What happening today here in Washington at the Supreme Court,
the justices heard arguments in two First Amendment cases about
essentially policing online speech.
These two cases come from Texas and Florida,
and they could transform social media as we know it.
Our senior Washington correspondent Devin Dwyer has more for us
now.
Just sort of break it down for us and and
talk about what's at stake here with regard to free
speech on social media.
I mean it's quite the docker,
it's quite the talker cure and it touch touches all
of our lives.
We all use social media every day and the
interestingly the justices on the Supreme Court don't.
So if they got an an education today in four
hours of argument about how social media works and how
some of these algorithms and restrictions that companies put on
their users and their content work in real life.
These are a pair of cases that deal with how
much discretion social media companies have in moderating the content
you see on their sites,
meaning their decisions to limit your newsfeed.
Highlight some stories, devalue other stories,
remove certain people from their platforms if they
violate the terms of service.
Is all of that legal now?
The companies say they're effectively
like newspapers, their publishers, protected by the 1st Amendment,
able to say whatever they want to say on their
private sites.
But critics of the companies and the two states that
put these laws,
which were challenged today, Kira
argued that these companies are common carriers.
They're like utilities. They're like the electric electric company or
Verizon,
your telephone company. They have to be open to everybody,
no matter what they're saying.
And that was the big debate we heard today at
the court.
Yeah. And that we, you and I are both listening
to the arguments.
And it's hard to say where the justices are going
to go.
Devin, These cases come out of politics,
right? It was after the attack on the Capitol January
6th
that Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, what was known as Twitter at
the time,
they're all banned. The then sitting president of the United
States Donald Trump,
from their platforms. And so Texas and Florida passed laws
to try to stop that.
Conservatives think that that these companies are engaged in censorship.
Did you hear much of that?
What? What do you think in these arguments that we
heard something that we
Yeah, we we heard a lot about censorship from particularly
3 justices on the right side of the court.
Terry, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch
and Samuel Alito all worried about these companies wielding too
much power and silencing the views and the voices of
conservative Americans,
including people who question vaccines,
who question the results of the 2020 election.
And yes, removing Donald Trump from those platforms over his
role in the January 6th attack at the US Capitol,
that's been a long running concern that's been simmering for
years among conservatives.
We saw that on display today.
But we heard a number of justices,
including the liberal justices, say,
well, wait a second here,
If companies can do this,
you know, if you're going to raise concerns about this,
it could also happen on the other side.
So they're going to tread very carefully and how they
decide these cases.
And so it was fascinating listening to them.
Devin, thanks very much for breaking that down for us.