‘Be afraid.’ Wired’s Steven Levy sounds an alarm about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ willingness to revisit the 1996 Communications Decency Act’s Section 230, which Levy says lets internet companies “give voice to billions of people without taking legal responsibility for what those people say.”
■ The Federal Communications Commission is leaning that way, too.
‘I ran political advertising for Twitter. It’s time for platforms to mute Trump.’ Peter D. Greenberger, writing in The Washington Post: “Speech is not protected if you yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. Trump is telling people holding tiki torches to ‘stand by’ to set the country aflame.”
■ Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says the company’s handling of tweets sharing a widely questioned and dubiously sourced New York Post story “was wrong.”
■ Twitter has locked the accounts of at least two hosts on the reactionary Salem Radio Network.
■ Post columnist Max Boot: “Sorry, Republicans. Social media companies aren’t obligated to spread your lies.”
‘A disgrace.’ A University of Minnesota law professor condemns a Justice Department lawsuit against first lady Melania Trump’s estranged friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, for writing a tell-all book without permission: “Wolkoff’s revelations are exactly what the First Amendment should protect.”
■ A federal court says a Louisiana high school student had a First Amendment right to paint a portrait of Donald Trump on his parking spot.
‘What am I missing?’ In Senate confirmation hearings, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, could name only four of the First Amendment’s five freedoms, but Free Speech Center director Ken Paulson says her more concerning shortcoming was failing to understand why those five “were packaged in a single amendment.”
■ The New York Times’ Emily Bazelon: “It’s time to ask whether the American way of protecting free speech is actually keeping us free.”
■ A labor lawyer offers guidance to employers wondering about limits on employee speech through this contentious election season and beyond.
‘Noxious ideas.’ Harvard’s on edge anticipating a speech Friday by an alumnus who’s championed the widely discredited notion that differences in intelligence are attributable to race and ethnicity.
■ The president of the University of Texas at Austin: “Free speech is perhaps the greatest right we have as Americans. … Difficult and deeply uncomfortable conversations are sometimes necessary for us to make progress.”
■ The editor of Wisconsin’s Beloit Daily News on the appearance of a Confederate flag at a college campus bridge: “The true test of the First Amendment is tolerance for unpopular speech.”
‘Tribute to a generation of free-speech advocates.’ The Hollywood Reporter reviews Mighty Ira, a profile of the former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union …
■ … now streaming online.
