Republican States now numbering 10 in total are seeking redress from the courts to check the power of social media platforms to censor Americans for political reasons. This move is just one of many moves that have been made ever since Twitter censored Donald J Trump while he was President and banned him while he was still President as well. That was the canary in the coal mine for the political class, in general, around the world. But how have we gotten to this point and what is next to come?
Before Twitter decided to censor the tweets of an American President, nation-states around the world were beginning to question the soundness of allowing a public discourse digital platform to dominate your nation-state that is managed by individuals willing to use that platform to enforce their particular political, moral, and ethical beliefs, meaning citizens in nation-states around the world were having their thoughts regulated more by billionaires in silicon valley and Beijing than by their own state governments.
For the most part, though, Twitter began to cooperate with states, having in part initially built its reputation on being a source for revolutions with the #iranelection revolution of 2009. By 2016, Twitter was no longer the source for information sharing for any group at fundamental odds with the state authority of their land. Here in America, the authority is more from the corporation than the state, though its power is ultimarely derived from the state willing to protect its assets after it violates the bills of rights of its customers.
Twitter reflected the values of the ruling authorities.
But that changed when Twitter began to interfere in an election, choosing not only to target people who fell outside the orthodoxy of the state, but of a particular political party. Twitter became the moral authoritarian of the DNC, willing to even target an American President for censorship in an effort to protect the DNC from a political election loss. At the moment that the first tweet by an American President was censored, all the other wanna-be rulers of the world began to see Twitter not only as a cultural adversary, but now, a state political one. Twitter was, and still is, positioning itself to be the kingmaker throughout the world.
For all the small nation-states, especially, this moment must have seemed even more chilling. After all, if Twitter could censor the American President without consequence, what would protect them from being the victim of Twitter’s international political opinions. Twitter is de facto colonizing the world, through force, to become their Silicon Valley and Beijing (there’s plenty of overlap between these two, though some notable differences) cultures if they want to stay in power at all.
The effect is that many small nation-statees especially havee begun to move to rid itself of the need of Twitter by building state-sponsored digitial public discourse platforms of their own.
That was the international effect of Twitter’s possibly treasonous actions (using their market power to subvert an American election by censoring the government itself), but domesticallly, many governments at the local to state level also received this message as a chilling grab for political power by the billionaires of silicon vallley, who were attempting, and still are, to make themselves the kingmakers of political power in America, at all levels, after all, if they could censor the American President, they can censor anyone.
With that in mind, the states are making moves to use the levers of political power to check the power grab attempt by Twitter, to criminalize the censorship of Americans for political beliefs and for claiming to be stopping the spreading of ‘misinformation,’ a task no free people would ever wish to see centralizedd and definable by the very few, the billionaires of silicon valley, over the vast many.
What will follow will be more lawsuits by states, more legislation by states, aimed at curtailing social media powwer. The final decision will be made by the Supreme Court and that, perhaps, is 3 or 4 years away from culmination.
Worldwide, the relevence of all the current major social media platforms will only decrease as more and more nation-focused alternatives emerge, and the internet, in general, will begin to seprate itself from itself as nation-states ruled by their respective political classes move to control the vehicle of power that is digital public discourse.
Attorney General Paxton Joins 10-State Coalition to Regulate Big Tech Censorship
From texasborderbusiness.com
2021-09-21 15:21:20
Excerpt:
Attorney General Paxton led a 10-state coalition that filed an amicus brief in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Florida’s law that regulates censorship on Big Tech platforms by requiring them to apply their content-moderation practices in a consistent manner and to provide disclosures to affected users. The brief explains why relevant provisions of Florida’s law are fully compatible with the First Amendment, which guarantees Americans’ right to freedom of speech, expression, and political beliefs.
“The regulation of big tech censorship will inevitably suppress the ideas and beliefs of millions of Americans,” said Attorney General Ken Paxton.
