The Breitbart News reported on April 30 that Republican Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), following a legal opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, has introduced the 21st Century FREE Speech Act, which captures the growing similarity between big tech The 21st Century Free Speech Act, based on Justice Clarence Thomas’ legal opinion, captures the key point that big technology companies and common carriers are increasingly alike.
Common carriers, which include trains or telephone networks, have historically been subject to “special rules, including nondiscriminatory customer service. Senator Hagerty noted that public carrier law has long applied to the communications technology on which the American public relies.
In a recent Supreme Court opinion, Justice Thomas noted that the oligarchs’ censorship of Americans could be ended if Big Tech’s platforms were regulated as public carriers or places of public accommodation.
The bill, aimed at tech companies with more than 100 million monthly active users, protects them from liability for hosting third-party content, allowing these platforms to host a wide range of speech without legal risk, while eliminating Section 230’s broad exemption from speech censorship.
The bill would allow limited content review to protect children, but the bill regulates tech companies’ platforms as if they were common carriers, meaning that all Americans, would be able to access the platforms on reasonable, non-discriminatory terms.
Tech platforms must also disclose content control technology to users, which means that platforms will not be able to create discriminatory technology without the user’s knowledge. Users will also be able to sue any technology company that violates these principles.
Adam Candeub, a tenured law professor at Michigan State University and an expert in communications and antitrust law, applauded Senator Hagerty’s bill. Candeub is the acting director of the Trump administration’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which drafted Trump’s big tech regulatory proposals.
Candeb told Breitbart News, “Senator Hagerty’s bill packs a real punch compared to some of the well-intentioned, but flawed bills that Republicans have introduced at the federal and state level. It is innovative bill that protects American consumers from the runaway censorship of Silicon Valley’s tech overlords, while preserving First Amendment principles.”
While Senator Hagerty’s bill must still fight its way through the Democratic-controlled legislature, Google-funded tech blog Masnick (Techdirt) can’t wait to jump in and call the bill “nonsense” and “unconstitutional insanity.
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