Leftists Want to Regulate Big Biz — Except Big Tech

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases this term with the same issue: are social media companies exercising free speech by blocking others’ comments or engaging in censorship. In NetChoice v. Paxton out of Texas and Moody v. NetChoice out of Florida, the court will decide the legality statutes that restrict social media companies from censoring or limiting content users post on their platforms.

Censorship by social media platforms, what they call “content moderation,” came to a head during the 2020 presidential election, when Twitter blocked, and Facebook tightly controlled the reach of, the New York Post’s series of stories describing the contents of a laptop computer belonging to then-candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

They and others, such as Google-owned YouTube, also severely limited any posts that were critical of U.S. public health’s recommendations to prevent and treat COVID-19 during its outbreak, often at the prompting of the Biden White House.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar recommended that the court consider two questions presented by the cases:

• Whether provisions in the Texas and Florida laws that regulate tech companies’ ability to remove, edit, or arrange the content that appears on their platforms violate the First Amendment; and,
• Whether provisions that require tech companies, represented by the trade group NetChoice, to explain their decisions to remove or edit specific content violate the First Amendment.

In short, the government argues that restricting Big Tech’s ability to censor their users’ content violates Bug Tech’s free speech rights.

Dan Schneider, vice president of Media Research Center's Free Speech America, submits that this incorrectly frames the issue.

“The proper question that the court will address is whether states can protect free speech rights of individuals from corporations that seek to suppress private speech for their own political agenda,” he told Newsmax.

Schneider added that “we have plenty of Supreme Court precedents that are applicable here,” and referenced Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, a free speech dispute between a California shopping mall and a group of high school students soliciting petition signatures protesting an anti-Semitic United Nations resolution.

“The Supreme Court held that when there’s a critical pathway of communication, that it is allowable for a state to protect that speech and the free flow of information,” Schneider said.

Applying that to the present set of facts, he observed that “Big Tech is the single most powerful pathway to communication that exists on the planet — and has ever existed on the planet.”

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody made that very point in her petition asking the court to hear the case.

"Social media has become a dominant method of communication. That dominance, however, comes at a price," she argued. "When social media companies abuse their market dominance to silence speech, they distort the marketplace of ideas."

In confirmation of Big Tech’s dominance in the “marketplace of ideas,” Pew Research found in a 2021 survey, that more than eight our-of-10 Americans get news from digital devices.

Schneider continued: “And Big Tech is trying to censor and restrain speech that these left-wing oligarchs disagree with. They are very specifically trying to silence political speech on the right as they try to create a world in their own image. This is violative of our individual rights, and it is a harm to our country and our Constitution.”

He added that Google, another tech giant, should also be short-leashed.

“Google is the fount of all evil,” and “when the Supreme Court upholds the Texas [and Florida] statute, it must also be applied to Google.”

In 2019, C-Fact demonstrated how Google discriminates against conservatives and government skeptics.

Last year, PJ Media reported that Google labels conservative sites and political cartoons as “dangerous and derogatory” in an apparent effort to scare off advertisers.

But above all, Schneider found the left’s argument supporting Big Tech hypocritical.

“As a general thought, I think it’s humorous that the left is arguing for the first time in its existence that big corporations should not be regulated — that they should be allowed to do anything they want,” he said.

Previously, however, “the left has pushed hard to regulate what kind of toilets can be manufactured, what kind of gas stoves we can or cannot have in our homes, and what kind of engines we can have in our cars.”

In short, “they want to regulate every aspect of our lives, until it touches on an industry that is fully in bed with pushing a left-wing agenda. Suddenly they want that industry to be treated as though they’re angels descended from heaven.”

The now-nominally conservative high court has made monumental, landmark decisions in the last two terms.

It struck down the nearly-half century old Roe v. Wade decision that had declared abortion to be a constitutionally protected right. It also expanded the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, ended the use of affirmative action in college admission decisions, and reaffirmed religious freedom.

When the court delivers its opinion next summer, it has an opportunity to reaffirm free speech rights.