Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - ICE Is Hunting Down TikTok Journalists

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

ICE shot a TikTok journalist covering raids in Los Angeles then locked him in desert detention for 300 days (he is still there) with a festering gunshot wound, worms in his drinking water and cockroaches in his cell. This is the story of Carlitos Ricardo Parias known online as Richard LA or Richard Noticias LA and what it reveals about the war on independent journalism under the guise of "kids online safety" and "cracking down on social media addiction."SUPPORT MY WORK: Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at https://www.usermag.co         Support my work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/taylorlorenzIn this episode of Free Speech Friday, I'm joined by Adam Rose, Deputy Director of Advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, to investigate the horrifying case of Richard Parias. Richard is an independent community journalist in Los Angeles who spent months documenting immigration sweeps, neighborhood stories, and ICE activities directly on TikTok and Instagram. After being struck by an ICE vehicle, ambushed on a quiet residential street, and shot by a federal agent who juggled his sidearm between hands, Richard found himself trapped in a dystopian legal nightmare. Despite having all criminal charges dropped, federal agents erased surveillance footage of the incident and sent Richard to a sweltering detention facility in the Mojave Desert, where he is still trapped and struggling to get basic medical care. Adam's story: https://theintercept.com/2026/08/16/ricardo-parias-ice-detention-journalist-los-angeles/ (PLEASE SHARE!!!!) We break down how independent journalism has evolved away from legacy newsrooms into livestreams, citizen journalism, and social media content creators, and how the government is pushing "kids online safety" laws to aggressively unmask journalists, enact real-name ID mandates via "age verification", and sweeping digital censorship laws, all under the guise of child safety. 

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I get it. I'm Siaiaa and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.

These people would get in a fist fight at a bar, right? These people do not get along. And they were all mistreated equally by the government. And they were all arrested and all still face those criminal charges today. So it can happen to anyone. Imagine being shot by ice, pulled off the street, sent to a sweltering detention center in the middle of the desert where you're kept in squalor. You're surrounded by cockroaches. The food is disgusting.

And worm-like creatures are swimming in all your drinking water. You beg for treatment on your... gunshot wound and federal officers give you vitamin D and Ben Gay. This is what Richard Perraeus has been enduring for nearly a year. The horrifying conditions that he's enduring are not unique among immigrant detainees, but his case offers a terrifying window into how the government is seeking to treat independent journalists. Adam Rose is deputy director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. He's been covering Richard's story and he wrote recently that perhaps no other independent

journalists has endured such a sustained sequence of violence, prosecution, and imprisonment at the hands of the government than Richard. Today, I'm really excited to have Adam here to tell Richard's story and to talk about how escalating censorship amid a moral panic about kids' online safety is endangering independent journalism across the country. Adam, welcome to Free Speech Friday. Hey, Taylor, thanks for having me on. So you have been reporting for The Intercept and doing phenomenal coverage of this independent

journalist named Richard Prius. Who is this guy? How did he get on your radar? So Richard is a well-known community journalist here in Los Angeles. He started by doing what many people do, which is just to go out in the street and film the world around him. He was documenting crime and other sort of what we would call a copse beat in the journalism industry. Stories, which were important to his South L.A. community, which often is undercover by the mainstream media. He was even honored by the Los Angeles City Council for his work keeping the community informed. Now, Richard is undocumented, And when the immigration surge happens last year, he really put himself at risk by going out there to document what was happening to his neighborhood. It's kind of amazing to see what these independent journalists have accomplished, especially I was covering some of the ICE stuff last year.

And I feel like you would see these reporters from mainstream media amidst a lot of people who were first at the scene, actually, that were documenting these ice raids on Instagram and TikTok specifically. So Richard, it sounds like, was one of these independent journalists, a leading one who was. involved in all of this stuff last June. What was the first incident that Richard had with the police in the midst of his coverage? Sure. So he had covered several of these immigration raids amongst other things. But the first incident where he was involved was in June,

so fairly early on. And he went out as he normally would to go and film and document. Allegedly, he was struck by an ice vehicle. And that caused a pretty serious injury to his knees. So he winds up on the ground. The agents came out and put him in handcuffs and left him on the side of the road while they kept working. Just ignored him, left him there. Wow. So an ice agent hits him while he's on the job,

I mean, I think people sort of get confused about this, but you don't need any sort of like a permit or license from the city government to go out and do journalism, right? I mean, he's completely within his rights to be documenting this stuff and reporting on these ice activities, correct? You're exactly right. I mean, that's the whole point of the First Amendment. And so that has been, you know, part of the fabric of our country going back for hundreds of years, obviously predating even the ability to record with video like we have today. I mean, look, the journalism industry honored Darnella Frazier with a Pulitzer Prize, and she's the one who was there as a bystander when George Floyd was murdered, and she filmed it.

And if not for her being there and recording that moment, you know, that press release that went out from the local police saying that some guy had a drug overdose, that narrative might have taken hold. So the journalism industry even recognizes the importance of this. And here in California, where I am, we even have state laws that explicitly protect your right to record in public. So no permit is needed, no special privileges. You don't need a degree or a license. If you think about the First Amendment and the Constitution, there are really two professions that have, you know, total protection.

One is the clergy, right, religion, and then the other are journalists. So Richard is hit by a car. Ice agents handcuff him, basically leave him on the side of the road for dead or basically just drive off. It sounds like eventually he got brought to the hospital by a bystander, recovers, and pretty soon ended up back out on the job, right? Yeah. So one important distinction there, because this will feed a false government narrative that took hold later. The agents were still there when he left.

And you see videos from other bystanders, which were also posted on TikTok, of someone who just a private citizen came along and realized this guy's really hurt. And the videos show Richard grasping at his knee while in handcuffs, screaming in pain. And so as Richard's being loaded into a private car, some of the agents come up just for a few seconds, right? And they check in on him. One of the agents, I think, gives a thumbs up. And they let him go. and they let him go get treatment. What's really horrible about it is they left him in handcuffs,

just like they didn't care at all. And so after being treated in the hospital and there's TikTok videos of him in the hospital being treated, then he goes on with his life a few weeks later and starts going back out in the field again. So last October, he's out in the field. He's documenting me. He's doing his really crucial journalism work.

And another incident takes place. Can you break down what happens? Yeah. So Richard was driving in his car and he had just pulled out, I believe, of the driveway. This is South LA. So it's the community where he documents and serves the community with information, and it's where he lives and where his family lives. So, you know, he's on a very quiet street. I went and visited later and investigated the scene. It's this quiet street near a school, and ICE agents pulled up in large SUVs and pickup trucks and pinned in his car from all sides in the middle of the street, so his car couldn't move.

And you can see all this on body cam video that was later released and also some bystander video that came out later from across the street. in a home. And the agents without any warning, without asking him, hey, open your door, anything like that, they rush up. One of them says, I'm going to smash his window, and they smash his window. And these are masked gunmen, literally. And Richard is originally from Mexico. I don't know if he ever experienced anything like this, but it looks like what you might imagine a cartel ambush would be. Really terrifying just to think about. So this is where things get into a wild narrative that spread online. Richard, as they're smashing his window, and he doesn't know what's going on, he hit the accelerator pedal in his car, right? So there's a little bit of wheel spinning and some smoke,

but the car doesn't budge, right? Nothing actually happens. Right, because it's pinned in by these other bigger cars, right? Exactly. I mean, these are multiple times the weight of his car. There's no way he's moving those. And, you know, he's freaked out. I mean, who wouldn't be freaked out in that situation? Within seconds, he stops, right? That's a really quick thing. And if you watch it in real time, even the agent's own body camp. So the agents at this point realize that he's calmed down, but they don't. And in fact, the body cam of the one agent that's been released widely shows him holding his gun in one hand, flipping it to his other hand, flipping it back and forth several times.

So the agent juggles the gun back and forth between his hands and then shoots Richard in the elbow. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life?

You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I plan. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride.

Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. Going on vacation? We're here for it. With kids who turned the backseat into a courtroom drama over whose tabla is louder, whose charger is faster, and while watching the same cartoon for the hundredth time is a human right? Yep. totally have vehicles to handle that because whether it's a road trip or a business trip,

where your flight's delayed, your phone's at 2% and your dinner is whatever is open. Yeah, here for that too. Enterprise. We're here for it. So Richard is terrified. He's shot in the arm. He's surrounded by these federal agents. From what I understand from your reporting, Richard is brought to the hospital for treatment. And then these federal agents stay on the scene and run into the mall. where there are these security cameras and start deleting footage, right? That's exactly right.

I actually visited the mall security office myself and the guard there showed me on screen where it said no data for the time code. The agents had made their own copy, but then they made sure that no one else could access it. Richard eventually, I guess, gets some level of treatment at the hospital. Where do federal agents then send him? So Richard was released still on morphine and this guy's in a lot of pain. And he was taken by the agents directly into a criminal detention center in downtown L.A. And eventually, the court drops these criminal charges, which were completely bogus against Richard anyway.

But Richard doesn't get released. He ends up in an ICE detention facility, correct? And is that where he is now? That's right. He was taken to the Adelanto facility in the Mojave Desert. And this is not anywhere near L.A. or his family, correct? I mean, you know, depending on traffic, it's L.A. after all, but it could be hours away. And it makes it very hard for not only his family, but also his lawyers to see him.

Tell me a little bit about the conditions that Richard is enduring in this detention facility. It's disgusting. You actually have video and photos that have come out now of these worm-like creatures in the drinking water, of cockroaches that were caught in the cell. And of course, Richard's gunshot wound is not being properly treated. Right. I forgot that Richard still has this like festering gunshot wounds since all of this happened. So because Richard is undocumented, even though he's never committed a crime, he was cleared of all charges. He was engaging in First Amendment protected activity. Of course, because he's undocumented, ICE can still hold him in indefinitely. Is he able to even see a lawyer?

He has been able to communicate with his lawyer, but he has been behind bars or in custody now for over 300 days. What I think is so incredible is that throughout this, he's still been practicing journalism. Well, the reason we know that there are these fly larvae in the water, there are cockroaches in the cells, and that there's medical neglect is because of Richard. It's because he is using his visitors to help get the story out and to get video and photo of these really awful disgusting conditions. Richard's story is obviously so horrifying because I think it just shows how these federal officers can completely trample on anyone's sort of civil liberties and rights while they're engaged in this protected activity. But we're seeing a lot more encounters between law enforcement. And it seems like there's an aggressive effort to crack down and target a lot of these independent journalists that are out there doing really essential firsthand reporting work.

You're absolutely right. We've seen it in Newark. We've seen it in Chicago. We've seen it here in Los Angeles. And with the federal government, it's been really bad for the past year. I've actually sat in court while their lawyers have tried to argue that the mere act of filming their agents is violence against them. It's so Orwellian. It's double speak. I mean, literally their agents are committing acts of violence.

They're being caught by bystanders, by professional journalists, and so importantly now, by these independent journalists on social media who are able to directly inform the public about what's really happening. Yeah, I mean, I feel like social media has just become the primary vehicle for all of this. Obviously, there were these sort of dedicated apps called Ice Watch and others that were shut down, actually removed from the app store after government pressure because they were being used to document this. And now Meta and Google are receiving hundreds of subpoenas a week from the federal government, according to the New York Times, seeking to unmask a lot of these anti-ice accounts or ICE accounts that are sort of doing crowdsource community journalism. I don't think people realize how much of what traditional journalists used to do has moved onto social media and platforms like TikTok and Instagram and is being done by kind of regular people. Well, that word traditional is so important here because we might have this concept from, I don't know, maybe a few decades ago, right? This sort of semi-professionalized journalism that started in the 60s.

We were really comfortable with it in the 90s. And then, you know, the last 20 or so years, it started to dissipate. And it's gone back to what it used to be before, back when the country was founded. Basic, basic, basic history here, you know, the First Amendment. Who is it supposed to protect? Were they thinking about the New York Times and CNN and Fox News? I mean, those didn't exist. Big corporate media didn't exist.

They did have Thomas Payne, some guy writing pamphlets. They did have Benjamin Franklin with his twice a week newspaper. And those are people who would be on substack today. Those are people who would be on Instagram or TikTok. And, you know, they have a point of view, right? That's protected as well by the First Amendment. So fast forward to today. And you think about people like Darnela Frazier who filmed the murder of George Floyd

and prevented the public from being bamboozled by a press release that said, oh, this guy just died of a drug overdose, right? So much incredible work being done by journalists who are independent, who have nothing but a TikTok, right? That's fine. That's great. That is journalism if you go out there with an intent to inform the world about what's happening around you. And so these people are making a difference in our communities every single day, but they're also increasingly being targeted by the government. 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. Yeah, to me what's so terrifying is sort of how coordinated all of this is. And when people read these efforts from the government to unmask, you know, different accounts, or to use these real name policies, do age verification, which is de facto ID verification. I think of someone like Richard. I mean, rich. Richard was not posting under his government name, right?

He was going by Richard, you know, Tzias. He himself is undocumented. And so I feel like, you know, him having the ability to have some anonymity potentially protected him for a while. I think you're exactly right. You know, if the government knew right away who he was and where he was, they might have come after him sooner. I don't think they were trying to come after him because they really cared about immigration issues, right? It was only after they knew that he was out there recording them and who he was. and they'd been embarrassed by that first incident, then they targeted him.

Yeah, and it just seems like across the country, federal officers, police, et cetera, are targeting more and more independent journalists? What do you think people should understand about this? Because I think so many people complain about influencers, they want to see influencer bans, they want to see bans on recording other people. And all of this could have really serious effects on people like Richard's ability to tell stories and get news out, right? Absolutely. What I always ask people to do is just pause for a second and in your head picture the politician you trust the least.

I don't want to know who it is. I don't care who it is, but you're already picturing someone who you're like, oh my gosh, I hate this person. They're terrible. I can't imagine them in charge. Maybe they are now. Maybe they might be in the future. And then imagine they get to pick and choose who counts as a journalist. That it's their power to decide what you hear and who you hear it from. That's terrifying. And it shouldn't matter what your politics are or what administration you support. And that's why we have a First Amendment. we need to protect people and we don't want the police to credential journalists to cover the police, right? That's a terrible idea. And so why we, you know, have fought so hard in the press rights community over the years to, you know, not only have that constitutional right,

but to articulate specifically in laws that can be easily interpreted by police, that's an important thing for us. And here in California, we have those laws. I actually helped pass one of those a few years ago. And it's a very broad interpretation of who press is. You don't need to be working for a specific employer. You don't need a match. magic, you know, press credential from the government, you do need to be participating only as a journalist, right? You have to be observing. You can't be participating in a protest or something like that. You can't break any other law. It's not a get out of jail free card. But if you are simply there in public to document, you have every right. Doesn't matter if you went to school for it,

doesn't matter if you have a license, you get to do it. I think a lot about when I worked as a full-time staffer in mainstream media, I was sued many times over for sort of bogus charges. The goal is, of course, to silence legitimate reporting. But when those things happened and when I would have even encounters with law enforcement, etc., I was covering the Unite the Right rally and was assaulted physically while on the job. And I think of my employers that always stood behind me and had this whole teams, you know, especially at the New York Times, this huge team of lawyers that would come and fight for you. Now that journalism is moving to sort of independent people doing this work, like, you know,

people like Richard doing this work on TikTok and Instagram, are these platforms getting involved? Do they care about protecting people like Richard at all? I mean, is TikTok stepping in in any way to sort of have his back in any of this? So back when all of this started, I actually reached out to TikTok several times and never heard back from them. So, you know, it's disappointing because here's someone, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers, is engaging the community, is doing what they would probably want in an ideal community sense of right, keeping that public informed. And it was radio silence. So I haven't tried for a few months, but I was disappointed at the time they never responded.

Yeah, I've had the experience where Meta actually takes the accounts down, where you reach out for comment about something and they just say, oh, well, it seems like there's some drama here. It seems like the police or the government doesn't like this account for some reason. We're just going to remove it. And you see this a lot with these platforms just sort of caving to the government's pressure. I also think of efforts that are happening right now in Congress to revoke Section 230 and argue that these platforms should be held liable for the speech that's on them. What would the effect of revoking Section 230 be on journalism like Richards? Well, there's an old joke that America has the worst form of government in the world except for every other one. Section 230 is not without its flaws, but what are you going to replace it with?

And so I think you're exactly right that this means that journalism like Richards would not be feasible. Many of the even larger mainstream outlets with all their standards and best practices that they try and follow, they're going to make mistakes. Things are going to happen. And if you take that away and take away Section 230, I think you're exposing us to as a society to much more. more problems. So I don't pretend to have a magic solution here, but I don't think it's simply revoking 230. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just like these platforms already, I think, are wary to host speech that is critical of the government. And we see that reflected in their moderation policies.

And of course, they're not going to take on liability for independent journalism against ICE if there is that liability threshold. I want to get back to Richard's case specifically. In addition to having his rights violated and being shot, et cetera, it seems like there was also this effort to cover it up. the deletion of the footage, the cops acted really badly. Has there been any accountability efforts there? I mean, are any of these cops on leave? Is there internal investigations into the wrongdoing by these ICE agents? Nothing that we're aware of. I mean, I've been dealing with this sort of misconduct for, I don't know, five or six years now, both with LAPD, with the Sheriff's Department here, now with DHS. And I'm part of, with the LA Press Club, multiple lawsuits against law enforcement

that created not for any damages or money, but to get what they call preliminary injunctions, which are orders from a judge that restricts, say, the use of tear gas or so-called less lethal munitions against the press and ensures they can remain. So we've done things like that. But invariably, whenever there's a problem, let's say someone gets injured by law enforcement and there's a massive payout of millions of dollars. I pay that. You pay that, right? That's coming out of our wallets as taxpayers. The officers never get suspended. They never get prosecuted. To my knowledge, they never get demoted or stuck on desk duty or even lose overtime. You know, it has been, in my experience, complete impunity, whether it's DHS or LAPD or any other agency.

In addition to Richard, there are all these other independent journalists that are under attack, especially in the L.A. area, but elsewhere that are documenting ICE, that are documenting law enforcement that are being targeted in these types of deportation proceedings or just harassed by the police for, again, engaging in First Amendment protected activity. Can you talk about the state of, I guess, press freedom in America? Because it seems like as we're moving into this social media dominated landscape, things are getting really bad. I mean, I could imagine just a lot of people reading Richard's case and being nervous. I was at VidCon this past June talking to a lot of independent content creators, including

one news content creator who has millions of followers covering news. And he was talking about how he's planning to pivot to video games because he just doesn't want to get in trouble with law enforcement. He doesn't want people harassing his family. He's an American citizen, but has family that is not American citizens. And it just seems like a really scary time for the. journalism world. It's heartbreaking to hear that.

And it is happening to a lot of other people. I hear from journalists all the time that they're not willing to go out because of the safety issues, that their children plead with them not to go out or ask if they're going to wind up arrested or injured in the hospital again. And that's heartbreaking. I think that, you know, we use a term in the constitutional right space. It's a chilling of rights. The rights are chilled.

Your right to exercise your First Amendment right or whatever it may be. Let's talk about how bad it is because I can put it in a word and just say it's terrible right now with press freedom in the country. But there's this wonderful group called Reporters Without Borders. They go by RSF, which is the French acronym, and they put out a ranking every single year, globally, of all countries. And maybe, you know, 20 years ago, the U.S. was 12 or something like that worldwide in terms of press freedom. Now we're down in the 60s. We're not even in the top third of countries.

And this is the land of the First Amendment. So we've absolutely collapsed in terms of press freedom on all sorts of fronts, whether it's federal agents coming and seizing the devices of Washington Post journalists from their home, whether it's these incidents that protests where journalists are injured by less lethal munitions, whether it's Don Lemon and Georgia Fort and June Bollman all being arrested because they covered a protest in the Twin Cities and later police came to their homes and to their hotels where they were staying on the road. And all of these things are really scary. What I will also really want to highlight here is how it's happening to everyone. It doesn't matter if someone has a

point of view or what your opinions are. So thinking about those independent live streamers and people who are posting on social media, there was a hunger strike at Delaney Hall, which is a facility in Newark, New Jersey. And everyone came out to cover the protests that were happening out in front of this facility, including mainstream media. I mean, you literally say like Ali Valshi from MSNL now being chased down the street by officers. You see an NBC crew was pulled out of their vehicle into the tear gas. So, you know, mainstream, traditional, corporate, whatever you want to call them. But then multiple journalists, basically just posting as themselves online, but they'd gone out as journalists were arrested. At least three people still face

criminal charges in Newark. And this includes people who are, what was interesting, to me, one who is very strongly conservative and pro-Israel, some that are very progressive and pro-Palestine, these people would get in a fist fight at a bar, right? These people do not get along. And they were all mistreated equally by the government, and they were all arrested and all still face those criminal charges today. So it can happen to anyone. Yeah, I mean, two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands in Toronto. for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk.

Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. When Westchaff first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion,

inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. I just think of how bipartisan these censorship efforts have been. I've been covering the Kids Act and a lot of these other identity verification laws and child safety laws where they want to remove this content from the internet.

And you see people on the left and the right kind of uniting around. censorship. I've brought this up before, but a human rights organization that I talked to was talking about how they don't even mention free speech anymore in their marketing materials, because it's just not popular with young people, they claim. And that really scares me because aside from you and some like other press freedom digital rights organizations, who is standing up against these efforts? Like who is fighting back? Well, sometimes it's the journalist themselves. And often when we see like legal filings, it starts with the independent journalists who are part of major lawsuits to get injunctions and orders from courts to protect

their rights. And then you'll see the major corporate outlets come through with what they call amicus briefs. Sometimes the New York Times is on the front lines of these things and having to deal with it in court themselves. We've got obviously great civil liberty groups out there. You think about like ACLU and organizations like that. These organizations don't care what someone's politics are, if they have a certain perspective or point of view. They care about the fundamental rights. The problem is, I kind of joke that this administration is good for business and that there's a lot to do. But these are all nonprofits. It's terrible for business because it's expending all the resources, whether it's of the advocates or of the attorneys and all the efforts to try and stand up for our collective rights.

So if it's not popular, then democracy isn't popular, right? We do not have democracy without an informed public and we don't have an informed public without a free press. Yeah, I think of, you know, some lawmakers and really people like Jonathan Haidt, who's the architect of this modern child, kids' online safety movement. And he has, I think even been working with, certainly praised the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the UAE. Even Macron praised the UAE's speech laws and sought to actually replicate a lot of their social media restrictions. This is really concerning to me because Shazana Weissman wrote a great piece on this that I'll link in the comments. But Malaysia and Indonesia and the UAE, these people jailed journalists. I mean, the UAE especially

has been jailing dozens, if not hundreds of citizens for simply sending WhatsApp messages with images of damaged buildings that they live in or live near in an effort to tamp down information about attacks amidst the Iran War. So Malaysia and Indonesia, like, again, these places don't have free speech whatsoever. It's quite terrifying the way that they prosecute journalists and prosecute people for speaking out for human rights, for supporting LGBTQ people, et cetera. So I guess I'm curious like what your thoughts are when you hear people like Jonathan Haid with so much political power. He's actually consulting with the Democrats now on their new project 2029 to revamp our online speech laws. You know, when you see someone like that praising Malaysia or these other countries like the UAE, does that concern you?

And what does that sort of reveal? Do you think about the way that our press freedom is going? Well, I think it tells us that when people have power, they want to keep that power. They want to control it. And the reason our democracy was set up as it exists was to be a hedge against that, right? We don't have press freedoms because it makes the government's job easier. The point of it is to be adversarial. And if you're smart about it and you think about the long-term health of our society,

you want freedom of information because you're not going to be in control. The party or tribe or whoever you root for is not going to be in control all the time. And so if we want to have longevity, if we want to be holistically healthy, we need to support a system that actually encourages freedom of speech. not allow those sorts of tools to be created legally or otherwise that can infringe on it. What about people that would say, but it's harmful for children? I mean, this content is constantly deemed harmful, violent, especially videos of some of what ICE has been doing online. They've been hidden by meta for violent activity. And we see a lot of this content being removed under child safety

guidelines. What are your thoughts on these people that say, well, that's all well and good, but we have to make the internet safer for children? Well, I'd say that there's a lot to impact there, but I do think that a lot of that's a scare tactic. I mean, the reality is that, you know, children have been exposed to inappropriate and bad things for generations, for millennia. And often there's a role with parenting that needs to be considered more importantly. And the idea that parents would just, you know, give a device, you know, with unfettered access to everything to a child, is probably a bigger issue than saying that, well, we need to police everyone. It's the line if you would trade liberty for security, you deserve neither.

Eventually this is what authoritarian regimes always do is they try and control things. And so it's not wrong to say that we need, you know, to think about children and, you know, especially to be supportive of parents and empower them to be a good influence in their children's lives and keep, you know, a steer on some of this for them. But it's not the government's job to do that. I mean, sometimes people will call this conservative in nature. But like, that's the most anti-conservative thing is to say, well, take away everyone's liberty, right? Well, it is very pro-Christian nationalist. I mean, it is pro-conservative. Like, the conservative movement is the architect of a lot of this stuff. Much has been written about this. But I think also there is this Christian far-right conservative,

and then there is like the more libertarian free markets conservatives. And those are always, I guess, opposed in various ways. I want to get back to Richard. What does his future entail? I mean, he's been held in this detention center for almost a year. It doesn't seem like he has any pathway to get out anytime soon. Like what can be done to help his situation? And where do you see this going for him?

Yeah. So it's important to consider that Richard has a family, that they're, you know, obviously in need. If people find his TikTok, I know that there are some fundraiser accounts that are linked there that people can donate to. You'll see Ulysses listed there, which is his son's name. And, you know, Richie's got two kids and a wife, and he was the main breadwinner for the family when he was locked away. His oldest son is a college student, right? He should be busy studying electrical engineering. He's a teenager. He doesn't deserve any of this, and it's all been falling on him.

So, you know, the community can directly support, obviously, in the, you know, through the various whatever is. Oh, no, I'll put those links below as well. Yeah, well, I don't know if his cash app or Venmo, but whatever's on there from Richard's TikTok account, I would recommend if you want to support in that way. I think it would also be good if people have Congress representatives who are receptive to this sort of thing to ask them to demand for Richard's release. It really doesn't make a lot of sense why someone would be held that long. It doesn't seem like there's any reason to think he's a flight risk. I mean, for crying out loud, he has two kids in school in Los Angeles. He needs to be here for them. And, you know, I would also just let folks know that it's not like his attorneys are doing

nothing. They've got a very difficult battle to fight with him because the federal government has all the odds stacked in their favor. One of the things that we would actually hope to see, and this is almost a little bit ironic here, is that there is a visa available to people who are victims of violence. Now, in this case, the victim was Richard and the violence was committed by the government itself. But if they could get something like that or maybe some other type of visa for him, I can't think of anyone more deserving at this point than Richard. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Adam, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you for all the amazing work that you guys are doing at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. And I'll obviously link all the information below, but really, really appreciate you coming on here to talk about. this. Thank you, Taylor. Really appreciate you shining a light on Richard's story. You know, it's not unique that immigrants in this country are being mistreated, but I can't think of a sequence of events happening to a journalist and an independent live streamer quite like Richard. Yeah, absolutely. All right. That's it for this week's episode of Free Speech Friday. If you like my work, please, please buy a paid subscription to my substack at usermag.co. That's usermag.com or support me on Patreon via the link below. On both my substack and my Patreon, I do a monthly bonus episode,

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