Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (R) attend a congressional hearing remotely on Oct. 28, 2020.
Six North Dakota Republican House members introduced a bill Jan. 8 on censorship of big tech companies that would allow U.S. users whose accounts have been deleted or censored to file lawsuits against Twitter and Facebook.
The new bill is titled “Allowing civil lawsuits against social media sites for censoring speech. The bill states that online platforms with more than 1 million users would be “liable in a civil action for damages to a person whose speech was restricted, censored, or suppressed by the platform, and to any person who reasonably could have received (the censored) text, speech, or publication.
In addition, censored individuals may be awarded damages equal to three times the actual damages, including compensatory, consequential and incidental damages.
North Dakota Rep. Tom Kading (D), who sponsored the bill, explained to the Grand Forks Herald that social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube “are wrong to ban a sitting president’s (right to) speak,” adding that the proposal is intended to provide North Dakotans with legal protection tools.
Cardin further said that Twitter and Facebook violated the terms of their own agreements with users by banning or restricting politically related content.
Under Twitter’s rules, the site has a zero-tolerance policy for violent and threatening content, and if a post contains a propagandistic call to action that could harm a specific individual or group, Twitter can delete the tweet. But some critics argue that Twitter has overstepped the boundaries of its mandate by creating its own censorship standards and adding context to what a “threat of violence” might be. Another group stressed the company’s often double standard for censorship controls.
But some experts questioned whether the newly proposed bill would have any impact on big tech companies.
Attorney Akiva Cohen tweeted that even if the North Dakota legislature passes the bill, it could be invalidated and replaced by Section 230 of the Communications Act due to conflicts with federal law, which would take precedence over state law when there are conflicting laws.
Recently, Section 230 of the Communications Regulatory Act has been criticized by conservatives as providing immunity from liability protection for Twitter and Facebook. According to Section 230, these companies that provide online platforms are not liable for, among other things, any actions taken in good faith to restrict access or for content material that is deemed obscene, lewd, lascivious, profane, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable by the content provider or user, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.
The Trump administration and other Republicans have repeatedly emphasized the risks associated with unbalanced censorship of user content by social media platforms. Trump has said the law should be repealed and argued that Big Tech is overstepping its authority by censoring content.
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