MIAMI.- “The US Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether Big Tech has the right to censor political speech with which it disagrees,” said Governor Ron DeSantis in an X published this Monday, February 26.
The US Supreme Court will address challenges to state laws that could affect how Facebook, TikTok, X and other social media platforms regulate content posted by their users.
This Monday, February 26, the Court is hearing different arguments on the laws adopted by the Florida and Texas legislatures in 2021.
“Florida passed protections for individuals who had been canceled or censored from platforms based on content or political views or speeches,” DeSantis said.
In 2021, the group Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice, which brings together Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, filed the complaint in federal court in Tallahassee, in which they allege that the Florida state law “violates the constitutional right of First Amendment freedom of expression” for private companies on the Internet. That year, Florida passed a law that fines social platforms $250,000 a day if they cancel the account of a political candidate at the state level and $25,000 a day if they censor the account of someone running at the local level.
“When you remove the president of the United States from the platform, but allow Ayatollah Khamenei to talk about killing Jews, that is wrong,” the governor said then, adding that the law questioned by the platforms is “a protection against the elites of Silicon Valley.” “.
The dilemma, according to the governor, is that technology companies argue that they are private and, normally, private companies can host the political speech or point of view they want. But in that case, social platforms obtain protection from the federal government from their responsibility for content by not being editors of the expressions that circulate in their public forums. The protection is because they do not judge which speech is good or bad. They are just platforms, so they cannot be responsible for what anyone says there. “One thing or the other,” said the president.
What is crucial, according to DeSantis, is whether platforms have the right to censor users of the platforms without any protection.
Regardless of what the Court decides, we are going to make sure we do everything necessary to give people the right to speak in these public forums. We want people to be able to express themselves more, not less, freedom of expression.
In this context, DeSantis criticized some technology companies that use artificial intelligence to create a completely fictional and highly ideological narrative. “It’s not good for robust political discourse in this country.”
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