Last week we told you about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis introducing legislation to give people recourse if they are canceled by Big Tech companies like Twitter and Facebook. Now there’s a another Republican governor doing the same:
FOX BUSINESS -Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced his office is working with State Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, on legislation that would “prevent social media providers like Facebook & Twitter from canceling conservative speech.”
“We filed a bill about this during the last session two years ago, it passed the Senate did not make it through the House,” Hughes told WFAA’s Inside Texas Politics in an interview on Sunday. “So the bill we’re getting ready to file will say that if a company discriminates against you, deplatforms you, blocks you, kicks you off based on your viewpoint, based on your politics, your religion, based on viewpoint discrimination, it will give you a way to get back online.”
According to Hughes, the previous bill looked at different options for how users can bring discrimination lawsuits against the social media giants.
“What we would like to do is to give any Texan who’s being discriminated against, the option to bring an action and we think that will get Facebook’s attention, get Twitter’s attention, and cause them to start treating Texans fairly,” Hughes added.
A spokesperson for Twitter declined to comment while representatives for Facebook, Abbott, and Hughes did not immediately return FOX Business’ request for comment.
After what we saw in the previous election cycle, this is desperately needed. People need a legitimate way to fight back because if we don’t, we’ll all be canceled.
Section 230 is what truly needs reform and I worry that it could give these Big Tech companies an escape route from these state laws. Not sure how it all works, but I hope that’s not the case.