Cruz and Wyden's JAWBONE Act would let you sue officials for pressuring platforms

A bipartisan bill against "jawboning"

The EFF post covers the JAWBONE Act — Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression — introduced by Senators Ted Cruz (R) and Ron Wyden (D). "Jawboning" is the term for government officials pressuring private companies into censoring speech the First Amendment protects.

The bill does two concrete things: it creates a federal cause of action against officials who coerce intermediaries into removing lawful speech, and it imposes transparency requirements on government communications with platforms about user expression. EFF grounds it in a case it's litigating — it represents Joshua Aaron, creator of ICEBlock, an app for reporting immigration-enforcement activity, after federal officials threatened him and pressured Apple to pull it from the App Store.

EFF supports the bill, but with a deliberately narrow caveat: "not every communication from a government agency to a platform is unconstitutionally coercive," and treating all of them as unconstitutional could "chill the valuable, good-faith engagement that supports a healthier and safer internet." It applauds the senators and says it hopes the final bill "lands on the right balance."

The line the thread kept quoting back

The comment that drew the most agreement wasn't about the bill at all — it was EFF's reminder that the platforms are not the government:

"Social media platforms and other internet intermediaries have their own First Amendment rights to decide how they moderate users' speech. They are not 'state actors' … Private platforms do not have an obligation, legal, moral, or otherwise, to host or boost your harmful opinions." — a reader quoting the article's overlooked passage

"Did people read past the headline?"

A recurring frustration: the title reads partisan, the bill isn't. One reader spelled it out — Wyden is a Democrat, the effort is bipartisan, and the EFF is on board:

"Do people not read the article, or do they just read the clickbait title and comment? … the bill is a bi-partisan effort." — a reader pointing to the co-sponsor's party

The skeptics didn't dispute the text so much as the sponsor. Several pointed at anti-BDS laws — 35+ states require government contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel — as government speech restrictions a free-speech champion might be expected to oppose:

"This on its face seems like a government restriction on speech, squarely violating the First Amendment. The Supreme Court … go out of their way to avoid anti-BDS challenges." — a reader citing the contractor-pledge statutes

One put the suspicion plainly: "I doubt that ICEBlock was the first thing Ted Cruz wanted to benefit from this bill."

Who decides where pressure ends and speech begins

The hardest question in the thread was definitional. Where's the line between coercion and a government simply talking?

"If vaccination misinformation is spreading like wildfire … and the government urges social media to control the spread of misinformation, is that 'government pressure' and should it be illegal?" — a reader probing the boundary of legitimate government contact

That is precisely the seam EFF flagged: the same statute that stops officials from threatening an app developer off the App Store could, drawn too broadly, criminalize a public-health agency flagging a fraud. The bill's whole fate rides on a definition it hasn't finished writing — and a thread that agreed jawboning is real disagreed sharply on who can be trusted to police it.