Just a year and a half ago, Senator Rand Paul sponsored a bill that would make it illegal for federal government employees to ask internet companies to remove any speech. Now, in a NY Post op-ed, Paul proudly announces that he did exactly that—formally contacting Google executives to demand they remove a video he didn’t like.

The video apparently (falsely) claims Paul took money from Nicolas Maduro, the former Venezuelan President the US recently kidnapped. And Paul is furious that YouTube wouldn’t take it down for him.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back came this week when I notified Google executives that they were hosting a video of a woman posing as a newscaster posing in a fake news studio explaining that “Rand Paul is taking money from the Maduro regime.”

I’ve formally notified Google that this video is unsupported by facts, defames me, harasses me and now endangers my life.

Google responded that they don’t investigate the truth of accusations . . . and refused to take down the video.

Let’s pause here. Senator Paul—a sitting U.S. Senator—”formally notified” Google executives that they needed to remove content. Under his own proposed legislation, that would be illegal. His bill was explicitly designed to prevent government officials from pressuring platforms about speech. And yet here he is, doing exactly that.

This is also notably closer to actual government jawboning than most of what the Biden administration was accused of in the Murthy v. Missouri case—where the Supreme Court found no First Amendment violation because platforms felt free to say no. Paul, a Senator with legislative power over these companies, is “formally notifying” them of what he wants removed, and is now saying that Google’s refusal to do so means they should lose Section 230 protection. Remember, the “smoking gun” in the Murthy case was supposedly Biden officials (and Biden himself) threatening to remove Section 230 if the tech platforms didn’t remove content they didn’t like.

Rand Paul was furious about that and his bill was supposedly in direct response to the Murthy ruling, in which he wanted to make it clear that (1) no government official should ever demand content be taken down and (2) threatening to pass legislation to punish companies for their refusal to moderate content would also violate the law.

And here he’s doing both.

But it gets worse. Buried in the third-to-last paragraph of Paul’s op-ed is this remarkable admission:

Though Google refused to remove the defamatory content, the individual who posted the video finally took down the video under threat of legal penalty.

Wait. So the system worked exactly as designed? Paul threatened legal action against the person who actually created the content, and they took it down? That’s… that’s the whole point of Section 230. Liability attaches to the speaker, not the host. The creator is responsible. And when threatened with actual legal consequences, they removed the video.

So what, exactly, is Paul complaining about?!? He got the outcome he wanted through the mechanism that Section 230 preserved for him: the ability to bring legal action against the speaker. But instead of acknowledging that the law worked, he’s using this as his justification for destroying it.

Paul is a public figure. He has access to pretty much all the media he wants. If he wanted to use the famous “marketplace of ideas” he so frequently invokes to debunk a nonsense lie about him and Maduro, he was free to do that. If the video was actually defamatory, he could sue the creator—which he apparently threatened to do, and it worked! Instead, he wants to tear down the entire legal framework because YouTube wouldn’t do his bidding, even though the video was already taken down.

The Arbiter of Truth Hypocrisy

Here’s where Paul’s position becomes truly incoherent.

I asked one of Google’s executives what happens to the small town mayor whose enemies maliciously and without evidence, post that he is a pedophile on YouTube?. Would that be OK?

The executive responded that YouTube does not monitor their content for truth. But how would that small town mayor ever get his or her reputation back?

Just a few years ago, Rand Paul was apoplectic that YouTube tried to determine whether content—specifically about COVID-19—was true or not. He thought it was terrible that YouTube would dare to be the arbiter of truth, and he whined about it at length.

Now he’s demanding they be the arbiter of truth and remove one video because he says it’s false.

Paul even acknowledges this contradiction in his own op-ed, apparently without realizing it:

Interestingly, Google says it doesn’t assess the truth of the content it hosts, but throughout the pandemic they removed content that they perceived as untrue, such as skepticism toward vaccines, allegations that the pandemic originated in a Wuhan lab, and my assertion that cloth masks don’t prevent transmission.

Yes. And you screamed bloody murder about it. You insisted they should never do that. You built your entire position around the idea that platforms shouldn’t be deciding what’s true. And, with the re-election of Donald Trump, the big tech platforms all bent the knee and said they’d stop being arbiters of truth (even as it was legal for them to do so).

And so they stopped. And now you’re furious that they won’t make an exception for you.

Doesn’t that seem just a bit fucking hypocritical and entitled?

The “It’s Their Property” Problem

Paul’s real complaint—buried under all the high-minded rhetoric about defamation—is that Google makes its own decisions:

So, Google and YouTube not only choose to moderate speech they don’t like, but they also will remove speeches from the Senate floor despite such speeches being specifically protected by the Constitution.

Google’s defense of speech appears to be limited to defense of speech they agree with.

Yeah, dude. That’s how private property works. They get to decide what they host and what they don’t. That’s how it works. It’s also protected by their First Amendment rights. Compelled hosting or not hosting of speech you agree or disagree with is not a remedy available to you, Senator.

Paul continues:

Part of the liability protection granted internet platforms, section 230(c)(2), specifically allows companies the take down “harassing” content. This gives the companies wide leeway to take down defamatory content. Thus far, the companies have chosen to spend considerable time and money to take down content they politically disagree with yet leave content that is quite obviously defamatory. So Google does not have a blanket policy of refraining to evaluate truth. Google chooses to evaluate what it believes to be true when it is convenient and consistent with its own particular biases.

He says this as if it’s controversial. It’s not. It’s exactly how editorial discretion works. The company gets to make their own editorial decisions. You don’t have to like those decisions. But demanding they make different ones, and threatening to strip their legal protections if they don’t, is a government official using state power to coerce speech decisions.

You know, the thing Paul claimed to be against.

I think Google is, or should be, liable for hosting this defamatory video that accuses me of treason, at least from the point in time when Google was made aware of the defamation and danger.

Again: you already threatened the creator, and they took it down. The remedy worked. You used it successfully.

And if Paul’s standard is “Google becomes liable once made aware,” then anyone who wants content removed will just claim it’s defamatory and dangerous. How is this different from the COVID videos Paul was so mad they removed? People told Google those were false and dangerous, Google removed them, and Paul was furious that they acted after being “made aware” of allegedly false and dangerous content.

Now Google is doing exactly what Paul demanded—not removing content based on mere claims of falsity or danger—and he’s still mad at them.

The Section 230 Threat

So what’s Paul’s solution? Threaten to remove Section 230:

It is particularly galling that, even when informed of the death threats stemming from the unsubstantiated and defamatory allegations, Google refused to evaluate the truth of what it was hosting despite its widespread practice of evaluating and removing other content for perceived lack of truthfulness.

Remember when MAGA world insisted that Biden administration officials threatening platforms’ Section 230 protections was unconstitutional coercion? Remember how that was supposedly the worst violation of the First Amendment imaginable?

Rand Paul is now doing the same thing. A sitting Senator, using his platform and his legislative power, threatening to strip legal protections from a company because they won’t remove content he personally dislikes.

Paul literally told these platforms it wasn’t their job to determine truth or falsity. He literally sponsored a bill to prevent government officials from pressuring platforms about content. And now he’s doing exactly what he said was wrong—and threatening consequences if they don’t comply.

He didn’t “change his mind” on Section 230. He just revealed that he never had a principled position in the first place.

Paul supported Section 230 when he thought it meant platforms would leave up content he liked. He sponsored anti-jawboning legislation when he thought it would stop people he disagreed with from pressuring platforms. But the moment the system produces an outcome he doesn’t like—even though it worked exactly as designed and the video came down anyway—he’s ready to burn the whole thing down.

What is it with Senators and their thin skins? A few months ago we wrote about Senator Amy Klobuchar pressing for an obviously unconstitutional law against deepfakes after someone made an obviously fake satirical video about her. Now Paul joins the club: Senators who want to remake internet law because someone was mean to them online.

The video’s already down, Senator. You won. Maybe take the win instead of trying to burn down the open internet because Google wouldn’t do you a personal favor (the same favor you wanted to make illegal).

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Do you still want to cling to this pretense, Trump supporters? Do you still want to pretend ICE efforts are targeting “the worst of the worst?” Are you just going to sit there and mumble some incomprehensible stuff about “respecting the laws?”

Go ahead. Do it, you cowards. This is exactly what you voted for, even if it now makes you a bit queasy. Just sit there and soak in it. You are who you support, even if you never thought it would go this far.

“Worst of the worst,” Trump’s parrot repeat on blast. “This one time we caught a guy who did actual crimes,” say spokespeople defending whatever the latest hideous violation of the social contract (if not actual constitutional rights) a federal agent has performed. “Targeted investigation/stop” say the enablers, even when it’s just officers turning white nationalism into Official Government Policy. “Brown people need to be gone” is the end game. Full stop.

Here’s where we’re at in Minnesota, where ICE officers are being shamed into retreat on the regular, punctuated by the occasional revenge killing of mouthy US citizens.

I don’t want you MAGA freaks to tell me you’re OK with this. I want you to tell me why.

Federal agents detained three workers from a family-owned Mexican restaurant in Willmar, Minn., on Jan. 15, hours after four agents ate lunch there.

Does that seem innocuous? Does this seem like some plausible deniability is in play here? Well, disabuse yourself of those notions. This is how it went down.

The arrest happened around 8:30 p.m. near a Lutheran church and Willmar Middle School as agents followed the workers after they closed up for the night. A handful of bystanders blew whistles and shouted at agents as they detained the people. “Would your mama be proud of you right now?” one of the bystanders asked.

Nice. Is this what you want from a presidential administration? Or would you rather complain ICE officers have been treated unfairly if people refuse to feed or house them, knowing full well that doing either of these things will turn their employees into targets.

To be sure, the meal wasn’t a meal. It was half-stakeout, half-intimidation.

An eyewitness who declined to give a name for fear of retribution, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that four ICE agents sat in a booth for a meal at El Tapatio restaurant a little before 3 p.m. Staff at the restaurant were frightened, said the eyewitness, who shared pictures from the restaurant as well as video of the arrest.

I’m not saying ICE officers shouldn’t be able to eat at ethnic restaurants. I am, however, saying that they definitely shouldn’t because everyone is going to think the officers are there for anything but the food. And I do believe any minority business owner should be able to refuse service to ICE officers who wander in under the pretense of buying a meal. The end result is going to be the same whether or not you decide to engage with this pretense. You’re getting raided either way. May as well deny them the meal.

Especially if ICE and the DHS are just going to lie about what happened. Here’s what eyewitnesses, business owners, and local journalists said about this display of ICE shittiness:

El Tapatio Mexican Restaurant closed after WCCO confirmed agents visited the spot for lunch and later returned, detaining its owners and a dishwasher nearby after they had closed early due to the federal law enforcement’s previous appearance.

And here’s the DHS statement, which pretends ICE officers didn’t eat a meal at a restaurant and then return a few hours later to detain employees when they left the building:

“On January 14, ICE officers conducted surveillance of a target, an illegal alien from Mexico. Officers observed that the target’s vehicle was outside of a local business and positively identified him as the target while inside the business. Following the positive identification of the target, officers then conducted a vehicle stop later in the day and apprehended the target and two additional illegal aliens who were in the car, including one who had a final order of removal from an immigration judge.”

Nope. I don’t care what the ICE apologists will say about this. These narratives have places where they overlap but it’s impossible to believe this went down exactly like the government said it did. These officers picked out an ethnic restaurant, were served by an intimidated staff, and then hung around to catch any stragglers leaving the business that previously had graciously served them, despite the threat they posed.

Abolish ICE. It’s no longer just a catchy phrase to shout during protests. It’s an imperative. If we don’t stop it now, it will only become even worse and even more difficult to remove. Treat ICE like the tumor it is. Pretending its MRSA gives it more power than it should ever be allowed to have.

For years now, we’ve been repeatedly pointing out that the “social media is destroying kids” narrative, popularized by Jonathan Haidt and others, has been built on a foundation of shaky, often contradictory research. We’ve noted that the actual data is far more nuanced than the moral panic suggests, and that policy responses built on that panic might end up causing more harm than they prevent.

Well, here come two massive new studies—one from Australia, one from the UK—that land like a sledgehammer on Haidt’s narrative—and, perhaps more importantly, on Australia’s much-celebrated social media ban for kids under 16.

The Australian study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, followed over 100,000 Australian adolescents across three years and found something that should give every policymaker pause: the relationship between social media use and well-being isn’t linear. It’s U-shaped. Perhaps most surprisingly, kids who use social media moderately have the best outcomes. Kids who use it excessively have worse outcomes. But here’s the kicker: kids who don’t use it at all also have worse outcomes.

This isn’t to say that all kids should use social media. Unlike some others, we’re not saying any of this shows that social media causes good or bad health outcomes. We’re pointing out that the claims of inherent harm seem not just overblown, but wrong.

From the study’s key findings:

A U-shaped association emerged where moderate social media use was associated with the best well-being outcomes, while both no use and highest use were associated with poorer well-being. For girls, moderate use became most favorable from middle adolescence onward, while for boys, no use became increasingly problematic from midadolescence, exceeding risks of high use by late adolescence.

This seems like pretty strong evidence that Haidt’s claims of inherent harm are not well-founded, and the policy proposals to ban kids entirely from social media are a bad idea. For older teenage boys, having no social media was associated with worse outcomes than having too much of it. The study found that nonusers in grades 10-12 had significantly higher odds of low well-being compared to moderate users—with boys showing an odds ratio of 3.00 and girls at 1.79.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Manchester just published a separate study in the Journal of Public Health that followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years. Their conclusion? Screen time spent on social media or gaming does not cause mental health problems in teenagers. At all.

From the Guardian’s coverage of the UK study:

The study found no evidence for boys or girls that heavier social media use or more frequent gaming increased teenagers’ symptoms of anxiety or depression over the following year. Increases in girls’ and boys’ social media use from year 8 to year 9 and from year 9 to year 10 had zero detrimental impact on their mental health the following year.

Zero. Not “small.” Not “modest.” Zero.

The UK researchers also examined whether how kids use social media matters—active chatting versus passive scrolling. The answer? Neither appeared to drive mental health difficulties. As lead author Dr. Qiqi Cheng put it:

We know families are worried, but our results do not support the idea that simply spending time on social media or gaming leads to mental health problems – the story is far more complex than that.

The Australian researchers, to their credit, are appropriately cautious about causation:

While heavy use was associated with poorer well-being and abstinence sometimes coincided with less favorable outcomes, these findings are observational and should be interpreted cautiously.

But while researchers urge caution, politicians have been happy to sprint ahead.

Australia leapt into the fray, and the ban has so far proven to be a complete mess.

The entire premise of Australia’s ban—and similar proposals floating around in various US states and across Europe—is that social media is inherently harmful to young people, and that removing access is protective. But both studies suggest the reality is far more complicated. The Australian researchers explicitly call this out:

Social media’s association with adolescent well-being is complex and nonlinear, suggesting that both abstinence and excessive use can be problematic depending on developmental stage and sex.

In other words: Australia’s ban may be taking kids who would have been moderate users with good outcomes and forcing them into the “no use” category that the study associates with worse well-being. It’s potentially the worst of all possible policy outcomes.

The UK study’s co-author, Prof. Neil Humphrey, reinforced this point:

Our findings tell us that young people’s choices around social media and gaming may be shaped by how they’re feeling but not necessarily the other way around. Rather than blaming technology itself, we need to pay attention to what young people are doing online, who they’re connecting with and how supported they feel in their daily lives.

That’s a crucial distinction that the moral panic crowd keeps glossing over: correlation running in the opposite direction than assumed. Kids who are already struggling, and who aren’t getting the support they need, might use social media differently—not the other way around.

This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. We’ve covered study after study showing that the relationship between social media and teen mental health is complicated, context-dependent, and nowhere near as clear-cut as Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation” would have you believe. As we’ve noted before, correlation is not causation, and the timing of teen mental health declines doesn’t actually line up neatly with smartphone adoption the way the narrative claims.

But nuance doesn’t make for good headlines or popular books. “Social Media Is Complicated And The Effects Depend On How You Use It, Your Age, Your Sex, And A Bunch Of Other Factors” doesn’t quite have the same ring as “Smartphones Destroyed A Generation.”

No one’s beating down my door to write a book detailing the trade-offs and nuances. Instead, Haidt’s book remains on the NY Times’ best seller list almost two years after being published.

The Australian study also highlights something else that should be obvious but apparently needs repeating: social media serves genuine social functions for teenagers. Being completely cut off from the platforms where your peers are socializing, sharing, and connecting has costs. The researchers note:

Heavy use has been associated with distress, while abstinence may cause missed connections.

This is what we’ve been saying forever. These platforms aren’t just “distraction machines” or “attention hijackers” or whatever scary framing is popular this week. They’re where social life happens for a lot of young people. Cutting kids off entirely doesn’t return them to some idyllic pre-digital social existence. It cuts them off from their actual social world.

Both sets of researchers make the same point: online experiences aren’t inherently harmless—hurtful messages, online pressures, and extreme content can have real effects. But blunt instruments like time-based restrictions or outright bans completely miss the target, and are unlikely to help those who need it most. The Australian authors recommend “promotion of balanced and purposeful digital engagement as part of a broader strategy.”

That’s… actually sensible policy advice? Based on actual evidence?

Imagine that.

Meanwhile, Australia is out there celebrating how many accounts it’s deleted, tech companies are scrambling to comply with fines of up to $49.5 million, the UK is actively considering following Australia’s lead, and policymakers around the world are looking at Australia as a model to follow.

Maybe—just maybe—they should look at the actual research coming out of Australia and the UK instead.