Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Hasan Piker Reveals The New Censorship Playbook: The Twitch Streamer on KOSA, Section 230, jawboning, travel bans and more

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Hasan Piker On The Terrifying Future Of Internet SurveillanceSUPPORT MY WORK: Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at usermag.co      Support my work on Patreon: patreon.com/taylorlorenz ��Hasan Piker joined me for this week's Free Speech Friday for a wide-ranging conversation about online censorship, government surveillance, digital ID laws, Section 230, TikTok, KOSA, free speech, the JAWBONE Act, internet privacy, and the growing pressure campaigns targeting creators and political commentators.We discuss: • The rise of online censorship around the world• The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)• Government surveillance and digital ID requirements• The future of online anonymity• Section 230 and why it matters• TikTok, Big Tech, and content moderation• Government pressure on social media platforms• Free speech on the left and the right• The Jawbone Act• How new internet laws could impact creators, journalists, activists, and everyday usersAs governments push new regulations in the name of safety, misinformation, and national security, the debate over free speech, privacy, censorship, and online freedom is becoming more important than ever. #HasanPiker #FreeSpeech #Censorship #KOSA #Section230 #TikTok #Privacy #Surveillance #InternetFreedom #TechPolicy

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Visit edc.ca to learn more. It's as if the government would be able to peek into your home and listen into your conversations with your loved ones about how frustrated you are about the government's policies. I mean, it's terrifying. As threats to free speech escalate around the globe, Hassan Piker is constantly in the crosshairs. The leftist Twitch streamer has been targeted by multiple governments for his commentary. He was recently banned from entering the UK, a venue for a rally he was set to appear at in Denver, mysteriously canceled and multiple members of Congress are actively trying to get him deplatformed. So why does it more of the left care about protecting free speech online?

Why aren't more big leftists speaking out against these draconian internet surveillance laws being passed in the name of child safety or cracking down on big tech as if that's what they do? Well, Hassan is here today to discuss all of that. We're going to dig into why leftists should fight to protect Section 230. What makes the Kids Online Safety Act and other laws like it so incredibly dangerous? How Democrats became the pro-censorship party? And why everyone on the left should be talking about things like the Jawbone Act, a new law that could actually protect against government censorship pressure.

Hassan, welcome to Free Speech Friday. It's great to be here. Unfortunately, under not such great circumstances, I feel like what's good for Free Speech Friday is really bad for American society for the Western world in general. And I've been a, I've been a victim. of many anti-speech initiatives, especially as of late. Yeah, I mean, I think like, obviously you're banned from the UK. Recently, your rally in Denver was canceled that you were supposed to attend.

And you've just been subject to so much sort of censorship. And I think government pressure to remove your speech from the internet. It's an issue that you deal with all the time. Absolutely. And it's interesting because, like, look, free speech is not an infinite concept for the most part. There are very few people that are consistent in terms of defending speech that they don't like, right? But what I mean is the way that we understand free speech or the way that we discuss free speech in theory is very different than the established boundaries around free speech, right? There are certain things that are crimes or defamation, for example, that is not protected speech.

But free speech is supposed to give you an expansive protection, and especially in the United States of America, it's the most expansive, right? And yet, I think my argument always has been that America only gets to have this expansive free speech liberty and free speech protections, which they don't always follow through on, right? The assassination of historic revolutionary black leaders or, you know, the Red Scare, McCarthyist trials and, you know, blacklists in Hollywood, things of that nature have always undermined this, this fundamental principle that we think we believe in that we advocate for. and yet the expansive free speech protections have only been afforded to a country that is dominant, right? America gets to not be threatened by someone like myself and what I'm saying because it's a powerful nation. It's the most powerful nation on earth. And yet, due to geopolitical incidents due to the decline of American Empire in general, it's spread too vast. America no longer feels as unthreatenable around the globe.

Its power around the globe and its hegemonic status is, waning. And therefore, nowadays, they're taking a closer look at dissidents. And as someone who's Turkish, someone who grew up in Turkey, I watched a weak and an autocratic government consolidate power in the hands of the few, while simultaneously taking very aggressive stances against those who are political dissidents. I saw this experience in Turkey. You know, the prostitution. of cartoonists and journalists. I mean, there's an entire prison dedicated to political dissidents in Turkey. There's numerous prisons now.

I never thought that I would see something similar in the United States of America, but I think we're heading down that direction now. And this is unfortunately what weak countries do. And America is becoming a weak country. Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that you bring up Turkey, of course, as well, because Turkey passed a very draconian internet law restricting speech online. And all of these social media companies, of course, just went right along with it. And we see a lot of these social media companies constantly go along

with speech restrictions, whether it's in India, Saudi Arabia, you know, all of these countries that have, you know, sort of intense restrictions around online content. Now we're seeing even in the UK, right, then attempting to pass this social media ban, which is effectively digital ID for everyone where you're going to have to scan your face or upload your documents to use the internet. And here we have COSA as well, the Kids Online Safety Act that is currently, you know, that Marsha Blackburn's attempting to sort of push through Congress. I'm curious. I'm curious. I'm curious how close you're following this like online speech restrictions, because I agree, there's been this offline crackdown on journalists. You know, marginalized people have always been more censored than the powerful, obviously, here.

But we're just seeing this like, I think, like censorship also escalate across the internet. And we're seeing some really scary laws like the Kids Online Safety Act and the No Fakes Act and some of these other laws that are sort of meant to restrict speech. And I'm curious how quickly you're following these and how, you know, concerned you are that they could be weaponized against. you. I mean, it's terrifying. I think that taking away anonymity on the internet is a tremendous opportunity for the surveillance state to start prosecuting people, however they see fit. Conversations that you might have in private or what you think is in private with your friends in a joking manner could be prosecutable. I don't think a lot of people understand that reality. and it's and I don't think a lot of people are like ready for what that would look like.

I mean, this is this is one step removed from being able to prosecute people's thoughts. It's as if the government would be able to peek into your home and listen into your conversations with your loved ones about how frustrated you are about a government's policies, a government's initiatives in a certain way. And then boom, all of a sudden, you got the speech police knocking down your door. Now, this, in the past, this would have seen, this would have been an exaggeration. Like, people would say that's ridiculous. And yet we are inching closer to that reality. And it's not like the neo-feudal, techno-futalist overlords are shy about revealing that that is precisely what their perspective is. A lot of Western billionaires want.

to design this penopticon and want to create some semblance of a social credit system in the way that they claim China has, which is ironic because while China is, China heavily surveils its population, certainly, they don't even have a social credit system beyond a pilot program that they implemented in one prefecture and then they never actually used it. Like they just, you know, tabled that system. And it was never as like aggressive as the one that Americans presented it as. And it's really interesting that you have tech CEOs going to conferences and literally talking about how everyone is always going to be surveilled at all times.

And that's going to make them much more polite. And what they talk about there, when they're talking about politeness, it's not actually about politeness at all. It's about the elimination, the eradication of dissent. They want to make sure that your most private thoughts are both, monetized and also surveilled at every given moment. And they want to be able to engage in direct social conditioning. And I think that's a terrifying prospect. Obviously, that's still maybe a decade in the future. I think it's now. I'm just, I'm just saying like, you know,

knocking down your door and like arresting you or like sending a drone swarm to your house because you're having a private conversation and your TV is spying on you because your TV is currently spying on you, but it's not actionable yet is what I mean. I just. I don't agree. I mean, we have people like the women in Virginia that was arrested just for being in an anti-ice group chat. We have the government sending hundreds of subpoenas a week to these social media platforms to unmask anonymous accounts. I mean, I think you're right that it's not as bad as the UK where they're arresting over a dozen people a day for speech crimes essentially. I think it was 12,000 people arrested last year in the UK. But it is, you know, it is concerning.

And I think what's scary to me is I've been covering this movement for 10 years, really since Fostasesta, which was the first horrible major amendment to Section 230, terrible, terrible consequence. you know, it was really driven by the Heritage Foundation, by morality and media, aka Encoes. And it didn't have that much traction with liberals. It wasn't until liberals got on board and started framing it as this way to protect children or crack down on big tech, that it really started to get motion. And even today, you see a lot of political candidates, Democrats, leading the charge on this stuff in Congress and running in races across the country. Now that you're a Democrat, you know, sort of Democrats are listening to you, what is your message?

Because every Democrat that I speak to in elected office is like, well, it's convenient. It's popular with parents. It's an easy political win, you know, to trade away our rights. And obviously, you know, everybody loves mass surveillance. I think it's terrifying and they need to not allow this to happen. And I think that it's deeply unpopular with the youth. And it probably would be unpopular with the parents as well if they realize that this has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with surveilling them.

And I think that in places like the UK, they kind of understand that now, now that it's like being initiated. Because how do you make sure that, everyone is over the age of 16. Well, everyone has to put their ID and their, you know, and their facial scan on their phones, either via like by way of Apple or, you know, directly put your identification on the internet through these third party systems

that will basically, I assume, operate like a face key. And those things are not protected at all. I mean, virtually every other year, there's another initiative where, you know, hackers gain. access to a trove of data and our social security numbers. Yeah, our social security numbers are out there for whoever that wants to, whoever that, whoever wants to access it.

And this makes us even more vulnerable beyond the obvious surveillance capabilities that are profound. I mean, the anonymizing the internet is, is going to make things very difficult. It's just like people kind of understand. I understand intrinsically what this feels like when we talk about flock cameras. When we talk about mass surveillance in public spaces and how your face is not something you can hide and they can associate that with your identity and they can track you everywhere you go. And that creates an environment of fear amongst people. But when it comes to the internet for some strange reason, they don't understand that that surveillance is even, that surveillance is different than a surveillance in the media.

surveillance in the meat space, surveillance in real life. Because at that point, they're basically figuring out what your thoughts are. They can create these unbelievably sophisticated psychographic profiles. And when I say they, I mean, anyone can do this, right? Anyone that has access to this data that's readily available, that's either being sold in these marketplaces or data that goes beyond that, very private data that goes beyond, I can just track you down and figure out

with the exact same methodology that McDonald's, the McDonald's application uses to figure out when you're hungry, to figure out when you're angry, to figure out how they can manipulate you. And then you pair that up with like some of these AI initiatives that people talk about as far as social conditioning goes. These are, you know, LMs are mass adopted at this point,

especially for the next generation. They utilize it. There's obviously some great utility for artificial intelligence, but then there's also this terrifying prospect that these are chat boss that you feel a sense of closeness to because they're designed to create this feeling within you. They're designed to be agreeable. And then I hear, you know, Jonathan Greenblatt and all these other high profile Zionists speaking at different conferences talking about how they're going directly to these AI companies.

companies to make sure that they upgrade their Hosbera initiatives to manipulate the way people think about Israel and its war crimes. I'm truly terrified about what that future looks like. If you're watching this video and you like my work, please support me on Patreon via the link below or buy a paid subscription to my tech and online culture newsletter at usermag.com. That's usermag.com. I don't have any long-term brand partnerships and a lot of my content is effectively demonetized. I've lost major brand deals for speaking out on certain issues and for challenging power. As you can imagine, advertisers are not exactly eager to work with somebody who covers a lot of the topics that I cover and talks about the things that I talk about.

These videos I make are entirely funded by you and I can't continue to make them without your support. So if you get any value out of the videos that I create and you want me to be able to create more, please support me on Patreon or Substack via the links below. On Patreon, I do bonus episodes, monthly Q&A live streams, and post frequent updates, about my work. My substack newsletter gives you a bi-weekly roundup of everything that I'm seeing and reading and paying attention to online. You can also get my newsletter on Patreon. Once again, the links to everything are below in the description. Every dollar of your support makes such a difference. I mean, it's interesting that you bring up AI. There's been a lot of discussion in terms of AI and the First Amendment and, you know, should we have sort of open access to information through AI? And I think you're already seeing, seeing as you mentioned Israel, but also just all of these different corporate interests and, you know, people trying to exert influence over the information that people can access through AI. And will they be able to get, you know, as people sort of move into this new information age, will information be open and free or will we just be getting propaganda through these new systems?

And because the technology is so new, I think they've been able to get a lot of people on the left on board with terrifying policies by claiming that it's cracking down on big tech, as if mass surveillance ever cracks down on big tech. I mean, this is, again, this is how we got Fostasca. It was framed as cracking down on big tech. And a lot of leftists today will say, you know, we have to repeal Section 230 to crack down on Big Tech. Can you debunk that idea? Because I think a lot of people are very misinformed. I mean, somehow they believe that mass surveillance will, you know, hold Big Tech accountable.

Yeah, I think any kind of initiative to like give the government an opportunity for social conditioning or more, more of an opportunity to demand what kind of, speech is permissible is going to lead down a very scary path. I mean, we're already seeing it. Look at the Ellison purchase of TikTok. I mean, that was deliberately done. They very openly talked about the forced sale away from China into American ownership. And what basically pushed that conversation over the hill was Israel, right? They're very open about it. Mitt Romney would go on these panels and straight up say it out loud. Like teenagers are growing on TikTok. and they're developing an attitude that we don't like about Israel's war crimes, so we should exchange ownership over this algorithm and give it to someone who will manage it better,

someone who will actually engage in this mass social conditioning. And Ellison was right there, you know, one of the biggest donors of the IDF. And we're seeing that already. It's not like a secret at all. So I am very fearful that the government will then turn around and demand further censorship over platforms on what kind of speech they find to be inappropriate.

Or, there I say, illegal. I mean, look, I'm victim of a dual bipartisan messaging bill, a condemnation bill, where they pair me next to Candace Owens, right? And Candice Owens is actually an anti-Semite. Now, should that be bannable speech? That's a totally separate conversation. Should the government have any say over?

is banable speech or not, I don't think so, right? But the reason why they put me on that bill and pair me up with someone who's actually anti-Semitic is to drive home this argument that I am a scary, anti-Semitic, radical terrorist, a speech terrorist, if you will, who must be deplatformed. Because if that messaging bill, which is probably not going to pass, at least according to the, you know, Congresspersons I've talked to, they're like, this is ridiculous. it's just a donor play for the most part. But if that were to somehow pass, right?

That creates tremendous pressure on these tech companies to ban me to the platforming because of my anti-Israel advocacy at a time when my position on Israel is not even this radical position at all. My position on Israel is the overwhelming majority's position on Israel. So this is truly a terrifying prospect. for a very different dystopian future that that technological availability have created. You know, in the past you had pamphlets and people would try to, you know, take down the printing presses.

And now, now they're controlling the Internet. And that creates a lot more control over how you feel, how you think. And I don't think enough people are aware of this. I don't think enough people are thinking about it because they're looking at it. the other side of this because there is some validity to the other side's argument as well obviously they have to present a good argument and that argument comes from the fact

that children are constantly on the internet their brains are being broken by what they're seeing algorithms are driven by obviously violence and and you know right wing reactionary commentary for the most part that's churning out you know the next generation of sometimes

nihilistic extremists as the government likes to call them and then you have this radicalization pipeline that goes all the way to what they're calling terrorgram, right? Telegram channels that are specifically designed to find vulnerable young teenagers, men and women that are shut-ins for the most part and goad them into doing acts of violence. And it's been fairly successful for them all around the world, as a matter of fact. The San Diego mosque shooting that happened recently is connected to these groups. I mean, it has the same tell-tale markers of a terrogram order of nine. And Engels style incident.

And I think there are probably much better ways of combating this violence. And it's very clear that this surveillance state has not been able to thwart this kind of violence to begin with. There is always that classic meme when in the aftermath of another mass shooting, they say, oh, he was on our radar. And it's like, well, you guys didn't do anything about it. So you're just surveilling people. And that's it. And yet what it has been very effective in combating. is creating a chilling effect on speech and stopping organizing because people are fearful that the government will come after them.

And this new technology makes it much easier to do that. So on the front end, you have social conditioning and social manipulation. And on the back end, those who still make it through that filter, who are independent thinkers, can be consistently surveilled and maybe even prosecuted for what they're thinking. thinking about engaging in any crimes mind you but that could still change maybe one day we're we're looking at this administration right now i mean they got a a new white house initiative that my name is on as well alongside many other critics of the administration the the leftist lunacy page that they created who's to say that the administration won't find that to be prosecutable i mean

they're very clearly trying to design a a system of surveillance that goes after people who are who they consider to be anti-fascist extremists and, you know, pro-trans extremists, pro-abortion activists, right? They, it's unbelievably vague. It's unconstitutional. There's no domestic terrorism statute in this country. It contradicts, it goes against the First Amendment. That's the reason why the KKK is never prosecuted, right, until they do something, actually, that is a criminal, but not their speech or they're organizing.

And yet, this administration is trying to make that illegal and, and not. Not necessarily the KKK, of course, but they're trying to make leftists in liberal organizing and political dissent illegal. And if people think, oh, it's just the left radicals. It's just people like Hassan, who I don't always agree with, they're being foolish. I mean, the administration has tried to censor Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel is a vanilla, you know, cookie cutter liberal guy. And he didn't even say anything that was offensive. And even if he did say something that was offensive, why does that?

the government get to have a say on, on, you know, a comedian's offensive commentary. That's, again, terrifying. They'll come for all of them. Just to go back to something that you said, you know, previously you mentioned TikTok and the TikTok ban. And I covered the sale of musically actually to TikTok. And I think the TikTok ban is such a good, I mean, it's such a clear example of Israel and sort of like all of these interests, sort of pressure, you know, seeking to censor speech. It was done through manufacturing a moral panic about these TikTok. challenges and child safety, right? But also, let's not forget that the reason TikTok was, you know,

owned by bite dance to begin with is because musically was being driven out of business because of meta, competition for meta, meta going in and doing all these aggressive tactics to capture their creator community, to capture their user base, et cetera. And I think if we had cracked down on that anti-competitive from behavior from meta back in the 2010s, musically might have remained independent. You know what I mean? We wouldn't have even had to worry about the sale to bite dance. So it's sort of. of like interesting to sort of re-look at that case. And there is this movement on the left of like log off, right, which is great in a lot of ways. We want people offline in the world engaging in

mutual aid, like getting, you know, not becoming totally brain poisoned by the internet. But leftists have also completely abdicated tech policy, I would argue. And even throughout the TikTok ban, you had TikTokers staging these, you know, protests at the Capitol that leftists weren't covering. They weren't getting involved with. We had two of the biggest antitrust cases last year against Google and meta. I didn't see any leftist. content creators even talking about that, we could have unwound the Instagram deal, right? And obviously it didn't go through. But like there was no sort of motion from the left to talk about tech and to talk about tech

policy. Even now, the kids online safety act is back in the mix. I don't see people covering it. Why do you think the left has sort of failed to connect a lot of these dots? Because I agree with you, what they understand, the vast censorship. They understand the sort of offline censorship. When it comes to online censorship, it seems like a lot of them do buy into this reactionary framing, the moral panic framing, or the, or the vast censorship.

they're just not engaged on tech policy. I mean, part of that could be because there's so many different places that the left is is hyper focusing on. And maybe they're just oblivious to this as well. I mean, I've covered the Sesta stuff already. I mean, for years. And it was because, you know, obviously a lot of sex workers that I know were very frustrated by it. And a pattern that is also not dissimilar in that argument is is is currently being presented right now the notion that these initiatives are to protect children on the internet it's the same as as it was back then it's not it's never to protect children on the internet that's just a way to market these bills right there are probably more effective measures of of protecting children on the internet that

ironically actually don't revolve around government surveillance but more so revolve around like real world initiatives like shifting their focus elsewhere you know creating opportunities for for children to be around one another in the real world that would create a healthier balance between their their use time online and then also things that they're doing in the real world especially because like access to the internet for children i think is also very important uh there's a lot of of important tools that they can gain access to you know things that they would not be privy to otherwise, things that they're, you know, things that abusive parents might want to take away from them, you know, access to information about, you know,

sexual violence, what that means. Like, that's why sex ed is very important. And it's part of the reason why the Republicans love banning it in schools. And they claim that it's to protect children. Meanwhile, it's literally to protect the pedophiles for the most part. So there are these sorts of tools. And plus, like having tech illiterate 16-year-old. is probably not going to be good when the by the time they make it to 16 and then all of a sudden they're on the internet and and this is now a much more advanced internet that they weren't privy to so there there are a million different complications that i can think of that i that i find to be troublesome as far as why the left is not involved in in this initiative i don't even know how much power

they would even have at this point uh whether or not they were involved but that's somewhat defeat is they should be involved for sure and i don't know why uh they're they're not as uh as invested in this maybe it's because somewhere along the way i think overall the left was always in favor of free speech left was the protector of the free speech initiatives forever right it was the the nancy regans of the world and and uh people like that that wanted to uh create some sort of morality police around what was permissible and what wasn't. And it was the left that said, no, you can have like degenerate content out there. You can have degenerate art out there. Like there's no way, we should not be tampering artistic expression. And I think maybe in the 90s with Hillary Rodham

Clinton, the liberal and left also got involved in censorship initiatives somewhat. And it became this bipartisan thing. And then in the late 20s, 10s, it was the right that wanted to defend being able to say hate speech and do hate speech on these private platforms that seemingly started shepherding the free speech conversation in their direction, while also being some of the most aggressive defenders of censorship, some of the most successful defenders of censorship. I think there's a real pivot point here, even from a partisan political perspective, that liberals should become the free speech defenders once again,

in my opinion, because I do think that a lot of Americans, regardless of party affiliation, do care about that. And it is a popular initiative. I mean, I've talked to people who are lifelong at this point, Trump supporters, three-time Trump voters. And when they hear about what the administration is doing, what the subpoenas against me or what the British government is done,

they're actually horrified by it. I mean, they still love Trump, but they don't like that, right? And I feel like the left should take ownership over free speech initiatives once again, because we're going to be the people that they take out first, for sure. And that's always been the case, right? I mean, the right has been able to do this thing successfully, where on the one hand, and woke 1.0, if you want to call it that, they've been able to actively continue banning books. and doing deliberate initiatives that are anti-speech, like, you know, the Manhattan Institute concocted anti-CRT initiative, anti-DEI initiative. You know, the idea that like Florida as a state is on the one hand, supposed to be cherishing the values of free speech, but then has anti-BDS measures. And on top of that has banned certain kinds of educational initiatives in their schools, like in their community colleges and also,

are actively banning books. Like that is anti-free speech. They are getting to dictate what your children can and can't learn. And there is no greater anti-free speech initiative than that. And yet, if you ask the average American, they still have this false notion that it's actually the liberals that are against speech. And I think part of that, is because of the liberal side taking ownership over anti-speech initiatives,

even if it's actually still geared by and motivated almost entirely by the right. I think the right is very, the right is very smart. The Heritage Foundation is very smart about concocting these narratives, right? Project Esther, which is like the accompanying version of Project 2025, I don't know if you're familiar with this, wanted to take advantage of the bipartisan and, and dare I say, actually liberal advocacy network that existed for tackling any sort of like anti-Semitic speech on the internet or for the most part anti-Zionist speech on the internet that they portray as anti-Semitic to take out prominent critics of Israel.

And it's not because the Heritage Foundation cares about anti-Semitism. I mean, you know, Sebastian Gorka is like the counterterrorism guy and he's literally, a Nazi. Like he wore a straight up Nazi pin, the Vitezi Wren pin in Trump's 2020 inauguration. This group literally hunted Jewish people in Hungary. Like that was their job, right? So it's these guys that are, you know, quote unquote, tackling vicious anti-Semites on the internet. And the reason why they are tackling that from this angle and Mahmoud Khalil's, you know, deportation hasty deportation initiative was was absolutely in line with this agenda is because they want to to open the door to more restrictions on what you can and can't say. And they know that if they go

after vulnerable targets like immigrants, you know, green card holders, legal permanent residents, or undocumented migrants that are still supposed to be protected by the First Amendment, according to the Constitution, they can justify more restrictions later down the line. So it's, the anti-Semitism stuff is just a way to open the door to further restrictions. Because it's bipartisan because a lot of liberal advocacy groups are also trained to, to, you know, go after and demand the, demand the speech restrictions of or the platforming of people that, you know, some of these groups have declared as anti-Semitic.

Whether they're actually anti-Semitic or not, doesn't matter. As long as these advocacy groups say that they're anti-Semitic, then a lot of these liberal groups will say, yeah, take these guys out. I totally agree with you. At the same time, I want people on the left to also understand that it goes beyond Israel, right? Because they're also targeting anti-immigrant speech. They've been targeting, as you mentioned, sex workers, right? LGBTQ people, Marsha Blackburn said that we need to pass COSA to protect children from the transgender in society, right? And so, I mean, also, if you want to talk about the Heritage Foundation, one of the core policies that they've been trying to enact for years is repealing Section 230. And I'm not sure how sort of familiar are, but I was hoping you could sort of talk a little bit about section 230 and why it's so important because I think a lot of people on the left these days, again, they sort of have this false understanding. They don't really realize that section 230 protects like users speech and they think like, oh, they hear that it like doesn't let us hold platforms liable, right? And so they want to hold everything like. I don't know. They again, they think of

it as this way of cracking down on big tech. You've covered Fossa Suss, obviously the first big amendment to section 230 that was supposed to hold big tech accountable. I would argue big tech is only more powerful in the past 10 years and the right has only seized more sort of of the internet since since Fossus has to pass. But why is protecting Section 230, you know, so crucial, especially right now? Because if we don't have safe harbor provisions for for online publishers and, and we hold them accountable for what, like, independent users are doing, then they're going to be unbelievably censorious.

And once that censorship initiative takes hold, beyond what we obviously understand is, like, criminal things, right? because they still abide by subpoenas when the federal government is demanding them. And Section 230 doesn't protect against illegal content, by the way. Yeah, exactly. Like, if you're doing a crime on the internet, if you're like distributing child sexual abuse material, like, of course that's unbelievably illegal. And everyone understands that that is not supposed to be protected by free speech.

And it's not protected. And unless you're Elon Musk, for the most part, people do get prosecuted for that, right? with some very notorious exceptions on Twitter. However, what they want to do is basically start prosecuting, like start creating legal hurdles on all of these platforms like that the government decides is harboring unsafe speech, right? And I could totally see myself being in the crossairs where the government could just as easily be like, look, you have to de-platform this guy because we've decided that,

his speech is unsafe and his speech and they're saying this already like Jonathan Greenblatt will go on television and every single time there's like a crime that takes place will point back to someone like myself and say Hassan Piker is responsible for this now that's a defamatory statement is you know and the ADL is certainly no stranger to always defaming people but that that is uh that will now have a lot better standing uh in the hands of the government and and these platforms will actually take action Instead of just saying, no, we're not, we're not prosecuting people on our own. We're not dictating what is appropriate and what's inappropriate on these platforms at the behest of the government.

But if they're legally held liable, they certainly will have to do that because at the end of the, these guys want to make money. All they care about is generating profits. So, of course, they're going to be like, all right, yeah, we'll ban this guy. It's nothing for them to do that. And they already do that. They already do that for their own personal ideological reasons, for example. Like, I mean, META is unbelievably censorious when it comes to pro-Palestinian speech, for example. They've also, like, figured out a way to cord and off the pro-Palestinian users so that they're only talking to one another rather than like a more expansive audience.

God forbid they're able to convince people who might be in the margins, right? So there are already so many different nefarious initiatives that people, that these platforms engage in for ideological purposes. And then to have to have the government force their hand would make it all but an inevitability that the government gets to control what is said and what isn't said on all these platforms. I'm curious if you support there's this new law called the Jawbone Act that Ron Wyden and Ted Cruz have come together to support L.L. at Ted Cruz. But, you know, Wyden has been really good on privacy. And jawboning for people that don't know, it's when the government sort of tacitly pressures platforms to take down content they don't like. This is something that Republicans have long accused Democrats of, and Democrats have absolutely engaged in the Biden administration. They were not found guilty of it formally by the Supreme Court, but they absolutely pressured platforms to take down certain speech.

Trump is doing this now. And so the jawbone act is this law that's being proposed now that would create this cause of action against any government agency or employee that engages in jawboning. even if the censorship doesn't succeed. And it would require agencies to submit to Congress communications with companies, basically so that you could have transparency. And you could see when one of these government agencies or representatives is trying to get specific people deplatformed, whatever. So I'm curious your thoughts on sort of jawboning and these efforts to bring more transparency to that space. Because I have not seen anyone on the left speak about the jawbone act.

And it seems like something that you of all people would, I guess, like, be interested in. Yeah, I mean, I'm victim to it. And I didn't know about it. I'll admit, but, you know, as soon as I read up a little bit on it right before we started, I was like, that sounds like a great initiative. Does Ted Cruz know that he wants the job own me? Is he aware? I mean, let's not tell him.

It's fine. If he's on board, then that's great. I'm totally in support of this, especially because, like I said, that is quite literally happening to me right now with this dual condemnation bill, right? Republicans don't want Candace Owens's commentary to be out there. and there's plenty of Democrats who don't want my commentary to be out there. I'm not making a moral equivalence between what I'm saying and what Candace Owens is saying, obviously. You know, we each have our very different audiences, right?

And we each say very different things, oftentimes at odds with one another. And yet, this dual condemnation bill is specifically designed for platforms to go out and de-platform people like myself. I mean, Richie Torres, another Democrat. He used the congressional letterhead five days before the general election to demand that Amazon blacklist me, to demand that Amazon de-platform me, to demand that Amazon ban me. Now, to give Twitch some credit, they didn't actually ban me, but they did blacklist me on the night of the election. And in spite of that blacklisting, I still was in the top 10 of live broadcasters on the internet. nine of the other top 10 broadcasters were all right wing.

I was the only left liberal outlet that was covering the fucking election. And you had a Democratic congressperson five days before the general election demanding that the most prominent left content creator in the political sphere get deplatform because he didn't like what I was saying about Israel. That's insane. And there's no punishments for this, but that is part of the reason why there is this overarching attitude that, you know, liberals are censorious. Liberals want to censor people.

But I do think there's a new opportunity here because of all the Israel stuff. I think a lot of people realize that if you criticize Israel, they come after you, they try to censor you. They demand that you get canceled. They demand that you lose your job. and I think a lot of people are frustrated by that. And not only does that feed into the enmity towards Israel and its war crimes and it, you know, it generates more salience for what Israel is doing, more transparency into what Israel is engaging in,

but it also, I think, creates an initiative to defend speech in this country. I've never, look, no matter how big of a Trump supporter, anybody is in this country, and I've had many conversations with Trump supporters, when I tell them that there are, you know, A-pack-backed bills in more than 30 states that have directly contradicted the First Amendment and have created provisions in place like Texas, for example, where if you want to become a school teacher in a public school, you have to sign a loyalty pledge to the state of Israel. They lose their minds.

They're like, what are you talking about? This sounds insane. But it's real. That's a real thing that people do without even thinking about it, right? In so many of these different circumstances, this is a direct violation. of the First Amendment. It was Diane Feinstein and Bernie Sanders who actively said this was, these, these BDS initiatives are against the First Amendment. And yet there's no conversation around it. And just like you mentioned, there's no conversation around these other censorship initiatives

against, you know, that are presented as like combating big tech and, and protecting children. And therefore, they kind of get to, they kind of get to push this stuff. And then we just one day wake up and realize that we're we're living in a very different internet we're living in a very different world and it's terrifying yeah and that's because i would say the right has dominated the conversation on tech policy and i hope that more people obviously you've spoken out about these laws i know you covered cosa the last time it was sort of coming up but like these laws are being shaped and these platforms themselves are being shaped by the far right and i think we're looking you know a decade into this like really aggressive effort to dominate our tech ecosystem and

Yeah, the left is like not even talking about these state laws or again, they're falling for the cracking down on big tech framing. And there are so many ways we can crack down big tech, comprehensive data privacy reform, antitrust regulation or litigation, you know, all of these other ways that we actually sort of hold big tech accountable that don't have to do with making sure some content creator you don't like doesn't appear in your algorithm, right? Or making you scan your face to Google something. Well, Hassan, thank you so much for chatting with me today. and can't wait to, you know, see you continue to speak out against online censorship laws. Thank you for having me. Thank you for fighting a good fight. Someone's got to do it.

As a reminder, Free Speech Friday is a series that I do every week covering tech policy and the fight for online freedoms. It runs across my YouTube channel, podcast, and newsletter. As I said throughout this interview, it is so, so crucial that people on the left wake up and start educating themselves on tech policy. Shaping the laws that govern our technology has been a primary way the far right has been able to seize power in this country. And I want people on the left to join the fight against these mass surveillance and censorship laws. So if you want to support this work, please, please buy

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