During oral arguments, SCOTUS justices seemed reluctant to strike down Texas' and Florida's social media laws, but raised concerns about companies' 1A rights
Update Tim Wu / New York Times : Big Tech's Latest Power Grab: the Constitution Washington Post : A roundup of the oral arguments made in the Supreme Court for two cases involving Florida's and Texas' social media laws that impose strict limits on moderation Threads: Dave Lee / @daveleebbg : All I could think today listening to the Supreme Court hearings on social media: Why is so much time, money and effort going into discussing a failed Ron DeSantis publicity stunt? Horrendous waste Casey Newton / @crumbler : Forcing tech platforms to carry harassment and other harmful speech is unconstitutional — and it seems like a majority of the Supreme Court agrees https://www.platformer.news/ ... Bluesky: Mike Masnick / @mmasnick.bsky.social : I think Kavanaugh definitely sees the issues most clearly of all the justices. Jackson's questions were... scary. But, as always, trying to read the tea leaves via oral arguments is generally not a good idea. I am very slightly cautiously optimistic, but still super worried. Mike Masnick / @mmasnick.bsky.social : Okay, well the Supreme Court oral arguments on the future of the internet (and speech) just ended. There was a lot of messiness in there. I'm going to go back through the transcript, but... there are many ways SCOTUS might mess this up, and their questions were not confidence building. X: Marty Swant / @martyswant : A key question from Justice Thomas regarding social media algorithms and the role of deep learning: “Who's speaking then: The algorithm or the person?” I wonder how that question & thread of thought would apply to content creation & moderation related to AI-generated content. Billy Easley II / @billyez2 : With the exception of the Etsy discussion, there was way too much focus on the biggest social media sites in oral arguments Dr. Jess Maddox / @drjessmaddox : The precedent tells us the states will lose. SCOTUS has overwhelmingly sided with Big Tech in the past because of Section 230. It will come down to a couple things that I would have eaten my hat on 10 years ago: The strength of the First Amendment arguments... Daniel Lyons / @profdaniellyons : Etsy continues to punch far above its weight in Internet law & policy discussions. Thomas Berry / @thomas_a_berry : No matter what procedural resolution the Court chooses, the good news is that the Court seems unlikely to endorse the states' sweeping and dangerous arguments that a government may tell websites what to publish without inflicting any First Amendment injury. Jess Miers / @jess_miers : @Meta [I love that the Court isn't buying Texas' bullshit re: can't operate in the state of Texas. The law literally says that the platforms can't exit Texas because of this law. The State is quite literally lying to the Court. I hope NetChoice calls this TF out]. Nora Benavidez / @attorneynora : SCOTUS heard arguments today abt whether state officials can mandate platforms keep up content. Yes platforms should bolster content-moderation, but the First Amendment is clear: It's not the govt's role to impose rules on how companies should do this:https://www.freepress.net/ ... Vidushi Dyall / @vidushi_law : TX'AG floundered when confronted with who their law is meant to apply to. They ended up denying that it would apply Etsy bc it's primarily a marketplace, but then also said it wouldn't apply to @discord, whose biz model relies on its promo of certain messages. Thomas Berry / @thomas_a_berry : After four hours, it appears that a majority of the Court is likely to find that the laws violate the First Amendment, at least when they force traditional social media sites like Facebook and X to change their moderation practices and disseminate speech they want to exclude. Thomas Berry / @thomas_a_berry : What is less clear is how the Court will resolve the case. Justice Jackson and others raised concerns about whether they knew enough about the full sweep of the laws (especially Florida's law) to make an informed judgment as to whether some applications might be constitutional. Thomas Berry / @thomas_a_berry : Among the nine justices, only Justices Thomas and Alito seemed potentially sympathetic to the argument that the laws might be fully compatible with the First Amendment. Jennifer Huddleston / @jrhuddles : Florida basically admits they don't know how it applies to Etsy only for Sotomayor to explain to them how it does... [image] Billy Easley II / @billyez2 : This is a real problem because it warps the discussion. Not just when it comes to the burden, but also the regulatory discussion. You'll have law professors supporting 1A restrictions because they see it through a market power lens, which is super odd. Jess Miers / @jess_miers : @Meta Kavanaugh: can the state just make social media companies into a common carrier? [Kavanaugh gets it — he knows that you can't just declare common carriage and he's effectively drawing that out here]. [image] Patrick Hedger / @pat_hedger : Almost every proposal to tackle the power of online platforms conflicts directly with another proposal to tackle the power of online platforms. The Florida and Texas laws argued today at SCOTUS stifle competition. Billy Easley II / @billyez2 : Numerous times some of the Justices referred to “traditional social media” sites to refer to Twitter and Facebook but whether that's a reference to market power or the generalized discussion allowed on the platform, it's a bad way to refer to the scope of the laws Jess Miers / @jess_miers : Justice: “If YouTube was a newspaper, how much would it weigh?” [is the Court okay?] Issie Lapowsky / @issielapowsky : Wild to me that the Florida solicitor general in the Netchoice case just now didn't seem to realize Etsy has a whole lot of content moderation decisions to make regarding political viewpoints https://www.platformer.news/ ... Forums: r/scotus : Supreme Court seems divided on cases that could lead to a rethinking of the First Amendment r/news : Supreme Court hears landmark cases that could upend what we see on social media r/NPR : The Supreme Court will hear challenges to Texas and Florida social media laws