State Legislatures Threaten Right to Anonymous Speech

The Texas State Capitol. House Bill 896 would require users to submit legal identification for the creation of social media accounts. (Larry D. Moore, https://tinyurl.com/mtz9tdtf; CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

Free speech in the United States always has included anonymous speech. Thomas Paine signed Common Sense as “Written by an Englishman.” Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay signed the Federalist Papers as Publius. And since the earliest days of the internet, sites such as Yahoo, Reddit, and Twitter have allowed …

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