By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 5-24-21
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill, recently passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature, that the governor promotes as a way to stop Big Tech from censoring his citizens.
Republicans have argued that Silicon Valley giants have attempted to suppress conservative speech in the guise of moderating their platforms and under the protection of Sec. 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which exempts them with civil liability over most of that third-party content.
The bill’s language makes that clear, saying: “Social media platforms have unfairly censored, shadow banned, deplatformed, and applied post-prioritization algorithms to Floridians.” The bill presumes that doing so is acting in bad faith, which means it is legally actionable, and the governor signaled the state’s attorney general would act if that were the case. » Read More