Many of the free speech fights today rest on the question: How do we protect kids online? But some of the battles over what can be said or shared on the internet are about protecting a remarkably less vulnerable — and significantly more powerful — group from so-called harm: public officials. One such case is in Australia, where top bureaucrat body the Secretaries Board is asking Parliament to cap politicians’ and parties’ ability to share and criticize clips of testimony from the very officials the board represents.

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‘Ridicule’ directed at public officials

In a recent submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Parliamentary Standards’ inquiry into workplace behavior codes, the Secretaries Board raised concerns about challenges facing public servants and officials, including members of the military and heads of government agencies, when acting as witnesses before Parliament.

One of the Board’s “emerging concerns” is that politicians, political parties, and “third parties” can excerpt “short segments of committee broadcasts and distribute them to large audiences via social media.” In doing so, the Board notes, they can present “incomplete” clips of exchanges, remove segments from their “broader context,” add “captions with highlights or additional commentary,” and “invite ridicule, hostility or abuse directed at individual officials.”

The Board shared a long list of some “highly offensive” comments posted beneath videos of officials’ testimony, including “despicable,” “political puppet,” “bigot,” “pig,” “KKK member,” “clown,” “fraud,” “demonic,” “shill,” “criminal,” and “scumbag.”

The Board acknowledges that committee proceedings are public, but it argues that witnesses did not consent to having their testimony shared on social media, where clips can cause “reputational harm and personal abuse” to officials as well as “risk undermining political debate more generally.”

“When officials are publicly criticised, mocked, berated, or portrayed as personally responsible for policy decisions, the resulting effect can be significantly broader than the experience of the witness alone,” the Board writes. “Such conduct may contribute to a perception that appearing before parliamentary committees carries an unreasonable personal or reputational risk, potentially discouraging capable public servants undertaking public-facing responsibilities.”

Board seeks limits on ‘harmful’ social media clips

The Board is calling on Parliament to provide “guidance,” or more accurately, censorship. In short, it’s clear they want Parliament to consider banning politicians’ use of “harmful” clips from parliamentary hearings on social media — and, in their view, mockery and ridicule are a form of harm.

But, if “Parliament were not inclined to prevent the use of this evidence on social media,” then the Board would like it to consider guidance pressing members of Parliament to share video in full rather than in excerpts, as well as “refrain from content and commentary that targets individual officials for ridicule or harassment,” and disable comments so the general public cannot reply.

Bureaucrats shouldn’t set limits on criticism of bureaucrats

The Secretaries Board does express concerns about threats to public officials after they testified.

But it’s striking how much of the Board’s focus is on ordinary insults, criticism, and mockery by politicians and members of the public responding to videos of hearings. And because the Board is proposing disabling comments, its intent is to limit not just what politicians say about testimony but how ordinary Australians can respond to it.

Sure, ridicule is not a pleasant experience, and it can be miserable and hurtful. There’s no denying that. But satire, parody, mockery, and insult have also long been used by citizens to challenge state power. Treating those methods as harms in themselves in order to justify censorship is itself a threat to a free and open society.

Politicians from a range of parties, including the Greens, Liberals, and One Nation, are objecting to the Board’s proposal. “Bureaucrats shouldn’t get to decide where to draw the line on parliamentary scrutiny, particularly when they’re the ones being scrutinised,” Greens Senator Steph Hodgins-May told The Guardian.

Ridiculing bureaucrats who make and enforce public policy, and are often well-paid in the process, is not a subversion of the democratic process. It is a component of it. If we allow public officials to limit permitted political speech to only what is perceived as “respectful” by those officials, we may find that the real limit is that nothing critical can be said at all.

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.

What’s past is prologue — and talking about it might be a crime. Many of the stories I discuss in the Free Speech Dispatch address fresh cases of censorship of speech about things that are happening now: dissenters opposing a new government policy, reporters investigating uncovered corruption, protest movements suddenly flourishing, etc. But governments are sometimes just as sensitive about the past as they are the present. Today’s edition leads off with a look at Hong Kong and China, where activists and an artist were recently prosecuted for their retrospection and discussion of China’s past — warts and all. And be warned: this repression leaks outside the borders of China and Hong Kong and into freer nations.

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Tiananmen memorial activists and Mao artist convicted

Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, who led the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China and organized annual Tiananmen massacre memorials in Hong Kong, could now face a decade in prison. They were found guilty in court late last month and convicted under Hong Kong’s national security law. The alliance’s call to “end one-party dictatorship,” the panel of three judges asserted, constituted an attempt to unlawfully overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.

Politicians and civil society groups around the world condemned the decision, and Hong Kong authorities are now objecting to what they deem “baseless slander and smearing” from anti-China critics. “Members of the public should not be misled by the external forces’ attempts to smear, but must be able to distinguish between right and wrong, and clearly understand the difference between this case and the normal situation regarding the exercise of freedoms of association, assembly and speech,” a spokesman for the government said.

In mainland China, the situation is also grim. Gao Zhen, a Chinese artist and U.S. permanent resident, will spend three years in prison for “infringing upon the reputation of heroes.” The criminal conduct? Satirical works of art, including “Mao’s Guilt,” a sculpture of Mao Zedong kneeling in repentance. The law against insulting heroes was passed after Gao created these works. Gao’s wife had prepared his clothes, hoping and expecting that he would be released. But now she must return to the United States, and their family, alone. Comedian Guo Degang joins Gao in similar trouble. The popular comedian is facing show cancellations — and police investigation — after revising the lyrics to revolutionary song “Playing My Beloved Pipa” in a performance.

And there are, yet again, accusations that Chinese officials are attempting to chill speech outside the country, too. This summer, protesters held a vigil for Lobga Rangzen, the Tibetan activist who self immolated by the UN’s New York headquarters, outside the Chinese embassy in London. Footage from the vigil shows guards inside the embassy brandishing stun weapons — which are illegal in the UK — at protesters yelling outside the gates. Four years ago, staff at Manchester’s Chinese consulate dragged and beat a protester who held a sign mocking Xi Jinping.

It’s even in the United States. As I wrote about earlier this week, Chinese officials pressured a U.S.-based Catholic group to disinvite a speaker who studies state regulation of religion from a conference in Texas this summer. And they agreed to do so.

Will Palestine Action’s terrorist designation import UK censorship?

Last week, the Trump administration designated the UK-based Palestine Action as a terror organization, meaning it will face financial and other sanctions from the U.S. government. Reporting from The Telegraph and The Times suggests that pro-Palestine Action demonstrators who were arrested in the UK in recent months under Section 12 of the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000 — which bars expressing “opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation” — may be denied entry to the United States. Unlike British law, the First Amendment draws a distinction between materially supporting groups proscribed by the government and simply expressing words and ideas about those groups.

If the designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization results in the United States denying entry to British grandmothers who were arrested for peacefully holding signs in a public park, America will be bringing the UK’s censorship onto our shores. At a time when the United States rightfully criticizes the UK for its immense failures on freedom of expression, we must reject that censorship — not import it.

New Zealand joins the social media ban campaign

Another domino threatens to fall. This time it’s in New Zealand, where Parliament is set to consider a bill forcing social media platforms to take steps to keep kids offline. The proposed ban would require platforms including Facebook and TikTok to enact measures to ensure teens under 16 are walled out or face major fines, potentially “substantially higher” than in Australia. As FIRE has explained before, Australia’s landmark ban has effectively been a failure. Not only are kids still using social media, but the tools governments have used to try to keep them out have created massive new privacy and censorship risks — including for adults.

Mexico weighs new demands on TV and radio broadcasts

A new proposal put forth by President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration is raising fresh concerns about media censorship in Mexico. Under the proposed guidelines from the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, TV and radio broadcasters would be required to make a number of changes to respect “audience rights.” Among those changes, which would be enforced by the commission, are that broadcasters would need to put up tags clarifying what content is news and what is opinion, the installation of ombudsmen to address audience complaints, and a guaranteed right of reply to audiences in response to coverage they deem false.

Sydney library returns ‘How to Sell a Genocide’ to shelves

A library in the same council area as Bondi Beach in Sydney took Adam Johnson’s 2026 book How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza from shelves after a survivor of last year’s Bondi Beach terror attack said the book’s presence was upsetting to victims and the bereaved. But the book is now back after the State Library of New South Wales wrote to remind Waverly Library that it can retain controversial material on its shelves. “The library acknowledges that some books and materials may not align with everyone’s personal views, experiences or beliefs, but supports the right of individuals to make their own choices about what they read, view and access,” the State Library said in a statement.

The danger of online expression in Pakistan

TikTok creator Shamso Bibi was murdered last month, shot dead by two men as she traveled in a car with her family. Bibi had 1.3 million followers on TikTok. Her family suspects she was killed by men with whom she had a financial dispute and who wanted “to silence her and take her money.” She apparently joins at least nine other women content creators killed in the past year or so in Pakistan, often by men offended at content they posted online. One man reportedly murdered four relatives for posting “indecent” on TikTok. Activists warn that the killings expose the heightened risks women in Pakistan face when using the internet to express themselves to broader audiences.

There’s another risk to online speech, too: “cyber-blasphemy.” Families of the accused are pushing the government to look into their allegations that a network is intentionally entrapping people into blasphemy cases online to extort them, given the risk of long prison sentences and even mob violence against accused blasphemers. The existence of “cyber-blasphemy” is a disturbing, if fascinating, insight into how much things change but how much they stay the same when it comes to free speech. Modern technology meets perhaps the most ancient of speech restrictions.

Tourist jailed for insulting sacred holiday in Bali

It’s an ugly reality tourists occasionally learn from time to time: Being on vacation in another country does not mean you are also on vacation from that country’s laws. Such was the case for Luzian Andrin Zgraggen, a Swiss tourist sentenced to prison late last month in Bali. Zgraggen was arrested in March after posting an Instagram video of himself using expletives to complain about Nyepi, the Day of Silence, a sacred Balinese Hindu observance during which businesses and events shut down on the island and residents usually stay at home.

Zgraggen apologized at his trial, expressing that he did not intend to insult the Balinese people, but was nevertheless sentenced to one year in prison. The presiding judge said he “offended the Balinese people, hurt their faith and provoked public outrage.”

‘Discredit’ the military, spend over a decade in prison

Russia continues to enact harsh punishments on critics of the war in Ukraine, particularly under laws banning “discrediting” or spreading misinformation about the armed forces. Last month, a Pskov court sentenced war critic and politician Lev Shlosberg to 11 years and one month in prison for comments about the war in a YouTube debate and a Telegram repost. In a separate case, his party, Yabloko, was also banned from participating in upcoming elections. “A single person is imprisoned, yet fear seeps into the hearts of millions,” Shlosberg said in closing remarks at his trial.

Europe’s top human rights court calls for political prisoner’s release

In a 15-2 ruling, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights issued a clear statement: Activist, businessman, and philanthropist Mehmet Osman Kavala must be freed. Part of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s crackdown on dissent in the aftermath of the 2016 failed coup, Kavala was first arrested by Turkish authorities in 2017, acquitted in 2020, but then prosecuted again and sentenced to life in prison. The Grand Chamber found that the Turkish government’s actions against Kavala were “predominantly motivated” by a desire to punish him “for expressing his opinions as a human-rights defender, and to silence him,” and constituted violations of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In the United States, campus speakers, online expression, blockbuster movies, and printed books are all, of course, protected by the First Amendment. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re protected against influence and censorship by foreign powers, particularly the Chinese government. This censorship may go under the radar for many Americans, but make no mistake: It can influence not just what you encounter in the secular world, but maybe the spiritual one, too.

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A report this week from the National Catholic Register paints a disturbing picture: A U.S.-based Catholic organization chose to disinvite a speaker from its conference at the University of St. Thomas in Houston after facing direct pressure from Chinese officials. Apparently even the speaker lists at religious events in the U.S. cannot escape pressure from foreign officials who vest in themselves the authority to censor the world.

How a small Texas conference became a target

This time last year, the U.S.-China Catholic Association (USCCA) invited Purdue University professor and director of the Center on Religion and the Global East Fenggang Yang to speak at USCCA’s summer 2026 conference in Houston. Yang agreed to deliver what he called a “very non-political” speech, “Transforming Guanxi: Chinese Christian Transnational Ties and the Making of Social and Spiritual Capital.”

Yang, who was born in China, says his academic work on state regulation of religion — a long-brewing issue between the Vatican and the Chinese government — at one point was well received by Chinese officials. But, with the rise of Xi Jinping and growing repression within the country, state authorities have increasingly censored Yang’s work in the past decade. Enough so, it seems, that they sought to limit his ability to speak not just in China, but in the United States.

That brings us to May of this year, when chair of the USCCA board Peter Tan contacted Yang out of the blue to tell him that the two needed to talk, as Tan “just returned from China,” where he “was confronted by two government officials regarding your participation in our conference.” The two spoke over Zoom, where Tan asked Yang to step down but gave little detail.

Yang declined to self-censor, so Tan made the decision for him: To “protect the future of the USCCA,” Yang was no longer welcome to speak.

Why did a U.S. Catholic group bend the knee?

Tan offered a number of reasons.

The University of St. Thomas and the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston would “most likely ask us to cancel the conference,” Tan said, because he had to ensure that “we will not be in conflict with the Vatican’s position on the PRC or jeopardize the Vatican.” (The Register reports that, in a comment, the university said it did not make any requests regarding the conference and the archdiocese did not respond in time for publication.) Tan also worried that board members feared retaliation from Yang’s participation. “The bottom line is no one can predict what the government can and will do. There is too much risk,” Tan wrote.

In a June 29 letter, chair of the 2026 USCCA conference Father Rob Carbonneau and Tan wrote to Yang offering further explanation: Two officials from the State Administration for Religious Affairs called for Yang’s removal due to his “past public criticism of the Chinese government.”

The board deemed it necessary to “preserve the USCCA’s fragile, long-term presence and mission in China.” One board member, University of California, San Diego professor Richard Madsen, did not agree and resigned, objecting to this “violation of the freedom of speech that is essential to academic integrity.”

Yang, too, objected, including to the USCCA’s request that he keep this matter quiet. “I cannot promise to be silent about this whole thing,” Yang wrote. “The egregious violation of religious freedom and academic freedom, and your organization’s willing cooperation in it, need to be exposed.” He also called the group’s “willingness” to assist in transnational repression “disappointing and hurtful.”

In a comment to The Register, Tan said critics need to understand that his group is not a “human rights organization.”

Sometimes, it takes two to censor

“I think it really represents an escalation,” Yang told The Register about his cancellation by USCCA. “They are trying to censor me on American soil.” He’s right — and he’s not alone. As I chronicled in my book Authoritarians in the Academy, critics of the Chinese government face censorship, threats, and fear in U.S. higher education and beyond.

But that’s only half the story. The other half is those who are willing to assist with that censorship and comply with orders from officials seeking to exert power beyond their own jurisdiction. People who find themselves in that situation, where they are pressured to consent to censorship abroad on behalf of an authoritarian power, no doubt often face a difficult choice. But it is, nevertheless, a choice.

Americans must ask themselves uncomfortable questions about what else foreign powers quietly censor on our shores without our notice, and why it’s so difficult for tech companies, civil society institutions, universities, and even religious groups to clearly and resolutely say “no” to those efforts.

How can we fight for a more just and free world if we aren’t even willing to embrace, defend, and employ our own freedoms in the process?

How many times can you prosecute blasphemous speech under other laws until you effectively have a blasphemy law?

This isn’t just a hypothetical. It’s a question the United Kingdom is posing again and again as police and the judiciary crack down on offensive speech about faith. In the aftermath of the Hamit Coskun saga — in which Coskun was violently attacked after burning a Quran and initially convicted by a judge who cited the attack as evidence for Coskun’s misconduct — more cases now suggest Britain has resurrected the concept of blasphemy under other names.

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One such case involves retired police officer Stephen Gray, who is in the process of appealing after being found guilty of offensive communications under Section 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003. Gray went on trial at Newton Aycliffe magistrates’ court earlier this year after facing charges for reposting two images on Facebook.

The first showed “an image of a Middle Eastern man, who was in his late 20s or 30s, and the words ‘Children in Need,’” as well as the words “time for mass deportation” and a caption calling for donations “to help him move from a three-star to a five-star hotel.” The second meme showed bacon, a man in a turban, and the message: “Fun facts about Bacon! People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9-year-old!”

The Telegraph reports that the complainant was Gray’s non-Muslim neighbour, with whom he had previously had an unrelated dispute.

The judge found the first image was not grossly offensive, reasoning that it dealt with a matter of public concern being debated in Parliament. But he reached the opposite conclusion about the bacon meme, saying that it concerned religion rather than politics and was grossly offensive. Gray was ordered to pay more than £1,000 in fines and costs. His appeal is scheduled for November. He fears a conviction could affect his family’s ability to foster children.

“I was initially quite worried because obviously we have to have enhanced DBS checks to foster children,” Gray told The Telegraph. “These kids have enough to put up with without the fear they may be moving again hanging over their heads.”

A second case raises similar concerns, but under a different statute. Two protesters were arrested after holding signs reading “fuck Islam” at the May 16 Unite the Kingdom rally in London, organized by activist Tommy Robinson, and are being investigated for possible offenses under the Public Order Act 1986. The Free Speech Union and Big Brother Watch have asked police and prosecutors to drop the matter.

British law doesn’t protect speech as broadly as the First Amendment does in the United States and permits investigation and prosecution based on the perceived offensiveness of speech.

That brings us back to Hamit Coskun.

As FIRE readers may remember, Coskun, a Turkish-born Kurdish-Armenian asylum seeker, burned a Quran and yelled “Fuck Islam” outside London’s Turkish consulate in 2025. A man named Moussa Kadri chased Coskun with a knife, attacked him, then kicked and spat on him. A passing delivery cyclist also stopped and kicked and spat on him. Coskun was charged with, and soon convicted, of a religiously aggravated public-order offense and fined. (Kadri was handed a suspended sentence for assault, and did not serve any time in prison.)

The trial judge’s reasoning produced one especially disturbing passage. In finding Coskun’s conduct disorderly, District Judge John McGarva cited the fact that Coskun was attacked as evidence of Coskun’s guilt, writing that his disorderly conduct was “no better illustrated” than by the fact that it led to two people assaulting him — even though the judge admitted neither attacker was justified.

Coskun appealed. In October, Southwark Crown Court acquitted him, saying that burning a Quran may offend others, but “the right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.” The Director of Public Prosecutions then challenged that appeal, and Coskun was forced once again to defend his case at the High Court. The court chose not to reverse the lower court’s ruling.

But the damage was done: his victory only came after arrest, prosecution, conviction, appeal, and another appeal by the state. Prosecutors, though they objected to critics’ claims of a return to blasphemy law, made clear they would vigorously pursue Coskun and similar cases of subjectively offensive speech about religion.

A destroyed Quran, “Fuck Islam,” and a meme mocking religious tenets may indeed offend some. The same would be true if you swapped out Islam, and swapped in Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism. But free people should be able to speak critically of the religions that sometimes influence or even directly determine political policy and social power today.

Offense is simply the price we sometimes pay to live in a free society, and free societies must not allow government officials the dangerous authority of deciding when the state can limit speech about the sacred. That will not magically do away with discord and hate — but it just might create another avenue to silence dissent.

Following a spike in reporting and public scrutiny into plagiarism allegations and his personal history, Jason Arday died, presumably by suicide, last week after resigning from his professorial position at Cambridge. His memoir about his story also hit bookshelves this month. And, as I explained in a piece earlier last week, Arday also apparently engaged in censorship tactics — reporting a journalist to the police, contracting with a libel law firm — to try to stop coverage of the plagiarism allegations from surfacing last summer.

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Understandably, many people, from supporters of Arday to those who questioned his scholarship or wrote about his life story, are now seeking to make sense of the chain of events that led to Arday’s death. Much of the public conversation now centers on the role played by the press, whether Arday was treated harshly because of his race, and to what extent media outlets and the people who engaged with their reporting are responsible for his tragic death.

People are free to criticize journalists, outlets, and the reporting they produce if they believe the coverage is insensitive, incorrect, or disproportionate. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, though we are unlikely to reach any social consensus on where those moral boundaries lie. I remember growing up as a pre-teen in the early 2000s, baffled as I watched celebrities grace tabloid covers alongside senseless mockery about how fat a musician’s thighs were, or how disgusting a star’s body looked as she stepped out of a car. I understand anger at perceived cruelty and bullying from the media.

No one can reasonably deny that photographers, writers, and the media can treat their subjects with shocking venom — or that the market to buy, read, and share that material exists. Too often we ignore that second piece of the puzzle, perhaps out of our discomfort at grappling with why so many of us are drawn to those stories.

Critics are also free to call for censorship and limits on the press to restrict the kind of reporting that flourished in recent weeks about Arday. They have that right, just as Arday’s critics do. And that is, indeed, exactly what some are doing — including politicians.

UK nonprofit the Good Law Project is pushing an open letter, currently with over 122,000 signatures, calling for Prime Minister Andy Burnham “to commission an immediate public inquiry into how to ensure a responsible press given its contribution to Dr Arday’s tragic death.” Several members of Parliament signed on. “Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed,” the letter adds. So the government must then regulate it.

Another petition calls for Arday’s Law, “legislative action to impose limitations on the number of news articles published about a single individual within a defined time frame” to “work towards creating a framework that balances the public’s right to information with an individual’s right to privacy and mental well-being.” Activist groups housed under Amnesty UK also issued a statement supporting the creation of Arday’s Law and for the media to “be held accountable for failing to honour” his family’s wishes for privacy.

How would this prior restraint work? The more time one spends thinking about it, the more rapidly the concept falls apart. What number of articles reaches the tipping point from reasonable to “hounding”? From how many authors and outlets? Are lengthy articles treated the same as short blurbs? Do bigger outlets with more authors get more articles? Would outlets be incentivized to produce shoddier journalism as they race to beat some kind of government-imposed limitation? Are some targets of inquiry exempt from such limits or would even the worst abusers, criminals, and offenders be able to benefit from this muzzle placed upon the press? What about the people who aren’t working for official media outlets, but just expressing themselves online, and their impact on a target’s mental health?

The short answer is: You cannot come up with a principled way to mete out who is permitted to speak about a matter of public concern, and how much they can say. One of the greatest strengths of the First Amendment that we enjoy in the United States is that it understands, and accounts for, the inherent danger of giving anyone that kind of authority over speech or press. What looks like a simple fix may very well be the lid to Pandora’s box.

It would be one thing just for commentators or members of the public to demand this. But it’s a whole different issue when politicians pick up the mantle. In addition to the group of MPs petitioning for a government investigation into the press, London Assembly Member and Green Party leader Zack Polanski is demanding further action. (I wrote about Polanski earlier this summer when the UK’s Reform Party absurdly called for his arrest over an Instagram repost.)

Over the weekend, Polanski said: “It’s time we sorted out the press. Constant misinformation to protect their donors and fossil fuels is destroying lives and our planet. The Government must step up and stop being cowardly.” Eighty-nine members of the Green Party also backed a motion, “Justice for Jason Arday: Stopping Racist Smear Campaigns and Reforming Media Power,” ahead of their fall conference. Their motion calls for much vaster state regulation of media outlets to police their printing of alleged racism and ableism, as well as broader powers for media regulator Ofcom to compel the removal of online material deemed hateful or discriminatory. The motion also pushes for a statutory right of reply for individuals or communities subjected to “allegedly defamatory, misleading, racially motivated, or otherwise discriminatory publication” with a response broadcast at similar prominence. The UK has not magically solved social ills with its ever-growing efforts to police and regulate speech online and off. It is baffling, at this point, to imagine that yet more limits on speech would finally do the trick.

An undeniable truth about censorship that few of its adherents are willing to address is that it is not a precision tool, it cannot carefully cut and extract. It’s a buzzsaw, and you cannot confidently predict who will be operating the blade, and what damage will be left in the wreckage.

So, criticize reporting you find unfair. Challenge commentators you think are cruel or wrong, whether about Arday or anything else. But Arday’s Law, or similar restrictions on press freedom, will not end cruelty or public speculation. They might, though, just give the powerful yet another tool to shut down much-needed inquiry into their conduct or even their crimes.

The implosion of the magnificent tales of Jason Arday, a professor who recently resigned from the University of Cambridge, is currently playing out across social media and headlines. Anyone reading this has no doubt heard at least some of the messy details by now. But because of some of the United Kingdom’s most notorious censorship problems, this story took a long time to see sunlight.

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Arday is a British academic and, until last week, taught sociology at the University of Cambridge, the youngest Black person ever appointed as professor at the prestigious institution. That was hardly the most interesting thing about Arday, though, according to accounts he gave of his own life story. Arday was diagnosed with autism at three, nonverbal until 11, unable to read until 18, but then overcame these obstacles to obtain his PhD, not to mention his herculean long-distance running achievements and the millions he raised in charity. All of these inspiring tales — like Arday running 30 marathons in 35 days, the last nine while injured — and more are set to appear in Arday’s forthcoming memoir with Simon & Schuster.

But, as we now know, there’s a bit of a problem: He made a bunch of it up. In the midst of snowballing reports questioning his life story, Arday resigned from Cambridge last week. “This decision should not be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship or in the values that first brought me to Cambridge. Nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me,” Arday wrote. “It is simply the decision of someone who has reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure.”

There have also been accusations that Arday engaged in plagiarism in his PhD thesis and other publications, but they did not spring into widespread view until this summer. And Arday’s apparent efforts to quash those plagiarism investigations are where the UK’s long-simmering free speech problems come into play.

Last week, Times Higher Education’s Jack Grove shared a shocking account: Earlier this year, London’s Metropolitan Police contacted him and explained that Grove, without his knowledge, had been the target of a now-closed complaint over his contact with Arday. Grove hadn’t been in touch with Arday for months. He last emailed Arday in September 2025, offering him an opportunity to respond to plagiarism allegations Grove was investigating. But even though months had passed since the last email, Grove shared that when police contacted him in February, an officer warned Grove to “not contact him again, because it was affecting his mental health.”

In all, Grove had sent only a few emails to Arday in the course of his investigation. But that was enough for police to insert themselves into a matter of journalism, then temporarily investigate a journalist, and even when acknowledging the matter was closed, issue a warning not to contact Arday for the sake of his mental health.

It’s a story that has played out ad nauseam in recent years in the UK: Police are knowingly inserting themselves into non-criminal activity, further blurring the already fuzzy line between protected expression and crime. Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has since admitted officers “dropped the ball” and erred in contacting Grove, but how many times can police make a mistake before it starts to look like standard practice?

That wasn’t even the only censorship threat that hindered Grove’s investigation, or the one that stopped him from publishing his investigation in the first place. This week, a letter Arday’s legal team sent to Times Higher Education last September finally leaked. The British firm Carter-Ruck, which specializes in libel law, detailed Grove’s interactions with Arday, challenged Grove’s questions, and criticized his “aggressive approach.” They wrote further:

As an academic, our client is not averse to criticism, nor does he wish to stifle the legitimate voicing of opinions of those who may disagree with his work. However, the fact that our client’s published work spanning the last decade is being called into question, and that his 2015 PhD thesis is now the subject of a complaint made by your journalist to our client’s doctoral awarding university (Liverpool John Moores University), and current employer (University of Cambridge), appears to suggest that there is an axe to grind against our client, personally. Our client feels that these repeated enquiries are a campaign of harassment against him, many of which have no bearing on his academic career and seem to be raised solely with the aim of sullying his reputation.

So the outlet chose to drop the story rather than risk a protracted and costly legal battle with Arday and Carter-Ruck. As Grove explains, “Arday’s solicitors had been in touch with THE and it was clear that the story could tie the publication up in months of expensive litigation. Even if we were right — and I stand by my reporting — it would have been ruinously expensive.”

What Grove is referring to here is the UK’s notorious libel law, which has been so friendly to plaintiffs over the years that targets of investigation or criticism used England as a home base for “libel tourism” against their critics. Despite some efforts to reform it, “London is still the libel capital of the world, thanks to our punitive costs system and a SLAPP culture that hasn’t been properly checked.”

The absurdity of Arday’s misdeeds should not lull us into ignoring the seriousness of a legal environment that makes reporting on it so challenging.

In the grand scheme of things, an academic fabulist’s tall tales may seem to some like small potatoes, but these same tactics could be used against whistleblowers, reporters, and critics seeking to uncover the truth about government malfeasance, illegal conduct by the wealthy and the well-off, and the worst forms of abuse and harm. If a journalist has to fear a ruinous legal battle, and perhaps even police warnings, just to report on plagiarism allegations, what else can he not safely investigate?

Late last year, the United Kingdom, France, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and dozens more nations signed the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime, a treaty ostensibly intended to improve global cooperation to fight crimes taking place over computer systems. Canada joined them this summer. The United States remains a notable exception and says it is still reviewing the treaty.

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Three nations have since ratified it, and the treaty will enter into force 90 days after 40 states do so. As FIRE has long warned, the treaty opens the door to greater violations of free expression online — and new cybercrime bills popping up around the world show why.

What does the cybercrime treaty say?

The treaty purports to improve international cooperation in addressing crimes taking place using computer systems — but cooperation is not limited to specific online criminal acts like fraud or phishing. Instead, the treaty pushes nations to share personal data that other nations request about individuals accused of committing “serious” crimes.

But there’s an important question here. What constitutes a “serious” crime? The treaty does little to define it other than clarifying that it’s a crime carrying at least a four-year prison sentence as a punishment. For billions of people around the world, speech is a crime that warrants a long prison term.

The treaty also would command nations to adopt legislation and measures “as may be necessary to oblige a service provider to keep confidential” the execution of government searches for user data. Even more concerning, a nation seeking data from other countries can request that the user under surveillance not be notified and “may require that the requested State Party keep confidential the fact and substance of the request.”

As I wrote previously about the treaty:

The likely outcome here is obvious: The treaty will streamline unfree countries’ involvement with other unfree countries’ repression and pressure freer ones into helping, too. And it can all take place confidentially, without the knowledge of the public or even those being targeted . . .

And as though existing national laws punishing political expression aren’t enough, the treaty could even incentivize governments to enact harsher penalties on expressive acts. After all, if you’d like other nations to assist you in punishing your critics on the internet, you’ll want to ensure their expression qualifies for inclusion under the treaty’s definition of “serious crimes.”

How is ‘cybercrime’ legislation evolving?

A review of cybercrime legislation that has emerged in the wake of the treaty suggests that the free speech problems surrounding online “crime” and the UN treaty are just beginning. Take three bills, one of which has been passed by the Malaysian Parliament, under review by legislators this year in countries which signed on to the treaty. When reading the below, keep in mind that the UN treaty defines “serious” crime as that which is punishable by four or more years in prison.

First, Malaysia’s Cybercrimes Bill 2026. Article 19 criticized a number of the bill’s problems, including a lack of procedural safeguards for privacy and other issues, and some provisions that directly target content. The bill criminalizes content “generated or manipulated” by computer systems and “resembling an existing person, object, place, entity or event that falsely appears to a person to be authentic or truthful” with the intent to violate any other existing laws. This new offense is punishable by up to seven years in prison and, as Article 19 points out, runs the risk of targeting “satire, artistic works, journalism, or comments critical of the government.” The group also warns that the bill’s section on “intimate” imagery is written so broadly as to essentially punish any pornographic imagery made or transmitted using computer systems with up to five years in prison.

Next, let’s look at Namibia’s Cybercrime Bill 2026, the draft of which is still being finalized. In its current form, the bill threatens the vague offense of “cyberbullying” with 10 years’ imprisonment. “Failure to moderate undesirable content” — which includes material that “promotes racism” or is “inaccurate” and intended to “mislead the public” — is punishable with up to five years. Use of computer systems to publish pornography deemed “lascivious or obscene” can net up to 15 years.

And then there’s China’s Draft Law on Cybercrime Prevention and Control, which was published for comment earlier this year but is not yet enacted. Readers are unlikely to be surprised that it seeks to further entrench China’s authoritarianism online. Read Human Rights Watch’s analysis for a full breakdown, but here’s just a glimpse: The bill targets so-called offenses like “disrupting online order,” harming “national security” and “public interest,” “disrupting the real-name management system,” and “disseminating false information.”

While South Sudan and Iraq have not yet signed the treaty, they may yet in the future — and they, too, just unveiled troubling new cybercrime laws.

South Sudan’s newly enacted Cybercrimes and Computer Misuse Act, 2026 punishes publication of “false or misleading” information that damages a person’s reputation with up to five years in prison, and a similar sentence can be doled out to administrators or intermediaries who don’t take “reasonable steps to restrict or remove access to unlawful content.” And Iraq is reviewing a cybercrime bill that would, among other things, dole out harsh punishments to those who publish what authorities deem “misinformation.”

What does this mean for the future of online expression?

There are, no doubt, serious transnational crimes taking place on the internet that require international cooperation. And there are ways we can improve cross-border collaboration to fight actual crime. But this treaty risks emboldening states that already seek to crush out online dissent, giving them more tools to do so, and enlisting freer states in this campaign.

And, perhaps most concerningly, this treaty may exacerbate what is already a uniquely dangerous era for free speech online. Every day it seems nations are pursuing new limitations on people’s ability to express themselves online, passing privacy-threatening age-gating restrictions, and seeking to gut government critics’ ability to speak anonymously. It’s more urgent than ever that democratic nations seek to reverse this corrosive trend rather than deepen it.

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.

What do the internet and national borders have in common? As today’s Free Speech Dispatch illustrates, both are currently hotbeds for government action regulating what information and material people can access, and how. When it comes to the internet, authorities are targeting not just what individuals say online, but the tools and platforms they use to express themselves, as readers will see in stories from Australia, Russia, France, India, and more. And while regulations of internet tools are a somewhat nebulous concept, governments are meanwhile seeking to use borders in a much more literal way — as a corporeal barrier between their nations and people expressing ideas they hope to exclude, as I explain below.

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Telegram is on the hot seat again

Pavel Durov and Telegram, the immensely popular messaging app he founded, have faced legal trouble before. Russia has repeatedly clashed with the platform, while French authorities arrested Durov in 2024 over allegations that Telegram enabled criminal activity. Now the company and its founder face a new set of allegations on opposite sides of the world.

In Australia, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant announced last week that the agency is taking legal action against Telegram over its failure to remove content deemed extremist, including videos of mass shootings and Islamic State beheadings, in violation of a law requiring the removal of terrorist content. The regulator says some material remained accessible on the service long after Telegram had been put on notice.” In a statement, Telegram replied, “We reject these allegations and will contest them in court.”

Durov’s legal troubles are continuing in Russia, too. Last week, the Federal Security Service claimed Telegram did not take down “numerous channels, chats and bots” allegedly operated by “Ukrainian intelligence agencies, terrorist and extremist organizations to prepare and coordinate acts of sabotage and terrorism, mass murder, and cyberfraud” in Russia, which resulted in “numerous human casualties.” Authorities charged Durov, who lives in Dubai, with aiding terrorism and placed him on an international wanted list.

Where borders and speech collide

Should foreigners be expelled from a country over views they express while visiting, working, or living there?

In the United States, FIRE is currently suing over Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s use of two federal immigration law provisions that grant him vast power to revoke legal immigrants’ visas and deport them for protected speech. Similar conflicts are unfolding abroad, as governments turn borders into ideological checkpoints.

In Argentina, President Javier Milei just signed an emergency decree establishing that the government can deport or bar entry to foreigners who “incite or disseminate messages of hatred, discrimination and/or violence against the Argentine people” or “insult national symbols.” Much is left up in the air by this decree, but one thing is clear: It offers authorities much greater power to target foreigners for deportation if they have engaged in government criticism deemed “hateful” or “insulting” by officials.

Two European nations also just removed controversial figures for their speech. Pascal Robinson-Foster, frontman for British punk-rap duo Bob Vylan, was recently denied entry at Berlin’s airport and deported to the UK. The Intercept obtained police files addressing the entry ban on Robinson-Foster. Police wrote that his presence would cause “considerable reputational damage” by suggesting Germany is making “no effort to prevent the spread of the propagated antisemitism and the associated calls to violence.” Concerns about Robinson-Foster’s entry no doubt in part rested on his controversial “Death, death to the IDF” chant at Glastonbury Festival last year. German authorities reportedly later lifted the entry ban.

France’s Interior Ministry also just expelled Russian commentator Xenia Fedorova, a commentator in French and European media and former chief of RT France. Officials’ expulsion order against Fedorova alleges she acts “as a conduit for disinformation campaigns orchestrated by the Russian authorities.” President Emmanuel Macron has long sparred with Fedorova, whose lawyer intends to file an appeal on free speech grounds.

France approves internet age-gating

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced last month that an EU-wide youth social media ban is coming this fall, though specifics of the ban are not yet known. France, though, isn’t waiting any longer. French lawmakers, the first in the European Union to do so, officially approved an under-15 ban last month, with Macron proclaiming that “France is leading the way in Europe in protecting our children and our teenagers.” As FIRE has frequently warned in recent months, age-gating teens off the internet raises a lot of privacy and censorship concerns for adults.

More free speech news from Europe

As I wrote last week, the United Kingdom experienced yet another social-media censorship controversy after Nigel Farage and Reform UK called on police to arrest Green Party leader Zack Polanski. Polanski had accepted a tag on an Instagram carousel that included a photo of a man wearing a shirt with a guillotine and the words “We’re only making plans for Nigel.” He said he removed the tag after learning about it. Police later said they were not looking into Polanski but were pursuing the man pictured wearing the shirt.

London’s Metropolitan Police also confirmed dozens more arrests of activists holding signs in support of Palestine Action outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court. They join hundreds of others facing terror charges after the government proscribed the group.

There are new judicial developments in Europe, too. In a troubling ruling, an Italian appeals court reaffirmed journalist Fabio Butera’s civil liability for third parties’ comments on his Facebook page. A lower court ordered Butera to pay damages for defamatory comments other users had posted on his page about a fellow journalist Butera criticized.

And Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish member of Parliament found guilty of hate speech earlier this year by Finland’s Supreme Court, is taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights. Räsänen is appealing to the ECHR over the ruling that she committed incitement against a group for reposting a religious pamphlet she co-wrote in 2004, “Male and Female He Created Them.” Räsänen’s conviction also resulted in her being denied an Electronic Travel Authorisation for the United Kingdom this summer.

As ’s and , also a FIRE senior fellow, argue in a new article at the Journal of Free Speech Law, it’s possible that hate speech laws may become even more entrenched across the European Union. EU member states individually already wield hate speech laws, but since 2020, von der Leyen has advocated making hate speech an EU-level crime. While some measures have stalled, they write, “the Commission has signaled a narrower, ‘online‑only’ route: a legislative initiative under existing Article 83(1) crime categories (e.g., computer crime) to harmonize definitions of online hate offences. In practice, this would still embed criminal prohibitions more deeply into national criminal law and EU digital enforcement frameworks.”

There are a number of serious concerns this maneuver would raise. Among them? “Speech that is lawful when delivered offline could trigger criminal liability once posted online.” Read the full article, A Cure Worse than the Disease: Why the EU’s Proposal to Criminalize Hate Speech Violates Freedom of Expression — and Won’t Reduce Intolerance or Extremism, to learn more.

More political arrests, complaints, and prosecutions — some with severe sentences

• Two lawyers and two activists are facing criminal libel charges in the Philippines for their involvement in advocacy against a mining company.

• Vietnamese authorities arrested five people on “anti-state propaganda” charges for publishing a book about former President Ho Chi Minh. They could face decades in prison if convicted.

• Russian activist Ilya Remeslo — best known for his support of the Kremlin and antagonism toward the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny — was arrested for spreading false information after publishing a surprise manifesto critical of President Putin.

• A Thai appeals court upheld a two-year prison sentence handed down to human rights lawyer Anon Nampa in one of the 14 lese-majeste cases against him for his criticism of the monarchy.

• An Azerbaijani court sentenced a group of journalists and media workers to a whopping 12 to 15 years in prison for financial crimes, allegations which the accused say are trumped up and politically motivated.

Censorship amid protest and turmoil in India

It’s been a busy summer in Indian politics, as the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party (named after the country’s chief justice called the young activists “cockroaches”) snowballed from an online movement complaining about a voided exam to mass protests across the country. The movement found success, with Prime Minister Modi’s government acceding to protesters’ demands including the ousting of the education minister. But protesters are paying the price, too — hundreds are facing charges, including for “abusive slogans” about Modi. The censorship has extended online, with authorities directing social media platforms to “remove content they considered abusive, objectionable or in violation of Indian law.”

At the same time, India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre ordered GitHub to remove, within three hours, three repositories hosting Bitchat, a messenger app from Jack Dorsey that operates using Bluetooth-mesh technology rather than accounts or phone numbers. Authorities targeted the source code on GitHub because Bitchat’s decentralized technology cannot be targeted the same way as other apps. The Centre’s order alleged that “anonymous communication without registration, phone numbers or centralized logging,” could “significantly” hinder “lawful interception, attribution, and investigation by law enforcement agencies.” It also warned that the app could be used to coordinate “unlawful assemblies” and “dissemination of misinformation.” It marks yet another notable effort by authorities not just to unmask anonymous speakers, but to crack down on the tools that could aid in anonymity.

And last week, both houses of Parliament approved the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, which would grant Vande Mataram the same protections as the national anthem. Under the bill, insults to the Vande Mataram, a poem adapted as the national song of India, can be punished with fines or up to three years in prison. Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, a member of the lower house of Parliament and an opponent of the bill, said during debates, “We respect the national song… we can even stand for it… but you cannot force us to say it with you.”

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.