WASHINGTON D.C.-The Electronic Frontier Foundation and five organizations defending free speech urged the Supreme Court to strike down laws in Florida and Texas that let the states dictate certain speech social media sites must carry, violating the sites' First Amendment rights to curate content they publish-a protection that benefits users by creating speech forums catering to their diverse interests, viewpoints, and beliefs.
The court's decisions about the constitutionality of the Florida and Texas laws-the first laws to inject government mandates into social media content moderation-will have a profound impact on the future of free speech.
At stake is whether Americans' speech on social media must adhere to government rules or be free of government interference.
Social media content moderation is highly problematic, and users are rightly often frustrated by the process and concerned about private censorship.
Retaliatory laws allowing the government to interject itself into the process, in any form, raises serious First Amendment, and broader human rights, concerns, said EFF in a brief filed with the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, Authors Alliance, Fight for The Future, and First Amendment Coalition.
Social media sites should do a better job at being transparent about content moderation and self-regulate by adhering to the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation.
The Principles are not a template for government mandates.
The Texas law broadly mandates that online publishers can't decline from publishing others' speech based on anyone's viewpoint expressed on or off the platform, even when that speech violates the sites' rules.
Content moderation practices that can be construed as viewpoint-based, which is virtually all of them, are barred by the law.
Under it, sites that bar racist material, knowing their users object to it, would be forced to carry it.
Sites catering to conservatives couldn't block posts pushing liberal agendas.
The law gives preferential treatment to political candidates, preventing publishers at any point before an election from canceling their accounts or downgrading their posts or posts about them, giving them free rein to spread misinformation or post about content outside the site's subject matter focus.
Users not running for office enjoy no similar privilege.
What's more, the Florida law requires sites to disable algorithms with respect to political candidates, so their posts appear chronologically in users' feeds, even if a user prefers a curated feed.
In addition to dictating what speech social media sites must publish, the laws also place limits on their ability to amplify content, use algorithmic ranking, and add commentary to posts.
This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Thu, 07 Dec 2023 23:43:05 +0000