Posted on 04/30/2025 6:50:10 AM PDT by DFG
The Republican-led Texas House has officially caved to the radical Left’s war on free speech—and shockingly, it’s being spearheaded by none other than the state’s own scandal-plagued former House Speaker Dade Phelan.
On Tuesday, House Bill 366 passed with bipartisan support, making it a potential crime in the state of Texas to share or distribute AI-generated and “altered media”—including political memes—without a government-approved disclaimer on political ads.
According to the bill:
“A person may not, with the intent to influence an election, knowingly cause to be published, distributed, or broadcast political advertising that includes an image, audio recording, or video recording of an officeholder’s or candidate’s appearance, speech, or conduct that did not occur in reality, including an image, audio recording, or video recording that has been altered using generative artificial intelligence technology, unless the political advertising includes a disclosure from the person or another person on whose behalf the political advertising is published, distributed, or broadcast indicating that the image, audio recording, or video recording did not occur in reality.”
Let that sink in: Texas Republicans — yes, Republicans — are now trying to police memes.
The bill makes it a Class A misdemeanor for candidates, officeholders, or political committees to knowingly distribute political ads that use manipulated images, audio, or video—especially if created with generative AI—without an explicit disclosure that the content did not occur in reality. The law applies to any group spending over $100 on such materials and seeks to curb misleading media that could influence elections.
Under the bill, the Texas Ethics Commission will define the specific formatting for these required disclosures. However, media platforms and service providers like internet hosts, broadcasters, and billboard owners are exempt from liability.
If signed into law, the legislation will take effect on September 1, 2025.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Civil lawsuits for defamation and liable largely would be useless anyway because it often would be judgement-proof scumbags in their mom's basement creating and disseminating those images. Suing them after the fact doesn't compensate the victim because the perpetrator has no money anyway.
So we wouldn’t have been allowed to criticize Kamala or Biden??
How do the Republicans come up with rinos like Phelan????
“ In every country in the world, everyone is always free to go to a public park, stand on a soapbox and say “I love our government!” I bet you can do that in North Korea as easily as you can it in New York or Texas.”
Oldie, but goodie:
American speaking to Russian: “In my country I could walk up to President Reagan and call him a stupid idiot.”
Russian’s reply: “That is nothing. In MY country I can walk up to Prime Minister and call President Reagan a stupid idiot.”
“My second thought was that eventually it will be enforced against sarcasm and mockery memes and dramatizations”
Exactly. Take the Patriot Act. Sold to supposedly protect America from moslem terrorism. Now it’s aimed squarely at the American people and “white Christian nationalists” are the number one threat to America.
Would prefer to move to the Hill Country, but my 3 grandkids are within 30 minutes, and I’m still working. Maybe in a couple of years.
Apologies for the stridency of my previous post.
The main point being that once the lefty is a senator or congressman and the righty rings up a failed race, the issue is over and who cares about lawsuits.
The state that gave us Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Green & Jasmine Crockett, 3 of the absolute dumbest, moronic, ignorant reps we've ever had foisted upon us, is fighting back? Lol. And before you say, "Yeah, that's Austin (Houston, et al), that's how we started in Colorado, too. "Oh, it's only Denver". Lol. Disregard the warnings. Texas will soon be no different.
The results of their time in office allows the electorate to properly decide whether or not to re-elect them or to entertain better proposals from other candidates. Remember, running upon what you propose increases the chances of you fulfilling your promise or next election you might suffer the consequences. This puts TRUTH in charge of things rather than deception.
The 1st Amendment does not an exception for “untrue”.
Speech of any kind, generally cannot be criminalized. The narrow exceptions are persons who voluntarily sign up for things like a security clearance, threats of actual violence, or the proverbial crying “fire” in a crowded theater.
The only Constitutional remedy is civil, libel or slander.
This is well-established.
Well, that isn’t so different from the need on this site to add “/sarc” after comments that the sender might consider obviously mischievous but the recipient might misconstrue. Personally, I just avoid reading the posts that are labeled part-news part sarcasm, because I don’t know where one leaves off and the other begins. It’s also possible to append a disclaimer that is comical itself, and ridicules anyone who would set out to intentionally misrepresent it, which they, of course do with nauseating regularity. It’s at the very least worthy of serious discussion.
A handful of RINOs consistently vote with democrats. The republican majority is an illusion on issues that really matter.
Yes, the the giant and varied state that did all that and if you would have been paying attention the last 40 years you would have noticed California and Texas and Colorado and the rest of America on a path but seen Texas break off from that path and start and continue a lot of major victories overcoming the direction of that path.
Texas and California have the same proportion of immigration but Texas didn’t flip. Your Colorado is a weak state that was filled with rino moderates and social liberals similar to California and your bitterness about its weakness is noted.
Indeed. Or if they had to tell you, “You know how we just told you for the fourteen hundredth time the DJT endorsed racism and white supremacy and Naziism after Charlottesville and refused to distance himself from the loonies; well, that was a lie, and here’s the film of him saying what we told you he refused to say.” That would be kind of nice.
On the other hand, all civilized places have laws against libel and slander.
Yep, once again two Conservatives split the vote and the rino traitor slid in. Then he helped the rats put in his clone as speaker.
“The only Constitutional remedy is civil, libel or slander.”
That is correct, but when the deception comes out a day before an election it won’t matter.
The 51 liars who signed the letter about the Biden tapes could be considered. They all lied knowlingly and skated. It is said to have turned about 17% of the vote for Biden, the ones he actually got.
Beto is up next. It’s coming.
You obviously have childish emotions tied to Texas, your negativity isn’t just about government and politics.
I tend to agree. Also, I don't see this as being anti-meme at all ...it's an attempt to reign in increasingly realistic "deep fakes" that truly could distort an election. All it's requiring them to do is to label it as not being a real image/video. If anything, this will disarm leftists, for whom lying is second nature, more than conservatives.
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