A recent Florida Bill signed into law (SB 7072) was declared by Governor Ron DeSantis to prevent “big tech” from silencing conservatives. The bill’s sponsor (and the lawmakers that voted to pass it) felt that the large social media giants, such as Twitter and Facebook were editing out certain political viewpoints, which violated the First Amendment. The premise was that these social media giants had become so big that they were tantamount to a public utility.
Industry associations sued the State of Florida to challenge that law and last week they won (again) in the 11th Circuit.
This case was an interesting one for us to follow, since some of the social media giants have excluded registrants from their platform. If the Court would have found that social media platforms were the modern day public square and cannot ban undesirable individuals from participating in the discourse that took place thereon, it could have been a significant win for those on the registry.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. As Justice Newsome pointed out, “[social media] platforms are private enterprises, not governmental (or even quasi-governmental) entities. No one has an obligation to contribute to or consume the content that the platforms make available. And correlatively, while the Constitution protects citizens from governmental efforts to restrict their access to social media, see Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017), no one has a vested right to force a platform to allow her to contribute to or consume social-media content.
Sadly, that statement spells out clearly why registrants are (and can) be banned from social media platforms.
This may be adverse to the interests of registrants in the short term but it was right legally. The same law that protects Facebook from having to deal with people it doesn’t want protects NARSOL connections, for example, from having to deal with people it doesn’t want. And why would we assume that if the judiciary found that political speech trumps Facebook’s property rights, that they would suddenly realize that registrants deserve the same consideration? It’s a stretch to suppose they would suddenly become consistent…
Besides, plenty of registrants just say phooey and use the platforms anyway.
This should be appealed. These companies are no longer private entities. Mark Zuckerberg and the other Big Tech magnates admitted they received tax-payer dollars and worked hand-in-hand with government. Just like FPL is a utility, so is Big Tech.
Twitter already permits registrants and their advocacy organizations. And they ban use of their platform for child sexual exploitation. Twitter understands the difference. You really wanted a court ruling to upend that? Be careful what you wish for, and be thankful for having avoided the unintended consequences that would have resulted, had the 11th Circuit gone the other way.
Looks like the Supreme Court issued an injunction regarding the similar Texas law.
This analysis fails to recognize that it is the goverment who is facilitating the ability of the private companies to obtain what would be otherwise private information, namely, the label. The government collects the identifiers under theat of felony and they are not collecting identifiers from any other group.
The people that case was about were people who incited violence and/or performed other misdeeds on the platform. The government’s scheme creates roadblocks to free speech.
The platforms could say the don’t want murderers on their site. They do not have a means to reveal any other types of people except for registrants.
It is a classic bill of attainder.
Surely the DeSantis administration will appeal this to the Supreme Court, no?
What about “equal time” laws and regulations during campaign seasons?
While I agree that Facebook, Twitter, et al are private organizations and can ban whoever they want, I think it should be their burden to scrub the registry daily and cross-reference it with their records to do so. No state has any business enforcing a private organization’s terms of service.
Besides, of the handful of sex crimes that might – MIGHT – have occurred after initial contact Facebook over the past 30 years, how many were by registrants? IF that number is less than 1000 (and I’m certain it is), there are an awful lot of zeros between the decimal point and the first digit in terms of percentage of Facebook accounts.
Well We’ll, great news, if only, only if, it could have been,
Let’s just face reality, we are no better than the witches during the Salem witch hunts.
We are screwed, permanently.
TO: Tired
The difference is, people who practice witchcraft now days do not get dunked anymore, they are left alone. So, they have it better than we do.
What we have in common, they were labeled as witches with little to no proof. And we get labeled as sex offenders, regardless if we have not re-offended for decades. So we have come a long way in progressing away from killing people being accused of witch craft. But keep adding new restrictions every year on anyone who has to register?
For me, the biggest one would have been Next door. BUT, Why ban our families (At the same address), they didn’t do anything. I guess because it is not based on Race, religion, or gender, they can do whatever the Hell they want huh?
Many of us miss work oportunities because so much business content is hosted soley on facebook.
There truly ought to be a law!