Social media websites provide limitless information, videos, social affinity groups and entertainment. They also provide a potential platform for political conflict, hate speech, mis-information on public health issues, obscenity, and endless spin on current events. Most of the postings on social media are user-generated content and, as such, reflect both the positive and negative aspects of American society. To make their users’ experience more appealing, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok moderate and edit users’ submissions. Their goal is to remove content the websites’ owners deem violations of their terms of use and objectionable to their target audiences.
While many mainstream politicians have effectively used sites like Facebook to communicate their messages, the more extreme groups on the Right and Left have been frustrated. Postings supporting extreme positions on topics like gun violence, immigration and abortion have been promptly removed by moderators working for the social media sites. In response, in 2021 the Florida legislature passed a social media law which was represented to “level the playing field” for politicians, particular those claiming social media bias against their conservative political views. Senate Bill 7072. In his signing statement Governor DeSantis stated that the bill was combat the “biased silencing of ‘our freedom of speech as conservatives … by the ‘big tech’ oligarchs in Silicon Valley.”
