Most chilling effects scholarship focuses on law's direct inhibition of speech. @penney.bsky.social new book asks a harder question: what about the indirect effects on conformity and power? We discuss on this week's Law Bytes podcast.
"Chilling effects" is a term everyone uses and few people interrogate. @penney.bsky.social joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss his new book and why we may be understating the issue, with implications for surveillance, content moderation, and AI regulation.
VOLT Symposium dedicated to new book: Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age (Cambridge University Press)
Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age (Cambridge University Press) and Dan Solove quote
Last month, the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology hosted a Symposium on my new book "Chilling Effects".
Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ApG...
Amazing lineup incl: @daniellecitron.bsky.social @zittrain.bsky.social @ariezra.bsky.social @natematias.bsky.social Julie Cohen, Neil Richards, & others
What does it take to prove causality in tech harms cases? After rulings in NM & CA, commentators are throwing around causality in arguments both for & against the results. If you’re frustrated by the causality maze, don’t worry- @penney.bsky.social & I have you covered
tsjournal.org/index.php/jo...
Thanks so much, Jacob! Value your thoughts once you’ve read!
Chilling effects, if not the most severe, might be the most distinctive challenge to free speech under the second Trump administration. This is an exceedingly timely book from someone who's been working on the topic for years, and I'm excited to learn from it.
Chilling effects are hard to measure or document. They are what doesn't get said over here, because of some gvt action over there. But pieces like this are a small part of making visible what is obvious: right now, chilling effects are everywhere
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/u...
Delighted to join @daniel-solove.bsky.social tomorrow (Tues, Mar 17 at 2 PM ET) to talk about my new book "Chilling Effects".
Register Here (free & online!): teachprivacy.com/video-tech-s...
BOOK LAUNCH: Join the Citizen Lab’s @penney.bsky.social @rondeibert.bsky.social, and Kate Robertson as they discuss Penney’s new book, "Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age."
🕠 March 12, 5:30 pm
✅ RSVP: machformext.osgoode.yorku.ca/machform/vie...
Join us on February 23rd for a conversation with @penney.bsky.social around his new book Chilling Effects, exposing how emerging technologies are increasingly weaponized to threaten democracy.
ℹ️/🎟 www.uottawa.ca/research-inn...
Join us on February 23rd for a conversation with @penney.bsky.social around his new book Chilling Effects, exposing how emerging technologies are increasingly weaponized to threaten democracy.
ℹ️/🎟 www.uottawa.ca/research-inn...
Happening tomorrow! Join us online to hear from
@penney.bsky.social exploring key themes from his new book, ‘Chilling effects: repression, conformity and power in the digital age’. Tuesday 3 February, 12.00-13.00 GMT. Register here: www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/...
Hot off the press - Jon Penney's @penney.bsky.social new book, CHILLING EFFECTS. As I wrote in my blurb: "This book is the definitive account of chilling effects – the most comprehensive and incisive analysis to date." amzn.to/3L3G2VC
More transparency is a critical component that in theory should be relatively easy to implement. Along with @penney.bsky.social & Niamh Leonard, we argued that such transparency is critical to the system's functioning: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti....
How can we know if a law or policy has chilled people’s free expression? Can we use science to find out?
Excited to join @penney.bsky.social, author of a new book on Chilling Effects, & @katygb.bsky.social on Dec 10th to discuss the science of civil liberties
knightcolumbia.org/events/the-s...
Details and RSVP link for the social science and chilling effects webinar on Dec. 10, with @penney.bsky.social and @natematias.bsky.social: knightcolumbia.org/events/the-s...
Want to learn more about chilling effects and why they matter to the First Amendment? Join our webinar with litigators and experts on Monday, Nov. 17, including @carriedecell.bsky.social @evelyndouek.bsky.social @penney.bsky.social @stacylivingston.bsky.social:
knightcolumbia.org/events/litig...
The Columbia settlement is an “astonishing transfer of autonomy and authority to . . . an administration whose disdain for the values of the academy is demonstrated anew every day.” New @knightcolumbia.org analysis of the Columbia settlement, just published. knightcolumbia.org/blog/what-th...
From concerns about social media addiction to urgent civil liberties issues, courts are asking scientists to be arbiters of alleged technology harms. How can scientists reliably inform courts and how can courts interpret our work?
New article with @penney.bsky.social
tsjournal.org/index.php/jo...
Really grateful to the Université de Montréal for organizing this roundtable on The Privacy Fallacy and to @penney.bsky.social @elanazeide.bsky.social @stzeitouni.bsky.social @cehaupt.bsky.social Nicolas Vermeys Pierre-Luc Deziel & Neil Richards for joining and sharing their fabulous interventions
Except this authoritarian regime is too stupid to do so, and in fact is adopting policies to do the opposite, and will accelerate those prices.
Their advantage is their ruthlessness, shamelessness, and wealth; their disadvantage is their stupidity.
Steve Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die
"the U.S. is sliding toward a more 21st-century model of autocracy: competitive authoritarianism"
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
"A failure to resist... could pave the way for authoritarian entrenchment"
www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...
A classic authoritarian move is to go after judges. I honestly did not think we would see it in the US because the system is already so politicized and Trump has a 6-3 majority. But here we are.
Check this interview out. @rondeibert.bsky.social and @citizenlab.ca at the Munk School are Canadian national treasures. youtu.be/x3z_R-oIRzg
President Trump delayed the U.S. #TikTok ban, but is his executive order legally sound? The Citizen Lab’s @penney.bsky.social writes for the @theglobeandmail.com, questioning whether the move addresses privacy issues or is purely about political power.
www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...
it really is appropriate to view this as potentially the biggest privacy and cybersecurity scandal in American history
Others like @taylorowen.bsky.social, who I link therein, have written similarly about this new era. It requires a different approach to tech regulation but also democratic governance. The law that enacted the TikTok ban weaponizes rather than restrains this new tech/state power.
I wrote about the the TikTok ban in the @theglobeandmail.com. I argue the ban is dead for a few reasons, but mostly because its' design failed to account for the new era that Trump's admin represents: persistent weaponization of tech and state power: www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...