Texas‘ HB 20 severely limits social media companies‘ ability to moderate content on their platforms, and is likely unconstitutional. But the complaint from the CCIA and NetChoice is now in the hands of a Texas district court.<\/b>
\nThe Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice this week filed suit to overturn a Texas law that bans many social-media platforms from interfering with users\u2019 posts based on their viewpoint. The complaint filed by CCIA and NetChoice in US District Court for the Western District of Texas against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alleges that the Texas law, House Bill 20, violates multiple parts of the Constitution, starting with the First Amendment\u2019s prohibition of laws \u201cabridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.\u201d HB 20, signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Sept.9, prohibits many forms of content moderation at social platforms with more than 50 million US monthly average users. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Its text says they \u201cmay not censor a user, a user\u2019s expression, or a user\u2019s ability to receive the expression of another person based on: (1) the viewpoint of the user or another person; (2) the viewpoint represented in the user\u2019s expression; or (3) a user\u2019s geographic location in this state or any part of this state.\u201d \u201cCensor\u201d means \u201cto block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.\u201d (\u201cTrump\u201d appears nowhere in the law\u2019s text, but it reads as a response to social sites bannin g the former president after his encouragement of the Jan.6 insurrection and repeated lies about his loss in the 2020 election.) The law permits few exceptions: Social platforms can block material that federal law allows them to censor, that has been flagged by organizations fighting sexual exploitation of children, that \u201cdirectly incites criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence\u201d targeting people\u2019s \u201crace, color, disability, religion, national origin or ancestry, age, sex, or status as a peace officer or judge,\u201d or is \u201cotherwise unlawful.\u201d HB 20 also mandates that social platforms publish transparency reports about content moderation ( Twitter and Facebook already do that), document moderation policies, and provide prompt appeals processes. Short Version: That’s Not How Any of This Works The lawsuit says the First Amendment does not allow the government to force a publisher to carry anybody else\u2019s speech, yet HB 20 would \u201ccompel a select few platforms to publish speech and speakers that violate the platforms\u2019 policies.\u201d It also references Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which encourages sites to moderate as they see fit by waiving their liability for removing legal speech they find \u201cotherwise objectionable.\u201d Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a Section 230 hearing in October 2020. The suit decries HB 20’s narrow exceptions, saying the law would require social sites to keep up \u201cpro-Nazi speech, terrorist propaganda, foreign government disinformation, and medical misinformation.\u201d It further notes the business-model problem of keeping sites afloat without content moderation: \u201cadvertisers will not permit their products and services to be displayed in an editorial context of harmful or offensive content.\u201d (In practice, many ad networks automatically put their ads on bigot-friendly sites anyway.) Florida passed an analogous social-media law in May; CCIA and NetChoice sued to overturn it in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida, and on June 30 Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction finding it unconstitutional. In a Wednesday Washington Post Washington Post op-ed, Gov. Abbott defended the law as a necessary response to cases of overreach, like when Twitter briefly blocking access to a New York Post story about Hunter Biden\u2019s lost laptop. He argues that the biggest social sites deserve regulation as common carriers, a category traditionally reserved for phone companies. \u201cBut Twitter, Facebook and other massive platforms aren\u2019t just any private companies,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey are our modern-day public square, and effectively control the channels we use for discourse.\u201d Abbott did not cite numbers for that, but in April, the Pew Research Center reported that while 81% of US respondents said they \u201cever\u201d use YouTube and 69% said the same about Facebook, no other social platform cracked 50%. Instagram came in third at 40%, followed by Pinterest at 31%, and LinkedIn at 28%. Twitter was at just 23%, good for a seventh-place tie with WhatsApp.<\/p>\n