There are some things you can always count on in life: The sun rising and setting, the tide advancing and retreating, and UK police announcing new investigations of social media posts.

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This time, it’s over an Instagram post from London Assembly member and Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who initially accepted a collaboration request on an Instagram carousel of images from a recent Green Party event. Polanski was tagged as a co-author on the post by another account and approved the tag, bringing the post onto his account and into his followers’ newsfeeds.

What was in the post? How did police respond?

The fifth image in the carousel showed a man at the event wearing a T-shirt depicting artwork of a person operating a guillotine and the text “We’re only making plans for Nigel.” The BBC reports that the words on the shirt “are the same as the lyrics of a 1979 song by band XTC.” A party spokesman said of Polanski’s post, “Once this image was brought to his attention he immediately unshared the post. He unequivocally does not support this type of dangerous message.”

The UK’s Reform Party, and its leader Nigel Farage, made the case that the shirt is referencing Farage — and they’ve asked police to intervene. Reform Spokesperson for Home Affairs Zia Yusuf, who argued the image shows “the beheading of Nigel Farage,” said: “This is incitement to murder. It should be treated as such by the police.” He also wrote earlier this week, “If Zack Polanski is not in police custody by this time tomorrow, the Police will have declared open season on Members of Parliament.”

Farage, too, weighed in calling for arrest: “If I was to post anything as inciteful then I would expect to be arrested, and so should Polanski.”

In a statement, Metropolitan Police confirmed they’re looking into it: “Earlier today we received a third-party report relating to an image shared on social media. We take reports of this nature extremely seriously, and officers are conducting inquiries into the matter.”

It’s not clear, though, whether police are looking into Polanski, the Instagram account that originally uploaded the photo, the man pictured wearing the shirt, or some combination of those involved. A freelance photojournalist who took and uploaded the photo said Polanski was not responsible for the image, and that he had reported himself to police to explain the context.

The UK’s uneasy political environment

Tensions around charged political expression are particularly high in the UK right now, given the recent gruesome murder of Ann Widdecombe, a politician and member of the Conservative, Brexit, and Reform Parties over her career. Widdecombe was found in her home earlier this month, bludgeoned to death with a hammer. Prosecutors have since charged a 28-year-old man with murder and terror offenses, and police are still investigating the suspect’s motives.

Politicians and commentators like Reform’s Zia Yusuf have connected the two cases, arguing that the guillotine image is particularly dangerous “just two weeks after our friend Ann was murdered.”

It’s not the only free speech question that has arisen in the aftermath of Widdecombe’s murder. Despite originally saying her posts were not criminal, police arrested University of Aberdeen web developer Heather Herbert for Bluesky posts celebrating Widdecombe’s death. “And some good news for once. I hope it was an extremely painful death. And I hope she was handcuffed to the bed as she screamed in agony,” Herbert wrote in a post. And in response to a critic of her comment, she said: “I’m done with being nice to pieces of human garbage like her.”

What does this mean for free speech?

Both these posts — the image of the guillotine and the comments celebrating Widdecombe’s murder — would be protected in the U.S., and the First Amendment has answered these questions before, some quite recently. They remain deeply contentious socially, though.

On the question of the first, the guillotine shirt that says “We’re only making plans for Nigel,” the Supreme Court’s definitive cases addressing true threats and incitement are instructive.

In Watts v. United States (1969), the case centered on an 18-year-old who said at a Vietnam War protest, “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ . . . They are not going to make me kill my black brothers.” The Court, finding that Watts’ speech was protected political hyperbole, explained that advocacy in the political arena “is often vituperative, abusive, and inexact.” True threats require that the speaker convey a serious intent to commit violence, not just engage in rough and tumble expression around politics.

Similarly, the Court’s reasoning in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), a First Amendment challenge to a Ku Klux Klan leader’s conviction under an Ohio criminal syndicalism law, lays out its approach to incitement to imminent lawless action. The Court ruled that simply advocating or celebrating violence is protected as long as it’s not intended and likely to provoke immediate unlawful action.

Without more, this T-shirt, whether a reference to Farage is intended or not, would not meet the high bar required for either the true threat or incitement tests in the U.S. — not for Polanski, the person who posted the image, nor the man who wore the shirt.

And regarding the legality of posts commenting on a political figure’s death, the United States is still dealing with the fallout of censorship after the murder of Charlie Kirk last fall, but it’s not a crime to speak ill of the dead. And for good reason. Guidelines around how we discuss the dead are matters we must map out socially, not legally.

Government bodies, including public universities that fired faculty members who posted controversial or critical tweets about Kirk after his killing, are now paying out steep settlements to those same faculty members who sued and raised First Amendment claims. FIRE has also brought two First Amendment lawsuits over protected speech about Kirk, both in Tennessee. FIRE recently secured an $835,000 settlement for retired law enforcement officer Larry Bushart, who was jailed for 37 days after posting a meme on Facebook that quoted President Trump saying, “We have to get over it.” And FIRE’s case on behalf of an Iraq War veteran, fired by a state agency for criticizing Kirk in a Facebook comment, is still ongoing.

But ultimately we’re talking about the censorship battles taking place in the UK, where there is certainly no First Amendment or neutral speech principles to be found. And that’s exactly the problem. The UK has created a turnkey censorship system so expansive and reflexive that officers are encouraged to act as speech police in part because they already have done so, thousands and thousands of times.

Farage said he believes he would be investigated over a similar post, so he wanted to see Polanski receive the speech police treatment. The solution, however, is not a race to the bottom, where police are asked and expected to run a magnifying glass over every X, TikTok, and Instagram post. All that will do is further entrench an already disturbing practice granting officials the power to narrow the boundaries of expression. Indeed, in testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee last year, Farage lamented that on “the question of civil liberties, Britain has, unfortunately, now lost her way,” and rightly advocated First Amendment-style protections in the UK.

After dropping the case over comedian Graham Linehan’s tweets last year, Metropolitan Police admitted that officers should not be “policing toxic culture war debates” and that the agency must move away from investigating non-criminal online speech. That’s right. The UK needs to turn away from speech police and toward speech protections. You can’t fix a free speech problem by digging deeper into censorship.

Last month, Georgia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (the country, not the American state) established the Division for Combating Hate Speech. The department’s role is to identify offenders and their identities, draft reports of the alleged offense, and pass them along for prosecution. State Minister for Coordination of Law Enforcement Bodies Mamuka Mdinaradze said the group is needed to address “any type of public communication that contains hate speech, incitement of enmity, violation of dignity, and other similar acts.”

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Revisions to the criminal code pushed through by the ruling Georgian Dream party last year, which punish insults to public officials with fines and short prison terms, have given this new division a vast range of political speech to target. And the department has been busy indeed.

In just one month of hunting down alleged “hate speech,” staff forwarded 150 cases to courts for prosecution, even when the target of the speech hadn’t filed a complaint. In yet another victory for the department, presumably one of many more to come, a journalist who insulted politicians on social media was sentenced to prison last week.

Vakho Sanaia, a journalist with Formula TV, wrote a Facebook post in June sarcastically encouraging others not to call Parliamentary Speaker Shalva Papuashvili and Member of Parliament Lado Bozhadze “dicks.” On July 10, the Tbilisi City Court fined Sanaia around $2,300 for the post. Sanaia responded to the ruling with two more comments: “I wrote a post, saying ‘don’t call Papuashvili and Bozhadze d*cks’ [sic] and they fined me ₾6,000. Well, go ahead and call them that, then,” and a joke that the decision meant the court was therefore declaring Papuashvili and Bozhadze “dicks.”

Sanaia soon learned the Division for Combating Hate Speech was pursuing an investigation of these two new posts, and last week he was sentenced to 14 days in prison on top of his original fine.

“After becoming aware of the previous court decision, he published a post that also contained insulting language,” a lawyer representing the Ministry of Internal Affairs said of the decision. “Accordingly, we considered this to be a disregard for the court’s decision and an indication of a willingness to continue engaging in unlawful conduct.”

There are many lessons to learn from Georgia’s continuing descent into censorship, but an especially important one is that this is simply an inherent risk of giving government officials a wider mandate to crack down on “hateful” expression: Authorities may very well take it as an opportunity to punish speech they deem hateful toward . . . authority.

Just remember last year, when President Donald Trump, responding to questions about then-Attorney General Pam Bondi’s threat to target “hate speech” for prosecution, suggested Bondi would “go after” journalists because they treat Trump “unfairly” and “hate” him. (“Hate speech,” of course, is quite famously protected under the First Amendment, and Bondi later attempted to walk back her statement.)

Sanaia’s arrest isn’t an outlier in Georgia, and it isn’t even the first time he has personally been charged under this law against insulting politicians. Nor, unfortunately, is his case an outlier globally. In Germany, for example, politicians receive heightened protection against insults under the country’s criminal code, and social media users regularly face prosecution and investigation for online jokes and insults about political figures. One man’s home was even raided after he — and I’m sensing a broader theme here — called a Hamburg minister a “penis.”

In France, a woman was prosecuted for calling President Emmanuel Macron “filth” on Facebook, and in Italy a journalist was fined over tweets joking about Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s height. Around the world, it’s the same: A mocking tweet can land you in hot water, and maybe even behind bars.

Even in the United States, where insulting political figures stands second only to baseball as a national pastime, this right is under attack. That’s why FIRE sued leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement this month after federal agents issued a “WARNING NOTICE” to a man simply for likening the head of ICE to a Nazi over email.

Authorities should not exempt themselves from criticism by the very people whose lives they affect, sometimes in profound ways. Restrictions on insults to public officials fundamentally invert the way free societies should function — and government “hate speech” bodies like the one Georgia just rolled out only deepen authorities’ power to narrow the boundaries of political speech.

If we’re not careful about making free expression non-negotiable in emerging technology, it will be the authoritarians’ world — and the rest of us will just be living in it.

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That much is clear in a new report from Meta’s Oversight Board, which found that “some of the world’s most-used models from Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Meta and OpenAI are significantly less likely to criticize political regimes that restrict free expression.” Users in free countries are experiencing “free speech infringements by proxy,” meaning that censorial foreign powers may be shaping the material LLMs produce to people outside of their borders. That is incredibly dangerous for how we discuss, research, and understand the world around us.

Why is it happening? And what does it mean for AI users? Let’s dive in.

The findings on political content about repressive regimes

They’re troubling.

Conducted using an IP address in Australia, the Board’s survey found that models “were more than twice as likely to refuse to criticize repressive regimes” compared to freer nations. When prompted to produce “politically critical materials,” on average the models refused a shocking 45% requests about China, nearly matched at 43% for Thailand, then followed by Cambodia and Saudi Arabia hovering just over 30%. Compare that to the U.S. and UK, where denial rates averaged just under 10%.

The ways that LLMs refused to answer were notable, too. In some cases, no meaningful response is provided. But in others, the models suggested that they were not willing to expose users — or even the models themselves — to breaches of censorship laws. One of the justifications Claude Opus 4 provided was that it didn’t want to “put individuals at risk.” Gemini 3 Pro flat out said it would not “generate content that critiques the King of Thailand or violates lèse-majesté laws,” Thai laws that aggressively punish insults and critiques of the monarchy. (Thailand has targeted government critics for speech they have posted freely in other nations.)

The Board’s report cautioned that the reasons for these findings could be complex. Results “could be shaped at various points throughout the model development process, including latent biases in training data, the complex interaction of many different approaches to align model behavior, deliberate restrictions or any combination of these factors.”

The broader speech environment tech is swimming in

While the factors behind these results are complex, one thing is clear-cut: People are using LLMs around the world, and some countries have deeply restrictive censorship laws that will inevitably create a burden on speech abroad. Even companies much further removed from expressive content, like hotel chains and airlines, are under pressure to abide by authoritarian nations’ preferences and politics.

That burden may come from overt demands, like a court order or a government official’s retaliatory threats. Look at Reuters, for example, which complied with a 2023 Indian court order demanding an investigative piece be removed from “public domain” by temporarily taking down the article globally, not just for Indian readers.

But it can also come from a place of cowardice or profit-seeking, either in the administration and leadership of these companies or in the way their models are directed to operate. Here is the ugly truth about authoritarian censorship seeping across borders: It often takes place with no explicit threat at all. Executives see the writing on the wall and simply presume self-censorship is a precondition for market access and voluntarily decide to play ball.

I discuss this incentive in higher education at length in my recent book Authoritarians in the Academy, which documents how American universities have chipped away at their core values of academic freedom and free expression in pursuit of the financial and expansion opportunities offered by oppressive governments.

But there was also a direct admission from a tech company when Midjourney’s CEO openly admitted the AI image-generating tool’s policies would hew to China’s censorship laws and prohibit satirical images of Xi Jinping. The reason? Market access, of course. “Political satire in china [sic] is pretty not-okay,” CEO David Holz said, and “the ability for people in China to use this tech is more important than your ability to generate satire.” Because China limits what its people can say, Midjourney chose to pass that restriction along to the rest of the world.

Be wary of corporations that claim to censor for users’ own good when that censorship may be good for the corporation, too.

Why this matters for what we see and say

We no longer live in the days when a person who wants to say something just needs to know what local or national laws are on the books. What you can say online, and sometimes even offline, may be influenced and determined by a panoply of overlapping foreign speech laws. The same goes for what you can read, learn, and generate on the internet, from an online classroom to a social media platform to the LLM you use for work or study.

These manipulated results affect the millions, and perhaps billions, of people who are growing increasingly reliant on AI in their work, research, and play. But it will subtly affect many more people than just the direct users of LLMs. As writers, creators, companies, educators, and researchers generate content for broader audiences, it will influence political and historical material at scale — whether shared in books, movies, social media content, or more — for consumers unaware of the bias incorporated into the models producing it.

What a victory it represents for authoritarians to see their repression ripple far beyond their own police and prisons into technology that shapes what people say and understand about them and the world.

If we’re not careful to guard against the willful or unintentional influence of foreign censorship laws or practices, the intelligence these models provide may prove artificial indeed.

Free Speech Dispatch covers censorship trends and challenges around the world. If you want to know where free expression is under attack and why it matters, subscribe now to get each edition delivered to your inbox.

Free speech is in a curious place today. We’re facing challenges that, in many ways, feel fresh and new while at the same time fighting battles that feel ancient. Take two of the issues we discuss in this week’s Free Speech Dispatch: age-gating and blasphemy. While restrictions on young people’s speech is nothing new, what is new — and remarkable — is that governments in different countries now seem to be pursuing the same aggressive approach to tech regulation. On the other hand, even today the right to commit “blasphemy” is far from settled. People can still be put to death for it. Restrictions on insults to the gods may be as old as humanity itself.

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EU bans loom as Australia hardens its own

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing on teen social media bans. The bans are everywhere, and more are coming. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced this week that the EU will seek some form of a youth social media ban across Europe.

“It is clear we need age-appropriate restrictions to platforms,” von der Leyen said. Though she did not offer exact details on what restrictions would apply to which ages, she advocated “a phased and gradual access for different age ranges.” An expert panel convened by von der Leyen pushed for policies across the EU that restrict “social media plus” — including platforms with video games and chatbots — for children under 13, but added that member states could consider applying the rules to older ages too. Irish officials, for example, have signaled their intent to move forward with an under-16 ban.

Check back for more details this autumn, when the European Commission plans to roll out its draft policy.

Over in Australia, the landmark under-16 ban has been missing the mark. It simply has not worked to keep kids off of social media. So officials are doubling down. Parliament will now consider legislation that would double the maximum fine for platforms that don’t take enough steps to keep kids offline, bringing the fine up to nearly 70 million USD.

We’ve also discussed at length the problems with the UK’s incoming under-16 ban — we know too little about how it will operate, but we do know that officials have threatened it will be more expansive and extreme than Australia’s rules. With Keir Starmer’s exit as British prime minister, Labour Member of Parliament Andy Burnham is on track to fill the role. And Burnham has confirmed that the change in leadership will not signal a change in policy.

“He knows this ban is a critical first step to keeping kids safe online and preventing further tragedies for families,” a spokesperson said. “The task now is to build on the consensus across political parties to make sure it’s enforced in full, and delivered with the urgency this issue demands.”

New ‘trusted’ media policy and more from the UK

There, as always, is more free speech news out of the UK. Last month, government officials unveiled a new “trusted” media strategy to combat disinformation. Measures under discussion include requirements that social media and video sharing platforms “make sure that news content from public service media . . . and other trustworthy providers, is prominent and easy to find on their platforms.” Platforms may be required to augment their algorithms to ensure government-approved sources are “more likely to be at the top of people’s social media feeds when they search for news.”

Meanwhile, Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice is pushing an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill, introduced into Parliament earlier this year. The amendment would require that all election materials be in either English or Welsh — with a penalty of fines or up to six months in prison for violations.

And the UK’s track record with censorial defamation threats continues: JK Rowling, author and founder of sexual violence support center Beira’s Place, is offering to fund legal action over an Amnesty International UK report — “A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK” — that accused Beira’s Place, For Women Scotland, the LGB Alliance, and similar groups of being “anti-rights.”

Amnesty quickly took down the report, saying its “use of language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK which is why it was promptly removed.” Rowling has not dropped the matter — her organization Beria’s place is still threatening legal action, and Rowling is encouraging others listed in the report to apply to her fund to target Amnesty UK with lawsuits over its criticism.

Hong Kong police targets booksellers

If Hong Kong authorities are to be believed, the city is in the midst of a dangerous crime wave — from bookshops. Independent bookshops and their employees have been the target of police raids, tax investigations, and arrests. This week, police raided two more shops, Have a Nice Stay and Greenfield Bookstore, and arrested five employees on sedition charges. The Hong Kong Free Press reports that police “found that the five had displayed and sold items carrying seditious intent” that “could stir hatred for the Hong Kong government, the Judiciary and law enforcement bodies.”

After the raid, Secretary for Security Chris Tang said he would not create a “banned books” list, as that would “let criminals off the hook.” He added that booksellers have a “responsibility” to ensure their material “won’t endanger national security,” just as restaurants have a duty not to sell poison.

Author CJ Hopkins faces prosecution, again

Readers may remember FIRE covering the case of CJ Hopkins, an American writer living in Germany, who faced prosecution for violating Germany’s law against disseminating propaganda. The charges centered on two tweets Hopkins posted that showed a swastika and medical mask on the cover art for his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021).

Hopkins was initially acquitted, but the prosecutor appealed the verdict and he’ll be sentenced later this year. Last November, Hopkins received yet another visit from police, who interrogated him and seized his devices. But Hopkins says that, while he waits to be sentenced in the case over the cover art for his book, he is now facing separate charges for the “authoring, publishing, and advertising” of the very same book. Hopkins says he had even cancelled the distribution of his book after his previous prosecution, but is nevertheless facing new charges.

A blasphemy accusation can be a death sentence

Seven nations still keep the death penalty for blasphemy on the books, though outside of Iran actual government-run executions are rare. Mob executions, however, are a different story and simply being accused of blasphemy in Nigeria or Pakistan can result in vigilante violence. This month, an armed mob of men and even children surrounded a courthouse where a blasphemy suspect was being held and demanded they be allowed to execute the accused.

And in Pakistan, Amir Peter, a 61-year-old man awaiting trial for blasphemy, died after suffering deteriorating health in custody. A shopkeeper accused him of insulting the prophet Muhammad and Peter was held until his death, even though he suffered from advanced dementia. An investigation this month found that in Punjab, the province in which Peter was arrested, most of the blasphemy cases registered over the past five years were found to be totally fabricated by accusers who use the law to settle personal fights and disputes.

In less lethal, but still disturbing, news, Turkish authorities detained comedian Deniz Goktas upon when he landed in Istanbul and questioned him for “publicly insulting religious values.” Goktas’ recent set in Istanbul earned millions of views on YouTube — and apparently dozens of complaints from viewers for his jokes about religion.

EU court affirms Russian propaganda sanctions

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled this month that EU sanctions against broadcasting or transmitting Russian state propaganda from RT or Sputnik extend to websites that are free to access and operate without a profit motive. The case centered on a German state’s 2023 prosecution and seizure of the Traugott Ickeroth blog. That year, the blog reposted three videos from RT. Reason reports that it’s a site run by reader donations where one of the bloggers “uses the ‘Traugott Ickerroth’ pseudonym to publish tracts about interdimensional aliens and the Illuminati.” The Court confirmed that German prosecutors should pursue action even against non-commercial entities that broadcast sanctioned content.

Even Spongebob can’t evade Russia’s LGBT ban

A highly memed clip of Spongebob Squarepants casting a rainbow over his head looks a little different to Russian viewers. Instead, there’s just a yellow arc over his head. A likely reason? The station may very well be trying to avoid Russia’s oppressive LGBT propaganda laws, which dole out harsh penalties for symbols and material — rainbows included — deemed to be advancing sexual themes or identities banned by the state.

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Where exactly are the lines drawn around speech about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? It’s one of the most pressing free speech questions today, given both how contested the subject matter is and how rapidly the legal environment is shifting. European nations like France and the United Kingdom have pursued new protest restrictions and, in Australia, the state of Queensland continues to arrest activists under a new ban on the phrase “from the river to the sea.”

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Germany has stood at the center of these debates, too. And now the German parliament is pressing for more radical legal changes: a bill criminalizing speech that denies Israel’s right to exist and punishing offenders with fines or up to five years in prison. If passed, Germany would be the first European nation to legislate on this specific type of expression.

Germany has banned Holocaust denial for decades, but German legislators say more action is needed to fight rising antisemitism. Boris Rhein, head of the German state Hesse, said, “Those who deny Israel’s right to exist are attacking Jewish life. Those who attack Jewish life are attacking our free and democratic order.”

This bill would expand Section 130 of the Criminal Code, which addresses incitement to hatred and Holocaust denial, to also cover public denials of Israel’s right to exist and calls for its elimination that promote “a willingness to commit acts of antisemitic violence or arbitrary acts.”

The Bundesrat, the upper house of Parliament, advanced the bill last week and now it heads to the lower house, the Bundestag. Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, celebrated the bill’s progress, saying, “The German parliament today drew a bright red line, according to which denying the existence of the State of Israel is no longer legal in Germany.”

Similar expression has drawn attention in the United States, too, especially in the context of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA’s) definition of antisemitism. FIRE takes no position on the working definition itself, but has repeatedly expressed serious concerns about the censorship threats posed by incorporation of the IHRA definition into criminal law and antidiscrimination enforcement, including on campus.

Of particular concern are some of the IHRA’s examples of contemporary antisemitism, including one which directly addresses denial of Israel’s right to exist, the speech Germany’s new bill seeks to govern:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Some or many readers will no doubt find this kind of speech to be antisemitic, but it is nevertheless protected political expression in the United States. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that the government does not get to decide what political speech is unreasonable or unjust, and which countries or conflicts Americans cannot fully and freely discuss.

Whether the German parliament will ultimately finalize the bill is not yet certain but one thing is clear: Democracies around the world are fighting many of the same battles around the limits of speech, whether it’s hateful expression or under-16 bans, and we can expect similar bills and regulations to pop up across borders. That’s why the First Amendment is so vital — it can act as a bulwark against speech restrictions that have advanced in other nations from doing the same here.

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A recent records request revealed that a Canadian government department is working up a potential new federal strategy on misinformation. But the section explaining what “legal action” would be taken against misinformation, and either the users posting it or the platforms hosting it, is obscured by a large black bar.

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Ottawa outlet Blacklock’s Reporter shared this month that it obtained the 35-page memo “Misinformation and Disinformation Strategy” from Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly’s office.

The memo recommends that the Innovation, Science and Economic Development department determine when material is “factually incorrect, misleading or out of context.” It also singles out social media platforms as “channels where misinformation related to the department’s mandate is most likely to appear or spread.”

And the memo advises a “transition from a reactive stance to one that is focused on prevention and early detection” that “will enable the department to proactively address false and misleading information.”

But most important is the section titled “legal action.” It also happens to be almost entirely redacted. A paragraph underneath it is covered by a black bar and the only visible portion states: “Ensure any such actions are documented, proportionate, and subject to senior level approval.”

There is certainly a role for governments to appropriately respond to false information. There are a lot of lies and half-truths that can be detrimental to public health and safety — whether about surging viral and bacterial infections or threats from foreign powers — and public officials can serve their constituents well by directing people to accurate information.

But how they do so is absolutely vital and the redactions here are troubling. Public officials can use government channels, social media advocacy, traditional media campaigns, and more to counter mistruths and to challenge what they deem false. But that method — more speech — is vastly different from potential legal action against either individual users who post or platforms that host information that the government deems false or even “out of context.”

For one thing, sometimes government officials are themselves incorrect about important matters. You can be elected or appointed as a government official, but you’re still just a human being. And like death and taxes, one of the realities of life is that we are imperfect creatures who get things wrong sometimes. That’s okay. It’s part of the human condition. But much danger lies in granting imperfect people not just the power to determine what is true or false, but to do so with the authority of the state as an enforcer.

And even more importantly: Sometimes politicians determine what is a lie or a fact not based on objective reality, but on what is personally or politically useful for them. Take a stroll through history, recent and ancient, and you’ll encounter many politicians and officials who sought power specifically for the purpose of maintaining it and abusing it. We must be careful against granting them authority to set the legal parameters of truth and falsity, even when we address the real challenges posed by lies and dishonesty.

These are live questions in the United States, too, not just Canada or other nations.

That’s why FIRE has endorsed the bipartisan JAWBONE Act, introduced last month by Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Wyden. (See FIRE’s explainer on jawboning here.) The act would require the federal government to report its communications to social media companies and broadcasters about the speech they host and allow people to sue if the federal government is unconstitutionally leaning on private actors to censor speech the government cannot.

FIRE also sued Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in February over their demands that Apple and Meta take down, respectively, an app that hosted footage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in public and a Facebook group for users to share information about ICE operations in Chicago. (The lawsuit is now against Bondi’s and Noem’s successors, Attorney General Todd Blanche and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin.) Just because federal officials allege information is dangerous, harmful, or detrimental to government policy does not mean they are exempt from the First Amendment’s limits on public officials’ ability to censor expression.

It isn’t clear whether this Canadian memo on misinformation advises standard jawboning, where government agencies would privately coerce social media platforms to take down speech it flags as misinformation, or, as some outlets have suggested as a possibility, direct targeting of the individuals who post that speech. But both present deep challenges to free expression, and the existing uncertainty about what strategy the government may pursue only adds to that threat.

FIRE’s Free Speech Dispatch covers new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.

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German politicians question law criminalizing insults to politicians — rightly so

Deutsche Welle reports that a group of legislators from parties including the Christian Democratic Union and the Greens are advocating reform of Section 188 of the Criminal Code, which provides heightened protection to politicians against insults. Yes, that means pretty run-of-the-mill jokes and memes about politicians, from the mean-spirited to the mild, can currently be punished with fines or a prison term up to three years. And the law does not even require that the butt of the joke press charges.

The law occasionally catches international scorn, usually when an especially absurd case breaks containment of local media and goes global, like last year’s viral 60 Minutes segment about German speech policing. You may be familiar with some of the law’s greatest hits, for lack of a better term, like the investigations and even prosecutions of social media users who have called politicians names like “Schwachkopf” (weak-head) or “pimmel” (penis). Such words may not be particularly nice, but they’re also insults children throw around at each other on the playground. Politicians can presumably survive such barbs — in theory. A commenter was even briefly investigated by police for recently calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz “Pinocchio” on Facebook. (This targeting of online political speech is one of many reasons to be suspicious of Merz’s push for “real names” on the internet.)

Christian Democrat Jens Spahn admits that regardless of the intent behind the law — defenders say it was meant to protect democratic institutions — “what has emerged is the impression: The powerful have created a special law for themselves.” Well…yeah. The law retains popular support, though, according to a poll last month finding that 58% of Germans polled wanted to keep it and only 38% wanted to see it dismantled.

Amending the law would not magically fix all of Germany’s free speech problems, but it would help to reverse the very backwards notion that political figures deserve special protection from the words of the people they’re elected to govern.

Journalists allege censorship at U.S. ambassador’s event in Belgium

Did reporters asking questions of U.S. ambassador Belgium Bill White pose a security threat? That’s what European Correspondent journalists Julius E.O. Fintelmann and Samuel Dempsey allege Belgian police told them after they questioned them and removed them from an event with the ambassador over the weekend.

On Sunday, White held an invite-only event with thousands of attendees in Brussels’ largest public park to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. Fintelmann and Dempsey had permission to attend the event, and asked questions of other political figures attending. But they say shortly after they asked White a question, to which he replied “no comment,” a group of Belgian police officers working at the event approached them, took their IDs, and began to question them. They “asked whether The European Correspondent had a political leaning, whether we had an agenda, and how we had got into the event (that the American embassy invited us to).” The journalists report that officers were told to remove them because they posed an “active threat.”

About a week before the event, Dempsey also shared that an American citizen living in Belgium contacted the Zac Brown Band to encourage them not to perform at the event. White then emailed this person, Dempsey reports, with the message: “We would like to get in touch with you regarding your email to my friend Zac Brown what’s your best email and number? Pls do let us know because we know it already.”

Canada approves problematic Combatting Hate Act

Canada has now enacted Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, to amend the country’s criminal code to heighten penalties for certain acts and expression deemed motivated by hate. A wide range of civil liberties, religious, and advocacy groups have long opposed some provisions of the bill as well as a lack of recognition of their objections during the legislative process. Their concerns largely centered on the bill’s reforms to hate symbol policing and “intimidation and obstruction offences” outside houses of worship or buildings used by an “identifiable group.”

Bill C-9 creates a new “hate propaganda offence that makes it a crime to wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group by publicly displaying” designated terrorist symbols, Nazi symbols, nooses or “a symbol that so nearly resembles” one of the above that it is “likely” to be it. A joint statement signed by 65 advocacy groups stresses that this provision “introduces significant legal uncertainty and risks capturing lawful political or cultural expression.”

These groups also voiced concern about the lack of clarity and overbreadth in the restrictions on “intimidation and obstruction.” As the Canadian Bar Association warned earlier this year, “The meanings of the words ‘obstruction’ and ‘interference’ are also very broad. It is not clear at what point a person, their words, or their actions would constitute an obstruction and interference on the face of the amendments.”

Japan pursues flag desecration ban

Japan already bans desecration of foreign flags and is now seeking to apply similar rules to its own national flag. Three parties including the ruling Liberal Democratic Party introduced a bill targeting “publicly damaging, removing, or defacing” Japan’s flag in a “way or situation that evokes significant discomfort or disgust in people.” Violators of the law could face a fine up to $1,250 or two years in prison.

Flag desecration remains deeply divisive around the world, including in the United States, but that some perceive it to be a discomforting or disgusting act does not negate the fact that it’s basic political expression. Such expressive activity is protected in the United States thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Texas v. Johnson. “The way to preserve the flag’s special role is not to punish those who feel differently about these matters,” Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority of the Court, but “to persuade them that they are wrong.” Spot on.

More censorship news out of Asia

• In Hong Kong’s neverending quest to crack down on alleged “sedition,” booksellers have been a frequent target of government retaliation. Former district councillor Leticia Wong and her Hunter Bookstore business partner were arrested last week for displaying “seditious” material and “inciting hatred against the Hong Kong SAR government, judiciary, and law enforcement agencies.”

• Thailand’s oppressive lese-majeste law found another victim. A Thai court sentenced a man to 18 months in prison for a comment in a Facebook group dedicated to discussing the monarchy. At least 17 other people have faced similar royal defamation charges for their posts in the “Royalist Marketplace” group.

• Access now appears to be restored, but last month India blocked the messaging app Telegram over allegations that it was being used to share leaked questions to a medical exam. Telegram’s attempt to challenge the ban in Delhi’s High Court failed.

• Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi and eight others have been sentenced to 74 lashes each over their involvement in a 2024 live-streamed concert where Ahmadi performed without a hijab.

Paris police ban left-wing party’s concert

Paris police prefect Patrice Faure denied left wing political party La France Insoumise’s attempt to hold a concert on June 21 at the city’s Place de la République. Faure’s decision largely rested on the views of the concert’s expected performers and attendees like rapper Médine, who has reportedly expressed support for the comedian Dieudonné, the target of a number of prosecutions across Europe for antisemitic remarks and Holocaust denial. Other potential attendees of concern were artist Soso Maness, who reportedly started “Everybody hates the police” chants at past events, and activist Assa Traoré, whose presence has “led to significant public order disturbances.”

“The event risks attracting a particularly hostile audience toward law enforcement,” the prefecture warned, “in a highly polarized political context ahead of the next presidential election.”

Arrests continue under Queensland’s ban on ‘from the river to the sea’

Helen O’Sullivan, a 64-year-old grandmother and activist, was arrested under Queensland’s recent hate speech ban after using the phrase “from the river to the sea” at a rally outside Brisbane Magistrates Court. Inside, the court was handling the cases of over two dozen people charged under the same law, for the same offense. Over loudspeaker, O’Sullivan had said she was “speaking against the [Queensland Premier David] Crisafulli government that is attempting to silence valid criticism of the state of Israel” and asserted that “from the river to the sea is a call for democracy and freedom.”

Among social media commenters, columnists, and even heads of state, it’s a typical refrain: If we just rid ourselves of that pesky internet anonymity and pseudonymity, we will have a cleaner, better, happier world. Anonymity, the common sentiment goes, is the weapon of the evil and the cruel.

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Despite some prevalent misconceptions, anonymity is not an invention of social media, email, or the internet age. The American founding fathers, for example, took great advantage of pseudonymous and anonymous expression, as have denizens of Rome for hundreds of years on the city’s “talking statues.”

Opposition to anonymity is not new either — far from it. Nearly 400 years ago the British Parliament sought to attack anonymous speech in the 1643 Printing Ordinance, one of a number of related attacks on the right to free press, to ensure all printers were licensed — and known by name to the Crown. Fast forward a few centuries. In the past year, the Trump administration has attempted to use oversight-free administrative subpoenas to unmask online critics of federal policy.

There are some figures, politicians especially, who advocate an end to anonymity with ill intent and the specific desire to curb public criticism. Look back through history, one week ago or one millennium ago, and you’ll find frequent attempts by the powerful to diminish the right to anonymous speech as a means to attack political speech. The reason is simple: Without the protection anonymity offers, critics may be far less likely to risk the punishment that may accompany challenging power.

This piece, though, is intended as a reply to good faith advocates who sincerely believe that the information environment and public discourse would markedly improve if we necessitated the use of “real names” online. (Here’s one recent piece, for example, supporting a real names requirement because “much of the worst content is produced by anons.”)

But they are wrong, for two major reasons. First, the notion that anonymity is largely to blame for ugliness online is not particularly well supported. South Korea actually legislated “real names” rules in the early 2000s, with various developments culminating in a 2008 law requiring real names from commenters on sites with 100,000 daily visitors. The results were not what supporters expected. Research found little to no evidence that the requirements made a difference in the amount of cruel and ugly comments posted and “consensus across these studies was that the real name registration policy did not deter wild and unfounded positions from being promoted online.”

Not only that, but South Korean websites became “prime targets for hacking both from in and outside of the country” and “a series of high-profile cyberattacks made it clear that the real-name system was untenable,” including one hack affecting 35 million people — over half of the country’s population. (These are exactly some of the privacy concerns that FIRE has raised about burgeoning age and identity verification schemes internationally and in the U.S., which will also diminish anonymous speech.) Four years later, the Korean Constitutional Court overturned the law on free speech grounds.

“Real name” supporters are wrong for another big reason, too. Anonymity and pseudonymity are not weapons trained upon the vulnerable. Rather, anonymity is the protector of the vulnerable, the shield between them and consequences ranging from embarrassment to social fallout to the worst forms of government oppression.

So who, exactly, is anonymity for?

It’s for a teenage girl who lost her mother when she was young, just got her period for the first time, and is too embarrassed to meet with a school nurse.

It’s for a 45-year-old who hasn’t drunk in years but is realizing that he’s struggling with his sobriety again and needs to talk privately about it.

It’s for a woman coming to terms with the fact that her boyfriend is abusive, and figuring out how to get away from him without his knowledge.

It’s for a Chinese immigrant who wants to speak about the human rights abuses he witnessed at home without his family in Beijing paying the price for his words, or repression following him abroad.

It’s for a factory worker looking for resources about how to report unsafe conditions without losing his job.

It’s for a college freshman who needs to talk about being gay without fearing his family will learn of it before he’s ready to tell them.

It’s for a grandmother who just received a breast cancer diagnosis and wants to discreetly discuss her anxiety about mastectomy.

It’s for a priest dealing with depression who doesn’t know how to manage his feelings of emptiness amidst his duties to his parish.

It’s for anyone who has ever experienced a fear, thought, idea, or emotion that they need to express but aren’t ready to share with colleagues, family, friends, acquaintances, or authority figures.

We need to abandon the tired conception we have of anonymity — the cheesy 90s-era stereotype of a hacker in a hoodie typing away rapidly in a shadowy room. Anonymity is for anyone who has ever needed the protection offered by a barrier between their ideas and their identity. It’s a guard dog that allows freer communication, truth-seeking, and soul-baring.

A difficult truth we need to accept is that in a free society we cannot just restrict the rights of others based solely on our fears and nightmares. Yes, there are ills that come from online expression and yes, it can disturb us even more when the origin of those ills seems untraceable and murky. Few defenders of anonymity will pretend otherwise.

But our fellow citizens do not owe us an explanation for why they may want to speak anonymously and we are not entitled to know or understand their reasons. To put it bluntly, it isn’t your damn business if someone speaks anonymously because they’re dealing with abuse, a difficult medical diagnosis, government oppression, or no seemingly noble reason at all. They don’t need our permission, and it isn’t owed to us.

Finally, many supporters of a real name requirement should consider that just because they don’t want to be anonymous now does not mean they will always feel that way. People change. The world evolves. Life happens. Politics shift. Perhaps you will get that medical diagnosis, or you will experience addiction, or you will think it safer to express your political views without your name attached. And you might no longer wish to live in the “real name” world you’ve helped to create.

Imagine your favorite team just scored an incredible, last-second goal at the World Cup. So you log online to celebrate with other fans. But, using data it’s already collected on you, the social media platform you like to post on wrongly guesses that you’re under 16 so it forces you to go to a third-party verification app and provide images of your face or your government-issued ID. You don’t really know much about the verification app, what country it’s based out of, what happens with your information, and whether you’re protected from hackers or data breaches. You’re not happy about it, but you hand over a photo of your passport and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt you.

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Now imagine that instead of posting about sports, you’re criticizing a powerful politician, or talking about your experiences with abuse or addiction, or discussing embarrassing medical issues you’re facing. Suddenly this “papers, please” approach to the internet sounds even more invasive, right? Unfortunately, that’s the direction we’re all headed — even here in the United States — and we have good reason to be wary of the global rush to sacrifice user privacy on the altar of age verification.

How has this worked (or not) in Australia?

Australia’s social media ban for under-16s went into effect in December 2025 and set a landmark standard many other nations now look to when crafting their own such regulations. As a preliminary matter: This law is not working as intended. The government’s own research found that months after the institution of the ban, roughly seven out of 10 kids still were using social media. And a study just released in the British Medical Journal found “little evidence was found of immediate substantive reductions in reported social media use by adolescents under 16 years.” Secondly, phones are already banned in Australian schools, so this ban is intended to address what kids do on the internet in their own free time, not during class time.

So, what exactly does this law — one that is rendered irrelevant during the school day, and isn’t even working properly outside it anyway — actually mandate? Well, pretty much what was in the hypothetical described earlier in this piece, except it’s not at all a hypothetical anymore.

Australia’s law mandates that social media companies, at risk of massive fines, collect either biometric info, government-issued IDs, or other data from users because they now have a duty to take sufficient steps to ensure users under 16 are kept logged out. In some cases, platforms can use existing data they have on users to verify age, like if an account has been open for a sufficient number of years, but will in many scenarios need to verify independently by gathering more user data. This is where third-party verification tools come in.

Look at Snapchat, for example. Snapchat uses k-ID, a company based in Singapore, and allows verification through a banking connection, government ID scan, or selfie the company uses to provide an age range. This requires quite an investment of trust on the user’s end. How do third-party companies like this retain and protect data? What kind of laws govern these companies abroad? Is such a company in another country more susceptible to censorial requests from local or foreign governments?

Australia does order that personal information collected for age verification “must be destroyed once all purposes have been met.” But those purposes include challenges and complaints, so it’s unclear exactly how long data will be retained on users who object to wrong age classifications. Worryingly, in research conducted before the ban went into effect, Australia’s Age Assurance Technology Trial “found some concerning evidence that in the absence of specific guidance, service providers were apparently over-anticipating the eventual needs of regulators about providing personal information for future investigation…which could lead to increased risk of privacy breaches due to unnecessary and disproportionate collection and retention of data.”

The longer that information is retained, and the more that is collected for verification, increases the risk of breaches or hacks that threaten a user’s privacy. Now multiply that individual risk by millions.

We don’t even need to imagine the hypothetical here, because it happened to nearly 70,000 Australians just weeks before the under-16 ban went into effect. A breach of a third-party customer service app Discord used “mainly to deal with” — guess what — “complaints relating to the platform’s age assurance processes” was hacked, leading to the release of “government ID images, names, usernames, email addresses, and some limited billing information.”

Expect more such attacks in the future.

In addition to introducing new risks from data breaches and hacks, the Australian government admits that mandated age verification introduces new risks for phishing attempts by scammers seeking to take advantage of confusion surrounding the ban. But the government puts much of the onus on social media platforms to ensure users understand the verification process and on users to read up to make sure they aren’t being scammed.

We have, quite reasonably, spent much of the 21st century debating what should be our relationship to tech companies and what amount of our personal lives and details we are comfortable handing over, knowingly or not. Governments have even been hauling tech CEOs in to question them about their intake of individuals’ data. Yet now countries like Australia are mandating that they collect it or face consequences.

As the Australian Human Rights Commission explains, even if some user accounts ultimately evade age checks, this signals a broader shift in how people use the internet:

The eSafety Commissioner’s guidance tries to reassure us: ‘No, not every account holder will go through an age check process if the platform has other accurate data.’ But that doesn’t actually mean you escape scrutiny. It just means that platforms will use what they already know about you to make the call. That’s the real shift that is happening here. We’re moving to a world where the law requires you to be profiled in order to participate.

The online world we’re moving toward is a “papers, please” one, where vital venues of public discussion might now only be open to those who are willing to trust tech companies and the third party verification apps they use with information that can eliminate their anonymity online, and the governments responsible for mandating the collection of that information.

Many users will very likely provide the information they need to log on and continue communicating with their friends and families. But maybe they’ll think twice about what they say and do. This new era of the internet is unlikely to be significantly safer for children. But it will be much less free for everyone.

Is the UK’s age verification plan worse?

You’ve likely heard by now that the UK (along with France, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Malaysia, Greece, Denmark, Norway, and the European Union) is pursuing its own under-16 ban.

The ban will happen even though the exact details for its enforcement and verification methods are not yet public — but the UK intends to avoid Australia’s failures. That’s why Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised this month that the British version will be “Australia-plus,” as the UK will “learn the lessons from Australia’s experience” and “make it far harder for children to bypass safeguards.” (Starmer has since resigned as prime minister but there is currently no indication that the government’s plans for the policy will change.)

UK citizens have reason to worry. Australia’s enforcement of its under-16 ban comes with a wealth of risks to user privacy, so to see government officials signal that they intend more severe enforcement suggests the potential for even greater privacy threats.

Perhaps even most alarming is officials’ open interest in targeting virtual private networks to crack down on verification evasion. VPN use rose last year after the rollout of the UK’s similarly messy Online Safety Act, when internet users sought to avoid roadblocks from the government against online “harms.” After the Online Safety Act was implemented, UK officials said they were “gather[ing] information on VPN usage.” And as I explained at Persuasion last week:

One problem facing advocates of internet restrictions is the availability of virtual private networks (VPNs), which reroute traffic and allow users to access banned content or sites from behind firewalls or blocks. The UK government is well aware of the challenge VPNs may pose to its under-16 ban, and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall announced this week that the government “will make further statements in July about VPNs.” Children’s Minister Josh MacAlister has said there are “options there about whether we could age-gate VPN use, which would be really welcome.”

Many UK citizens no doubt have valid and reasonable concerns about the way their children experience the internet and social media. But they may be shocked and surprised by the amount of power and control UK officials claim they need to solve the problem. Should UK officials travel down the path of targeting VPN usage, they may find themselves more in line with countries like China, Iran, and Russia. It’s not good company.

Is the United States following the same path?

Alarmingly, yes. The home of the First Amendment is on course to embrace the “papers, please” era of the internet and has been slinking towards it for years now.

A number of states have been developing and passing bills, many of which are facing challenges, that pose many of the same concerns we’ve raised in the international context. At least 19 states have passed legislation addressing minors’ access to social media or “addictive” feeds, but some are enforceable, some enjoined, and some not yet effective. And more than 20 states have enacted age-verification laws for adult-content websites, many of which became more secure after the Supreme Court’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton in 2025. Separately, app-store age-assurance laws are being litigated in states such as Texas and Utah.

While this takes place among the states, at the federal level we’re seeing a number of proposals being considered, including the so-called “Kids Online Safety Act,” or KOSA, which was incorporated in the House’s broader KIDS Act package and has been the subject of negotiations between the Senate and the White House. The House and Senate have slightly different versions of the bill, but both would impose regulations that would effectively force social media websites and other platforms to conduct age verification of their users. And since it’s a federal bill, states that wanted to maintain a free and open internet would be overridden. The entire country would be forced to reveal their identity and data before they could speak online.

What this means for the American people is that both the state and federal government could be mandating collection of information about you at every step you engage with the internet. Soon, everything you do online could have an element of age assurance or verification, from downloading an app in the app store to making an account to posting a photo, whether you’re a 14-year-old trying to game or a 40-year-old posting about recipes. The debate is rapidly expanding to include video games and AI chatbots as well.

And that creates a lot of risks for data breaches, overly broad data collection and retention, censorial legal demands for collected data, corporate and governmental malfeasance, pressure to self-censor, and perhaps blatant First Amendment violations. Every new layer and every new mandate brings more potential for risk. As we’ve unfortunately seen many times over the years, people including high-level government officials will maliciously seek to root out the identities of their critics, so the more layers of anonymity we can preserve in online speech, the better.

Americans can take seriously the need to protect kids online while still recognizing that many of the policy and legislative solutions offered today are creating intolerable burdens on our ability to speak freely and anonymously on the internet. The reality is that age verification to a large extent requires us to confirm identity, and we will come to regret so closely tying our expressive activity online to government-mandated age and identity verification. Once we create this legislative infrastructure of surveillance we may find it very difficult to tear down.

This week, in the Streisand effect…

Cenk Uygur, political activist and co-host of “The Young Turks,” along with his nephew, the left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, were blocked from entering the UK this morning. Both were set to give several speeches at SXSW London as well as the Oxford Union in the coming week, but were alerted late last night that their visas had been revoked and they would not be admitted.

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According to a statement from the British interior ministry, this was due to concerns that “their presence in the U.K. may not be conducive to the public good.”

No further reason was given by UK officials, which of course opened the floor up for speculation — particularly from Uygur, Piker, and their audiences. Although none of their scheduled talks were on the topic, both commentators cited their public stance on Israel and the war in Gaza as the reason behind their visa revocations.

“I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel,” Uygur posted on X. “Are we free anymore? This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!”

Piker made similar comments on his Twitch stream late last night, saying, “It’s a sad state of affairs where obviously the interests of Israel take the highest priority.”

This is, unfortunately, a trend. Last month, the British government banned 11 “far right agitators” from entering the country ahead of a rally organized by controversial activist Tommy Robinson. In January, Dutch journalist and political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek was also banned from entering the UK, three days after criticizing Prime Minister Keir Starmer on free speech grounds. French philosopher and anti-immigration activist Renaud Camus was also barred entry in April of last year for “going against the public good.”

Like any country, the British government can exercise broad discretion when it comes to who it decides to let into its borders. There is currently no proof that Ugyur’s and Piker’s views on Israel were the motivating factor behind their visa revocations, but if they were, it’s yet more evidence of the UK’s backsliding on free speech in recent years. Remember the UK police database tracking “non-crime hate incidents”? Or the 12,000 people arrested in the UK in 2023 for their online speech? And who can forget the UK government’s ominous and Orwellian “Think before you post” warning on social media back in 2024?

Perhaps most disappointingly, the banning of scheduled speakers from entering your country also betrays an unwillingness or inability to engage with ideas and arguments on their merits. Barring their entry and thinking you’ve shut them down is like having your opponent killed in the locker room before a boxing match and declaring yourself the champion. This, particularly in the land that gave us John Stuart Mill, is pretty shameful behavior.

And of course, preventing Uygur and Piker from entering will only increase the energy and attention surrounding their commentary, which already reaches massive audiences — including in the UK. “The Young Turks” averages 200 million views per month, and Piker’s Twitch stream has a daily audience of 30,000. Keeping them from speaking on your shores isn’t going to silence them at all. It’s just going to give them even more to talk about.

FIRE’s Free Speech Dispatch covers new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.

UK takes two steps back

Last week, the High Court of England and Wales overturned a £585,000 ($793,696) fine against the University of Sussex. The school had allegedly violated free speech policies by investigating philosophy professor Kathleen Stock for institutional transphobia because she believes people cannot change their biological sex. But the Court said that the Department of Education had unfairly targeted the school in order to make an example out of it.

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The Police Federation (an alternative to regular trade unions, which UK police cannot join) has spent over £500,000 in legal fees fighting the High Court’s ruling that it violated the Article 10 free speech rights of two men: Rick Prior, former head of London police, by suspending him for saying his officers were hesitant to act over fear of being called racist, and his colleague Richard Cooke, by suspending him for saying his force was not “institutionally racist.”

Also in the UK

• The government is introducing a new university complaints system that will allow staff and speakers to report any suppression of speech. Universities could face fines of up to £500,000, or 2% of their income, if found guilty.

• In Northern Ireland, a retired pastor is facing prosecution after preaching a Bible verse near a hospital.

• In Essex County, a church is facing criminal charges after a local council issued an order that could criminalize public Christian preaching.

Problems across Europe

• Police in Berlin arrested two demonstrators at a pro-Palestinian rally as people peacefully marched and chanted slogans under heavy police presence.

• Policymakers across the European Union are considering new proposals targeting emojis used to “hide illegal speech” such as hate speech or illegal sales.

Pakistan batters press freedom

Press freedom in Pakistan has declined sharply, with the amended Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act increasingly used to silence dissent, Freedom Network said in a report published last week. The Pakistan-based free-speech watchdog documents 129 violations over the past year, including two killings, 16 assaults, two kidnappings, and 58 legal cases — with state actors responsible for over 60% of these incidents.

Also this week, an article about Shiite unrest in Pakistan was removed from the country’s print edition of The New York Times, sparking debate over the censorship of minority voices and broader efforts to control what information reaches the public.

Problems across Asia

• Late last month, Thailand’s Supreme Court said it has accepted a petition accusing 44 current and former opposition lawmakers of ethics violations over their attempt to amend the country’s law protecting the king and his family from any criticism. The law carries prison terms of up to 15 years per offense.

• In Indonesia, a suspect was detained for blasphemy and hate speech because he posted videos on TikTok that are allegedly insulting to Muslims.

Legal debates down under

Australian legal experts are saying that a pending legal challenge against Queensland’s controversial laws banning phrases like “from the river to the sea” and “globalise the intifada,” which have already seen over two dozen people arrested, might succeed.

Last week, the University of Queensland Press suspended publication of a children’s book by Wiradjuri-Irish poet Jazz Money, with illustrations by Matt Chun. After the Bondi Beach massacre at a Hanukkah celebration that killed 15 people, Chun published an essay about the tragedy titled, “Never mourn a fascist,” in which he argued that because they were white and Jewish, the people killed that day were not victims. The decision not to publish the book has led to a debate over whether this constitutes censorship or sound judgment.

Egypt gives Christian scholar hard labor

Egyptian courts sentenced Coptic Christian scholar Augustinos Samaan to five years in prison with hard labor for posting academic videos about Christianity on YouTube. In his videos, Samaan discusses Christianity and how it differs from Islam. He was initially charged with terrorism-related offenses.

You’re most likely reading this article from a country that is not China. So, naturally, you might think that China’s censorship laws have nothing to do with you. Not so fast. The interconnectedness of global commerce has created crevices for authoritarian censorship to seep in, and the latest news out of the Victoria and Albert Museum offers a perfect illustration of how it unfolds.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum, the United Kingdom’s famed art institution, joins the growing list of institutions that have consented to censorship rules imposed by the Chinese government in order to print goods more affordably in the country. Documents obtained by The Guardian reveal that the museum consented to changes in the catalogue for its new Music is Black exhibition after C&C Offset Printing, its printing partner in China, said a map in the document was flagged by censorship body the General Administration of Press and Publication.

“There is a map on p10 relates to China (there is China border here and we need to use the standard maps from Chinese Government) and GAPP rejected it,” the printer wrote in an email to the V&A. “Our suggestion is to delete this map or use another image.”

An internal email to V&A East director Gus Casely-Hayford complained, “We were aware of sensitivity around contemporary maps but it now clearly applies to historic maps too.” Ultimately, the museum chose to substitute in a different photograph and print the censored version. And this wasn’t the only time they’ve done so. The museum also consented to cut another map from the Fabergé: Romance to Revolution exhibit catalogue as well as a photo of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin would be too “sensitive” for China’s censorship body, the printers warned.

The V&A defended its decision making process, arguing that it only consents to what it sees as superficial edits. “We sometimes print in China, but maintain close editorial oversight,” the museum said in a statement. “We were comfortable making minor edits, as they did not affect the narrative and we would obviously pull production if we felt any requested change was problematic.”

In isolation, such changes may appear to some as minor or unimportant. But in the aggregate, they add up — and influence in perpetuity how the entire world reads, experiences, and understands material pertaining to China and content it deems politically sensitive. It isn’t just one museum. It’s also book publishers, AI companies, movie studios, hotel chains, fashion houses, and gaming giants. And that’s not to mention the threats made to critics of the Chinese government in countries all around the world, including the United States. Doesn’t seem so minor, does it?

Perhaps worst of all, this influence is operating in higher education on a global scale, introducing both overt and subtle limits on universities and the people who study and teach within them. In the short term, researchers and student dissidents suffer threats and censorship. In the long run, the education, research, and discussion that the entire world relies on for knowledge generation is throttled. I covered this oppressive trend in my book released last year, Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech.

You may be thousands of miles away from the Chinese government, but its censorship is operating much closer than you think.

FIRE’s Free Speech Dispatch covers new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.

Editor’s note: Sarah McLaughlin is going on sabbatical soon, so there may be a bit of a break between future entries. But regularly scheduled content will resume in late June. Stay tuned.

France considers new antisemitism bill

A bill with broad support brought by MP Caroline Yadan is set for debate soon in French Parliament, and it would introduce a broad range of new speech offenses under French criminal law. The bill seeks to expand the existing terror offenses of incitement to terrorism and glorification of terrorism to criminalize “implicit,” rather than just direct, incitement of terror as well as glorification of the perpetrators of terrorist acts.

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It would also punish speech calling for the “destruction of a state recognised by the French Republic” with a €45,000 ($53,080) fine and up to five years in prison. “From the river to the sea” is one of the phrases that would be considered advocacy for the destruction of a recognized country. “It’s not specifically about Israel,” Yadan said about the legislation. “But obviously, today, there is only one country in the world whose criticism takes the form of calls for its destruction, and that’s Israel.” Earlier versions of the bill included language banning comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, but those provisions have since been removed.

France is not the only country to consider banning “from the river to the sea” and similar phrases. The Australian state of Queensland recently banned the slogan, and arrests under the new law have begun. A 70-year-old activist arrested for displaying the slogan at a protest appeared in court this week under the new hate speech laws — and is “pleading insanity.”

“Not that I think I’m insane,” he said. “I think the law is insane.”

Irish media minister targets ‘lopsided’ media

Irish media Minister Patrick O’Donovan said he wants media regulator Coimisiún na Meán to look into the “lopsided” media coverage of recent fuel protests in the country, as well as why he received fewer invites to speak than other officials and commentators. He also objected to comments in the media calling the government’s tone about the protests “lecturing and hectoring.” The National Union of Journalists called O’Donovan’s warnings “sinister and deeply disturbing.”

“One of the things I will be looking at as Minister for Communications is to see if you have a panel discussion, for instance, on a national broadcaster, where there’s three or four from the opposition and one from the government, is that a legitimate debate?,” O’Donovan said. He further added that “in a democracy, all voices should be heard, not just some” — and apparently it’s the role of a government regulator to decide which voices should be heard, and how frequently.

More speech news out of Europe

• France is considering joining the growing list of countries banning social media access for children under 15, with officials arguing the move is necessary to protect young users.

• In Germany, a 67-year-old woman was fined €800 for insulting politician Markus Söder on a sign held during a 2023 protest, but has been acquitted on appeal.

• UK police arrested protesters near a Royal Air Force base used by U.S. forces. Authorities said they were detained “on suspicion of supporting a proscribed organisation” during a demonstration.

Australia’s teen social media ban isn’t working

In Australia, debates over online access and the country’s landmark age-gating legislation continue. Proponents of these laws have argued they are absolutely necessary to protect kids online and the associated risks to privacy and free speech are a price we must be willing to pay. But…what if the laws aren’t even doing what they promise? A new eSafety report finds that among parents with kids on social media before Dec. 10, 2025, about seven in 10 said their child still had an account on Facebook (63.6%), Instagram (69.1%), Snapchat (69.4%), and TikTok (69.3%).

Brazil’s aggressive antiracism laws ensnare tourist

A case in Brazil has drawn international attention after an Argentine tourist was charged with “imitating a monkey and uttering a racist slur” after getting into a dispute with waiters over her bill at a Rio de Janeiro bar. Agostina Páez has since apologized but could face up to two years in prison if convicted. Until recently, Páez was kept under watch by Brazilian authorities and required to wear an ankle monitor, but she was eventually permitted to pay a $20,000 bail and return to Argentina until a judge rules in her case. “Brazil is being painted as this authoritarian country,” prosecutor Fabíola Tardin told The New York Times, “when we are only seeking justice for the harm done.”

Journalists and writers face intimidation, arrest, and imprisonment

• Malaysia convicted blogger Papagomo of sedition for a social media post deemed to have “incit[ed] hatred against the King,” sentencing him to a RM 4,000 fine or jail time. The court ruled the defense had “failed to raise a reasonable doubt,” reinforcing how speech involving the monarchy remains tightly controlled.

• In Iraq, American journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen but has fortunately since been freed.

• Egypt arrested political commentator Ahmed Douma over an article and social media posts. Authorities accused him of spreading “false news and rumors…that would disturb public order,” a charge often used in cases involving dissent.

• Kuwaiti authorities arrested American-Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin on charges of “spreading false information, harming national security, and misuse of a mobile phone. Some of the charges reportedly relate to “footage of a US F-15 fighter jet crash near a base in Kuwait during a reported friendly fire incident earlier in March.” Such arrests have been common lately in the Middle East amid war with Iran. In the UAE, authorities arrested 375 people for filming incidents and sharing what officials described as “misleading information.”

Russia tightens internet restrictions as VPN access disappears

Russia is expanding its control over online speech, blocking hundreds of VPN services that once allowed users to bypass censorship and access independent information. Authorities say the restrictions are necessary to combat “illegal content” and protect national security, and more than 400 VPNs have already been affected, cutting off one of the last major workarounds to government controls.

The changes are part of a broader effort to reshape the country’s digital infrastructure. Analysts describe the shift as the construction of a “digital iron curtain,” with users pushed toward state-approved platforms and away from global networks. In some areas, disruptions have become so severe that people are turning to landline phones as internet access becomes less reliable.

Russia has also designated Tufts University and its Fletcher School as “undesirable organizations,” effectively banning collaboration and exposing affiliates to legal risk. Officials accused the institutions of acting as “instruments of anti-Russian propaganda” and attempting to “undermine public trust.”

Expanding limits on media, culture, and the internet

• In Canada, proposed changes to Ontario’s freedom of information system have sparked pushback from transparency advocates. They argue the reforms could lead to a more “secretive government,” limiting the public’s ability to access records and scrutinize decision-making.

• India is, yet again, expanding its regulation of online expression. Proposed rules reclassify influencers as publishers, putting them under the same oversight as traditional media outlets, a move critics say could “tighten control over online news.”

• Belarus has introduced a sweeping law banning so-called “propaganda” of same-sex relationships, “gender reassignment,” and “childlessness.” The law defines propaganda broadly as information meant to “influence citizens’ perceptions,” with Human Rights Watch saying it reflects a broader effort to “control public discourse, and suppress dissent.”

Blasphemy prosecutions in Nigeria carry death sentences

A Sharia court in Kano sentenced an Islamic cleric to death for blasphemy after determining his remarks insulted the Prophet Muhammad. In a separate case, a Christian father may also face execution after being accused of possessing “blasphemous material,” which he denies.

As is the case in Pakistan, rights advocates have accused these brutal blasphemy laws of being used as a tool to settle disputes among individuals — the fallout from an accusation alone can be so destructive that alleging blasphemy can be enough to derail another person’s life.

Free speech advocates have long warned that the laws and regulations passed at the state, federal, and international level are chipping away at our ability to speak anonymously online. The latest news out of the European Union has supercharged these concerns as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the rollout of an age verification app, one that will require a passport or ID card, to member states. Meanwhile, Turkey is threatening to gut that right directly, offering a perfect example of the threats online identity verification poses. And the Turkish government says that social media platforms are playing along.

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According to Justice Minister Akın Gürlek, the Turkish government is submitting a proposal to parliament that would require people to provide a national ID number to use social media. Unregistered accounts will be removed by platforms. Gürlek also claims platforms have agreed to implement these terms — though which platforms, and which exact terms, are not entirely clear yet.

Gürlek says ending anonymity is necessary to fight crime on the internet — and personal insults. “If someone insults someone or carries out a character assassination on social media,” he warns, “they must bear the consequences.”

Given that Turkey has prosecuted thousands of people, children included, for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, this measure will no doubt contribute to the government’s already draconian efforts to obliterate even light-hearted government criticism. (Also, if you weren’t aware of the extent to which the crackdown on presidential insults goes: The trials — plural — over internet memes comparing Erdoğan to the Tolkien character Gollum even have their own Wikipedia page.)

This is exactly what FIRE and other advocates have been warning about: Many of these efforts that erode people’s ability to speak anonymously online are sold as if they are necessary to protect kids from harm, or protect societies from crime and dysfunction. The EU’s new age verification app, which will offer over two dozen countries a streamlined process to verify identities, is promoted under the same guise. But ultimately, they will hand governments yet another tool designed to protect themselves from criticism under the guise of preventing online harms.

Make no mistake: These kinds of regulations are like a bad cold — they spread fast and are hard to shake. Governments and legislators around the world are constantly peeking over the fence at their neighbors to see what policies they’re rolling out and asking themselves whether they, too, can enact such laws.

You shouldn’t be surprised when more nations ask, If Turkey can do away with that pesky anonymous internet speech, why can’t we? In fact, the sentiment already exists in democratic nations freer than Turkey. In February, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for an end to anonymous posts. “I want to see real names on the internet,” he said. “I want to know who is speaking.” Coincidentally or not, Germany also prosecutes insults to public officials. Not long after Merz’s statements, police investigated a Facebook comment calling Merz “Pinocchio.”

Anonymous online speech is in peril even here in the United States. In 2023, then-presidential candidate Nikki Haley walked back her demand that companies “verify every single person” using their platforms “by name.” The idea was toxic at the time, and she faced backlash among conservatives. But in the years since, that campaign has ballooned. The bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, which enjoys Democratic and Republican support, as well as the constantly growing list of state-level age-verification bills in red and blue states are putting a real strain on Americans’ ability to remain anonymous, whether they are 16 years old or 60.

And while supporters of age-verification tools argue that their methods are not the same as having to hand your real name and identity directly to the government, it nevertheless saws away at crucial barriers between anonymous speakers and government oppression. Once the link between your account and your identity exists, your anonymity is destroyed no matter what pseudonym you post under, as recent unsettling events make clear.

The Trump administration has waged a campaign to unmask citizens who have used the internet to discuss or criticize their government. A Washington Post investigation from February revealed that the Department of Homeland Security is abusing oversight-free administrative subpoenas to demand online services provide identifying information of users who engage in protected speech, like a man who sent an email about the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker on humanitarian parole.

We need the ability to speak anonymously online, whether to criticize our leaders, search for embarrassing medical advice, or even just to ask the age-old question: r/AmItheAsshole? What’s happening in Turkey should signal a clear shot across the bow. We need to fight for this right, or we are going to lose it. Fast.

With an act designated as “non-crime,” you might reasonably expect the role for law enforcement to be quite limited. No crime means no cops…right? For years, though, the United Kingdom has allowed a system of police intervention and record-keeping over “non-crime hate incidents” — including legal speech — to flourish. But new Home Office guidance intends to “prevent police from recording lawful free speech.”

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Will this signal a new step forward for the UK? It’s complicated.

Some background: The practice of police recording non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) started as a way to monitor hateful behavior before it crossed into illegal territory. Police would log complaints of perceived hateful but legal acts, which in recent years have often just been social media posts — and sometimes targets of those complaints were logged as offenders without even being told.

Such a system blurs the line between protected and unprotected speech, chills speakers who would rather not be recorded in a government database for entirely legal expression, and recklessly invites police to referee verbal or written disputes. But that hasn’t stopped the growth of NCHIs. In the past decade or so, police departments across the UK have recorded tens of thousands of NCHIs. About 30,000 alone were recorded between 2022-2025.

Things have gone off the rails. And the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing admit it. In their review of NCHI enforcement, they acknowledge:

In some high-profile NCHI cases, policing has not struck this balance effectively. Disproportionate responses have left individuals feeling criminalised for engaging in lawful debate, prompting criticism that police are becoming involved in matters that should not be for the police to deal with.

The report also states that using terms such as “victim” and “suspect” when recording non-crimes contributed to the impression that targets of NCHI recordings were, well, criminals.

These police groups have issued a new set of recommendations regarding NCHIs, which the UK government has said they are accepting. NCHIs “are to be scrapped,” the government said in its press release, admitting that the system simply does not work. Police are not equipped — nor should they be — to respond to complaints concerning the millions of social media posts circulated each and every day, which any citizen may personally find hateful.

So, what’s actually changing?

The Home Office is revising its definition of “incident” to heighten the threshold for when police must record an act reported to them. Previously, police took action over “a single distinct event or occurrence” that “disturbs an individual, group or community’s quality of life or causes them concern.” Disturbs? Causes concern? With language this broad, it’s no mystery why police recorded tens of thousands of complaints.

Going forward, “incident” is defined as “a single distinct event or occurrence which may be relevant to policing for preventing or solving crime, safeguarding individuals or communities or fulfilling other statutory policing purposes.”

This is certainly an improved and narrower definition, and it more closely ties police responsibilities to actual criminal activity. But there are still reasons to question how meaningful the change will be, in part because of the new reliance on the term “anti-social behaviour” (ASB).

Now, “where a report meets the threshold of an incident…it should be recorded as anti-social behaviour” and “with a prejudice qualifier added.” The definition of ASB includes “[c]onduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person.” While the tighter definition of “incident” will hopefully limit how many reports get logged as an ASB, the vagueness of the concepts of “alarm or distress” opens the door for some of the same problems present in the prior form of NCHI policing.

“Making ASB the designated opening code category for incidents perceived to be motivated by hate or hostility would give forces a greater ability to search command-and-control systems, to collate data and identify repeat incidents,” the police groups’ report asserts.

All in all, there are improvements here, including the much-welcomed admission from the government that this system is not sustainable or desirable, but there are still reasons to be wary. And while this may help address police involvement over legal speech, don’t forget that the UK criminalizes a wide range of speech just because it’s offensive. Take the Communications Act 2003, which criminalizes “grossly offensive” or “indecent” speech, or the Malicious Communications Act 1988, which targets words that “cause distress or anxiety.”

Ultimately, authorities may still very well have existing reasons to investigate upsetting speech, NCHI or no.

And while the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to engage in speech that some might perceive as offensive or upsetting, Americans should be wary of quasi-NCHI systems brewing here at home. It isn’t just the UK that’s policed legal tweets. For one, “Bias Response Hotlines” have emerged in U.S. cities and states, mirroring the function of NCHIs with U.S. police reporting bias incidents that have not met the threshold of criminal behavior.

But in even more disturbing developments, police showed up to Americans’ homes to investigate them — and even arrest them. In January, Miami Beach police appeared at the door of U.S. Army veteran Raquel Pacheco to question her about her social media posts accusing Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner of being anti-LGBTQ and anti-Palestinian. Police claimed they were just there “to have a conversation” — but in a free country, you shouldn’t have to chat with police over your protected speech.

And FIRE is representing Larry Bushart, a retired police officer who recently spent a shocking 37 days in jail on a $2 million bond he couldn’t afford, all because of a meme quoting the president. Perry County police hauled Bushart away on spurious accusations of threats after he posted a meme about Charlie Kirk’s killing that quoted Donald Trump’s response to a different shooting, “We have to get over it.”

Either in the U.S. or the UK, there is no role for police when it comes to legal speech. That’s the whole point of protected speech. Let’s keep it that way.

FIRE’s Free Speech Dispatch covers new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.

Finnish politician found guilty over ‘Male and Female He Created Them’ pamphlet

After a seven-year legal battle, Päivi Räsänen, a member of Finnish parliament and politician from the Christian Democrats, was acquitted last week on one charge of hate speech, but found guilty for a separate charge over a pamphlet she posted twice online. Räsänen was found not guilty over a 2019 tweet criticizing the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s decision to support a Pride event and citing Romans 1:24–27. But in a 3-2 decision, Finland’s Supreme Court found Räsänen and her co-author Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola guilty of incitement against a group for reposting their 2004 pamphlet, “Male and Female He Created Them,” on the internet.

The pamphlet shared the author’s view of biblical marriage as well as criticism of homosexuality. The court said that Räsänen “must have understood that, for example, claiming that homosexuality is a disorder of psychosexual development is, in light of the prevailing medical understanding, an incorrect assertion.” Räsänen was fined the equivalent of $2,080. Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Räsänen, says the court also ruled that the offending statements from the pamphlet be “removed from public access and destroyed.”

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“This creates uncertainty, not only for me, but for every citizen who wishes to express their beliefs, or even more concerning for anyone who has expressed their opinions in the past,” Räsänen said. She is considering appealing to the European Court of Human Rights and other Finnish political figures, including Minister of Justice Leena Meri, have objected to the ruling and are calling for reform.

Hong Kong rolls out broader national security law powers. Travelers, Americans included, should be cautious.

Hong Kong expanded powers under its National Security Law to give authorities the ability to require suspects in “national security” investigations — which often focus on pure political speech and government criticism — to reveal passwords to their electronic devices.

The U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong & Macau issued a warning in response, correctly noting that this law applies to anyone and everyone who passes through Hong Kong, including the millions who travel through Hong Kong’s airport each year — and officials weren’t pleased. Beijing officials summoned the U.S. envoy in Hong Kong to express “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to what they called foreign interference.

Hong Kong police also arrested independent bookstore staff for allegedly selling “seditious” publications, including a biography of jailed media figure Jimmy Lai, as authorities expand enforcement of national security laws against printed materials.

Busy week for free speech in the UK, including a new bill addressing the UK’s ever-growing censorship problem

If you read FIRE’s Free Speech Dispatch, then you’ll know the United Kingdom has been in a free speech freefall for some time now, from arresting social media users and peaceful protesters to regularly crafting new regulations harming online expression. Recognizing the UK’s need for codified speech protections, the Adam Smith Institute has written a model Freedom of Speech Bill intended to limit the government’s ability to infringe upon free expression. The bill offers some strong features, like the assumption that speech is protected unless it falls into a specific unprotected category, remedies against strategic lawsuits against public participation, and an analogue of the U.S.’s Section 230. But other provisions would raise new concerns, like amending the Employment Rights Act 1996 to constrain private employers from firing employees based on lawful expression outside of the workplace — a potential challenge to free association rights.

The UK should use this as an opportunity to discuss how to best create reforms to protect free expression, online and off. And that’s not the only free speech news across the pond. Here’s the latest from another busy week:

• Metropolitan Police have reversed their decision to stop arresting pro-Palestine Action protesters in light of the High Court ruling against the government’s proscription of the group. Arrests have resumed while the government challenges the ruling.

• The House of Lords and House of Commons are currently going back and forth over plans to ban teens from social media. Alarmingly, one proposed amendment would grant an official power to target VPN use for teens under 18. Separately, the UK government is rolling out a trial test enforcing bans and “digital curfews” on hundreds of teens. And tech policy developments in the U.S. may even be influencing how the UK acts. Read FIRE’s coverage here.

• Apple’s rollout of mandatory age verification in the UK has sparked backlash after users reported being effectively locked out of full device functionality unless they submit ID or credit card details, with critics warning it forces people to “hand over sensitive personal data or lose functionality.” The system has also faced technical failures and accessibility issues, with some adults unable to verify their age at all and instead being pushed into restricted settings that “block websites” and monitor content.

• Artists accused Bristol City Council of censorship after officials ordered the removal of politically sensitive elements, forcing them to “literally [take] a knife to our art” and cut out “offending” material about local businesses. The council defended the move, saying it must “balance freedom of speech and a duty to prevent harm.”

• A UK school sparked backlash after using AI to flag nearly 200 library books as “inappropriate,” including classics like 1984 and popular titles like Twilight, with critics warning the system treated complex literature as a “safeguarding risk” based on surface level themes. The librarian said she was “gobsmacked” by the directive and faced disciplinary action for refusing to remove the books, as free expression advocates argue the case shows how automated tools can drive overbroad censorship without human judgement.

• Hong Kong dissidents in the UK say they are facing a growing campaign of harassment, surveillance, and violence that they believe is linked to Chinese authorities, with one activist recalling, “I thought I was blinded…Is this the end of my life?” after a brutal attack. Experts warned the effort is “widespread” and aimed at silencing critics abroad, raising concerns about transnational repression and the safety of political speech even outside China’s borders.

Hungary hits investigative reporter with espionage charges for reporting on Moscow ties

Hungary’s government has filed espionage charges against investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi, accusing him of working “in coordination with a foreign country” amid reporting on ties between Hungarian officials and Russia. Panyi denies the claims, while his outlet warned the move reflects authorities “resorting to authoritarian tactics” to discredit critical journalism.

“Accusing investigative journalists of espionage is virtually unprecedented in the 21st century for a member state of the European Union,” Panyi says. “This is really something more typical of Putin’s Russia, Belarus and similar regimes.”

Political censorship across Asia

• Chinese authorities put dissident artist Gao Zhen on trial over artwork accused of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” with proceedings held behind closed doors and observers barred from attending. The case centers on satirical sculptures of Mao Zedong created years earlier, and critics say it reflects a broader crackdown on artistic expression, with Gao facing up to three years in prison.

• A prominent Indonesian rights activist was seriously injured when an assailant threw acid at him near his home, calling it a “brutal acid attack” that left him with severe burns. Human Rights Watch is calling for “a fact-finding team independent of the military to fully investigate the acid attack against a prominent human rights activist who has criticized the military.”

• Indonesian authorities arrested a Swiss tourist after he allegedly posted insults about a Hindu holiday. Officials said he could face up to five years in prison for “spreading hate speech online.”

• A Filipino heritage advocate is facing cyberlibel charges after pointing out alleged factual errors in a published book, raising concerns about how defamation laws can be used against critical speech. He questioned the case, asking “what’s libelous about citing errors,” as advocates warn the complaint risks chilling public discussion and academic critique.

• Singapore denied entry to a Malaysian pro-Palestinian scholar, labeling her an “undesirable visitor” and accusing her of promoting “radical advocacy” and involvement in domestic political activity. Authorities said they “will not tolerate any foreigners getting involved in our domestic politics,” while the scholar rejected claims as “false” and argued she was being targeted for her academic work and public positions.

• Activists and digital rights groups say India has seen a noticeable spike in online censorship during the Iran war, with authorities issuing a growing number of takedown orders targeting posts critical of the government’s foreign policy stance and broader geopolitical messaging. Internet watchdogs reported “dozens of removals” in a short period.

• India’s Telangana government has introduced a sweeping hate speech and hate crimes bill that would criminalize a wide range of expression deemed to promote “disharmony” or “ill-will” against protected groups. The law proposes prison sentences from one to seven years, rising to ten years for repeat offenses, and allows authorities to order the removal of online content considered to violate the law.

Hundreds arrested in UAE and Qatar for posts about Iran

Authorities in the UAE and Qatar have arrested hundreds of people over social media posts and videos related to the Iran war, accusing some of spreading “rumors” or content that could undermine national security. The crackdown targets individuals for filming or sharing footage of attacks, with officials warning such posts can “stir public opinion” and create misleading narratives about the situation. In the UAE, the largest number of arrests over social media posts about the war weren’t even for alleged misinformation or lies, but for “publishing true videos of the attacks and their impact.” And many of those arrested “came from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, countries that send large numbers of low-paid workers to the Emirates.”

European Parliament member alleges censorship by Canadian immigration officials

European Parliament member Rima Hassan is accusing Canadian authorities of revoking her travel authorization ahead of scheduled public appearances because of her speech about Israel. Hassan says her authorization was approved and then revoked after she reportedly “was asked to submit new documents and information, including bank statements and a list of family ties, a few hours before her flight.” Citing privacy reasons, Canadian officials declined to comment on the case, but the groups who invited Hassan to Canada to speak are calling foul.

The future of expression online will in part rest on today’s debates over what age groups can legally use platforms deemed “social media” and what information we must provide to prove we’re adults and allowed to access them. This week, developments out of the UK and Australia continued the global age-verification campaign, as governments around the world push full steam ahead into dicey questions of who is allowed to speak, whether they can do so anonymously, and what responsibilities rest on platforms when teens are users.

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The United Kingdom, never one to let an opportunity to regulate expression pass by, is currently in the “ping-pong” stage as the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill moves back and forth between the House of Lords and House of Commons.

Members of Parliament are now debating whether and how to ban teens from social media, with the House of Commons rejecting an amendment from the Lords that advocates “highly-effective age assurance measures” to keep under-16s off of “all regulated user-to-user services.”

Instead of keeping authority with the communications regulator OfCom, the proposed amendment from the Commons would grant broad authority to a government official to require companies to force kids under 18, not 16, offline. Old enough to drive a two-ton vehicle, yet not old enough to post about it.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains, it would give the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology power “to restrict internet access for young people and determine what content is considered harmful…just because she can.”

It would also grant the secretary power to target “addictive” features and, alarmingly, Virtual Private Network use for teens under 18. Any of these proposals should raise concerns from internet users, but none more than suggestions of VPN restrictions — a tactic most common among authoritarian regimes.

Meanwhile, the UK government is rolling out a trial test enforcing bans and “digital curfews” on hundreds of UK teens. A control group of teens will have no changes to their internet experience while some will undergo a full social media ban and others will have curfews or time limits on their usage. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said results from the study “will give us the evidence we need to take the next steps, informed by the experiences of families themselves.”

To be clear: parents have always had the authority to set curfews — online and off — on their children. It has never required an act of government to tell kids to log off.

Keir Starmer, too, said he’s “very keen” on rolling out a policy on teens’ social media use after the trial test concludes — and that he’s looking to the U.S. for inspiration on next steps. Starmer was specifically referring to last week’s ruling in California holding YouTube and Meta liable for designing “addictive” products accused of causing depression and other harms to a user at a young age. FIRE’s Ari Cohn explained why this and another high profile ruling against tech firms raise very serious concerns for free speech in the United States.

In Australia, where the government’s decision to launch a landmark teen social media ban last year set off a wave of global dominoes, regulators are updating their definition of “age-restricted social media platforms” amidst Reddit’s legal challenge against the ban on privacy and free expression grounds.

To continue “targeting the most harmful and addictive social media features that keep young Australians hooked online,” the government is updating its definition of such platforms as ones that adopt “recommender systems (algorithms)” that employ at least one of these features when users are logged in: “endless-feeds (infinite scroll),” “feedback features (such as displaying the number of ‘likes’ or ‘upvotes’ a user has received),” and “time-limited features (such as disappearing ‘stories.’)” Ten platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and Reddit, currently earn this designation.

These new designations were, according to Sky News Australia, “quietly” issued just ahead of the deadline for the government’s filing in response to Reddit’s challenge over the ban. The outlet says it “understands the updated rules” on the definition “could be an attempt to iron out the government’s legal defence against the social media giant.”

And, in light of the recent rulings against social media companies in the U.S., Australian law firms are now looking into whether similar efforts could succeed in Australia as an even more effective tool than government bans. “The [social] media ban has had very little impact on adolescent use of these technology platforms,” Shine Lawyers’ chief legal officer told Guardian Australia. “Meta has targeted generations of people who may never be able to detach from the grip of social media.” Another attorney said firms “expect the conversation around social media harm, regulation and accountability in Australia to accelerate in the wake of this decision in the U.S. overnight.”

The conversation around age verification has long centered on whether developments abroad could influence policy in the United States — but now the opposite may be true, too.

First arrests under Queensland’s new hate speech law

Two protesters were arrested on the first day of Queensland’s ban on the slogan “From the river to the sea.” Authorities enforced the restriction as part of new rules regulating protest speech related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which also cover the chant “globalize the intifada.” Offenders could face up to two years in prison.

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The first protester arrested was Liam Parry from Students for Palestine, who spoke at a march against the law outside the state parliament house. Parry reportedly gave a talk about the phrase, disputed the claim that it was antisemitic, and “discouraged others from chanting the slogan.” Another protester was arrested for wearing a shirt with the message “From the river to the sea.” Both were charged and will be expected to appear in court next month.

Rush for passage of Canadian hate speech law, despite serious free speech concerns

The Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights closed debate on the Combating Hate Act, with the next reading of the bill to take place late this month, despite long-held concerns from dozens of civil liberties and other advocacy groups about the text.

Among other things, the act would “create an offence of wilfully promoting hatred against any identifiable group by displaying certain symbols in a public place” and “of intimidating a person in order to impede them from accessing certain places that are primarily used for religious worship or by an identifiable group for certain purposes.”

The provision on hateful symbols also includes “a symbol that so nearly resembles” a proscribed image “that it is likely to be confused with that symbol.” And groups like the Canadian Bar Association have objected to the vagueness of the offense concerning intimidation at a house of worship, warning that it’s “not clear at what point a person, their words, or their actions would constitute an obstruction and interference on the face of the amendments.” Keep an eye out for more updates from FIRE on the bill if it passes.

UK launches new definition of ‘anti-Muslim’ hostility

After a monthslong process, the UK has finally unveiled its new working definition of “anti-Muslim hostility,” which is facing criticism both from those who think it does too little to protect Muslims and others who fear it poses another threat to free expression in the UK. The Free Speech Union, for example, is already launching a legal challenge against the definition, arguing that it “relies on vague and legally undefined concepts,” among other objections.

It is defined, in part, as “the prejudicial stereotyping of Muslims, or people perceived to be Muslim including because of their ethnic or racial backgrounds or their appearance, and treating them as a collective group defined by fixed and negative characteristics, with the intention of encouraging hatred against them, irrespective of their actual opinions, beliefs or actions as individuals.” The definition also notes that it’s “important to bear in mind the fundamental right of every person in the United Kingdom to exercise freedom of speech and expression within the law” and includes as protected speech “criticisms of a religion or belief, including Islam” and “ridiculing or insulting a religion or belief, including Islam.”

As FIRE has written before, it will be key to watch how this and any other definition of hatred is ultimately employed across government, and how it can chill or directly censor speech. Kenneth Stern, the primary author of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, warned it “was intended for data collectors writing reports about anti-Semitism in Europe” and “was never supposed to curtail speech on campus.” The same concerns must apply here. Member of Parliament Iqbal Mohamed, for example, has already pushed for “sanctions” against other MPs under the definition.

More concerns about political censorship in Europe

• Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, just passed legislation giving Welsh Ministers new authority to criminalize false statements before or during a Senedd election. Granting government officials the power to determine truth or falsity, and hand out criminal sanctions in the process, is a can of worms Wales may regret opening. Read FIRE’s in-depth analysis here.

• German writer Rainer Zitelmann is facing investigation under Germany’s law on “anti-constitutional” symbols for reposting a photo that showed a swastika in it. That swastika was on an armband worn by Adolf Hitler — and the post was criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin by suggesting parallels between the two. “In my case, Hitler serves as a negative warning example in drawing an analogy,” Zitelmann said. “I have the impression that Section 86a is being instrumentalised against critical journalists and scholars, and that was clearly not what it was intended for.”

• Authorities in Belarus have designated the literary organization PEN Belarus as an extremist group. Free speech advocates warn the decision further restricts cultural expression and civil society in the country.

• Spain is developing a system designed to track hate speech on social media platforms. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who recently pushed for an under-16 social media ban and rules holding tech owners personally liable for hateful content on their platforms, is promoting the AI tool as a means to track and criticize companies’ allowance of “hate” on their platforms. Read FIRE’s full discussion about the program, and the risks it may pose to free expression.

New ethnic unity law poses yet another censorship threat in China

China is preparing to adopt a new “ethnic unity” law intended to strengthen national cohesion across ethnic groups. Rights groups warn the legislation could expand government control over speech related to minority identity and political dissent. Officials claim the measure is necessary to maintain “national unity and social stability” but it will instead serve as another tool authorities can use to censor ethnic minorities, particularly in Tibet and Xinjiang — where oppressive censorship already runs deep.

Meanwhile, Chinese company CHOKNOR Information Technology released a new Tibetan large language model and app, DeepZang, “for global users seeking to learn about Tibetan culture, history and politics, thereby preventing the dissemination of distorted ideologies and values.”

Albania’s highest court rejects TikTok ban

Albania’s Constitutional Court ruled that the government’s ban on TikTok violated constitutional protections for free expression. Judges concluded the restriction imposed disproportionate limits on online speech and access to information. The ruling is a notable development as internet bans and blocks, particularly of TikTok, continue to propagate on a global scale.

Russian officials censor artistic works at home — and abroad

The Netherlands has accused Russia of attempting to censor a photo exhibition in Sri Lanka documenting the war in Ukraine. Organizers say pressure was applied to remove images that portrayed Russia negatively. Dutch officials warned that efforts to interfere with exhibitions abroad represent attempts to “silence documentation of the war” and efforts from Russian officials to control not just what their citizens can see, but to censor the rest of the world, too.

Russia’s film industry is also facing increasing government censorship as authorities expand oversight of cultural production. Filmmakers say projects can be blocked, edited, or denied funding if they contain themes viewed as politically sensitive or critical of the government. Critics warn the growing system of approval and funding controls effectively determines which stories can reach audiences. Some filmmakers argue the process is increasingly used to ensure cinema reflects “state-approved narratives” about politics, history, and the war in Ukraine.

Political censorship, tech regulation, and campus protests in India

The Indian state of Telangana is considering legislation to regulate “misinformation” on social media, allowing authorities to intervene when content is deemed misleading or harmful. Officials claim the measure is necessary to prevent destabilizing false information, but critics rightly warn it could enable the government to police dissent under the label of “misinformation.”

Police in Khandwa registered cases against dozens of people after a mob attacked a police station following a controversial social media post accused of blasphemy. Authorities said at least 47 individuals were booked and a security “flag march” was conducted to restore order.

India’s film certification board has blocked the release of The Voice of Hind Rajab, an Oscar-nominated drama about a child killed in Gaza, reportedly warning it could “break up” India-Israel relations. The film’s distributor criticized the decision, saying authorities “want to censor it anyway” despite the film being shown in other countries with diplomatic ties to Israel.

Student protests at Jawaharlal Nehru University have also renewed debate about political expression and democratic participation on Indian campuses. Demonstrators argue that universities must remain spaces where dissent and debate are protected. Sociologist Anand Kumar warned that restrictions on campus activism threaten democratic culture, saying “campus democracy is essential to democratic society.” Supporters of the protests say limiting student speech undermines the role universities play in fostering critical political discussion.

Speech restrictions and media control in the Middle East

Iran continues to maintain strict control over political expression, public protest, and media reporting. Authorities frequently restrict speech through arrests, surveillance, and state regulation of news outlets. Human rights organizations warn that the government continues to target individuals who publicly challenge official narratives.

Journalists reporting from Israel during wartime must operate under a military censorship system that reviews sensitive reporting before publication. The system allows the military censor to block details related to security operations or infrastructure damage. News outlets say the process significantly shapes what information reaches the public during conflict.

Expanding national security and speech controls across Asia

Lawmakers in Macau have approved a new national security law allowing court proceedings to be held behind closed doors when authorities determine public hearings could threaten state interests. The law gives a government committee authority to decide whether cases involve national security, with decisions that are “not subject to appeal or judicial review.” Officials said the move reflects the principle of “patriots governing Macau,” while critics warn it could further restrict transparency and public scrutiny of politically sensitive cases.

Nepalese authorities have launched an investigation after copies of Chinese President

Xi Jinping’s book were burned at a university, an incident school officials say occurred during the disposal of damaged materials. A government panel has been tasked with ensuring such incidents are “not repeated in future,” while university officials said the books were destroyed “inadvertently” and there was no intent to cause offense.

Senegal passes law criminalizing “promotion” of homosexuality

Senegal’s parliament has approved a law increasing penalties for same-sex relationships and criminalizing the “promotion” of homosexuality, a move officials say reflects that “the majority of Senegalese do not accept homosexuality.” Rights groups warned the law is “deeply worrying” and could increase fear, discrimination, and violence while restricting expression related to LGBT issues.

Government suppression of political speech and satire

Indian authorities blocked a viral Instagram reel featuring comedian Pulkit Mani impersonating Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with users seeing a notice that the post was unavailable “pursuant to a notice” under local laws. Critics called the move an “alarming escalation” of censorship, warning that satire and political criticism are being suppressed without transparency or due process.

A Russian blogger who publicly criticized President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine was placed in a psychiatric facility shortly after his post went viral, according to local reporting. In the post, he wrote that “Vladimir Putin is not a legitimate president” and should be “brought to trial,” raising concerns about the use of psychiatric detention in response to political dissent.

Salvadoran lawyer Ruth López, known for criticizing government corruption, has been held in pretrial detention, with her husband saying authorities targeted her because “they didn’t like the free expression she exercised.”

The political sphere, and the world more broadly, would probably be a better place if we did away with the practice of lying. Most of us would sleep more soundly at night if we didn’t feel the need to treat political campaigning with similar skepticism we’d give to days-old gas station sushi.

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But that doesn’t mean we’ll improve the world by giving government officials more power to punish dishonesty. We would still have lies — we always will, and no law can make them disappear. But in addition, we’ll have the added problem of more censorship laws ripe for abuse and error.

The Welsh Parliament, however, believes legislation is necessary to fight the scourge of political lies. In a new bill passed this week, by a vote of 50–1, the Senedd passed legislation in part granting Welsh ministers new authority to criminalize making false statements before or during a Senedd election. The language creating this authority, likely to come into force in 2030, reads:

(2A) The Welsh Ministers must make provision, of the kind that may be made under subsection (1)(a), prohibiting the making or publishing of false or misleading statements of fact before or during an election for the purpose of affecting the return of any candidate.

(2B) The provision required by subsection (2A) may include, in particular, provision—

(a) about what is or is not a statement of fact;

(b) prohibiting false statements only or both false and misleading statements;

(c) specifying the period in which any prohibition has effect;

(d) prohibiting false or misleading statements of fact relating to matters specified in the order or matters generally;

(e) prohibiting false or misleading statements of fact made or published by persons or categories of person specified in the order or any person;

(f) prohibiting the making or publishing of false or misleading statements knowingly or recklessly;

(g) specifying exemptions or exceptions to any prohibition.

With the law’s passage, the onus will now be on Welsh ministers to craft criminal offenses that punish political candidates who issue false — or, according to the bill — even misleading statements during an election.

Legislators say the act is vital to combat declining public trust in civic life but fail to account for what new risks to public trust will arise from a bill that doesn’t even define false or “misleading” information, and yet grants future government officials the power to punish candidates for it with criminal sanctions.

Nor does the bill acknowledge the reality that some political matters are contested and don’t fit into a simple fact or fiction paradigm, or that those accused of lies today could even someday be vindicated as wrongly-maligned truth-tellers. It’s happened before, and it will happen again.

The reality is that people in office, and not just those aspiring to it, who will be enforcing these future laws against lies don’t always tell the truth. In fact, that’s been a mainstay throughout human history. Sometimes they do so for more innocent reasons — perhaps, just like the rest of us, they’re occasionally operating on incomplete or faulty information and just conveying what they believe to be true. Or, as many tyrants big and small have done over the years, they are misleading citizens because they have selfish or nefarious reasons. No matter what political views you hold or party you support, you can probably think of a few politicians who fit that bill.

While it’s a matter of regulatory abuse rather than criminal law, Americans should be aware that we’re fighting similar problems of a government monopoly on truth here in the U.S. Just days ago, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to do away with the broadcasting licenses of networks he claims are “running hoaxes and news distortions” about the war in Iran. While Welsh politicians are seeking to punish “fake news” (as future ministers may define it) among political candidates, our own FCC is trying to stamp out from our airwaves what the Trump administration defines as false, free press be damned. Americans must not allow these threats to go unchecked, either from today’s FCC or its future leadership.

Possessing the qualities of righteousness or virtue does not immunize a politician from sometimes just being flat-out wrong on some factual matters, or at least halfway there. For that reason alone, we should be wary of granting them the power of the state to sift through truth and lies. But we don’t live in a world governed by angels, and many politicians will not be honorable figures — so we should not hand such beatific power to human beings imperfect enough to abuse it.

Spain is no longer just talking about regulating online “hate.” Now it’s building an AI system to track it. Fresh off an announcement that he intends to pursue an under-16 social media ban, as well as regulations holding tech owners personally liable for hateful content on their platforms and algorithms that share that material, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is promoting the launch of an AI program to track online hate.

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The tool, named HODIO (Huella del Odio y la Polarización) and operated by Spain’s Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia, will reportedly “analyze large volumes of publicly available activity on social media to measure the scale and spread of online hate speech.” According to Politico, HODIO’s data will then “be used to track how hateful content evolves and spreads on platforms, and will feed into a public ranking comparing how much hate speech circulates on major networks.”

It’s valuable for governments to know and understand how prejudice operates and affects the citizens they govern, but this system risks expanding government pressure on platforms to censor lawful political expression.

First, there are significant preliminary questions of how “hateful content” is defined by the agency operating HODIO and to what extent an AI tool can be expected to track and understand that content. Will the definitions hew to Spanish law and precedent, broader language from other member states under the EU’s Digital Services Act, or encompass more nebulous concepts of hurtful speech that may nevertheless receive some legal protection? And how will these tools grasp the complexities and nuances surrounding contested political speech that some, but not all, users perceive as hateful?

FIRE warned about similar concerns last year regarding the Trump administration’s plans to use AI to search through the social media accounts of international students to find targets for potential deportation based on their posts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With stakes as high as these, AI cannot be tasked with the responsibility of parsing speech about a high-profile conflict and fully understanding both the nuance of language — and the First Amendment protections — in play. We cannot outsource free speech rights to a technological tool.

Most important, though, are questions about how this data — the collection and classification of which will raise challenges already — could be used not just to track hateful speech, but to guide government policy on it. When announcing HODIO’s launch, Sánchez said his government “plans to introduce a legal offense for ‘algorithmic amplification’ of hate speech” and warned that “social media must be held publicly accountable for every piece of hate content they allow.”

Taken together with these warnings, as well as earlier promises from Sánchez about personally punishing executives for posts and banning teens from social media, it seems increasingly likely that HODIO will function not just as a tracking tool, but as a component of regulating and policing the web.

Unless careful guardrails and caution are exercised, government efforts to understand and track bigotry can quite seamlessly morph into official censorship campaigns that infringe upon protected political speech. Just look at the expansive use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Anti-Semitism in the United States. Its primary author Kenneth Stern said it “was intended for data collectors writing reports about anti-Semitism in Europe” and “was never supposed to curtail speech on campus.” It’s done exactly that.

As with any new or emerging communicative tool, there will be concerns about the ways social media can upend society, for good or ill. But we must push back against efforts to grant governments sweeping new powers to police expression on the internet — AI-powered ones included.