CDT Submits Comments to UN on Role of Private Sector in Free Expression Online
Last week, CDT submitted comments to the UN Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, regarding the role of the private sector in the exercise of those freedoms in the digital age.
In our comments to the Special Rapporteur, we discuss the critical importance of financial intermediaries such as credit card companies, payment processors, and electronic currency providers in enabling the environment for free expression online, and the danger of government programs dedicated to flagging user content that violates companies’ Terms of Service in order to achieve censorship objectives they could not otherwise accomplish in accordance with international human rights standards.
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.
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.
