DeSantis’ Big Tech crackdown ready

House to vote on bill punishing firms that ‘deplatform’ candidates

TALLAHASSEE — Despite concerns about its constitutionality, a bill to punish Big Tech companies that “deplatform” candidates or censor users’ speech without reason is ready for a vote in the House after passing through a committee in that chamber Tuesday.

It’s part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ push to crack down on Twitter, Facebook and other major technology firms for censoring conservatives, including banning former President Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

“The vast majority of Americans think Big Tech is inappropriately censoring people,” said Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, sponsor of HB 7013. “We need transparency, accountability and consistency.”

The bill passed 12-6 along partisan lines through the House Judiciary Committee, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed, but there were no questions or debate despite the heavy criticism the bill has generated.

The Senate version, SB 7072, passed through a committee in that chamber later on Tuesday and will likely get one more hearing before it’s ready for a floor vote. The vote was 3-2, again along party lines.

“I don’t want there to be a strong arm of government coming down on the social media and those that want to voluntarily get involved with that,” said Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando.

Ingoglia has touted a provision in the bill requiring the Big Tech

companies to post their standards for conduct and speech on their platforms and be unable to change them more than once every 30 days. Users must be notified when they’re banned or censored — including when a warning or “addendum” is attached to their posts.

The bill defines “social media platform” as an “information service, system, Internet search engine, or access software provider that does business in the state, and provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including an Internet platform and/or a social media site” that has gross annual revenues of more than $100 million and at least 100 million monthly users worldwide.

Those provisions mean it would apply to the five main tech giants that have raised the ire of DeSantis and other conservatives: Twitter, Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon. DeSantis has cited Facebook and Twitter’s removal of Trump from their platforms as a reason the new restrictions are needed, as well as Apple and Amazon’s move to stop web hosting services to Parler, a social media platform touted by conservatives as an alternative to Twitter.

But the bill’s expansive new restrictions on those firms have spurred criticism that it is unconstitutional. For example, the measure would prevent companies from kicking candidates for office off their platforms, or face daily fines of $100,000 for statewide candidates and $10,000 for other candidates if they do.

“Generally, businesses cannot be compelled to host speech with which it disagrees, absent a mandate that has been narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest,” an analysis of the bill prepared by House Judiciary staffers states. “Some of the provisions of the bill may implicate First Amendment protections for business speech.”

The tech firms would also be barred from new contracts with the state and local governments if they are deemed to violate or suspected of violating anti-trust laws by the Florida Attorney General. The use of algorithms to boost or suppress topics, issues or viewpoints must be spelled out to users, who must be given the option to opt-out of any algorithm.

Those algorithms can’t be used on the accounts of candidates for office, and the social media platforms have to give candidates a way to identify themselves as a qualified candidate for office under the bill.

Any user kicked off a social media platform would also be allowed to retrieve any personal information, data and content within 60 days after being deplatformed, and the tech giants must also provide a user with a “precise and thorough explanation” of how they learned about the censored post.

The bill has turned normal political allegiances on its head, as conservative Republicans move to impose strict regulations on private companies and Democrats defend their right to control what is posted on their platforms.

“As a conservative, I’m frustrated too — I get upset when I see what I think is considered to be acts of bias against conservatives,” said Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, a free-market tech advocacy group that counts Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon as members. “But as a conservative, I fundamentally believe in a private entity’s right to decide what’s best for its users and its advertisers.”

But for Florida Republicans, the tech firms have become too dominant in determining public discourse.

“What we now have are large monopolies that have not been broken up, and they’re not being regulated either, and what we’re saying is we’re going to use this bill to regulate those monopolies for the benefit of the Florida consumers,” said Sen. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, sponsor of the Senate bill.