Judge tears apart Texas social media law for violating First Amendment

Judge tears apart Texas social media law for violating First Amendment

A federal judge yesterday blocked a Texas state law that bans "censorship" on social media platforms, ruling that the law violates the social networks' First Amendment right to moderate user-submitted content.

"Social media platforms have a First Amendment right to moderate content disseminated on their platforms," Judge Robert Pitman wrote. He found that the Texas law "compels social media platforms to disseminate objectionable content and impermissibly restricts their editorial discretion" and that the law's "prohibitions on 'censorship' and constraints on how social media platforms disseminate content violate the First Amendment."

Pitman's ruling granted a preliminary injunction requested by tech industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications & Industry Association (CCIA), which sued Texas in US District Court for the Western District of Texas. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and various other tech companies belong to the groups.

The injunction prohibits the Texas attorney general from enforcing the law. The judge found that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their case, a prerequisite for granting a preliminary injunction.

“Replete with constitutional defects”

... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...sorship-violates-first-amendment-judge-rules/​

You can see how extreme the former GOP has become, especially in Texas. Continuing to kowtow to that raving kook and malignant narcissist Donald Trump is not good for the party or America. Not at all. These former Republicans turned RINOs have abandoned their principles and lost their way to the point where they're trying to use Big Government to enforce their own version of Sharia Law for women and oppose free speech where they deem it politically inconvenient (and where it angers Donald Trump personally).

 

That's what makes them a "Publisher" not a "Platform".​

 

Wow, This OP is rife with BS.

Fake Claim number 1
1. The Judge didn't tear apart anything. They got a preliminary injunction until the case is heard.

Fake claim number 2
2. Trump has nothing to do with it. lol

Fake claim number 3
3. This is not an attempt to use Big Government to enforce their own version of Sharia Law for women and oppose free speech

They are setting a standard that no social media platform may not censor a user, a user's expression, or a user's 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's expression or another person's expression;
(3) a user's geographic location in this state or any part of this state," the law says.

The bill's definition of "censor" is "block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression." The Texas attorney general or users can sue social media platforms that violate this ban and win injunctive relief and reimbursement of court costs.

Basically stopping the lefts idiotic cancel culture for those they deem not worthy.

When you have to exaggerate the actual report, its pretty telling why you would do that.

 

You either have freedom or speech or don't. America has freedom of (we edit the bits we don't like or that don't follow our agenda) speech.

 

Lol as if he’s not a driving force behind the Rw attacks on social media

 

That ain't what the First Amendment says. Read the effin' manual. Geez...

 

Does anyone else see the irony here?

They're arguing that the ability to take away a user's free speech through censorship is part of their free speech.....

It truly is bizarro backwards world.

 

Probably why threads on America's freedom of speech should be moved to the Humour & Satire section.

 

A similar law in Floriduh crashed and burned in front of a Federal judge in June.

 

Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg's web page. It's LOT bigger than yours or mine but that's really all it is.

So, basically what all these social media laws are saying is that if you have a web page and I want to disseminate my argument as to how the Earth is flat or all conservatives must die you have to provide me with space to do so.

Your software supporting AOC for President is in the email

 

Everyone who's on Facebook has a bigger page than mine because I don't entertain Facebook, I shut my account about 5 to 6 years ago. I've never been on Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and all the other crap. I just dibble and dabble on the odd forum.

The upshot is, I'm immune from other people's drama, I don't get to see 99.99% of it.

 

never happen, the day it does, all free social media goes away, all anonymous social media goes away, and every post would be censored before it ever sees the light of day - now, would that be a bad thing, it's debatable

 

it's their website, that would be like a judge saying I can't force you to yell what I want you to yell on a street corner, and me saying that violates my free speech

you can't tell them what to yell on their website, it's their choice

they do not have to save anyones message to the world and repeat it forever

can you imagine if Christian boards had to allow Muslims to post their propaganda and visa versa?

if we have a government web board, then one could claim free speech rights, not private boards that anyone of us could spin up by morning

 

When they have what could be argued that amounts to a monopoly on social media and they also do things like publish information affecting the outcome of politics elections so on and so forth I think they have a little bit more culpability

 

Sadly it's T****ites that dominate the party platform even with him out of office. Five years ago the Republican party would be all over requiring online services to police themselves as much as possible, in fact Section 230, the law that enables them to moderate their sites of inaccurate or offensive materials was passed by Republican led Senate and house majorities.
The Republicans really need to split their party. Sane and Insane, while accurate, would be inappropriate but I bet if there was a movement started to promote a moderate Republicans party T****ites would jump all over that and start a T****ian's party instead and leave the Republicans alone. Win win. If they don't, when Mitch dies or quits, the party will be prolifically split.

 

The Far RW has gone of the deep end into oblivion.

 

When do we get to start forcing FOXNews to require counterpoint programs?

 

no on has a monopoly on free social media sites, you could create one if you wanted

 

exactly, letting anyone that wants to speak, to say what ever they want on fox news

or letting other people preach at a church, why should only certain people get to preach

 

Which brings up school prayer. What are they going to do when one of sweet little darlings is from a family who practices witchcraft?

 

Sadly too many politicians make laws knowing damn well they are going to be shot down in courts but they get to tell their constituencies how hard they tried but were shot down by liberal or conservative courts. We could save a lot of money by having a judge sign off on Congressional laws to force them to comply with the law before enacting. "Is this legal?" should be determined before it becomes law.

 

Judge tears apart Texas social media law for violating First Amendment

Good ruling. The constitution applies to government, not the private sector. There is nothing illegal about censorship except when government engages in it.

 

You only have freedom of speech from congress. Congress shall make no laws.

 

There is no irony here. Not for those who actually understand the First Amendment. No more so than it would be "ironic" for you to say you believe in free speech but you won't let me write your forum signature for you.

 

And this is where we get into the ACTUAL irony. I used to listen to right wing am radio. Limbaugh and others were CONVINCED that Obama was going to force something like this to happen. Now they are the ones pushing for exactly what they used to call tyranny.

I think the only thing more ironic is when they call private property rights Communism and propose, as a solution to this "Communism" that we take private property rights away from private entrepreneurs and make it publicly owned.