"Bullying and Harassing Behavior Are Prohibited on Social Media Platforms," Says Alaska Senate Bill

What counts as "bullying and harassing" behavior, you might ask? The bill doesn't say.

From Alaska bill SB 214, sponsored by state senators Lora Reinbold and Mia Costello:

[B]ullying and harassing behavior are prohibited on social media platforms. A social media platform shall take steps to prevent bullying and harassing behavior and shall provide a platform user who hosts a page a mechanism to establish and enforce rules of decorum to prevent bullying and harassing behavior on the platform user's page.

Note that simply requiring platforms to give users who host pages a tool to delete others' comments on those pages, or to block users from posting further comments, might be viewed as a constitutional content-neutral requirement (though it's not open and shut). But the bill would also outright forbid "bullying and harassing behavior," whatever that means, and would also require platforms to take unspecified "steps" to prevent it.

Comments

[apedad]

Prof. Volokh,

Give state senators Reinbold and Costello a break.

They’re just coming out of their winter darkness so can be expected that they would be a little stir-crazy.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Reinbold is so wingnutty the Republicans booted her from their caucus. How far gone must one be to be shunned by right-wingers in a rural state? Reinbold constitutes the answer.

She also was banned by Alaska Airlines for being a virus-flouting boor.

It seems to be tough in modern America for half-educated (Oral Roberts), belligerently ignorant Republicans these days, even in Alaska.

[Jett's Pop]

So if, in response to such a law, a social media platform then engages in censorship to prevent what it perceives as “harassing,” it would be acting under color of state authority, wouldn’t it? And could be sued under Sect. 1983?

[StellaLink_the dog]

“a social media platform then engages in censorship”

I don’t think so.

The case I’ve seen cited for this proposition is Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963). The court found that a Rhode Island commision was guilty of censorship by threatening book distributors with prosecution if they distributed objectionable material. But, as far as I can tell, the distributors were not a party to the suit. The cause of action was against the government, not against the distributors who, as non-government agents, have no ability to censor anyone. The proper party to sue would be Alaska, not the social media platform. At least as long as Ginny Thomas doesn’t get her way.

[David Nieporent]

it would be acting under color of state authority, wouldn’t it?

No. Social media services already have the power to ‘censor’ to prevent harassment. The fact that the government tells them to do it would not make it an exercise of government power rather than private power if they did so.

Think of an analogy: if you have guests over at your home and one of them is being rude to the others, you have the right to throw the jerk out. If the government passes a law requiring you to throw the jerk out, that doesn’t somehow make it unconstitutional for you to throw the jerk out.

[Archibald Tuttle]

Yikes. Just imagine how quickly the archives would be scrubbed if we allowed users to delete other user’s posts. Let them also delete stuff posted by corporations, affinity groups, and governments.

Whee.

[DaivdBehar]

Is it harassment of one person or of a class of people?

[DaivdBehar]

Is criticism harassment or loving correction?

[A nerdy Fred]

Asking from curiosity. Compelled speech is bad, but does the same or a related doctrine apply to compelled editing?

Defining bullying and harassment is certainly a work in progress. Recently I took an academic survey at a crowdwork site where the researchers were collecting data on whether people perceived example unpleasant messages as “hate speech” or bullying. If they have to ask …

[korioliam]

This is good on the one hand. But there is a nuance. The people who control and review content also have the same human traits as the rest of us. Who will decide how offensive certain words, photos and something else are? This is the main reason why I closed my FB account and went to such a site – https://www.onenightfriend.com/asian-hookup.html It is much more comfortable for communication as for me.

[benji]

Yes, but what about cyberstalking, until Alaska addresses that Holden C won’t be safe from Professor Volokh’s Big Tech paid opinions.