Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter are no longer immune to lawsuits in the Lone Star State when they silence or otherwise violate the free speech rights of Texans.
"We will always defend the freedom of speech in Texas," Abbott announced while signing the legislation into law.
"Social media websites have become our modern-day public square. They are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely – but there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas," he added. "That is wrong, and we will not allow it in Texas."
Texas remains at the forefront of states that are challenging First Amendment violations by Big Tech. Since the federal government refuses to act, Texas has decided to take matters into its own hands.
House Bill 20, which was passed during a special session, requires social media companies with 50 million or more users to publicly disclose all of their content management practices and policies. The legislation also expressly prohibits said companies from targeting users based on political or ideological beliefs.
The law states that:
"... social media platform may not censor a user, a user's expression, or a user's ability to receive the expression of another person based on: (1) the viewpoint of the user or another person; (2) the viewpoint represented in the user's expression or another person’s expression; (3) or a user's geographic location in this state or any part of this state."
Based on these provisions, the Texas attorney general will be tasked with intervening on behalf of any plaintiff who files a suit.
Why do Democrats love censorship so much?
Florida passed similar legislation prohibiting social media platforms from banning political candidates, however a federal judge has temporarily blocked that one in favor of continued Big Tech censorship.
Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing for more social media censorship in an effort to silence their political opponents and prevent their voices from ever being heard in the digital public square.
Even though the Constitution clearly delineates that free speech is a critical tenet of a free and fair society, the left would rather erase the First Amendment entirely. In other words, the left would prefer to have fascism rather than freedom.
The Democrats' full-fledged hatred for free speech is anomalous since those who identify as such are constantly whining about how "all voices" need to be heard in order to preserve "democracy."
These same folks also want the government to forcibly penetrate you with Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) needles, even while they scream in the streets about "my body, my choice."
It is nothing but hypocrisy from these people, who claim to champion civil liberties while trampling them every chance they get. And conservatives, for the most part, just put up with it rather than fight back, which is their own fatal flaw.
"Can't trust these politicians," wrote one commenter at Natural News about the false left-right political paradigm. "Both sides are wings of the same bird and elections are rigged. They all say one thing and do another. It's all smoke and mirrors. Don't fall into believing otherwise."
Another noted that all the major tech platforms, including Amazon and Apple, are guilty of antitrust and RICO violations, and yet nothing is being done to punish these corporate criminals for stomping all over the Constitution while amassing ever-more wealth on the backs of the working class.
For more related news about free speech issues, visit FirstAmendment.news.
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