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Featured Articles: Introducing #PlatformPitches
#PlatformPitches is the name we’ve given to our new series of articles, offering suggestions to the Republican ticket. There are now three articles in the series:
Introducing #PlatformPitches: Our Suggestions for the Republican Ticket
#PlatformPitches: Time For A New COPS Program
#PlatformPitches: You Want Price Controls? I’ll Show You Price Controls
NEW: #PlatformPitches: More Paid Vacation Time
Did The Third Circuit Just Kill Section 230?
This is Matt Stoller’s takeaway from a recent Third Circuit decision. We don’t have to tell you how far-reaching the implications could be if this ruling–which is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court–is confirmed.
Here are the highlights:
The case involved TikTok being sued for promoting dangerous content to children, specifically a “Blackout Challenge” that led to a 10-year-old girl’s death.
The court ruled that when platforms use algorithms to curate and recommend content, this becomes the platform’s own speech, making them potentially liable for harmful content.
This decision challenges the longstanding interpretation of Section 230 that has allowed tech companies to avoid responsibility for the content on their platforms.
The ruling draws on a recent Supreme Court decision (Moody vs NetChoice) that granted First Amendment protection to platforms’ editorial decisions in content curation.
One judge, Trump appointee Paul Matey, went further, suggesting tech platforms should be treated as “distributors” rather than “publishers,” potentially subjecting them to similar liability as other industries.
The case is likely to be appealed and could potentially reach the Supreme Court, potentially leading to a significant reinterpretation of Section 230.
You should read Stoller’s whole analysis, which is always worth your time.
Policy News You Need This Morning
#SocialMobility – Important and interesting new report from Scott Winship and Kevin Corinth at AEI, trying to measure that mysterious but all-important dark matter, social capital, and assess its relationship to income.
#Immigration – Andrew R. Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies looks at the likely course of a future Harris Administration on policy.
#Immigration – Speaking of, CIS’s Todd Bensman went to Panama and interviewed that country’s border security chief. He says he’s caught many US-bound terror suspects. Important reading.
#Debt – Brookings’ Willam G. Gale and Tayae Rogers offer their assessment of the debt issue. They examine past instances of debt reduction in U.S. history, noting that previous solutions like cutting defense spending or relying on economic growth are unlikely to be sufficient for the current situation. The authors argue that addressing the debt problem will require more substantial and sustainable policy changes than ever before.
#TaxPolicy – Speaking of, Tax Foundation’s Scott Hodge has a list of “10 less harmful ways of raising Federal revenues.”
#AI – More later, but for now Epoch AI Research has a big new report out now looking at the challenges to scaling AI such as power generation and chip production. They are cautiously optimistic.
#Housing – At American Action Forum, Thomas Kingsley evaluates Kamala Harris’s housing proposals, including her call for 3 million new homes. His conclusion is that while the U.S. faces a significant housing shortage, Harris’s proposals are largely ineffective or counterproductive, because the main barrier to new construction is local zoning restrictions, which federal policies can do little to address. Meanwhile, demand-side subsidies like downpayment support would only drive prices higher.
#Freedom – One of the most intriguing niche policy issues out there is home distilling, on which there is currently a federal ban. However, the Buckeye Institute is trying to overturn it.
Friday Essays
At Modern Age, Robert W. Patterson analyses America’s Anti-Family Turn.
Self-recommending: Ryan T. Anderson, First Things: Kamala’s Abortion Extremism
We’ve commented on it before, but we still recommend this excellent essay by Adam J. White in Commentary on the Supreme Court’s administrative state jurisprudence.
Eric Kaufmann has been a leading “anti-woke” academic voice, and his work has now culminated in a new book. That’s good, right? Maybe. In a review at the Claremont Review of Books, Helen Andrews argues that Kaufmann is still too liberal.
At Chronicles magazine, Ben Boychuk remembers H.L. Mencken.
Chart of the Day
From Lyman Stone, demographer at the Institute for Family Studies: “People commonly think that poor people have big families, and rich people have small ones. They’re wrong: most of the supposed high fertility of low-income people is just because of omitted variable bias, and the omitted variable is culture.”
Meme of the Day
