US Judge restricts Biden officials from contact with social media firms (msn.com) WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday restricted some agencies and officials of the administration of President Joe Biden from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content, according to a court filing. The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who alleged that U.S. government officials went too far in efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections. The ruling said government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI could not talk to social media companies for "the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech" under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The order also mentioned by name officials including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in its restrictions. More good news coming from the courts
I would be interested to hear the arguments for and against this. The government can not suppress speech, even when they don't agree with it.
Haven't read upon it but seems like a pretty broad injunction to me. I imagine there are degrees between a government making mere requests on a private company, advising of potential legislation or regulation, making overt quid pro quo demands, and actually passing laws in retaliatory fashion? I also wonder whether and to what extent comparisons are applicable with the Disney litigation.
I wonder if this kind of case has the juice to get to the SCOTUS. On the surface, the arguments would appear to pit the General Welfare Clause against the 1st Amendment.
I'd consider removing social media's impunity from not being responsible for their content. Start suing social media companies for making money off slanderous posts which would at least eliminate the highly sketchy nature of social media. Just a thought. Im sure there is a downside. What about Chinese and Russian attempts to influence elections on social media? I am all for a way to eliminate Dick and Jane from the FCC contacting a social media company.
Social media's roots are as a digital town square of conversation. Whether it be from comments like here on this forum or photos, videos, etc etc. It allows the world to communicate freely in this digital town square, so long as there is no law being broken such as violent threats, stalking, fraud, etc etc. People are and should be encouraged to post their ideas and beliefs. If they are wrong, they'll instantly be told so by a myriad of others in the town square. That's the way it should be, so long as people are not criminally hateful to one another. When the government begins to regulate what ideas and beliefs are acceptable conversation in the town square, I start having visions of George Wallace, Vladimir Lenin.
Wouldn't that start us down the slippery slope towards censorship? Who would determine what can and cannot be posted? Does it open the company or individuals to lawsuits? Would it be slander or libel? A lot of ugly questions and even fewer answers in my opinion at first blush. At the very least, it would likely destroy the economics of social media companies because they wouldn't want the exposure (that's a mixed blessing)
This ruling seems like a very broad reach and may be overturned but this current administration was actively demanding that social media companies take down or de-platform posts or posters they disagreed with. Not ones that were erroneous but ones they disagreed with. They wanted posts saying vaccinated people could catch and pass COVID (which is true) taken down and posts saying if you were vaccinated you could not catch covid or pass it (which is incorrect) were fine.
While what the government wanted taken down was viewed as correct at the time, it was later determined to be not true. This is a perfect example of why they should not even attempt to surpress speech.
Meh. From what I understand they made their own decision and it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt since they reversed their decision a few days later. I see no issue with the government telling you it is false information and i see no issue with Twitter telling them to go to hell. That is free speech to me.
They aren’t suppressing speech. They are advising social media companies of the facts concerning the speech. It is up to the social media company to decide whether to allow the post. And the order is overbroad.
I doubt you’ll apologize. In Reversal, Twitter Is No Longer Blocking New York Post Article (Published 2020) SAN FRANCISCO — It is the 11th hour before the presidential election. But Facebook and Twitter are still changing their minds. With just a few weeks to go before the Nov. 3 vote, the social media companies are continuing to shift their policies and, in some cases, are entirely reversing what they will and won’t allow on their sites. On Friday, Twitter underlined just how fluid its policies were when it began letting users share links to an unsubstantiated New York Post article about Hunter Biden that it had previously blocked from its service.
I agree with your sentiment, but I'm not sold on the bolded part. At best, virologists simply did not have enough data to make such sweeping conclusions, which is different than "this is what they truly thought was correct." They had no way of knowing with any certainty due to the rushed nature of the vaccine rollout and lack of ample data to draw such conclusions. So they lied to get everyone to vax up. Imagine if they had said "well, we really don't know if it works or not", as employers are firing workers who refused the vax. Suppression of speech is quite typically done by governments to provide cover for a lie.
Me too, maybe it has to do with political pressure to sell a product from the private sector? And dangerous and still yet to be determined if the product in question (vaccines) have any dangerous permanent long term side effects?
Shouldn't the ruling prevent any govt official or employee from contacting social media platforms? The fact this targets just Biden officials leads me to believe this is political theater.
