Florida Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) wants bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, and other members of the Florida executive cabinet or legislature to register with the state or face fines.
I'm also preemptively not convinced by takes that this is transparently unconstitutional. Sure! But look who's in the Supreme Court. And even if it were eventually overthrown, the law, if enacted, would have been used to destroy many lives.
If you live in Florida, please call your state reps and tell them to kill this bill.
The bill requires any blogger who writes for pay about state officials to register with the state. Here's how the bill defines a "blog":
"'Blog' means a website or webpage that hosts any blogger and is frequently updated with opinion, commentary, or business content. The term does not include the website of a newspaper or other similar publication."
People talk about tweeting as microblogging. What about Post, which is set up to look like a blog with a comment section?
What about a Substack or Patreon with subscribers? Do those count as blogs? Do they count as "paid" for the purposes of this bill?
The bill requires bloggers to report "the individual or entity that compensated the blogger for the blog post." Does that mean folks would have to provide lists of paid subscribers to their Patreon or Substack?
Ultimately, they want to use this to make lists.
Lists of names.
I don't trust them with those lists.
Greg Pak