The big American technology companies (Facebook, YouTube, TikTok or X) breathed a sigh of relief. After almost four hours of legal debate, they concluded that the majority of the members of the US Supreme Court lean in their favor and against the Texas and Florida laws that seek to limit their ability to moderate and prohibit content on their social networks.
Several of the nine justices, both conservative and liberal, showed skepticism about these regulations, suggested the capacity of the networks to edit content – ??although they pointed out that they do not have protection in the Constitution for anything goes – and leaned against the regulations of both states to prevent content from being deleted.
Pending its ruling, scheduled for June, the result will have a significant impact on the online operations of companies that increasingly play a more relevant role in citizens’ habits, public discussions, elections or democracy.
If they were in favor of states, that would expose users to any aberration.
But the judges indicated that the rules in question could infringe on the companies’ ability to make decisions. Although the justices expressed concern about the power of social media giants, the majority of the High Court expressed the thought that the First Amendment (protects free speech) prevents state governments from requiring companies to host certain contents.
At the heart of the matter is that first amendment and whether it protects the editorial discretion of large social networks or prohibits the censorship of unpopular points of view. Articles in these media have the ability to spread extremism and misinformation, but, at the same time, remove controversial issues that can silence discussions in important debates.
Texas and Florida, two states dominated by the far-right, passed laws in 2021 that limited the ability of social networks to regulate user content linked to the suppression of conservative postulates.
The laws were inspired by the measure by Twitter (today
Both laws, very controversial from the moment of their conception, represented a severe restriction on companies to regulate or remove individual articles that contravened the platforms’ rules. This process comes when, on the contrary, Congress, the federal executive and many states and even local governments try to establish limitations on the use of networks due to the danger they pose to the mental health of minors.
Several of the justices agreed that the states violated the first amendment with their laws by telling the platforms that they could not moderate the publications of their users, making distinctions between the government censorship prohibited by that amendment and the content moderation actions of private parties. .
Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether the power to decide who can and cannot speak on a particular platform belongs to the government or businesses.
“The first amendment restricts what the government can do, and what the government is saying here is what you should do, the people you should take in, and you have to explain it if you don’t. This is not the first amendment,” Roberts stressed.
“I have a problem with laws that are so broad that they repress expression,” said progressive Sonia Sotomayor.
But there were judges who also did not seem convinced that this first amendment protects all aspects of digital platforms.
In that sense, ultra-conservative Judge Samuel Alito leaned in favor of the laws and questioned whether when social networks restrict an opinion, that should not be described as censorship instead of “content moderation.”
