So the EFF and ACLU seem to support this bill. I'm skeptical given one of the sponsors is Ted Cruz who famously said [1]:

> After earlier stating he first ran for Congress in 2012 “with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate,”

Texas has laws that government contractors must promise not to boycott the state of Israel [2]. 35+ US states have similar laws [3]. This on its face seems like a government restriction on speech, squarely violating the First Amendment. The Supreme Court, who otherwise love to pay lip service to the First Amendment, go out of their way to avoid anti-BDS challenges [4]. Courts have generally split hairs here saying anti-BDS impacts commerce and is speec-neutral. That's a complete cop out.

So do I think that Ted Cruz really cares about free speech? Not for a second. I suspect that if this passes, it'll only ever be applied in cases where governments officials attack conservative misinformation (eg stolen elections, anti-vaxxer anything). Any speech contradicting US foreign policy will be labelled as domestic terrorism so First Amendment freedoms don't seem to apply (I suspect).

US tech platforms already have incredible conservative bias. Meta's policy chief, Jordana Cutler (who worked in Benjamin Netanyahu's office), boasts about taking down pro-Palestinian content [5]. Twitter is a Nazi shithole [6]. And worse [7]. The whole manosphere, which is an alt-right entry point, flourishes on every platform.

So, no, I have no confidence in anything Ted Cruz supports.

[1]: https://www.christianpost.com/news/ted-cruz-cites-genesis-12...

[2]: https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/anti-israel-policies-are-ant...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws

[4]: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/supreme-court-declines-t...

[5]: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...

[6]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-mus...

[7]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/07/27/twitter-...

A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech