Law Week Colorado takes a deep dive on Donovan's social media bill

2 thoughts on “Law Week Colorado takes a deep dive on Donovan’s social media bill”

1. Enough teasing- what in Donovan’s bill do you, or the writers at Law Week, think is unconstitutional? 
    

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2. The Law Week item online is here

   Vincent Carroll is not a fan, according to his Denver Post column.

   Although the bill makes no attempt to define hate speech, fake news or disinformation, it explicitly foresees government suppressing speech it doesn’t like. Upon detecting an “unfair or discriminatory digital communications practice,” the commission would issue an “order requiring the respondent to cease and desist from the practice and to take action that the commission orders.”

   TechDirt has a few objections, too.

   Over in Colorado, Colorado Senate president pro tempore Kerry Donovan would seek to force companies to moderate "hate speech," "fake news," and "conspiracy theories."

   The full bill is really, really bad. Websites would need to register (for a fee) with a "digital communications commission" in Colorado, and that Commission would accept complaints against social media websites if they were used for hate speech, undermining election integrity, disseminating intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news. There's a big problem with this: most of that is protected under the 1st Amendment. I know that many people don't like that those things are protected speech, but you actually should like it. Because if "fake news" or "undermining election integrity" was not protected under the 1st Amendment, just imagine how the Trump administration would have abused both things.

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