Today, December 26, is known as Boxing Day in some parts of the world. If you don’t celebrate Boxing Day, were you offended that I wished you a happy Boxing Day? Or did you just say, “Whatever, thanks, I guess.” And if you do celebrate Boxing Day, were you offended that people who talk to…
I voted in a new polling place yesterday, in my new community of Portland, Maine. The polls were in a church. And the church wanted me to embrace Jesus. Many polling places are in churches. In this case, the building was actually a gym attached to the church. What surprised me, though, was that in…
Florida law now says it is illegal to throw a politician off a social network. This violates the First Amendment. First the facts. From Wired: On Monday, Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the Stop Social Media Censorship Act, which greatly limits large social media platforms’ ability to moderate or restrict user content. The bill is a…
The Boston Globe challenged other newspapers to write editorials in support of press freedom today. More than 350 responded. I’m a huge news fanboy. In my job as an analyst, I got to work with reporters like Jefferson Graham of USA Today, Jon Healey of the San Jose Mercury and the Los Angeles Times, Tony…
Reddit clarified its policy to ban speech that “encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm.” Sounds great, but as always with free-speech issues, the lines between acceptable and awful are fuzzy. Reddit has a challenging history to deal with. Among mainstream public social platforms, it has been the most tolerant of extreme…