Slate: “On Wednesday, without a word of explanation, the nation’s most radical appeals court reinstated a Texas law that imposes sweeping censorship on social media companies. The statute—which Republicans passed in retaliation against the perceived liberal bias of “Big Tech”—forces these companies to disseminate hateful expression, dangerous misinformation, and foreign propaganda, among other objectionable speech. It empowers aggrieved users to file an unending stream of lawsuits to combat content moderation while creating a slew of onerous regulations that are literally impossible to comply with. Texas’ statute is, in short, an egregious affront to corporations’ First Amendment rights.
Texas Republicans passed their internet censorship bill, known as H.B. 20, in the fall of 2021. Its sponsors said that the legislation was necessary to prevent “West Coast oligarchs” from silencing “conservative viewpoints and ideas.” (Their theory that social media companies discriminate against conservative speech has no evident basis in reality.) The bill applies to social media companies with “more than 50 million active users” in the U.S. each month, like Twitter, YouTube, and Meta, that operate in Texas. (Republicans rejected a proposal that would’ve broadened its application to smaller conservative platforms like Parler and Gab.) It states that these companies may not “censor” a user’s expression on the basis of their “viewpoint,” whether that “viewpoint” is expressed on the company’s platform or somewhere else. If a platform removes a user’s content, it must provide them with notice and an opportunity to appeal. Alleged victims of “viewpoint discrimination” can also file suit against social media companies, as can the Texas attorney general.
H.B. 20 doesn’t stop there. The law also bars social media companies from labeling posts on their own websites—with, for instance, a warning that they contain violence, vulgarity, or disinformation. It obligates companies to turn over a massive amount of information to the state about their algorithms, curation, and account suspension. And one baffling provision sharply restricts email service providers’ ability to block spam, allowing users to collect $25,000 for each day that their provider impedes “the transmission of an unsolicited or commercial electronic mail message.”
What would the internet look like in Texas if corporations implemented these policies? In addition to a sudden surge of spam in Texans’ inboxes, social media would become unusable.”