Supreme Court Blocks Texas Social Media Law, With Kagan Joining Conservatives in Dissent

thewrap.com:

HB 20 echoes claims made by conservatives that platforms such as Twitter and Facebook deliberately target conservative speech with content moderation policies such as “shadow banning,” which the platforms have repeatedly denied.

However, the evidence is clear that that even with content moderation policies, Facebook still prioritizes conservative speech and ideologies and studies have proven that, for reasons that are unclear, right wing figures are amplified far more than left wing figures on Twitter.The tech industry and other parties have argued that the law would prevent content moderation of any kind, and enable hate speech to flourish online.

In an emergency application submitted to the court, two industry groups representing companies including Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and Google wrote that “HB20 would compel platforms to disseminate all sorts of objectionable viewpoints, such as Russia’s propaganda claiming that its invasion of Ukraine is justified, ISIS propaganda claiming that extremism is warranted, neo-Nazi or KKK screeds denying or supporting the Holocaust, and encouraging children to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior like eating disorders.”In response to the application, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that HB 20 does not “prohibit the platforms from removing entire categories of content” such as pornography, “foreign government speech,” spam and other illegal content.Justice Kagan departed from her liberal colleagues, voting with conservative justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas in dissenting to the decision.

In the dissenting opinion, Alito wrote that the court had sided with the technology trade associations which contended, “among other things, that the law is facially unconstitutional under.