Make this man President. Ron DeSantis has signed into law something that will allow Floridians to sue Big Tech if they have been banned by one sided “selectively enforced” rules. Finally, Big Tech, at least in Florida, will have to set some rules and apply them to both sides of any debate or the aggrieved party can sue Big Tech.
“I, along with the legislators and this great governor, do not think that a handful of kids behind some desks in Silicon Valley get to be the arbiter of what free speech is,” House bill sponsor Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill said.
The new law comes into effect on July 1. It applies to any company with a revenue over $100 million or who have 100 million monthly participants. This is about maintaining a free and open town square. If political candidates are deplatformed it will cost the Tech Giants a quarter of a million dollars a day. (Those fines might have to be raised).
Coming soon: Big Tech to create all kinds of rules that benefit people who like Oligarchs.
Presumably Big Tech have already convened a team to deal with this. Expect their new rules to allow expressions of anything in peer reviewed literature, or approved by the FDA, AMA, Fed Reserve, or New York Times. And after the Biden Government sets up a Ministry of BLM, and a Department of Gender-Rights, then, “that too”.
It’s only step one in an arms race, but it’s a step.
DeSantis Signs Bill to Stop Big Tech Censorship of Floridians
by Bowen Xiao, Epoch Times
Courts may award up to $100,000 in damages to an individual if a social media platform censors or shadowbans a user’s content, deplatforms a user, or if it hasn’t applied censorship or deplatforming standards in a consistent manner, according to the text of the bill.
“We will be the first state to hold Big Tech accountable,” DeSantis said at a press conference. “They are exerting a power that really has no precedent in American history.”
Big tech companies that violate the bill, SB 7072 Social Media Platforms, can be sued by Floridians for monetary damages. The state’s attorney general can bring action against companies that violate this law under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Big-Tech are protected by Section 230, which treats the publishers as if they were really neutral platforms. DeSantis can’t change that, but he can enforce it:
According to Florida state, the new law will likely be able to withstand legal challenges, as it contains language that explains how Big Tech companies are different from other corporations, and that Section 230 requires companies to act in good faith—something the governor accuses Big Tech of not always following.
The bill allows the state attorney general to use Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.” That might hurt a lot more:
“If social media platforms are found to have violated antitrust law, they will be restricted from contracting with any public entity. That ‘antitrust violator’ blacklist imposes real consequences for Big Tech oligopolies’ bottom line,” his office said.
Amazon has nearly 500 federal subcontracts, how many state contracts does it have? If Florida leads the way in cutting off public contracts — other states will follow suit.
DeSantis has a great example of last years censored “conspiracy” which is this years topic du jour:
“Now we have information that this very well may have emanated from the Wuhan lab, that it was a leak from the lab. But you remember when people last year were raising that as something that needed to be investigated, they were deplatformed for talking about the lab leak,” DeSantis said.
“They were censored for having said that. And now, even Fauci admits that this may be something that very well is the case. Are they now going to censor Fauci and pull him down off social media?” he asked.
Because corporate media said it was a conspiracy theory
There is already opposition to it, and calls saying it is unconstitutional:
… the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
“The (bill) compels businesses to host speech that contradicts the terms and agreements to which users agree — which legal and First Amendment experts have claimed is unconstitutional,” Julio Fuentes, president of the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said in a prepared statement. “In the same way that a grocery store can turn customers away for not wearing shoes or shirts in their store, social media companies have the right to turn users away for violating their rules.”
The Hispanic Chamber doesn’t seem to know that Facebook et al have no rules apart from what they make up on the day. And for every rule they announce there are one hundred breaches they ignore by Ayatollah Khamenei.
Just holding them to one set of rules will sort them out.
via JoNova
May 25, 2021
You must be logged in to post a comment.