The Iron Grip of the Magic Kingdom — The American Prospect

From my latest article at The American Prospect:

“This session, we took action to ensure that ‘We the People’-real Floridians across the Sunshine State-are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 24. “If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”

The speech was given at the signing of Florida Senate Bill 7072, a bill that aims to prevent major social media platforms from “deplatforming” (banning or otherwise censoring) users. The law has been criticized by internet freedom advocates such as Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who argued that the policy “is mostly performative, as it almost certainly will be found unconstitutional” under existing Supreme Court decisions.

Regardless of the law’s survival, DeSantis’s talk about the consistent enforcement of rules is undermined by the statutory language. Buried in the bill’s definition of a “social media platform,” a specific exception to the law was added: “The term does not include any information service, system, Internet search engine, or access software provider operated by a company that owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex.”

Florida is the home of the world’s largest theme park, Walt Disney World, along with another global contender, Universal Studios Florida. This theme park carve-out was purposefully added to the bill through an amendment by Florida Sen. Ray Rodrigues (R). As the second-largest fundraiser in the Florida Senate during the 2020 cycle, Rodrigues was a recipient of $2,000 contributions from both Disney and Comcast, the respective owners of Walt Disney World and Universal Studios Florida.

Some Florida Republicans have argued that Sen. Rodrigues’s amendment was necessary: The bill’s definitions would otherwise have included Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+, thus barring the company from moderating the review sections on its family-oriented site. Thus, according to Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, the provision ensures Disney+ “isn’t caught up in this.”

The most obvious issue with this argument is that the legislature could have resolved the Disney+ issue by writing the bill to exclude streaming services. Instead, they chose to create an exclusion for theme park owners, a truly bizarre criterion for a social media law. In Orlando, home to Disney World, Democratic Rep. Anna V. Eskamani wasn’t buying it either. “I assume theme parks saw this culture war agenda impacting their social media platforms and wanted out so they got a carve out!” she tweeted. “So now, if any social media company wants to avoid the impacts of this ‘bill’ they can just buy a theme park!”

As odd as the situation may seem, the theme park carve-out is far from the first time that the presence of Disney World has allowed the Walt Disney Company to operate above the law. Disney-a media monopoly with dangerous reach -has long used the park to flex its political muscles in Florida. This corporate influence over the state’s politics runs deep through the park’s past.

You can read the rest at their site.

Originally published at https://prospect.org on June 2, 2021.