We've known that Texas is suing Twitter for some time. There's been a development.
So Texas is trying to force Twitter to keep posts up that violate their terms of service, because it's mostly Trump supporters post death threats, hate speech and racism. Texas is calling Twitter a "common carrier" and therefore they can't discriminate against people who make death threats, hate speech or racist statements, unless they also kick off people of the opposing viewpoint, because Twitter shouldn't be allowed to discriminate.
Another judge just blocked that blocking, allowing Texas to continue enforcing that law, while the lawsuit continues.
That second Texas judge did not rule on the law itself, which only makes sense because quite frankly he can't. This is a blatant First Amendment issue. The government can't force Twitter to keep speech on its platform it doesn't want. The judge just is allowing Texas to enforce it anyhow.
This means, for the time being, Twitter has a few options.
1) Cut off Texas. Which is what I would do, but Twitter probably wants the money.
2) Create one host for everyone who isn't Texas, and one for Texas, and only ban people on the first.
3) Enforce the law equally in all states, and therefore, stop banning people for their opinions which happen to be against the terms of service.
Let's do this hypothetically. Hypothetically, mods, hypothetically.
Let's say, for example, I hypothetically said:
MMO-C could not ban me for that. Or, at least for now, I could launch a lawsuit from the state of Texas, under Texas law, and win. Forcing MMO-C to host my statement, even though it quite clearly breaks the terms of service.Originally Posted by Hypothetical
Or!
They would also have to ban the likely dozens of people responding with "What? What? No, what the fuck is wrong with you?" Because they would be espousing an alternate viewpoint.
So it's both or neither.
Now I'm going to ask @Rozz @Flarelaine and what the hell @Radux how they feel about this, because they are mods and I think their input is worth it, and they have all commented in these forus.
And before anyone brings it up, the fact that Twitter isn't based in Texas doesn't seem to be an issue, so where MMO-C is based isn't either.
Now once again, the lawsuit is ongoing and I really hope Texas loses. The "common carrier" rule should not apply to Twitter, because being on Twitter isn't really mandatory for...anything, except being employed by Twitter. There's also Section 230 which is still the law, and yes the First Amendment. We'll find out eventually. But again, for now, Texas is allowed to enforce a law that says social media companies cannot ban people for posting things that violate the terms of service, if those things can be defended as opinions -- without banning people who take the other side, even if the other side does not violate the terms of service.