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Backpage The court found insufficient evidence to sustain 53 of 84 remaining counts against Lacey. A federal judge has acquitted Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey of dozens of counts, including a majority of those on which federal prosecutors planned to retry Lacey later this year. U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa...

Last month, I noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had repeatedly exaggerated the scientific evidence supporting face mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facebook attached a warning to that column, which it said was "missing context" and "could mislead people." According to an alliance o...

Eighty-six counts of criminal activity—that's what veteran journalist and publisher Michael Lacey faced in the federal case against him, a saga kicked off by federal agents raiding his house and shutting down a website he co-founded in 2004, Backpage. A saga that has stretched on for more than five years, through mu...

Is Congress really trying to outlaw all sex work? That's what some people fear the Preventing Rampant Online Technological Exploitation and Criminal Trafficking (PROTECT) Act would mean. The bill defines "coerced consent" to include consent obtained by leveraging "economic circumstances"—which sure sounds like a goo...

Mixing new technology and new laws is always a fraught business, especially if the tech in question relates to communication. Lawmakers routinely propose bills that would sweep up all sorts of First Amendment-protected speech. We've seen a lot of this with social media, and we're starting to see it with artificial i...