DeSantis plan goes against 1st Amendment
He calls them the “Big Tech cartel,” and ever since Twitter, Facebook and other social-media companies banned his political godfather, Gov. DeSantis has launched a crusade against them.
Speaking at a news conference on Feb. 2 about the proposed “Transparency in Technology
Act” (it goes by the unfortunate acronym “TiT”) DeSantis vowed to protect Floridians — or a certain Mar-a-Lago resident — from tech companies’ censorship that he says discriminates against conservatives. DeSantis’ plan has less to do with substance and more with appeasing Donald Trump and making DeSantis the next messiah of his base.
But there’s no evidence that social-media platforms disproportionately target conservatives and, in fact, conservative pages such as Fox News and Breitbart dominate engagement on Facebook, according to a New York University study released in February.
There’s another tiny detail: Much of what the Transparency in Technology Act attempts to do is what the First Amendment prevents government from doing: telling private businesses what kind of speech they should allow on their platforms.
The proposal would impose daily fines of up to $100,000 on tech companies that de-platform a political candidate in Florida, and fine a company that uses its content and algorithms “to suppress or prioritize the content related to political candidates.” Social-media platforms also would be required to reveal how they became aware of any content they censor.
What DeSantis is trying to do is similar to an old law the Supreme Court struck down in 1974’s Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo. That law required newspapers to allow equal space to political candidates to respond to that paper’s editorial-page criticism. The court ruled newspapers should have full control of the content they publish, a protection that’s been expanded to internet companies.
“(The Transparency in Technology Act) would compel socialmedia companies to host speech they don’t want to,” Clay Calvert, a First Amendment expert at the University of Florida’s law school, told the Miami Herald’s Editorial Board. “Instead of a newspaper print medium, you’re now compelling social-media platforms to host the speech of individuals.”
DeSantis’ heavy-handed and regressive political theater aside, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google
and others deserve their day of reckoning for their use of consumer data. The price we pay for using those platforms is our own privacy and personal information that is sold for a profit. On this front, DeSantis and House Republicans are onto something.
While “TiT” has not been filed as a bill — and it shouldn’t be — lawmakers filed a different bill last week. Despite DeSantis’ combative anti-Big Tech rhetoric, House Bill 969 is a “pretty mundane standard privacy bill,” Corbin Barthold, an internet policy lawyer at the think tank TechFreedom, told the Editorial Board.
HB 969 would allow users to know what data companies collect, request it be erased and ask whether it was sold or shared. The state and individuals would also be allowed to sue companies that violate their rules.
Consumers deserve to know what happens once they hit the “accept” button on terms and conditions. But experts warn the best place for such regulations is Congress, and not state legislatures, because tech companies operate across state lines.
But the proposal deserves a discussion. Unike the DeSantis’ misguided crusade, HB 969 appears to have consumers’ interest at its core.
As the pandemic throws millions of Americans out of work, cars line up for miles outside food banks across the country. COVID-19 did not create the crisis of hunger in the United States, but it has exposed its root cause. Hint: It’s not a shortage of food.
Even before the pandemic, 35 million Americans were food insecure, meaning they were not able to access and afford enough nutritious food for their families. And many more people were one or two paychecks away from needing help.
In a 2018 survey, the Federal Reserve found that 40 percent of Americans could not afford to pay an unexpected $400 bill. When businesses were forced to shut down, this lack of a financial cushion created an economic shock and a dramatic increase in food insecurity.
Feeding America estimates that in 2020, some 50 million Americans — one in seven — suffered from food insecurity.
Let’s be clear: The reason we have massive lines at food-bank distributions is not because we have a shortage of food supplies. Yes, in the early days of the pandemic we faced short-term shortages when people stockpiled toilet paper and other nonperishables. But we have a robust food supply that rebounded quickly to respond to the need.
Millions of Americans are hungry because they lack the means to pay for food.
During the pandemic, we have awakened to racial injustices and systemic inequalities that put certain groups of people at greater risk for losing their jobs, contracting the virus and becoming food insecure. Black and Latino Americans are more likely than whites to work in low-wage service industries and are more likely to lose their jobs because of COVID-19.
People of color, particularly women, were already the most at risk for food insecurity, financial instability and health disparities prior to COVID-19.
Despite decades of providing charitable food from regional food banks and local food pantries, food insecurity remains a persistent public-health problem that the pandemic has only exacerbated.
Food banks have risen to the occasion and are addressing the immediate need for food. To tackle the root causes of food insecurity, however, we need both public and private responses.
We need a stronger government safety net that includes not just federal food assistance, but a minimum wage that enables workers to afford food, housing and other basic needs.
We need the business sector to step up, not only with charitable donations, but by paying living wages with benefits so their employees don’t need to rely on food charities.
There is light at the end of this dark tunnel. Vaccines are rolling out, businesses are beginning to reopen, spring is around the corner and President Biden has
signed executive orders to reduce food insecurity during COVID-19.
As important, the Biden administration has demonstrated its willingness to tackle the root causes of hunger by proposing a $15 minimum wage. The federal rate of $7.25 has not budged since 2009, which helps explain the financial devastation millions of low-wage workers have experienced during the pandemic, including many essential workers.
Let’s use this extraordinary
moment in history to reduce systemic inequalities and ensure that all Americans can afford enough food.
Americans are hungry for change.