are so shamefully traduced”.

But Douglass turned Thompson’s damning accusations into a victory. He wrote a sarcastic reply in Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Douglass begged Thompson “to accept my thanks for his full, free and unsolicited testimony, in regard to my identity”, since the article had “forever” settled the question of whether Douglass had truly been a slave or was a fictitious character of abolitionist propaganda. He continued:

“I am greatly indebted to you, sir, for silencing those truly prejudicial insinuations … You have done a piece of anti-slavery work, which no anti-slaveryman could do.”

His reply also contained the initial contours of a Douglassian ethical framework necessary for press freedom to serve its proper function. Douglass submitted his response to The Liberator expecting the Delaware Republican to refuse him a rejoinder:

“In any country but the United States, I might hope to get a hearing through the columns of the paper in which I was attacked. But this would be inconsistent with American usage and magnanimity. It would be folly to expect such a hearing. They might possibly advertise me as a runaway slave, and share the reward of my apprehension; but on no other condition would they allow my reply a place in their columns.”

To Douglass, the proper response to attacks on reputation and ideas was reciprocal counterspeech. Ideally, the venue of attack would provide the target equal access to respond. When reciprocity was denied, press freedom provided a corrective mechanism. Media pluralism increased the chances that a fair-minded newspaper would give voice to those denied a right of reply elsewhere.

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The Poison and Its Antidote

Douglass would get plenty of chances to wrestle with the functioning of this framework during his extensive stay in Great Britain and Ireland from 1845–47, where he thundered against slavery and its apologists.

Douglass repeatedly attacked the recently established Free Church of Scotland for its fundraising efforts among Presbyterian slaveholders in the American South. Douglass popularized the slogan “Send Back the Money” among Scots outraged that their church was soliciting funds from the “man-stealing, cradle-robbing, and woman-whipping monster[s]” whom Douglass vividly portrayed in his speeches.

The Northern Warder, a Free Church-friendly newspaper, fought back against Douglass’ moral crusade. It accused Douglass and fellow critics of being “foul-mouthed clamourers” and “hired bravoes from the ranks of the American abolitionists” who spread “impieties” and “falsehood and slander” against the Free Church and its ministers.

In his speech “Charges and Defense of the Free Church,” delivered in Dundee on March 10, 1846, Douglass told the audience that he had fully expected a “desperate” attempt to counter his message through “the grossest misrepresentations and the darkest insinuations”. He would not have “uttered a single word of complaint” if the Northern Warder had resorted to such measures in a free and open contest. But instead, he asserted, the editor “assailed our character, impeached our motives, perverted our arguments, and peremptorily refused to permit us a single word of reply”.

Douglass then expanded on his previous press ethics sketch:

“In America, and I believe in this country, it is understood as being but common fairness, when either a single individual or a body of individuals are attacked in their opinions or conduct in the columns of a newspaper, that he or they have an opportunity of reply through the same columns, so that the cup containing the poison, or supposed poison, may also contain its antidote. This in America is established etiquette; it is also common fairness and common justice. It is only where this etiquette is established in a community that it can be said to have any of the advantages of a public press, that it becomes the palladium of liberty as well as of purity. But let the opposite principle prevail, and it is a curse rather than a blessing. No man is safe. He may be pierced through with a thousand poisoned weapons, and be totally without the means of defence or redress. An adroit editor may keep within the letter of the law and break its spirit in every line. Such is the present case. We have not been allowed a single word of reply.”

Note that just months earlier Douglass had written that in America it would be “folly” to expect a right to reply in the same newspaper where he was attacked. Now he described the right of reply as an “established etiquette” in the U.S. He may simply have meant that reciprocity in a pro-slavery Southern newspaper was futile for a runaway slave (after all, most Southern states strictly prohibited abolitionist writings), and that the established etiquette operated with a dividing line based on color.

Whatever the reason for this seeming discrepancy, the quoted passage showed Douglass’ keen awareness that the twin freedoms of the press and speech functioned differently in practice. Press freedom was exercised by the few who had the means to acquire and operate a printing press, providing editors and publishers outsized power to shape public opinion. Restraining this concentration of power demanded responsibility and a commitment to ethical standards, preventing the press from perverting the principles which it was meant to serve. As such, Douglass clearly acknowledged that words—however indispensable for realizing universal human freedom—could also be weaponized to frustrate these ideals and harm those without access to the reach that print provided.

But crucially, Douglass’ primary remedy for the violation of press ethics was not a resort to the law, but rather a reliance on a pluralistic and decentralized press and active civil society. When the Northern Warder refused Douglass a right of reply, the Dundee Courier wrote a detailed article rebutting the claims of the Northern Warder and supporting Douglass, who in turn praised the Courier’s editor for “expos[ing] the sophistries and denounc[ing] the base insinuations”. The combination of the Courier’s coverage and his speech at the raucous meeting in Dundee “was sufficient answer to all the Warder’s indirect slander”.

The New-York Tribune also republished a Douglass article from the Liberator to counter coverage in hostile New York newspapers accusing him of being a “glib-tongued scoundrel” who was “running a muck in greedy-eared Britain against America, its people, its institutions, and even against its peace.” In a private letter thanking the Tribune’s editor, Douglass wrote: “Of the low and vulgar epithets applied to me by the Express, very little need be said. I am used to them. Their force is lost upon me, in the frequency of their application.” What really mattered to him was the opportunity to explain to the readers that “the best friend of a nation is he who most faithfully rebukes her for her sins—and he her worst enemy who, under the specious and popular garb of patriotism, seeks to excuse, palliate or defend them.”

After Douglass spoke at a temperance convention in London, Reverend Samuel Hanson Cox wrote an article in the New-York Evangelist accusing Douglass of being a paid “agitator” who “denounce[d] America” as part of an abolitionist plot to “re-kindle, on both sides of the Atlantic, the flames of national exasperation and war.” Douglass once again relied on the Liberator to respond.

Douglass conceded that answering every hostile accusation displayed “a ridiculous sensibility to the good or evil opinions of men” and wasted precious “thought, time and strength,” particularly when the attacks came from “those who hate me.” But a rebuttal was required when it involved defending “great and vital principles, the vindication of which is essential to the triumph of righteousness throughout the world”.

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The Limits of Counterspeech

Soon the limits of Douglass’ commitment to counterspeech would be severely tested. His criticism of the Free Church had caused many Presbyterians to rebel and join the growing chorus of “Send Back the Money”. When Douglass traveled to Belfast to persuade local Presbyterians to demand the return of slavers’ money, Free Church supporters decided to fight back and fight ugly. They cleverly appropriated the viral abolitionist campaign with leaflets shouting “Send Back the Nigger”. But that was not all: the Irish-born American Free Church supporter Thomas Smyth circulated a rumor that Douglass had visited a brothel in Manchester. This was a highly damaging attack on Douglass’ character, calculated to invoke racist stereotypes and blacken his reputation as a person worthy of addressing white Christians as their equal. Douglass confessed that his “spirit was marred” by this “malignant slander”, and he instructed solicitors to initiate legal action against Smyth for defamation. Unable to substantiate his statements, Smyth felt compelled to write a letter expressing his “sincere regret” for the “unfounded” allegations. Douglass accepted the retraction and apology and insisted that the letter should first be published in Belfast, where Smyth had spread the falsehood.

Douglass had finally found the limits of free speech. Racial epithets and character assassination directed at his public life and opinions should be confronted in the court of public opinion. False and highly damaging allegations of fact directed at his private life might justify escalation to courts of law unless retracted. This was hardly a case of egregious hypocrisy. In fact, Douglass might have won a defamation lawsuit against Smyth even under the exacting standards of modern First Amendment doctrine.

From the sources I have identified, it appears that Smyth was the first and last person Douglass ever took legal steps against for defamation, despite a career that continued for almost five decades after Smyth’s retraction. This conclusion is consistent with Douglass biographer John Muller, who in 2022 wrote that he had “not yet come across a case where Frederick Douglass, Sr. filed suit against any journalist or newspaper.”

A Press of His Own

Despite the many attacks on his person, Douglass concluded that his British tour and the attention the controversies generated for him and his cause had been a net benefit. In My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Douglass wrote that he was often “more indebted to my enemies than to my own skill” since a “man is sometimes made great, by the greatness of the abuse”. But the path to greatness depended almost wholly on having a forum and a receptive audience for counterspeech. This experience convinced Douglass that he needed a printing press of his own:

“a tolerably well conducted press, in the hands of persons of the despised race … would prove a most powerful means of removing prejudice, and of awakening an interest in them”.

Douglass’ entrepreneurial spirit was not appreciated by his backers among white American abolitionists, whose usual admiration turned to condescending dismissal:

“My American friends looked at me with astonishment! ‘A wood-sawyer’ offering himself to the public as an editor! A slave, brought up in the very depths of ignorance, assuming to instruct the highly civilized people of the north in the principles of liberty, justice, and humanity!”

With money from British supporters, Douglass overcame his self-doubt and defied the naysayers by launching The North Star in 1847. As editor and publisher, he was no longer reliant on the goodwill of other gatekeepers when spreading his abolitionist gospel in print. Douglass was now a gatekeeper and responsible for ensuring that The North Star complied with the demanding ethical framework he so frequently lambasted other publishers for violating.

The Editor on Trial

In 1849, The North Star became the venue for a heated and factional discussion among abolitionists divided on the issue of whether the Constitution was an instrument of slavery or a roadmap for emancipation.

Douglass promised to keep the North Star open to all sides of the argument and to be guided solely by the pursuit of truth: “The only truly consistent man is he who will, for the sake of being right today, contradict what he said wrong yesterday.”

These debates—especially with his friend and later financial supporter Gerrit Smith—helped persuade Douglass to abandon the Garrisonian view of the Constitution as inherently proslavery. The reversal caused a bitter rupture with his former allies and sparked an acrimonious war of words. In the following years Garrison spread rumors that Douglass was having an affair with his white collaborator Julia Griffiths, who lived with Douglass and his wife. Much like the Smyth rumors in Belfast, these charges were aimed squarely at Douglass’s private life rather than his ideas. This raised a delicate strategic question: When would publicly answering internecine attacks do more harm to their common cause than the attacks themselves? Despite the rumors’ malicious nature, Douglass met them with furious denials from his pen and press, or strategic silence, rather than legal threats.

Douglass soon faced another difficult test of his own editorial principles. Following a dispute over the proposal to distribute Bibles among enslaved people, he published a sharply personal attack on Henry Highland Garnet, who was preparing to tour Britain. Douglass questioned Garnet’s commitment to moral abolitionism, portrayed him as an advocate of violence and warned British supporters that Garnet represented only himself. Garnet replied that Douglass had “slandered and traduced” him and attempted to discredit his character before an audience important to them both. He further alleged that Douglass had previously withheld one of his letters because its opinions were unwelcome—the very charge Douglass had leveled at the Northern Warder in Dundee. He also portrayed Douglass as hostile to and jealous of other abolitionists whose prominence might threaten his own standing and fame. Yet Garnet acknowledged that Douglass had now given him “an opportunity to speak for myself, through the same medium.” Douglass honored that promise, printing the hostile reply in full under the headline “Calling Him Out, and He Comes.” Douglass allowed Garnet to pour his antidote into the same cup that had contained Douglass’ poison.

The North Star also served as the first line of defense when Douglass was on the receiving end of attacks from other newspapers which didn’t share the same ethical commitment to reciprocity as Douglass. In 1850, Douglass was physically attacked while walking through New York with white friends, including women. One press account falsely portrayed him as deliberately provoking the public by walking down Broadway with two white women on his arms, and claimed that the women subsequently placed themselves under the protection of his assailants. According to Douglass’ account, a group of men surrounded the party, shouted “coarse and filthy language,” struck the women and attacked him multiple times.

In “At Home Again,” Douglass connected the assault to a press campaign that had made him a target:

“Having been, during the past few weeks, the special object of attack, marked out by a corrupt and fiendish Press, for assassination, the victim of a continuous train of almost unprecedented abuse—harassed and dogged from day to day by the furious blood-hounds of American Slavery—I should be something more than a Stoic, if I did not feel and acknowledge a sense of profound gratitude … that I am again permitted safely to occupy my editorial chair.”

Douglass corrected the false particulars but refused to retreat from the principle underlying his conduct. His real “crime,” he wrote, was treating white companions as equals and reducing his belief in human brotherhood to practice: “Not an inch will I retreat—not one jot of zeal will I abate—not one word will I retract.”

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Truth and Falsehood at Harper’s Ferry

In 1859, a group of armed abolitionists led by John Brown attacked the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, hoping to capture weapons and ammunition for a slave rebellion. Brown’s plan failed; many of his men were killed, and Brown was wounded and captured. The fallout of Harper’s Ferry also ensnared Douglass. Newspaper and telegraphic reports implicated him in the raid and attributed to the captured raider John Cook the allegation that Douglass had promised to participate, only to flee when the decisive moment arrived. Federal marshals were dispatched to arrest Douglass as an accomplice. With lawmen closing in, Douglass narrowly avoided arrest and a likely death sentence in slaveholding Virginia by escaping to Canada and from there to Britain.

Douglass mocked the telegraph as “the swiftest of liars” when placed in the hands of the slave power. But his public response carefully distinguished between an insult and a damaging allegation of fact. Cook might call him a coward: “I have not one word to say in defense or vindication of my character for courage.” What Douglass categorically denied was that he had ever promised to take part in the raid.

Nor did he accept that defending his reputation obliged him to disclose potentially incriminating details about Brown or expose other abolitionists to prosecution. Moreover, Douglass would continue to “write, speak, publish, organize, combine, and even … conspire against Slavery” when success appeared possible.

Douglass confronted a subtler version of the same allegation when the pacifist Elihu Burritt accused him of advocating bloodshed, deserting Brown by leaving him to the gallows and fleeing to England. Burritt’s account may have contained individual facts that were technically correct: Douglass had met Brown; he had left the United States; and Brown had been captured and executed.

But to Douglass, press ethics demanded more than avoiding literally false sentences. A writer could arrange “a simple truth” to accomplish “all the malign purposes of a positive untruth.” Biased omission and insinuation could “state a fact, as to convey a complete misrepresentation of its natural import”. Yet once again, his preferred remedy was a reciprocal right of reply in the pages where the untruths had been printed.

The legal aftermath of Harper’s Ferry also provides another rare indication of where Douglass placed the limits of counterspeech, although it may do more to blur than to clarify any Douglassian doctrine. His friend Gerrit Smith suffered a severe mental collapse after the raid. The Chicago Tribune subsequently implied that Smith had feigned insanity to avoid prosecution for supporting Brown. Smith demanded an apology and, when the newspaper refused, brought a $50,000 libel action. In a private letter to Smith, Douglass supported taking legal action against “an accusation of the most damaging kind” for which its editors should “retract or suffer.” The case ended with the Tribune publicly acknowledging that Smith’s illness had been genuine.

The Smith affair complicates any sharp distinction between attacks on public and private life. Smyth’s brothel rumor concerned Douglass’ private sexual conduct, whereas the Tribune’s allegation concerned Smith’s actions following an event of enormous public importance. Yet Douglass pursued legal redress against Smyth and endorsed Smith’s libel lawsuit. Still, the Smyth vs. Smith cases are not necessarily comparable. Douglass’ support for Smith was expressed in a private letter to a distressed friend and benefactor and may not have reflected the redress Douglass thought appropriate if he were on the receiving end. After all, he was the target of significantly more damaging accusations related to the same incident and responded in print rather than in the courts.

The Weight of the Evidence

The willingness to be corrected did not fade with age. In 1882 Douglass wrote a letter to Robert C. Winthrop Jr. apologizing for an unflattering and misleading portrayal of Winthrop’s father in Douglass’ third autobiography Life and Times. Douglass promised to “redress this wrong” in future editions, a promise he kept.

Nine years later, an older Frederick Douglass reflected on his combative spirit:

“When I was a younger man than now … I thought it my duty to contradict all the falsehoods told in respect to my conduct; but I soon found that if I did so I would have little time to do anything else. I therefore concluded to leave many of them to time and events.”

This was more a rule of economy than a retreat from counterspeech. Douglass had learned to distinguish falsehoods that threatened important principles if left unanswered from those whose rebuttal would merely distract him from advancing those principles.

When it comes to what remedies Douglass thought proper for redress, the scale of the evidence is overwhelmingly one-sided. Against the Smyth and Smith cases stand countless speeches, letters and editorials answering his critics with facts and arguments. As an editor, he repeatedly opened his own columns to opposing views, including attacks directed against himself. Even when he failed to live up to his professed editorial ideals, as both Garnet and Winthrop Jr. alleged, Douglass ultimately allowed his accuser to answer in his own columns or acknowledged his error and corrected the record. Add to this several examples of Douglass defending other Black journalists and editors when they faced legal jeopardy for their writings. In one instance, Douglass offered the then-considerable sum of $300 in security for John W. Cromwell—editor of the People’s Advocate—who was charged with criminal libel.

As David Blight shows, Douglass was proud, often hypersensitive to criticism and not above vicious personal counterattack, so the temptation to settle scores in court must have been considerable. That he seems to have instructed lawyers only once in response to defamatory statements suggests he meant what he said about answering attacks in print: rebuttal was owed to “great and vital principles,” not merely to his own wounded pride.

Two things underwrote Douglass’ conviction that the law should protect the pen rather than restrain it: an extraordinary confidence in counterspeech, and a demanding conception of what press freedom required. A newspaper worthy of being called the “palladium of liberty” did not protect readers from controversy. It enabled accusations to be answered, exposed its own claims to adversarial testing and gave truth a chance to prevail over falsehood. Douglass did not merely preach that ideal. Across more than half a century of vilification, he practiced it with a record that—if not unblemished—was impressively consistent.

More than 130 years after his death, Douglass still has something to teach the thin-skinned who want free speech for themselves but not for their critics. It has become all too common for politicians and public figures to sue or threaten legal action over attacks that Douglass would have ignored or answered with facts and arguments. Recent examples include Donald Trump’s defamation suits against the media, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s many criminal complaints against online critics over “insults”, free-speech advocate Matt Taibbi’s dismissed lawsuit against the author of a critical book, Gavin Newsom’s $787 million defamation lawsuit against Fox News, and J.K. Rowling’s offer to bankroll libel actions against Amnesty International over its characterization of gender-critical campaigners. It’s a testament to Douglass’ enduring legacy that even in 2026, a culture of free speech infused with his principles would strengthen our ability to speak freely as well as our commitment to truth, integrity, and dialogue.

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Jacob Mchangama is the founder and CEO of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (with Jeff Kosseff).

Join Us! The 2026 Global Free Speech Summit returns on October 2–3 in Nashville, TN. Hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University, this event brings together global leaders, thinkers, and change-makers to confront the most urgent threats to freedom of expression and explore bold, resilient solutions. Guests will have the opportunity to attend networking receptions where they can exchange ideas with speakers and other guests.

🎟️ Spots are limited. Get your tickets here.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

• 🇺🇲 U.S. Senate Marks Up “Jawboning” Legislation

• 📲 California Enacts Child-Safety Tech Laws

• 🇪🇺 EU Unveils Kids Act

• 🇹🇷 Turkey Detains Dozens in Anti-LGBTQ+ Raids

• 🇧🇩 Bangladesh Cyber Protection Draft Amendments Threaten Media

First of All 🇺🇲

» Senate Marks Up “Jawboning” Legislation

• The Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation targeting “jawboning,” or government pressure on companies to censor certain speech.

• The Bill:

  • Individuals, broadcasters, and platforms could sue government agencies or employees over coercion to alter or remove speech.

  • It requires a public database of government communications with platforms, broadcasters, and AI providers.

  • It would potentially strip Section 230 protection from platforms that make content decisions based on government communications.

  • Exceptions are carved out for communications that are part of investigations, federal law enforcement, or national security.

  • The bill received bipartisan support in the committee, reflecting frustration with government censorship across the political spectrum.

Our Take: Jeff Kosseff wrote that the bill, building on First Amendment precedent, would better protect the companies and individuals facing government pressure by creating a private right of action and providing transparency.

» Kimmel Shelves Talarico Interview Over FCC Threats

• ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel declined to air his interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico over fears the FCC would target it for violating the equal time rule.

• Details:

  • Instead, Kimmel’s show posted the interview to YouTube, where it drew 3.6 million views in 16 hours – more than double his typical broadcast audience of 1.5 million.

• Context:

  • This is Talarico’s second streaming redirect in 2026 – Stephen Colbert’s CBS show did the same in February, as included in a previous Free Flow.

  • The equal time rule requires that broadcasters give all legally qualified candidates equal airtime.

  • Since 1984, the FCC’s “bona fide news” exemption has let chat shows freely host candidates – including Donald Trump, who appeared twice on Kimmel’s show before his 2016 nomination.

  • FCC Chairman Brendan Carr revoked the exemption in January, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

  • ABC pulled Kimmel off air for a week in 2025, after Carr threatened agency action over separate remarks, as detailed in a previous Free Flow.

Our Take: Ashkhen Kazaryan warned that the FCC’s actions send a message to students and future policymakers that agencies can target speech they dislike. “Our constitutional system will withstand and protect the speech rights that are under attack today. But today’s students are tomorrow’s policymakers. If we want them to inherit a First Amendment worth defending, we can’t treat it like an afterthought today.”

We’ve also submitted comments urging the FCC against the early license renewal of ABC stations, and arguing it declares The View, another ABC interview show, exempt from the rule.

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The Digital Age 🤖

» California Enacts Sweeping Child-Safety Tech Laws

• Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of laws restricting how social media platforms and AI chatbots interact with minors.

• Details:

  • The laws ban autoplay and personalized algorithmic feeds for users under 16.

  • AI chatbot providers must alert parents when a young user shows signs of emotional distress.

  • Platforms that negligently harm children face fines up to $1 million per child.

  • The bills also require the state to create a registry of independent AI-safety auditors.

Our Take: Writing on Meta’s $17.1 billion child-safety settlement, Jeff Kosseff argued that government efforts to protect children online risk handing authorities the power to shape content and erode platforms’ First Amendment right to set their own policies.

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» EU Unveils KIDS Act

• The European Commission proposed the “EU Kids Act,” setting bloc-wide age restrictions for social media and other online services.

• Age Restrictions:

  • Under 13: barred from social media unless a parent opens the account and the platform proves it’s a “child-friendly” service.

  • Ages 13–15: parents can open accounts, but with added safeguards — parental oversight, one-hour screen-time limits, and restrictions on contact with strangers.

  • From 15: teens can open their own accounts.

• Additional Provisions:

  • The act covers social networks, video-sharing platforms, AI companions, chatbots, and certain gaming services – a wider net than Australia’s regulations.

  • Companies face penalties up to 6 percent of global annual sales.

• Context: The proposal follows more than a dozen member states floating their own social media bans, pressuring the Commission to act.

• What’s next: Commission officials expect approval in 8–12 months, though approval by Parliament and member states could take up to two years.

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Hong Kong Court Jails Tiananmen Vigil Leaders

• A Hong Kong (HK) court sentenced three organizers of annual Tiananmen Square remembrance vigils to up to seven years in prison for inciting subversion under the Beijing-imposed national security law.

• Context:

  • Lee Cheuk-yan received seven years; Chow Hang-tung, seven years and three months; and Albert Ho, who pleaded guilty, five years and two months.

  • They were convicted of “inciting subversion” earlier this month under a 2020 Beijing-imposed national security law, as mentioned in a previous Free Flow.

  • HK activists held vigils for three decades, until China banned the annual event during the pandemic.

  • Lee and Chow plan to appeal.

» Turkey Detains Dozens in Anti-LGBTQ+ Raids

• Turkish police detained at least 63 people in raids on gay bars and activists’ homes across major cities.

• Details:

  • The nation-wide crackdown launched legal proceedings against 162 individuals, nine organizations, and 13 companies, and blocked 100+ LGBTQ+ accounts on X.

  • Justice Minister Akin Gurlek tied the raids to a “Decade of the Family” initiative aimed at “protecting our children, the institution of the family, and social order.”

  • Turkey’s LGBTQ+ community is a symbol of resistance to the country’s conservative rule, making it a target of recurring crackdowns.

  • President Recep Erdogan, in power since 2003, has repeatedly called LGBTQ+ people “perverts” and blamed them for declining birth rates.

» Bangladesh Cyber Protection Draft Amendments Threaten Media

• Draft amendments to Bangladesh’s Cyber Protection Act would jail journalists for up to 10 years for circulating “rumor” and “misinformation” online.

• Details:

  • The amendments criminalize material that authorities deem “unsubstantiated or unverified” and likely to cause public confusion, panic, or unrest.

  • Cases would go before a specialized Cyber Tribunal, which could also suspend or cancel news outlets’ licenses.

  • Information and Broadcasting Minister Andaleeve Rahman said the amendments aim to stop “disorder” online and protect social harmony.

  • Previously, 255+ journalists were sued under Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act, which governed online speech from 2018–2023.

» Iran Advances Bill Restricting Contact With Foreign Media

• An Iranian bill requiring pre-approval from the Intelligence Ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps for foreign interactions is advancing.

• Details:

  • Interviews and communications with “hostile” media, as well as sending materials to foreign media, is punishable by up to 2 years in prison.

  • Publishing articles and joining academic exchanges or conferences also requires pre-approval.

  • Parliament approved the bill’s framework 183- 4 in mid-August; its articles have since expanded from 19 to 33, though only the first two have passed the floor.

  • The bill will still require Guardian Council approval to become law.

» Egypt Holds Sudanese Journalist Incommunicado

• Egyptian authorities detained Al-Sudani editor-in-chief Ataf Mohamed Mokhtar and are holding him incommunicado.

• Details:

  • Authorities have disclosed no legal basis for his detention or whereabouts.

  • The arrest came after Ataf commented on a UN expert’s Sudan report that linked the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the war, which it has denied.

  • Some outlets suspect UAE complaints led to his arrest.

  • He is being held at an undisclosed location where he is prohibited from speaking with anyone outside.

» Israeli Minister Seeks to Strip Documentary Directors of Citizenship

• Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar formally asked the government to revoke the citizenship of Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, directors of the documentary “NAZA.”

• Details:

  • The documentary examines “the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing” in Gaza after October 7, 2023.

  • Abraham says that Israelis need to hear directly from soldiers in the film; the Israeli Film Council accuses the film of maligning the troops.

  • Zohar wants an inquiry into whether the film constitutes “treason” or “aiding the enemy during wartime,” crimes, he argues, that free expression cannot excuse.

  • “Naza” won a prize at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, a year after the directors won an Oscar for “No Other Land,” about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

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Ashley Haek is a Communications Manager at The Future of Free Speech.

Ajdin Muratovic is the Director of Communications at The Future of Free Speech and the Managing Editor of The Bedrock Principle.

Meta’s settlement of the social media addiction case brought by 47 states has attracted substantial criticism for its concessions on speech restrictions and age assurance. But one aspect of the case likely will set a dangerous precedent involving Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Before Meta settled with the state attorneys general, it asked the district court judge in California to dismiss the lawsuits under Section 230, which immunizes online service providers such as Meta from most claims arising from user content. Although the judge concluded that Section 230 applied to some of the claims, she allowed others to proceed.

Typically, a defendant can’t immediately appeal a denial of a motion to dismiss, as appeals generally require final judgments. But there are some narrow exceptions to the final judgment rule that allow such “interlocutory appeals.” Meta attempted to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals under one of those exceptions, the collateral order doctrine. But to do so, the court would need to agree with Meta that Section 230 provides immunity from suit. If, as the plaintiffs argued, Section 230 merely provides immunity from liability, Meta could only appeal the Section 230 ruling when it received a final judgment (such as a trial verdict).

While this seems like an in-the-weeds civil procedure peculiarity, it matters significantly when it comes to Section 230. One of Section 230’s primary benefits is that it prevents platforms from going through costly discovery and trial. While a huge company such as Meta likely could handle such expenses, the litigation costs could be enormous for a smaller platform.

And the 9th Circuit had never ruled on whether Section 230 losses qualified for early appeals. In its Aug. 10 opinion, the court concluded that they do not, because Section 230 only provides a defense to liability. As Sophia Cope of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote last month, “the ruling should raise concerns for anyone who cares about an open and free internet.”

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But as Cope correctly notes, the text of Section 230 suggests that it provides immunity from suit, in which case the early appeal would be available. Section 230 states “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.” If Section 230 only protected defendants from liability, this sentence would start with “no liability may be imposed.” But Congress chose to also state that “[n]o cause of action may be brought,” suggesting full immunity from suit. The 9th Circuit acknowledged this, but summarily wrote it off as a drafting quirk: “Whatever Congress’s reason for including both phrases, sometimes the better overall reading of the statute contains some redundancy,” the court wrote.

The 9th Circuit acknowledged that the entire sentence was not in the original version of Section 230 and was added during conference committee. One might see that important change as an intentional move to create immunity from suit. But the court did not see it that way. “It would be surprising if these ‘minor modifications’ included the addition of immunity from suit,” the court wrote.

Surprise! That is exactly what the revisions to Section 230 did. As it was originally introduced, Section 230 also had a provision that barred the Federal Communications Commission from regulating internet content. The conference committee eliminated that section and added the immunity sentence. When Section 230 was initially introduced, its backers focused largely on the bill’s anti-regulatory nature. For instance, when Section 230 co-author, then-Rep. Chris Cox, introduced the bill on the House floor in August 1995, he said that it “will establish as the policy of the United States that we do not wish to have content regulation by the Federal Government of what is on the internet, that we do not wish to have a Federal Computer Commission with an army of bureaucrats regulating the internet.” But by the time it received a final vote in Congress as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Section 230 was more focused on immunity.

Indeed, the 9th Circuit’s conclusion that Section 230 only provides immunity from liability contradicts some of its earlier rulings. For instance, in Barnes v. Yahoo, a 2009 opinion that is one of the most cited 9th Circuit opinions on Section 230, the court wrote that the statute “protects certain internet-based actors from certain kinds of lawsuits.” And one of its earliest Section 230 opinions, Carafano v. Metrosplash, concluded that “Congress intended that service providers such as Matchmaker be afforded immunity from suit.” In its ruling against Meta, the court acknowledged that it used the word “‘immunity’ somewhat loosely in our section 230 jurisprudence” but wrote those cases off as nonbinding because they were not in the context of an interlocutory appeal.

Because of the weaknesses in the three-judge panel’s reasoning, Meta would have stood a reasonable chance of convincing the 9th Circuit to rehear the case en banc before a panel of 11 judges. But now that the parties have negotiated a settlement, such review is highly unlikely, meaning that this opinion will remain the law of the land in the western United States, where many small and large tech platforms are based. And that could translate into fewer options for people across the country to express themselves and receive information.

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Jeff Kosseff is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Future of Free Speech and the co-author (with Jacob Mchangama) of the new book The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026).

Join Us! The 2026 Global Free Speech Summit returns on October 2–3 in Nashville, TN. Hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University, this event brings together global leaders, thinkers, and change-makers to confront the most urgent threats to freedom of expression and explore bold, resilient solutions. Guests will have the opportunity to attend networking receptions where they can exchange ideas with speakers and other guests.

🎟️ Spots are limited. Get your tickets here.

This Week at a Glance 🔎

• 🇺🇸 Judge lets Pentagon fire Stars and Stripes journalists

• 🇺🇸 FCC chair eyes “a lot of actions” after Trump targets NBC anchor

• 🇫🇷 Macron pushes EU-wide social media ban for under-15s

• 🇬🇧 UK police made 62,199 “speech offense” arrests in five years

• 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan jails election monitor for 13 years

First of All 🇺🇸

» Judge Lets Pentagon Fire Journalists

• A federal judge declined to block the Pentagon from firing three Stars and Stripes staffers who say they were punished for speaking out.

• Context:

  • 📰 Stars and Stripes is a military paper partially funded by the Pentagon. It is legally required to remain editorially independent.

  • Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte got separation notices after a CBS interview on the paper’s independence, as covered in a previous Free Flow

  • Pentagon officials directed publisher Max Lederer to fire the pair; he refused and instead announced his retirement.

• The Ruling:

  • ⚖️ U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden ruled Slavin and Korte spoke in their official roles, making their words speech that the First Amendment does not protect.

  • McFadden said editorial independence “is not at stake here” and that the plaintiffs failed to show that their firing will chill free speech.

  • At least two other suits accuse the Pentagon of interfering with the outlet’s editorial integrity and independence.

» FCC Chair Eyes Action Against Broadcasters

• FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the agency is “looking at a lot of actions” after President Trump demanded it punish NBC’s Kristen Welker.

• Details: :

  • 📺 Welker argued that Trump-backed candidates had “mixed results” in primaries, as noted in last week’s Free Flow

  • Trump accused her of “purposeful inaccuracy” and said she “will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”

  • Carr signaled the FCC is weighing a ban on broadcasting “fake” polls, among other policies on political coverage.

Our Take: The Trump administration has used the FCC to target speech. We’ve been pushing back. At the Washington Examiner, Ashkhen Kazaryan and the ACLU’s Jenna Leventoff wrote: “The FCC has made its goal clear: It wants to retaliate against broadcasters with a different political bent by burying them in baseless regulatory enforcement. Such a move sends a warning to other media that they should walk the administration’s preferred line or else.”

» Court Declines to Block Minnesota “Nudify” Ban

• U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank again denied xAI’s request for a preliminary injunction against a Minnesota ban on AI tools that make sexual images of real people without their consent.

• Details:

  • ⚖️ The law, passed with near-unanimous bipartisan support, was signed in May and took effect August 1.

  • It bans website operators and software developers from using AI to create fake nudes of identifiable people, with fines of up to $500,000 per unlawful download.

  • xAI called the law a “clumsy attempt” and an “overbroad, content-based ban on free speech.”

  • xAI added that it already bars users from making nonconsensual nude images, and it has sued users who bypass its blocks to do so.

Our Take: The law “would likely discourage companies entirely from offering image generation in those states,” Jeff Kosseff warned at The Bedrock Principle. “Companies would fear that they could not guarantee with absolute certainty that users would not misuse their services, and it is unlikely that they would risk a half-million-dollar fine each time a user circumvented their controls.”

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The Digital Age 🤖

» U.S. Slams UK Plan to Boost Traditional Media

• The U.S. Embassy in London warned that a UK plan to make platforms boost traditional broadcasters “risks becoming a mechanism for viewpoint-based censorship.”

• Details:

  • 🇺🇸 The U.S. said it sets “a template that authoritarian regimes could invoke” and risks “extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans.”

  • The Embassy asked what safeguards would keep UK officials’ preferences from sidelining minority viewpoints.

  • Supporters of boosting traditional media outlets such as the BBC argue that it helps combat disinformation and preserve culturally British content.

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» Macron Pushes for Under-15s Social Media Ban

• French President Emmanuel Macron urged Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to pass an EU-wide ban on social media for children under 15.

• Details:

  • Macron is turning to Brussels after France’s Constitutional Council struck down a domestic ban, as covered in a previous Free Flow.

  • Von der Leyen has backed a tiered approach that loosens restrictions as children get older; Macron wants a blanket ban for everyone under 15.

  • Several EU states — including Spain and Denmark — want to copy Australia’s landmark ban, but members differ on how to rein in addictive platforms.

» MEPs Demand EU Action on Meta

• Fifty-two MEPs demanded the Commission force Meta to strip addictive features for European minors, matching the company’s promise to U.S. states.

• Details:

  • ✉️ The letter points to Meta’s $16.7 billion settlement with U.S. states, in which it agreed to limit teen social media use, as detailed in a previous Free Flow.

  • The MEPs argue that EU inaction has left European children less protected than American ones.

  • They are also frustrated that the EU has yet to close its 2024 Digital Services Act probe into Meta.

  • MEPs want immediate fines, and, if needed, court-ordered shutdowns, which bite cash-rich tech companies far harder.

» 62,000 UK “Speech Offense” Arrests

• UK police have arrested 62,199 people for “speech offenses” in five years, per a Big Brother Watch report.

• Details:

  • 🚓 The organization argues that the “elasticity of vaguely defined speech offenses” in legislation enables overzealous policing.

  • Many activists agree that threats of violence warrant police intervention, but they argue officers are increasingly targeting “thought crimes” over physical offenses.

  • Police have arrested parents for complaining about their children’s schools and urged some to complete “online thinking skills” classes.

  • Big Brother Watch is calling on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to launch a “free speech reset” by ordering a review of speech laws and police practices.

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Taliban Shutters Shiite TV Station

• Taliban forces raided Rah-e-Farda TV in Kabul, forced it off the air, and took owner Salman Akhlaqi to an unknown site.

• Details:

  • 📡 The raid followed the station’s coverage of a Taliban raid on a Shiite seminary in Kabul.

  • In February, the Taliban shut down the station for three months and revoked its former owners’ license before letting it reopen under Akhlaqi.

  • It is one of the last broadcasters serving Afghanistan’s Shiite community.

» Russia Brands Novaya Gazeta “Foreign Agent”

• Russia’s Justice Ministry designated Novaya Gazeta a “foreign agent”

• Details::

  • 🇷🇺 Authorities claim the outlet publicly opposed the invasion of Ukraine, spread false election information, and collaborated with other “foreign agents.”

  • The label forces disclaimers on all published content, including social media posts.

  • Over 100 individuals tied to the paper were listed as “affiliated with foreign agents.”

  • Russia has expanded its “foreign agents” list to over 1,250 people and entities — including Nobel Prize winners and poets — in an ongoing effort to silence dissent.

» Azerbaijan Jails Election Monitor for 13 Years

• A Baku court sentenced election monitor Anar Mammadli and journalist Anar Abdullayev to 13 and 12 years in prison.

• Details:

  • ⚖️ Mammadli was charged with smuggling, illegal business, money laundering, tax evasion, and forgery.

  • Activists argue the government arbitrarily denied bail, withheld evidence, and barred witness cross-examination.

  • This is not Mammadli’s first conviction — the European Court of Human Rights found that his 2014 pre-trial arrest and detention violated the Convention on Human Rights.

  • Azerbaijan has intensified its crackdown on dissent, sentencing nine Toplum TV journalists to 12 to 15 years in prison on similar charges in July.

» Tunisian Journalists Protest Editor’s Arrest

• Journalists rallied outside a Tunis court after police arrested Mohamed Yousfi, editor of Al-Qatiba and a critic of President Kais Saied.

• Details:

  • 🚔 A judge was questioning Yousfi over illicit enrichment and money laundering charges protesters call fake.

  • Yousfi — a vocal critic of President Kais Saied — is one of several media figures the authorities have arrested this year.

  • While Tunisia saw free speech flourish after its 2011 revolution, critics say President Saied is now consolidating power and silencing dissent.

» Iran Jails Man Over Social Media Posts

• Iran sentenced café chain owner Sadegh Saeedinia to 12+ years and seized all his property for posting in support of January’s protests.

• Details:

  • 🇮🇷 Saeedinia was convicted of “propaganda against national security” and acting “on behalf of hostile groups.”

  • He supported January’s anti-regime protests on Instagram and encouraged his employees to participate.

  • Since 1979, Iran has seized regime critics’ assets — a practice it escalated following January’s protests and a war with the U.S. and its allies.

  • Reports document the seizure of property belonging to more than 400 critics this year.

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Ashley Haek is a Communications Manager at The Future of Free Speech.

Ajdin Muratovic is the Director of Communications at The Future of Free Speech and the Managing Editor of The Bedrock Principle.

Join Us! The 2026 Global Free Speech Summit returns on October 2–3 in Nashville, TN. Hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University, this event brings together global leaders, thinkers, and change-makers to confront the most urgent threats to freedom of expression and explore bold, resilient solutions. Guests will have the opportunity to attend networking receptions where they can exchange ideas with speakers and other guests.

🎟️ Spots are limited. Get your tickets here.

This Week At A Glance 🔎

• 🇺🇲 Judge Rules Speech-Based Deportation Policy Unconstitutional

• 🇮🇷 Iran Revises Online Regulation Bill

• 🇪🇺 EU Adds New Platforms to DSA

• 🇹🇭 Thai Court Jails Activist Over Livestream

• 🇷🇸 Serbia Targets Opposition with Spyware

First of All 🇺🇸

» Judge Rules Speech-Based Deportation Policy Unconstitutional

• 🧑‍⚖️ A federal judge ruled the Trump administration’s attempts to arrest and deport students who criticized Israel were unconstitutional.

• Details:

  • The case was brought by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) on behalf of The Stanford Daily, a student newspaper at Stanford University.

  • The paper claimed that several members resigned or withdrew stories about Israel or Gaza, fearing it could lead to their deportation.

  • Judge Noel Wise declared that the Trump administration was using a vague provision to revoke visas or deport students over protected speech.

» House of Representatives Passes Bill Limiting University Boycotts of Israel

• 📃 The House of Representatives passed a bill that penalizes universities for participating in boycotts of Israel. The bill heads to the Senate for consideration.

• The Bill:

  • Colleges and universities participating in federal student aid programs are prohibited from participating in boycotts of Israel.

  • Institutions receiving federal funding for international study and foreign language programs must certify that they do not bar students from programs in Israel.

  • They must also not restrict students from Israel from participating in campus programs.

» Trump Asks FCC to Punish TV Host

• 📺 President Trump said he will report NBC “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker to the FCC for “rebuke or punishment” over her read of his endorsement record.

• Details:

  • Trump charged Welker with “purposeful inaccuracy” after she said his candidate endorsements had “mixed results.”

  • “The Press is a Disgrace to our Nation, and I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously,” Trump concluded.

  • Trump also walked out on an interview with Welker in June, after she pressed him on claims of “crooked” elections.

Our Take: We’ve submitted public comments on three FCC actions over the past few months targeting viewpoints it dislikes. At the Washington Examiner, Ashkhen Kazaryan and ACLU’s Jenna Leventoff argued, “The FCC is not the speech police, and the First Amendment dictates that it must stay out of our nation’s newsrooms, no matter how much it agrees or disagrees with coverage.”

» Treasury Bars Reporters from G20

• 🚫 The Treasury Department blocked reporters from major outlets from the G20 finance meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, without explanation.

• Details:

  • The G20 meeting gathers finance ministers and senior officials from the world’s top economies.

  • The Treasury blocked several reporters from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg.

  • 💬 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the denials had “nothing to do with point of view.”

  • The Times said the “stakes of this gathering are significant for the global economy” and excluding reporters is a “disservice to the public.”

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The Digital Age 🤖

» Australia Eyes Curbs on Feeds and Pornography

• 🇦🇺 Australia is considering letting users switch off algorithmic feeds and banning strangulation pornography.

• The Plan:

  • Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek announced that future regulations could allow users to opt out of social media algorithms.

  • Australia is also considering a UK-style ban on strangulation and suffocation pornography following the death of a teen from suspected asphyxiation during sex.

  • Plibersek alleges that social media algorithms are feeding boys and men violent content, including sexual strangulation.

  • The ruling Labor Party will also consult on a “digital duty of care” bill to hold tech companies responsible for users’ online safety.

» California Passes 25+ AI & Social Media Bills

• 📃 California’s legislature passed 26 bills restricting AI and social media.

• The Bills:

  • Seek to ban social media companies from providing “addictive features,” including autoplaying videos, to under-16s.

  • Impose Age-verification requirements on AI chatbots and limit the ads children see.

  • Would hold companies financially liable for not protecting children online.

  • Limit AI use in the state university system, healthcare, employer surveillance, and for retail pricing.

• 🕐 Governor Gavin Newsom has till the end of September to decide which to sign into law.

» Iran Revises Online Regulation Bill

• 🇮🇷 Iran has revised its Cyberspace Protection bill, which seeks to grant the Supreme Cyberspace Council control over the Internet.

• The Revisions:

  • The revised bill, called the Cyberspace Regulation Plan, requires Internet service providers to authenticate users, thus eroding online anonymity.

  • Foreign online platforms are required to establish a physical presence in the country.

  • It also concentrates content moderation powers in the Council, where members are handpicked by the country’s supreme leader.

  • Provisions criminalizing the use of VPNs were removed.

• It is unclear when the bill will be voted on.

The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺

» EU Imposes New Obligations on ChatGPT, Reddit, and Roblox

• 🖥️ The EU designated Reddit and the gaming platform Roblox as “very large online platforms” and ChatGPT as a “very large online search engine,” all subject to additional obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

• Context:

  • The designation applies to platforms and search engines with over 45 million monthly active users in the EU, which the services exceeded.

  • ChatGPT is the first AI chatbot to be designated a “very large online search engine”.

• What’s Next:

  • 🕐 The platforms have four months to comply with DSA obligations

  • Obligations include addressing risks related to the spread of illegal content, negative effects on minors, users’ well-being, electoral processes, and more.

  • Companies that violate the law face up to 6% of global annual revenue.

Our Take: “The designation of ChatGPT as a very large online search engine under the DSA expands the range of obligations this product is subject to. OpenAI’s models already fell under the purview of the EU AI Act. ChatGPT itself is now subject to the DSA systemic risk provisions as well.

As we have repeatedly explained, systemic risk provisions are problematic, with vague requirements like mitigating negative effects on civic discourse. There is a real danger that such provisions result in misguided enforcement and self-censorship from companies, limiting the perspectives they provide on contested issues to avoid creating tensions with regulators.” — Jordi Calvet-Bademunt

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Free Speech Recession 🌍

» Serbia Targets Opposition with Spyware

• 🔎 In the most widespread use of spyware in Serbia, the government has been surveilling students and opposition members over the past 9 months.

• Details:

  • The incidents come as President Aleksandar Vučić prepares to hold parliamentary elections in October.

  • A nationwide student movement began after a train station canopy collapsed in November 2024, killing 16 people.

  • The movement represents a clear challenge to the ruling party.

  • Pegasus, which mirrors phones’ content, including encrypted messages, and NoviSpy, have been found on infected phones.

» Thai Court Jails Activist Over Livestream

• 🇹🇭 A Thai court sentenced activist Tantawan “Tawan” Tuatulanon to two years in prison over a 2022 Facebook livestream where she questioned police conduct.

• Details:

  • Tuatulanon questioned police dispersing farmers protesting on King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s motorcade route.

  • The court found she violated the royal insult law; she intends to appeal.

  • Proceedings are still pending for computer crimes and sedition charges for the same incident.

  • Since 2020, Thailand has charged nearly 300 people under its lese-majeste law, which carries up to 15 years in prison for insulting, defaming, or threatening the royal family.

» Cuba Tells Journalist to Leave

• 🚔 Cuban State Security warned journalist Austin Llerandi to leave the country within two months or face jail for reporting without state authorization.

• The Pressure:

  • Llerandi runs the newsletter Amanecer Habanero.

  • He has been detained numerous times, including a July 14 interrogation over “crimes against State Security.”

  • On August 21, they told him he was under investigation for violating Decree 370, which bans media the state hasn’t cleared.

» Uganda Jails Reporter Over Fake News

• 🇺🇬 Uganda has held Daily Express journalist Remmy Asiteza since August 13 on charges of “publishing fake news” and “broadcasting without a license.”

• The Case:

  • Prosecutors allege that Asiteza’s reporting on alleged corruption in the presidential cabinet and in local government is “fake news.”

  • Asiteza faces up to two years in jail and fines up to 960,000 shillings (about $257 USD).

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Ashley Haek is a Communications Manager at The Future of Free Speech.

Ajdin Muratovic is the Director of Communications at The Future of Free Speech and the Managing Editor of The Bedrock Principle.

This article was originally published at Lawfare on August 31, 2026.

Elected officials and commentators hailed Meta’s settlement with 47 states as a massive victory that will protect teenagers from addictive social media. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that it “institutes real change.” New York Attorney General Letitia James called the deal “groundbreaking.” The Wall Street Journal editorial board deemed it “sensible.”

One more word describes the settlement, which requires Meta to pay the states up to $17.1 billion and make sweeping changes such as screen-time limits for teens: jawboning.

The term refers to the government’s use of pressure on middlemen such as social media platforms to impose limits on speech that the First Amendment prohibits the government from imposing directly on speakers. The Supreme Court has taken a strong stance against jawboning, for good reason. A close examination of the Meta settlement reveals why it should concern anyone who cares about the First Amendment.

The settlement requires Meta to reduce teenagers’ exposure to “age inappropriate content.” While some of this content—such as child sexual exploitation and abuse—is not protected by the First Amendment and some content can legally be withheld from children, the settlement defines the term broadly to include gambling and “risky stunts,” as well.

The deal requires Meta to take steps to reduce teens’ exposure to speech already prohibited by its community standards, on topics such as drug use and eating disorders. Such policies could reduce teenagers’ access to helpful information such as educational materials. Meta is free to set its own rules on such subjects, but it becomes a First Amendment concern when the government uses the heavy leverage of pending litigation to codify those standards.

Not only do these “inappropriate content” standards raise serious First Amendment concerns for Meta’s consumers, but the mandatory content standards also intrude on Meta’s First Amendment right to set its own user content policies. In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects such choices, as they “give the feed a particular expressive quality.”

Meta also agreed to “disable Teen Users from seeing numbers of likes or reactions” by default on its platforms. While this might sound reasonable, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last year preliminarily blocked a similar provision in a California law, concluding that it “is not the least restrictive way to advance California’s interest in protecting minors’ mental health.” If California cannot restrict a teenager’s ability to view like counts, the states should not achieve this end run around the Constitution through a settlement.

The settlement threatens the First Amendment rights not only of minors but also of adults. The deal requires Meta to adopt an “age assurance framework” to identify whether the user is a minor or an adult. Because the requirement necessarily entails collecting information about every user, it threatens all Americans’ ability to use the internet anonymously, despite the agreement’s attempt to impose privacy protections and minimize the collection of personal data. “Once information is shared to verify age, there’s no way for a website visitor to be certain that the data they’re handing over is not going to be retained and used by the website, or further shared or even sold,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in 2023.

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The deal’s impact on anonymous speech raises constitutional concerns because the Supreme Court for decades has held that the First Amendment shields the right to speak without having one’s name attached to the expression. “Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind,” the Supreme Court wrote in 1960. “Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all.” Since the internet’s infancy, courts have applied that precedent to online speech.

These are just a few of the settlement’s many impacts on First Amendment-protected speech. As Mike Masnick summarizes, “a legislature could not have mandated most of these features without running straight into the First Amendment.”

Defenders of the settlement would argue that the content restrictions and age assurance requirements are not direct government mandates but, rather, provisions to which Meta voluntarily agreed. But the Supreme Court has repeatedly questioned the purportedly voluntary nature of such restrictions when the government applies pressure.

Most recently, in 2024, the Supreme Court vacated a decision that allowed New York’s financial regulator to threaten enforcement actions against financial companies that did business with the National Rifle Association (NRA). “A government official can share her views freely and criticize particular beliefs, and she can do so forcefully in the hopes of persuading others to follow her lead,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for a unanimous court. “In doing so, she can rely on the merits and force of her ideas, the strength of her convictions, and her ability to inspire others. What she cannot do, however, is use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.”

The lawsuit against Meta raises similar concerns about jawboning, despite the settlement’s statement that all parties “freely and voluntarily entered into this Consent Judgment without any degree of duress or compulsion.” Although the NRA case involved the executive branch’s threat of enforcement actions and Meta was facing litigation, both ultimately involve state action.

Meta had warned that the litigation could lead to liability of up to $1.4 trillion. Even if Meta has “voluntarily” entered into the settlement, it is difficult to argue that the threat of losing an existential lawsuit did not factor into its decision. And even though Meta is free to enter into this agreement, it should not be able to waive the First Amendment interests of millions of speakers and users. The settlement is particularly concerning for the broader internet because Meta would pay more if TikTok and YouTube adopt similar restrictions.

This is not to minimize the very real concerns about teenage social media use that the states raise. But the government should address those concerns within the bounds of the First Amendment, and should not jawbone its way around the challenge.

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Jeff Kosseff is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Future of Free Speech and the co-author (with Jacob Mchangama) of the new book The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026).