Ron DeSantis has tabled a citizen vs. Silicon Valley, Digital Bill of Rights, designed to hand Florida’s masses protections against Big Tech overreach.
Consistent with DeSantis’ pro-freedom platform, the bill’s purpose is to “empower Floridians in the fight” against online fraud, groomers, and partisan political agendas.
This, DeSantis said, protects children, and the elderly, by creating a defence against predators, while at the same time ensuring information stays in the hands of the people.
The DBR’s five tools are:
- Private conversations without surveillance by Big Tech
- Participate online without unfair censorship
- See internet search engines manipulation
- Control personal data
- Protect children from online harms
Explaining the legislative proposal, Ashley Moody, Florida’s Attorney General said, “Big Tech has gone unchecked for too long and has been reckless with our data, causing major concerns about privacy and potentially jeopardizing sensitive state information.”
Moody then called Florida’s Digital Bill of Rights an “audacious Silicon Valley reboot.”
DeSantis’ DBR will add to actions already taken by the Republican governor in 2021.
Senate Bill 7072 protections sort to curtail Big Tech monopolising the political agenda by legislating against ‘social media platforms wilfully deplatforming a candidate.’
Recognising social media as the ‘new public square,’ 7072, also protects against ‘deceptive practices and unfair trade such as shadow banning, or unfairly censoring content.’ (FULL Transcript)
Commenting on the 2021 bill in May that year, DeSantis said, “Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behaviour firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela.”
He added, “If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favour of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”
Florida’s Vice Governor, Jeanette Nuñez, then explained:
“What we’ve been seeing across the U.S. is an effort to silence, intimidate, and wipe out dissenting voices by the leftist media and big corporations. SB 7072, takes back the virtual public square for Florida’s citizens, as a place where information and ideas can flow freely.”
Both the DRB and DeSantis’ 2021 Big Tech ‘transparency and accountability bill’ appear to be his administration’s answer to the Trusted News Initiative.
To recap: the TNI, which is essentially a COVID cabal, was created under the guise of fighting “misinformation.”
However, Robert Kennedy Jnr has strongly disputed this, charging the cabal with manipulating COVID so as to control competitors, and dissidents, by demonetising, and/or deplatforming them.
The monopoly, founded by the BBC, is largely comprised of Big Tech, and legacy media.
Talking about the Digital Bill of Rights, DeSantis used revelations from the Twitter Files to argue, Social Media Companies are acting like publishers.
They should not be hiding behind Section 230 liability protection, because “we know without a shadow of a doubt Social Media Companies are not functioning truly as open platforms,” he said.
“They do have terms and conditions, they do have certain rules, but those rules are applied with a thumb on the scale against the people they disagree with politically.”
The “free-state of Florida’s” pro-freedom leader has again chosen to go against the political flow.
Instead of creating more government, he’s handing government back to the people.
Incorporated in the DBR is DeSantis’ battle against Big Tech surveillance, and the mass surveillance monitoring of foreign entities.
Florida banned the Communist Chinese Party affiliated app TikTok from all government devices, and internet platforms in September 2022.
Laying out reasons for the ban, DeSantis described, cyberspace, real estate, and academia, as being the three main areas where the CCP poses a threat.
The ban on TikTok coincides with a more complex response to “the infiltration of CCP-affiliated groups such as Confucius Institutes,” and from Latin America’s Communist and pro-Communist governments.
Many of whose victims now reside in the southern U.S. state.
