(FreedomBeacon.com)- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis isn’t sitting around and waiting for Congress to act. He’s taking matters into his own hands when it comes to big tech companies.
On Monday, he signed into law the Big Tech bill that he says fights back against left-leaning technology companies that often ban conservative voices from their platforms.
According to the law, big tech firms could face a fine of $100,000 each day for every state-wide political candidate that is removed from their platforms. The daily fine for local candidates would be $10,000. The law applies to Amazon, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Google and other tech companies.
When the tech companies want to ban other users, they must first notify them of the action, according to the bill. The tech companies must let users know when they’ve violated a rule and issue them a warning that they are about to be banned, or that their posts will be censored due to disputed or false information.
Users in Florida now will also have the ability to sue these big tech companies if they violate the law.
One provision of the Florida bill is that companies that own a theme park are exempt. That means that streaming service Disney+ doesn’t have to abide by the law, since their parent company, Walt Disney Co., owns theme parks in Florida.
As DeSantis said about the law:
“[Social media companies] use secret algorithms and shadow banning to shape debates and control the flow of information. But yet they evade accountability by claiming they’re just neutral platforms, even as they amplify partisan agendas and censor dissent.
“Every day, they act as the proverbial Big Brother, and 2021 looks an awful lot like the fictitious 1984 … This will lead to more speech, not less speech, because speech inconvenient to the narrative will be protected.”
Conservatives have been furious with Big Tech companies over the last few years because of their censorship practices that seem very targeted at Republican views. They are also wildly inconsistent and aren’t carried out on equal terms.
Former President Donald Trump and many of his prominent followers have been censored and/or banned from social media platforms for what they have posted. Trump has been permanently banned from Twitter, and is on what’s a seemingly indefinite suspension from Facebook and Instagram.
As a result, many people with conservative viewpoints have migrated to other social media platforms such as Parler. However, that app was censored, in effect, by Big Tech companies for apparently not moderating posts enough.
While Parler is back online now, they were barred from appearing on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Amazon even removed them from their hosting platform so their website went down for a while.
This has led Trump and others — such as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — to look into creating their own social media platforms so they don’t have to deal with these Big Tech companies.
Anti-trust lawsuits have been filed against Google, and Congress has held multiple hearings with the heads of Big Tech companies. Thus far, though, no action has come of it.
Now, in Florida, some action has been taken by one of the rising members of the Republican Party.
