A New Law May Be About To END Political Censorship On Social Media
GOP Files NEW LAWS To Make Social Media Censorship ILLEGAL. At the state level in California, Texas, and Florida Republicans have pushed new laws to prohibit censorship on political grounds or even just based on content as a whole.Florida's censorship law seems to have failed but Texas and California are moving forward. California could have changes come as soon as tomorrow.Right now the far left and social justice regressive leftists are gaining ground due to a LACK of regulation. Social Media companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google can censor or ban anyone and it typically affects moderates and conservatives. Recently many conservatives banned by facebook, like Paul Joseph Watson, got a mention from President Donald Trump escalating the attention and focus on the censorship issue.Regulation will be constrained by the first amendment and thus any new regulation could only INCREASE speech not restrict it.
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A new law recently filed in California would prohibit a social media website from removing or manipulating content based on its political affiliation or the political viewpoint.
This is a huge step forward in the fight for censorship and may effectively end at least a lot of it because most of these social media websites are based in California and would be restricted under this law.
Now, California isn't the only state pushing some kind of legislation to protect speech.
Florida recently introduced a law But that one appears to be effectively dead.
Texas also has a new law being filed that seeks to end political censorship.
With Donald Trump tweeting about the censorship of conservatives, naturally the fight is escalating.
But over in Europe, they're going the other direction.
They're enacting new policies and laws that actually restrict speech.
So it would seem that if these state-level laws in the U.S.
pass, we might actually see some pretty extreme political opinions appear on social media where the opposite would be true for Europe.
Today, let's take a look at some of these laws in the U.S.
as well as the laws in the U.K.
to see how we may gain more speech rights in the U.S.
and see how Europe might actually be losing theirs.
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The first bill from legislature.ca.gov, Assembly Bill introduced by Member Gallagher, February 22, 2019.
It seems like some moves are being made.
The law states, the bill would prohibit a person who operates a social media internet website located in California, as defined, from removing or manipulating content from that site on the basis of the political affiliation or political viewpoint of that content, except as provided by the social media internet website's terms and conditions of use.
Now I'm not a lawyer, so I can't tell you exactly what this would mean, but my interpretation would be, You will be allowed to post pretty extreme political opinions so long as they don't fall under hate speech, which means you still probably can't say some things, but this would allow someone to create a party account or party content.
Say you have an extremely far-left or far-right party, which is banned right now by Twitter, so long as you don't say things that violate their hate speech rules, you will be allowed to operate that account.
Because in fact, Twitter has actually banned many political accounts that we would all find abhorrent and extreme.
But this law might actually bring those accounts back!
Now, I have no idea how California operates and when or how this may become law, but we can see that there are the last five history actions here listed on the website.
We can see that it went from committee, do pass and refer to come.
I don't know what this means, but it has six ayes and zero nos, meaning they all approved it.
It then moved forward for a reading, and on the 1st of May, it passed with four ayes and no nos.
And now on the 2nd, it was moved for a third reading, Which will happen tomorrow.
There's a lot of complicated legal work in that bill.
Some people have argued to me, well, they'll just enact new terms banning specific individuals or something to that effect.
Maybe.
I don't know.
All I know is it's a pretty big move and it's being pushed forward by a Republican.
But we're also hearing Texas is doing something similar.
In a story from the 23rd in the Texas Tribune, Texas' bill would allow states to sue social media companies like Facebook and Twitter over free speech.
The proposal aims to protect users on social media platforms from censorship if a site advertises itself as impartial.
Critics say the bill is too restrictive.
The story reads, The measure, Senate Bill 2373 by State Senator Brian Hughes, R. Mineola, would hold social media platforms accountable for restricting users' speech based on personal opinions.
Hughes said the bill applies to social media platforms that advertise themselves as unbiased, but still censor users.
The Senate State Affairs Committee unanimously approved the bill last week.
Update.
The Texas Senate approved the bill on April 25th.
In an 18-12 vote, it now heads to the House.
Senate Bill 2373 tries to prevent those companies that control these public spaces, this new public square, from picking winners and losers based on content, Hughes said in the committee hearing.
Basically, if the company represents we're an open forum and we don't discriminate based on content, then they shouldn't be able to discriminate based on content.
Now there is an interesting defense for these social media platforms.
They say during the hearing, Hughes pointed to a recent ad on Facebook by the Texas Senate Republican Caucus in support of an anti-abortion bill that the platform flagged because it could be a negative experience.
Facebook objected to the ad because it asked users to share it.
Hughes said Facebook told him.
However, the Republican caucus posted an ad about the Senate's property tax bill that also asked users to share, and it was promoted with no issue, Hughes said.
So it appears to the Republicans, this is Facebook taking a political stance and not wanting to promote this content.
Think about the damage to democracy.
If Facebook, Twitter, Google, and these other platforms are dominating the commons, the place where we trade, the place where we speak, then naturally the political opinions of the people at the top of these companies are going to control what we think, see, or hear.
You can't think about something if they don't allow it to exist on their platform.
Some things probably shouldn't be on the platform, sure.
Some things are bad, some things are good.
But it's up to the public to decide, not a private, massive, multinational corporation with no accountability.
Facebook claimed that they were trying to reduce clickbait, and this is where the problem arises.
If these laws pass, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
could probably still ban content and claim it's not about politics.
It would then fall on the user to file a suit and try and fight back.
That may be too cumbersome.
However, because you might actually start seeing thousands or tens of thousands of lawsuits, Facebook and Twitter probably couldn't handle all of these lawsuits at once.
So it's hard to know exactly how this will end up playing out.
But there is some bad news on the censorship front for those in Florida.
I was tracking SB 1722, social media websites.
The law stated, social media websites citing this act as the Stop Social Media Censorship Act, providing that the owner or operator of a social media website is subject to a private right of action by a social media website user in this state under certain conditions.
Prohibiting a social media website from using hate speech as a defense.
Authorizing the Attorney General to bring an action on behalf of a social media website user.
Essentially, this would help protect people who are being banned or restricted based on their hate speech or bad opinions.
However, as of the 3rd, it is indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration.
When I sat down with Joe Rogan, Jack Dorsey, and Vijaya Gade, I said, it's only a matter of time until you see these politicians step up and start passing laws to try and protect themselves.
And I felt the response was rather arrogant.
Vijaya said that, oh, but I talk to these people.
I know what they're actually interested in.
But do you really?
At the state level, there are many, many more politicians that I don't think you'd have the time to even meet if you tried to meet all of them.
And it's not even about state level.
What about local jurisdictions?
Washington, D.C., for instance, protects political affiliation as a human right.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, but theoretically there could be a challenge in D.C.
on human rights grounds that these platforms are restricting people.
One of the most important aspects of the censorship fight has to do with a recent story published by Motherboard.
In the story, they claim a Twitter employee said they couldn't ban certain far-right people with an algorithm because the algorithm would sweep up innocent Republicans.
Instead of responding to what the story was actually about, many on the left said, Twitter's refusing to ban the far right, or whatever that means.
In fact, in the story, they said they do use an algorithm to sweep up people like ISIS, and that does result in innocent Muslims and Arabic people getting banned.
There was no outrage.
There was no anger.
They straight-up said broadcast personalities are getting banned by algorithm, and they know it.
Why should Twitter be exempt from civil rights law?
Under civil rights law, a business can't reject someone based on their national origin or their religion.
But it seems, on a First Amendment argument, Twitter is exempt from these laws.
So, many people argue, even if they pass these laws, Twitter could still say, federal law allows us to do this.
But at least within those states, maybe they can't.
Now, California would restrict them across the board.
It seems like if California passes this law, it means that California can't restrict anybody anywhere.
So I don't know how that would play out, but rest assured, there's going to be a huge legal battle.
Conservatives have been having an argument over how to deal with this for a while, and thanks to Donald Trump, the argument is being escalated.
This story from the Daily Caller says, conservatives wrestle over how to wallop big tech as
Facebook conducts major content purge.
The story talks about a variety of issues from some conservatives saying there shouldn't be
new regulation, some conservatives saying it's a matter of antitrust and monopoly laws,
while others are saying it's a civil rights abuse.
But I will say, this is all part of the process of developing new law, new regulation, and figuring out what needs to be and what shouldn't be.
And I think a lot of people on the left who keep arguing about private platforms are missing the point.
Something isn't, and it should be.
That requires people to get angry about it, to reach out to politicians, and for legislation to go up for debate, and then get passed.
This is a normal part of the process.
In my opinion, I think we really will see censorship be restricted.
And they're gonna have to figure out how to do it.
All of this kind of started with Section 230, which was pushed forward by people who are getting angry about certain issues on the internet.
Some people expressed their ideas.
Politicians heard this.
They passed this law.
And now we're dealing with ramifications of that.
It seems like Section 230 will have to be clarified or amended in some capacity.
But, at any rate, I believe it's going to be at the state level where the changes really happen.
If California passes this law, yes, there will probably be a legal fight.
Yes, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube will probably start changing their rules, or maybe they will move out of California.
Who knows?
But this is a step towards ending censorship.
Unfortunately for people in Europe, you guys are going the other direction.
CNBC ran this story April 8th.
Britain plans social media regulation to battle harmful content.
Britain proposed new online safety laws on Monday that would slap penalties on social media companies and technology firms if they fail to protect their users from harmful content.
Now, many of these companies are in California.
That would mean Twitter would have two standards to abide by for European content and for U.S.
content.
While many people in the UK are upset about Article 13, which is a sweeping bill which would cause serious censorship issues, they may have their own extreme regulation.
Keep in mind, the UK regularly arrests people for jokes.
Well, I don't know if regularly is the right word, but there have been many people who have been arrested over saying bad words on the internet or making jokes, Count Dankula being one of the most notable.
And don't forget, there are still people in the US arguing in favor of regulation.
to restrict speech, which can't really ever happen.
But they're still arguing for it.
But in the end, it doesn't matter what the left wants.
Because right now, as it stands, the only thing allowing these social media companies to ban people is a lack of regulation.
Because in fact, the government doesn't have a right to restrict you access to a platform.
As noted by Will Chamberlain over on Human Events, he mentions the court case, Packingham versus North Carolina.
Where the Supreme Court said, in a unanimous decision, that banning someone from social media is unconstitutional, which means the regulation can only ratchet in one direction.
Will says, so here we have it, a unanimous Supreme Court decision holding that the First Amendment prohibits federal and state governments from restricting your access to social media.
There are a lot of conservatives that are concerned.
If you pass some kind of regulation, then once the Democrats get in power, they will use that regulation against you.
But that's actually a fairly bad take, at least in my opinion.
Now, I'm only reading someone else's opinion, but it sounds like the First Amendment stops the government from restricting speech.
The only thing a regulation would be able to do is protect speech.
If a regulation is passed, if the CA law is passed, or something like it at a federal level, the only outcome will be more speech.
This may be bad for these platforms because now they're going to have a bunch of conversations they don't like and advertisers might not like.
But it also may be a rock and a hard place for advertisers.
If the only place to advertise online is through these companies, they must legally uphold free speech, then you have no choice.
Advertise there.
One of the arguments I've made is that if someone buys a billboard in the middle of a city, and then someone else walks by and starts shouting racist things, do you think the advertisers care?
No, not really.
That's life in the real world.
So why should it be any different on social media?
If the law is passed, in my opinion, the advertisers will fall in line and say, well, there's nothing we can do, and this will actually protect social media sites.
So maybe regulation is a good thing.
But I don't know.
I'm not a lawyer.
Maybe I got this all wrong.
It's interesting, though, so we'll see what happens.
Let me know what you think in the comments below, and we'll keep the conversation going.
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