[remarkEon]

Neither of these restrict speech, and I'm not sure how one could construe the text of the laws toward that conclusion.

The first looks like regulation on social media activities, which is well within the boundaries of government - state or otherwise. Perhaps ill-advised, but "how to regulate the digital town square" is a pretty open and fluid debate, no? I don't see anything in there that says "this kind of speech is banned".

The second[1] looks like a workplace and education regulation, which is again well within the boundaries of things the government is charged with regulating. Honestly the text of the law looks pretty benign to me.

[1] http://laws.flrules.org/2022/72

[ModernMech]

Both cited laws were blocked by judges for violating the first amendment. So you’ll have to provide a better argument than they seem to you to be benign, or well within the bounds of government regulation powers. Because the courts disagree with you.

[remarkEon]

The first is really the first attempt that I'm aware of to regulate social media companies, so it's not surprising that the legal arguments are not that robust or are clumsy at this stage. Surely social media companies are not considered "unregulatable" solely because speech occurs on those platforms. For the second, the article states that only "part of" the law was blocked, and leaves it up to the reader to guess which part. Unfortunately I can't find the actual court opinions, and journalists generally don't link to the primary sources when they have a specific opinion they would like their readers to have, which appears to have worked here.

[slg]

>The first looks like regulation on social media activities, which is well within the boundaries of government - state or otherwise. Perhaps ill-advised, but "how to regulate the digital town square" is a pretty open and fluid debate, no? I don't see anything in there that says "this kind of speech is banned".

The law prevents private social media companies from adding a warning to posts for things like misinformation. That is banning a speech for these companies.

>The second[1] looks like a workplace and education regulation, which is again well within the boundaries of things the government is charged with regulating.

Except when those regulations violate the first amendment. This law dictates what private businesses can say while training their employees. How is that not an issue of speech?

[remarkEon]

It's interesting to me that implicit in your argument is that the corporation has some sort of "prime" speech right that users do not, but I understand how you could think that with regard to telling these companies they can't arbitrarily apply a speech to a user's speech (which is what adding a "misinformation" "warning" is doing) based on viewpoint.

We already have tons of laws that restrict what businesses can do, that would obviously restrict speech - like banning discrimination. The law does not, in fact, dictate what private businesses can say. It gives them a list of things they cannot say (e.g. certain races are morally superior). I don't see how that's different.

edit: bad grammar

[slg]

>It's interesting to me that implicit in your argument is that the corporation has some sort of "prime" speech right that users do not,

No I'm not. Both have the same free speech. Except the corporations speech is being restricted by the government while the user's speech is being restricted by a private corporation. Only one of those is a First Amendment issue.

>We already have tons of laws that restrict what businesses can do, that would obviously restrict speech - like banning discrimination.

Discrimination is usually action and not speech. It is someone being fired, promoted, not hired, or just generally being treated differently. It generally takes for discriminatory speech to venture into harassment or a hostile environment before the government would step in.

>The law does not, in fact, dictate what private businesses can say. It gives them a list of things they cannot say

How are these not the same thing? Telling someone they can't do something is inherently telling them what they can do.

[salawat]

>Except the corporations speech is being restricted by the government while the user's speech is being restricted by a private corporation.

Government is of, by and for the People. That Corporation is composed of the People which the Government is of and for, and through which the legal fiction is granted legitimacy.

As far as I'm concerned, corporations are de facto extensions of Government.

[slg]

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but I don’t think this viewpoint is supported by any established law at least as far as I’m aware.

[rnk]

Social media use and restrictions related to that is absolutely a free speech impact. Posting on instagram or twitter is not free speech?