Twitter Removes Florida Political Candidate Advocating Shooting Federal Agents; If DeSantis Won His Lawsuit, Twitter Would Need To Leave It Up
The Florida Politics site has a report on what appears to a be truly despicable individual running for the Florida state house with horrifically dangerous ideas - who has now been banned from Twitter. The article notes that he's still on Instagram and Facebook, though it looks like the same message that got him banned from Twitter has been taken down from both Instagram and Facebook (plenty of other, equally incendiary, messages remain, however). Here's the message that got candidate Luis Miguelus banned:
If you can't see that, it says:
Under my plan, all Floridians will have permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other feds ON SIGHT! Let freedom ring!" - Luis Miguel, Republican for Florida House
His other messages may not be quite as directly threatening, but they seem equally unhinged. He has one saying the time to stand back and stand by is over..." And he appears to demand that Ron DeSantis ignore a federal court declaring the Stop WOKE Act unconstitutional:
He says that Bill Gates is a traitor who needs to be arrested for the crime of... working on a bill to lower inflation, build better infrastructure, and protect people from the impact of climate change?
He also claims he will kick all federal agents out of Florida (and in one message appears to imply that he will push for Florida to secede from the United States). He also wrote an article praising DeSantis' quest for authoritarian power, and talks about how he wants Trump to unleash a Dark MAGA storm" to punish the libs.
Honestly, his views look so silly and so disconnected from reality, I'd almost think it was satire or someone parodying your everyday GOP candidate. But apparently it's real.
And that brings us around to the point of this post. The other DeSantis bill that has been ruled as an unconstitutional infringement of 1st Amendment rights, the social media content moderation bill, Twitter would not have been able to kick him off for advocating killing federal agents, and Facebook and Instagram could not have pressured him to remove those posts with similar language.
As you may recall, that bill had a specific clause banning websites from moderating political candidates:
A social media platform may not willfully deplatform a candidate for office who is known by the social media platform to be a candidate, beginning on the date of qualification and ending on the date of the election or the date the candidate ceases to be a candidate.
In other words, under that law, none of the social media platforms could claim that literally advocating murdering federal agents was against their terms of service, and would be required to host that speech.
Thankfully, the law has been blocked (though we're still waiting to see if Florida appeals).
Anyway, thanks to candidate Miguel for giving what I'm sure will be a very useful exhibit in the filings from folks trying to explain to the Supreme Court the problems of Florida's law.