I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. (Barlow 1996)
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve … as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist … [others] we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different. (Barlow 1996)
In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit bearing media (Barlow 1996)
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before. (Barlow 1996)
. . .
You are in a group of legislatures. What, if anything, user behavior or content should platforms be responsible for?
An unidentified Prodigy user posted several statements … which allegedly defamed a brokerage company by falsely accusing it of committing “criminal and fraudulent acts.” The question in Stratton Oakmont [1995] was whether Prodigy could be held liable for these statements… (Millhiser 2022)
— There probably was a “fire”: Stratton Oakmont was the inspiration for The Wolf of Wall Street
This was a website courting mean and (often) defamatory material, including about Sarah Jones (a H.S. teacher and cheerleader).
Yet, Nik Lamas-Richie was not held liable by an appeals court in Jones v. Dirty World because of §230 (Ziniti 2014)
(Dirty World was deindexed by Google and went offline in 2023.)
… unnecessary, imprecise, impaired speech, and endangered sex workers
Concerns over sex exploitation, harassment, hate, and terrorism are complemented by Republican concerns about anti-conservative bias.
In Twitter v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google families of terrorist victims sued platforms.
Supreme Court ruled allegations didn’t establish sufficient culpability of platforms (Lennett 2023).
Under the narrow ruling, the state laws remain intact, but lower court injunctions also remain in place, meaning both laws continue to be paused. Although the justices voted 9-to-0 to return the cases to the lower courts, they splintered on the reasoning (VanSickle et al. 2024).
The cases remanded to lower courts (for additional 1st Amendment analysis) with an injunction against enforcement.
The court concluded that TikTok’s algorithm, which deliberately amplifies certain videos and challenges to users based on their engagement, was not a neutral conduit for user content but an active participant in shaping the content that users see.
In a classic case of cutting both ways the circuit court relied on 2024 SCOTUS opinion Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, which held that content promotion algorithms are a form of protected speech under the 1st Amendment. (Leijon 2025)
Other jurisdictions?
What do you think?