If enacted and it somehow clears legal challenges, California Senate Bill 771 will be the first online censorship law of its kind in America. It would also likely pave a path for other states run by people with no tolerance for dissent.
On September 22, the California Legislature sent SB 771 to Governor Gavin Newsom. He has until October 13 to sign it. If he doesn’t veto or sign the proposal, it becomes law anyway.
Mainstream media outlets claim that SB 771 “targets social media platforms for the role they could play in aiding and abetting in hate crimes by pushing content that could lead to a hate crime.”
The bill allows people to sue social-media companies for up to $1 million per violation. If the litigant is a minor, the fine could double.
Tucker Carlson’s analysis of the bill is more accurate than the mainstream media’s. Carlson:
That’s a censorship law.… The state of California, under Gavin Newsom, is about to — we think — censor the opinions of Americans, not to protect anybody, but to shield themselves from criticism so they continue to do what they want to do in secret.
Coerced Censorship
The bill uses broad terms that make it easy to justify censorship. It reads:
California law prohibits all persons and entities, including corporations, from engaging in, aiding, abetting, or conspiring to commit acts of violence, intimidation, or coercion based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, or other protected characteristics.
Merriam Webster defines “intimidated” as “to make timid or fearful.” Synonyms include “bully” and “frighten.” Fear and intimidation are subjective emotions that have significantly increased among America’s younger and more unstable generations. People are swimming in pools of victimhood and mental illness today. We constantly hear about a spike in anxiety. What happens when we create laws that allow litigation on the basis of largely subjective emotions?
But the more likely primary intent here is to coerce social-media companies into pre-censoring. The senior vice president of social-media company Parler, Elise Pierotti, said of the bill:
SB 771 isn’t about protecting civil rights, it’s California’s brazen attempt to export its one-party censorship regime to every corner of the internet. This bill hands Sacramento the power to bully platforms into preemptively scrubbing dissent on everything from border security to parental rights. We’ve seen Big Tech abuse vague “hate speech” rules to throttle conservatives for years, including shutting down our platform in 2021; now, lawmakers want to make it mandatory with teeth-shattering fines. This must be stopped before it buries the First Amendment.
Shoshana Weissmann, director of digital media at the R Street Institute, also suspects this is the drafter’s main agenda. She told the Daily Caller that “rather than risk liability for showing users content one could argue (even if it doesn’t actually) violate a law, platforms will over-moderate and remove posts in order to stay out of court.”
We saw what this type of censorship looks like during the Covid mania era. Social-media companies, under pressure from the government, eventually implemented algorithms that erased and banned views contrary to the approved narrative on the origins of Covid-19, the ineffectiveness of face masks, and the safety of the mRNA Covid injection. Major platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) also censored fact-based views on “transgenderism,” an imaginary sexual category. SB 771 would make Covid-era censorship permanent in the Golden State.
Protected Groups
But notice who is deemed above criticism by this bill: illegal immigrants and the deviants huddling under the LBGTQ umbrella. Citing the Los Angeles County Commission, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Geroge Soros-funded Center for Countering Digital Hate, it says that “hate crimes involving anti-immigrant slurs increased by 31 percent” and that there’s been a “400-percent rise in anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation and harmful rhetoric on major social media platforms.”
The bill would also silence anti-Israel and anti-Islamic rhetoric. It says there’s been a 53-percent increase of “anti-Jewish bias events” and a 62-percent increase of “anti-Islamic bias events.” The bill doesn’t define “bias,” but the conventional definition makes clear the issue here isn’t criminal behavior or probably even legitimate bigotry. The context here suggests “bias” is just code for criticism. Israel has indeed been on the receiving end of worldwide criticism over its carpet-bombing campaigns in Gaza. Even President Donald Trump is hinting that he’s seen enough.
Blaming social-media companies for whatever attacks illegals, people in the LGBTQ mob, or any other “protected class” may have incurred is a straw-man argument. César Chávez waged a campaign against illegals in the 1970s. He used language harsher than what most opponents of illegal migration use today. As a result, some illegals did incur violence. There was no social media back then. Jewish people have also suffered violence for millennia, and homosexuals as well — all of it long before social media ever existed.
Christians Not Protected
Notice which class of people this bill doesn’t protect: Christians. Christianity is the most common religion in the state of California. And unlike most critics of LGBTQ lifestyles or illegal migration, many opponents of Christianity aren’t just spouting off, they’ve become increasingly hostile. According to the Family Research Council, violence against Christians more than doubled in 2023 when compared to the previous year. Moreover, anti-Christian violence increased eightfold from 2018 to 2023.
If the legislation’s drafters genuinely wanted to stop social media from “amplifying” violence, why not carve out a clause to protect a class that is under significant attack? The answer is obvious. This bill is not only a Trojan horse for outright censorship of sensible criticism, but an attempt to AstroTurf the culture. It seeks to quash Christian ideas and silence online speech that points out the absurdity of our leaders’ policies and ideas.
Free-speech Problem
Social-media platforms are forums for people all over the world to exchange ideas. For the elites, this is a problem. The internet has broken their monopoly on the narrative. Social media enables reasonable people to see that they’re not alone. It’s an avenue for encouragement. And it’s a great tool for organizing on a large scale.
In essence, social media is where the culture moves en masse. This bill is designed to stop that.
The proposal has more notable opponents than supporters. Social media companies, of course, don’t want it. Representatives of X have asked Newsom to veto the bill. The company’s Global Government Affairs department published a statement saying, “It’s alarming that California lawmakers, sworn to uphold the Constitution, have so brazenly ignored their oath and voted to pass SB 771, knowingly undermining First Amendment protections.”
An association representing Facebook’s parent company, Meta, testified against the bill on the basis that it violates the First Amendment and weakens free speech online. The California Chamber of Commerce, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and TechNet also oppose the bill.
In addition to California lawmakers and the propagandists in the mainstream media, Soros’ Center for Countering Digital Hate is also sold on the bill. This is the same outfit that worked to have right-leaning websites such as Breitbart, Newsmax, the Washington Times, and Media Research Center demonetized on Facebook and Google because they argued against the climate change con, the Daily Caller reported. Also, More than a dozen Jewish organizations support the bill as well.
Worldwide Problem
This is the latest reminder that America is not immune from what’s happening in the rest of the world. Many parts of Europe have already fallen. In the United Kingdom, police have arrested thousands of people for offensive social-media posts. Moreover, the European Union’s landmark Digital Services Act, passed in 2023, allows legal cover for the globalists to come after the platforms that provide a space for the conversations the elites don’t want people to have.
Even if SB 771 doesn’t ultimately become law, the fact that it has gotten this far is very concerning. This is not the first or last time the elites have tried something like this. This should motivate those in California, and Americans everywhere really, to be on alert for attacks against one of the core tenets of a free society. Social media threatens to expose the lies and deception of the powerful and those who seek to establish tyrannical global government. The elites are trying to use their remaining power, which is significant, to put the kibosh on a global awakening. We must not let them.
