The Government’s Disturbing Rationale for Banning TikTok
Vague national-security concerns don’t justify shutting down the popular Chinese-owned app.
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Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic. Source: Hein Nouwens / Getty. The Hypocrisy Underlying the Campus-Speech Controversy
Conservative lawmakers can’t seem to decide how they feel about government influencing private institutions’ speech policies.
Graeme Sloan / Sipa / AP The Supreme Court Seems Poised to Decide an Imaginary Case
A dispute about a stalking conviction has morphed into something very different—with potentially dangerous results.
Illustration by Tyler Comrie The Cold Dose of Reality Awaiting Elon Musk
Twitter’s new owner faces a difficult regulatory landscape around the world.
Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Running Twitter Is Going to Disappoint Elon Musk
Social media’s newest billionaire overlord is in for a surprise.
Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post / Getty 1 Billion TikTok Users Understand What Congress Doesn’t
The video-sharing app avoids scrutiny because politicians don’t take it seriously.
Miguel Medina / Getty Somebody Has to Do It
Facebook’s made-up court is filling an enormous legal void.
Adam Maida / The Atlantic / Michael Zwahlen / EyeEM What Facebook Did for Chauvin’s Trial Should Happen All the Time
If the social-media giant can discourage hate speech and incitements to violence on a special occasion, it can do so all the time.
Katie Martin / The Atlantic Trump Is Banned. Who Is Next?
Tech giants must not treat their crackdown on the president’s social accounts as an edge case. The social web should be different now.
Shutterstock / The Atlantic The Year That Changed the Internet
In 2020, the need to contain misinformation about COVID-19 pushed Facebook and Twitter into a role they never wanted—arbiters of the truth.
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