Category Archives: Censorship

Facebook is disputing the claim that it provided President Trump and his campaign more editorial leeway ahead of the 2020 election as part of a deal to avoid new federal regulation.

The newest tussle is part of a larger battle Facebook is fighting with critics who say they have evidence that Facebook applies different rules for politicians and VIPs than it does for the regular posters using its platforms. Answers about how Facebooks censorship regime developed in the run-up to its ban of then-President Trump earlier this year could prove critical to regulatory and policy decisions debated by federal lawmakers and affect Mr. Trumps lawsuit against Facebook over his ban.

Author Max Chafkin is claiming Mr. Trumps fingerprints were on Facebooks decision not to fact-check political speech before the 2020 election. Mr. Trump, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Jared Kushner Mr. Trumps son-in-law and billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel huddled in private at the White House in 2019 and hatched a plan, according to Mr. Chafkin, author of The Contrarian a book about Mr. Thiel.

The specifics of the discussion were secret but Thiel later told a confidant that Zuckerberg came to an understanding with Kushner during the meal, wrote Mr. Chafkin for New York Magazines website. Facebook, he promised, would continue to avoid fact-checking political speech thus allowing the Trump campaign to claim whatever it wanted. If the company followed through on that promise, the Trump administration would lay off on any heavy-handed regulations.

Facebook is dismissing the allegation as nonsense.

The policy was announced before this dinner ever took place, Andy Stone, Facebook spokesperson, said on Twitter.

Mr. Stone said the policy developed over the course of a year before that meal, citing a September 2019 Facebook statement and a 2018 report in The Washington Post as evidence that Mr. Zuckerberg did not concoct a secret plan over a meal with Mr. Trump.

Regardless of when Facebook decided to treat political speech differently than other forms of online speech, the companys critics are already up in arms about how it treats various users differently.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook engaged in whitelisting exempting select people from its enforcement actions online. An internal review of Facebooks whitelisting behavior found it indefensible, according to the Journal, despite Facebook employing the practice to address prominent accounts.

Facebook says critics fundamentally misunderstand its rules.

Dan Gainor, vice president at the conservative Media Research Center, criticized Facebooks whitelisting practices but does not believe the social media giant is alone.

As for whitelisting, it seems obvious they do it in some formal way, [b]ut all of the major social media companies treat some posters differently than others, Mr. Gainor said in a message. Its awful, inconsistent and not even transparent. I just dont think Facebook is the only one giving certain users special treatment.

Facebooks rules, however, are under more scrutiny than other tech platforms because of how lawmakers and regulators have taken aim at its platforms. For example, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Democrat, wrote to Mr. Zuckerberg on Monday to request all documents regarding suspected human trafficking using Facebook and Instagram accounts.

While the CEOs of tech companies routinely receive letters from disgruntled lawmakers, Mr. Krishnamoorthi leads a subcommittee on economic and consumer policy within the House Committee on Oversight and Reform with considerable say over regulation for the social media companies.

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Facebook denies it withheld censorship under Trump to avoid regulation - Washington Times

United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), along with Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Roger Marshall (R-KS), on Wednesday, July 28 introduced the Disclose Government Censorship Act, which seeks to end the government-directed speech suppression and viewpoint censorship the White House recently revealed in stating that it routinely urges Big Tech companies to remove the speech of Americans that the government deems inaccurate or unhelpful.

The recent collusion that has come to light between the Biden Administration and Big Tech is not only disturbing, but inconsistent with the governments constitutional role in American life, Sen. Hagerty said. The purpose of the First Amendment is to prevent government from suppressing speech with which it disagrees.

If the federal government is attempting to end-run the Constitution by secretly working with tech platforms to censor Americans speech, then the American people deserve to know. Requiring transparency will ensure that the government cannot work secretly to censor Americans.

Sen. Rubio added, No government should pressure social media companies into censoring their users legal speech. That is particularly true for our own government. This legislation will require transparency from governments, including the Biden Administration, when they collude with Big Tech and silence Americans in the process.

And Sen. Johnson said, Big Tech, the mainstream media, and the Administration have no credibility in determining what is and isnt misinformation. Im pleased to co-sponsor Senator Hagertys legislation that aims to provide transparency regarding this administrations actions and prevent Big Tech and Big Government from colluding to censor the free speech of Americans.

Sen. Marshall added, Theres a reason that our founding fathers had the wisdom to enshrine the right to free speech as our first freedom, because its fundamental to the health of our democracy. Government must not be in the business of picking and choosing who gets to speak up or what can be said in the public sphere, and this bill ensures transparency in any efforts to censor opinions with which they disagree.

To provide transparency regarding these censorship efforts, the Disclose Government Censorship Act requires Executive and Legislative Branch employees to publicly disclose on an easily accessible website any communications with technology platforms regarding action or potential action by the platforms to restrict speech, with the exception of communications for a legitimate law enforcement or national security purpose.

This legislation also establishes a cooling-off period during which government employees who engage with Big Tech platforms to censor Americans speech cannot turn around and lobby the government on behalf of such platforms, in order to prevent conflicts of interest that create the potential for increased censorship.

In April, Hagerty introduced the 21st Century FREE Speech Act, which would (1) abolish Section 230s license to censor, (2) treat the largest Big Tech platforms like common carriers that must provide reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to all consumers to prevent political, religious, or other censorship, and (3) require Big Tech platforms to disclose their content management and moderation practices to users, so that consumers can better understand and assess the information they receive.

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Legislation seeks to end government collusion with Big Tech to censor - Kingsport Times News

A group of social media companies and their leaders have asked the Miami, Florida federal court overseeing the cases filed against them by former president Donald Trump and several other social media users to move the lawsuits to the Northern District of California. Twitter Inc. moved to transfer the case pending against it earlier this month on similar grounds, that its terms of service mandate that litigation filed against it take place in the proposed transferee district.

The July-filed complaints allege that the platforms illegally censored the plaintiffs in violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution, as previously reported. In Facebooks filing, the company notes several procedural pitfalls plaguing the lawsuit, including the plaintiffs failure to serve either the company or its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook also recounts how the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint that added two Florida law claims for unfair business practices in addition to its allegations that Facebook and Zuckerberg violated the First Amendment by censoring protected speech. The lawsuit also claims that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act incentivized Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg to deplatform and censor Plaintiffs, and so is unconstitutional, according to last weeks motion.

Both transfer requests note at their outset that the cases are legally baseless and should be dismissed. They argue that the companies terms of service forum selection clauses govern where lawsuits may take place, and that place is the Northern District of California.

Facebook first contends that its mandatory forum-selection clause is valid, explaining that the plaintiffs cannot meet their heavy burden of showing that enforcement would be unreasonable. The claims also fall within the ambit of the clauses broad scope, Facebook asserts. Finally, the motion claims that no extraordinary circumstances justify rejecting the agreement that the plaintiffs entered into when they signed up to use Facebook.

In their motion to transfer venue to the same district, YouTube and defendant Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google LLC, YouTubes parent company, make similar arguments in favor of transfer based upon YouTubes term of service and its binding forum selection clause.

Facebook is represented by White & Case LLP and Kirkland & Ellis LLP, YouTube by Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson P.A. and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and Twitter by Homer Bonner and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.

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Facebook and YouTube Join Twitter, Requesting Transfer of Censorship Cases to NDCA - Law Street Media

The big-name social media companies have all done a ratheratrocious jobof moderating user speech on their platforms. However, much like Florida's similarlyunconstitutionalattempt to address the issue (S.B. 7072), Texas' recently enactedH.B. 20would make the matter worse for Texans and everyone else.

Signed into law by Governor Abbott last week, the Texas law prohibits platforms with more than 50 million users nationwide from moderating user posts based on viewpoint or geographic location. However, as we stated in ourfriend-of-the-court briefin support of NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Associations lawsuit challenging Florida's law (NetChoice v. Moody), "Every court that has considered the issue, dating back to at least 2007, has rightfully found that private entities that operate online platforms for speech and that open those platforms for others to speak enjoy a First Amendment right to edit and curate that speech."

Inconsistent and opaque content moderation by online media services is a legitimate problem. It continues to result in the censorship of a range of important speech, often disproportionately impacting people who arent elected officials. That's why EFF joined with a cohort of allies in 2018 to draft theSanta Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, offering one model for how platforms can begin voluntarily implementing content moderation practices grounded in a human rights framework. Under the proposed principles, platforms would:

H.B. 20 does attempt to mandate some of the transparency measures called for in the Santa Clara Principles. Although these legal mandates might be appropriate as part of a carefully crafted legislative scheme, H.B. 20 is not the result of a reasonable policy debate. Rather it is a retaliatory law aimed at violating the First Amendment rights of online services in a way that will ultimately harm all internet users.

We fully expect that once H.B. 20 is challenged, courts will draw from the wealth of legal precedent and find the law unconstitutional. Perhaps recognizing that H.B. 20 is imperiled for the same reasons as Floridas law, the Lonestar State this week filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the appeal of a federal courts ruling that Floridas law is unconstitutional.

Despite Texas and Floridas laws being unconstitutional, the concerns regarding social media platforms' control on our public discourse is a critical policy issue. It is vitally important that platforms take action to provide transparency, accountability, and meaningful due process to all impacted speakers and ensure that the enforcement of their content guidelines is fair, unbiased, proportional, and respectful of human rights.

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Texas' Social Media Law is Not the Solution to Censorship - EFF

Censorship is the theme of this years Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, but the four-day event has also turned out to be about resilience.

Those involved this year have determinedly created art through a pandemic with the many off-Cape artists waiting a year to be able to travel to present their work and some have faced the fears and challenges of a hurricane, too.

The Mahagonny Songspiel, written by Bertolt Brecht with music by Kurt Weill, will be presented with music and puppetry each day of the Sept. 23-26 annual event by members of AllWays Lounge in Exile from New Orleans.

Final rehearsals to bring the show north to Provincetown to celebrate playwright Williams had just begun last month when Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana, according to festival co-founder/curator David Kaplan.

They continued to rehearse, in rehearsal space without electricity and running water, going home to places without electricity and running water, he says. I thought (the show) might have to be canceled … but Dennis (Monn), the director, said no, (readying for the Williams festival) is what is giving them a sense of purpose.

Theyre doing something. Theyre not passively enduring a hurricane. Theyre creating something … and looking forward to coming to Provincetown and showing what theyve got, Kaplan says.

Here, the production had to be moved outside because of COVID-19 concerns as have most of the presentations and the festival is providing a keyboard and drum kit to replace what was destroyed in New Orleans. The theater company has been indefatigable, Kaplan marvels. Its been very inspiring. … Its heroic. They deserve support.

The complex musical score the group will perform is described as Hitlers least favorite collection of songs. Brechts tangos, love ballads and musical commentary are part of a fable of innocence that addresses a morally bankrupt society. The reaction at its 1927 premiere nearly a century ago? Nazi and Communist sympathizers blew whistles to stop it.

As part of telling that history of trying to censor thought, AllWays Lounge will be handing out whistles to the Provincetown audience, too.

Thats just one of numerous creative ways productions in the festival will explore and create conversations about the Tennessee Williams & Censorship theme. Thats the same focus as 2020 when organizers managed to put on a much smaller, outdoor event but the emphasis has changed from Puritans and writer Williams battle with censors.

In 2021, were discussing when, if ever, censorship is appropriate, Kaplan said when he announced the season.

The festival will include four plays by Williams, who spent a few summers in the 1940s in Provincetown and wrote some of his best-known work there, including The Glass Menagerie.

The festival will include Williams 1940 Battle of Angels, the run of which was cut short by Boston censors, presented by Blessed Unrest, a subversive physical theater ensemble from New York City. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Theatre will present Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor?, an unfinished short story by Williams in which a Black screenwriter in 1940s Hollywood has a secret affair with his films white leading lady, a piece never produced because of the interracial relationship.

Back this year will be The Municipal Abattoir, which Kaplan staged last year on a dune as a Hitchcock-inspired thriller. The Philadelphia-based Die-Cast ensemble will explore The Demolition Downtown, a pointedly political short play by Williams in which a suburban family shuts themselves up in their house as explosions rock their countrys capital.

Other shows presented will include the Longing Lasts Longer rock manifesto by Penny Arcade (with a connected interactive workshop) confronting cultural amnesia as a form of censorship. A Sex play from 1926 that got Mae West thrown in jail will be produced by international ensemble The Goat Exchange, during a Tea Dance at The Boatslip Resort and Beach Club.

The Witch is a satire based on a 1616 drama by Thomas Middleton, with an all-female cast from the Outer Cape group Campfire Quorum playing women from the Pilgrim ship Mayflower.

Beyond live performances, there will also be workshops, parties and educational programming, all connected to Williams and the censorship theme. One-time events will be a Tennessees Latest Peep Show burlesque show bump and grind response to censorship by Lefty Lucy who also had to rehearse from a damaged New Orleans home; and a Cut Blanche interactive censoring display of the 1951 film of A Streetcar Named Desire, led by the former festival executive director Jef Hall-Flavin.

Beyond censorship, a pandemic and a hurricane, Kaplan adds the countrys political divide to the challenges that artists involved with the festival and beyond have to face. While some left-leaning people are angry or dismissive these days of people in conservative southern states, Kaplan said its important to think about the artists and others living in those states who dont agree with politicians stands on controversial topics and actions.

It is significant that we have a Tennessee Williams festival in New England, and not just in Mississippi (where Williams was born) and New Orleans (where he spent much of his later years) because he is an American writer, Kaplan says. We dont need to allow politicians and other people to define American identity for us. We can have our artists both dead and alive and future help to identify American identity. … We share this American cultural figure.

In New England, he says, we have an obligation … to recognize and help support those people in the South who are struggling to be heard, and that includes artists.

Noting that a group from Texas Tech University has been part of the Williams festival for years, Kaplan says, No matter how we feel about the governor of Texas, thats not the point. Not everyone in Texas feels that way and we want to encourage the people in Texas with whom we have common interests to come celebrate, and meet each other.

Then he adds with a laugh: And conspire.

Contact Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll at kdriscoll@capecodonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @KathiSDCCT.

What: The 16th annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival

When: Sept. 23-26

Where: Various venues around town

Tickets and information: twptown.org and 866-789-8366

COVID-19 protocols: Most performances will be outdoors or under tents with open sides. For indoor shows, a vaccination card or negative PCR test is needed for admission. Masks and social distancing required at all shows.

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'It's heroic': Tennessee Williams theater fest goes on despite a pandemic and a hurricane - Cape Cod Times

WASHINGTONEarlier this week, The Heritage Foundation was informed that Amazon would not support paid promotion of Heritage Senior Fellow Mike Gonzalezs expos on the Black Lives Matter movement, BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution. Amazon declared promotion of the book no longer complies with our current Creative Acceptance Policies because it contains book/s or content that is not allowed. Content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted. In other words, Heritage viewpoints were effectively being censored.

Heritage appealed the decision earlier this week, giving Amazon well beyond its own stated response time before issuing a forceful statement Thursday morning. Amazon subsequently reversed its decision and will allow paid promotion of Gonzalezs book to move forward. Importantly, an Amazon spokesperson told The Daily Signals Fred Lucas that the original decision banning promotion was the result of human error, not an automated decision by a computer or algorithm.

Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James said:

While we appreciate Amazon reversing this egregious decision, this incident is consistent with the trend of Big Tech companies to suppress conservative speech they disagree with. Thats why The Heritage Foundations Center for Technology Policy continues to monitor Big Tech companies and recommend legislative and regulatory solutions to ensure that they are held accountable when they unfairly suppress speech, especially speech that encourages healthy debate on the critical issues that America faces.

Amazons original stated reason for suspending the ad included that it does not allow content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics. Using that standard, one of the worlds largest booksellers apparently wouldnt allow ads for the biggest bestseller in historythe Bible.

Kara Frederick, research fellow in Heritages Center for Technology Policy, released the following statement upon learning of Amazons reversal:

This episode is a reminder that while sometimes Big Tech can be pressured to respond in certain cases of wrongdoing, there are so many more instances where those without the resources or large-enough public profile simply have to live with the arbitrary decisions made by these companies. The fact that this was the result of human error further demonstrates the need for Big Tech companies to establish clear, sensible, and consistent rules and policies, and then implement those rules and policies fairly across the board. They also must be willing to publicly admit mistakes when they do occur, whether intentional or not. Big Techs influence over everyday American life continues to grow. Its vital that we establish clear standards for how these companies behave, and mechanisms to hold them accountablewhen they dont.

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Heritage Pressure Leads to Amazon's Reversing Censorship Decision - Heritage.org

By Phil Lawler (bio - articles - email) | Sep 17, 2021

In todays Wall Street Journal, my friend Tom Spence, president of Regnery Publishing (which brought out my book Lost Shepherd), lets loose on Banned Books Week. He explains that this gimmicky promotion caters primarily to those who believe that schoolchildren should have access to anything bound between two covers without the interference of those busybodies we call parents.

Unfortunately, Spence observes, there are books being banned todayalthough the sponsors of Banned Books Week have nothing to say about it. Books that offend against woke attitudes and politically-correct standards are disappearing from bookstores and from the Amazon menu. Authors are cancelled. Lecturers are disinvited.

Such censorship hurts the authors, of course. But it also hurts the rest of us, their potential readers, because we never have a chance to learn what they have to say. We dont even know what we dont know.

The censorship is not confined to written works alone, however. The social-media giants, Facebook and Twitter, are even more blatant in stifling the views that their employees find offensive. How often have you seen a fact-check pasted onto a controversial postand, if you took the time to investigate, discovered that the fact-check was far more misleading than the post it sought to correct.

An urban television news team recently issued an appeal on Facebook, asking for stories about unvaccinated people who had been felled by Covid. That Facebook page was promptly flooded with thousands of replies. But the vast majority of those replies were not giving the reporters what they wanted; instead they were telling stories about friends and relatives who had been harmed by the Covid injections, or had contracted Covid even after being fully vaccinated. Clearly this response was not what the TV news editors expected. Still, isnt it a story nonetheless?

News editorslike publishers and librarians and bookstore owners and social-media baronshave enormous power to sway public opinion. They exercise that power not only by putting their own slant on news stories, but alsofar more ominouslyby censoring the stories they find inconvenient. You cannot be outraged by an injustice, or encouraged by a positive development, if you dont hear about them.

Mistrust of the mass media is widespread in our society today. Many Americans say that they dont believe what they hear from the mainstream media. That skepticism is richly deserved, and for the most part healthy. Still a problem remains. You may not believe what you see in the mainstream media, but what about what you dont see? You dont know what you dont know.

This is why, for more than 30 years now, I have been insisting that discerning readers need to find their own trusted sources of news. If you know that the mainstream media are offering slanted coverage of some stories, and blacking out other stories altogether, you need to find outlets that will provide accurate reporting on the subjects that interest you. Which is I why I established Catholic World News, 25 years ago, and why I want you all to encourage your loyal Catholic friends to discover us.

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

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Here's how to beat liberal censorship of ideas - Catholic Culture

From Desmond Mgboh, Kano

The Kano State Film Censorship Board has outlawed sales of movies displaying scenes of abduction, drug addiction or theft of GSM phones as part of efforts to check the rising cases of violent crimes in the state.

The Executive Secretary of the Board, Ismaila Naaba Afakallah, disclosed this during a session with the media saying the prohibition became necessary in the face of criminal trends in the state.

Henceforth, we will not allow films displaying kidnappings, drug addiction and GSM phone snatching which has now taken a toll on Kano residents, he stated.

He added that the measure was aimed at curtailing the menace and reducing the possibility of young people taking to these criminal acts mistaking them to be real.

Not every young man has the tenacity of understanding fictitious film actions. Somebody might mistake it as a reality and may go ahead to practice it. Therefore, we must act now before it is too late, he added.

The snatching of mobile phones and other valuables like handbags has been on the rise in Kano. Also rising at an alarming rate is the rate of drug addiction and abuse across gender in the state.

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Kano Censorship Board bans films with scenes of abduction, drug addiction - Daily Sun

I think Tennessee Williams accidentally wrote a love letter to the year 2020, says director Brenna Geffers of Williamss The Demolition Downtown, the short play shes staging outdoors at the Bas Relief in the towns center. Geffers, founder of the Philadelphia-based Die-Cast ensemble, has directed four festival productions over the years, including Pericles in 2017.

The Demolition Downtown is about a fascist takeover and the way many might sort of comfortably slide into that, Geffers says. David [Kaplan] chose the play before the pandemic. But its about a couple afraid to leave their house and talking about what food they have left in the freezer, so it became spooky and, after Jan. 6, it seemed even more relevant.

The rarely staged play was published in Esquire magazine in June 1971 as the escalating war in Vietnam divided the nation. As a companion piece, Kaplan directs an outdoor staging of Williamss dark satire The Municipal Abattoir, a short play that Williams worked on through the 1960s. It centers on a government clerk and a state-run slaughterhouse where good citizens, when summoned, go willingly to be killed.

In both plays, the audience has a voyeuristic experience, says Geffers. They are both funny pieces [about] a world that is absurd yet so familiar that we can do nothing else but laugh at it. Its too terrifying to do anything else.

Williamss plays and their popular screen adaptations were often censored, including his first produced play, Battle of Angels. In its pre-Broadway tryout in Boston in 1940, the Boston City Council took umbrage at the story of a charismatic drifter, Val Xavier, whose arrival upends a Mississippi Delta small town and exposes its racism and religious intolerance. According to the festival program, when Margaret Webster, the plays original director, returned to Boston to watch a performance of the censored version, she wrote that she found a castrated and largely incomprehensible edition of the play dying an inevitable death at the Wilbur Theatre.

Not just that, but a conflagration at the end of the play went so awry on opening night they almost burned down the entire theater. The first two rows of the audience had to flee, says Jessica Burr, founder and artistic director of the New York City ensemble Blessed Unrest, which will stage the Battle of Angels, sans pyrotechnics, at Provincetowns Town Hall.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Battle of Angels never made it to Broadway, although 17 years later a different version with a new title, Orpheus Descending, did open in New York. A third retelling was the 1960 film The Fugitive Kind, starring Williams mainstays Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani.

Burr sees contemporary parallels in the 1939-set Battle of Angels.

We generally think of community as a good thing but in this case theres a dangerous groupthink that can destroy the individual. Its also an impossible love story between people who refuse to compromise. They are surrounded by these terrified, frightened people who have to destroy it to keep the status quo.

Unlike the original production, Burrs Battle of Angels has a multiracial cast led by Michael Gene Jacobs, a Black actor. Burr says her research indicates that Williams likely wanted Val to be played by a Black man. But in 1940 Williams was 23 years old and a nobody. He could not tell the producers what to do.

Williams was obsessed with the Othello story, says Burr. He studied Shakespeare really closely and he studied his Greeks. [Battle of Angels] is a collision between these very Christian ideals of right and wrong and the Greeks sensibility. Before completing the play, Williams wrote a short story called Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor? Its a strange piece but it led directly into Battle of Angels, she says.

Audiences can see the connection for themselves as the festival will also present a staged reading of Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor? at Fishermen Hall. Adapted by Thomas Owen Mitchell, it is about a Black screenwriter who has a secret affair with a white movie goddess. Williams abandoned the project after writing 75 manuscript pages, likely because he realized that, in 1940, the subject matter would prevent it from being produced as either a play or a film.

PROVINCETOWN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS FESTIVAL

At various locations in Provincetown, Sept. 23-26. Schedule and ticket information at http://www.twptown.org

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Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival returns to celebrate works that made the censors sweat - The Boston Globe

Tech trade groups representing Facebook, Twitter and Google are vowing to fight what Texas is labeling as a crackdown on social media censorship of conservatives.

Under legislation signed Thursday by Texas Gov. Greg AbbottGreg AbbottHurricane Nicholas makes landfall in Texas, Louisiana White House welcomes fight with GOP governors over vaccine mandates Overnight Health Care Departing FDA vaccine regulators argue against COVID-19 booster shots MORE (R), social media companies with more than 50 million monthly users are forbidden from banning users based on their political views.

The sites are required to implement a complaint and appeals process for the content they remove, in which they provide a reason that content was removed and a review of their decision. The measure also bans email service providers from impending transmission of emails based on content.

Steve DelBianco, president and CEO of NetChoice, a coalition supporting online businesses,said in a statement that the bill clearly violates the First Amendment.

This law essentially creates a new Fairness Doctrine for the internet which will only make it harder for conservatives to share their news and views online, he said.

The Fairness Doctrine was a Federal Communications Commission policy created in 1949 that required broadcasters to present issues with a balanced view. The policy was eliminated in 1987.

Social media censorship has been a hot-button issue for conservatives, particularly in the wake of former President TrumpDonald TrumpBiden stumps for Newsom on eve of recall: 'The eyes of the nation are on California' On The Money: House Democrats cut back Biden tax hikes Abortion providers warn of 'chaos' if Supreme Court overrules Roe v Wade MOREs removal from major social media platforms following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

In a statement, Abbott said there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas.

Florida passed a similar law in April, which fines companies $250,000 a day for banning statewide politicians from their platforms and $25,000 a day for other politicians.

A federal judge blocked that law in June, after NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) successfully challenged it. That ruling is now on appeal.

DelBianco said the same outcome will almost certainly occur in Texas.

Tech groups warned that Texass intentions behind the law could backfire and lead to more issues.

Adam Kovacevich, CEO of Chamber of Progress,said in a statement that the law would allow more hate speech to exist online.

When you force social media platforms to pull their referees, the bad guys are going to throw more fouls, Kovacevich said.

CCIA President Matt Schruers said the law would prevent digital services from protecting their law-abiding users in Texas by fighting malicious online actors.

Its proponents claim this law protects free speech, but compelling private companies to host extremist content couldnt be further from what the Founders intended, Schruers said.

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Industry groups to fight Texas crackdown on 'censorship' of conservatives | TheHill - The Hill