Featured Posts
News Release
Judge gets Google antitrust ruling wrong
A federal judge ruled today that Google violated antitrust law, declaring “Google is a monopolist” in online search. Competitive Enterprise Institute antitrust, legal, and economic…
National Review
AI Could Make the Google Court Decision Moot
In a decision by the District Court of the U.S. District of Columbia, Google has been found guilty of monopolizing its leadership in…
The Washington Times
KOSA is a poor substitute for parenting
Good parenting was always a lot of work, but guarding kids’ online mental health has added to the parental load. Not every problem has a…
Search Posts
Blog
On Online Speech, Sasse Stands Alone
There was an almost total lack of skepticism of expanding government regulation of online content moderation at yesterday’s Senate hearing with the CEOs of…
Blog
Biden Tech Policy Preview
Joe Biden has been declared the president-elect (I’m pretty sure). Here’s what a Biden administration and a (presumably) divided Congress might mean for tech issues.
Blog
Don’t Panic Over Ad Tech
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold an antitrust hearing on September 15 to examine Google’s 90 percent market share in online advertising. Senators who would…
National Review
Why Are We Even Contemplating Canceling Aristotle?
There is a good piece hidden in philosopher Agnes Callard’s recent article for the New York Times about cancel culture. Unfortunately, that piece is lost in the framing device.
National Review
House Antitrust Hearing Discusses Everything but Antitrust Law
In Wednesday’s antitrust hearing with the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, questions from liberal members of Congress laid the groundwork for expanding the…
Forbes
Regulating Social Media Content Moderation Will Backfire And Make Big Tech More Powerful
As repeatedly noted by defenders of free speech, expressing popular opinions never needs protection. Rather, it is the commitment to protecting dissident expression that is…
Blog
The Flawed EARN IT Act: Rights and Common Sense Should Not Have to Be Earned
The EARN IT Act is set for a markup in the Senate Judiciary Committee as early as this Thursday. Essentially the bill conditions intermediary liability…
Blog
House Judiciary Setting up Political Theater Disguised as Tech Antitrust Hearing
Sometime next month, the House Judiciary Committee is expected to hold a hearing on competition and antitrust featuring the CEOs of Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple,…
Blog
Calls to “Reform” Section 230 of Communications Decency Act Are Misguided—and Thankfully Unlikely to Succeed
This week, four U.S. Senators asked the FCC to “take a fresh look at Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act .” Real changes…
Blog
Executive Order on Social Media Threatens Property Rights and Free Speech
Today’s Executive Order on Section 230 liability protections for online platforms violates the First Amendment and property rights of social media companies, contradicts the most…
National Review
Here Is A Catalog Of Trump’s Threats To Regulate Social Media
The major print and cable television news media outlets are abuzz with stories of Twitter fact-checking President Donald Trump’s tweets. Alleged…
Blog
Presidential Panel on Social Media Bias Misfires
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is considering forming a panel to investigate charges of discrimination against right-leaning users and…
Blog
Glaring Problems with Latest Right-Wing Attack on Section 230
A recent opinion editorial in Newsweek is the latest salvo from the political right against Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Couched in criticisms…
Washington Examiner
Why is there bipartisan support for limiting online liberty?
Facebook recently announced the first 20 members of its independent Oversight Board on content moderation. Many criticized the political bent of the majority of the…
Blog
Let Local News Outlets Bail Each Other Out
Allowing common ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations would allow them to achieve economies of scale in their sales departments and other keys aspects of…
Blog
CEI Submits Comments to FCC Reinforcing Public Safety Benefits of Internet Freedom
Last year, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld virtually all of the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom Order. This order, issued in 2017, rolled back…
Blog
Regulatory Restraint, Full Throttle
Members of Congress pursuing compromise or bipartisan net neutrality legislation should think twice about regulating away certain practices as a priori harmful. Among the greatest…
Blog
CEI Scholars Warn EARN IT Act Will Weaken Online Protections
Today, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the EARN IT Act, a bill that ties critical intermediary liability protections for online platforms, known as Section…
Blog
Federal Court Rightly Affirms Online Platforms’ First Amendment Rights
This week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, “despite YouTube’s ubiquity and its role as a publicfacing platform, it remains a private forum,…
Blog
Net Reality: Five Years Since the Open Internet Order
If you’re reading this, the Internet is alive and well. If you’re wondering how the Internet is doing, just picture a rocket—symbolizing both the incredible…
Blog
So-Called Conservative Tech Proposal Is an Affront to the First Amendment
Several conservative groups have signaled their support for what some are calling a “small-government solution” to perceived anti-conservative bias by tech platforms. The solution that…
Blog
USMCA Won’t Protect Tech from Trudeau
A point of contention in the debate over the new U.S., Mexico, Canada (USMCA) trade agreement has been whether or not the final deal will…
Blog
Government of Singapore Demonstrates Real Online Censorship
Singapore’s recent policing of online content provides an instructive example of the difference between private curating of material by platform owners and dangerous curtailing of…
The Chicago Tribune
PRO: Critics can’t decide if Facebook does too much or too little
During his recent appearance at Georgetown University, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg summed up the company's predicament: "Right now, we're doing a very good job at…
Blog
Twitter’s Ban on Political Ads Has No First Amendment Implications
Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey announced that the social media platform will ban all political advertising. This comes on the heels of Facebook’s recent announcement…
Blog
Cautiously Optimistic about Facebook’s New Approach to Speech
It seems increasingly the case that there is a lot more to like about what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has to say than not. His…
Blog
Facebook’s $5 Billion Privacy Fine Almost Certainly Too High
Facebook has faced intense criticism from lawmakers and regulators since last spring, when The Observer and The New York Times reported that data from over…
Blog
Where Facebook Interim Report on Bias Falls Short
Today former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), in fulfillment of an arrangement with Facebook, released an independent Interim Report (and accompanying op-ed) cataloging the primary concerns of…
Blog
Leaked White House Executive Order on ‘Censorship’ Violates Two Basic Constitutional Tenets
Earlier this week it was reported that the Trump administration was drafting an executive order to combat perceived “censorship” of conservatives on online platforms such…
News Release
Draft White House Executive Order Aimed at Social Media Companies Would Violate First Amendment
Following yesterday’s Politico report about a draft executive order aimed at social media companies’ policies, CNN obtained a copy of the proposed order on Friday.
Blog
Nipping at Big Tech’s Heels: Competition in Social Media
There has much bemoaning and hand-wringing by members of Congress on the alleged dangers of social media.
Blog
Response to State Lawsuit against T-Mobile/Sprint: Mergers Signal Dynamic Markets
The end of the first blog post in this series warned that the real result of a successful lawsuit to block the merger of Sprint…
Broadcasting Cable
Trump’s Social Media Summit Billed as ‘Bias’ Bashing Exercise
Broadcasting Cable cites Research Fellow Patrick Hedger on social media censorship. The fiscally conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute weighed in with a warning before…
News Release
Empowering Government to Regulate Speech Would Harm Americans’ First Amendment Rights
This afternoon, the White House is convening a group of elected officials, public policy organizations, and private citizens for a “Social Media Summit.” …
Reason
Because Politicians Are for Sale, They Think Everyone Else Is Too
Reason cites CEI’s position on government control of the Internet. The senator thus compounds his disdain for free speech with accusations that his…
Blog
More to Like in Zuckerberg’s Aspen Talk Than Not
Yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg touched on some of the most pressing issues facing his company and big tech as…
The Singapore Business Times
Regulating Facebook Protects Facebook
The Singapore Business Times cites a CEI report on the economy under the Obama Administration. More recently, a report by the Competitive Enterprise…
Blog
If Facebook and Apple are Feuding, How Are they Monopolies?
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal recapped a recent war-of-words between a European Facebook executive, Nick Clegg, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. At issue…
Politico Playbook
POLITICO Playbook: Trump Wants to Talk to Iran, Not Bomb It
Politico cites CEI regarding its annual dinner, inspired by Game of Thrones. OUT AND ABOUT — The Competitive Enterprise Institute celebrated its 35th anniversary with a…
NewsBusters
‘Climate Emergency’ Activism Now Official Party Line at Telemundo
Newsbusters cites CEI on news media use of the term “climate emergency.” As the Competitive Enterprise Institute has indicated, “the doomsday interpretation of climate change…
Blog
White House Uses Discredited Complaints Tactic against Social Media Companies
My colleague Wayne Crews has already slammed the White House for a first step towards government regulation of online speech in its “tech bias” complaints…
Blog
Breaking up and Regulating Facebook: Unfair, Un-American, Unacceptable
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, former publisher of The New Republic, argues in a long essay for The New York Times that the company should be…
Blog
Don’t Let Facebook Team up with Big Government to Censor the Web
Facebook’s expulsion of several controversial figures from its platform last week is an example of a company managing its own private property to what it…
Blog
Americans Optimistic about Role of Tech and Platforms
At a time when big tech companies are being attacked over bigness, privacy, elections, and the ordering of their news feeds, the Charles Koch Institute…
Blog
Facebook’s Call for Regulation Could Lead to Government Censorship
The Internet is unique in history not because it lacked “rules” about free expression, but that it expanded that broadcast freedom to all, not just…
News Release
CEI 35th Anniversary Event Speakers Announced
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute is pleased to announce the speakers for its 35th-anniversary dinner on June 20 in Washington, D.C.
Blog
Move Slowly and Establish Rules: Facebook’s Call for Regulation
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s motto used to be “Move fast and break things.” Now that his company is under increased political scrutiny—and facing calls for…
Blog
Net Neutrality Regulation Still a Bad Idea
The debate at today’s House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing was largely between making blocking, throttling, and fast lanes illegal and going further to…
Blog
Agenda for the 116th Congress: Tech and Telecom
As technology and telecommunications evolve, new challenges inevitably arise for policy makers. New mandates or prohibitions should be avoided in all but the most exceptional…
Blog
End of the Road for Net Neutrality Comeback Attempt
The end of the 115th Congress meant the end of using the Congressional Review Act to void the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of Obama-era net…