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Articles by John Samples
Life without Buckley v. Valeo
This analysis is part of an Institute for Free Speech symposium, which will be cross-posted in partnership with the Volokh Conspiracy. In the late 1960s, the U.S. Congress began enacting campaign finance regulations. The reasons for those regulations are not hard to discern.
Kimmel Suspension and Freedom of Speech
By David Inserra and John Samples for Cato Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, comedian Jimmy Kimmel offered some remarks about the killing, the assassin, and the way the right was responding. The next day, he was suspended from his job on late-night television after facing significant blowback, including from government officials. Four days later, Kimmel returned to his show. But the danger to speech has not passed so quickly.
Opinión | 1776 – 2025: Estados Unidos, un largo camino
Las opiniones expresadas en este artículo son únicamente del autor y no reflejan las opiniones y creencias de El Nuevo Día o sus afiliados. Como estadounidenses, comenzamos a celebrar el 4 de julio en 1777. La primera gran celebración tuvo lugar en Filadelfia. Este evento incluyó un desfile, 13 cañonazos y fuegos artificiales. Sin embargo, el Congreso no lo declaró feriado federal oficial hasta 1870. Guías de Opinión Las columnas deben enviarse a Gerardo Cordero: gerardo.cordero@gfrmedia.com.
The Once and Future Congress
June 30, 2025 • Free Society June 30, 2025 • Free Society Illustration by Keith Negley As executive authority expands to fill the void left by Congress’s self-imposed decline, the balance of powers that the Constitution was designed to foster has unraveled. But a congressional renaissance is possible—if lawmakers are willing to reclaim their proper role in the constitutional order. n Federalist no.
Hawley Wants to Restrict Funding of Political Speech
We have two kinds of political speech, the rhetorical and the responsible. Those who speak responsibly make concrete arguments and proposals that look to the ethics and consequences of what should be done. More often speakers engage in empty rhetoric that reveals and burnishes a politician’s brand without proposing anything real or engaging an opponent seriously. Consider Senator Josh Hawley (R‑MO), who recently attacked the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.
Campaign Finance
The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits governments from abridging the freedom of speech, and political speech receives the highest protection. In the seminal case of Buckley v.
Who Will Guard the Fact Checkers?
Robby Soave at Reason examines the intervention of the fact checkers at Meta into a recent political debate. Let’s stipulate that the question of whether we are in a recession or not is complicated, and reasonable people can take either side of this issue. Of course, the First Amendment protects expression on both sides of this issue; the Biden administration could not simply censor criticisms of its views about recessions.
Evidence of Public-Private Collusion Complicates Online Censorship Debate
By Bret Swanson AEI recently published two thoughtful essays on the online censorship question. The Cato Institute’s John Samples (also a member of Facebook’s Oversight Board) argues concerns about online censorship are understandable but misplaced and that nearly all proposed solutions are too aggressive.
Social Media and the Appearance of Corruption
Executive Summary Conservatives often say that Big Tech companies, especially Facebook and Twitter, discriminate against conservative viewpoints. However, conservatives make two assumptions that, on closer inspection, are faulty: (1) that Big Tech’s censorship is “systematic” and (2) that this is a violation of free speech rights. Thus, they claim, government must act to vindicate the rights of conservative Americans.
Glaucoma Pipeline
A View Into Ongoing Innovation Content guidance and source: Iqbal Ike K. Ahmed, MD, FRCSC, John R. Samples, MD Illustration: Marielle Mahan, MD This content originally ran as a poster in the January/February issue. Check out the print publication to view the full size poster. Glaucoma Pipeline: Surgical Iqbal Ike K.
John Samples, Author at The American Mind
Overregulating digital technology will backfire in the end.
Glaucoma Pipeline
A View Into Ongoing Innovation Content guidance and source: Iqbal Ike K. Ahmed, MD, FRCSC, and John R. Samples, MD This content originally ran as a poster in the November/December issue. Check out the print publication to view the full size poster. Glaucoma Pipeline: Surgical Iqbal Ike K.
Leave Electoral College Intact
The American Constitution empowers state legislatures to choose the means to select electors who in turn select the president. Some Americans have argued that this Electoral College should be eliminated in favor of direct election of the president by a majority of eligible voters. But evidence on the ground suggests little need for this major constitutional change. Each state has electors equal to its representation in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.
Rights against Speech
Why do social media companies have the right to suppress speech on their platforms? In the United States, they may do so because the U.S. Supreme Court has said the First Amendment does not apply to private companies. But the companies want more than sheer discretion, and they seem unwilling to say, “we’re maximizing shareholder value which requires suppressing speech.” Indeed, they seem to want an answer to the question: why should we suppress speech?
A Good Bad Idea from TikTok
The interim leader of TikTok, Vanessa Pappas, has just proposed that social media companies agree to warn one another about violent, graphic content on their platforms. Specifically, TikTok proposes a “hashbank for violent and graphic content” with a special concern about suicide videos.
Independence in Content Moderation
Social media managers cannot tolerate all speech on their platforms. They are obligated to maximize value for their shareholders. Leaving some kinds of speech on a platform would drive some users away. So social media managers establish rules intended to maximize the number of users. Managers also hire content moderators to enforce the rules. Users that get thrown off have no complaint. When they joined the platform, they agreed to the rules and to how they are enforced. End of story.
Does Social Media have a “Democracy Deficit”?
The United States Supreme Court has it easy. No doubt their job is difficult, but at least they know what they should be doing: interpreting and applying the Constitution and other laws. Social media content moderators have a harder task. No one wrote and ratified a Constitution, no legislature passed Community Standards. Content moderators created Community Standards in resolving cases as judges did with the common law.
The Market for Speech Paternalism
From Plato on, paternalists have argued that individuals would be better off if they were shielded from lies, disinformation, and “bad speech.” In contrast, liberals think individuals are capable of discerning their own ideals and interests, free from the oversight of “those who know.” For liberals, such restrictions “elevate society and the state to a despotic command and…reduce the individual to the arbitrary control of others.” In the United States this liberal case for speech enshrined...
How Strict Would "Strict Scrutiny" Be Online?
My last post set out the case that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) offered strong protections to online speech on social media. Let's turn now to assessing that case. That case depended on Article 19 of the ICCPR which established both a broad right to free speech and a tripartite test for restrictions on speech by governments. Some have argued that the vagueness prong of the tripartite test would invalidate many “hate speech” restrictions.
International Law and “Hate Speech” Online
From the beginning social media managers have excluded content from their platforms. At first they did so intuitively. Only a few people moderated content; like Justice Potter Stewart’s view of obscenity, “the new governors” of speech knew what to exclude when they saw it. As the platforms grew, such judgments seemed too subjective and opaque. Content moderation teams sought to formulate general rules, published as Community Standards, that could be consistently applied.
Social Media Regulation in the Public Interest: Some Lessons from History
Essays and Scholarship Examining past abuses of the ‘public interest’ standard to argue against expanding antitrust authority By John Samples & Paul Matzko May 4, 2020 An essay series addressing the tech giants' power to shape public discourse For two decades after the courts struck down the Communications Decency Act in 1997, direct government regulation of the internet was a political third rail.
Speech in a Time of War
The prominent legal scholar Geoffrey Stone reminds us that war is a perilous time for freedom of speech. The struggle with COVID-19 seems like a war. Some have evoked executive authorities created for, and justified by, wartime exigency.Unity will be needed to defeat this “invisible enemy.” How is free speech doing in this difficult time? Speech may be restricted by public or private authorities.
The End of an Era
No, not the end of the Trump Era. Or the Obama Era. Or an “era” named after a politician, including the Reagan Era. Or even the end of the New Deal, or the Great Society, or whatever. It’s actually the end of the era of campaign finance “reform,” born in 1969 died in 2020.
Illiberalism Ascendent
Protocol reports: Senator Amy Klobuchar [announced] a new bill to crack down on monopolies, including shifting the burden of proof onto companies to demonstrate they’re not suppressing competition and fining anticompetitive giants up to 15% of their revenues. In a liberal government, government officials must carry a burden of proof to limit the liberties or rights of individuals. For example, to put someone in jail, prosecutors must show they violated the law beyond a reasonable doubt.
Seeing Like a Social Media Company
In October of last year, Senator Elizabeth Warren posted an ad on Facebook which included the false statement that Mark Zuckerberg supported President Trump. Hoping to focus attention on the platform’s lack of fact checking, Warren explained, “What Zuckerberg has done is given Donald Trump free rein to lie on his platform—and then to pay Facebook gobs of money to push out their lies to American voters.
Facebook's Filtering Policies Strike Nearly the Right Balance
Last October the Trump re-election campaign funded an ad on Facebook claiming that then–Vice President Joe Biden had threatened to withhold $1 billion of aid to Ukraine to end a corruption investigation of a company where Biden’s son was a board member. Biden asked that Facebook remove the ad; the company refused.
The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider” (Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996). Those 26 words (and not a member of Congress) invented the internet as we know it. These words protect internet platforms from lawsuits based on user-generated content, allowing them to open their doors to a dizzying variety of sentiment and speech.
Do We Need the Constitution?
Samples discusses some of the failures of the constitution, wondering if it can truly be a government limiting document. I have just finished writing a Cato policy analysis about the constitutional war powers of the president in light of the recent Libyan adventure. At the same time, I have been reading Richard Brookhiser’s excellent and concise new biography of James Madison. Brookhiser finds that Madison left two legacies, both important: American constitutionalism and American politics.
Big Government Conservatism Returns
Donald Trump ran and won by opposing many traditional Republican candidates and ideas. However, for two years or more, his administration seemed a lot like a traditional Republican administration though its President behaved rather differently than other presidents of either party. Now intellectuals are coming forth with manifestos articulating Trump’s revolution three years after the barricades were stormed. For example, we have For Real American Greatness, A Tech New Deal.
Don’t Panic on Tech
Donald Trump ran and won by opposing many traditional Republican candidates and ideas. However, for two years or more, his administration seemed rather a lot like a traditional Republican administration. Now, leading young intellectuals on the Right are trying to define the Trumpian moment whether the President knows it or not. One of their manifestos—“For Real American Greatness, A Tech New Deal”—bears attention. This manifesto strikes me as a response to conservative political failure.
Humanity in the Digital Age
Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors, the Claremont Institute, or its board of directors. Nothing in this journal, whether in print or pixels, is an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill or influence the election of any candidate.
Speech Paternalism and the People Most Likely to Advocate It
Facebook has decided not to suppress putative falsehoods in political ads on its platform. This decision has many critics. I see three ways forward for Facebook. First, stay with the policy. The policy is close to the American free speech tradition. It assumes Facebook users have the right and ability to discern truth and falsehood. Regardless of their veracity or original target audience, all political ads are preserved in Facebook’s Ad Library, where anyone can view them.
Political Ads and Political Truth
Let’s begin by updating Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes for the digital era: Persecution for Suppression of the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law content moderation and sweep away all opposition. (The original quotation may be found on page 888 of this worthwhile essay).
Mark Zuckerberg at Georgetown
Mark Zuckerberg gave an important speech today at Georgetown University about free expression and Facebook. I think the speech is important for four reasons. Recently Zuckerberg wrote that free expression was a “paramount” value for Facebook. Paramount means “more important than anything else; supreme.” This speech articulates his understanding of “paramount” for Facebook. Free speech is immensely valuable and just not another value to be traded off against many other values.
Warren’s Dangerous Lie
Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign has a new Facebook ad claiming Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has endorsed Donald Trump for re‐election. That claim is false, and Warren admits as much in the ad. Warren is not trying to mislead people about Zuckerberg. She is trying to control what can be said on Facebook. That is much more dangerous than any lie appearing in a campaign ad.
Archives
October 13, 2019 Blog Warren’s Dangerous Lie Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign has a new Facebook ad claiming Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has endorsed Donald Trump for re-election. October 9, 2019 Blog Free Speech Is Not Killing Us Andrew Marantz makes a provocative, but not persuasive, case against free speech in the New York Times.
Free Speech Is Not Killing Us
Andrew Marantz’s New York Times op-ed “Free Speech Is Killing Us” provokes but does not persuade. You might think the essay advocates the federal government preventing harms – maybe mass shootings – by restricting freedom of speech. But Marantz writes: I am not calling for repealing the First Amendment, or even for banning speech I find offensive on private platforms. What I’m arguing against is paralysis. So we don’t have to restrict free speech assuming the government could do so.
A First Look at Facebook’s Oversight Board
Today Facebook released a Charter for its Oversight Board. This institution may well face insuperable difficulties and come to nothing. But it is possible, perhaps likely, that the Facebook board will significantly influence the future of speech on the internet. The charter announced today offers a kind of constitution for the Oversight Board. What does the Charter mean for free expression? First, some context.
Dennis Prager, Big Government Conservative
Dennis Prager recently made a case for government management of social media in the Wall Street Journal. Prager is a conservative so it might seem odd to find him plumping for government control of private businesses. But he is a part of a new conservatism that rejects the older tradition of laissez-faire that informed the right. What could justify Big Government regulation for tech companies?
Some Proposals to Represent Users on Facebook’s Board
Recently I argued that Facebook needed to focus more on representation in creating its oversight board for appeals from its content moderation. If the Board is to be legitimate, it must be representative as well as law-like and independent. How might it be representative? First: who should be represented on the Board? Facebook users create much of the content that generates the data used to improve both advertising and the company’s bottom line.
The Limits of Law for Facebook’s Legitimacy
Facebook expects to set up its Oversight Board for content moderation by the end of the year. Soon the company will fill in the final details for the Board. One big question: who should serve on the Board? Facebook will initially select specific individuals for the Board; it’s likely that the initial choices will then select their successors. At this point, we might ask a more general question: what kind of individuals should be selected?
False Assumptions Behind the Current Drive to Regulate Social Media
In the early days of the Internet, citing concerns about pedophiles and hackers, parents would worry about their children’s engagement on unfamiliar platforms. Now, those same parents have Facebook accounts and get their news from Twitter. However, one look at a newspaper shows op-eds aplenty castigating the platforms that host an ever-growing share of our social lives.
We Need More Speech about the Census
Facebook has pledged to remove misinformation about the Census from its platform. Inevitably this removal involves suppressing speech that would be protected by the First Amendment if uttered in a public forum. After all, there is no misinformation exception to the First Amendment. However, Facebook may remove the speech because as a private firm, it is not obligated to enforce the First Amendment. Nonetheless, we might ask: why speech about the Census?
Knight Institute v. Trump
July 9, 2019 8:24PM The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has affirmed a district court’s ruling that Donald Trump may not block Americans from viewing or responding to his tweets. In an opinion largely mirroring that of the district court, Judge Barrington D. Parker determined that Trump’s use of his account in his capacity as President of the United States rendered it a limited public forum.
Don’t Believe Too Much in Democracy, Mark Zuckerberg
Everyone dislikes the social media companies these days. Conservatives (that is, Republicans) decry alleged bias against their views. Liberals (that is, Democrats) complain about hate speech online and market domination. And that’s just the start for both sides. Of course, both sides believe “something must be done,” ranging from federal agencies controlling the platforms to breaking up the companies. Both see government as the solution for what is thought to ail social media.
Hawley Contra Reagan
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows… -Bob Dylan, a long time ago The winds of illiberalism are blowing strongly here and abroad and in both major political parties. What had seemed to be gusts and squalls signifying little prior to 2015 now threatens a major storm. Sen. Josh Hawley’s Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act, introduced yesterday, seems to be the latest potential disaster of this hurricane season. Sen.
Free Speech and Identity Politics
June 3, 2019 2:59PM I think Arnold Kling is one of the most insightful bloggers around so I am pleased that he likes my latest Cato policy analysis. He remarks: My worry is that American culture no longer supports free speech…But hurting someone’s feelings should not count as direct harm. Racist remarks or Holocaust denial may be uncouth, but in a culture of free speech they should be permitted. I agree with Kling about extreme speech.
Shallow Fakes: Why Facebook Was Right Not To Delete The Doctored Video Of Nancy Pelosi
from the defending-free-speech dept We live in a Manichean political world where every person and institution is said to be either good or evil. Facebook used to be in the good column; since November 2016, they are listed among the evil ones, oddly by both left and right. The truth: Facebook is a tremendously successful and innovative business that nevertheless makes mistakes. But beyond making its users happy, Facebook also does good. By defending free speech, for example, at a difficult time.
Shallow Fakes
We live in a Manichean political world where every person and institution is said to be either good or evil. Facebook used to be in the good column; since November 2016, they are listed among the evil ones, oddly by both left and right. The truth: Facebook is a tremendously successful and innovative business that nevertheless makes mistakes. But beyond making its users happy, Facebook also does good. By defending free speech, for example, at a difficult time. The case may be familiar to you.
Why Section 230 Is Unstable
May 20, 2019 1:56PM Everyone interested in social media should read Jeff Kosseff’s The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet. It provides an excellent history of Section 230, the legal foundation of social media. That might sound boring, but Kosseff makes it work by mixing stories and analysis without vitiating either. I agree with Kosseff that, problems notwithstanding, the benefits of Section 230 have outweighed its costs.
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