To combat disinformation, California State Legislatures are pushing for a bill that will force social media companies to uncover a process for removing false, hateful, or radical material from their platforms. .. In contrast, Texas lawmakers want to ban the largest companies, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube from deleting posts from a political point of view.
In Washington, the state’s Justice Secretary persuaded the court to fine nonprofit organizations and their lawyers $ 28,000 for making unfounded legal oppositions to the 2020 governor’s election. In Alabama, lawmakers want to allow people to claim financial damages from social media platforms that close their accounts for posting false content.
In the absence of significant action against disinformation at the federal level, state officials are targeting the sources of disinformation and the platforms that disseminate it. Only they do so from a completely different ideological standpoint. In this deeply polarized era, even the battle for truth breaks along the lines of the faction.
The result is a dissonance of state legislation and legal action that could intensify the information bubble of increasingly dividing countries along various issues such as abortion, guns and the environment and geographical boundaries.
The November midterm elections are driving much of the activity at the state level. The Red States have focused on protecting conservative voices on social media, including those that spread unfounded allegations of widespread fraudulent elections.
In the blue states, lawmakers sought to force the same company to do more to prevent the spread of conspiracy theories and other harmful information on a wide range of topics, including voting rights and Covid-19.
“We shouldn’t wait and raise our hands and say this is an impossible beast that will take over our democracy,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said in an interview. rice field.
Calling disinformation a “nuclear weapon” that threatens the foundations of a country’s democracy, he upholds a law that criminalizes spreading lies about elections. He praised the $ 28,000 fine imposed on advocates who challenged the integrity of the state’s vote in 2020.
“We should creatively look for potential ways to reduce that impact,” he said, referring to disinformation.
The biggest hurdle to the new regulation is the First Amendment, regardless of the political party promoting it. Lobbyists at social media companies are trying to moderate content, but governments shouldn’t engage in businesses that dictate how it’s done.
Concerns about freedom of speech are “a misdemeanor punished with up to a year’s imprisonment for spreading lies about free and fair elections when it could stir violence” for candidates and elected civil servants. Defeated the deep blue Washington bill that would be. .. “
Faced with unfounded allegations of fraudulent elections after winning the third term in 2020, Governor Insley upheld the bill, citing the 1969 Brandenberg v. Ohio Supreme Court ruling. With this ruling, the state is calling for violence or criminal activity when “such advocacy is intended to incite or produce imminent illegal activity and is likely to incite or produce such activity.” I was able to punish.
The bill stalled in the state Senate in February, but Mr Insley said the scale of the matter required urgent action.
The scope of the problem of disinformation, and the scope of the power of tech companies, is beginning to undermine the notion that freedom of speech is politically untouchable.
The new Texas law has already reached the Supreme Court, blocking the law from coming into force in May, but sent the case back to the Federal Court of Appeals for further consideration. Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill last year. This was partly prompted by Facebook and Twitter’s decision to close the account of former President Donald J. Trump after the violence in the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The court’s ruling shows that one major issue can be revisited as to whether social media platforms such as newspapers retain a high degree of editorial freedom.
“It’s not entirely clear how our existing precedents ahead of the Internet age should apply to large social media companies,” Judge Samuel A. Arito Jr. suspends law enforcement. I challenged the court’s urgent decision.
A federal judge blocked a similar law in Florida last month. This would result in a $ 250,000 daily fine if social media companies block political candidates from platforms that have become an integral tool in modern campaigns. Other states with Republican-controlled parliaments, such as Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Alaska, are proposing similar measures.
Steve Marshall, Attorney General of Alabama, has created an online portal where residents can complain that access to social media is restricted: alabamaag.gov/Censored. In a written answer to his question, he stated that social media platforms have stepped up efforts to limit content between the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.
“During this period (and still going on), social media platforms have abandoned all the pretense of promoting free speech. This is the principle of marketing to users and has openly and arrogantly proclaimed the Ministry of Truth. “He writes. “Suddenly, any perspective that deviated from the general Orthodox school was censored.”
Much of today’s state-level activity is fueled by fraudulent claims that Mr. Trump, not President Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. Repeatedly disproved, Republicans cite claims to introduce dozens of bills limiting absentee or mail voting in the states they control.
The Democratic Party has moved in the opposite direction. The 16 states have expanded the ability of people to vote and have increased preemptive accusations among conservative lawmakers and critics that the Democratic Party is committed to cheating.
Sean Morales Doyle, Deputy Director of Voting Rights at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan election advocate at NYU School of Law, said: “Now, more than ever, your voting rights depend on where you live. This year we saw half of the country going in one direction and the other half going in the opposite direction. It’s going on. “
TechNet, a lobbying group for internet companies, has fought local proposals in dozens of states. Industry executives claim that variations in state law create a confusing patchwork of rules for businesses and consumers. Instead, companies are emphasizing their own enforcement of disinformation and other harmful content.
“These decisions are made as consistently as possible,” said David Edmonson, Vice President of State Policy and Government Relations for the Group.
For many politicians, the issue has become a powerful club against adversaries, accusing each side of spreading lies, and both groups have criticized the social media giants.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has raised election funds from his vows to advance the fight against what is called an “authoritarian company” trying to curb conservative voices.
In Ohio, Senator and Republican candidate JD Vance has said he has countered social media giants and suppressed news about the president’s son, Hunter Biden’s foreign commerce.
In Missouri, former Republican senator Vicky Hartzler has released a television ad criticizing Twitter for suspending personal accounts after posting a statement about a transgender athlete. “They want to cancel you,” she said in an ad, defending her statement as “what God intended.”
OnMessage, a polling firm that counts on the National Republic Senate as a client, reports that 80% of the primaries surveyed in 2021 believe tech companies are too powerful to be held accountable. did. Six years ago, only 20 percent said that.
“Votes are clearly afraid of canceling culture and censoring political views,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the National Republican Senate.
In Blue State, Democrats, through false claims about elections and Covid, and through racist or anti-Semitic sources that motivated violent attacks such as the May Buffalo supermarket massacre. It focuses directly on disinformation about harm to society.
Connecticut will spend about $ 2 million on marketing to share facts about voting and create a position for experts to eradicate false voting information before it gets infected with the virus. .. Similar efforts to establish a disinformation committee at the Department of Homeland Security have caused political anger before work was suspended in May until an internal review took place.
In California, the state legislature is pushing for legislation that requires social media companies to disclose policies on hate speech, disinformation, radicalism, harassment, and foreign political interference. (The law doesn’t force them to limit content.) Another bill is big like TikTok or Meta’s Facebook or Instagram if their product proves to have addicted children. Allow civil lawsuits against large social media platforms.
“All of these challenges we face have a common thread, which is the power of social media to amplify really problematic content,” said Democrat Jesse Gabriel. .. Transparency from social media platforms. “This has significant consequences both online and in physical space.”
It seems unlikely that a surge in legislative activity will have a significant impact before the elections this fall. In the event of a disinformation accusation inevitably, social media companies will not take a single, acceptable response.
Matt Perault, Director of the Center for Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina, said: “With abortion, guns and democratic participation at the forefront of voters’ minds, the platform will face fierce challenges in mitigating speech. The decisions made by the platform may dissatisfy either side. I have.”
