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Reason
Reason
Politics
Stewart Baker

Is silencing a few million Americans a form of protected speech?

The Supreme Court has granted certiorari to review two big state laws trying to impose limits on social media censorship (or "curation," if you prefer) of platform content. Paul Stephan and I spar over the right outcome, and the likely vote count, in the two cases. One surprise: we both think that the platforms' claim of a first amendment "right to curate" is in tension with their claim that they, uniquely among speakers, should have an immunity for that form of speech.

Maury weighs in to note that the EU is now gearing up to bring social media to heel on the "disinformation" front. That fight will be ugly for Big Tech, he points out, because Europe doesn't care if it puts social media out of business, since it's an American industry. I point out that elites all across the globe have rallied to meet and defeat social media's challenge to their agenda-setting and reality-defining authority. India is aggressively doing the same.

Paul covers another big story in law and technology: The FTC has sued Amazon for antitrust violations – essentially price gouging and tying. Whether the conduct alleged in the complaint is even a bad thing will depend on the facts found by the court, so the case will be hard fought. And, given the FTC's track record, no one should be betting against Amazon.

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