In Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons,” the character of Sir Thomas More argues at one point that he would “give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!” Defending the right to due process for a broadly disliked company is similarly not the most popular position, but nonetheless, even Meta deserves the rule of law.

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In Susan Crawford’s 2013 book “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,” the Harvard Law School professor argued that the U.S. telecommunications industry had become dominated by a few powerful companies, leading to limited competition and negative consequences for consumers, especially for broadband internet.

Crawford’s ire was focused particularly on Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, as she made the case that these three firms were essentially monopolies that had divided territories and set up roadblocks through mergers, vertical integration, and influence over regulators and franchisors to prevent competition and innovation. In particular, she noted the power Comcast commanded in securing access to live sports, allowing them to effectively prevent cord-cutting and limit competition from other cable companies.

According to Crawford, the consequences of this monopoly power were high prices for service, poor customer service, and limited access to high-speed internet in certain areas, particularly in rural and low-income communities. In effect, she saw no incentives for broadband companies to invest in high-speed and reliable internet. In response, she proposed increased competition and regulation, including the development of fiber-based municipal broadband to foster greater consumer choice, lower prices, and improved access to reliable internet service.

A decade later, the broadband market is far more dynamically competitive than critics like Crawford believed was possible. YouTube TV’s rights to NFL Sunday Ticket (as well as the massive amount of programming available online) suggests that Comcast did not have the control over important programming like live sports that would have enabled them to prevent cord-cutting or to limit competition. And the rise of 10G broadband also suggests that there is much more competition in the broadband market than Crawford believed was possible, as her “future proof” goal of symmetrical 1Gb Internet will soon be slower than what the market actually provides.

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After the oral arguments in Twitter v. Taamneh, Geoffrey Manne, Kristian Stout, and I spilled a lot of ink thinking through the law & economics of intermediary liability and how to draw lines when it comes to social-media companies’ responsibility to prevent online harms stemming from illegal conduct on their platforms. With the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Twitter v. Taamneh, it is worth revisiting that post to see what we got right, as well as what the opinion could mean for future First Amendment cases—particularly those concerning Texas and Florida’s common-carriage laws and other challenges to the bounds of Section 230 more generally.

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Legislation to secure children’s safety online is all the rage right now, not only on Capitol Hill, but in state legislatures across the country. One of the favored approaches is to impose on platforms a duty of care to protect teen users.

For example, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have reintroduced the Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would require that social-media platforms “prevent or mitigate” a variety of potential harms, including mental-health harms; addiction; online bullying and harassment; sexual exploitation and abuse; promotion of narcotics, tobacco, gambling, or alcohol; and predatory, unfair, or deceptive business practices.

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According to an old English proverb, children are meant to be seen and not heard. But if we aren’t careful with new online-safety legislation, kids will be neither seen nor heard in online spaces.

There has been no shortage of stories in recent months focusing on the real harms associated with teens on social media, which the platforms have already invested in mitigating in response to market demand from parents, advertisers and teens themselves. Far less attention has been paid to the benefits that teens today enjoy in terms of increased connections and access to information that was previously unimaginable in an offline world.

While it bills itself a “Digital Bill of Rights,” the Florida Senate Bill 262 could actually harm consumers and businesses online by substantially raising the costs of targeted advertising.

For consumers, this would mean less “free” stuff online, as publishers switch from advertising-based to subscription-based models. For businesses, it would mean having less ability to target advertisements to consumers who actually want their products, resulting in less revenue.

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While the impact of social media on the mental health of children and teens has rapidly emerged as a hot-button political debate, the federal government has largely stalled in passing any legislation on the issue.

Instead, the states have led the way, with Utah and Arkansas both passing laws intended to protect children’s online safety in recent weeks. Other states – including Florida, Texas and California – are also considering bills that would apply to social-media services used by minors.

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The topic of social media’s impact on childhood mental health has rapidly emerged as a hot-button political debate, becoming the subject of a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee and earning a mention in President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

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It seems that large language models (LLMs) are all the rage right now, from Bing’s announcement that it plans to integrate the ChatGPT technology into its search engine to Google’s announcement of its own LLM called “Bard” to Meta’s recent introduction of its Large Language Model Meta AI, or “LLaMA.” Each of these LLMs use artificial intelligence (AI) to create text-based answers to questions.

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