AppleInsider Staff
Live on Twitter and Facebook, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that takes aim against "big tech censorship," that aims to minimize the suppression of political speech on social networks.
Signed on Monday by DeSantis, measure SB 7072 enacts new rules that will affect political speech on social networks. Under the law, social media companies must inform users of instances where they are banned or censored. The rules put forth in the Florida law also encompass mandatory notification to users of instances where a post is flagged with a warning to others about potential false or disputable information in the post.
Penalties under the bill include daily fines of up to $100,000 for the platforms. Users will also have the ability to sue companies they believe are violating that law.
While the bill will affect companies including Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon, it won't affect companies owned or operated by Walt Disney Co. A provision states the law doesn't affect systems and services "operated by a company that owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex" in the state.
According to DeSantis, social media firms "use secret algorithms and shadow banning to shape debates and control the flow of information. Yet they evade accountability by claiming they're just neutral platforms." DeSantis also likened the situation to Big Brother's power in the George Orwell novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four."
The bill is the first at a state level taking on a perceived problem of political content suppression, claims that have repeatedly been made before, during, and after the last U.S. Presidential election.
Unless other laws are passed to strip "personhood" from corporations, Florida's new law is not likely to survive a challenge to the Constitutionality of the law.
The complaints led to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee subpoenaing the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to testify before Congress in October 2020 about the Communications Decency Act and allegations there was political censorship on social media sites and apps.
While Apple doesn't operate a social network directly, it has become the target of criticism over Parler, a right-wing social media app it pulled from the App Store over claims it was used by hate groups and helped organize the January attack on the Capitol. In May, Parler returned to the App Store with a system in place to censor content that violates Apple's guidelines.
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Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
73 Comments
Censorship cuts both ways you know. Someone is always ready to silence opposing opinions, thinking they are doing the right thing and making the world a better place.
Really disappointed in the inaccurate and baseless commentary within the article.
The way this is written is really biased. Calling it a "perceived problem" implies that those who believe that large platforms discriminate on ideological groups are somehow wrong or to be dismissed. Moreover, stating that the "claims" have been made "repeatedly" around the Presidential election is sly way of tying those who point out the bias as being tied to the former President, election fraud claims, and January 6th. Finally, AI links to its own article on a political content suppression lawsuit being dismissed. This further undermines the view that political content suppression is real.
Reasonable people can disagree on if such suppression is happening and to what extent, but if the author wants to take a position, he should do so directly. If not, it should be written from as neutral a POV as possible.
On what is this based? It has nothing to do with "personhood" under the law. It's about requiring transparency for censorship and allowing people to sue under Florida law. Either way, it's a wholly unsupported opinion.
Parler is not a "right-wing" social media app. That is patently false. Parler is a free speech app. It was and is populated by conservatives and libertarians, but welcomes all viewpoints, including those left of center. It was never designed or marketed to be a right-wing social media app.