Connect with us

Social Media

Twitter Takeover by Elon Musk Forces Conflict Over Free Speech on Social Networks

Transparency laws in Calif. and N.Y. are the ‘liberal’ counterpart to the ‘conservative’ speech laws in Texas and Florida.

Published

1 year ago

on

WASHINGTON, November 23, 2022 — As the Supreme Court prepares to hear two cases that may decide the future of content moderation, panelists on a Broadband Breakfast Live Online panel disagreed over the steps that platforms can and should take to ensure fairness and protect free speech.

Mike Masnick, founder and editor of Techdirt, argued that both sides of the aisle were attempting to control speech in one way or another, pointing to laws in California and New York as the liberal counterpoints to the laws in Texas and Florida that are headed to the Supreme Court.

“They’re not as blatant, but they are nudging companies to moderate in a certain way,” he said. “And I think those are equally unconstitutional.”

Censorship posed a greater threat to the ideal of free speech than would a law forcing platforms to carry certain content, said Bret Swanson, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“Free speech and pluralism, as an ethos for the country and really for the West, are in fact more important than the First Amendment,” he said.

At the same time, content moderation legislation is stalled by a sharp partisan divide, said Mark MacCarthy, a nonresident senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation.

“Liberals and progressives want action to remove lies and hate speech and misinformation from social media and the conservatives want equal time for conservative voices, so there’s a logjam gridlock that can’t move,” he said. “I think it might be broken if, as I predict, the Supreme Court says that the only way you can regulate social media companies is through transparency.”

Twitter’s past and current practices raise questions about bias and free speech

While talking about Elon Musk’s controversial changes to Twitter’s content moderation practices, panelists also discussed the impact of Musk’s rhetoric surrounding the topic more broadly.

“Declaring yourself as a free speech site without understanding what free speech actually means is something that doesn’t last very long,” Masnick said.

When a social media company like Twitter or Parler declares itself to be a “free speech site,” it is really just sending a signal to some of the worst people and trolls online to begin harassment, abuse and bigotry, he said.

That is not a sustainable business model, Masnick argued.

But Swanson took the opposite approach. He called Musk’s acquisition of Twitter “a real seminal moment in the history and the future of free speech,” and called it an antidote to “the most severe collapse of free speech maybe in American history.”

MacCarthy said he didn’t believe the oft-repeated assertion that Twitter was biased against conservatives before most Musk took over. “The only study I’ve seen of political pluralism on Twitter — and it was done by Twitter itself back when they had the staff to do that kind of thing — suggested that Twitter’s amplification and recommendation engines actually favored conservative tweets over liberal ones.”

Masnick agreed, pointing to other academic studies: “They seemed to bend over backwards to often allow conservatives to break the rules more than others,” he said.

Randolph May, president of The Free State Foundation, said that he was familiar with the studies but disagreed with their findings.

Citing the revelations from the laptop of Hunter Biden, a story that the New York Post broke in October 2020 about the Joe Biden’s son, May said: “To me, that that was a consequential censorship action. Then six months later before a congressional committee, [Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey said, ‘Oops, we made we made a big mistake when we took down the New York Post stories.’”

Multiple possibilities for the future of content moderation

Despite his criticism of current practices, May said he did not believe platforms should eliminate content moderation practices altogether. He drew a distinction between topics subject to legitimate public debate and those posts that encourage terrorism or facilitate sex trafficking. Those kinds of posts should be subject to moderation practices, he said.

May made three suggestions for better content moderation practices: First, platforms should establish a presumption that they will not censor or downgrade material without clear evidence that their terms of service have been violated.

Second, platforms should work to enable tools that facilitate personalization of the user experience.

Finally, the current state of Section 230 immunity should be replaced with a “reasonableness standard,” he said.

Other panelists disagreed with the subjectivity of such a reasonableness standard. MacCarthy highlighted the Texas social media law, which bans discrimination based on viewpoint. “Viewpoint is undefined: What does that mean?” he asked.

“Does it mean you can’t get rid of Nazi speech, you can’t get rid of hate speech, you can’t get rid of racist speech? What does it mean? No one knows. And so here’s a requirement of government that no one can interpret. If I were the Supreme Court, I’d declare that void for vagueness in a moment.”

MacCarthy predicted that the Supreme Court would reject the content-based provisions in the Texas and Florida laws while upholding the transparency standard, opening the door, he argued, for bipartisan transparency legislation.

But to Masnick, even merely a transparency requirement would be an unsatisfactory result: “How would conservatives feel if the government said, ‘Fox News needs to be transparent about how they make their editorial decision making?’”

“I think everyone would recognize immediately that that is a huge First Amendment concern,” he said.

Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, November 23, 2022, 12 Noon ET – Elon and Ye and Donald, Oh My!

With Elon Musk finally taking the reins at Twitter after a tumultuous acquisition process, what additional new changes will come to the world’s de facto public square? The world’s richest man has already reinstated certain banned accounts, including that of former president Donald Trump. Trump has made his own foray into the world of conservative social media, as has politically polarizing rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, currently in the process of purchasing right-wing alternative platform Parler. Ye is no stranger to testing the limits of controversial speech. With Twitter in the hands of Musk, Parler in the process of selling and Trump’s Truth Social sort-of-kind-of forging ahead in spite of false starts, is a new era of conservative social media upon us?

Panelists

  • Mark MacCarthy, Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies, Center for Technology Innovation, Brookings Institution
  • Mike Masnick, Founder and Editor, Techdirt
  • Randolph May, President, The Free State Foundation
  • Bret Swanson, Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
  • Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

Panelist resources:

Mark MacCarthy is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings. He is also adjunct professor at Georgetown University in the Graduate School’s Communication, Culture, & Technology Program and in the Philosophy Department. He teaches courses in the governance of emerging technology, AI ethics, privacy, competition policy for tech, content moderation for social media, and the ethics of speech. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown Law.

Mike Masnick is the founder and editor of the popular Techdirt blog as well as the founder of the Silicon Valley think tank, the Copia Institute. In both roles, he explores the intersection of technology, innovation, policy, law, civil liberties, and economics. His writings have been cited by Congress and the EU Parliament. According to a Harvard Berkman Center study, his coverage of the SOPA copyright bill made Techdirt the most linked-to media source throughout the course of that debate.

Randolph May is founder and president of The Free State Foundation, an independent, non-profit free market-oriented think tank founded in 2006. He has practiced communications, administrative, and regulatory law as a partner at major national law firms. From 1978 to 1981, May served as Assistant General Counsel and Associate General Counsel at the Federal Communication Commission. He is a past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of  Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.

Bret Swanson is president of the technology research firm Entropy Economics LLC, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a visiting fellow at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University and chairman of the Indiana Public Retirement System (INPRS). He writes the Infonomena newsletter at infonomena.substack.com.

Drew Clark (moderator) is CEO of Breakfast Media LLC, the Editor and Publisher of BroadbandBreakfast.com and a nationally-respected telecommunications attorney. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, he served as head of the State Broadband Initiative in Illinois. Now, in light of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, attorney Clark helps fiber-based and wireless clients secure funding, identify markets, broker infrastructure and operate in the public right of way.

Social media controversy has centered around Elon Musk’s Twitter, Ye’s new role in Parler, and former U.S. President Donald Trump

WATCH HERE, or on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTube channel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. 

See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.

Related Topics:

Reporter Em McPhie studied communication design and writing at Washington University in St. Louis, where she was a managing editor for the student newspaper. In addition to agency and freelance marketing experience, she has reported extensively on Section 230, big tech, and rural broadband access. She is a founding board member of Code Open Sesame, an organization that teaches computer programming skills to underprivileged children.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

12 Days of Broadband

12 Days of Broadband: State Regulations and Children’s Safety Online

12 year olds (and older) having to age-verify on social media may become more common going forward.

Published

2 weeks ago

on

January 3, 2024

By

Illustration by DALL-E

January 3, 2024 – A nationwide push to restrict teenagers’ online actions gained ground in 2023 as several states implemented stringent laws targeting social media use among youth.

In March, Utah ventured into uncharted territory when Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed two measures, H.B. 311 and S.B. 152, mandating parental consent for all minors – 17 and under – before they can register for platforms like TikTok and Meta’s Instagram. For decades, the default standard of the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act has been no restrictions on social media use by kids 13 and over.

The pair of bills, which do not go into effect until March 2024, require individuals under 18 to gain parental consent to open a social media account, bar minors from accessing social media platforms between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., and grant parents full access to their child’s social media accounts.

In October, Utah announced a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging that the app deploys addictive features to hook young users. The lawsuit raises additional concerns regarding user data and privacy, citing that TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, is legally binded with the Chinese Communist Party. 

Arkansas, Montana may be following Utah

Soon after, Arkansas took a similar step as Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Act 689, named the Social Media Safety Act, in April 2023. The newly approved act, aiming to mandate age verification and parental consent for social media users under 18, was set to come into effect on September 1. 

However, on that very day, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks granted a preliminary injunction following a petition from the tech trade industry group, NetChoice Litigation Center. Their contention was that the new law infringed upon the First Amendment’s freedom of expression guarantee.

In May, Montana Gov. Greg Ganforte signed legislation banning TikTok on all devices statewide, threatening fines up to $10,000 per violation for app providers like Google and Apple. Before the law took effect on January 1, Federal Judge Donald Molloy stopped the TikTok ban in late November, stating that the law exceeds state authority and violates the constitutional rights of users. 

Shortly after, TikTok filed a lawsuit against Montana. Judge Molloy found merit to numerous arguments raised by TikTok, including that TikTok has a number of safeguards in place surrounding user data.

Is Age verification a First Amendment issue?

Consumer groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have raised issues with the fact that many of these bills extend beyond merely mandating age verification solely for minors; they now necessitate age verification through proof of legal documents for anyone seeking to utilize social media within the states.

The issue was much discussed at a Broadband Breakfast Live Online session in November 2023, where child safety advocate Donna Rice Hughes and Tony Allen, executive director of Age Check Certification Scheme, agreed that age verification systems were much more robust than from a generation ago, when the Supreme Court struck down one such scheme. They disagreed with civil liberties groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

On TikTok, 13 states joined in enacting bans over the use of the Chinese-owned platform being installed on government-issued devices. That brings to 34 the total number of states that have banned TikTok on government devices due to national security concerns. Additionally, more than 40 public universities have barred TikTok from their on-campus Wi-Fi and university-owned computers in response to these state-level bans.

See “The Twelve Days of Broadband” on Broadband Breakfast

Continue Reading

Social Media

Diverse Groups File Amicus Briefs Against Florida and Texas Social Media Laws

The Supreme Court will decide whether the social media laws violate the First Amendment.

Published

1 month ago

on

December 8, 2023

By

Photo of Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar in June 2023 by Ryland West of ALM

WASHINGTON, December 8, 2023 –  Industry, public interest, and conservative groups filed briefs with the Supreme Court this week arguing against Texas and Florida social media laws.

Drafted to combat what state legislators saw as the unfair treatment of right-wing content online, the 2021 laws would allow residents of those states to sue social media companies for suspending their accounts. Both have been blocked from going into effect after legal challenges from tech industry trade groups. The cases were initially separate, but the Supreme Court agreed in October to hear them together because they raise similar issues.

Industry groups argue the laws violate the First Amendment by forcing platforms to host speech they normally would not. The White House agrees – Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asked the Court in August to take up the issue and strike down Texas’s law.

Consumer protection group Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief on Thursday in support of the tech trade groups, arguing the laws are unconstitutional and “driven by political animus.”

Center-right think tank TechFreedom filed a similar brief on Wednesday. 

“Only the state can ‘censor’ speech,” Corbin Barthold, the group’s director of appellate litigation, said in a statement. “And these states are doing so by trying to co-opt websites’ right to editorial control over the speech they disseminate.

Both groups also pushed against the states’ move to treat social media platforms as ‘common carrier’ services, a part of both laws. The legal designation, typically applied to services like railroads or voice telephone calls, requires a carrier to serve the public at just rates without unreasonable discrimination.

The states’ move to designate social media platforms as common carriers would make it more difficult for them to refuse their service to users. But the designation, the groups argued, does not map cleanly onto the service social media provides, as the platforms make editorial decisions about content they transmit – through moderation and recommendation – in a way companies like voice providers do not.

In all, at least 40 similar briefs have been filed arguing against the laws, according to the Computer and Communications Industry Association, one of the parties in the case.

A set of 15 states with Republican-led legislatures and former president Donald Trump, who had multiple social media accounts suspended after the January 2021 attack on the Capitol, have filed amicus briefs in support of Texas and Florida. The Court is expected to hear oral arguments in the case sometime in 2024.

Continue Reading

Free Speech

Improved Age Verification Allows States to Consider Restricting Social Media

Constitutional issues leading courts to strike down age verification law are still present, said EFF.

Published

2 months ago

on

November 20, 2023

By

WASHINGTON, November 20, 2023 — A Utah law requiring age verification for social media accounts is likely to face First Amendment lawsuits, experts warned during an online panel Wednesday hosted by Broadband Breakfast.

The law, set to take effect in March 2024, mandates that all social media users in Utah verify their age and imposes additional restrictions on minors’ accounts.

The Utah law raises the same constitutional issues that have led courts to strike down similar laws requiring age verification, said Aaron Mackey, free speech and transparency litigation director at the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“What you have done is you have substantially burdened everyone’s First Amendment right to access information online that includes both adults and minors,” Mackey said. “You make no difference between the autonomy and First Amendment rights of older teens and young adults” versus young children, he said.

But Donna Rice Hughes, CEO of Enough is Enough, contended that age verification technology has successfully restricted minors’ access to pornography and could be applied to social media as well.

“Utah was one of the first states [to] have age verification technology in place to keep minor children under the age of 18 off of porn sites and it’s working,” she said.

Tony Allen, executive director of Age Check Certification Scheme, agreed that age verification systems had progressed considerably from a generation ago, when the Supreme Court in 2002’s Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, struck down the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. The law had been designed to shield minors from indecent material, but the court ruled that age-verification methods often failed at that task.

Andrew Zack, policy manager at the Family Online Safety Institute, said that his organization he welcomed interest in youth safety policies from Utah.

But Zack said, “We still have some concerns about the potential unintended consequences that come with this law,”  worrying particularly about potential unintended consequences for teen privacy and expression rights.

Taylor Barkley, director of technology and innovation at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, highlighted the importance of understanding the specific problems the law aims to address. “Policy Solutions have trade-offs.” urging that solutions be tailored to the problems identified.

Panelists generally agreed that comprehensive data privacy legislation could help address social media concerns without facing the same First Amendment hurdles.

Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, November 15, 2023 – Social Media for Kids in Utah

In March 2023, Utah became the first state to adopt laws regulating kids’ access to social media. This legislative stride was rapidly followed by several states, including Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi, with numerous others contemplating similar measures. For nearly two decades, social media platforms enjoyed unbridled growth and influence. The landscape is now changing as lawmakers become more active in shaping the future of digital communication. This transformation calls for a nuanced evaluation of the current state of social media in the United States, particularly in light of Utah’s pioneering role. Is age verification the right way to go? What are the broader implications of this regulatory trend for the future of digital communication and online privacy across the country?

Panelists

  • Andrew Zack, Policy Manager, Family Online Safety Institute
  • Donna Rice Hughes, President and CEO of Enough Is Enough
  • Taylor Barkley, Director of Technology and Innovation, Center for Growth and Opportunity
  • Tony Allen, Executive Director, Age Check Certification Scheme
  • Aaron Mackey, Free Speech and Transparency Litigation Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

Panelist resources

Andrew Zack is the Policy Manager for the Family Online Safety Institute, leading policy and research work relating to online safety issues, laws, and regulations. He works with federal and state legislatures, relevant federal agencies, and industry leaders to develop and advance policies that promote safe and positive online experience for families. Andrew joined FOSI after five years in Senator Ed Markey’s office, where he worked primarily on education, child welfare, and disability policies. Andrew studied Government and Psychology at the College of William and Mary.

Donna Rice Hughes, President and CEO of Enough Is Enough is an internationally known Internet safety expert, author, speaker and producer. Her vision, expertise and advocacy helped to birth the Internet safety movement in America at the advent of the digital age. Since 1994, she has been a pioneering leader on the frontlines of U.S. efforts to make the internet safer for children and families by implementing a three-pronged strategy of the public, the technology industry and legal community sharing the responsibility to protect children online.

Taylor Barkley is the Director of Technology and Innovation at the Center for Growth and Opportunity where he manages the research agenda, strategy, and represents the technology and innovation portfolio. His primary research and expertise are at the intersection of culture, technology, and innovation. Prior roles in tech policy have been at Stand Together, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Tony Allen a Chartered Trading Standards Practitioner and acknowledged specialist in age restricted sales law and practice. He is the Chair of the UK Government’s Expert Panel on Age Restrictions and Executive Director of a UKAS accredited conformity assessment body specialising in age and identity assurance testing and certification. He is the Technical Editor of the current international standard for Age Assurance Systems.

Aaron Mackey is EFF’s Free Speech and Transparency Litigation Director. He helps lead cases advancing free speech, anonymity, and privacy online while also working to increase public access to government records. Before joining EFF in 2015, Aaron was in Washington, D.C. where he worked on speech, privacy, and freedom of information issues at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law

Breakfast Media LLC CEO Drew Clark has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing campaign for broadband data. As Editor and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media company advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.

WATCH HERE, or on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTube channel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.

Continue Reading

Signup for Broadband Breakfast News



Broadband Breakfast Research Partner

BroadbandNow: Internet Provider Search and research on the digital divide

Trending