If anything, they do the exact opposite.”vox.com. Nevertheless, the perception of bias remains powerful among the base. Republican officials have thus increasingly tried to coerce tech platforms into changing policies. Aside from Florida and Texas, other GOP states have proposed copycat bills, and in 2023, some House Republicans introduced a bill to strip platforms of Section 230 immunity if they “censor” lawful speech.
This approach – using state power to limit a private company’s content moderation – is a form of government control of media, just not traditional media. It essentially aims to compel online media to carry certain speech. As such, many civil libertarians see it as just as dangerous as book banning. The firestorm over “big tech censorship” intensified after Trump’s deplatforming: Republican officials frequently suggested retaliation, from antitrust lawsuits (Trump’s DOJ did sue Google and Facebook, ostensibly on competition grounds) to calls to treat social media as common carriers or public utilities. Some have even floated creating a government-run social platform to guarantee access (though that has not materialized).
It’s worth noting that the same Florida government that passed the Social Media law also targeted specific private companies for their speech. In 2022, after Disney’s CEO spoke out against the “Don’t Say Gay” law, Governor DeSantis and Florida’s legislature moved to strip Disney of its special municipal district status – widely seen as punishment for Disney’s stance. “If Disney wants to pick a fight, they chose the wrong guy,” DeSantis said, essentially admitting retaliation. This battle is ongoing in court as Disney alleges First Amendment retaliation by the state. It showcases how under the influence of Trump’s combative approach, Republican officials have become increasingly willing to wield government power to punish corporate or media speech they don’t like – whether it’s a theme park company or Twitter’s former moderation policies.
Impact on Online Discourse
While these social media laws have mostly been tied up in court, their impact is already felt in online discourse. Some platforms have adjusted policies for fear of being sued. For example, when Texas’s law briefly went into effect in 2022 (before the Supreme Court stayed it), sites like Reddit and Discord were confronted with the possibility that their community moderation – say, banning hate speech in a forum – could trigger lawsuits. Many smaller websites might simply shut down or avoid operating in states with such laws, rather than risk liability. The uncertainty also gave rise to alternative platforms like Trump’s own Truth Social, Parler, and Gab, which market themselves as not moderating political speech (though in reality they often ban users for other reasons, showing the complexities of “free speech” absolutism).
On the flip side, mainstream platforms have actually bent over backwards to avoid perceptions of anti-conservative bias. Facebook reportedly shelved some anti-misinformation tools in 2020 to avoid angering Republicans. Twitter (before its 2022 sale to Elon Musk) had internal debates about exempting rule-breaking tweets by politicians to avoid accusations of bias. Ironically, data indicates conservative pundits and politicians thrive on these platforms under the current rules – for instance, right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro’s posts were consistently among top Facebook links in 2020, and under Musk, formerly banned figures like Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump (though Trump hasn’t tweeted yet) have been reinstated.
Still, by portraying Big Tech as an enemy of free speech and positioning themselves as defenders of the “little guy’s voice,” GOP lawmakers have justified increasing government scrutiny of online media. This has extended to issues like net neutrality repeal (under Trump’s FCC) – framed as anti-regulation, it effectively gave more control to internet service providers – and threats against tech CEOs (Trump mused about investigating Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in retaliation for The Washington Post’s coverage, and he repeatedly accused Twitter’s and Google’s leaders of conspiracy). In July 2023, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana even issued an extraordinary injunction barring Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies about content moderation, claiming government “coercion” of platforms to remove misinformation (that order was later narrowed on appeal, but it shows the continuing battles over who influences online media).
Looking ahead, Trump and his allies have promised that if they regain power, they will go further in controlling media and online speech. Trump’s 2024 campaign platform talks of investigating journalists for “fake news” and establishing mechanisms to punish “misinformation” (presumably as defined by Trump).