This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].  

.....On July 7, the Institute for Free Speech submitted comments to the Federal Election Commission in support of WinRed Inc.’s petition for rulemaking on REG 2022-05: Conduit Reporting Threshold.

Read the PDF of the comments here.

Read WinRed’s petition here.

Read the FEC Record Notice here.

Washington Post: Social media injunction unravels plans to protect 2024 elections

By Cat Zakrzewski, Naomi Nix and Joseph Menn

.....A July 4 injunction that places extraordinary limits on the government’s communications with tech companies undermines initiatives to harden social media companies against election interference, civil rights groups, academics and tech industry insiders say.

Politico (West Wing Playbook): Biden’s former disinfo czar would like a word

By Adam Cancryn, Eli Stokols, and Lauren Egan

.....[The July 4 injunction] is an unprecedented ruling that First Amendment scholars and disinformation researchers largely characterized as alarming and unwarranted.

For Nina Jankowicz, it also represented something else: the inevitable next step in a concerted effort to weaken defenses against the conspiracy theories and misinformation campaigns that could run rampant over the next year...

Washington Post: Why are government social media takedown requests secret? Make them public.

By Michael W. McConnell

.....Social media platforms should make government takedown requests public. That was the recommendation this spring by the Oversight Board of Meta, Facebook’s parent company. The board (on which I serve), is a global body, independent of the company, with authority to review its content moderation policies. Meta, the board proposed, “should be transparent and report regularly on state actor requests to review content” under various policies, including the coronavirus misinformation policy, foreign government attempts to suppress discussion of the treatment of political prisoners and requests from police departments.

Mashable: Threads backtracks flagging right-wing users for spreading disinformation

By Matt Binder

.....If you regularly spread "false information" online, Threads already knows. The platform apparently flagged those accounts on launch, warning users that considered following them, before backtracking.

Election Law Blog: “The Associational Rights of Political Parties”

By Tabatha Abu El-Haj

.....Sharing a chapter I have written for The Oxford Handbook of American Election Law (Eugene Mazo, ed.) (2023, forthcoming). The chapter, among other things, stresses the ways that the U.S. Supreme Court’s current approach to the associational freedom of political parties significantly constrains party reform strategies. Given the manifest need for party regulation in the interest of a healthy democracy and the recent buzz around Lee Drutman’s report and op ed arguing for more and better parties, this seems a good time to share.

Politico: Former NYPD colleague of Mayor Eric Adams at center of alleged straw donor scheme

.....An acquaintance of New York City Mayor Eric Adams is at the center of an alleged straw-donor scheme, announced by the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Friday, that funneled tens of thousands of dollars in illicit contributions to the Democratic mayor’s campaign.

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