E’ stata data la notizia circa la sentenza di appello 23 maggio 2022 dell’11 circuito, USCA11 Case: 21-12355 , Netchoice LLc e altri c. ATTORNEY GENERAL, STATE OF FLORIDA (link fornito da varie fonti), circa la legittimità di una legge della Florida regolante e vincolante in vario modo le piattaforme social.
Soprattuto tre son i vincoli contestati:
i) restrizioni sulla content-moderation, ( p. 10);
ii) obblighi di disclosure (p. 12);
iii) obbligo di fornire i dati all’utente in caso di deplatforming (p. 13; disposzione invero molti interessante e probabilmente da accogliere, visti i recenti casi italiani di distruzioni immotivate del materiale postato negli anni dall’utente medesimo)
La corte di appello dell’11° circuito, adita dalle piattaforme la ritiene sostanzialmente incostituzionale, in quanto troppo inibente la freedom of speech tutelata dal Primo Emendamento.
Il presupposto , importante, è che le piattafforme sono soggetti privati titolari appunto dei diritti da First Amendement: <<The question at the core of this appeal is whether the Facebooks and Twitters of the world—indisputably “private actors” with First Amendment rights—are engaged in constitutionally protected expressive activity when they moderate and curate the content that they disseminate on their platforms. The State of Florida insists that they aren’t, and it has enacted a first-of-its-kind law to combat what some of its proponents perceive to be a concerted effort by “the ‘big tech’ oligarchs in Silicon Valley” to “silenc[e]” “conservative” speech in favor of a “radical leftist” agenda. To that end, the new law would, among other things, prohibit certain social-media companies from “deplatforming” political candidates under any circumstances, prioritizing or deprioritizing any post or message “by or about” a candidate, and, more broadly, removing anything posted by a “journalistic enterprise” based on its content. USCA11 Case: 21-12355 Date Filed: 05/23/2022 Page: 3 of 674 Opinion of the Court 21-12355
We hold that it is substantially likely that social-media companies—even the biggest ones—are “private actors” whose rights the First Amendment protects, Manhattan Cmty., 139 S. Ct. at 1926, that their so-called “content-moderation” decisions constitute protected exercises of editorial judgment, and that the provisions of the new Florida law that restrict large platforms’ ability to engage in content moderation unconstitutionally burden that prerogative. We further conclude that it is substantially likely that one of the law’s particularly onerous disclosure provisions—which would require covered platforms to provide a “thorough rationale” for each and every content-moderation decision they make—violates the First Amendment.
Accordingly, we hold that the companies are entitled to a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of those provisions. Because we think it unlikely that the law’s remaining (and far less burdensome) disclosure provisions violate the First Amendment, we hold that the companies are not entitled to preliminary injunctive relief with respect to them>>
Sul conflitto tra editorial judgment/diritto di free speech in capo alle piattaforme social, da una parte, e diritto dello stato di chiedere conto dei criteri seguiti nella content moderation, dall’altro, v. l’interessante saggio “Rereading Herbert v. Lando” di E. Douek-G. Lakier, 26 maggio 2022 , richiamante la cit. decisione della Suprema Corte del 1979.
Sulla legge della Florida v. Calvert, First Amendment Battles over Anti-Deplatforming Statutes: Examining Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo’s Relevance for Today’s Online Social Media Platform Cases, NY Univ. law review-online, aprile 2022.