Bill to prevent social media censoring passes Georgia Senate | News

ATLANTA — Georgia Republicans handed a invoice within the Senate Tuesday that may stop social media platforms from censoring consumer viewpoints.

Related legal guidelines handed in Texas and Florida final yr have been blocked by judges in federal courts. A proposal – which awaits a Home and Senate vote – in Alabama seeks to make the platform pay $100,000 to the consumer for every offense, whereas in Mississippi, a social media censorship invoice died in committee in early February. 

“Georgia is about to be the primary state within the nation to empower customers of social media platforms,” Senate Majority Chief Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton, stated. “By passing SB 393, we’re guaranteeing Georgians usually are not unfairly focused for his or her private ideologies by giving oversight of social media platforms to our Public Service Fee.”

Senate Invoice 293 would prohibit giant social media platforms with greater than 20 million U.S. customers from censoring somebody in Georgia based mostly on their viewpoints, or precise or perceived race, colour, ethnicity, faith, political opinions or affiliation, nationwide origin, intercourse, gender, sexual orientation or incapacity. The invoice would nonetheless permit the social media platforms to nonetheless ban posts or customers for harassment, extreme violence or pornography.

The invoice additionally requires platforms to reveal data concerning decision-making procedures, content material administration data, algorithms and different data, and requires the platform to publish a report each six months on information associated to variety of coverage violating posts, content material elimination, content material demonetization, and many others. 

Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal, the invoice’s sponsor, in January attributed the censorship proposal to social media websites filtering or banning customers for “false” claims of election fraud and COVID-19 data — most notably former President Donald Trump and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

The laws protects “Georgia customers throughout all main social media platforms from the continuing censorship that has unfairly focused conservatives and anybody who appears to problem the prevailing thought,” Dolezal stated on the time. “With this laws, Silicon Valley liberals will not be capable to silence the voices of Georgians with out making a clear case with a justifiable trigger.”

The invoice encourages civil actions in opposition to social media platforms that violate the regulation.  

Democrat Sen. Jen Jordan‚ who was amongst 21 Democrats who voted in opposition to the invoice, stated whereas social media corporations are “uncontrolled,” the state’s Republican-led proposal is unconstitutional.

“It must be handled on a federal degree,” Jordan stated. 

Opponents have additionally argued the invoice would make it more durable for social media platforms to filter out hate speech or false data.

The invoice now heads to the Home for a vote.