Florida Governor Ron DeSantis unveiled legislation protecting people from Big Tech abuses on Tuesday during a press conference held in the state's legislature.
According to The Blaze, DeSantis is the first Republican governor to act upon the Big Tech oligarchy through a new legislation that intends to "protect the privacy and free speech rights of Floridians from Silicon Valley."
DeSantis, who made the announcement with Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nunez, Florida Speaker of the House Christopher Sprowls, and Florida Representative Blaise Ingoglia, said the Big Tech companies had double standards and cited Twitter who banned former President Trump's account while "other people like the Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran still have an account despite calling for the destruction of Israel," WPTV reported.
"They have some much garbage and filth on that platform...[Twitter's] excuse doesn't hold water. No group of people should exercise such power, especially not tech billionaires in Northern California," DeSantis pointed out.
"It's high time that we step up to the plate to ensure the protection of the people and their rights," he stressed.
DeSantis revealed the new legislation will limit social media companies from selling user information for advertising purposes and will protect social media users from censorship of their viewpoints.
He acknowledged the contribution of social media in the last decade in so far as providing citizens an avenue to "directly connect with large numbers of people" that "could cut out corporate media outlets entirely." However, instead of serving as a 21st century "tool to liberate Americans from reliance on distrusted legacy media outlets," Big Tech has become monopolizers on censorship.
"Over the years, however, these platforms have changed from neutral platforms that provided Americans with the freedom to speak to enforcers of preferred narratives," DeSantis said. "These platforms have played an increasingly decisive role in elections and have negatively impacted Americans who dissent from orthodoxies favored by the Big Tech cartel."
The Blaze said the governor raised his concerns that are "shared by many conservatives and Republicans" that Big Tech has become too powerful in that they can now control "the spread of information on the internet" with "seemingly arbitrary enforcement action against conservative content" such that they recently "deplatformed users secretively without" even being able to identify the specific violation done.
Some examples of this display of power that the governor highlighted involved "censorship of criticism of coronavirus lockdowns," banning an incumbent U.S. president, removal of Parler from the Amazon servers and "suppression of the New York Post's" story on Hunter Biden.
"Our Founding Fathers were deliberate in the enshrinement of our rights in the Constitution to ensure that we the people were guaranteed protection against those wishing to violate our rights," he declared.
"Ironically, our early founders were most concerned with the tyranny of government in deciding these rights, but today the Big Tech oligarchy has in many ways become a clear and more present danger to the restriction of the right to free speech than the government itself."
Because of these abuses, DeSantis warned Big Tech to "stay out" of Florida elections since his proposed legislation will implement disciplinary measures and fines against them such as a "daily $100,000 fine on a tech company that deplatforms a candidate for elected office in Florida during an election until the candidate's access to the platform is restored" and "the ability to bring lawsuits against tech companies and empower the Florida attorney general to bring actions against a tech company for violations of these requirements under Florida's Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act."
