Texas social media law takes aim at Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM/CNN) - After a federal appeals court sided with a Texas law restricting how social media sites can moderate their platforms, residents in the Lone Star State can now sue Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for allegedly censoring their content.

The 15-word ruling allowing the law, which had been blocked in 2021, to take effect has significant potential consequences. Most immediately, it creates new legal risks for the tech giants, and opens them up to a possible wave of litigation that legal experts say would be costly and difficult to defend.

Texas's law makes it illegal for any social media platform with 50 million or more US monthly users to "block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression."

The law, which will take effect while judges weigh an appeal to the lower court decision, creates uncertainty about how social media will actually function in Texas, according to legal experts, and raises questions about what users' online spaces may look like and what content they may find there, if the companies are even able to run their services at all.

The ruling also sets the stage for what could be a Supreme Court showdown over First Amendment rights and, possibly, a reinterpretation of those rights that affects not just the tech industry but all Americans - and decades of established precedent.

In short, the decision has allowed Texas to declare what some say is open season on tech platforms, with huge ramifications for everyone in the country. It could reshape the rights and obligations of all websites; our relationship to technology and the internet; and even our basic, fundamental understanding of the First Amendment.