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Tag: Florida social media

  • ‘Destroying vital evidence’: Florida CFO accuses social media companies of shielding child predators – Orlando Weekly

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    Credit: via Blaise Ingoglia @GovGoneWild/X

    Florida’s chief financial officer demanded Friday that social media companies be held accountable for creating disappearing messages that handicap child sex trafficking investigations.

    Blaise Ingoglia, a Spring Hill Republican and former state senator, accused social media platforms of “destroying evidence” of messages between groomers and minors by installing instant vanishing features across platforms. His comments came Friday, amid a broader legal battle waged by Florida officials trying to impose age restrictions on social media companies.

    “A lot of these tech companies are in this state of de facto protecting these predators,” Ingoglia said during a Winter Haven press conference, speaking alongside Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, adding that a case that should be a “slam dunk” for law enforcement is stopped by vanishing messages.

    “These social media companies need to be held accountable for destroying vital evidence that law enforcement needs to put these predators in prison,” he told The Florida Phoenix in a phone call later. “It’s severely hindering and handicapping their efforts.”

    Ingoglia, appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis as CFO in July, had sponsored a bill during the 2025 session that would have required social media companies to decrypt messages if subpoenaed by a court, and would have prohibited minors from having access to disappearing messages. The measure failed, despite passing the Senate.

    This isn’t Florida’s only venture into targeting the social media world. The predominantly GOP-led Legislature in 2024 passed a law banning social media companies from allowing children under 15 years old to create accounts, sparking a massive legal battle between state officials and two trade associations representing social media giants. The law was blocked by an appellate court over the summer, but the case remains pending.

    Earlier this year, Uthmeier filed a lawsuit against Snapchat, a social media platform allowing users to send each other photos and messages that can vanish instantly after viewing. He heralded the April case as just the beginning of his continued crackdown on social media platforms, building off of a separate investigation into the gaming platform Roblox.

    Other platforms that allow for encrypted messages include Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal.

    As a lawmaker, Ingoglia also sponsored a new law funding a grant for law enforcement to ramp up online sting operations to capture and imprison child predators. During Friday’s press conference, which announced 246 arrests of human traffickers, child predators, and prostitutes in just seven days, Ingoglia added that parents need to become aware of the “depravity” of online predators.

    “You have no idea of the depravity that is waiting to take advantage, take hold of them, abuse them, and turn their lives upside down,” he said. “Social media companies should stop the encryption of any message that has a minor account so law enforcement can have the proof they need to put these scumbags away for life.”

    Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Contact Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.

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    Chloe Greenberg
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  • Supreme Court decision sparks new fight in Florida’s social media law dispute

    Supreme Court decision sparks new fight in Florida’s social media law dispute

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    After a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month, Florida and tech-industry groups could be poised to resume a legal battle about a 2021 state law aimed at placing restrictions on social-media platforms.

    Attorneys for the groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which challenged the constitutionality of the law, have filed a motion at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that new briefs should be filed in light of the Supreme Court decision.

    U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in 2021 issued a preliminary injunction to block the law (SB 7072) on First Amendment grounds, and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of Hinkle’s decision.

    Florida took the case to the Supreme Court, which on July 1 vacated the appeals-court ruling and sent the lawsuit back for further consideration.

    The Supreme Court did not resolve the constitutional issues but said the 11th Circuit and another appeals court in a similar Texas case did not properly consider the “facial nature” of challenges to the laws, a critical element in deciding whether they met constitutional muster.

    “To make that judgment, a court must determine a law’s full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other. Neither court performed that necessary inquiry,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the main opinion.

    The tech-industry groups, in the motion Friday at the 11th Circuit, argued that briefs should be filed “so that the parties can address the import of the Supreme Court’s decision, whether this (appeals) court can resolve the facial challenge on this record or whether a remand to the district court is necessary, and if so, whether the preliminary injunction should remain in effect pending any necessary further proceedings.”

    “Indeed, the Supreme Court’s decision expressly contemplates additional proceedings in this court to determine in the first instance whether SB 7072 prohibits a substantial amount of protected speech relative to its plainly legitimate sweep,” attorneys for the groups wrote.

    As of early Thursday afternoon, the state had not filed a response to the motion, according to an online docket. But attorneys for the tech-industry groups wrote that the state opposes the motion.

    Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law after Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, blocked former President Donald Trump from their platforms after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    The law, in part, sought to limit the ability of social-media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to moderate content on their sites. As examples of the disputed issues in the case, part of the law would prevent platforms from banning political candidates from their sites and require companies to publish — and apply consistently — standards about issues such as banning users or blocking their content.

    The law seeks to regulate social-media platforms that have annual gross revenue of over $100 million or more than 100 million monthly active users. Companies could face steep penalties for violating restrictions in the law.

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    Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida

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