June 2022

As a follow up to our previous posts on digital assets and social media, the Federal Trade Commission recently published a Consumer Protection Data Spotlight on June 3, 2022.  In the post, the FTC provides insights on the fraud reports submitted to the FTC from January 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022.  According to the FTC, the fraud reports show that social media and digital assets are a “combustible combination for fraud” with nearly half of those who reported losing cryptocurrency to a scam saying that it “started with an ad, post, or message on a social media platform.”  Since the start of 2021, more than 46,000 people reported losing over $1 Billion of cryptocurrency to scams, and during the reporting period, nearly four out of every ten dollars that was lost to a fraud that originated on social media was lost in crypto.  This report is another example of agencies and courts taking note, and informing the public that the connection between social media and digital asset fraud is direct, and significant.

On May 23, 2022, the Eleventh Circuit upheld an injunction on parts of Florida’s controversial social media “censorship” law, S.B. 7072, in NetChoice, LLC v. Att’y Gen., Fla.  In a 67-page opinion, the three-judge panel held that large swaths of the law’s provisions were unconstitutional, finding that social media companies are private actors and government regulation of content-moderation policies “unconstitutionally burden[ed]” their First Amendment rights.