Florida is not banning a social media site from operating in state. They are fining them per day (and likely per incident) that it is out of compliance, which if a company chooses to ignore, it will be struck with contempt of court charges, which are valid. If they appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, I don't think it's certain they will win, as at least one Justice has supported the basic strategic approach Florida is attempting.

@hszmv: Florida needs five justices to win, and they almost certainly will not get five justices. The Court has been extremely pro-free-speech in the last several years, across party lines (with rare exceptions, such as Citizens United). Free speech cases are routinely decided on an 8-1 or 9-0 basis.

@hszmv contempt of court isn't a charge, and is for contempt of court, not contempt of statute. The penalties for defying a statute are defined in the statute, if you violate a statute there isn't a double jeopardy of contempt also, unless you misbehave in court as a separate matter. Also, any contempt is undone when a higher court says you were right after all.

I think, a law that treats “politicians” or “‘journalistic enterprises’, defined as entities that do business in Florida” specially can’t claim for itself to be “protecting the free speech rights” that actually belong to anyone. Not to speak of the exception for theme park runners. In the very unlikely case that this law survives the supreme court, we can look forward to the Twitter Theme Park, etc.

What is the argument for SB 7072 being unconstitutional, but Net Neutrality being constitutional (as federal appeals found)? Both regulate the service terms of transmissions by companies.

@hszmv - Also, it should go without saying that it takes 5 Justices to win a SCOTUS case, not one. All your one justice tells you (assuming that's even accurate) is that it might not be a unanimous loss. Given how few of those happen these days that means its effectively saying nothing.

What kind of enforcement capabilities does the EU have that Florida lacks?

@PaulDraper - Florida has 21 million citizens, the EU has half a billion. Facebook could probably shut down all access to Florida to avoid a dumb law and would barely notice.

@PaulDraper: One difference is that net neutrality laws do not force ISPs to do business with anyone. They don't keep them from dropping customers who don't follow their rules or put the company in disrpute. ISP EULAS still say they can close your account for any reason they see fit. I also note that net neutrality laws don't try to have different rules for different entities, while this proposed law has one rule for politicians and one rule for everyone else. Finally, there could be scrutiny tests, and it will be hard to argue there's a legitimate reason for this law to need to exist.

@PaulDraper Imagine being any elected official in Florida when the media is blaming you for getting them all banned from Facebook.

@hszmv - Your opening statement while accurate misses the point. If Twitter or Facebook were to be genuinely threatened with significant fines from Florida for preventing people they don't want from posting on their platforms and there was a hope in hell of that being enforced, they would more than likely ban the entire state from their platform rather than risk the rest of their business. Which would be the same result as Florida banning them.

@PaulDraper Net neutrality laws don't try to regulate the editorial policy of a curated media product. Net neutrality laws are very much about access to a product or service -- like saying you can't have a bookstore that only lets LGBTQ people shop there. This is about what a media product's product experience is -- very much like saying you can't have a bookstore that only sells LGBTQ books. One is a clear First Amendment right (like the right to have a Christian bookstore or an LGBTQ bookstore) and the other isn't (like the "right" to have a bookstore only Christians can shop at).

@Studoku Didn't something similar almost happen in Australia?

@gerrit Emphasis on "almost". Sounds like Facebook won that game of chicken.

@trlkly exact opposite. Net Neutrality requires that if a company transmits StackExchange content, it must also transmit Facebook content.

@DavidSchwartz you botched the analogy. Book Neutrality would be closer to requiring bookshops to carry and treat all books equality. Net Neutrality does not regulate treatment of the consumers of information, but the treatment of the content itself.

@PaulDraper : 100% false and backwards. There is no requirement of transmission without a matching request.

@EricTowers, okay, but what does that make "false"? Are you saying there are 0 requests to see @realDonaldTrump?

@PaulDraper : What is "false" is your false equivalence of Net Neutrality and government regulation of political speech. In part, because the Facebook service is not an ISP. In part, because Facebook has First Amendment protection in the operation of its "press". In part, because transport and content are inequivalent.

@PaulDraper Requiring bookshops to carry and treat all books equally would be a First Amendment violation. Courts upheld Net Neutrality precisely because they didn't think it was analogous -- they thought it was more analogous to deciding who gets to come into a bookstore than what books are available at the bookstore. This makes sense because bookstores speak through the books they carry just as curated media products speak through their editorial policies. Equally important, ISP's often have regional monopolies and service areas where consumers have limited choice due to gov't action.