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Teens will likely soon be losing online privileges in Texas, which this week became the third state to require parental consent for minors under 18 to access social media. Utah passed a similar law in March , and Louisiana followed suit this month.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB 18 into law on Wednesday. It takes effect on September 1, after which platforms will be required to verify ages of all minors, secure parental consent to register the minor as a user, or else risk legal action from the state attorney general or private actions from parents who report violations.

"Online platforms have been collecting data and manipulating our children's online behavior," the Texas House Republican Caucus tweeted Thursday after the bill, sponsored by Representative Shelby Slawson (R), was signed into law. Slawson also tweeted , thanking Abbott and Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan for "prioritizing this issue."

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Days after TikTok users sued to block Montana's TikTok ban , TikTok has followed through on its promise to fight the ban and filed its own lawsuit in a United States district court in Montana.

"We are challenging Montana’s unconstitutional TikTok ban to protect our business and the hundreds of thousands of TikTok users in Montana," Brooke Oberwetter, TikTok's spokesperson, told Ars. "We believe our legal challenge will prevail based on an exceedingly strong set of precedents and facts."

TikTok's complaint hits all the same points that TikTok users' lawsuit does.

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Surprising no one, immediately after Montana became the first state to ban TikTok on Wednesday, five TikTokers in the state with thousands of followers banded together and sued to block the ban. The TikTokers argued that the ban is a huge overstep by the state because it's "unconstitutional and preempted by federal law."

According to their complaint, Montana’s claimed interests in enacting the ban to shield minors and prevent foreign spying "are not legitimate and do not support a blanket ban on TikTok. Montana has no authority to enact laws advancing what it believes should be the United States’ foreign policy or its national security interests, nor may Montana ban an entire forum for communication based on its perceptions that some speech shared through that forum, though protected by the First Amendment, is dangerous."

Citing First Amendment concerns, the TikTokers argued that the ban is "substantially overbroad" and "suppresses far more speech than it may permissibly regulate." They say that restricting access to content for all users just to address concerns that minors may access some TikTok content that's "dangerous" goes too far. The First Amendment requires the government to find the "least restrictive means" of regulating speech when the government does have a "compelling" interest. Quite the opposite, Montana's ban, they argued, is an example of the government finding "the most restrictive means imaginable."

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk hoped that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would narrow or possibly even end the terms of a 2018 securities fraud settlement that require a lawyer to review his Tesla tweets before he posts them. Instead, a federal appeals court today rejected Musk's claims that the SEC's consent decree violated his First Amendment rights by placing a prior restraint on his speech.

This means Musk is stuck with what his lawyers called a "government-imposed muzzle" on his Tesla tweets.

The SEC's consent decree came after a controversial Musk tweet claiming that he was considering taking Tesla private after allegedly securing funding—a tweet that caused investors to lose billions .

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This week, The Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh got hacked, leading a hacker called Doomed to gain unfettered access to his Twitter, Google, and Microsoft accounts. A journalist named Dell Cameron then tweeted to encourage the hacker to contact him, then published an interview with Doomed for Wired . Tweeting out that story—Cameron confirmed on Mastodon —ultimately got the tech policy reporter permanently suspended from Twitter for violating the social platform’s policy on distributing hacked materials.

Now, Walsh is threatening to sue “members of the media who openly solicited stolen information” from his phone, he tweeted . Announcing that The Daily Wire’s team was assisting him with legal counsel, he warned journalists like Cameron that he could afford to hire “very good lawyers.”

Walsh could not immediately be reached for comment. Cameron declined to comment. Yesterday, Wired tweeted a statement from its managing editor, Hemal Jhaveri.

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A YouTuber, Marshall Daniels—who has posted far-right-leaning videos under the name “Young Pharaoh” since 2015—tried to argue that YouTube violated his First Amendment rights by removing two videos discussing George Floyd and COVID-19. Years later, Daniels now owes YouTube nearly $40,000 in attorney fees for filing a frivolous lawsuit against YouTube owner Alphabet, Inc.

A United States magistrate judge in California, Virginia K. DeMarchi, ordered Daniels to pay YouTube $38,576 for asserting a First Amendment claim that “clearly lacked merit and was frivolous from the outset.” YouTube said this represents a conservative estimate and likely an underestimate of fees paid defending against the meritless claim.

In his defense, Daniels never argued that the fees Alphabet was seeking were excessive or could be burdensome. In making this rare decision in favor of the defendant Alphabet, DeMarchi had to consider Daniels’ financial circumstances. In his court filings, Daniels described himself as “a fledgling individual consumer,” but also told the court that he made more than $180,000 in the year before he filed his complaint. DeMarchi ruled that the fees would not be a burden to Daniels.

Enlarge / Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a press conference in Daytona Beach Shores on January 18, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | SOPA Images)

A proposed law in Florida would force bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis and other elected officials to register with a state office and file monthly reports or face fines of $25 per day. The bill was filed in the Florida Senate Tuesday by Senator Jason Brodeur, a Republican.

If enacted, the proposed law would likely be challenged in court on grounds that it violates First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and the press. Defending his bill, Brodeur said, "Paid bloggers are lobbyists who write instead of talk. They both are professional electioneers. If lobbyists have to register and report, why shouldn't paid bloggers?" according to the Florida Politics news website .

The bill text defines bloggers as people who write for websites or webpages that are "frequently updated with opinion, commentary, or business content." Websites run by newspapers or "similar publications" are excluded from the definition.

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On a mission to stop young men from being increasingly radicalized online , New York Attorney General Letitia James suggested today a new strategy to stop online hate from spreading: Punish anyone who reposts content created by those who commit homicide.

Her potentially First Amendment-infringing policy reform recommendation comes after the Bureau of Internet and Technology and the Hate Crimes Unit of the Civil Rights Bureau conducted an investigation into how online platforms—including Reddit, Discord, 4chan, 8chan, Twitch, and YouTube—helped a white gunman prepare and then murder 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York, during a mass shooting in May.

According to the Office of the Attorney General, the gunman's content, including snippets of his manifesto, was shared across mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Among other solutions proposed, James and New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that they want lawmakers to establish a civil liability so that no one shares extremist content, which can potentially inspire copycats.

Enlarge (credit: Kanye photo: Enlarge Edward Berthelot / Contributor | GC Images, Musk photo: Joe Rogan podcast)

Self-described free speech absolutist Elon Musk couldn’t resist warmly welcoming Kanye West back to Twitter after the rapper had his Instagram account locked over the weekend for posting a caption that echoed dangerous Nazi propaganda by suggesting that Jewish people today have too much power. On Saturday, Musk replied to a tweet from West criticizing Mark Zuckerberg for the rapper’s Instagram ban, with Musk saying to Kanye, "Welcome back to Twitter, my friend!"

A short time later, West got his account locked on Twitter, too, this time for escalating his antisemitic content. In another tweet, West coldly invoked memories of the Holocaust by suggesting that he would go “death con 3 on Jewish people.” Commentators since have speculated whether West intended to tweet “death con 3” or “Defcon 3,” a military term indicating a high level of defense readiness that the US has only ever reached twice in history. Both meanings, Vanity Fair reported , raised alarm bells, though. “While it was not clear if he’d meant to write ‘Defcon,’ or actually meant ‘death con,’ neither would be great, given the persecution that Jews have historically faced, including that one period in which more than 6 million of them were wiped off the face of the earth,” Vanity Fair’s analysis read.

Musk, like many Republicans, opposes broad social media censorship of hate speech, which he suggests conflicts with First Amendment protections . As controversy swirled, Musk stuck by West, who now goes by Ye and has publicly spoken about his bipolar disorder and his experiences tweeting through manic episodes . On Monday, Musk tweeted, “Talked to Ye today & expressed my concerns about his recent tweet, which I think he took to heart.”