Another failure of the Texas and Florida social media laws
Social networks would face lawsuits for taking down content that leads to more mass shootings. Plus, we also cover free speech issues, Twitter's content moderation, and more.
This week, we join the nation in mourning the 21 tragic deaths in Uvalde, Texas after a shooter attacked an elementary school. We were brokenhearted hearing the accounts of survivors and the families of the victims. We stand with all Americans in our dedication to finding solutions that will prevent catastrophic acts of violence like this one from happening again.
Social Media Regulation. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve highlighted a plethora of problems with Texas and Florida’s fraught social media laws. In the wake of two consecutive mass shootings, we felt compelled to expose another failure of theirs: They’ll force social media websites to host videos of shootings, as well as content that glamorizes or supports the shooters. In The Daily Beast, Berin explains how the text of the laws means that social networks would face lawsuits for moderating and taking down content that leads to more radicalization and violent attacks. He also wrote a Twitter thread on the subject, which you can share here.
We've long been saying that Florida’s SB 7072 is a First Amendment train wreck—and on Monday, all three judges on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. By upholding Judge Robert Hinkle’s preliminary injunction, the Eleventh Circuit panel made clear that social media platforms have First Amendment rights to decide what speech they wish to carry, and the government cannot intrude on those decisions. Be sure to check out the recording we made of our Twitter Spaces conversation after the decision dropped and the accompanying Twitter thread.
Corbin’s analysis was quoted in Fast Company and The Washington Post. Ari’s also made the media rounds with an appearance on the Ross Kaminsky Show and quotes in Law and Crime, KSL 5 TV (local Utah news) and Platformer. Corbin’s Twitter thread on the decision can be found here and Ari’s can be found here.
Last week, our Supreme Court amicus brief in NetChoice v. Paxton tearing into Texas’s “viewpoint neutrality” law was highlighted in several news publications. It continued to attract attention this week—the brief was referenced by Reuters and Reason, and our overall analysis of HB 20 was quoted in the Washington Examiner.
Content Moderation. The latest Tech Policy Podcast featured Berin and Jillian York, author of the recent book Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism. They lamented that lately we’re stuck with Elon Musk and Twitter whenever we talk about content moderation, social media, and the First Amendment. But that’s where we remain; the conversation touched on algorithms and their relationship to free speech, the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, bots and identity verification, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Tracking Global Online Censorship Project. And if you haven’t already, make sure to check out Ari and Berin’s two-part series in TechDirt about the difficulties Musk will face if he wants to use only First Amendment standards in content moderation.
Free Speech. This week a decision was reached in FDRLST v. NLRB. That vowel-challenged case concerned whether a joke, and an obvious one at that, should be treated as a labor-law violation. A Third Circuit Court of Appeals panel found Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, not guilty of violating U.S. labor law for threatening the employees of his conservative magazine with “the salt mine” if they unionized. See our amicus brief and Twitter thread on the case.
Follow us on Twitter! Corbin @CorbinKBarthold; Bilal @BilalKSayyed; Andy @AndyJungTech; Jason @JasonKuznicki; me (Rachel) @MillionthRachel; Berin @BerinSzoka; Ari @AriCohn.