Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he’s working with state legislators on a bill to prevent big tech companies from taking action to moderate user content based on political viewpoints.
Florida would also require companies who promote a candidate to record such endorsements as a political campaign contribution at the state’s election commission.
Several states are taking steps to protect the free flow of speech and prevent Silicon Valley companies from using their monopoly to police speech they don’t agree with. These companies have been scrutinized repeatedly for their perceived political bias and alleged unbalanced moderation of users’ content. Critics say much of the companies’ moderation in the past year has focused on conservative speech and speech from individuals deemed to be supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Hughes, a Republican, told Inside Texas Politics that the measure he and Abbott intend to introduce will address any unbalanced moderation of user accounts by social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook.
Officials at Google, Facebook, and Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
On the same day, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also confirmed that his state will take further steps to address big tech censorship, adding that the state has already started by filing an antitrust lawsuit against Google in December 2020.
“We have already started. We have a lawsuit against Google that focuses some of the very issues about their dominance, about how they abuse consumers, about how they take their private information, they don’t pay these consumers and they then use that information to make billions of dollars without the consumer really knowing how their private information is going to be used.
“So yes, I think you’re going to see more from my state in the coming months and coming years because if we don’t do something now, it’s maybe too late and these companies will have such dominance and so much money.”
Trump and his Justice Department repeatedly urged Congress to roll back liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act for companies that have engaged in censoring or political conduct. They have accused the companies of acting as publishers rather than online platforms when they engage in targeted moderation of user content. Protections under Section 230 aren’t intended to be used to protect publishers.
Meanwhile, the campaign to remove Section 230 protections have received pushback from technology groups.
