The Supreme court has agreed to take up two cases that could dramatically alter how social media companies work. But there are some very serious legal issues at play with the cases that most people don’t quite understand. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The Supreme Court has agreed to take up two cases that could dramatically alter how social media companies work. But there’s some really serious legal issues and most people don’t understand what those issues are. We talk about this case all the time, don’t we? We’ve been talking about the fact this is going to the Supreme Court, how these two cases are huge, and basically it has to do with something fairly simple. It is that you have Florida that says, look, you can’t ban politicians. Florida says, and oh, by the way, you can’t remove content because you disagree with user viewpoint. And those are picking up in states all over the country right now. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And Texas also has a nearly identical law and those are the two the Supreme Court’s holding up. I do take issue with the way the laws were written just in general, because they’re making assumptions that they couldn’t prove. Sure, like, oh, you can’t ban people based on their political viewpoints alone. There’s no evidence that the political viewpoint alone was the reason. When you look back at some of the users who were banned, it’s clear that they violated the terms of service. But at the same time, parts of these laws absolutely do make sense, because you cannot have these vague terms of service that are determined by people in a back room, because that is when ideologies and things of that nature do come into play. So we need to have these open forums and certain types of things should be banned from these platforms. You know, death threats, things of that nature. Doxxing somebody.
Mike Papantonio: But I don’t think, yeah, that’s the problem. Okay. Who interprets what that is?
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: And so they’re gonna have to clear that up. But the argument for the tech industry, of course, is First Amendment. That you can’t tell us what we can say and can’t say, and by their actions, it is an action that actually creates a First Amendment issue. I think something has to shake up the tech industry.
Farron Cousins: A hundred percent. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: With these Supreme Court judges, something’s gonna happen and I don’t think tech industry’s gonna be really happy with it.
Farron Cousins: No.
Mike Papantonio: One of the decisions coming out of 11th Circuit, 11th Circuit is a very conservative circuit. And they’ve ruled in a way that it’s pretty good for the people who wanna say to the tech industry, look, you need to stop.
Farron Cousins: And the main point of all of this is, again, I disagree completely when they say, oh, you’re censoring conservatives. The studies have actually proven that ain’t the case at all. But.
Mike Papantonio: But I wanna tell you something. I wanna point something out. You’re right. Some studies do and some studies don’t. Statistics can lie. Right. And that’s what’s happening here. That’s what you’re gonna see in front of the Supreme Court, two sides of it.
Farron Cousins: Well, and the big thing is that there has to be the transparency. And I think that’s kind of the best we can hope for out of any decision we get, is the public needs to know. Right. You need to be open as a company, whether you’re Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn for god’s sake. Whoever you are, if you have these standards, make them to where everybody knows ’em, everybody can follow ’em so that if somebody gets taken off your site, they’re not up in arms saying, oh my God, I was deleted because of my political views. No, you actually called to kill somebody.
Mike Papantonio: In other words, post what the rules are, is what you’re saying.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Make sure everybody knows it.
Mike Papantonio: It’s not, well, I’ve got a secret algorithm and nobody knows what it is. That’s kind of where things are right now. So at least post what you’re gonna do to moderate all this, I think is your point.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it needs to take people’s opinions out of it. That has to be removed from the, and it has to be a strict set. Like, did user do X, Y, or Z? Yes, they did. Alright, we have the permission to ban you now.
Mike Papantonio: You know, Farron, you raised the issue about the statistics overwhelmingly show that it’s not a conservative issue, but there are statistics on the other side that show it, that’s gonna be the fight in front of the Supreme Court.
Farron Cousins: Sure.
Mike Papantonio: They’re gonna talk about, I mean, anybody can buy statistics and they’re gonna evaluate what’s most credible, on its face they’re gonna do that, but in their heart, they’re saying, what is my political, what’s my political leaning on that? And I don’t think there’s one of these Supreme Court judges, at least on the conservative side, that have any love for the tech industry.
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we got a six three majority, we know how this court’s gonna rule.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah.
