Nearly thirty years ago, an obscure liability section of law aimed at restricting online porn powered a revolution for the Internet and online commerce. Now, in the age of the AI boom and a global resource crunch, we need the same principle put to use for American energy. Section 230, tucked within the 1996 Communications Decency Act, exempted online companies from liability for third-party content. Without Section 230, known…
Every industry in the world is scrambling to put artificial intelligence tools to creative use, and America’s robust sector of lawyers, law firms, and jurists is no exception. Judges have hilariously busted lawyers for using ChatGPT to hallucinate court citations in briefs, and AI-generated attorneys have pleaded for their clients and faced ridicule online. There have been AI videos created using court transcripts from cases where no cameras were allowed, bringing…
Yaël Ossowski of the Consumer Choice Center and Bitcoin Policy Institute joined CNN to reflect on recent crypto-related crimes that threaten consumer privacy, the federal bank secrecy laws that make purchasing Bitcoin and crypto assets riskier and make our data vulnerable, and the prospects for consumers to benefit from positive reforms from the Trump Administration on Bitcoin and crypto policy. May 29, 2025
For the last five weeks, an agency of the Federal government has attempted to convince a judge that Meta should be forcibly broken up for parts. FTC v. Meta is nearing closing statements and could be decided in the weeks to come. Social media influencers, small businesses advertisers, and roaming bands of phone scrollers have their online experiences on trial. That’s millions, if not billions of users not…
Like many people my age, I have serious doubts about the long-term viability of Social Security and whether or not I’ll ever get a check once I hang up the proverbial hard hat. I have a ways to go, but I do think about it often. Time flies. Government projections aside, the only reasonable path most of us have to fully fund our golden retirement…
In Washington, D.C. this week, government lawyers wrapped up their antitrust lawsuit arguing that Instagram should be broken off from its parent company. The same for WhatsApp. The company Meta, formerly Facebook, has been in a long protracted legal battle over its decade-old acquisitions of the photo sharing app Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp. While those acquisitions were largely panned at the time – if not outright…
S01E05 Yaël Ossowski by Shawn Yeager The balance of power between individuals and institutions is shifting. Read on Substack In this episode of Trust Revolution, Shawn welcomes Yaël Ossowski, a consumer advocate and Bitcoin policy expert, for a candid discussion on the shifting balance of power between individuals and institutions. Yaël shares his global perspective, shaped by living under multiple governments, from Canada to the…
As the global economy pivots toward digital innovation and AI supremacy, tensions are mounting not just between rivals like the U.S. and China, but also among traditional allies. In a panel discussion hosted by The National Interest on May 8, policy experts unpacked both the growing friction and potential cooperation between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union over tech policy. The panel featured Yaël…
Journalist Janani Janarthanan interviewed me on broader Bitcoin adoption in Vienna, Austria, and the European Union. Some choice quotes: “At least millennials and maybe zoomers — those who straddle the timeline between Gen Z and Millennials— are aware of different digital assets and use the ecosystem in some way,” according to Yaël Ossowski, a fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute and the deputy director at…
A key Fannie Mae policy change could unlock bitcoin-based mortgages and expand financial access for millions of Americans. For those of us who save in bitcoin, use it on a daily basis, and are hopeful about its future, we recognize more than most the regulatory barriers and societal taboos that limit how we are able to use it. Though we view bitcoin as the ultimate…