US Censorship News

A Republican congressman and ally of President Trump, Michael Rulli, has filed a bill that would prevent the British internet censor Ofcom from enforcing Orwellian online safety rules on websites based in the US. This landmark bill would also prevent US courts from recognising or enforcing foreign fines relating to online speech.

Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, he and his administration have been fiercely critical of the UK Government's approach to free speech, particularly online, repeatedly citing the Online Safety Act. These concerns are also levelled at the EU for its Digital Services Act. In the eyes of the US administration, these censorious legislative regimes have infringed not only on the free speech of British and European citizens, but also on the First Amendment rights of US citizens, while unfairly targeting American businesses.

The bill introduced by Congressman Rulli is called the Granite Act (Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion).

Speaking to The Times, Rulli said: F

Foreign bureaucrats do not get to decide what Americans can say. My bill makes clear that if a foreign government tries to punish an American for speech protected by the First Amendment, that judgment is dead on arrival in our courts.

Ofcom has repeatedly gone after US websites for alleged breaches of the Online Safety Act, notably 4chan and Kiwi Farms. In March, Ofcom fined 4chan a staggering £520,000 after finding that it had failed to comply with its duties under the Act.

Both 4chan and Kiwi Farms have launched legal action in the US seeking an injunction against Ofcom. The regulator responded by asking for the case to be dismissed, arguing that, as a foreign governmental body, it was protected,claiming sovereign immunity, from being sued under US law. Rulli's bill would remove that protection.

It is not expected that this particular version of the bill will make it onto the statute book, but with support from a number of key Trump officials, the House Judiciary Committee, and the backing of both the White House and State Department, similar proposals could be taken forward.

The wording of the bill reads:

LIMITATION ON ENFORCEMENT OF FOREIGN CENSORSHIP JUDGMENTS.

(a) LIMITATION ON ENFORCEMENT

Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal or State law, a domestic court shall not recognize or enforce a foreign judgment, or a fine, order, or demand issued by a foreign court or a foreign state, enforcing a foreign censorship law.

(b) RIGHT OF ACTION

A United States person against whom a foreign judgment described in subsection (a) is entered, or upon whom a judgment, fine, order, or demand described in subsection (a) is served or purportedly served, may bring an action in an appropriate district court of the United States seeking declaratory relief that such judgment, fine, order, or demand is unenforceable under subsection (a)

 

US Chief District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a New Mexico abatement fund. He refused to overtly order age verification across Facebook and Instagram. But then he ordered a narrower version of it, aimed at the accounts Meta's own systems predict belong to children under 13, which would ultimately lead to age verification anyway.

New Mexico Attorney General Raoul Torrez sued Meta and Mark Zuckerberg in 2023, alleging that the company failed to protect children from abuse, online solicitation and human trafficking. This legal action was addressed in two trials:

A Santa Fe jury in March found 75,000 violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act and imposed $375 million in civil penalties , the maximum state law allows. The jury determined that the company knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

Now a second, bench asked whether the platforms are a public nuisance, and Biedscheid concluded that they are a significant contributing cause of the teen mental health crisis in New Mexico.

Torrez had asked the court to require Meta to apply various age-verification tools on its platforms , accurate to 99%, enough to keep under-13s off the apps entirely.

Because of the COPPA Rule, it is the Court's conclusion that it cannot order Meta to request children to submit personal data or be passively tracked online, even for age-verification purposes, Biedscheid wrote. But how would Meta know that an account belongs to someone under 13 without at the very least passively tracking them, what they write, say, and do?

What Biedscheid did order on age came from Meta. He adopted the company's own proposed relief, calling it far from ideal or sufficient and, all the same, most appropriate. Meta must keep improving its age assurance models in New Mexico using AI tools, and must attempt within two years to build a dedicated under-13-years-of-age prediction model. Where it cannot estimate a precise age, it must treat the user as under 13 or under 18 until they verify. And verify here likely means adults have to show ID to speak online, even though Judge Biedscheid said he wasn't mandating that.

Meta must also delete the personal information it has already collected on under-13s, and build a portal with schools or a child safety organization for flagging suspected underage accounts.

The money will be paid over five years, with $420 million of it going to treatment and the rest to awareness, prevention, screening, referral and evaluation. It comes on top of the March penalties.

 

Comment: The Meta Settlement: What It Means for Your Speech and Privacy

Under the teen safety provisions is a court-supervised identity system for every Facebook and Instagram user.

See article from reclaimthenet.org

The US State Department is developing an online portal that will allow users in Europe and other regions to view content banned by their governments. Three sources familiar with the plan told Reuters that Washington sees the initiative as a way to counter censorship.

The site will operate at freedom.gov, according to the sources. One of the sources said officials have discussed including a VPN (virtual private network) feature that would make user traffic appear to originate in the United States. The same source added that user activity on the site will not be tracked. The project is being led by Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers.

In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesman said the US government does not have a specific censorship circumvention program for Europe, but stressed that digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, and this includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship circumvention technologies like VPNs.

The Trump administration has placed freedom of expression at the center of its foreign policy, especially in cases where it assesses that conservative voices are being restricted online, including in Europe and Brazil.

EU censors regularly ask US-based platforms to remove content and, as a last resort, can impose bans. Platform X, owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, was fined 120 million euros in December for failing to comply with the rules.

In Germany, during 2024, authorities issued 482 removal orders for material they deemed to support or incite terrorism and forced providers to delete 16,771 pieces of content. Similarly, Metas supervisory board in 2024 ordered the removal of posts by a Polish political party that used racial slurs and portrayed immigrants as rapists, a category that EU law treats as illegal hate speech.

Florida has selected a few victims for its recently introduces ID/age verification internet censorship law. Florida's attorney general James Uthmeier filed two separate lawsuits against Lustyheroes.com and also Aylo, the parent company of Nutaku.net and SpiceVids.com. The dual suits allege that the three websites have violated HB 3, the state law that went into effect in January and forced explicit websites to verify the ID/ages of Florida users.

According to Uthmeier, all three websites have skirted the responsibility of ensuring that people visiting them are at least 18 years old. As such, he's serving them fresh lawsuits to ostensibly make examples out of them. He said in a press release:

We passed strong legislation to keep kids from being exposed to harmful and toxic material, and instead of following it, these platforms ignored it. We are taking them to court to make sure they cannot continue bypassing Florida's common sense safeguards.

LustyHeroes is an online video game with sexy female players. It is very heavily pushed in adverts found on porn tube site.

Nutaku.net is a subscription site for multiple sexy video games whilst  SpiceVids.com is a subscription site for regular porn videos.

Aylo said both Nutaku and SpiceVids have complied with the legislation since it went into effect earlier this year, adding:

We intend to vigorously defend against these allegations in court. These platforms are committed to ongoing compliance with applicable state laws. We look forward to presenting the facts through the appropriate legal process.