Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The Viral Elon Musk Lawsuit Everyone Is Getting Wrong

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Everyone got this viral lawsuit totally wrong.FOR AD-FREE EPISODES, BUY A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO MY PATREON OR SUBSTACK!! SUPPORT MY WORK: Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at https://www.usermag.co       Support my work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/taylorlorenz       This week, a viral story claimed Elon Musk's xAI is suing Minnesota so that he can create AI-generated CS*M. That false claim exploded across social media, but it leaves out the most important part.    In this episode of Free Speech Friday, I sit down with First Amendment scholar Jeff Kosseff to break down Minnesota's new AI law, why xAI is challenging it, why major civil liberties orgs like the ACLU are also against the law, and why free speech advocates across the country say the law raises serious concerns.This convo is NOT defending Elon Musk. It is about understanding how AI regulation can produce unintended consequences and why even laws that claim to do good can do immense harm to us all.  We discuss:The $500,000-per-image penalties facing AI companiesHow the law could affect image generators, creative software, and indie developersWhy First Amendment scholars are sounding the alarmThe risks of strict liability for AI platformsThe chilling effect on online speech and creative expressionWhether AI-generated content deserves First Amendment protectionHow this compares to Section 230, FOSTA-SESTA, and the Take It Down ActWhy regulating platforms instead of bad actors may have unintended consequences

This is actually the more concerning part. The state attorney general could seek civil penalties of up to $500,000 per image or video. If you were online at all over the past week, you might have seen posts from viral Twitter accounts like Dems Deliver, claiming that Elon Musk's X-AI is suing to stop a bill in Minnesota that bans AI-generated child porn, otherwise known as CSAM or NCI, which stands for non-consensual intellectual intellectual intimate imagery. Posts about Elon Musk suing to block this Minnesota law went so mega viral. They have tens of millions of views. Adam Mockler, one massive liberal YouTuber, quote, tweeted a post about this and said, why would you sue to block this? Isaiah Martin, another political figure,

quote tweeted, saying, we're dealing with some truly vile people. I'm sorry to have to report this, but Elon Musk's XAI is actually right to try to block this law. It's very much the case of, you know, that onion meme of the worst person you know just made a great point. Because I want to be clear, Elon Musk does not care about defending free speech. And I'm sure there are a million ways in which GROC could be a more responsible platform. But that doesn't change the fact that there are significant issues with this law. And this law will likely be used for further censorship of speech and free expression. The ACLU has withdrawn their support from the law and sounded the alarm about downstream effects. And First Amendment and free expression activists have been shouting about how problematic this

law is. Jeff Kossif is a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. He was previously a cybersecurity professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, and before that, he was a Pulitzer-nominated journalist and recipient of the George Polk Award. He has written a slew of books about internet law and free expression, and I'm so excited to welcome him here today to break down why exactly this Minnesota law is so atrocious, how it could be misused, and ultimately, how we can protect free expression while still holding bad actors accountable for producing illegal content. Hi, Jeff. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me.

To start off, I kind of want to explain what this Minnesota law was meant to do. So the law, which is HF 1606, has very laudable goals, and it is intended to go after non-consensual intimate imagery. And it's important to note that every state has an NCI law on the books, but those laws go after the person who's creating and distributing the imagery. This is very different that this law instead prohibits websites, apps, any other tech providers, from allowing users to use their services to create what are called nudified images or videos of identifiable people. So something that's altered or generated that falsely depicts someone's, as the law calls, intimate parts

in a way that a reasonable viewer could think is real. And so this is very unique in that it's putting the liability, not on the distributor, the creator, but on the company whose technology was allegedly used to create the image. And it's important to note it's a civil law, and there are two ways it could be enforced. So first, someone who's depicted in the image

can sue the company. Or, and this is actually the more concerning part, the state attorney general could seek civil penalties of up to $500,000 per image or video. That makes it very unique. It creates a strong disincentive for AI companies to serve a state if they're going to face that liability. I just want people to understand because they might think, well, screw the AI companies. Who cares, right? About these AI tools.

But this is not specific AI companies, right? It applies to any creative tool that has these sorts of AI features. It is. It is. Yeah, it could be read very broadly to include any tool that's being used. Now, there is an exception in the rule for images that require what it calls substantial application, individualized technological or artistic skill and judgment by a human creator.

So that could possibly exempt something like Photoshop or something like that. People were saying that, but I have to say as somebody that's used Photoshop recently, it is like all generative AI. And I feel like that is all how people use. I mean, I also think of just these photo editing apps. Like I feel like women especially constantly use and men, of course, to use tools like FaceTune or some of these other image editing apps just to like alter photos, change things.

I was in a bridal party recently in the front, my friend sort of like altered a bunch of our photos before posting it, you know, using one of these apps. There is generative AI technology is built quite literally into every like creative tool I think possible these days. And so I do think people should understand, yeah, it's not just like regulating anthropic or open AI or some other sort of tool like that. What concerns me most is what the law lacks. So there are safeguards that you could put in a law that has an impact on speech that make it less concerning from a First Amendment perspective. And the problem is that this law doesn't really have many of those. There's no state of mind requirement in the law.

So in legal terms, there's varying states of mind that apply to either civil or criminal penalties that they say you have to act with intent or recklessness or with knowledge. This just applies regardless of whether the provider knew of the image being generated, whether it was reckless. It even applies if the provider took the best steps that it possibly could, and its technology was misused by a very clever user. So it's strict liability, which is for speech-related issues, is very concerning. And the courts have repeatedly said, you know, imposing strict liability on speech, raises significant First Amendment concerns.

Yeah, let's dive into some of the problems with the law, because you wrote this great substack post where you basically outline sort of all the serious First Amendment concerns with the law. And one of the issues that you've raised that I think is so terrified. to me as somebody that uses image generation tools or edits by photos and videos or friends edit photos and videos, is that this law is not limited to non-consensual content, right? That's correct. So that makes it very different from the NCI laws that are on the books, which the end in NCI is non-consensual. And that matters a lot in a First Amendment context. So basically, I just want to clarify for people, this law could end up regulating companies that provides

that allow people to consensually edit photos. Like if I know that somebody's making like certain content of me, but it's with my consent or if we're all making content of each other with our consent, this law would still kind of come in and the state attorney general could come in and apply this law and it would be in violation. Right. It could lead to an attempt to seek, for the AG to seek civil penalties of up to $500,000 against whichever technology company was used for that. for that. If someone were to make an image of themselves, that could lead to liability for the

tech company if the AG sought civil penalties. Now, that's why the AG portion is particularly concerning because it's not just about lawsuits by the victim. It also gives whoever the attorney general is the ability to see very substantial fines. And you could say, well, a tech company could afford $500,000, but that's per image. So it's not really hard to imagine these days elected political officials having grudges against particular companies, but saying, you know, I want to go after this company for some other reason. I'm just going to really bring down the law as hard as I can on them under this. And because there's no safeguards for, you know, they were trying their best or anything like that, that could have serious impacts on speech in

general. Yeah, well, these tools will just not provide creative services, right? Like, they'll, they'll just start restricting speech and restricting users' ability to generate content in certain ways. I'm also wondering, like, one of my friends is, like, obsessed with vibe coding, and it was her 40th birthday recently. And she made this, like, funny little, like, image generation thing. Like, we were, like, putting our photos in it and they were being edited, whatever. And I'm curious, like, if just indie software, like, that could be regulated. Like, are we talking about any tool that is leveraged? leveraging these generative AI systems, even homegrown tools that, you know, an average person might make just for a small community or there are a bunch of people vibe coding tools for fan art to be made. Would this law potentially affect them?

I think depending on how it's enforced by the AG, I think that would be a very broad definition because the law itself says it's a person who owns or controls a website application software program or other service. So you could imagine if there were a particularly aggressive, attorney general. Yeah. That sounds like it absolutely would affect these people. I mean, I think of like the fan art communities, especially, like, who many fan art communities have been very anti-generative AI, but there are a lot of people that use tools and create tools. And especially as we're seeing software become more democratized, it worries me that they're trying to regulate software in this way and companies in this way and tools in this way, because they're sort of doing this at a time when more and more people are also trying to build tools independently outside of these

big tech ecosystems. Yeah. And I mean, some of the bill supporters are saying this isn't even a First Amendment issue because it regulates conduct and not speech. I would disagree on that. To be clear, we've had very few court rulings on whether AI output is First Amendment protected. We had one judge basically say, I'm going to hold off on ruling on that. California had a political deepfakes law that got struck down and the judge found a First Amendment interest in it. I believe that there are a variety of First Amendment interests in AI output. There's the interests of the person who's prompting the AI. There's the interest of people who are receiving the information because the Supreme

Court for decades has ruled that there is a First Amendment right, not just in expressing yourself, but also in receiving information from others. So just to say, you know, the First Amendment doesn't apply. always really raises my alarm bells when I hear someone say that. To me, no serious person would say that. And that honestly sounds like a lot of nonsense claims that I've heard. I mean, through so many people, these are the same people that try to, I guess, claim that we can regulate meta under like product liability standpoints or something.

I feel like they're always creating these novel ways to restrict content and then turn around and say, oh, no, there's no first amendment concerns here because of X, Y, Z. And I guess in this case, like you're saying, there's not tons of precedent. Anybody that watches my channel knows that I feel like we desperately need First Amendment protections around AI-generated output because the alternative would be really dystopian. And we would have a lot of, like you said, restrictions on access to information. And I mean, fundamentally, we're talking about expressive tools that are allowing users to create content, right? Yeah. And so I always get very concerned when someone says there's no First Amendment. protection for this speech that I don't like because the Supreme Court has repeatedly said,

that's not how we do things. And they've been pretty good. There are starting to be some cracks in that belief, but overall they've been pretty good at saying we're not going to keep carving out what we don't like. And I mean, I'll give you one example that's not AI related. This was back in 2021 when there were all the concerns about COVID misinformation. And there were members of Congress who proposed a law called the Health Misinformation Act, which is like this dystopian sounding law. And what it basically said is that for platforms that algorithmically promote, which is pretty much how platforms operate, health misinformation, they lose their protections from liability under Section 230. And you say, okay, well, what's health misinformation? And you look at the definition and it

says it's defined in guidance by the HHS secretary. So I really started raising alarms about that and saying, you know, this is really concerning. And I was on a panel with someone who was a supporter of the bill who said, well, the current president, we trust his administration. And I said, well, could you ever imagine a scenario where there's someone else in office and you might not agree? And the point is you shouldn't agree or disagree with them. There should never be an elected or unelected official who's defining what is misinformation.

And it's the same thought of saying, yeah, yeah, this is a problem. So in 2021, they said that misinformation was a problem. And we need to carve out the First Amendment. I'm not arguing at all that NCI is not a problem. It is a significant problem, but we have to operate within the confines of the First Amendment. We don't just start saying we're going to we're going to start reading the First Amendment differently. You say, okay, what's a roadmap to deal with this problem that does not chip away at First Amendment rights? I would love to know what that person thinks now that RFK is in charge.

I mean, what's really scary to me, too, is the chilling effect this has. You mentioned when all of that was sort of being debated in Congress, how meta reacted to that. And I wrote about this for the Washington Post and Twitter as well at that time. This is pre-Elon. Is that they actually started mass removing content that was factual just because they didn't want the liability. And so this was at a really dangerous point, I believe, when like the Omicron variant was coming, but I spoke to tons of public health advocates, vaccine advocates, people that were trying to get information out there that was accurate and factual and science-based. And they had their

accounts deleted and downranked because they were warning about the dangers of this virus. And basically these platforms were like, we're getting so much heat from the government. We just don't even want to like litigate this. So we're just going to take down all of your content and accounts. And I think that leads to people being less informed. We know that that led to people being less informed. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the important point is the government shouldn't be in the business of declaring something misinformation.

That's not to say that NCI cannot be regulated. I personally believe that the state laws generally, and they vary quite a bit, but the state criminal laws that go after the distributors of NCI, while it is subject to First Amendment analysis, I think that it survives First Amendment. analysis. But I think you bring up a good point, which is that there are laws out there that actually tackle this. We have state laws. We also have the Take It Down Act, which I have a whole video on. I actually also have a lot of problems with that law, but it did pass. And I would say that also, you know, creates a pathway where effectively, if you report problematic NCII

imagery online, these platforms have, I think it's like 48 hours to take it down. So I feel like a lot of people are thinking, oh, you know, we have to do something. We have to do something. there's no laws on the books. There are plenty of laws on the books already that sort of help mitigate this content. And that's not to say that there shouldn't be more and that we shouldn't find the distributors of this harmful content. But to shift the liability onto like the platform and software level is what I think concerns me here because of, yeah, the many issues you've raised. Yeah. And I mean, the really interesting thing about Minnesota is there's actually a roadmap that the Minnesota Supreme Court gave for NCI laws to.

to be compliant with the First Amendment. In 2020, there was someone who was convicted under Minnesota's NCI law, so the law that makes it a criminal penalty to distribute NCI. And this person was basically saying, the law is unconstitutional, it violates his First Amendment rights.

It went back and forth in the courts. One court found that it was unconstitutional, but it went up to the Minnesota Supreme Court. And the Minnesota Supreme Court, And the Minnesota Supreme Court ultimately found that it was constitutional so that the law that he was convicted under did not violate the First Amendment. But it was a very narrow ruling. And the court cited a number of reasons for why it believed that this law complies with the First Amendment. And a lot of these elements that the court basically said, this is why it's constitutional, are not in the new notification law.

So one of the reasons was that the criminal law is limited to intentional acts. And again, as we discussed, there's no state of mind requirement in the mutification law. So it's strict liability, meaning if someone uses your technology, you're liable. There also were exceptions for things like images produced in a commercial setting and public interest. Those are not present in the notification law. The court also said, and this is really important, it's limited to non-consensual images.

That's one of the reasons it's constitutional. And the nudification law is not limited to non-consensual. The court looked at all of these reasons and said that because there are these safeguards in the law, we're going to hold that it's not a First Amendment violation. 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.co. 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

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your support makes such a difference. I want to just dig into something you just said about the previous law where it has carve outs for things like commercial content or other things. You mentioned in your sub-sac posts that there's not really a carve-out for satire in this new law, too. And I'm wondering if you could just kind of dig in on that a little bit because I feel like a lot of political speech might get wrapped up in this. I wrote about law that they were trying to pass, for instance, that would have made that scene in South Park with Donald Trump, where they kind of depict him nude, illegal. And actually, that was brought up in court. And the lawmaker that was trying to pass the law said, like, yes, we do want to make this, you know, content illegal effectively.

So if a tool is being used to create, like, political satire in this way, could that be in violation of this law? It could be in violation. And the biggest problem is the uncertainty. Because what the defenders of the law would say is that nudification is defined as being limited to images that a reasonable viewer could believe is real. And so what they would say is, well, for a satire, or reasonable viewer would not believe that that is real. That is so false because all they need to do is go on Facebook and look at what these boomers consume all day long. Nobody can tell what's real anymore. Exactly.

So I think that's a pretty weak argument. But to play devil's advocate, that's what they would probably say. I think even if there were a satire carve out, that would be really difficult to prove there would be a lot of uncertainty. And, I mean, frankly, if I were in the legal department of... a tech company, I would err on the side of just not having image generation because I'm not going to face $500,000 every time a court or the state attorney general thinks, no, that's not satire.

Yeah, I don't see how satire, like how satirical content, especially of Trump, which there is so much satirical content of him shirtless, which seems like it would just blatantly violate these terms, or at least a motivated attorney general, as we've seen in some of these other states would interpret it that way in a negative way. Like, I think that's what's so scary too is like these attorney generals just kind of broadly and use laws like this often to like interpret things quite broadly. So Elon Musk's XAI, which has the image generation tool, GROC, is challenging this law. And this is why I feel like it went so viral because people hate Elon Musk and there was

tons of headlines of like Elon Musk is defending his right to create, you know, see Sam, et cetera, et cetera. Can you talk to me about what XAI is arguing here? And what are the issues that they are taking with this law? So XII's arguments about the law are pretty similar to what I talked about as being the real shortcomings of it. So the fact that it applies regardless of the efforts that the company takes. Now XAI says that it has all of these procedures and policies in place to prevent notification. I'm not familiar enough with what they're doing or not.

doing to validate that, but they're basically saying, you know, no matter what we did, we could face liability if someone were to get around it. They also focus a lot on the fact that it's not limited to non-consensual images. So it's a pretty standard First Amendment argument. And why do you think they are the ones to make this argument? Like, I'm curious if you have any insight into like why there haven't been other challenges or if it's just sort of up to this, the most embattled company to fight this fight. Because I feel like people might be a lot more open to these arguments if it was another company making them.

Yeah, you know, I'm really not sure why they're the ones making it and why other companies are it. I mean, I'll say that when for Take It Down, you had a lot of tech companies supporting the Take It Down Act. I think that's because a lot of these tech companies don't care about free expression and not that Elon Musk actually does. I think he generally does not. But in this case, I don't know.

I'm glad that they're fighting this fight. Yeah. And I mean, it's interesting. So XIA brought the lawsuit less than a week before the law was going to go into effect. So it was passed a few months ago. XIA brought the lawsuit last week and asked the judge to basically freeze the law. So to put the law on hold until the judge could make a full ruling on it. And the judge actually denied that saying, you know, if this were really the law,

this harmful law, you would not have waited months to bring the lawsuit. And I have no idea what the strategy was for bringing the lawsuit so soon before it goes into effect. But that was something the judge basically, and the judge wasn't giving a ruling on whether the law actually was constitutional, but just said, hey, this is not going to cause me to put the law on hold. One other interesting development that happened while the law was going through the state legislature, the Minnesota chapter of the ACLU issued a letter in support of the law, which surprised me because of the concerns I talked about, but actually last week, they issued a statement saying they actually don't support the final bill and that they're

bad first amendment concerns about it. So I, again, I don't know what the machinations were there, but I'm sure the law passed with very strong support. I think having the ACLU supported at the time probably help that. And now they've withdrawn their support and, you know, it's frustrating to me, I guess, that is not in the headlines and not notable because I feel like it's easy to claim that evil Elon Musk is against a law, but if the ACLU is against law and many privacy advocates as well and speech advocates, I feel like, you know, have been sort of spoken critically about this law in the past week.

And I feel like that's maybe not really made its way into people's feeds the way that the news about XAI has. Are there any other issues with the law that we didn't touch on? I talked about this before. that the main exception in the law is for services that require the substantial application of individualized technological or artistic skill in judgment by a human creator. So you could say, well, that's trying to allow certain amounts of free expression. The issue there is, well, what if someone's actually creating really bad stuff with this skill and judgment?

So could they get around the law altogether by just doing that? and would that basically make the law even ineffective in meeting the goals that it has? So I think that's an interesting thing. Yeah, right. It's like, okay, so then making homegrown, like, manually editing the horrible content that you're making of someone, like somehow makes it okay? All of this just seems really dangerous and kind of like a slippery slope to me in terms of like these arguments being made against platforms. And I feel like you've followed a lot of, I don't know, these shifting legal strategies. And I'm curious if you think that we'll see a broader effort around sort of regulating AI content through the platforms. Instead of going after the people that are making this really dangerous content and prosecuting people that are generating CSAM or NCI or whatever,

where it seems like we're starting to restrict creative tools, restrict speech, restrict the ability to create any content ourselves. Well, I think we saw that with the Take It Down Act. That law passed overwhelmingly. And, I mean, there are two provisions of it. One is this federal crime to publish or threatened to publish NCI. And I have far fewer First Amendment concerns with that portion of the Take a Down Act. But there's the takedown provision of the Take a Down Act, which says, you know, within 48 hours of getting notice of alleged NCII platforms have to remove it. And that's a really short amount of time.

And there's no requirement that the person who is reporting it stayed under penalty of perjury, that this actually is NCI. So, I mean, you could just imagine all the ways that this could be used to take down content that has nothing to do with NCI. But, I mean, a lot of the way it was framed while it was going through and getting all of the support was this is going after big tech. You're right. I don't think most of the big tech companies care all that much about the free express. of users. And so, I mean, they're just going to take down content. And that's a pretty easy call. They're not going to do this in-depth constitutional analysis every time they get a complaint. But I think that when it's always framed as going after big tech, no one likes big tech,

but it's not always framed as what is the impact on individual users. Absolutely. I mean, I feel like you can just claim anything is tough on big tech and pass the most restrictive censorship mass surveillance law ever. I'm so concerned and I've been covering a lot about kind of the AI world and stuff, but just like, again, and I said this previously, but like, we are entering into this era where like anyone can build technology and I think that that's a really good thing. Like if you are so theoretically against big tech, then you should be pro indie tech. You should be pro allowing people to like build a funny photo editing tool like for their friends

or something for somebody's birthday or just like, I don't know, fan art communities again or other kind of online communities, I think, are increasingly building their own indie software. And when we pass these sites, sorts of laws and regulations, I think people often think that they'll apply only to some evil list of companies that they have in their head. But a lot of times they can be leveraged against small companies. And especially when we see these state attorney generals attacks on LGBTQ people and these like other sort of support communities online, you can imagine how they would use these laws to maybe, go after people that are creating software for those communities or more niche interests.

And this isn't just about AI. I'm thinking about all of the efforts to regulate the internet, the age verification laws, and all of these different ways that states and the federal government are going after this. And I think it's missing the context of the fact that we're in a pretty big moment for free speech, where we have the government going after speech in so many ways. And I'm very concerned about giving the government more tools to regulate speech on the internet. So they're all laudable goals when you say, okay, you don't want this harm or that harm to happen. Yeah, that's a good goal.

But first, does it achieve that goal? And second, what else does it suppress when you're trying to achieve that goal? I mean, I'll give one quick example. So I got involved in Section 230 more than a decade ago. Section 230 is the law that says that online platforms aren't liable for most of the speech that their users post. So if someone posts something defamatory about you, you can't sue the platform, you can sue the person. And back in 2017, 2018, there were real concerns that one particular platform that was used for sex trafficking was held to be protected by Section 230. they were sued by victims of sex trafficking.

And the stories were absolutely devastating. And I worked and testified in Congress about, you know, how do we craft a law that would go after the really bad actor websites, but not chill speech. And I basically tried to find a way, you know, yeah, you can have this carve out to Section 230. What I suggested was not ultimately passed. What they ended up passing was a lot called Faust.

which has some serious problems and ultimately has made life much more dangerous for a lot of very vulnerable people. And it has done nothing to curb trafficking. I feel like often these advocates come out and they claim that they want to, you know, curb CCM or curb NCI or curb, you know, protect the children, protect this person, protect this group. And you hear these sob stories and they do these tours and they get these. And yeah, people raise concerns at the time, but a lot of people take those advocates seriously and they act as if they're good faith actors.

And I guess as somebody that's also reported on this for a long time, I just don't believe a lot of these people to be good faith actors anymore. And I think that there are some really reasonable advocates on all sides that really take a close look at these issues. And I sometimes agree with them and sometimes don't. I mean, I'll give one example of the Take It Down Act. The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which is a group that's run by Professor Marianne Franks,

which basically exists to help victims of non-consensual imagery and other online harms, they came out with a statement against the Take a Down Act because of their concerns about the removal provision. They're a group I respect, and I disagree with on some issues, but they said, you know, this could really be weaponized in so many ways. And when you're having advocates across the spectrum, say, this is really dangerous, it just really worries me that not enough people are listening and it gets passed anyway. Yeah, I guess what those people would say is that you have advocates across the spectrum that support these bad laws, right? I mean, often the people that that push these laws, like, I think what's so scary is since 2017, 2018, when we saw Fostas Sestapastapast, there has been this bipartisan coalition. And I think that that's that bipartisan coalition has furthered a very specific political agenda aimed at censoring speech. And, you know, there are good actors, I guess there are some people that are maybe naive enough

to go along with that censorship crusade. That is, I would say, a very intentional political project. We saw it outlined very clearly in Project 2025, the goal of repealing section 230 or chipping away at it, passing identity verification for the internet. Like, this is a clear sort of policy agenda, I guess, from the right. And when I see laws like this, like, I guess I just want people to think of that broader context and ask a little bit tougher questions about how these laws could be misused because we're also seeing the Trump administration weaponize laws across the board to censor speech and we're in this kind of scary moment. I just want people to kind of give a critical eye to some of these laws and especially when it comes to free expression and not just think like Elon Musk bad,

this person good because it's often a lot more nuanced than that. Yeah, I think it is. And again, I think that across the political spectrum, there is a real hatred, and I think in many ways, a very well-earned hatred for big tech. And when they position all of these efforts as reigning in big tech, you get the huge majorities in both houses voting for a bill. But I think you mentioned smaller platforms and community sites. I think that's important to keep in mind. But I also think the users, are really important to keep in mind. And I think that when you look at it like that, there's would be a different calculus,

but there's just such an overwhelming hatred for big tech that I don't think that legislators are really getting past that. Yeah, you can pass anything under the guise of cracking down on big tech. I mean, right now, people are trying to pass laws that big tech are advocating for. Something I hate, but that makes me laugh is the Digital Childhood Alliance, one of Meta's many front groups that they fund to push stores like like the App Store Accountability Act. And if you go on this platform's Instagram,

they're posting crack down on big tech, you know, don't you, we should hold big tech accountable and you know, parents against big tech, blah, blah, blah. This is a meta-funded group. And you see Open AI funded groups posting similar rhetoric. And again, these groups are funded by big tech to push laws that favor big tech. And I feel like it's like this magic phrase

where if you say this word, I guess people just get on board with these policies. And I just, again, I want people to think more more critically. Because some of these laws, maybe they do crack down on big tech in a minor way, but they also, as you said, hurt users, hurt free expression and hurt the smaller tech companies who we want to be able to compete. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jeff, thank you so much. You are such a legend in this space, and I really appreciate you coming on here and chatting with me about all of this today. Thanks so much for having me. All right, that's it for

this week's episode of Free Speech Friday. If you like my work, please, please, please buy a paid subscription to my substack at usermag.com. That's userbag.com or support me on Patreon via the link below. on this channel. And so seriously, every single dollar of your support makes such a difference and ensures that I can continue to dig into these tech policy bites and keep this series going. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Free Speech Friday. See you then.