Bill Kovarik, “That Time Private US Media Companies Stepped in to Silence the Falsehoods and Incitements of a Major Public Figure… in 1938,” The Conversation, January 15, 2021, https://theconversation.com/that-time-private-us-media-companies-stepped-in-to-silence-the-falsehoods-and-incitements-of-a-major-public-figure-in-1938-153157.

13 “Priest Won’t Meet WMCA Conditions,” New York Times, November 27, 1938, 42, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/11/27/99571181.html?pageNumber=42#.

14 Kovarik, “That Time Private US Media Companies.”

15 Doherty, “The Deplatforming.”

16 Otto D. Tolischus, “Germany to Keep Dieckhoff at Home,” New York Times, November 27, 1938, 46, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/11/27/99571225.html.

17 Kovarik, “That Time Private US Media Companies.”

18 “6,000 Here Cheer Coughlin’s Name,” New York Times, December 19, 1938, 6, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/12/16/98873857.html#.

19 “Fewer Coughlin Pickets; Protest at Radio Station over Ban Is Repeated,” New York Times, December 26, 1938, 27, https://www.nytimes.com/1938/12/26/archives/fewer-coughlin-pickets-protest-at-radio-station-over-ban-is.html; “WMCA Picketing Limited; Confined by Police to Broadway Side of Building,” New York Times, June 19, 1939, 8, https://www.nytimes.com/1939/06/19/archives/wmca-picketing-limited-confined-by-police-to-broadway-side-of.html.

20 David Goodman, “Before Hate Speech: Charles Coughlin, Free Speech and Listeners’ Rights,” Patterns of Prejudice 49, no. 3 (2015): 199–224, https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2015.10 48972.

21 “Coughlin Copies Goebbels Speech,” Daily Clarion-Ledger, December 31, 1938, 1, published online at Newspapers.com, September 23, 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/article/23966340.

22 “Coughlin Supports Christian Front; While Not a Member, ‘I Do Not Disassociate Myself from Movement,’ Priest Says,” New York Times, January 22, 1940, 1, https://www.nytimes.com/1940/01/22/archives/coughlin-supports-christian-front-while-not-a-member-i-do-not.html.

23 The FBI raid of the headquarters of the Christian Front led to the arrest of seventeen men who came to be called the “Brooklyn Boys.” However, sixteen of the seventeen were found not guilty. See Andrew Lapin, “Ep. 7: Sedition,” Radioactive: The Father Coughlin Story, March 9, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/exploring-hate/2022/03/09/ep-7-sedition; J. P. O’Malley, “FBI Files Shine Light on Homegrown Nazi Plot to Overthrow US Government During WWII,” Times of Israel, January 28, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/fbi-files-shine-light-on-homegrown-nazi-plot-to-overthrow-us-government-during-wwii; Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Christian Front,” Britannica, n.d., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christian-Front.

24 Kovarik, “That Time Private US Media Companies.”

25 “Father Coughlin Blames Jews,” History Unfolded.

26 Stewart M. Hoover and Douglas K. Wagner, “History and Policy in American Broadcast Treatment of Religion,” Media, Culture and Society 19, no. 1 (January 1997): 7–27, published online at Religion Online, https://www.religion-online.org/article/history-and-policy-in-american-broadcast-treatment-of-religion.

27 Ibid.

28 In 1949, the FCC implemented the Fairness Doctrine, which aimed to regulate public discourse on controversial topics in broadcast media by requiring equal time for balanced opposing viewpoints. This rule itself sparked controversy due to its vague criteria for what qualified as a viewpoint requiring equal debate. In 1987, under President Ronald Reagan, the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, citing its stifling impact on free speech.

29 Kate Klonick, “The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech,” Harvard Law Review 131, no. 6 (April 2018): 1598–1670.

30 Christopher St. Aubin and Jacob Liedke, “Most Americans Favor Restrictions on False Information, Violent Content Online,” Pew Research Center, July 20, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/20/most-americans-favor-restrictions-on-false-information-violent-content-online.

31 Daphne Keller, “Lawful but Awful? Control over Legal Speech by Platforms, Governments, and Internet Users,” University of Chicago Law Review Online, June 28, 2022, https://lawreviewblog.uchicago.edu/2022/06/28/keller-control-over-speech.

32 Renée DiResta, “The Digital Maginot Line,” Ribbonfarm, November 28, 2018, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line.

33 Giuseppe Russo et al., “Spillover of Antisocial Behavior from Fringe Platforms: The Unintended Consequences of Community Banning,” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media ICWSM 16 (2023): 742–753, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2209.09803.

34 Jeff Kosseff, Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).

35 Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing), “Twitter canceled a deal with @realdailywire to premiere What is a Woman?…,” Twitter, June 1, 2023, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20230601142311/https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255321630552065.

36 Some of Twitter’s policies regularly intersected with active fronts in the culture war, turning the policies themselves into a matter of controversy as well as an opportunity to capture attention. For example, it had a long-standing rule that prohibited harassing individual transgender users (such as by referring to them with prior names or pronouns) while still allowing criticism of trans-related policies and laws or identity politics writ large. This attempt to minimize the harassment of individual users, however, was often framed as inherently anticonservative; some argued that it forced conservatives to use pronouns that they disagreed with, which impinged upon their freedom of speech. The targets of the speech, however, were also users who wanted to express themselves on Twitter as well. As with many moderation decisions, calls sometimes hinged on whether individual moderators felt that a word or phrase was harassment, merely offensive, or an overreaction by the reportee. More importantly, however, the policy became a source of secondary attention-capture for clout and profit, as those who alleged that they were moderated unfairly—or felt they went unheard—subsequently commanded attention cycles highlighting the incidents.

37 Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing), “I appreciate the reply. We posted the two clips flagged by Twitter and they were indeed labeled ‘hateful conduct’ and the share functions were disabled on the…,” Twitter, Juny 1, 2023, https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664332765226057730?s=20.

38 Daysia Tolentino and David Ingram, “Musk’s response to an anti-trans video sparks 24 hours of chaos at Twitter,” NBC News, June 3, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/musk-elon-twitter-ella-irwin-trans-video-what-is-a-woman-stream-rcna87429.

39 Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice, 5th ed. (1984; reis., Boston: Pearson, 2009), 210–211.

40 “Community Principles,” TikTok, last updated March 2023, https://www.tiktok.com/community-guidelines/en/community-principles.

41 “Ensuring Respect for Free Expression, Through Independent Judgement,” Oversight Board, https://www.oversightboard.com.

42 For example, Twitter and Facebook have programs to ensure that moderation actions against high-profile users are checked by multiple reviewers, including at times the executive team. Preliminary indications from some of our data in the 2020 election suggested that lower-follower accounts were actioned for election misinformation even as influencers with far more reach did not appear to be. This is perhaps a natural defensive stance for Big Tech platforms, but it preferentially favors those with large audiences or offline power. Renée DiResta and Matt Debutts, “‘Newsworthiness,’ Trump, and the Facebook Oversight Board,” Columbia Journalism Review, April 26, 2021, https://www.cjr.org/the_new_gatekeepers/facebook-oversight-board-2.php.

43 For a nuanced explanation of how content moderation work is done and the mental health impacts it has, see Casey Newton, “The Trauma Floor: The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America,” The Verge, February 25, 2019, https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona.

44 “Singapore Tightens the Reins on Extreme Social Media Content,” Japan Times, November 12, 2022, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2022/11/12/general/social-media-content-law-singapore.

45 Yashraj Sharma, “Twitter Accused of Censorship in India as It Blocks Modi Critics,” The Guardian, April 5, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/twitter-accused-of-censorship-in-india-as-it-blocks-modi-critics-elon-musk.

46 Charlie Savage, “Trump’s Order Targeting Social Media Sites, Explained,”