In January 2017, after far-right extremist Richard Spencer was attacked on Inauguration Day, a semi-rhetorical question began trending on social media. Is it okay to punch the Nazi? While I would tend to say that it is rarely ethical to throw the first punch at anyone, can we at least agree that it is not only fair, but morally imperative, ...
When I first learned about Parler, my immediate, half-joking, comment was that it would make the FBI’s job easier. To the extent that could be true, some might say this is one rationale to keep the site online. But separate from the efficiency of having putative domestic terrorists gather in a single chat space, many parties have asked whether AWS ...
I guess this is the digital-age equivalent of defenestration: rather than an authoritarian getting thrown out a window, he gets thrown off Twitter. And now that the major platforms have closed the proverbial barn door while the cows run amok on Pennsylvania Avenue, calling the decision to deplatform Trump too little too late is itself saying far too little, and ...
There are a lot of posts going around lately about that photo. You know the one. It depicts St. Louis attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey standing locked and loaded—he with an AR15, she with a Bryco Model 38 handgun—in front of their large house on the afternoon of June 28th. That was the day when approximately 500 protestors, in response ...
Attorney Carrie Goldberg posted an interesting thread on Twitter last week in response to a September 4 New York Times article written by Taylor Lorenz. Before I go on, if you are unfamiliar with Goldberg’s work, her Brooklyn law firm defends victims of online harassment, and she has deservedly become one of the nation’s thought leaders on the subject of ...
