82 years ago today, Walter Chaplinsky was handing out Jehovah’s Witness literature & preaching on a street in Rochester, NH. What happened next birthed the regrettable fighting words doctrine, which is bandied about these days. In commemoration of the anniversary ... a thread. 1/ Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire is a shameful moment of SCOTUS history and should have been relegated to ignominy long ago. I wince (and usually curse) every time I see it cited in new cases, which unfortunately, is frequently. 2/

I’ve been reading lots recently about the interaction between First Amendment law and free speech principles with respect to online services in light of the events of the last few weeks.

And I have thoughts (MY OWN). So, I’m sorry ... a thread 1/25 One of the main reasons I think users are best served by a recognition that social media services have 1st Amendment rights to curate the content on their sites is because many users want filtered content, either by topic, or by behavior, or other. 2/

Tucked among the 230 blather of the Executive Order is a threatened ban on placing federal government ads on sites the government finds exercise viewpoint discrimination. Wanna know why that ban would violate the First Amendment? Read on . . . Section 3 of the EO threatens to leverage the federal government’s significant online advertising spending to coerce platforms to conform to the government’s desired editorial position of "neutrality"

The main thrust of the Executive Order is its attack on 47 USC § 230, the law that underlies the structure of our modern Internet and allows online services to host diverse forums for users’ speech. Let’s break down section 230 a bit to understand both the EO’s intended impact and erroneous legal footing. Section 230 grants online intermediaries broad immunity from liability arising from publishing another’s speech. It contains two separate and independent protections.