Civil society was the target of RightsCon’s cancellation
This is the week of the RightsCon conference that wasn’t. RightsCon, the leading international Internet and human rights conference organised by civil society group Access Now, was cancelled by the Zambian government just five days before it had been due to commence. The roundtable that my Center for Online Safety and Liberty (COSL) had organised […]
The Limits of Zero Tolerance – Animated Pornography, Platform Moderation, and Free Expression
This is a transcript of a conversation between Jeremy Malcolm, Brandy Brightman and Aurélie Petit held on May 23, 2025 for the podcast Beyond the Filter, which is presented here edited for length and clarity. Brandy: Hello and welcome to Beyond the Filter, a podcast about censorship. My name’s Brandy… Jeremy: And my name’s Jeremy. […]
How LGBTQ+ content could become illegal
In 2020, Yulia Tsvetkov, a 26-year-old Russian theater director and artist, found herself under house arrest, facing up to six years in prison. Her crime? Sharing feminist and LGBTQ+-friendly artwork on social media, which authorities branded as “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors.” Just a year earlier, Michelle, a 53-year-old transgender woman, was sentenced […]
