Texas Legislature Has Another Ridiculous And Unconstitutional Content Moderation Bill; Say Goodbye To Email Filters

Legal Issues

from the it-does-what-now? dept

You may recall last month we wrote about how the Texas legislature — even after seeing a similar Florida bill go down in the flames of Constitutional fire — decided to launch a special legislative session solely to focus on passing culture war legislation that plays well with ignorant voters. The bill we saw last month was in the Senate and was SB5. Now there’s another bill in the House called HB20, and it’s really, really dumb.

First, it tries to just outright declare social media websites common carriers, despite them possessing basically none of the characteristics of a traditional common carrier. As a side note, I find it funny how Republicans these days are obsessed with this idea of randomly declaring companies “common carriers,” as they spent decades fighting against any attempt to call broadband companies common carriers, and insisting that common carrier concepts were the root of socialism or something. But, apparently, when it comes to culture wars, things like principles, consistency, and just basic common logic go out the window in favor of nonsense.

Incredibly, this bill doesn’t just talk about social media — but sweeps up email services as well. Hope you enjoyed having email filters, because Texans, you can kiss those goodbye. The legislature thinks that not forcing junk you don’t want into your account violates the spammer’s rights apparently. I only wish I were joking, but an actual person in a legislature put this nonsense in a bill:

IMPEDING ELECTRONIC MAIL MESSAGES PROHIBITED. An electronic mail service provider may not intentionally impede the transmission of another person ?s electronic mail message unless:

(1) the provider is authorized to block the transmission under Section 321.114; or

(2) the message contains a computer virus, as defined by Section 33.01, Penal Code, obscene material, material depicting sexual conduct, or material that violates other law.

Now, 321.114 is Texas’s anti-spam law, so there’s a weird contradiction here. You can’t block messages… except if you think it’s spam. That’ll be fun to sort out in court. Of course, there are all sorts of reasons for filters that have nothing to do with spam. I get a ton of email, so I use a special filtering service that routes my mail to different boxes — including sending certain PR emails straight into the trash. As I read this bill, that would no longer be allowed in Texas.

And this includes monetary fines. So the PR folks who are mad that I never read their emails could sue for $10 for each message “unlawfully impeded” and $25,000 for each day that their emails are so impeded as well.

I mean, seriously, what the fuck does the Texas legislature think its doing here, trying to effectively ban email filtering?

Anyway, the rest of the bill is the usual garbage — demanding a bunch of busywork about clearer explanations of terms of service and transparency reports, while making it possible for the Texas Attorney General to sue a website if it moderates in a way the Attorney General believes is unfair (hey, that’s unconstitutional!).

The whole thing is garbage that is better off used for kindling in the next Texas ice storm, not as an actual bill. It would be an absolute nightmare for social media and email providers. And for what? Because some ignorant fools think they’re being targeted for their edgy ideas, when the reality is that some websites just don’t want to deal with assholes? Texans, stop being babies, and grow up.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, content moderation, email, section 230, social media, texas