Supreme Court to hear challenges to Texas, Florida social media laws | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court to hear challenges to Texas, Florida social media laws

npr.org

21 pointsshagie11 comments

The audio for oral arguments if anyone is interested in listening:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2...

Texas is right. Platforms cannot pick and choose which viewpoints they want to allow. If they do, they become publishers and become responsible for what is published.

I really doubt they want that liability.

Incorrect. Platforms absolutely can pick and choose which viewpoints they want to allow. Their legal liability for what they "publish" does not depend on neutrality.

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

Thanks for that link!

Incorrect. It’s in hands of the Supreme Court now.

Is The CDA even implicated in these case? I don't think so according to the syllabus provided by the supreme court.

> "Freedom of speech is under attack in Texas," declared Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott at the bill signing. "There is a dangerous movement by some social media companies to silence conservative ideas and values. This is wrong and we will not allow it in Texas."

Should tell you all you need to know.

It's incredibly sad we've come to this and the free speech "libertarian" nature of the internet is long dead. These laws, even if found "legal", are just a band-aid and won't change the underlying truth about how half the country (and most new immigrants) think of free speech.

Sad, sure, but libertarianism doesn't scale. Once we let anyone's kids and randos on the Internet, the goose was cooked.

There's no putting that genie back in the bottle, short of making Internet 2.

Just to be clear, could you lay out for us how exactly you think social media sites would operate in a scenario where the Texas law was upheld? Let's say for example, that the Texas law was upheld and Hacker News lost any ability to moderate the comments section of this site, how do you think that would go?

I don’t think it’s possible, hence my point on societal changes. It’s unenforceable for the most part and would lead the last real free speech sites to really shut down.

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