Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Facebook and Twitter are leading a “dangerous move to silence conservative voices and religious freedoms” while supporting a state bill on Friday that would allow any Texans to be temporarily removed or banned from Facebook or Twitter to sue social media companies in order to be reinstated.
The bill, presented earlier this week by Republican state senators, is the latest in more than a dozen efforts that have sprung up across the country in recent weeks, following the banning of former President Donald Trump from the two social media platforms on sequence of January 6 riot at the Capitol.
At a press conference in Tyler, Texas, Abbott argued that social media companies have an obligation, under a 1996 federal law, known as Section 230, to keep their platforms open, and that Facebook’s violations of that law , Twitter and others give Texas the right to enforce its own state-specific regulations.
“The efforts of big technology to censor conservative views are not American and we are not going to allow that in the Lone Star State,” said Abbott.
Texas state senator Bryan Hughes, who sponsored the project and spoke to Abbott, said that all the state wanted to do was protect the freedom of its citizens. “We don’t allow a cable company to cut its television because of their religion,” said Hughes as a justification for the proposed law.
A Facebook spokesman did not return a request for comment from CBS MoneyWatch. In the past, Facebook and other social media companies have said they have the right to monitor and ban users on their platforms when those users post speeches that promote violence.
Many technology and media experts agree. In a statement, the TechNet industry group said the Texas project would lead to several unintended negative consequences, including exposing children to harmful content.
“Every day, millions of pieces of digital content are posted that show child exploitation, bullying, harassment, pornography and spam,” said TechNet. “This bill not only recklessly encourages companies to leave objectionable content in the public eye, but it also creates a culture that supports frivolous lawsuits against American companies.”
Sharon Bradford Franklin, director of policies at the New America Institute of Open Technology, said Abbott “does not have a correct understanding” of federal regulations. She said, in fact, that Section 230 gives social media platforms, and all sites, the ability to decide which speech they want to host and remove.
While states can enforce their own privacy laws on social media platforms, they are prohibited by federal law from enacting their own content policing laws on platforms, added Franklin. “If a law needs to be changed, Texas cannot do it alone,” she said. “I am confident that any court would consider that a law passed by a state to regulate content on social media platforms is not allowed.”
Conservatives have long claimed that they are censored on social media sites, although there is little independent evidence to support this. A study released last month by New York University found no credible support for the claim that conservatives are regularly blacklisted by major social media sites.
However, complaints of conservative censorship have gotten higher since Facebook, Twitter and others tried to limit calls for violence following the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill. This year alone, Republican lawmakers in 20 states introduced bills that would allow their citizens to sue social media companies if they were “deplored,” according to David Horowitz of the Media Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on First Amendment issues.
While states are trying to argue that Facebook should be regulated as a public square, in which all speech is protected, Horowitz believes that these states will find it difficult to approve this level of regulation on their own. The biggest obstacle: the Internet operates between states. Any new regulations imposed on Facebook in one state, for example, would impact the company in another. “There is no way for Texas to guarantee that its rules will govern only Texans,” said Horowitz.
Furthermore, Horowitz said, courts have long held that business owners also have their own First Amendment rights of free speech. “If a bookstore does not want to sell a book, the government cannot force it to do so,” said Horowitz. “I think social media platforms have the same rights.”