I am surprised this made it to SCOTUS. When the government is demanding it, it becomes a 1st amendment issue. Meta is acting as an agent of the government. This should have never happened.
I’ll probably regret this but…
There is a difference between “please delist things telling people to drink bleach to cure covid” and “remove this negative story of the government or else”
This kind of harkens back to the idea of shouting fire in a crowded theater. Misinformation, specifically about pandemics, or alluding threats against officials, can lead to a much larger issue.
Even Kavanaugh states that it is not uncommon for these requests to be denied by social media companies.
This does not cross into first amendment issues because the government is protesting the spread of misinformation, threats, or government secrets, but can very rarely compel something.
In your post, you mentioned Meta. Meta choosing to accept the government concerns is acceptable as Meta is a corporation enacting its own will. In particular, Meta chose to help stop the spread of misinformation in order to benefit society. Which sounds really wierd to say about Meta. It’s the bare minimum, but still.
If you told Meta they aren’t allowed to stop the spread of misinformation, you’d be then restricting the ability of a corporation to stop the spread of things such as hate speech, calls for violence, etc. Which a corporation could then be found liable for.
Meta as a corporation, has chosen to moderate that information, and users have agreed to that moderation when they chose to use Meta’s platform.
The difference is through the government or by choice.
That’s why it’s a 1st amendment issue. If it wasn’t coming with pressure from the White House. It wouldn’t be an issue.
I am surprised this made it to SCOTUS.
You know what? Me, too!
So, let’s figure it out! And then maybe we can figure out what Justice Jackson is thinking.
Missouri and other folks are basically arguing the Biden administration unduly influenced social media companies to censor speech on covid-19, vaccine safety and efficacy, and election integrity. It’s understood that the government has an interest in providing truthful information, and it’s fine if they ask social media companies to voluntarily do various things to promote the public’s interest in truthful information. But Missouri is arguing that the Biden administration crossed that line, turning social media companies into state actors, and social media company’s censoring of speech amounts to a violation of the First Amendment. In short, the question at hand is whether social media content moderation, when requested by a government administration, constitutes a violation of speech.
Now referring to the article and what Justice Jackson asked:
“My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways in the most important time periods,” she told the lawyer representing Louisiana, Missouri and private plaintiffs.
“And so I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” she continued.
“So can you help me? Because I’m really – I’m really worried about that because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying that the government can’t interact with the source of those problems,” Jackson added.
It’s extremely unlikely she was asking a basic questions answerable by “a sophomore at Brown”. That’s an uncharitable view that assumes that she, a Supreme Court Justice, is an idiot. Instead, from my perspective, she’s asking if the defendants recognize that the government has a stake in defending the public interest. Like, if according to the defendant’s logic, if merely asking social media companies to engage in more stringent content moderation to protect the public from misinformation, without any sort of coercion or other elements that would effectively make them do it and leave the decision to social media companies to implement the government’s suggestions—if the mere act of asking constitutes a violation of free speech? Are they arguing that the First Amendment hamstrings the government in every case to combat misinformation?
Naturally, conservative media takes advantage of American ignorance to flip the script from Justice Jackson attempting to illuminate the scope of the right’s conception of free speech as absolute which is evidently harmful and dangerous into a trivial question of whether it hamstrings the government.
You can find more information with reference links at my Perplexity.AI search thread.
if they ask social media companies to voluntarily do various things to promote the public’s interest in truthful information.
They threatened the companies if they did not comply. That is what the lawsuit is about.
Well, the 5th Circuit found that to be the case…but the 5th Circuit is where the law goes to be corrupted, so I’m extremely skeptical that actually happened. Like, the FBI merely asking constitutes an implicit threat:
In the case of the FBI, it found the agency had coerced and significantly encouraged the social media sites to take down content, arguing that because it was a law enforcement agency, any request to take down content came with the implicit threat that it could take legal action.
That’s nonsense, and yet…here we are…
My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways in the most important time periods
Good. That’s the fucking point of it and worthless rats like her who can’t see it shouldn’t be running the show.
So, there are absolutely no circumstances when the government can do anything to promote the public’s interest in health and safety through factual information? None at all? Zero?
Sure. The government is free to speak it’s own stance on its own platform. Can’t you people who just want to blindly worship whatever the government says stick to watching cspan or whatever and fuck off of private platforms?
Can’t you people who just want to blindly worship whatever the government says stick to watching cspan or whatever and fuck off of private platforms?
Only if you agree to stop being so ignorant and falling so easily for misinformation (as defined by me, obviously). Deal?
Like when Biden said you can’t catch Covid if you are vaccinated? Or you won’t die? Both are false. Or when fauci said cloth mask are effective ? They are not.
That’s why an open debate is important. People need to be informed and able to have effective conversations about the topic.
You’re talking about the content of what the government is asking. I’m asking about the act of asking itself, as was Justice Jackson.
That’s why an open debate is important. People need to be informed and able to have effective conversations about the topic.
Yes, but…there are various indications that open debate is often a platform for misinformation. Furthermore, people often either can’t or won’t distinguish between what’s false and what’s true. Or rather, their test for veracity is identity rather than reality…like when Fauci said cloth masks were effective and you believed they weren’t. That’s a case in point.
I didn’t believe anything. The science shows they don’t work. They isn’t a belief. That’s a fact. Studies before the pandemic showed that to be true, studies during the pandemic showed that to be true and studies after the pandemic came to the same conclusion.
Fauci even admitted he knew he was lying.
I get you people like 1984 but we don’t need to make it how we run our country.
You’re talking about the content of what the government is asking. I’m asking about the act of asking itself, as was Justice Jackson
Yes. The act of asking is itself the problem. Justices should not be asking questions of whether or not we should discard the constitution just because it makes her political masters have a hard time enacting their garbage.
Fuck each and every shitstain politician who knowingly let her onto the court