The Revolution Will Not Be Moderated: Examining Florida and Texas's Attempts to Prohibit Social Media Content Moderation

Today, around seventy percent of American citizens actively use social media for news content, entertainment, and social engagement. Since 2005, the number of Americans using social media in some capacity has increased 13 fold from five to sixty-five percent. Despite numerous studies demonstrating a correlation between social media rhetoric and real-world violence against women, racial and ethnic minority communities, and the LGBTQIA community, both Florida and Texas passed bills limiting the ways in which social media sites can moderate the content and users on their platforms in 2021. Florida’s Senate Bill 7072 requires social media platforms to allow political candidates to have a presence on their platforms during campaigning.

In Texas, House Bill 20 prohibits social media platforms from moderating or removing any content or users that are legal but might be contrary to the platform’s guidelines.