TALLAHASSEE Gov. Ron DeSantis has put a bulls-eye on tech giants that he contends censor conservatives speech, but the social media apps and platforms hes targeting are blockbusters for the states financial portfolio.

DeSantis, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, and Republican legislative leaders on Tuesday laid out a plan to punish Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google and Twitter for blacklisting users or putting gags on social-media posts.

But the five tech behemoths are huge earners for Floridas investment portfolio, according to the State Board of Administration. The board manages Floridas pension plan as well as investments for more than two dozen other accounts.

Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, which is publicly traded as Alphabet, and Twitter reaped $3.1 billion for the state last year. The states investment in the big five known colloquially as FAAAT was just shy of $8 billion, according to information provided by State Board of Administration manager of external affairs John Kuczwanski.

DeSantis, House Speaker Chris Sprowls and Senate President Wilton Simpson held a news conference to condemn the tech companies, which have also been under scrutiny by Congress.

DeSantis repudiated Twitter for blocking Trump from its site and scolded Amazon for dropping Parler, a social media app used by many conservatives. Both actions occurred after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent attempt to prevent the certification of President Joe Bidens victory in the November election.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, DeSantis expressed concern that the tech firms could disable or suspend a political candidates account in the run-up to an election.

They could potentially de-platform a candidate, suppress a message, and that is something that is okay? I dont think so, he said.

DeSantis, however, isnt proposing that the state shed its investments in the corporate giants.

Im open to it, he said when asked about such a move. But I dont think that would markedly change the behavior of big tech. These are really big companies.

The five companies make up about 7.8 percent of the states global equity portfolio, which totaled around $103 billion at the end of December.

The companies blew past the states 16.35 percent benchmark for global equity investments, Kuczwanski told The News Service of Florida in a phone interview Wednesday.

For example, the annual return on Facebook was more than 81 percent. At 31 percent, the return on Alphabet Inc. was the lowest of the five tech companies.

The states investment gurus dont recommend dropping the tech stock superstars.

We believe divestiture is the least effective way to change corporate business practices and in most cases is counterproductive; and divesting from companies shuts off an important access point to proxy voting and corporate management teams, Kuczwanski said in an email.

As of mid-day Wednesday, Apples market capitalization, or market cap, was $2.3 trillion, Amazons was $1.7 trillion, Alphabets was $1.3 trillion, Facebooks was $760.8 billion and Twitters was $43.7 billion. Market cap refers to the total dollar market value of a companys outstanding shares of stock.

DeSantis said legislation targeting the companies could include such sanctions as a $100,000-a-day fine for each day a candidate is removed from a platform.

The plan also could require technology companies promotion of candidates to be recorded as campaign contributions with the state elections office, he said. Tech companies could also be prohibited from blocking or partially blocking posts by or about political candidates, a practice known as shadow banning.

But critics of the proposal maintain that such policing of tech companies could be problematic.

Berin Szka, a technology law attorney who is president of TechFreedom, called DeSantis plan a reboot of a 1913 Florida law that required newspapers to give political candidates the right to reply to editorials. In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional.

Since 1998, the Court has repeatedly held that websites enjoy the same, complete protection of the First Amendment which makes everything he proposes unconstitutional. Gov. DeSantis poses as a constitutional conservative, but hes made quite clear that he doesnt take the Bill of Rights seriously, Berin said in a prepared statement.

While DeSantis and legislative leaders arent calling for the state to dump its investments in the U.S.-based tech companies, Florida lawmakers in the past have ordered steps to limit investments in certain corporations.

Under state law, the State Board of Administration has a list of scrutinized companies with prohibited business operations in Sudan and Iran. The prohibited operations involve the petroleum or energy sector, oil or mineral extraction, power production or military support activities, according to the agencys website.

The SBA also has a list of scrutinized companies that participate in a boycott of Israel, including actions that limit commercial relations with Israel or Israeli-controlled territories.

Dara Kam, News Service of Florida

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Florida Republicans target Big Tech and its big business in the state - Tampa Bay Times

Conservatives claims of censorship and other forms of bias on social media are unfounded, according to a study by New York University released Monday. After an uproar from conservative media over that report, one of the authors of the study stood by it in comments to Mediaite.

False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives, from NYUs Stern business school, made the case that such claims are not supported by evidence.

The claim of anti-conservative animus on the part of social media companies is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it, the study says. No trustworthy largescale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons or that searches are being manipulated to favor liberal interests.

Conservatives have long accused tech and social media companies, often referred to as Big Tech in conservative media, of censoring, suppressing, or otherwise limiting the reach of their politicians and personalities. Republicans have also accused Twitter of shadow banning conservative politicians, alleging that the company manipulated its search algorithm to limit the ability to easily search for certain Republican officials.

The NYU study recognizes that initiatives to comb out false content disproportionately hurt conservatives, but points out that its because the right spreads more content that violates platform rules than the left.

In light of this discrepancy, the study continues, it stands to reason that right-leaning content would face labeling, demotion, or removal more frequently than left-leaning content.

In examining Facebook interactions to disprove anti-conservative bias, the study found that there were millions more interactions on Facebook with conservative media organizations than traditional, mainstream, or liberal media organizations.

From January 1 through November 3, 2020, Fox News had the most interactions 448 million and Breitbart was next, with 295 million. By comparison, CNN had the third-most interactions on Facebook, 191 million, ABC News had 138 million, NBC News had 106 million, and the New York Times had 87 million fewer than the conservative Daily Caller, which had 97 million Facebook interactions.

Regarding so-called shadow banning on Twitter, the study also found no support for these claims. [T]heres no evidence that Twitter intentionally shadow banned Republicans or anyone else, the study says. Rather, Twitter said it experienced a technical glitch which caused some 600,000 accounts including those of some Democratic politicians not to be auto-suggested when people searched for them. As the study points out, the glitch was fixed within 24 hours, but conservative politicians have continued to use it as an example of anti-conservative bias.

The study recommended that social media companies address conservatives claims by providing more disclosure for content moderation actions, offering users a choice of content moderation algorithms, hiring more employees and installing a content overseer to increase human moderation of influential accounts, and releasing more data for researchers.

The study also urged the administration of President Joe Biden to pursue a constructive reform agenda for social media, and to work with Congress to update Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act so that social media companies protection against liability depends on them taking more actions to monitor content. Study authors also encouraged the Biden administration to create a Digital Regulatory Agency, or expand federal oversight of social media, in order to rebuild the eroded trust in social media platforms that the study says has resulted from claims of anti-conservative bias.

Conservative media, including Breitbart, Fox News, and The Daily Caller, were quick to challenge the studys findings.

The Daily Caller covered the fact that the study was backed, at least in part, by Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, a longtime donor to Democratic candidates. Fox News linked the NYU study to Newmarks previous warnings about the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation on social media, and Breitbart focused on a monologue from Foxs Tucker Carlson that dismissed the study as manipulation by Big Tech. Carlsons monologue also mentioned Newmark, and managed to include criticisms of the usual array of modern-day conservative targets, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Gavin Newsom, and Hillary Clinton, before seeming to ultimately conclude that the study was actually the work of liberal philanthropist and one of conservatives favorite villains George Soros.

Conservative outlets also pointed to actions by Twitter and Facebook to limit the reach of an October 2020 New York Post story that included alleged emails from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. There were significant credibility concerns about the storys veracity, but the social media companies actions Facebook subject the piece to a fact-check review, while Twitter temporarily blocked any sharing of the link to the story sparked a massive conservative backlash.

Twitter eventually reversed its decision to block the story, but conservatives have continued to cite the incident as an example of social media companies anti-conservative bias. The NYU study addressed this, saying that, in retrospect, the social media companies actions seem like a case of reasonable decisions wrapped in mystifying processes, and concluded that [c]onsistency, clearer rules, and greater transparency would have gone a long way toward defusing criticism of these platform actions.

In response to criticism from conservative media, Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and one of the authors of the study, told Mediaite that Newmarks backing was disclosed from the start, and that Newmark did not play a role in the report itself. He also acknowledged the limited access to data, an issue which the study itself addressed when it suggested that social media companies release more data to researchers.

Were proud to have Craig Newmark as one of our supporters, Barrett said. We disclosed right up front in the report that he is a backer. But he had no say over the contents of the report. We didnt discuss it with him or clear the results with him.

We acknowledged in the report that there are limitations on available data related to content moderation and other aspects of the platforms activities. So, we gathered the data that we could such as engagement information available from CrowdTangle and NewsWhip and combined that with information from previous research by other organizations, Barrett added. We also did a close analysis of particular instances of supposed censorship over time. We relied on this combination of sources to reach our conclusion that the claim of anti-conservative bias is unfounded. In fact, it is a form of disinformation meant to rile up the Trump base.

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NYU Responds to Conservative Uproar Over Report Bias Report - Mediaite

The Narendra Modi government finally drew the red line yesterday (3 February) on the US tech giant Twitters limits of autonomy as far as its India operations are concerned.

Taking a tough stand against the hate-filled content shared on the microblogging social media platform during the farmer protests, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) sent a five-page notice to Twitter stating that Incitement to genocide is not a freedom of speech. It is a threat to law and order.

The notice referred to '#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide' hashtag which trended on Twitter last week which the government said was designed to inflame passions, hatred and [was] factually incorrect.

MEITY had passed an interim order on 31 January as a matter of emergency blocking 257 URLs and 1 hashtag under Rule 9(1) of the Information Technology [Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public] Rules, 2009 which are based on section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (the IT act).

The latest government notice alleges that Twitter didnt take off the objectionable content from its platform for several hours despite its order and did so only a few minutes before its Advocate appeared before the government committee on 1 February at 3 pm.

All the blocked content was soon unblocked and Twitter declined to abide by the order of the government justifying its action citing newsworthiness and free speech.

The government has now reminded Twitter that it is bound by Indian law.

The notice sent to Twitter clarified that it was an "intermediary" as defined under Section 2[1][w] of the Information Technology Act and it cannot decide the impracticability or disproportionality of the issue at hand as it is bounded by the orders passed by the Central government.

Further, the notice said that Twitter has no constitutional, statutory or any legal basis whatsoever to comment upon the interplay of statutory provisions with constitutional principles or to unilaterally read down the scope of statutory provisions as per its own limited private understanding of the constitutional and statutory laws of India.

Section 69A of the IT act, quoted repeatedly in the government notice, is clear: if the central government considers it "necessary or expedient to direct an intermediary to block for access for public and or cause to be blocked for access by the public any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource if the government is satisfied that the same is necessary or expedient in order to prevent incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to public order.

While Twitter may have decided to cock a snook at Indias constitutional law, the law is quite clear.

Section 69(3) of the IT act states that intermediaries which fail to comply with the governments order shall be punished with an imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years and shall also be liable to fine.

The limits on free speech put by the IT act are not standalone.

They flow from the constitution whose article 19 clause 2 states that nothing in sub clause (a) of clause (1) [which gives all citizens right to freedom of speech and expression] shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub-clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.

While Swarajya in the past has been vocal about the irrationality of many aspects of the above clause which was inserted by the first amendment to the constitution (championed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru), internal rules of a foreign company cannot override those of the constitution irrespective of their merit.

On a lighter note, if Twitter continues down the path it has chosen and leaves the Indian government with no choice but to take penal action against its executives or ban the platform outright for being a nuisance to public order, Modis detractors can always blame Nehru.

What they (or those Indians who like Twitters rules because it's in sync with their political ideology) cannot do is dispute the exclusive right of the Parliament to debate, decide and alter the constitution.

Thats the sole prerogative of the Indian State. Indians alone can and will decide when and how to reform the deficiencies in the constitution. That idea is at the very foundation of our sovereignty. WE THE PEOPLE in the constitution refers to Indians, not Twitter executives aligned with alien ideologies and driven by their narrow political interests.

The Indian State cannot allow Twitter to create a parallel rule of law online colony that Indians must adhere to. Indians are bound by Indian laws framed by those chosen by the citizens of this country.

At the core of the tussle between the government and Twitter is not free speech or the platforms autonomy, its Indias sovereignty. The Indian government has so far not taken Twitter to task for arbitrarily shadow banning and de-platforming people on the Right while allowing a free run to those on the left side of the political spectrum. It had allowed it full autonomy on that front. Its only when Twitter refused to comply with the Indian law and challenged Indias sovereignty that the government has taken a tough stand.

The issue of sovereignty was also the main reason for Indias ban on Tiktok. MEITY had reasoned then that Tiktok and other banned Chinese apps were engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.

At the time, I had argued that just as Chinese apps allowed themselves to become the tools in the hands of Chinese Communist Party, the US tech giants like Twitter were also slowly becoming the tools at the hands of Leftists and setting themselves up for failure.

But Twitter seems to have not learnt any lesson. India cannot allow intervention of foreign ideologies in its local politics because that would be prejudicial to its sovereignty. If Twitter still refuses to back down, it should be ready to face the music in New India.

Link:

It's The Sovereignty, Stupid: Why India Is Right To Draw The Red Line On Twitter's Limits Of Autonomy - Swarajya