The 26 Words That Created the Internet and the Future of Online Art and Activism

This chapter concludes the study and examines some of the recent Supreme Court cases dealing with online content, freedom of speech, and censorship. It provides a brief history of the American regulatory body, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the legislation that the US has used to govern online spaces as a media landscape. This chapter argues that despite multiple iterations of these laws and policies, lawmakers have consistently failed to listen to many marginalized groups, and instead have focused on bolstering or suppressing political speech they find troublesome. These efforts have been couched in rhetoric of safeguarding children from sexually explicit material and predators, but as the participants note, the laws have not done this. This chapter concludes with an analysis of the early 2010–2020s debates around what constitutes “free speech” and how fat liberation figures into these discussions.