5th Circuit Rejects First Amdt. Challenge to TX Social Media Common Carrier Law | Hacker News Reader

5th Circuit Rejects First Amdt. Challenge to TX Social Media Common Carrier Law

reason.com

Full Opinion Here: https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/NetchoicevPaxt...

It basically says muzzling/censoring the speech of others is not itself speech, or at least not protected speech in this context.

>the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of course, protects every person's right to "the freedom of speech." But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person's enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation's unenumerated right to muzzle speech.

Payment processors already deplatform businesses they don't like.

That’s BS. If citizen’s united made corporations corporeal allowing them to fund candidates and such surely it gives them free speech. The court’s narrow reading of things is odd at best as they want citizen’s united to hold so right wing candidates can be funded with unlimited corporate funds but don’t want the woke tech world to police speech. This ruling could make Cloudflare reinstate all the abhorrent sites they take down.

America continues to bifricuate and it sucks that the courts are becoming political as well. I think I’ll never return: I’ll just stay in the EU for the foreseeable future and enjoy a modicum of normalcy in government unless forced to return home to the US for some reason.

> they want citizen’s united to hold so right wing candidates can be funded with unlimited corporate funds but don’t want the woke tech world to police speech

The situation is not nearly so clear-cut. Both parties seem to get about equal amounts of corporate donations, while individual contributions vary. Currently, Democrats get slightly more than Republicans from billionaire donors. From <$200 donors, Republicans got more for the 2016 elections, but now Democrats seem to be taking the lead there too. Sources:

If you sum the donations from https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donor..., Democrats get 20% more donations from ultra-rich individuals (not corporations) than Republicans, in absolute terms.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/07/16/th... shows that the Republican Governor's Association raised $11 million from corporate and $13 million from individuals (mostly the ultra-rich), while the Democrat counterpart raised $12.8 million from corporate and only $1 million from individuals.

On the other hand, the 2012 Trump campaign got more funds from small (<$200) contributions than Hillary's - $239 million, which amounted to 69% of his individual contributions, compared to Hillary's $137 million, which amounted to 22% of her individual contributions: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/nov/13/kayleigh-m...

And many corporations have cut ties with election objector Republicans: https://fortune.com/2022/02/15/political-donations-corporate...

For actual corporate donations, those go through PACs. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs... shows the split by party and year.

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