And doesn’t even know it.
Federal judge blocks Florida law that would have fined social media platforms for banning politicians
US District Judge Robert Hinkle of the Northern District of Florida said in issuing a preliminary injunction, “The plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits of their claim that these statutes violate the First Amendment. There is nothing that could be severed and survive.” The law was due to go into effect Thursday.
The judge’s claim is that the Florida law violates the companies’ First Amendment rights, free speech. He’s finding that platforms’ content control and user bans are speech; their own speech. But Section 230‘s protection for social media platforms is that it isn’t their speech; they just provide a virtual bulletin board for other people’s speech.
1(c)(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
I think I’ll go prepare a bowl of popcorn and wait for more people to realize what this guy just did.
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Hardly an earthshaking observation here: When a “social media company” has an effective monopoly, they in effect become a utility, and their decisions regarding who they provide service to becomes the suppression of others’ speech.