Texas and Florida Content Moderation Laws Would Open Pandora’s Box

“A transparency mandate passed by Congress can avoid the controversial and difficult work of legally defining the terminology and specific guardrails for online safety and viewpoint neutrality.”

The United States Supreme Court is currently reviewing controversial “free speech” laws in Texas (House Bill 20) and Florida (Senate Bill 7072). While well intended, these laws would allow the states of Texas and Florida to interfere with—and even override—the content moderation decisions of online platforms. In effect, they may compel the platforms to enable the broadcast of specific content in order to satisfy the desires of these state governments to achieve viewpoint balance, even if said content may be imminently harmful to specific persons or groups. With insufficient guardrails to ensure both online safety and viewpoint diversity, future government decisions on acceptable content risk being politically motivated and partisan, resulting in arbitrary conclusions that depend on which political party is in power at a given time.

Additionally, if these state laws are upheld and enforced, other states will likely pass similar laws. This would result in a jumble of potentially 50 different state-level rules that would make it nearly impossible for platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, and others to operate effectively. Further complications would arise because users move around constantly throughout the states. The proper place for any laws pertaining to content moderation rules is clearly at the federal level.

Rather than introducing a direct role for Congress or state government to influence or direct the content moderation policies and actions of social media companies, a transparency-focused approach can achieve many of the same goals without opening the door for potential future government control over online content.