Greg Abbott just launched his latest scam
Governor Greg Abbott is once again lying and generally scamming voters for political gain. This time he’s promoting a new Texas bill, SB 12, which is a total waste of time, according to the ACLU.
Governor Abbott sent a tweet about SB 12 (with a link to a video of his totally fabricated press conference), claiming it would “prevent social media companies like Twitter and Facebook from censoring conservative speech and beliefs. Silencing conservative views is un-American, it’s un-Texan and it’s about to be illegal in Texas.” It’s also untrue.
His press release goes even further, falsely claiming it protects Texans from being censored “for voicing political or religious viewpoints.” Abbott is “taking on Big Tech’s political censorship” to “protect free speech in Texas,” by golly!
In truth and in fact, if passed, all SB 12 would do is grant Texans the right to sue social media platforms for being wrongfully banned. All you could possibly gain for your trouble is an order allowing you back on the site, and reimbursement of your legal expenses.
The problem is that social media platforms are protected by federal law from being held responsible for any of this. Also, the First Amendment only protects you from government censorship. The right to free speech does not include threatening language, and it certainly doesn’t force Big Tech to broadcast partisan hate propaganda or flagrant lies. And, of course, Big Tech doesn’t ban you just for giving your innocent opinion on anything that isn’t blatantly false and/or at the very least potentially harmful to others.
While most conservatives believe Big Tech unfairly censors and suppresses them, numerous studies have found this not only to be false, but the evidence shows the opposite: they are not censored enough (the biggest complaint of Democrats), regardless of what Fox News and others may tell you.
But this is such a great scam, Ted Cruz had to get in on it as well, so some of the news reports of Abbott’s fabricated press release include a clip of Cruz, lambasting Twitter at a US Senate hearing that had nothing to do with SB 12, other than it is relevant to the federal law that actually protects social media platforms from being held responsible for any of this crap.
Are these guys’ supporters really that stupid you ask? Yes, most of them are, and the rest are sly as a fox, so they just play along.
