Book Talk: Chilling Effects | Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age
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October 6, 2026
Boston University Scho0l of Law
Charles River Room, Fifth Floor
12:30-2pm
Please join us on Tuesday October 6th, 2026 for a book talk to discuss Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age with author Jonathon Penney. This book talk will be moderated by Woody Hartzog.
Lunch will be available starting at 12:30pm. Programming will begin at 1:00pm.
About Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age
In Chilling Effects, Jonathon W. Penney explores the increasing weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and new technology to repress and control us. With corporations, governments, and extremist actors using big data, cyber-mobs, AI, and other threats to limit our rights and freedoms, concerns about chilling effects – or how these activities deter us from exercising our rights – have become urgent. Penney draws on law, privacy, and social science to present a new conformity theory that highlights the dangers of chilling effects and their potential to erode democracy and enable a more illiberal future. He critiques conventional theories and provides a framework for predicting, explaining, and evaluating chilling effects in a range of contexts. Urgent and timely, Chilling Effects sheds light on the repressive and conforming effects of technology, state, and corporate power, and offers a roadmap of how to respond to their weaponization today and in the future.
This event is Co-sponsored by the BU Cyber Alliance, JOSTL and the IP/Tech Law Society .
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