this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Isn't this just performative? Social media companies are already beholden to legal requests and afaik have full access to all info on their servers.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Not encrypted info, if they set it up right.

But regardless, what they want is more like an actual

Currently, companies generally want warrants to give information like that.

Warrants are hard to come by when the government simply wants to read everyone's messages in case they're doing criminal activity.

Even in the best case, the completely honest with no hidden motives situation, they want messages to be more, a source of probable cause for other things. Like getting a drug sniffing dog, who detects drugs, and gives cops reasonable suspicion and therefore allows them to search your car.

Worst-case, I don't think anyone trusts the government in this day and age to not just read your messages to discriminate against you.

Plus the usual security concerns where digital backdoors are weak spots for other governments and everyone else.

And all that is the general case. this is Desantis's Florida. It's probably so he can tell who is gay and who isn't so he can make them illegal.

Some companies are happy to share, though, like you said, even without warrants. Those companies generally aren't encrypting your messages at all. This doesn't affect them. The law would just affect those that promise security, promise encryption, etc. Those would be, with this law, not quite public, but transparent to the government and compromised to everyone else.