Buffalo shooting tests Texas social media law | Opinion
of former President Donald Trump and other social conservatives aggrieved by platforms’ perceived political bias. Read broadly, Section 230 allows a platform to remove any content that it finds objectionable.
If, as Cain suggests, HB 20 is intended only to target decisions not protected by Section 230, then HB 20 is entirely symbolic — or at most, a trigger law that would take effect only if Congress repeals Section 230. This episode shows the difficulties that occur when the government tries to police speech, an activity that conservatives typically. Platforms are private companies. In many cases, the First Amendment protects their decisions about what speech they will carry on their servers. But even if it did not, conservatives should want to protect that discretion. Content moderation allows social media companies to keep most platforms family-friendly, free of violent videos and vile manifestos. Government restrictions on content management risks forcing platforms to carry such “lawful but awful” content, devolving into online cesspools. One must also consider what such a regime would look like under the reins of an elected official they dislike. Admittedly, different platforms may draw lines in different places. But this competition among platforms is the kind of free market approach that conservatives typically embrace. Admittedly, conservatives are correct that platforms may abuse the moderator’s privilege to push a particular agenda, consciously or subconsciously. High-profile missteps like theBut the solution is more competition in the social media space, not heavy-handed government micromanagement of online speech. There is nothing conservative about using the cudgel of big government to achieve immediately desirable outcomes. And, political philosophy aside, instances like the Buffalo shooting are already demonstrating that symbolic endeavors like HB 20 might not hold up in the real world. Daniel Lyons is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an associate dean of academic affairs and a professor of law at Boston College Law School. He wrote this for The Dallas Morning News.
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