18320.5. It is unlawful for a person to knowingly and willingly make, publish or circulate on an Internet Web site, or cause to be made, published, or circulated in any writing posted on an Internet Web site, a false or deceptive statement designed to influence the vote on either of the following:<\/i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
(a) Any issue submitted to voters at an election.<\/i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
(b) Any candidate for election to public office.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Share fake news, in other words, and face a punishment levied by the state of California.<\/p>\n
The bill does say that you have to \u00a0\u201cknowingly and willfully\u201d make reference to a set of \u201calternative facts,\u201d but it doesn\u2019t give details on who would determine a story is \u201cfake news\u201d or, for that matter, what a \u201cfake news\u201d story even is.<\/p>\n
Based on the approach taken in the wake of the 2016 campaign, \u201cfake news\u201d seems to mean a host of different things, from wrong-headed political opinions, to stories that look fishy and are later proven to be false or misleading. Based on this law, it also seems to include any story posted on social media that appears to be politically biased, or comes from any source with an editorial slant.<\/p>\n
The bill also seems to infringe on Constitutional guarantees of free speech. Political advocacy is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has been adamant that political advertising\u2014even\u00a0when it involves smears, exaggerations and \u201cpoetic license\u201d\u2014is included under the umbrella of \u201cpolitical advocacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, lately, too, the bill would definitely sweep up mainstream media sources in its \u201cfake news\u201d dragnet.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for the cause of free speech, California state legislators are already expressing discontent with the bill, and the Electronic Freedom Foundation\u2014not exactly the most conservative organization\u2014is weighing in, citing Constitutional concerns.<\/p>\n
___
\nhttp:\/\/heatst.com\/politics\/first-in-the-nation-california-attempts-fake-news-ban\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}