Tl;dr is: the laws don't affect us. So nothing to see here.
Longer version:
We normally don't do politics here on the forums, but sometimes an issue comes along that might directly affect us. For example, if a state or nation was to pass a law that affected social media sites like forums or file trading sites, we would take notice.
In 2021, the state of Texas passed HB20, a law aimed at preventing censorship of political speech by social media companies.
Florida has a similar law, SB 7072.
In both cases, the law generally makes it illegal to de-platform political candidates or to censor political speech just because the platform disagrees with the content.
These laws would penalize social media companies who show bias by censoring political speech. They also make it illegal to "de-platform" political candidates, as Twitter famously did with a certain political figure who started his own social network in protest.
So how does this affect us? Fortunately, we are currently immune to both of these laws. Both laws have a "minimum size" requirement as part of their definition of a social media company. Florida requires a company to have $100 million in revenue, and Texas requires a company to have 50 million users before the sites are covered by the respective laws.
Since we're not big enough to qualify as a "social media" company, we are not affected by either HB20 or SB7072.
Aside from that, Some things the Florida law requires:
- "Fair" application of moderation policies: we do not remove people just because we don't like them. We remove posts and/or accounts only when they are in clear violation of our posted policies.
- De-platforming of candidates: anyone is allowed to create an account here, but their messages must be on topic. If we do "de-platform" someone, it's not because of their politics, but because of their other actions (which may include the "no politics" rule.")
- Rules changes: Florida wants us to notify you in advance of rules changes. We try to make everyone aware of updates to the rules, via posts in this topic area. We'll continue to do so.
Part of that mission means not letting politics or religion affect how we serve you, and I believe we do that job well.
On a personal note: you guys are awesome. We've never had to really worry about the "no politics" rule, and all of you make this a great place to be. So thank you for not giving us a reason to worry about this, and we hope all of you are around for a long time to come.