Last week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill into law that forbids the largest social media companies from removing users or their posts based on their political viewpoints. It also lets Texans sue social media websites with more than 50 million US users over perceived violations.
The law categorizes social media platforms as public forums and “common carriers,” a term often used to describe phone companies or utilities that in most cases cannot discriminate against customers. The law empowers the state’s attorney general and private citizens to sue over alleged violations.
While the law claims it protects individuals from “censorship” on social media websites, it also appears to violate private corporations’ own speech rights. Free speech scholars and advocacy groups say the Texas state government unconstitutionally dictates political speech on the world’s largest platforms by forcing platforms to carry favored views.
The tech industry group NetChoice wrote in a statement the Texas law forces websites to host “obscene, antisemitic, racist, hateful, and otherwise awful content.”
Kate Huddleston, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, says governments forcing private parties to carry political content violates the First Amendment protections under the US Constitution. “Government efforts to curate online content on particular platforms is an impermissible exercise of editorial control—just as government cannot force newspapers to carry...
Read Full Story: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/texas-social-media-law-clear-110048724.html
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