Republican Texas Governor's Social Media Attack Gets Destroyed By Federal Judge

Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott had his social media attack legislation struck down by a federal court late last week, after the judge ruled that his law was a violation of the First Amendment. Abbott had signed legislation banning social media companies from barring people for "political affiliation", something that isn't actually happening, and the court was having none of it. Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Late last week, Republican, Texas, governor Greg Abbott suffered a major legal defeat at the hands of a us district judge, by the name of Robert Pittman. And what Pitman did was he struck down a law signed by Greg Abbott in September that basically banned social media companies from banning anyone from their platforms based solely on their political affiliations. A problem that by the way, doesn't actually exist here in the United States. But Pittman judge Pittman says that this law is a violation of the first amendment rights of these platforms. As multiple courts have already ruled, you cannot limit the editorial, uh, obligations, I guess you would call them or decisions of the social media outlets. They have a first amendment, right? To say what can and cannot be used on their platforms. And there's nothing you can do Greg Abbott to stop that the law was supposed to go into effect on Thursday, but judge Pittman issued his ruling right before it could happen.

So unfortunately for Republicans in Texas, you overstepped your bounds and you lost, but losing was always the point because the legislation was specifically designed to lose because it only applied not broadly to any social media company. Oh God, no. It only applied to social media companies with more than 50 million users, which means Facebook, Twitter, Instagram y'all are all liable for the new law, but parlor Frank speech, gab, you're fine. You can ban anybody you want for any reason you want. And we're not going to say anything about it. So basically it gave a pass to these hugely unpopular, right wing social media sites, and only punish the big tech companies and right off the bat, like totally not going to fly. If you're going to make a law that addresses censorship on social media, it has to apply to everyone. So right then and there, which again is not even what the judge ruled based on.

But even that alone, the judge could have struck down the law saying this is clearly targeted towards these tech companies as a political punishment. And I wish Pittman would have gone that far as to say that. But instead he said, listen, courts have already decided this issue years and years ago, you cannot tell one of these private entities, what they can or can not allow. As far as speech is concerned on their website. They have that editorial decision and they're free to do whatever they want, even if it's based on politics. But again, Abbott needed to lose this in order to show his hardcore Republican base. Look at what they're doing with us. The courts are siding with big tech. They're attacking us, they're attacking you. They want to allow big tech to sensor you because of your conservative opinions. That those are going to be the talking points that come out of this.

And that's what they were hoping for. That does them more of a service than actually winning the case and getting the legislation because nobody is being banned from social media sites based solely on their political affiliation. That's ridiculous. People get banned all the time for all kinds of reasons. We're seeing a lot of it now with misinformation, you know, posting, uh, anti-vax stuff can get you banned and it should because it's all fake misinformation. We've seen people banned for running bot armies, you know, for having these fake accounts that they're using to bolster their real accounts to make it look like they're more popular than they already are. And of course, people who spread hate, encourage violence, things like that. They get banned as well. But not any of those people, whether they're from the left or the right have been banned only because of their political ideologies, that doesn't happen, but it's a big Republican talking point that it does happen. And they think they're the victims of it. Even though conservative crap is spread across social media far more than liberal stuff. It's just the way it is. The tech companies have admitted that, that the algorithm favors the inflammatory comment from right wing talking heads and news sites. That's a fact from the tech companies themselves.