This is the Kato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 22,

I'm Caleb Brown.

Texas has passed a law that makes social media companies

so-called common carriers.

That is, they aim to restrict the ability of platforms to remove or

demonetize content based on the Views Express.

The law is now in federal court in the Fifth Circuit.

Cato's Tommy Berry argues Texas has adopted some very strange

and pretty bad arguments to defend the law.

We spoke last week.

What did social media companies ever do to Texas?

Unclear. Texas claims that they have it out for conservatives.

The evidence for that is not as clear cut as Texas may think it is. In fact, many of the examples

Conservatives have used of so-called bias by Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Really are just drops in the bucket of a massive number of content moderation decisions made every day

by these social media companies. But people have cherry-picked a few famous examples and they basically think that they can regulate a speech on social media platforms

better than these platforms themselves and that the answer to any issues is not competition in the marketplace

of social media companies but instead a one-size-fits-all

mandate from the state saying that platforms have to exercise viewpoint neutrality.

Well this sounds like Texas is a 1930s progressive liberal organization.

That's what's so ironic about this is if you read their briefs and their arguments, it parallels almost

exactly what we were called communication

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