Press Freedom

Middle East Eye reported in June 2026 that Israeli spyware firm NSO Group continued to target WhatsApp users with Pegasus despite a binding US court order arising from the Meta v. NSO Group litigation. The reporting cited evidence of continued infections after the judgment, raising the prospect of contempt proceedings and renewed pressure on US sanctions enforcement against the company.

On February 25, 2026, eBay settled a lawsuit filed by David and Ina Steiner, who operated EcommerceBytes newsletter. In 2019, eBay executives allegedly directed employees to harass the couple after critical coverage, telling staff 'I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes.' Employees sent live cockroaches, fly larvae, a bloody Halloween pig mask, and a funeral wreath to the couple's home. Several workers traveled from California to Massachusetts to surveil them and attempt to install a GPS tracker on their car. Former CEO Devin Wenig was named as a defendant. Seven employees pleaded guilty to conspiracy and cyberstalking charges.

Italy's communications authority AGCOM announced a penalty exceeding €14 million against Cloudflare in January 2026 for failing to comply with anti-piracy regulations related to Piracy Shield. CEO Matthew Prince condemned the fine as 'a scheme to censor the internet,' criticizing it for having 'no judicial oversight,' no appeal process, and no transparency, and requiring services to block content globally not just in Italy. Prince threatened to discontinue free cybersecurity services for Italian users, remove all servers from Italian cities, scrap investment plans, and 'discontinue the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber-security services' Cloudflare was providing for the Milan Cortina Olympics in February 2026.

In a Times Radio interview, Wales criticized President Trump's repeated 'fake news' claims, saying they mirror tactics used by strongmen around the world. He noted it was 'an astonishing situation' when a President 'clearly contradicts himself, or denies that he said things that we can all play tapes of him saying.'

In 2024-2025, Alex Karp made extremely strong statements against pro-Palestinian campus protesters, calling them 'unwitting products of an evil force, Hamas' and describing their views as a 'pagan religion' and 'an infection inside of our society.' He confronted a protester during an earnings call, saying 'she believes I'm evil, and I believe she's an unwitting product of an evil force.' He strongly supported Israel post-October 7, criticizing American companies for not speaking out.

Beginning in 2025, the State Department under Secretary Marco Rubio pursued a policy of denying or revoking visas for foreign nationals -- including researchers, fact-checkers, and officials -- deemed to have been 'involved or complicit in censoring American citizens,' invoking a rarely-used INA provision on foreign-policy-related inadmissibility. The policy targeted individuals who had worked on content moderation, disinformation research, or pressured US tech platforms on content policy, and was later expanded to include enhanced social-media and work-history vetting for H-1B visa applicants. Groups including the Coalition for Independent Technology Research and several international students sued, arguing the policy was unconstitutionally vague and punished protected speech and research; in 2026 a federal judge (Boasberg) blocked enforcement on First Amendment grounds. The State Department defended the policy, saying 'an American visa is a privilege not a right,' and moved to dismiss the litigation.

In April 2025, acting US Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation alleging Wikipedia 'allows foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda,' demanding documents to assess compliance with tax-exempt status requirements under Section 501(c)(3). The letter requested materials from January 2021 onward covering content moderation practices, editor misconduct handling, and interactions with search engines and AI companies. Separately, in May 2025, a bipartisan group of 23 US Representatives led by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Don Bacon sent a letter expressing concern about antisemitism and anti-Israel bias on Wikipedia. These actions represented escalating political pressure on the Foundation's editorial independence.

On February 26, 2025, Jeff Bezos announced that The Washington Post's opinion section would only publish columns 'in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,' and that viewpoints opposing those pillars would not be published. Opinion editor David Shipley resigned following the announcement. Former executive editor Marty Baron wrote that Bezos was doing this 'out of fear of the consequences for his other business interests.' Over 75,000 subscribers cancelled within two days. Senator Bernie Sanders called it 'what Oligarch ownership of the media looks like.' The move followed Bezos's October 2024 decision to block the paper's Harris endorsement.

On February 13, 2025 a coalition of major US news publishers including Condé Nast, The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, McClatchy, Politico, The Republican Company, Toronto Star and Vox Media filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Cohere in the Southern District of New York. The complaint alleged Cohere ingested and reproduced full articles from at least 4,000 publications and that the company's hallucinations falsely attributed fabricated content to named publishers. The suit was among the largest publisher-led actions against an enterprise AI company.

In February 2025 WhatsApp and forensic researchers at Citizen Lab disclosed that Paragon Solutions' Graphite spyware had been deployed against approximately 90 WhatsApp users worldwide, with confirmed Italian targets including investigative journalist Francesco Cancellato, head of the migrant-rescue NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans Luca Casarini, and activists working with refugees crossing the Mediterranean. Paragon, which had marketed Graphite as a 'responsible' alternative to NSO's Pegasus and was acquired by US PE firm AE Industrial Partners in 2024, publicly stated it had terminated its contract with Italy after the Italian government refused an audit. Italy denied authorizing targeting of journalists.

The Verge reported in 2025 that Elon Musk had 'privately pressured' Reddit CEO Steve Huffman to moderate content critical of him and the Trump administration. After their exchange, Reddit took action and temporarily banned r/WhitePeopleTwitter due to 'policy violations.' This occurred amid broader controversy where over 100 Reddit communities banned users from posting links from X social media site after Musk made an arm gesture critics claimed was a Nazi salute. Reddit also implemented controversial automatic moderation flagging the word 'Luigi' as 'potentially violent' in unrelated contexts.

Amnesty International documented Serbian authorities using Cellebrite tools alongside spyware to target journalists and activists. A student activist's phone was hacked using a Cellebrite zero-day exploit (CVE-2024-53104) affecting millions of Android devices. Cellebrite only suspended sales to Serbia's security services in February 2025 after the public Amnesty report—despite ongoing abuse documented since 2024.

In the Meta/WhatsApp lawsuit against NSO Group, a U.S. federal court found NSO liable for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing WhatsApp servers to install Pegasus spyware on over 1,400 devices in 2019. In May 2025, the court ordered NSO to pay $167 million in damages. During the lawsuit proceedings, court documents revealed Saudi Arabia as one of NSO's Pegasus customers. Evidence showed the spyware was used against Princess Haya of Dubai and associates of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. NSO admitted it had cut off 10 government customers for abusing Pegasus.

On October 25, 2024, Jeff Bezos killed The Washington Post's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, overruling the editorial board. The decision led to 200,000+ subscriber cancellations and two columnist resignations. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago the same day. Bezos defended it as 'principled' but critics called it capitulation to Trump.

Perplexity made what it described as its first philanthropic gift, giving $250,000 to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism to fund Knight Lab research into how generative AI can support journalism workflows and improve news consumers' experience with AI-generated answers. The gift followed weeks after Forbes and Wired had publicly accused Perplexity of plagiarizing their reporting (June 2024) and came around the launch of Perplexity's first Publishers' Program revenue-share pilot (July 2024), so it should be read partly as a goodwill/relationship-building move toward the journalism industry during a period of active criticism, not a purely proactive initiative.

In July 2024, European Parliament member Daniel Freund reported a spyware attack attempt assessed as likely emanating from Candiru. The attack masqueraded as a legitimate email link. Freund, a vocal critic of Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, believes Hungary's authoritarian administration was responsible. Active Candiru infrastructure was identified in Hungary and Saudi Arabia through late 2024.

Jack Dorsey's philanthropic initiative #startsmall donated $10 million to Freedom of the Press Foundation in January 2024 to support press freedom and transparency efforts.

A December 2023 HRW report found Meta's content moderation systematically silenced pro-Palestine voices. Of 1,050 cases reviewed, 1,049 involved peaceful pro-Palestine content being censored while only 1 case involved pro-Israel content. Documented issues included content removals, account suspensions, shadow banning, and broken appeal mechanisms affecting users in 60+ countries.

Substack has consistently maintained a 10% subscription-fee revenue model with no ad-targeting or behavioural ad systems, preserving direct creator-to-subscriber relationships and email portability. The model has been credited by writers including journalists transitioning out of traditional media with restoring viable independent reporting economics, while critics including The Atlantic argue the model concentrates writer compensation at the top. Substack publicly rejected ad-supported pivots throughout 2022-2025 funding rounds despite VC pressure.

In June 2023, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told employees that Apollo developer Christian Selig was blackmailing the company for $10 million. Selig publicly refuted the claim with audio recordings of his conversation with a Reddit employee that disproved the extortion allegation. In a June 9, 2023 AMA, Huffman doubled down, criticizing Selig for 'recording and leaking a private phone call' and saying he didn't know how Reddit could do business with him. The false accusation appeared to be retaliation against Selig for publicly disclosing Reddit's prohibitive API pricing that would force Apollo to shut down.