{"id":96248,"date":"2022-05-14T15:12:02","date_gmt":"2022-05-14T15:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=96248"},"modified":"2022-05-14T15:12:05","modified_gmt":"2022-05-14T15:12:05","slug":"the-5th-circuits-reinstatement-of-texas-internet-censorship-law-could-break-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=96248","title":{"rendered":"“The 5th Circuit\u2019s Reinstatement of Texas\u2019 Internet Censorship Law Could Break Social Media”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Slate<\/a>: “On Wednesday, without a word of explanation, the nation\u2019s\u00a0most radical<\/a>\u00a0appeals court<\/a>\u00a0reinstated a Texas law that imposes sweeping censorship on social media companies. The statute\u2014which Republicans passed in retaliation against the perceived liberal bias of \u201cBig Tech\u201d\u2014forces 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\u2019 statute is, in short, an egregious affront to corporations\u2019 First Amendment rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Texas Republicans passed their internet censorship bill, known as H.B. 20, in the fall of 2021. Its sponsors\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that the legislation was necessary to prevent \u201cWest Coast oligarchs\u201d from\u00a0silencing<\/a>\u00a0\u201cconservative viewpoints and ideas.\u201d (Their theory that social media companies discriminate against conservative speech has\u00a0no evident basis in reality<\/a>.) The bill applies to social media companies with \u201cmore than 50 million active users\u201d in the U.S. each month, like Twitter, YouTube, and Meta, that operate in Texas. (Republicans rejected a proposal that would\u2019ve broadened its application to smaller conservative platforms like Parler and Gab.) It states that these companies may not \u201ccensor\u201d a user\u2019s expression on the basis of their \u201cviewpoint,\u201d whether that \u201cviewpoint\u201d is expressed on the company\u2019s platform or somewhere else. If a platform removes a user\u2019s content, it must provide them with notice and an opportunity to appeal. Alleged victims of \u201cviewpoint discrimination\u201d can also file suit against social media companies, as can the Texas attorney general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

H.B. 20 doesn\u2019t stop there. The law also bars social media companies from labeling<\/a> posts on their own websites\u2014with, 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<\/a> email service providers\u2019 ability to block spam, allowing users to collect $25,000 for each day that their provider impedes \u201cthe transmission of an unsolicited or commercial electronic mail message.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would the internet look like in Texas if corporations implemented these policies? In addition to a sudden surge of spam in Texans\u2019 inboxes, social media would become unusable.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slate: “On Wednesday, without a word of explanation, the nation\u2019s\u00a0most radical\u00a0appeals court\u00a0reinstated a Texas law that imposes sweeping censorship on social media companies. The statute\u2014which Republicans passed in retaliation against the perceived liberal bias of \u201cBig Tech\u201d\u2014forces these companies to disseminate hateful expression, dangerous misinformation, and foreign propaganda, among other objectionable speech. It empowers aggrieved…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96249,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96248\/revisions\/96249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}