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Late last week, a US court effectively declared social media moderation illegal in Texas. The ruling doesn’t change anything for now. But it just set the stage for a Supreme Court decision that could transform the internet. And with that context… it’s remarkably bad.
The case I’m talking about is NetChoice v. Ken Paxton, a fight over a law called HB 20, which we’ve discussed before. HB 20 bans large social networks from deleting (or hiding or demonetizing or downranking) content or users based on “viewpoint.” It’s positioned as an anti-“Big Tech” censorship bill, but it’s poised to cover many sites beyond your average Facebook or YouTube behemoth. It would require a radical reworking of many major services, plausibly including an end…