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Two state laws, one in Texas and one in Florida, could upend how social media companies moderate content, but they’re still up in the air. The Supreme Court sent the challenges back to the lower courts, vacating their earlier rulings. In its 9-0 decisions in Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, the Supreme Court said that the lower courts’ earlier decisions had not adequately evaluated the impact of these laws on the First Amendment. Have you heard of NetChoice? It’s a trade group that represents big tech companies like Meta, Google, and X. In other words, they’re well-funded. NetChoice argued that these laws were unconstitutional.
A Texas law passed in 2021 allows users to sue major social media companies for alleged “censorship” of political views. The Supreme Court stayed the law in 2022 following a legal challenge. A Florida bill, also passed in 2021, that sought to fine social media companies that ban politicians is also on hold.
Justice Elena Kagan noted that the lower court decisions in both cases “centered” on the question of “whether state laws can regulate content moderation practices used in Facebook’s News Feed (or something like it).” But she wrote that the decisions “did not address the full scope of the activities covered by the laws, or weigh their constitutional and unconstitutional application.” It appears the lower courts will need to do their homework.
Matt Smith
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The company banned the production of images of Trump and Biden during the election.
MidJourney, a popular AI-powered image generation tool, has been creating images of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, despite saying it would block users from doing so ahead of the upcoming US presidential election. Engadget successfully got the tool to create images of Trump multiple times. The only time MidJourney refused to create images of Trump or Biden was when it was explicitly asked to do so. “The MidJourney community voted not to use ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘Joe Biden’ during the election period,” the service said at the time. MidJourney did not respond to Engadget’s request for comment.
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The owner of the video has 48 hours to respond.
Speaking of AI-generated fakes, YouTube quietly added a new policy last month that lets you request the removal of AI-generated content that includes your likeness. YouTube said that whether it considers removing it depends on several factors, including whether the content is altered or synthetic (and disclosed as such), whether it’s easily identifiable as the person in question, and whether it’s authentic.
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