Maneesha Mithal (Wilson Sonsini) discusses the FTC’s investigation of social media companies. What’s going on behind the scenes? What’s the FTC likely to do now? How can platforms prepare? How much damage to the First Amendment can the FTC inflict? We cover all this and more.

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 409: The FTC’s Quixotic Social Media Inquiry

Tech Policy Podcast 406: The Take It Down Act (Is a Weapon)

Tech Policy Podcast 394: Tech and Trump 2.0

Tech Policy Podcast 322: FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips

Appeals Court: Yeah, Of Course Ken Paxton’s Investigation Into Media Matters Was Bullshit

Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and Santana Boulton (TechFreedom) discuss the FTC’s “Inquiry on Tech Censorship.”

Topics include:

• What are we doing here?
• The myth surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop
• Does the FTC know how terms of service work?
• Does the FTC know how cartels work?
• Content moderation is pro-free speech
• Jawboning on steroids

Links:

Copia Institute FTC comments (https://tinyurl.com/y6r2b82f)

TechFreedom FTC comments (https://tinyurl.com/mccbwa2h)

Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Twitter And Hunter Biden’s Laptop (https://tinyurl.com/685fjmk8)

Moderating Eating Disorder Content Is Harder Than You Think (https://tinyurl.com/r37nvnjb)

Why Is The Republican Party Obsessed With Social Media? (https://tinyurl.com/bdec2u9w)

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez speaks with TechFreedom President Berin Szóka at the 2025 TechFreedom / CEI Policy Forum: Constitutional Limits on FTC, FCC, and DOJ Interference in Media and Speech.

Topics include:

• Nice broadcast license. Would be a pity if …
• Section 230 is good, actually
• Agency independence is good, actually
• How do you litigate regulation-by-threat?
• Edge providers =/= common carriers
• Jawboning versus  jaw 👏 boning 👏
• Skidmore is for experts

Links:

Constitutional Limits of FTC, FCC and DOJ | Day 1

Constitutional Limits of FTC, FCC and DOJ | Day 2

Vidushi Dyall (Chamber of Progress) discusses the remedies phase of the Google search antitrust trial. Will Judge Mehta order Google to sell Chrome? To license its search data? To stop paying Apple for default status? And: With AI advancing rapidly, why are we talking about any of this?

Sorry about Corbin’s sound quality! He’ll be back in front of a proper microphone next episode.

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 353: The Google Search Antitrust Trial

Tech Policy Podcast 393: Herbert Hovenkamp on the State of Antitrust Law

Jess Miers (Akron Law) discusses the problems with the Take It Down Act—the federal bill that (ostensibly) targets non-consensual intimate imagery.

Topics include:

• What does Take It Down (claim) to do?
• FFS, enforce the laws you have!
• “Sexually explicit content” (in a normal world)
• Brendan Carr is a preview of things to come
• Amy Klobuchar is asleep
• Is the “it” in Take It Down “all adult content”?
• The censorship administration

Links:

Jess’s Bluesky thread on Take It Down

The Take It Down Act Isn’t a law, It’s a Weapon

Tech Policy Podcast 403: The Constitutional Crisis

Tech Policy Podcast 404: The Worst Possible Moment to Break Encryption

Eric Goldman (Santa Clara Law) discusses his new paper, “The ‘Segregate-and-Suppress’ Approach to Regulating Child Safety Online.”

Topics include:

• The many kinds of online age-verification law
• Age verification as an information problem
• Fancy tech as deus ex machina
• Data collection today; state surveillance tomorrow
• What about devices and app stores?
• The internet and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Child safety: it takes a village
• The parental consent nightmare

Links:

The “Segregate-and-Suppress” Approach to Regulating Child Safety Online

Age-Verification Laws Are a Verified Mistake

Tech Policy Podcast 354: Online Age Verification (Sucks)

Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discusses the recent spate of attacks on end-to-end encryption—and free speech more broadly—in the United Kingdom and United States.

Links:

U.K. Orders Apple to Let It Spy on Users’ Encrypted Accounts

Tech Policy Podcast 356: The UK Targets End-to-End Encryption

The UK’s state-funded anti-encryption propaganda

The UK Has A Voyeuristic New Propaganda Campaign Against Encryption

Liz Dye and Andrew Torrez (Law & Chaos) discuss the Trump administration’s renditions to El Salvador, its purges of Justice Department lawyers, and other heinous things you should worry about.

Links:

Law & Chaos

Trump v. J.G.G. (SCOTUS)

Noem v. Abrego Garcia (4th Cir.)

Trump docket w/ CourtListener links

The Constitutional Crisis Is Here

In a crossover episode with the Rethinking Antitrust podcast, Bilal Sayyed (TechFreedom) questions our host, Corbin Barthold, about the presidential removal power, Humphrey’s Executor, the FTC, the Trump administration, and the Roberts Court.

Note: This episode was recorded just before the D.C. Circuit issued an interlocutory order addressing the president’s removal power as to the NLRB and the MSPB. That order is in the links.

Links:

Rethinking Antitrust

The Executive Power of Removal

Will the Supreme Court Face Down Trump or Flinch?

The D.C. Circuit’s post-recording order

Chris Marchese, NetChoice’s director of litigation, discusses the many, many lawsuits NetChoice has brought to defend free speech on the Internet.

Topics include:

• Texas’s HB 20: time to create a 100,000 page record
• NetChoice speaks for you!
• California’s building code for the Internet
• “Addictive”: you keep using that word . . .
• Targeting social media = targeting the little guy
• Age-gating the Web: bad idea then; bad idea now

Links:

Second preliminary-injunction order in NetChoice v. Bonta (N.D. Cal.)

Tech Policy Podcast 383: SCOTUS Internet Non-Law