Cody Venzke

sr. staff attorney, speech, privacy & technology, @aclu. formerly @cendemtech, @fcc, 3d Cir., and EDPA. tweets and takes are mine. he/him

[Cody Venzke @venzkec]

"You're a talker. Listening to talkers makes me thirsty."

[John Coleman @FreeSpeech_AI]

This letter was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee today in opposition to the NO FAKES Act.

[FIRE @TheFIREorg]

BREAKING: Here’s the deal, straight from the Senator putting it together. And it’s a big First Amendment loser.

[Cody Venzke @venzkec]

@TimSchnabel @neil_chilson The focus is on the use of algorithmic systems in decisionmaking that is traditionally protected by civil rights law. There’s well established First Amendment precedent that the impact of civil rights laws on expressive activity is sufficiently incidental to pass O’Brien scrutiny

[Cody Venzke @venzkec]

@TimSchnabel @neil_chilson And that’s exactly the issue here: I don’t think 205 was intended to reach expressive outputs — allegations in the complaint about Black Founding Fathers notwithstanding.

[Tim Schnabel @TimSchnabel]

@neil_chilson Any thoughts on how we can differentiate which parts of training are expressive and which aren't? Seems as if there'd necessarily be a spectrum, not all-or-nothing. https://t.co/MeGTyZaNHe

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The scariest finding in this paper: the subjects couldn't tell it was happening.

UPenn ran this study on 48 healthy adults. One group slept 8 hours. Another slept 6. Another slept 4. For 14 straight days. They tested cognitive performance every 2 hours from 7:30am to 11:30pm.

The 6-hour group's reaction times, working memory, and sustained attention deteriorated on a near-linear curve. By day 14 they were performing at the same level as someone who hadn't slept at all in 48 hours. The 4-hour group hit that threshold by day 6.

Here's the part that should unsettle everyone who thinks they "do fine" on 6 hours: the subjects' self-reported sleepiness flatlined after the first few days. Their brains kept getting worse. Their perception of how impaired they were stopped updating. The cognitive decline was invisible to the person experiencing it.

The researchers found a hard threshold. Any wakefulness beyond 15.84 hours in a day produces cumulative neurobiological cost. That cost compounds every single day you exceed it and does not reset with a weekend of sleeping in.

About 35% of American adults sleep less than 7 hours a night. 40% of those get 6 hours or less. In 1942 that number was 11%. We built an entire professional culture around a sleep schedule that this paper says is functionally equivalent to pulling consecutive all-nighters.

"I'm fine on 6 hours" is the most common response to sleep research. The first thing chronic sleep debt destroys is your ability to notice chronic sleep debt.

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

Perhaps my favorite Supreme Court exchange in recent memory:

Solicitor general: “It’s a new world."

John Roberts: "It's a new world. It's the same Constitution."

Into my veins 😌

[Kristin Raworth 🇨🇦 @KristinRaworth]

I've never sen anything more accurate

[Shannon Watts @shannonrwatts]

Socrates in 460 BC: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Marcus Aurelius in 150 CE: “You have power over your mind—not outside events.”

Augustine of Hippo in 400 CE: “Do not go outside; return into yourself. In the inward man dwells the truth.”

Marc Andreessen in 2026:

[Matthew Green @matthew_d_green]

Meta appears to be reversing its strong stance on encryption. The first obvious casualty is that they’re abandoning and disabling end-to-end encryption in Instagram DMs.

[Matthew Green @matthew_d_green]

I’m going to keep harping on this. Meta’s push to remove encryption and lobby for age verification laws feel like two sides of a very ominous coin.

[Acyn @Acyn]

AOC: We don’t have to talk about this as if it’s a hypothetical issue. Just a couple of months ago, Discord tried to roll out “age verification.” They contracted with a third party to conduct facial scanning — not just of kids, but also of adults. They decided to launch a teen default setting where they would lock users into a teen-appropriate experience. Which, mind you, if you are an adult who does not opt in, you then get cordoned off into the teen experience. Explain to me how that has anything to do with children’s safety.

The only way to get out of that censored version is by scanning your face. What’s more shocking is that Discord made the decision to move forward with this after they had been hacked and 70,000 users had their data stolen.

[Cody Venzke @venzkec]

My favorite thing about this post is the lead graphic depicts a technology that would almost certainly not be covered by the age verification technology they're championing.

[Energy and Commerce Committee @HouseCommerce]

The App Store Accountability Act is a commonsense bill. It puts parents back in the drivers seat to protect their children as they see fit.

Democrats need to decide if they stand with Big Tech or America’s parents.
https://t.co/lfbD7Rdj5c?

[Josh Kale @JoshKale]

Everyone’s saying OpenAI got the “same deal” Anthropic was banned for.
Read the fine print. They’re not the same:

On weapons:
Anthropic asked for “no fully autonomous weapons without human oversight” = a human involved in the decision.

OpenAI’s deal says “human responsibility for the use of force” = someone accountable, which can happen after the fact.

Oversight ≠ Responsibility. One requires a human before the trigger. The other requires a name on the paperwork after.

On surveillance:
Dario said explicitly: current law hasn’t caught up with AI. The government can already buy your movement data, browsing history, etc without a warrant. AI can assemble that into a complete picture of your life, at scale. That’s mass surveillance without breaking a single law.

Anthropic wanted protections beyond current law.

OpenAI’s deal says the Pentagon “reflects them in law and policy.” That’s existing law as the safeguard, the exact law Anthropic said is insufficient.

Same words. Different agreements. Read them carefully

[Jonathan Lemire @JonLemire]

The Coast Guard pilot who left Noem’s blanket behind was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home when they reached their destination

They eventually reinstated the pilot because no one else was available to fly them home https://t.co/xk1oaF5MVO

[Rep. Don Bacon 🇺🇸✈️🏍️⭐️🎖️ @RepDonBacon]

Went straight to the source.
The Constitution is clear.
Article I, Section 8 gives Congress authority over taxes and tariffs.

[John Palmer @johnpalmer]

https://t.co/KrI5bqIUkH

[Benjy Sarlin @BenjySarlin]

Ahhh that's the good dystopia

[Kyle Corbitt @corbtt]

Ohh well here's a novel form of regulatory capture!

Use your personal ChatGPT sub to get advice on a lawsuit? Unprivileged, other side can subpoena.

Your lawyer uses their sub to ask the exact same questions, and forwards you the answers? Privileged, inadmissible in court!