Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act - FL Social Media Law Blocked

[Luke]

The Kabuki Theatre is over for now after amping up the marks.

Federal judge blocks Florida's social media law
Conservatives had seized on the law as a way to combat perceived censorship by online platforms toward former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
By BENJAMIN DIN 06/30/2021 10:17 PM EDT

A federal judge on Wednesday granted a preliminary injunction against Florida's new social media law, which conservatives had seized on as a way to combat perceived censorship by online platforms toward former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. Set to go into effect Thursday, the law, FL SB 7072, was a top priority of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and would make it easier for the state's election commission to fine social media companies that banned political candidates in the run-up to an election, with penalties ranging from $25,000 to $250,000 a day.

The ruling: District Court Judge Robert Hinkle said that it was likely the plaintiffs — tech industry groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which count major platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google among their members — would prevail in their claim that the law was unconstitutional due to the First Amendment. Legal experts had been quick to question the validity of the law when it was signed last month. "The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal," Hinkle wrote in his opinion. "Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate governmental interest."

Swift reaction: Both NetChoice and CCIA praised the court's decision, saying that if the law had gone into effect, it would have had significant consequences for what users see on the internet. NetChoice‘s president, Steve DelBianco, said in a statement that the judge's order allowed the platforms to keep their users "safe from the worst content posted by irresponsible users."

CCIA President Matt Schruers said in a statement: “This decision upholding the Constitution and federal law is encouraging, and reaffirms what we have been saying: Florida’s statute is an extraordinary overreach, designed to penalize private businesses for their perceived lack of deference to the Government’s political ideology. The court’s ruling is a win for internet users and the First Amendment.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/3 ... law-497442

[TheNewSaint]

There's a major logic flaw in what Trump and his lickspittles are trying to do.

Section 230 basically says that Internet companies are not "publishers." They are content-neutral services that convey other people's messages to each other, like the phone company. They can't be held liable for the content of a message. Any messages it conveys aren't considered "speech" by anyone except the person who made them.

But this is becoming outdated. The CDA was written in 1997, with e-mail, message boards, and Yahoo Chat in mind. Those are mostly one-to-one or small private group messages comparable to phone calls. Social media messages are something very different. Social media shares some features with mass media. It can be used to build a large audience of the general public, and broadcast to it. Our society has become very aware of how much influence over elections social media can have. And if social media companies are going to make editorial judgments about what people are posting on them, then it's fair to argue that they should be classified as a publisher, and lose that protection. But if you do that, you have a new problem:

Publishers have First Amendment rights.

If social media companies were all declared publishers tomorrow, and Donald Trump demanded that Facebook reinstate him, Mark Zuckerberg's answer would be "Uh, sorry, the Fairness Doctrine was thrown out in 1987. Also the Supreme Court ruled in Tornillo v Miami Herald that editorial judgment is protected under the First Amendment. And every other First Amendment legal protection since the Zenger case now applies to us. If you have any questions, please refer to the response in Arkell v Pressdram."

If social media companies are content-neutral technical services, then they have protections from the content of the messages they convey. If social media companies are publishers, then they have First Amendment protections to engage in political speech as they see fit. They can't be both. And neither one will accomplish what Donald Trump wants.

[bob]

Social media sites may be both platforms and publishers.

They are platforms when they host others' content and publishers when they publish their own.

The reality is they are mostly platforms, but the publisher/platform is a false dichotomy.

Regardless, the federal court's ruling on Florida's law was widely anticipated because the law blatantly violated the First Amendment.