On August 27, 2026, the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education filed an amicus brief in the case of Patterson v. Meta. CDT filed this brief to bring to the court’s attention the broader impacts on free expression that weakening Section 230 will have on speech that is constitutionally protected but controversial. The brief explains that Section 230’s liability protections are essential to enable free expression online and they extend to the use of automated systems to engage to rank and order content as part of traditional publishing activities. It further argues that product liability claims do not fall outside of Section 230’s ambit, requiring courts to consider whether a particular product liability claim seeks to hold a service provider liable as a publisher of third party content. This appeal follows a significant victory in the lower court, which favorably cited CDT’s earlier amicus brief in holding that content-ranking algorithms are protected editorial activity under Section 230.
On September 15, 2026, the Center for Democracy & Technology and Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief along with the Wikimedia Foundation in Meta Platforms v. Bonta, challenging California’s SB 976.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
Op-Ed: France’s Constitutional Council Ruling Tests the Limits of Social Media Bans
Read our analysis the legal and policy significance of the Constitutional Council’s decision on ongoing social media age restriction and age assurance debates ahead of the most-anticipated EU-wide approach on child online safety due by December 2026.
