State laws against Big Tech could be headed to the Supreme Court

[Geee]

Washington Examiner

A split in the U.S. Court of Appeals over two states' social media laws may force the Supreme Court to settle free speech questions about the digital platform’s content moderation.

Last week, a three-judge panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously found Florida’s law prohibiting social media platforms from banning politicians to be in violation of the companies’ First Amendment rights and, therefore, unconstitutional. Some other parts of the law, such as requiring the explicit disclosure of content moderating rules, were not struck down.

 

The state law was signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021 and was fueled in part by the banning of former President Donald Trump from multiple social media services, including Twitter and Facebook.

But a Trump appointee, Judge Kevin Newsom, wrote in the opinion that “we hold that it is substantially likely the social media companies — even the biggest ones — are private actors whose rights the First Amendment protects” in response to the Florida regulations that restricted the ways those companies could moderate third-party content.

[Valin]

10 minutes ago, Geee said:

Washington Examiner

 

But a Trump appointee, Judge Kevin Newsom, wrote in the opinion that “we hold that it is substantially likely the social media companies — even the biggest ones — are private actors whose rights the First Amendment protects” in response to the Florida regulations that restricted the ways those companies could moderate third-party content.

 

 

I would agree with Judge Newsom, wee it not for the fact that today these places (Facebook,Twitter, Intagram, etc etc etc) Are The Public Square. They are whee People gather to put forth ideas, discuss...everything, ad these companies have been & are putting there thumb on the scale. And I believe often work i conjunction with each other to promote certain ideas and suppress others. Now maybe Someday site like Locals, Rumble etc etc will be able to compete with Facebook, Youtube, but today and for the foreseeable future Big Tech is effectively a monopoly, or cartel if you want to get technical.