If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A body set up to make Europe’s content censorship regime work has accidentally documented why it doesn’t. Appeals Centre Europe, an Ireland-certified dispute settlement outfit operating under the EU’s Digital Services Act, released its second transparency report this week. The numbers it published describe a system failing in both directions at once, and they hand the case against laws like the DSA to anyone who wants it. Let’s start with what the body found when it actually got to look at the disputed content. Across the year from April 2025 to March 2026, it disagreed with the platform’s call 59 percent of the time. Break that down and the picture gets stranger. When users challenged content that platforms had deleted, the Appeals Centre sided with the user 52 percent of the time. When users flagged content that the platforms had chosen to leave online, the body overturned that decision 63 percent of the time. The same companies are deleting things they shouldn’t and keeping up things the regime says they should remove, often in the same reporting period. The machinery the DSA built to produce correct moderation outcomes is producing roughly a coin flip. Legitimate posts get censored. The body reviewing the censorship then has to tell the platform to put them back. More than half the time, when it can see the evidence, it concludes the platform got it wrong. The Appeals Centre received more than 24,000 disputes over the year, with eligible cases arriving nine times faster in March 2026 than in April 2025. That is the scale of disagreement a single dispute body is fielding from across the EU. It is also a fraction of the moderation decisions these platforms make every day, which run to millions. The DSA’s underlying premise is that platforms can review this firehose of human expression and arrive at defensible, appealable judgments about each piece. The error rate on the small sample anyone actually checks suggests the premise was never sound. Then there is the question of whether any of it gets enforced and here the report stops being merely damning. Account suspensions are where the system collapses outright. The Appeals Centre received more than 14,000 suspension disputes. It managed to fully review fewer than 150 of them, because platforms would not hand over the content needed to assess the bans. More than 7,300 disputes ended in what the body calls “default decisions,” meaning the platform failed to supply the material within 30 days and the ruling went to the user automatically. Meta was the standout. Out of more than 4,600 eligible Facebook and Instagram suspension disputes, the company produced the disputed content in fewer than 100 cases. So a European can be banned, file a free appeal under the law that was sold as their protection, win that appeal by default because the platform never engaged, and still find their account gone. The Appeals Centre says that even after it reviews cases and rules, platforms often don’t act on the outcome. In one section covering disputes from civil society groups, the body says it knows of only “a handful” of cases where platforms acted on its rulings, with many disputed posts staying online. An appeals process that produces rulings no one is obliged to honor is nothing more than a complaint box with a logo. Thomas Hughes, the body’s CEO, positioned the findings around enforcement failures. “Online hate and harassment have real-world consequences for many people and communities. In more than two-thirds of our decisions about hate speech, we found that platforms failed to enforce their own policies and left up hateful content. This goes to show that platforms don’t always get it right. If you’re in the EU, you can challenge a platform’s decisions free of charge to Appeals Centre Europe and get an expert, impartial review,” he said. Read the same data without the institutional framing and a different lesson appears. “Failed to enforce their own policies” describes platforms not deleting content that someone, somewhere, has decided is “hate speech.” The hate speech category the report leans on is exactly the kind of definition that depends entirely on who holds the pen. The body overturned platform decisions to leave up reported hate speech 70 percent of the time, with TikTok at 83 percent, Instagram at 74, Facebook at 61, YouTube at 58. Those numbers can be read two ways. One reading is that platforms are derelict. The other is that a vast share of what one reviewer calls hate speech, the platform’s own systems looked at and decided was permissible expression. The disagreement is proof that nobody involved can agree on where the line sits, which is what happens when the rule is a category rather than a law. Brussels spent years promising users a robust system for contesting what happens to their speech online. The body running that system just published the evidence that it doesn’t work and the deepest problem isn’t administrative. You cannot build a fair, reviewable, rights-respecting censorship regime on top of a volume of speech this large. The mess is the message. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post EU-Backed Appeals Center Accidentally Confirms the DSA Censorship Regime Is Unworkable appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

This Post is for Paid Supporters Reclaim your digital freedom. Get the latest on censorship and surveillance, and learn how to fight back. SUBSCRIBE Already a supporter? Sign In. (If you’re already logged in but still seeing this, refresh this page to show the post.) The post Stop Renting Access to Your Own Movie Collection appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Samsung wants your passport living inside your phone and it has handed the keys to a private company called CLEAR. The announcement landed on May 26. Samsung Electronics America and CLEAR are launching Samsung ID with CLEAR, a digital passport that sits in Samsung Wallet and lets US travelers verify their identity at more than 250 TSA checkpoints by tapping their phone or scanning a QR code. Samsung and CLEAR are providing a “safe, secure, and free mobile digital ID designed to simplify users’ busy lives,” the company says. The selling point is convenience. What you actually exchange for it is your face, your passport data and a permanent place in a corporate identity network most people have never read the terms of. Setting it up reveals the shape of the bargain. You scan a valid US passport, then complete a face verification step run by CLEAR before the credential appears in your wallet. That scan is an enrollment into the same biometric network CLEAR has spent years wiring into airports and arenas, a network the company now puts at 41 million members and is pushing straight into the device you carry everywhere. “CLEAR’s secure identity verification platform makes experiences safer and easier – both physically and digitally,” said CLEAR CEO Caryn Seidman Becker. “Now with CLEAR’s secure identity platform embedded in Samsung Wallet, verifying your identity is easier than ever. Samsung ID with CLEAR gives you a simple, secure ID in the palm of your hand.” Notice what gets sold as progress. A federal identity document, and the biometric scan that locks it to your body, now route through a publicly traded private firm that earns its revenue by becoming the gatekeeper between you and the places you want to enter. Samsung points to Knox security, on-device encryption, and a required fingerprint or PIN, and those protections are real on the phone itself. They say nothing about what CLEAR retains on its own systems once your face and passport have passed through verification. The company anticipates that question. CLEAR states it is committed to privacy and that it does not sell biometric or sensitive personal data. Promising not to sell the data is not the same as not holding it and a pledge made today binds no future owner, regulator, or law enforcement request tomorrow. Then there is the reach beyond the airport. The credential already works for age checks at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, with more venues planned. “BMO Stadium is proud to be among the select venues leading the adoption of mobile digital identity verification,” said Christian Lau, Chief Technology Officer at BMO Stadium. Each new venue trains people to treat a phone-based identity scan as the ordinary cost of walking through a door. Samsung is not breaking ground here so much as falling in line. Apple and Google wired passport storage into their own wallets first, and the coverage greeting this launch treated it as Samsung finally catching up rather than doing anything new. When the three companies that control nearly every phone in circulation all offer the same thing, a face scan tied to a federal document stops reading as a remarkable demand and starts reading as a default you would look paranoid for refusing. Each rollout arrives dressed as a small kindness, a card you no longer have to dig for, and each one nudges up the baseline of what you are expected to surrender to get through an ordinary day. The wallet that began by holding your credit cards now holds your driver’s license, your passport, your house keys, and your face, and the firms assembling it would prefer you call that tidiness rather than the construction of a single private chokepoint your identity has to pass through. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Samsung Throws Its Support Behind Digital ID appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Texas can start forcing app stores to check the age of everyone who wants to download an app, after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday cleared the state to enforce its App Store Accountability Act while the legal fight over it plays out. We obtained a copy of the order for you here. The three-judge panel gave no reasoning for the order, which lifts an injunction that US District Court Judge Robert Pitman issued last year in Austin after finding the restrictions likely violate the First Amendment. SB 2420 does more than bar anyone under 18 from downloading apps or making in-app purchases without a parent’s permission. To draw that age line, marketplaces run by Google and Apple have to verify how old you are before you install anything, which pulls every user into the age-checking machinery rather than just minors. Apple and Google have already built tools to pass each person’s age range to developers on request, opening a fresh stream of personal data out of the verification step. The statute also pushes developers to sort their apps into four age bands, covering children under 13, young teens aged 13 to 15, older teens aged 16 to 17, and adults 18 and older, and to slap the same labels on individual in-app purchases. That structure is what bothered Pitman and he wrote that the law “is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book.” Texas passed the measure last year and set it to take effect in January, with Utah and Louisiana enacting similar statutes and federal lawmakers floating a national version. The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech trade group, and the advocacy organization Students Engaged in Advancing Texas sued separately in October, arguing the statute violates the First Amendment. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation backed the law, telling the court it “reinforces longstanding requirements” around parental authorization for take-it-or-leave-it contracts with minors. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who took the injunction to the 5th Circuit frames it as a valid regulation of “commercial” transactions between minors and app stores. “When minors download apps they are accepting terms of service, including agreements about how their data is used,” Paxton argued. “The child may even be agreeing to have the information in their phone monetized by the tech companies or used to track location.” The remedy Texas picked collects more data, not less. To shield children from apps that harvest and sell their information, the state requires age-verifying every user and tying minors’ accounts to a verified parent, then leaves the actual data harvesting untouched. Once a parent signs off, the app gathers and monetizes information exactly as it did before. What changes is the front door, which now demands proof of identity from people who used to walk through anonymously. The challengers pressed that distinction with the appeals court. “SB2420 restricts an enormous amount of online speech in violation of controlling First Amendment precedent,” the groups wrote, asking the panel to keep Pitman’s injunction in place. They rejected what they called Texas’s attempt “to reframe SB2420 as directed only at contracts and data privacy.” The groups argued that “While app store user agreements may … authorize data collection and set terms for user privacy, the Act does not regulate those aspects of the agreements.” They added, “It instead uses age-verification at the account-creation stage to create a parental-consent obligation that specifically (and exclusively) covers obtaining apps and in-app content.” Thursday’s order landed before Paxton’s office had even responded to that filing. The panel called its decision an “administrative stay,” a temporary measure, and the judges could still restore the injunction later. The trade group and the student organization can ask the full 5th Circuit or the Supreme Court to step in right away. Until they do, the age checks can switch on across Texas. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post 5th Circuit Lets Texas Enforce App Store Age Checks appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a lawsuit that treats a platform’s decision not to check your ID as an illegal business practice. By declining to hear Meta’s appeal in Meta v. Vermont, the justices let Vermont’s claim against Instagram move forward and tucked inside that claim is a demand that should worry anyone who values logging on without handing over proof of who they are. The case began in 2023, when Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, a Democrat, sued Meta, alleging violations of the state’s consumer protection laws. The headline accusation is that Instagram was built to hook young users. One of the listed offenses is Meta’s failure to “verify users’ age upon account creation,” which the state frames as an “Unfair Acts and Practices” violation of Vermont’s Consumer Protection Act. The remedy Vermont seeks is an injunction barring those practices and the practical effect of such an order would push Meta toward far broader age verification than it runs today. A lawsuit nominally about addictive design is being used to recast the absence of identity checks as consumer fraud. Verifying age online means collecting government IDs, scanning faces, or building behavioral profiles detailed enough to estimate how old someone is and every one of those methods replaces an anonymous account with a tracked, identified one. The state could have argued for narrower design fixes. It chose a theory whose logical endpoint is mandatory ID at the door. Meta fought to stop the case on constitutional grounds, telling the Supreme Court, “The complaint alleges that Meta violated Vermont law by ‘designing’ Instagram to be addictive, but there is no allegation that Meta ‘designed’ Instagram in Vermont or with features in any way unique to or targeted at Vermont.” Earlier, the Vermont Supreme Court rejected Meta’s claim, noting that because the state sued Meta for allegedly pushing an addictive program on minors and lying to users about it, any due process concerns have been “clearly extinguished.” Clark, announcing the suit, said, “Instagram’s harm to teens, and particularly girls and young women, is well-documented. But Meta has denied and downplayed these harmful impacts for continued profits. Meta knowingly designed and developed Instagram features to exploit teens’ vulnerabilities to maximize revenue. This is reprehensible and a violation of Vermont’s Consumer Protection Act. This lawsuit aims to hold Meta accountable.” With the appeal denied, Vermont v. Meta returns to Chittenden County Superior Court, where discovery is expected to be the next phase. The reach of the ruling extends past Instagram. A parallel suit, Vermont v. TikTok, had been frozen while Meta’s appeal played out, and now it can move too. TikTok faces the same construction, accused of targeting children with addictive features and faulted for failing to “adequately verify TikTok users’ age upon account creation,” again pleaded as an “Unfair Acts and Practices” violation of the same statute, again paired with an injunction request that would seemingly force broader age verification. You can hold a dim view of how these platforms treat teenagers and still see what is being built through the courtroom side door. The verdicts and each surviving complaint adds weight to a legal theory in which staying anonymous is itself the harm, and the cure is a system that knows your name before it lets you in. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Supreme Court Refusal in Vermont v. Meta Strengthens Addiction Suits Threatening Online Anonymity appeared first on Reclaim The Net.