A three member panel of U.S. Federal Court of appeals judges has temporarily allowed a Texas law designed to punish social media companies for alleged anti conservative bias to enter into force In a ruling late Wednesday, the panel suspended an injunction by the district court. It is reported that the ban suspends the implementation of the law when judges consider appealing the actions of lower courts.
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The decision was supported by two unnamed judges, and the reasons for its adoption were not immediately announced. At Monday's hearing, the judges seemed to struggle with basic technical concepts - including whether twitter was counted as a website.
The decision is a victory for conservative critics of the current interpretation of the technology law, which is the basis for the operation of social media platforms such as twitter and Facebook. Two technology trading groups with large technology companies as members sued Texas for the law.
Until this week, industry observers generally expected the court to support blocking the law. The law allows lawsuits against social media services if they are "censoring" users. A different federal court also suspended a similar law in Florida, arguing that the law's attempt to punish private companies' views and treatment of content violated the first amendment.
In court, Texas said it was simply trying to force the platform to deliver everything as phone companies should.
Although previously courts and legislators did not treat social media as a public operator like telephone companies, and the Supreme Court has a clear precedent against government intervention in Internet content, some conservatives are increasingly advocating a similar approach to platforms carrying user generated content.
Civil liberties experts and technology advocates believe that such treatment - even with the exception of obscenity or spam - can poison the online environment and force companies to give up hate speech, harassment, harmful misinformation and so on.
"Given the stakes, we will definitely appeal," a lawyer representing netchoice said in a tweet. "Bill 20 is unconstitutional from beginning to end." It is reported that netchoice is one of the organizations that filed a lawsuit against Texas law.
The decision came as many on the right celebrated Elon Musk's expected takeover of Twitter and his plans to reduce content censorship and restore the account of former president Donald Trump.