Publications: Ash Johnson

The UK should resist the urge to regulate in haste. Protecting children online is essential, but protection should mean smarter design, stronger safety tools, and greater parental control, not blanket bans that remove technology from young people and choice from families.

Critics say the SECURE Data Act is a unified Republican effort. Yet its core provisions mirror privacy protections passed by Democratic and Republican majorities in 21 states. So, while it would preempt state laws, it also draws heavily from those laws, reflecting a bipartisan, multistate consensus on how to protect consumers while enabling innovation.

A New Mexico ruling against Meta highlights how the growing patchwork of state digital regulations could fragment the U.S. internet by forcing companies to restrict or withdraw online services in certain states, underscoring the need for Congress to establish a unified federal digital policy framework.

The TRUMP AMERICA AI Act combines AI regulation with children’s online safety legislation in a single bill, creating overbroad, ill-suited policies that increase compliance burdens and ultimately weaken both innovation and effective protection of minors. These issues should be addressed separately with targeted approaches.

App store–level age verification laws pose privacy, security, and free-speech risks while leaving websites unregulated, whereas device-level, opt-in parental controls offer a more comprehensive and safer way to protect children online.

Ash Johnson writes in The Hill that teen social media bans are based on moral panic rather than evidence, misdiagnose screen time as the harm, and should be replaced with nuanced, evidence-based policies that empower parents, incentivize safer platform design, and target specific, demonstrable risks.

Sen. Rand Paul’s call to revoke Section 230 over grievances with Big Tech highlights a broader risk: using the law as a political weapon would undermine online free speech, whereas reforms increasing transparency in content moderation could address concerns without dismantling its protections.

Governments across the political spectrum are increasingly pressuring online platforms to remove lawful content, threatening free speech by politicizing content moderation decisions that should remain in the hands of private companies and governed only by the law.

The implementation of the Digital Services Act’s transparency obligations fails to provide meaningful insight into online platforms’ content moderation decisions, the extraterritorial effects of the act, and its effects on online speech.

Strict data privacy laws like the GDPR have significantly reduced biopharmaceutical R&D investment—especially among smaller firms—highlighting the need for U.S. policymakers to reform HIPAA, pass innovation-friendly federal privacy legislation, and invest in privacy-enhancing technologies to protect both privacy and progress in medical research.