A Republican state representative has introduced a bill that would make it illegal in Michigan for social media companies such as Google or Facebook to “censor, ban, shadow-ban” or use other means to exercise viewpoint discrimination against users on the basis of the person’s political opinions.
State Rep. John Reilly of Oakland Township introduced House Bill 4801 on June 26. A press release from the Michigan House Republican caucus cited a Project Veritas undercover sting that secretly recorded a Google executive, Jen Gennai, saying that her company is focused on “never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again.”
The bill has been referred to the House Communications and Technology Committee, chaired by Rep. Michele Hoitenga, R-Manton.
“This isn’t a question of property rights. This is a question of fraud,” Reilly said in the press release. “In this modern era, social media networks are the new public square. Banning – and worse, secretly banning while deceiving the user into believing their content is being shared equally – excludes individuals from public life.”
Reilly continued: “Social media companies cannot eat their cake and have it too. They cannot enjoy the privileges of being a platform, such as immunity from liability for users’ content, while also enjoying the privileges of being a publisher to control what everyone may or may not say on their network.”
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The legislation would amend the state Consumer Protection Act to explicitly prohibit “a provider of an interactive computer service” that represents itself as “viewpoint neutral, impartial, or nonbiased” from taking certain actions based on a user’s political views. It could not: “block a user’s speech; censor a user’s speech; ban a user; remove a user’s speech; shadow ban a user; deplatform a user; deboost a user; demonetize a user; otherwise restrict the speech of a user.”
This is not popular with people who believe that businesses have a right to run their operations as they see fit, within the law, and that users have the right to no longer use those businesses if they are unsatisfied. They believe that bad business practices will eventually be the downfall of Google, Facebook, Twitter etc, and that we should allow the market to work it out.
What do you think?
Stella's Place 
Facebook Google etc may have gotten away with the reasoning of your last paragraph
Run your business as you see fit…
Until of course Project Veritas walked into the picture with their undercover videos
Which showed us the Company’s true “intent”
Descrimination
Mind Control
Rig Elections
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If possible, please advise the Michigan House Republicans of two things – first, Rep Devin Nunes lawsuit against Twitter, McClatchy, et al, for defamation of character and shadow banning. This is a case to follow.
Second, have the Michigan House Republicans study the research done by Dr Robert Epstein, of San Diego Whatsits University. Dr Epstein has proven Google manipulates search results that affect elections, and how the elections were manipulated. Dr Epstein has proven the 2018 elections were manipulated by Google.
Rep Devin Nunes has 2 interviews with Dr Epstein on his (Nunes’) podcast.
Project Veritas has a bad rep among Democrats and are always discounted, but Democrats also worship university professors and their research, especially a PhD psycho-logist’s research. Tell ’em about Dr Epstein.
Godspeed to the Michigan House Republicans
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