A fairly simple argument for this position is: This speech (the content posted to social media) is either speech by the poster or speech by the social media company; you can't have it both ways. If the social media company isn't responsible for illegal content, then ipso facto it must be the user's speech. But then the company doesn't have first amendment rights attached to that speech itself, such as the right against compelled speech that would be implicated by this law. (Note that this law doesn't by any plausible interpretation limit anyone's speech acts.)
I think everyone intuitively understands you can't assert 4A rights on contraband held by the police while also denying owning that contraband to dodge criminal responsibility. This thing with social media is the same thing but with 1A instead of 4A.
I would consider myself a first amendment absolutist; and yet I don't have a 1A problem with the concept of this law [0] insofar as social media companies choose the position that user speech isn't their speech. The problem is that they won't come out and state that position, they intentionally flipflop on whose speech their websites host exactly depending on what is most convenient. So of course it looks like this is a massively overreaching law when the position flops to "company speech". And if a company came out and said okay we accept responsibility for what's posted on our platform, then I'd be the first in line to say that the government can't force them to publish certain content.
Contrast traditional publishers who definitely have first amendment rights to publish or not to publish things. Well, yes, they do, but they also have legal responsibility for what they publish. The rights follow the responsibility.
[0] Saying nothing of the wording; because I'm sure it was drafted by censorious assholes, like every other law.
In a world where Facebook doesn't have a freedom of speech right to remove a post without also losing section 230 protection do you think freedom of association could cover removing specific posts or only banning users outright? Would Twitter's model of banning a user until they delete their own unwanted tweet(s) be okay?
Freedom of association is rooted in freedom of speech. Otherwise all the Civil Rights Acts would be unconstitutional as they fundamentally impact association, but not in a way that dilutes speech which is what freedom of association covers, for better or for worse. So, social media corps lacking freedom of speech rights in their users content, they also lack freedom of association rights with regards to that content and those users. To push the metaphor too far, their users' speech and their own speech are like oil and water: they are too different to dilute each other.
Now, would an alternate universe in which freedom of association was actually a robust right on its own be a better one overall? Would I happily trade that for this social media thing? Quite possibly, quite possibly.
That's not freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is a general principle that covers more than government censorship. What you're thinking of is the first amendment, which covers government censorship (including by its agents). 1A neither invented nor set the absolute boundary of the principle of freedom of speech.
In that case freedom of speech is generally defined according to Mills in On Liberty which still doesn’t acquiesce to the application suggested of social media. They as a large business of many users should not be provided a greater speech mandate than a dissenting individual should speech be actually free.
I think everyone intuitively understands you can't assert 4A rights on contraband held by the police while also denying owning that contraband to dodge criminal responsibility. This thing with social media is the same thing but with 1A instead of 4A.
I would consider myself a first amendment absolutist; and yet I don't have a 1A problem with the concept of this law [0] insofar as social media companies choose the position that user speech isn't their speech. The problem is that they won't come out and state that position, they intentionally flipflop on whose speech their websites host exactly depending on what is most convenient. So of course it looks like this is a massively overreaching law when the position flops to "company speech". And if a company came out and said okay we accept responsibility for what's posted on our platform, then I'd be the first in line to say that the government can't force them to publish certain content.
Contrast traditional publishers who definitely have first amendment rights to publish or not to publish things. Well, yes, they do, but they also have legal responsibility for what they publish. The rights follow the responsibility.
[0] Saying nothing of the wording; because I'm sure it was drafted by censorious assholes, like every other law.