The Media Lied About Meta's $25 Billion Verdict

About this episode

The Government Just Found a New Way to Censor You SUPPORT MY WORK:  Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at https://www.usermag.co          Support my work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/taylorlorenz Meta was ordered to pay a staggering $25 billion in a New Mexico lawsuit. But nothing about this landmark case is about protecting consumers. Instead, it's about the government gaining censorship powers over online speech.  In this episode of Free Speech Friday, I sit down with Trace Mitchell, lead counsel for technology and free expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), to unpack the $25 billion Meta verdict and its potentially devastating implications for online free speech. The New Mexico case has largely been portrayed as a privacy and consumer protection victory. But that's completely false. Trace explains how state attorneys general are increasingly using consumer protection laws to censor what people can say online, why these legal tactics encourage social media companies to censor more speech, and how politicians across the political spectrum are using government power to pressure tech platforms to censor content that they don't like.