Florida governor will lose his fight with cyber censors and he knows it | Bill Cotterell – Tallahassee Democrat

Bill Cotterell, Your Turn Published 6:02 a.m. ET May 27, 2021

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Gov. Ron DeSantis did what he needed to do in signing Floridas new Big Tech law, even though the statute fairly shouts its unconstitutionality.

The Constitutions very First Amendment, the cherry on top of the whole Bill of Rights, says the government cant infringe on freedom of the press or freedom of speech. If they could have foreseen Facebook, Twitter and the sewer that so much of social media hasbecome, the Founders probably would have written it differently.

But they didnt.

So as much as we might wish to make those information giants stop de-platforming those whose ideas they find false or dangerous, we cant. Its their platform.

The bill DeSantis signed would impose fines of $250,000 a day on tech giants for removing statewide political candidates from their platforms. The fine would be $25,000 a day for sending a non-statewide candidate to Coventry.

More: GOP-controlled Florida Legislature approves elections overhaul, social media crackdown

Individual users stifled by the companies can sue them, under the law DeSantis signed in Miami on Monday. Users must be notified when their postings are censored or tagged with a warning of false or disputed information.

An odd part of the law provides an exemption for companies owning theme parks like Walt Disney Co., which owns the Disney+ streaming service. A skeptic might wonder why, if the governor and Republican Legislature are so appalled by big-tech censorship and liberal bias on the internet, their solution would exempt Floridas most famous tourism company.

The law could be named for former President Donald Trump, whose exile from Twitter and Facebook sparked cries of censorship and liberal bias in several states with Republican governors and lawmakers. Trumps continuing lies about a rigged 2020 election, and his Jan. 6 performance that prompted many members of his cult to attack the U.S. Capitol, were the basis for his social-media banishment.

DeSantis, who owes his election to Trump, said Facebook, Twitter and the others use secret algorithms and shadow banning to shape debates and control the flow of information. They claim to be neutral a virtual wall on which we can all scrawl a message or paste a poster but they act as the proverbial Big Brother and 2021 looks an awful lot like the fictitious 1984.

Hes right about the need for making the tech giants more responsive. Congress, not the states, should hold them responsible for knowingly and continuously spreading libelous or deliberately hurtful untruths that get posted maliciously.

For example, just last year Trump Tweeted a vile smear about the death of an aide to former Pensacola congressman Joe Scarborough, even though the womans family pleaded with Twitter to stop it.

DeSantis is also right, mostly, about a prevailing liberal bias in what gets quashed online. Funny how that just happens to follow a pattern. But its not governments job to ascribe motives to a decision to block a post or a person, or to decide whether a comment is deleted for partisan reasons.

Long before anyone heard of Facebook or Twitter, Florida set an instructive legal precedent that should apply here. Almost 50 years ago, we had a right to reply law requiring newspapers to print rebuttal essays from candidates they did not endorse on their editorial pages. The Miami Herald refused to run a rebuttal submitted by a spurned legislative candidate, he sued, and the Supreme Courtthrew out the 1913 statute.

The ruling means the press cannot be forced to publish something, any more than it can be forbidden to publish something.

Lawyer DeSantis, if he were serious about combatting cyber-censorship, might have pondered such a precedent before getting his friends in the Legislature to give him the new statute. But his real purpose here is to cater some would say pander to unhappy Trump supporters, whose votes hell need when seeking a second term next year.

Mark Zuckerberg et. al. have plenty of lawyers to brush aside the Florida law, and those popping up in other states. We taxpayers will foot the bill for defending our new statute, but that happens a lot.

When some judges chuck the whole thing, DeSantis can tell Trumps disgruntled followers he tried. That ought to gruntle them.

Cotterell(Photo: Democrat files)

Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat capitol reporter who writes a twice-weekly column. He can be reached at bcotterell@tallahassee.com.

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Florida governor will lose his fight with cyber censors and he knows it | Bill Cotterell - Tallahassee Democrat