US Censorship News

California state lawmakers are discussing proposed legislation to require age and identity verification for all internet users. The proposal is bassed upon the UK's Age Appropriate Design Code that requires websites likely to be accessed by under 18s to implement data protection according to age. Younger viewers will be restricted from handing over personal data. But of course the rub is that the websites needs to know the age of the reader to implement this.

The bill, AB2273, is known as The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act.

Critics of the legislation contend this requirement threatens the privacy of adults and the ability to use the internet anonymously. Eric Goldman, Santa Clara University School of Law professor commented:

The bill pretextually claims to protect children, but it will change the Internet for everyone. In order to determine who is a child, websites and apps will have to authenticate the age of ALL consumers before they can use the service. No one wants this.

The bill will put an end to casual web browsing, forcing companies to collect personal information they don't want to store and protect -- and that consumers don't want to provide -- in order to authenticate the age of visitors. And since age authentication generally requires identity details, that threatens the ability to use the internet anonymously.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has reacted to a recent mass shooting in Buffalo by signing as many as ten new laws, including one that concerns social media.

Hochul said that New York will require social media companies to report hateful content:

In the state of New York, we're now requiring social media networks to monitor and report hateful conduct on their platforms, Hochul announced.

According to the governor, the state will set up a task force whose focus will be violent extremism and social media, and this body will also investigate the role of social media in promoting domestic terror.

The US state of Florida responded to social media's silencing of Donald Trump by enacting a new law to ban social media from censoring users for political reasons. The law was challenged in the courts and it has now been judged to be mostly unconstitutional.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Florida's social media regulation law is unconstitutional.

The Appeals Court ruled against most of the provisions in Florida's social media regulation law. However, it said some of the provisions, including one that requires platforms to allow banned individuals to access their data for at least 60 days, were constitutional.

The ruling said that the law violated social media companies' First Amendment rights:

We conclude that social media platforms' content-moderation activities -- permitting, removing, prioritizing, and deprioritizing users and posts -- constitute 'speech' within the meaning of the First Amendment.

Most notably, the court rejected the argument that social media companies should be defined as common carriers, saying:

Neither law nor logic recognizes government authority to strip an entity of its First Amendment rights merely by labeling it a common carrier.

Earlier this month, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a similar law in Texas to be enforced. The Texas law prohibits social media companies from censoring content or banning users based on political viewpoints. Tech companies have appealed the ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and have submitted the ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to support their case.