2022 could also be remembered as a turning level for social media regulation, or possibly extra aptly, failed social media regulation. Though Texas and Florida managed to dominate headlines just lately for his or her constitutionally questionable deplatforming legal guidelines, they’re removed from the one states attempting to get artistic with managing content material on social media platforms.

A latest Politico analysis discovered 34 states, many conservative-leaning however not all, have proposed payments or handed legal guidelines vying to affect the best way social media corporations deal with their customers’ content material. In conservative-led states, the dominating pattern right here follows the Texas and Florida mildew. States starting from Ohio to Mississippi are attempting to write down legal guidelines that may prohibit corporations from eradicating or moderating customers’ content material based mostly on their political viewpoint. A handful of those states are attempting to make these legal guidelines a actuality by trying to designate massive social media companies as “common carriers,” a designation that may have them feel and look extra like telecoms.

On the opposite hand, legislators in Democratically led states like New York and California try to ahead laws that may encourage social media corporations to take a heavier-handed method to moderating sure forms of content material deemed dangerous. Though the implications aren’t equal in impact, each methods have drawn the eye of tech business teams like NetChoice and first modification students who say the payments may diverge basically from precedents round how tech corporations function. Some of those proposals, consultants say, are virtually definitely violations of the primary modification.

Here are just a few of the states with proposals trying to shake up social media.