February 4, 2025
The Value of Waiting: What Finance Theory Can Teach Us About the Value of Not Passing AI Bills
Nearly every time I am asked about AI governance, I’m asked some version of this question: The government runs slow and AI businesses are running fast; is the government keeping up? Adam Thierer put together the graph below which captures the idea, known as the pacing problem. While our technological capabilities sprint ahead, our social and legal…
February 3, 2025
Will Fresh Eyes Oversee Secret Surveillance?
The recent hearing on Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence inspires some observations on surveillance and society in the form of a book review. My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File (Duke University Press, 2018) is Katherine Verdery’s memoir of decades of anthropological fieldwork in Romania delivered through the lens of her…
January 31, 2025
Free Speech and the Tech Leaders’ Presence at Trump’s Swearing-In Ceremony
It was impossible to miss them during the swearing-in ceremony for President Donald Trump: The über-wealthy leaders of some of the world’s most prominent and important technology companies, clustered tightly together in the Capitol Rotunda. As Politico wrote, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Sundar Pinchai garnered “primo placement on the inaugural seating chart.” Apple CEO…
January 28, 2025
A Warning Against Warning Labels on Social Media Platforms
If you can’t constitutionally restrict social media platforms or the speech they convey, force them to transmit some of your own speech they’ll surely dislike. That’s seemingly the strategy of some lawmakers frustrated that the First Amendment’s guarantees of free expression and editorial autonomy have repeatedlystymied their paternalistic efforts to restrict minors’ platform access to lawful, presumptively protected…
January 27, 2025
Brilliant Ideas on the Cutting Room Floor
The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a neat repository for papers from what can be a long history of creating ideas. Most scholars maintain a page there, or their institutions do for them. Oh, how they may suffer from neglect, though! I recently started updating mine after a decade or more of . . . not….
January 24, 2025
Adults, Minors, and Access to Online Pornography: SCOTUS Weighs the Interests
When it comes to free speech rights, the United States has only one First Amendment, but it also has two classes of citizens who receive different levels of protection under it—minors and adults. In this age-based rights system, minors are second-class citizens. For example, they have scant constitutional protection to access sexually explicit content. In…
January 22, 2025
Liability Elasticity and Other Policy Concerns Underlying Social Media Addiction Lawsuits
Lurking beneath today’s raft of social media addiction lawsuits blaming platforms for harming minors are three broad public policy concerns. These frets could easily affect corporate liability in areas beyond online media. The first concern is the discretion trial court judges possess––in the absence of explicit legislation or a state high court ruling dictating otherwise––when deciding whether…
January 17, 2025
Demystifying Social Media Addiction Litigation
The old sales pitch hollered by baseball game vendors was “you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.” Something similar rings true today about not only knowing the litigants but also their theories in more than 1,000 lawsuits wending their way through numerous courts and blaming social media platforms for addicting and harming minors. The…
January 16, 2025
After Net Neutrality: The Return of the States
Last week I discussed the Sixth Circuit decision classifying broadband as a Title I information service and effectively eliminating the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) general power to regulate broadband. But like nature, regulators abhor a vacuum. While closing the door to federal regulators, the decision also creates opportunities for states to act. This post examines the present…
January 15, 2025
The Wearable Revolution: Transforming Health Care with AI-Driven Insights
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 has come and gone, leaving a wave of exciting new technologies. For health-conscious consumers, the show was packed with the latest advancements in wearable technology. From innovative smartwatches to AI-powered rings, CES 2025 revealed a new generation of devices intended to empower individuals in their pursuit of health and well-being. The…