October, 04 2022, 01:20pm EDT

If the Supreme Court Undermines Section 230, Marginalized People Will Pay the Price
WASHINGTON
Section 230 is a widely misunderstood but foundational law for human rights and free expression online. Especially in the wake of the Dobbs decision, weakening it would be a disaster.
The Supreme Court of the United States has said it will hear two cases related to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Any decision they make will have profound implications for the future of online speech and human rights.
Digital rights group Fight for the Future has long warned lawmakers about the potentially disastrous effects of amending Section 230. The group issued the following statement, which can be attributed to its director, Evan Greer (she/her):
Section 230 is a foundational and widely misunderstood law that protects human rights and free expression online. At a time when civil rights and civil liberties are under unprecedented attack, weakening Section 230 would be catastrophic--disproportionately silencing and endangering marginalized communities including LGBTQ+ people, Black and brown folks, sex workers, journalists, and human rights activists around the world.
The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and strip millions of Americans of their bodily autonomy makes the prospect of Section 230 being weakened even more nightmarish. As we explained in Wired, meddling with Section 230's protections in the wake of the Dobbs decision will lead to the widespread removal of online speech related to abortion, including information about abortion access and organizing and fundraising efforts. Far-right organizations like the National Right to Life Committee have drafted legislation that criminalizes not only providing an abortion but hosting abortion speech online. The legal immunity provided by Section 230 is the only thing preventing far-right groups and the attorneys general of states like Texas and Mississippi from effectively writing the speech rules for the entire Internet.
Some on the left misguidedly believe that attacking Section 230 is the only way to hold Big Tech accountable for the harm caused by its surveillance capitalist business model and its algorithmic recommendations that are maximized for engagement. But that's simply not true. Weakening Section 230's protections would make it harder, not easier, for platforms to remove harmful and hateful content because once they begin moderating, pre-Section 230 law says they become liable for any content they do not remove that causes harm. Additionally, by increasing the risk of litigation for small- and medium-sized platforms, altering Section 230 would solidify the monopoly power of the largest companies like Facebook and Google.
Conservatives and Republicans have claimed that Section 230 has been weaponized to "censor" right wing viewpoints on social media. There is no evidence for this. In fact, studies show that people of color and LGBTQ+ people are among the groups most regularly deplatformed and over-moderated on major tech platforms. In any event, weakening Section 230 protections wouldn't prevent social media companies from removing posts based on political views, just like it wouldn't incentivize platforms to moderate more thoughtfully, transparently, or responsibly. It would only incentivize them to moderate in whatever manner their lawyers tell them will avoid lawsuits, even if that means trampling on marginalized people's ability to express themselves online.
The two cases the Supreme Court has agreed to hear both deal with horrific crimes related to terrorism. One case deals specifically with liability around online recommendation algorithms, like those used by YouTube. We've written before about how attempting to regulate algorithmic recommendations by changing Section 230 is a dangerous idea. Most legislative attempts to do this will run smack into the First Amendment, which protects platforms' ability to make editorial decisions.
The Supreme Court should leave Section 230 alone. So should Congress. Instead, lawmakers should focus their efforts on enacting privacy legislation strong enough to effectively end the surveillance-driven business model of harmful tech giants like Facebook. The best way to address the harms of algorithmic manipulation without making matters worse is to regulate surveillance, not speech. The Biden administration's FTC should also do everything in its power to crack down on corporate data harvesting and use of personal data to power harmful and discriminatory algorithms.
We can hold Big Tech giants accountable while protecting free expression and human rights. The Court's preoccupation with Section 230 should be lambasted for endangering marginalized people and free speech, especially after the calamitous overturning of Roe.
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
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'Serious Disregard for Human Life': Dem Senators Press Hegseth on Yemen Civilian Casualties
"President Trump has called himself a 'peacemaker,' but that claim rings hollow when U.S. military operations kill scores of civilians."
Apr 25, 2025
A trio of Democratic senators on Thursday demanded answers from embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth regarding U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, which have reportedly killed scores of civilians including numerous women and children since last month.
"We write to you concerning reports that U.S. strikes against the Houthis at the Ras Isa fuel terminal in Yemen last week killed dozens of civilians, potentially more than 70," Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wrote in a letter to Hegseth.
The lawmakers noted that "the United Nations Protection Cluster's Civilian Impact Monitoring Project has... assessed that March 2025 marked the highest monthly casualty count in Yemen in almost two years, tripling the previous month, with a total of 162 civilian casualties."
"If these reports of civilian casualties are accurate, they should come as no surprise," the senators said. "Using explosive weapons in populated areas—as these intense strikes appear to do—always carries a high risk of civilian harm."
"Further, reports suggest that the Trump administration plans to dismantle civilian harm mitigation policies and procedures at the Pentagon designed to reduce civilian casualties in U.S. operations," the letter notes. "And the Trump administration has already dismissed senior, nonpartisan judge advocates, or JAG officers, who provide critical legal counsel to U.S. warfighters, especially when it comes to the laws of war and adherence to U.S. civilian harm mitigation policies."
"The Defense Department also recently loosened the rules of engagement to allow [U.S. Central Command] and other combatant commands to conduct strikes without requiring White House sign-off, removing necessary checks and balances on crucial life-and-death decisions," the senators added. "Taken altogether, these moves suggest that the Trump administration is abandoning the measures necessary to meet its obligations to reducing civilian harm."
The senators asked Hegseth to answer the following questions:
- Has the Department of Defense (DOD) assessed the number of noncombatant and combatant casualties in each of its strikes inside Yemen?
- What has DOD's process been for assessing the acceptable civilian casualties for individual strikes inside Yemen, and assessing estimated levels of civilian harm and collateral damage?
- What role have legal advisers, including JAG officers, played in reviewing the legality of U.S. strikes in Yemen?
- What DOD instructions or orders currently govern department civilian harm mitigation and response actions?
- Were the civilian harm mitigation and response experts at CENTCOM and/or at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence consulted in planning for these strikes?
- How does the department plan to engage with the families or communities affected by these strikes, including acknowledging civilian harm and exploring avenues for potential redress?
Last month, Hegseth
announced that the Pentagon's Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office and Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which was established during the Biden administration, would be closed. Hegseth—who has
supported pardons for convicted U.S. war criminals—lamented during his Senate confirmation hearing that "restrictive rules of engagement" have "made it more difficult to defeat our enemies," who "should get bullets, not attorneys," according to his 2024 book The War on Warriors.
Asked during his confirmation hearing whether troops under his leadership would adhere to the Geneva Conventions, Hegseth replied, "What we are not going to do is put international conventions above Americans."
During his first administration, President Donald Trumprelaxed rules of military engagement meant to protect civilians as he followed through on his campaign pledge to "bomb the shit" out of Islamic State militants and "take out their families." Thousands of civilians were killed during the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria as then-Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis announced a shift from a policy of attrition to one of "annihilation."
Meanwhile, noncombatant casualties soared by over 300% in Afghanistan between the final year of the Obama administration and 2019.
Overall, upward of 400,000 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen have died as a direct result of the U.S.-led War on Terror, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
In Yemen, the U.K.-based monitor Airwars says U.S. forces have killed hundreds of civilians in 181 declared actions since 2002. Overall, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing and blockade.
The U.S. bombing of Yemen has not received nearly as much coverage in the corporate media as the scandal involving Hegseth's use of Signal chats to share plans for attacking the Middle Eastern country with colleagues, a journalist, and relatives. However, critics say the mounting backlash over the high civilian casualties there is belying Trump's claim of an anti-war presidency.
"President Trump has called himself a 'peacemaker,' but that claim rings hollow when U.S. military operations kill scores of civilians," the senators stressed in their letter. "The reported high civilian casualty numbers from U.S. strikes in Yemen demonstrate a serious disregard for civilian life, and call into question this administration's ability to conduct military operations in accordance with U.S. best practices for civilian harm mitigation and international law."
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Journalist Sues to Secure Three Months Worth of Hegseth Signal Chat Messages
"And we are bringing this case to make sure that they can't just put national security at risk for their own convenience and then destroy all the evidence afterwards," said the head of the group that filed the lawsuit.
Apr 25, 2025
As the Trump administration faces a metastasizing controversy over reports of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's use of the commercial messaging app Signal, including to discuss U.S. strikes in Yemen, the legal group National Security Counselors on Friday sued on behalf of a journalist to secure three months worth of conversations that took place on the encrypted platform.
According to The Hill, which was first report the news of the lawsuit, the complaint requests Hegseth's Signal messages and the messages from other top Trump officials.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is journalist Jeffrey Stein, the founding editor of the outlet SpyTalk. Stein sought the three months worth of chat records via Freedom of Information Act request and is now taking legal action to obtain them, according to the complaint, which was filed in federal court.
News about my Signalgate iceberg lawsuit for @spytalker.bsky.social: it's OUT!
[image or embed]
— National Security Counselors 🕵 (@nationalsecuritylaw.org) April 25, 2025 at 12:35 PM
"The heads of at least five of the most powerful agencies in the national security community were freely texting over an app that was not approved for sensitive communications and setting it to automatically delete everything they said," Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, told The Hill. "Since then we've learned that we were right to be worried, thanks to the news about Hegseth's Signal chat with his wife and personal lawyer about bombing plans."
In what's now become known as "Signalgate," The Atlanticrevealed last month that its editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been accidentally included in a Signal group chat with top administration officials where they discussed forthcoming U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. The Atlantic later published messages from the chat.
Members of the chat, dubbed "Houthi PC small group," included Hegseth; National Security Adviser Mike Waltz; Vice President JD Vance; CIA Director John Ratcliffe; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The defendants listed in the lawsuit from the National Security Counselors are the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the CIA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The New York Timesreported last week that Hegseth had shared information about impending U.S. strikes in Yemen in another Signal group chat included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer on March 15. The outlet cited four unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter.
In response to the Times' reporting, a spokesperson for the Pentagon wrote on April 20: The the newspaper "relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the secretary and the president's agenda. There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story."
The Times responded a day later saying that it stood by the reporting, that the Pentagon had not denied the existence of the chat, and that the story did not characterize the information in the chat as classified.
In yet another twist, The Associated Pressreported Thursday, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the situation, that Hegseth had an internet connection set up in his office at the Pentagon that bypassed government security protocols—also known as a "dirty" line—in order to use Signal on a personal computer.
The AP reported that the advantage of this kind of a line is that a user would be essentially "masked" and not show up as an IP address assigned to the Defense Department, but it would also leave that user vulnerable to hacking.
Speaking of the lawsuit filed by National Security Counselors, McClanahan toldThe Hill that "this administration has proven again and again that it is allergic to accountability and transparency."
"And we are bringing this case to make sure that they can't just put national security at risk for their own convenience and then destroy all the evidence afterwards," he added.
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How Amazon Exemplifies a Right-Wing Tax Code Rigged for Oligarchs Like Jeff Bezos
A new report makes clear "what's at stake by detailing the numerous ways Trump's tax code is designed to favor Amazon and its executives."
Apr 25, 2025
Few if any corporations in the United States better exemplify the rigged nature of the nation's tax code than the e-commerce behemoth Amazon, which throughout its history has made use of cavernous loopholes to avoid taxation and build massive wealth for its top executives—including founder Jeff Bezos.
In a new report titled "Amazon and Our Rigged Tax System," a coalition of advocacy organizations details how "corporate tax advantages have been essential to the company's rapid growth and increasing market dominance"—and examines how Republican plans for another round of tax cuts could further benefit the corporation and Bezos.
The report from the Institute for Policy Studies, Athena Coalition, and PowerSwitch Action notes that Amazon—described as a "perfect case study in what is wrong with our tax code"—has "used credits and loopholes to avoid paying even the sharply reduced" 21% statutory corporate tax rate established in 2017 by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which President Donald Trump signed into law early in his first term.
If Amazon had paid the 21% statutory corporate tax rate between 2018 and 2021, the company's federal tax bill during that period would have been $12.5 billion higher, the groups estimated.
But in 2018, the first year the TCJA was in effect, Amazon received more in federal tax credits than it paid in taxes, giving the company a negative federal tax rate.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon's CEO in 2021 but still serves as executive chairman, has also benefited substantially from the skewed U.S. tax code. The report estimates that Bezos, one of the wealthiest people in the world, "pocketed $6.2 billion as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's failure to address the disparity in tax rates on income from wealth versus income from work."
"On his $36.7 billion in Amazon stock sales since that tax reform, Bezos owed only a 20% capital gains tax, far less than the 37% top marginal rate on ordinary income," the new report notes.
Andy Jassy, the company's current CEO, has "pocketed at least $6.6 million in savings over the past seven years thanks to the TCJA's reduction in the top marginal income tax rate," according to the new report.
"To stop autocracy, we need to challenge the corporations and billionaires behind and benefiting from oligarchy, not give them more tax breaks."
The report was published as Republicans in the U.S. Congress, with full support from President Donald Trump, work on tax legislation that's expected to renew individual provisions of the TCJA that would otherwise expire at the end of the year.
If the Republican-controlled Congress extends the soon-to-expire estate tax provisions of the TCJA—which doubled the federal estate tax exemption—"Bezos and Jassy's heirs would enjoy savings of $5.6 million," the new report estimates.
The advocacy groups said they produced the report out of "shared concern that a rising oligarchy is building an economy that bankrolls billionaires while leaving workers and small businesses behind."
"Right now, working families are bracing for drastic cuts to life-saving programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare and harmful slashing of pro-consumer regulations," the groups said. "Meanwhile, big corporations like Amazon and their executives stand to get even richer and more powerful through the huge tax breaks proposed by the administration and Congress. This fight has profound implications not only for Amazon and its executives, but for the balance of power in our economy."
Lauren Jacobs, executive director of PowerSwitch Action, said in a statement that "Amazon and Jeff Bezos have made billions squeezing every drop of profit they can out of our communities by breaking workers' bodies, poisoning our air, and sucking up public subsidies, and now they're selling out our fundamental freedoms."
"To stop autocracy," said Jacobs, "we need to challenge the corporations and billionaires behind and benefiting from oligarchy, not give them more tax breaks."
The report proposes a number of potential legislative solutions that it describes collectively as a "pro-worker and small business fair tax agenda."
Among the proposals are raising rather than cutting the statutory corporate tax rate and closing loopholes, imposing tax penalties on companies with massive CEO-to-worker-pay gaps, raising taxes on stock buybacks, and lifting the Social Security payroll tax cap to ensure the wealthy "pay their fair share into the system."
"This report highlights what's at stake by detailing the numerous ways Trump's tax code is designed to favor Amazon and its executives over the very workers and independent small businesses that have been hurt by Amazon," said Ryan Gerety, director of the Athena Coalition. "Over the next several months, we must stand together to protect public programs and oppose tax handouts to corporate billionaires like Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos."
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