The issue is whether or not moderation that removes comments amounts to censorship.
The Supreme Court is considering taking up two cases, one from Texas and one from Florida, that directly address the belief that social media companies are engaging in censorship by moderating and removing unwanted content from their websites.
Both Texas and Florida passed state laws in 2021 curbing social media companies’ ability to moderate and remove the content their users post, including misinformation, extremism, or hate speech. The laws were immediately challenged in court, where Texas’ law was upheld and Florida’s law was struck down.
Now Florida is hoping to revive the law by appealing to the Supreme Court, and industry groups representing Meta, Google, and X, formerly known as Twitter, have appealed Texas’ law to the Supreme Court.
The Department of Justice urged the Supreme Court this week to take on these cases. “When a social-media platform selects, edits, and arranges third-party speech for presentation to the public, it engages in activity protected by the First Amendment,” the Justice Department stated in its brief.
As the Lord Leads, Pray with Us…
- For Attorney General Merrick Garland and officials of the DOJ as they defend social media companies’ rights.
- For the Supreme Court justices as they consider the request to hear the case regarding free speech.
- For wisdom for governing officials as they weigh the freedom of speech of individuals against the freedom of companies to regulate or moderate it.
Sources: Reuters, NY Times
