Top line
The Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily blocked a Texas Law In a bid to limit users’ ability to moderate content on social media platforms, a law advocate says they promote freedom of speech but critics say platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will be forced to tolerate extremism.
Basic information
The court Voted 5-4 Tech Trade Group NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) to approve a request by a lower court to overturn a decision suspending the law while it is being sued.
Unexpectedly, the ruling came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Reversed A ruling barring Texas from enforcing the law, which would ban social media platforms from “censoring” users based on their “views,” whether published on or off the platform.
A. FilingNetChoice and CCIA have claimed that the law would require platforms for propaganda campaigns such as ISIS, the Kremlin and the KKK, expel advertisers and junk content moderation systems that cost billions of dollars to develop.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other officials argued Filing The social media platforms, which have made themselves the gatekeepers of public squares, have resorted to harsh and arbitrary censorship.
In a dissent OpinionsJustice Samuel Alito said it was “not at all clear” how pre-Internet judgments should be applied to social media platforms, arguing that the Supreme Court’s intervention was premature.
Watch for what
If the appellate court rules in favor of Texas, the law may eventually be effective.
Tangent
Texas Law Social media platforms will not be required to allow all speeches. Platforms will still be able to remove content that “directly incites” criminal activity or includes specific threats of violence against an individual or group of people due to race, gender or other personal characteristics. Platforms will still be allowed to remove content at the request of groups working to prevent harassment of survivors of child sexual abuse or sexual abuse.
Original background
The Texas Act was passed in 2021, Inspired Allegations that platforms like Twitter and Facebook are censoring conservatives. The supposed liberal bias of these platforms created a market for right-leaning alternatives such as Parlor, Gabe and Donald Trump’s Truth Social, which turned out to be concise. Most downloaded Free app in Apple’s App Store despite widespread technical issues. However, none of these alternative platforms could challenge the size of mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which commands 229 million And 1.93 billion Active users, respectively. Research has so far failed to confirm the popular notion that major social media platforms censor right-leaning users: Twitter Internal research It has been observed that the platform promotes content from right-wing sources rather than content from left-wing sources, while April Study Researchers at MIT, Exeter and Yale University determined that Republicans were more likely to be banned from Twitter because they were more likely to promote it. Forbidden Misinformation and not because Twitter was biased against them.
Read more
“Tech groups representing Facebook and Twitter have filed lawsuits against Texas under the Social Media Censorship Act” (Forbes)