If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. President Donald Trump has nominated Adam Candeub to lead antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department. The pick hands the government’s cases against Big Tech to a lawyer who wants to weaken the law protecting online speech and to put internet users under surveillance to enforce age checks. Candeub, general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission, was named on Tuesday as assistant attorney general. A White House official confirmed on social media that he would run the antitrust division. The job hands him the department’s case against Google, which is appealing a ruling that it ran an illegal search monopoly, along with the 2024 suit accusing Apple of monopolizing the smartphone market. Candeub has spent years pressing to weaken Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the provision that shields platforms from lawsuits over what their users post. Weaken that shield, and companies gain every reason to delete more user content rather than carry the risk. A 2019 essay of his described Facebook, Google and Twitter, now X, as using the statute to “advocate for an open internet while at the same time justifying their censorship regime.” He helped build the first Trump administration’s attempt to scrap the provision. As a Commerce Department official, he worked to carry out the president’s executive order targeting Big Tech over claims it silenced conservative voices. The surveillance runs through his campaign against online pornography. Candeub set out the case in a Heritage Foundation report on July 6 and an op-ed the day after. He argued for prosecuting porn under the modern version of the Comstock Act and state obscenity laws. “Never has so much pornography been so available to so many at so little cost,” he wrote. To keep the material from minors, he proposed estimating ages by watching what people do online. Age can be judged, he wrote, “simply by analyzing publicly available online information such as your email address or even pictures of your hand movements.” That would put every adult reaching for a legal website under a system that reads their email address and studies images of their hands to guess how old they are. His plans for antitrust follow the same instinct. Candeub has granted that tech platforms show little of the consumer harm competition law was built to catch. He argues regulators should reach for behavioral claims instead, among them that “social media makes Americans less happy.” He laid out the harder line in a chapter he wrote for the Heritage Foundation’s proposed blueprint for Trump’s second term. “The large internet platforms have transformed the US economy, streamlining consumer purchases, networking billions of people, and altering long-established business practices,” it reads. “Despite their enormous size, they have avoided significant antitrust liability or prosecution. The reasons for this are not entirely clear.” Candeub has questioned whether the Federal Trade Commission, which shares antitrust enforcement with the Justice Department, should be allowed to police competition “or even continue to exist.” In his Project 2025 chapter he urged revisiting the Supreme Court precedent that protected the agency’s independence “perhaps sooner than later.” The court did that in June, ruling against former FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. Trump had fired her without cause. Brendan Carr, who chairs the FCC, welcomed the nomination and said Candeub brought “a thoughtful and sensible approach” to his work as the regulator’s general counsel. Confirmation could take months and has proved hard to win for many of Trump’s nominees in the narrowly Republican Senate. The antitrust division has run under acting head Omeed Assefi, and lately associate attorney general Stanley Woodward, since Gail Slater was forced out as its chief. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Adam Candeub’s Plan for Section 230, Obscenity, and Your Hands appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Today the European Commission fined Google €890 million for breaking the Digital Markets Act, the law the bloc wrote to pry open its largest online platforms. €460 million was for self-preferencing in search: the Commission concluded that Google had given its own shopping, hotel, and travel results the prominent placement and the richer display that rival services could not get. The other €430 million was for the rules Google Play imposes on the developers who sell through it, rules that kept them from telling their own customers about cheaper offers available elsewhere while charging a steering fee above what the law allows. The Commission ordered Google to stop and to rank outside services on the same terms as its own. The reaction from Washington arrived before the fine did. Days earlier, twenty-five Republican members of Congress, seven of them on the House trade subcommittee and one its chairman, wrote to President Trump urging him to treat European enforcement as an act of aggression against American business, a tool, they said, of “economic extraction and regulatory coercion.” They asked him to reach for Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the statute that lets Washington answer unfair practices with tariffs, and reminded the bloc that “the EU’s access to the U.S. market is not guaranteed.” The lawmakers also caught the Commission in an awkward inconsistency: Apple, Meta, and Amazon wear the gatekeeper label that pulls them under the law, while the Chinese marketplaces Temu and AliExpress, which reach just as far into European pockets, so far don’t. The timing sharpened the suspicion, the fine landing hours before a batch of the President’s global tariffs was due to expire. Between the inconsistency and the timing, the charge of persecution has something under it. And yet the conduct Europe fined is the conduct American courts have already condemned, in cases brought by an American company, tried before American judges and an American jury, with no connection to Brussels. Apple spent the past two years losing to Epic Games in a federal courtroom in California. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that the company had willfully violated her 2021 order forbidding it to stop developers from steering customers to cheaper payment options outside the App Store. She threw out the commission Apple had tried to charge on those outside sales and referred the matter to federal prosecutors for possible criminal contempt. “That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation,” she wrote; “the cover-up made it worse.” Fortnite was back in the American App Store within days. Google lost the same fight on the same ground when a California jury decided in December 2023 that the Play Store and its billing system formed an illegal monopoly, and in July 2025 the Ninth Circuit upheld both the verdict and the order that came with it; Google must let rival app stores operate, permit alternative billing, and stop paying companies to keep out of app distribution. Epic’s chief executive called it a total victory. Anti-steering in the App Store, self-preferencing and a closed till in the Play Store; take the European postmark off the charges and they are the same ones a jury in San Francisco already returned. In May the Supreme Court refused to pause Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s order but in June it agreed to hear Apple’s appeal of the contempt finding, so the question of how far Apple defied the order is still open. What isn’t open, and what the appeal does not reach, is the 2021 injunction against blocking steering, or the jury’s monopoly verdict against Google that the Ninth Circuit affirmed. The core findings stand. American law looked at what these companies do and called it unlawful; the only live dispute is over how thoroughly Apple flouted the remedy. Google’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker, called the fine “product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants,” and warned that the law would tear out the search features Europeans love and dismantle the safety protections on Google Play. It is a practiced move, to describe the loss of your own advantage as a loss to your customer. But the American courts heard that argument and were not moved by it, because the parties actually held down were not Europeans who enjoy an instant hotel price. They were the developers forbidden to tell a buyer where the same subscription cost less, and the rival stores that were paid to stay out of the market. Which is why the letter to the President picked the wrong law. Reaching for Section 301 over the Play Store fine means threatening a trading partner with tariffs in order to defend conduct that an American jury found illegal and an American judge referred to prosecutors. Twenty-five members of Congress have arranged themselves behind the proposition that a company’s right to stop developers telling their own customers about a cheaper price is an American national interest. It is not one. It is Google’s interest, and the courts of the United States have already said so. There is another European law, and on that one the members would be standing on ground their own courts have laid for them. The Digital Services Act does not regulate competition. It regulates speech. It requires the largest platforms to identify and mitigate “systemic risks” arising from their services, a category that runs past illegal material and into content that is perfectly lawful and merely disapproved of, with penalties reaching six percent of global turnover for a company that mitigates too little. In December the Commission issued its first non-compliance decision under the law, a €120 million fine against X, and that one rested on transparency grounds: the paid blue check, the advertising archive, the data researchers could not get. The proceedings that matter more are the ones still open, the ones about what X leaves up. American courts have examined what the DSA institutionalizes and found it unconstitutional, in cases where American officials were doing it informally and with no statute behind them at all. In NRA v. Vullo the Supreme Court held unanimously in 2024 that a regulator may not use the leverage of her office to pressure an intermediary into cutting off a disfavored speaker. In the Missouri litigation the Fifth Circuit found that federal officials had crossed from persuasion into coercion in their dealings with the platforms over pandemic and election content, though the Supreme Court disposed of the case on standing without reaching that question. In Moody v. NetChoice the Court treated what a platform chooses to carry as editorial judgment, which is the kind of thing the First Amendment exists to keep the government’s hands off. Put those together and the American position is far from ambiguous. A public official with the power to impose a fine may not tell a publisher what to publish, and calling the instruction a risk mitigation obligation does not change what it is. Unlike the antitrust fines, this one reaches Americans. The Brussels standard becomes the standard in Ohio by default, not because anyone in Ohio voted for it, and Americans find their speech governed by a law they had no part in passing and no court of theirs can strike down. There is a fight worth having here, and it is not the one Congress has chosen. On the Play Store the members are defending the conduct their own judiciary condemned; on the Digital Services Act they would be defending a principle their own judiciary has affirmed three times in as many years. One of those is a trade grievance dressed up as a matter of principle. The other is a matter of principle that nobody in Washington has yet bothered to take seriously enough to dress up as anything. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Google’s €890m EU Fine and the Wrong Fight in Washington appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A federal judge has refused to throw out the civil rights lawsuit filed by a Texas journalist arrested over a satirical Facebook meme and declined to grant qualified immunity to the sheriff and investigator who put him in jail. Chief US District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled on July 20 that Kolton Krottinger’s suit can move forward against Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds and former deputy James Luckie. We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here. O’Connor wrote that Krottinger “sufficiently alleged that Luckie and Sheriff Deeds violated his clearly established rights to be free from arrest without probable cause, malicious prosecution, and First Amendment Retaliation.” The ruling keeps alive claims of First Amendment retaliation, unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution, and Fourth Amendment violations. Qualified immunity shields officers from suit unless they broke rights already clearly established in law, and it ends most cases of this kind before they reach discovery. O’Connor found that Krottinger cleared that bar. Krottinger, a 36-year-old Navy veteran, runs several Hood County news pages on Facebook and a nonprofit, Anxiety Solutions of America, that operates a 21-acre ranch for veterans and first responders. Governor Greg Abbott named him an honorary admiral of the Texas Navy in January 2025. His arrest traces to a satire image posted to a satirical page called Hood County Sheepdogs during a Granbury school board race. The meme made it look as though Tina Brown, a regular speaker at county commissioners’ meetings, had endorsed a candidate she actually opposed. Brown reported the post on October 6, saying she had not made it. C.J. Grisham, a First Amendment attorney representing Krottinger, said the meme was meant “to poke fun at the two people who can’t stand each other…endorsing that person. That’s the joke of it.” Investigators traced the page to Krottinger’s phone. On November 5, the day after the election, Luckie arrested him on a third-degree felony charge of online impersonation under Texas Penal Code 33.07. He was booked into jail and released on a $10,000 bond that barred him from using social media. Deputies seized his phone without a warrant. The case fell apart fast. A justice of the peace discharged the charge for lack of probable cause, and Ellis County District Attorney Lindy Beaty rejected the prosecution on December 22, citing insufficient evidence. Hood County District Attorney Ryan Sinclair had recused himself, claiming a conflict because he served on the board of Krottinger’s nonprofit. Krottinger’s attorneys dispute that, saying Sinclair had turned down an offer to join. Krottinger filed suit in January. Attorneys Brandon Grable and C.J. Grisham brought the case in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, naming Deeds, Luckie, and Sinclair in their personal capacities along with Hood County. The complaint alleges violations of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments, warrantless seizure of a working journalist’s phone, and breaches of the federal Privacy Protection Act. It describes the prosecution as a “coordinated effort to silence a political critic.” The arrest came one day after an election in which Krottinger had been active. “This lawsuit sends a clear message,” Krottinger said. “The people will not be bullied, silenced, or intimidated by abuse of power. We see it. We remember it. And we will hold them accountable.” Grisham said the felony charge over a joke defied belief. “It’s crazy that you can share a meme in the United States of America…and be thrown in jail,” he said. The phone deputies took from him has not been returned. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Judge Denies Immunity to Texas Cops in Meme Arrest Case appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Turkish police arrested Alican Uludag, a court reporter for the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, over a post on X that accused the country’s judiciary of feeding case files and police footage to pro-government reporters. Officers took him from his home in Ankara around noon on Tuesday and held him for roughly 25 hours. An Ankara criminal judge released him on Wednesday under judicial supervision, barring him from leaving Turkey and ordering him to report to a police station four days a week. The post went up on July 21. “A new judicial order has now been established in Turkey,” Uludag wrote, alleging that investigative material and detention footage reached pro-government journalists before suspects arrived at the station, in breach of the presumption of innocence. “No one has any legal security left,” he wrote. He recorded his own arrest as it happened. “I am being detained,” he posted as officers reached his door. The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office opened its investigation under Article 217/A of the penal code, covering the spread of misleading information, and Article 216, covering incitement to hatred and denigration of segments of society. Both articles have become standing tools against speech the government wants gone. Kivanc El, president of the Contemporary Journalists Association, condemned the detention. “The criminalization of journalism and the portrayal of journalists’ comments and social media posts as criminal evidence are unacceptable,” he said. This is the second time in five months that Turkey has jailed Uludag over what he publishes. Police detained him on February 19 over 22 social media posts, and a court sent him to Silivri Prison, where he spent 90 days pending trial on charges of publicly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spreading misleading information, and denigrating the government and the judiciary. He was released on May 21 under judicial supervision. Uludag covers the courts for DW’s Turkish service. The posts the prosecution cited in February criticized Erdogan and his policies. “If we cannot criticize the judiciary, members of the judiciary, [and] the president of the country, why are we practicing journalism?” he said after that arrest. The Committee to Protect Journalists found nothing in those posts to charge. “There are no insults, only harsh criticism, in the social media posts that led to the arrest of journalist Alican Uludag,” said Ozgur Ogret, the group’s Turkey representative. “Arresting a journalist for critical comments alone is a message meant to intimidate the news media.” Uludag’s February trial continues. The next hearing is set for September 18. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Turkey Arrests DW Journalist Over Post Criticizing the Courts appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Ofcom wasted months chasing a website it cannot reach, came up empty, and has decided the fix is more power. Britain’s speech regulator closed its investigation into an American suicide discussion forum this week, admitted it has hit the outer wall of what the Online Safety Act censorship law allows, and used the same announcement to ask the government for tools that reach further. The forum, which Ofcom will only call an “online suicide forum,” has allegedly been linked with more than 130 deaths in the UK and named in coroners’ reports. Ofcom fined it £950,000, roughly $1.3 million, under the Act. The forum is based in the United States, holds no assets in Britain, is protected by the First Amendment, and has not paid. So the regulator is holding a penalty against a company it has no clear way to bill. Ofcom thinks there’s a chance the money is still coming. It says it has “initiated work regarding the pursuit of this debt, as we have done with all companies that have not paid their fines by their deadlines.” A separate post, cheerfully titled “What happens when a company doesn’t pay a fine,” lays out the plan. For a company with no UK assets, obtaining a judgment debt “is more complex and challenging,” and Ofcom says “it is often necessary to engage with law enforcement agencies and private specialists in other countries to identify individuals and assets against which Ofcom can take action.” Whether Ofcom recovers a penny “can also depend on whether a court in that country will recognise a UK court judgment, and whether we can identify individuals on whom we can serve proceedings.” That means, a British regulator wants American help to collect a British censorship fine from Americans, and even Ofcom concedes an American court might throw it straight out. Ofcom has tried this before. It floated the same approach while chasing a fine against 4chan, a strategy that Preston Byrne, the US lawyer representing both sites, called “legally illiterate.” Byrne was just telling it like it is about the forum case. “Censorship fines are anathema to our Constitution,” he said, adding that “if Ofcom attempts to enforce the fine in a US court, which we do not expect, American law is on our side. As far as we can tell, however, this enforcement action is functionally over.” Ofcom’s own words describe the ceiling it has reached. The forum has “made changes that block access for vast majority of UK users.” Those changes, Ofcom says, “are the fullest extent of what can be achieved under the Online Safety Act,” and “all possible legal routes under the Act have now been exhausted.” An agency that has run out of legal options usually stops there. Ofcom did the opposite. It is working with the government to “consider areas for strengthening enforcement powers,” with a particular appetite for “business disruption measures,” the court orders that force internet providers to block a site across the UK. Keep in mind that this type of blocking is easily bypassable with a VPN and VPNs are impossible to ban. The current powers already frustrate Ofcom, and it listed exactly where they pinch. Today it cannot ask a court to block a site purely because that site poses “a significant risk of harm to people in the UK”; it also has to prove “ongoing non-compliance.” It cannot apply for a blocking order “for failure to pay a fine alone.” It looked at seeking a “conditional order,” a pre-emptive block that would take effect the moment a site drops its geoblock, and found the Act “does not provide a mechanism to do so.” It also noted that “neither Ofcom nor the UK courts have the power through the business disruption measure process to shut down a website globally.” The pattern in that wishlist is hard to miss. Ofcom wants to block sites on a risk-of-harm test alone, before any actual breach. It wants preemptive orders that trigger on their own. It is eyeing impossible powers that reach past British borders to pull a site down for everyone on earth. All three are bigger levers than the one that just failed, and all three will outlast this particular forum. The whole proposal turns on one phrase, “significant risk of harm,” and Ofcom would write the definition. A test that broad does not stay pointed at suicide forums. It stretches to whatever a regulator decides is risky this year, and the site goes dark before a court hears a word of defense. The tally is grim reading for Ofcom. The fine looks uncollectible. The forum has already blocked British users. The case is, in Byrne’s words, “functionally over.” What outlasts all of it is a regulator lobbying for permanent authority to block websites faster, on looser grounds, and with the rest of the world in view. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post UK’s Ofcom Seeks Wider Powers After American Forum Fine Fails appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.