The First Amendment and the freedom of speech and expression it provides has helped make the internet what it is today: a place for diverse communities, support networks, and forums of all stripes to share information and connect people. Individuals and groups exercise their constitutional right to host and moderate sites that offer a common place for people who share a hobby, a religious belief, a political opinion, or a love for a particular kind of music.
Online platforms, from Facebook to your blog, have the right to decide what speech they publish and how they publish it. In that way, online platforms are no different from newspapers or parade organizers.
A federal appeals court in Louisiana, ruling last month in the case Netchoice v. Paxton, dealt a staggering blow to this bedrock principle of free speech online. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld an unconstitutional and disastrous Texas law that creates liability for social media platforms’ moderation decisions, essentially requiring that they distribute speech they do not want to host. Texas HB 20 restricts large platforms from removing or moderating content based on the viewpoint of the user. The law was created and passed to retaliate against social platforms that allegedly “silence conservative viewpoints and ideas,” despite there being no evidence that large platforms’ moderation decisions are biased against conservative viewpoints.
Tech industry groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) challenged the law in court. EFF filed amicus briefs in the This article has been indexed from Deeplinks
Read the original article: