Transcripts For CSPAN Interview 20240703

Who are the named participants in moody versus net choice . The attorney general of florida against net choice, one of the groups representing it that has a lot of member companies, big names you would recognize that it together behind this trade association and filed a lawsuit. A new wave of regulation by various states telling us the content we can and cannot host on our platforms. We will hear oral arguments in just a moment. You were in the court room. What should you be listening for . In the florida case it is interesting to hear the justices delve into a strikingly novel question about the First Amendment rights of large social media platforms. There is a real acknowledgment on the part of the court that these are very important platforms. Platforms like what is now called x used to be called twitter. Facebook, youtube. In the words of some of the justices this is now the modern public square. What do you do when Large Private Companies have become so large they can impact the general discourse of millions of Everyday Americans . That is what the solicitor general was reviewing before the justices. Because these are novel issues you have some skepticism on the part of a lot of the justices asking about, when it comes to the First Amendment, that restricts the ability of the government to censor. It does not say anything about implied entities censoring. Once a day a government can come in and tell large social media platforms, even if they are extremely important to modern discourse, what kinds of content they can hold. That was a general philosophical debate you heard at the court. What could the ramifications be depending on what the Court Decides this summer . It is very hard to overstate what the ramifications could be if the Supreme Court upholds the florida law and says the government can in fact tell large social Media Companies what content they can post on their sites. The companies themselves are saying this will be an economic death spiral for us. No one will want to come to our sites. We are essentially being forced to host unethical content that violates our policies that we do not agree with because we have policies and systems in place to get rid of a lot of this stuff. Things like posting about terrorism or other criminal activity, pornography, etc. , will basically junk up their forums