Two state laws from Texas and Florida that could improve the way social media companies handle content moderation are still up in the air. Supreme Court referred complaints to lower courts, which overrules previous rulings. In the 9-0 decisions in Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, the Supreme Court said that previous lower court decisions had misjudged the laws’ impact on the First Amendment. Never heard of NetChoice? It’s an industry group that represents Meta, Google, X and other big tech companies. So it’s incredibly well funded. NetChoice argued that the laws were unconstitutional.
A Texas law passed in 2021 allows users to sue major social media companies for alleged “censorship” of their political views. The Supreme Court suspended the law in 2022 after a legal challenge. A Florida measure, also passed in 2021, attempted to impose fines on social media companies for banning politicians — which is also pending.
Justice Elena Kagan said the lower court rulings in both cases “centered on the issue of whether a state law can regulate the content moderation practices used on Facebook’s News Feed (or its equivalents).” However, he writes, “they did not address the full range of activities covered by the statutes, nor did they weigh constitutional against unconstitutional practices.” It seems the lower courts have to do their job.
– Matt Smith
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It banned the creation of images of Trump and Biden around the election.
Midjourney, a popular AI-powered image generator, is creating images of Donald Trump and Joe Biden despite saying it will prevent users from doing so ahead of the upcoming US presidential election. Engadget has repeatedly managed to obtain a tool to create images of Trump. The only time Midjourney refused to impersonate Trump or Biden was when he was asked to do so publicly. “The Midjourney community voted to prevent the use of ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘Joe Biden’ during the election season,” the service said at the time. Midjourney did not respond to Engadget’s request for comment.
The video owner will have 48 hours to respond.
Speaking of AI-generated hoaxes, YouTube quietly added a new policy last month that allows you to request the removal of AI-generated content featuring your likeness. YouTube says several factors will determine whether it considers the content to be a takedown, including whether the content is modified or synthetic (and disclosed as such), easily identifiable as the person in question, or real.
