22 ms·

This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing

by efitz 3y ago

This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech is literally the first thing in the Bill of Rights. The government did a bad thing. Why defend them?

freediverx 3y ago
“Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee…”
ceejayoz 3y ago
> A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. This is not how a preliminary injunction works. The court has ordered that the governmment stop doing the in-dispute things until the dispute is resolved - in either direction - in court. The standard for such an injunction is not proof, but "they might prevail in court, and there's potentially enough harm from letting it continue in the meantime".
- lordfrito 3y ago
  Also, a WSJ article suggested the point is that discovery needs to occur here before a judgment is made. [1] Judge Doughty could have dismissed the case without an opportunity for discovery, as another judge did in another NCLA case, Changizi v. HHS, involving the same sort of censorship. Judge Doughty understood, however, that a largely secret censorship system can’t be evaluated under the First Amendment until after discovery. [1] https://archive.is/GCWCr https://archive.is/GCWCr
  - kyrra 3y ago
    While I agree here, I want to add a caveat that the linked article is technically a "commentary" pieces, not a news-side piece (aka: it's published on the opinion pages). But even given that, the opinion pages of the WSJ is just as fact-filled as the news side, but just highlights that the person writing it may not be a disinterested party. The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more conservative, while the news side leans liberal. Though they will happily publish people from the left, such as publishing President Biden: https://www.wsj.com/articles/never-bet-against-the-american-economy-president-inflation-manufacturing-jobs-287a006f https://www.wsj.com/articles/never-bet-against-the-american-...
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more conservative, while the news side leans liberal. As with most News Corp outlets, the news side of the WSJ leans pretty far to the right (it did so even before it was a News Corp outlet, though not as much), it only seems “liberal” by comparison with its own opinion section. That said, unlike, say, Fox News, the WSJ news side at least makes an effort to adhere to traditional journalistic norms, its right wing bias is more evident in agenda-setting (story selection, devotion of space, and placement/promotion), and less in commentary and outright fabrications in “news” content.
      - jp191919 3y ago
        An interesting site if you are concerned about media bias- https://www.allsides.com/media-bias https://www.allsides.com/media-bias
        kurthr 3y ago
        An excellent example of the Overton Window. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
        mistermann 3y ago
        Very good point...you would think tech folks would be better at identifying relative vs absolute frames of reference, but then the problem space is heavily propagandized and there is only so much time in the day.
- judge2020 3y ago
  In particular, they need to find if there was any actual coercion or threat made by the gov't agencies to remove the speech they asked to. For example, when the FBI was asking Twitter to take down videos (of content that violated Twitter's own TOS), Twitter could've told them to go pound sand. But it would be a different story if the FBI indicated that Twitter "ought to" do it or face increased scrutiny, perhaps.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    I don't see why there needs to be any coercion. The offense here is not against the social networks, it's against the people whose speech was suppressed. Whether that suppression was done with threats, requests, subtle hints, or an automated system, if the government's intent was to suppress speech, the means employed make no difference. Edit: imagine an extreme case in which a social network independently created an automated system for government employees to remove posts. Would it be constitutional for the government to use that system? Clearly not, despite the lack of any coercion.
    - singleshot_ 3y ago
      Well, that’s definitely not true. The government can suppress speech when it sends an emergency action alert to commandeer tv and radio stations during an emergency, for one example. The fact is that the means employed make every bit of difference when it comes to whether or not the content based speech restriction is tailored as narrowly as possible to achieve a compelling government interest. On the other hand, maybe it makes not difference to your feelings, which is fair.
      - leereeves 3y ago
        I'm obviously not saying the means never make a difference in any case. I'm talking about this case. I'm saying that using minimal means does not make an unconstitutional action acceptable; you're pointing out that using excessive means can make a constitutional action unacceptable. That's a different situation and not really a reply to my comment or this case. To make it more relevant, can you point to a single case where a court has ruled that a constitutionally limited action was permitted simply because the means were unintrusive? A compelling government interest, as you said, could justify the action, but what is the compelling government interest here?
- unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
  The standard actually is the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits (not "might"-- it's probable per the judge), and in practice a preliminary injunction hearing in a major case can take the form of a mini-trial. The judge wrote 155 pages that, at first blush, appear to be a very serious and thoughtful effort. The judge summarized on page 154 thus: "The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country." [1] (emphasis mine) [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.293.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    "Likely" means more than "possible" and less than "probable", with a pretty hefty error bar given the trial hasn't happened yet. It's a far cry from the settled state the original headline implied.
    - unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
      An ultimate win must be "likely" to prevail in a PI, and this judge said it was. "Likely" and "probable" are synonyms".[1] Apparently some courts do apply an relaxed standard in First Amendment cases of "reasonably likely"[2], but that's not clearly right and it's also not a quibble over whether "likely" is "probable" (which it is). [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/likely#synonyms https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/likely#synonyms [2] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/publications/litigation-news/top-stories/2017/confusion-over-preliminary-injunction-standard-clarified-but-not-settled/ https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/publications/l...
lordfrito 3y ago
I'm with you on this. Something tells me the people here arguing that Flaherty wasn't coercive or threatening would be arguing just the opposite if this was the Trump administration. Apparently it's about time for our collective citizenry to relearn some generational lessons from history, preferably not the hard way.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > Something tells me the people here arguing that Flaherty wasn't coercive or threatening would be arguing just the opposite if this was the Trump administration. The Trump administration was doing the same thing. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-trump-twitter-files-collusion-biden-censorship-1234675969/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-tru... > When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down. > “It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done [when Donald Trump was in office],” one former top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. “It was normal.”
  - zpeti 3y ago
    I think you’ll find, that except for hardcore trumpists not many on the right support trump doin this.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      I haven't seen any outcry from Hardcore trumpists. There is an outcry for anything Biden does. Is it possible you want them not to support Trump doing that, even though they might do?
    - p_j_w 3y ago
      They never raised a stink, so I have to assume they, at the very least, didn't have a problem with it.
commandlinefan 3y ago
> Why defend them? Because a depressingly large percentage of people would actually like to see the first amendment overturned.
- causi 3y ago
  It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech they don't agree with, and rarer still any speech they find repugnant. It isn't liberty vs authority anymore; it's just team red and team blue. One might be wrong-er than the other but neither think people they hate should be able to open their mouths in anything but agreement.
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    I realized a long time ago that if no one was allowed to say thing I find distasteful the world would be a very quiet place. And I must imagine that there exist people who given the opportunity would be far more censorious than I might be at my worst. As such it seems beneficial to in general to mutually disarm with respect to censorship rather than create a world of pressing silence.
  - bequanna 3y ago
    Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? If so, they are by far the minority in that camp. Only one side is afraid of open debate and pure freedom of speech. Why could that be?
    - causi 3y ago
      Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? Yes. Restrictions on what teachers are allowed to teach are restrictions on freedom of speech. Restrictions on non-sexual drag performances are restrictions of freedom of speech. Bans on calling for boycotts of Israeli goods and services are restrictions of the freedom of speech.
      - bequanna 3y ago
timcavel 3y ago
[dead]
brasic 3y ago
Read the entire injunction. It’s only seven pages. Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0_3.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization” I’m not defending the behavior alleged here but this judge is not the sort of person you want adjudicating serious issues. You don’t fight censorship with blanket bans on speech. A supporter of free speech should be horrified by this ruling. If you’re not, imagine an injunction of similar scope where the political sides were reversed.
- engineer_22 3y ago
  -> Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. I'm just curious, can you tell us what you take issue with?
  - brasic 3y ago
    It’s a blatantly illegal prior restraint on speech, completely at odds with the values the plaintiffs and judge claim to hold. Free speech cuts both ways. If you’re pleased when a judge bans any and all communication among millions of citizens, you don’t actually value the first amendment, you’re just cheering a partisan victory.
    - ch4s3 3y ago
      There's a 5 part test laid out by the 9th circuit in Gibson v. Office of Attorney Gen related to speech rights of government employees. The government has broad latitude to restrict the speech that occurs in the course of a government employee's job, SCOTUS laid this out in Garcetti v. Ceballos. Moreover, this is an injunction related to the pending trial, and while judges can sometimes be a bit too aggressive for my taste there seems to be a compelling reason here.
    - curiousllama 3y ago
throwaway72762 3y ago
[flagged]
Pxtl 3y ago
First off, I think all of us have learned the unfortunate downsides to a libertarian approach to free speech over the past 20 years. Any free speech purist would do well to remember what their legal recourse would be if somebody made elaborate false-allegations about you that harmed your career and marriage - we have many legal tools that protect us from harmful lies. It is not remarkable that there are people who believe in "free speech" but do not consider disinformation about more nebulous bodies that don't have standing for a lawsuit (eg defaming vaccines in general, epidemiology, democracy, ethnicity, climate science, trans people, etc) to be something that should fall under that protection, any more than threats or perjury fall under that protection. Why is it actionable when you make dangerous public lies that hurt somebody's pocketbook, but not public health? Secondly, the US constitution says "shall make no law". What law was made here? What legal action was taken? There wasn't even a threat of legal action. Government workers should be free to contact private organizations and speak to them freely and make requests of them. "The government would like this content taken down for public good" is not making a law, it's making a request. It's making their opinion known, and government functionaries are allowed to have professional opinions. Something like "In my professional opinion as a public health worker, this content is dangerous advice that will get people killed, and in the interest of public safety it would be best if readers were protected from it." That is a reasonable thing for a government-employed professional to do and say. That said, I think they crossed the line here when it became a demand instead of a request. When the government starts ordering people around instead of just making the public interest known, it can easily be argued there's implied threats there. IANAL, but I'm assuming in the end that's where this will land during the appeals - that sweeping injunctions against various government bodies communicating with social media companies will be lifted, but the court will find against the government on this case.
- rabite 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    [flagged]
snowwrestler 3y ago
It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. The legal theory at stake here is that all government speech is inherently coercive. But this is not necessarily true, or aligned with free speech as a principle of society. Any time someone says “we must protect free speech by legally enjoining the following people from speaking,” I am suspicious.
- ETH_start 3y ago
  The government has no First Amendment rights.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. If the speech the government officials are engaging in is a demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then we are looking at a violation of the First Amendment. Nobody is saying that government officials can't engage in other kinds of speech that don't violate the Bill of Rights.
  - snowwrestler 3y ago
    Demands are free speech, even if unreasonable. The First Amendment constrains the application of the power of law, like prosecution and imprisonment. Which is not what happened in these cases.
    - GeekyBear 3y ago
      > Demands are free speech When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. If you recall, Trump wasn't allowed to block citizens who were critical of him on Twitter for the same reason. > In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-rules-trump-violated-first-amendment-by-blocking-twitter-follo https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...
rhaway84773 3y ago
The court clearly found that wrongly because they do say that there are other non first amendment protected speech that the government can indeed suppress on social media. It’s just these few non first amendment protected items that the court is ideologically opposed to that the government cannot suppress.
- curiousllama 3y ago
  > there are other non first amendment protected speech that the government can indeed suppress This is a famously narrow category (eg CSAM). The gov often can't even suppress state secrets. I think most people are fine with this category existing, even if there's disagreements on what's in it.
adfhbaidnioni 3y ago
Courts say a whole lot of things. The large majority of what the government is alleged to have done sounds entirely appropriate to me. The CDC, Surgeon General, and NIAID are responsible for publishing health guidance. This means they will say some things are true and some things are false. They have no power to censor third-party sources and I don't see evidence of even informal pressure. Yet third parties believed this information and used it to determine what posts are true, which sounds to me like these agencies did their job by publishing trustworthy guidance. Some of the things this court said were factually incorrect. For instance, >Dr. Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there needed to be a “quick and devastating take down” of the GBD—the result was exactly that Yet in context, you find that the "take down" in question was a published rebuttal, not censorship. This is a lie, plain and simple. > The FBI’s failure to alert social-media companies that the Hunter Biden laptop story was real, and not mere Russian disinformation, is particularly troubling. The "story" is that Hunter Biden owned a laptop. The "Hunter Biden laptop story" was very much fake. None of the supposed evidence of corruption existed.
treeman79 3y ago
Same reason counties fall to communism. Free speech and open debate get in the way of bureaucrats trying to control peoples lives. Example. There is a highly experimental vaccine, which is really gene therapy. People are questioning it. Including Mark Zuckerberg, who told all those people not to take it. But then censored anyone online that wanted to have a discussion about it. People are reporting severe injuries “including my own wife!” let’s block and ban them too. Big Pharmacy’s got millions to make. Oh cheap already available treatments seem to work? Let’s ban discussion about those those too. No one can know that possible alternatives exist.
- Timon3 3y ago
  > Example. There is a highly experimental vaccine, which is really gene therapy. People are questioning it. Including Mark Zuckerberg, who told all those people not to take it. My good, that sounds horrible! Can you share some information? You should go to the media with this. A hidden gene therapy, wow... Which genes are they trying to change in what way?
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Also working gene therapy holy shit I have a friend with a lifelong condition who would give away limbs for that.
mindslight 3y ago
To me, the problem is that the whole situation is rotten, and focusing on one tiny aspect while leaving out the wider context just makes a convenient scapegoat. Even before centralizing websites entered pop culture, it was blatantly obvious that they are intrinsically subject to censorship, just like TV, radio, and newspapers. cf "The revolution will not be televised". It wasn't a matter of if, and it wasn't even a matter of when. They are defective by design, and most people just straight up didn't seem to care. Just like how they were happy to believe corporate news on other mediums for decades. Furthermore, most of the power in this country resides outside the de facto government. The pattern of "this is bad for us. please take it down. <possible implied escalation>" is routine and banal. Focusing on a government agency doing this (which actually has much less soft power than say a major advertiser or a golf buddy), and blowing it out of proportion just feels like a distraction from the overall dynamic. "Look we found the censorship! This is what we need to fix!" - even though censorship is pervasive for any centralized media.
csomar 3y ago
I was listening to Ray Dalio the other day and the thing that caught my attention was when he talked about the WWII era during the Nazi reign: he said that it's the centrists (people holding center and more reasonable views) are the ones that got hanged. When society polarizes, it seems that people will stick blindly to their side. Maybe the rational behind that, is that a non-polarized side won't get you as many protections. HN seems to be non-immune to that. Many people here would like to think that they are smarter than the rest. It does seem from the many discussions here that it's the same homunculus everywhere.
roflyear 3y ago
It's an interesting discussion: should the government be able to ask private entities to take down content? What if that content puts a family at risk? What if the WH thinks it does, but it isn't obvious to a third party?
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  What if the party that receives that ask knows that legally they can reject it with a "hah, no" note and the government can't do anything about it? Free speech is thoroughly protected in the US. Are there any carveouts about how even government employees are private citizens when they don't work in government capacity. Can Amy from the DMV ask to have revenge porn taken down? Can Tim from the IRS tell his wife who works at Twitter that he thinks Elon is a liar and grifter?
shadowgovt 3y ago
> The government did a bad thing. The filing is that there is sufficient probability the government did a bad thing to issue an injunction while the court figures out if the government did a bad thing. In general, injunctions protecting freedom of speech are broadly and freely issued. ... But a rational person can ask how we protect free speech by muzzling the government in this context.
- aksss 3y ago
  But the Court is not muzzling the government in the sense of prohibiting their public message. The court is enjoining their method of influencing public debate - that they were/are preventing what you say from being published based on its content. Prohibiting unlawful orders is not an abridgment of an authority’s “free speech”.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Nothing the government was doing is preventing what I say from being published based on its content because (a) I left Twitter ages ago (on account of it being a hole) and (b) I have no right to post on Twitter in the first place.
    - aksss 3y ago
      I'm not sure why this needs to be said, but "you" in this context is conceptually an abstraction of the private citizen. Maybe @shadowgovt the individual never says a word that the establishment would disapprove of, but don't count on that always being the case, and certainly don't expect others to fall in line in that regard. Is it your opinion that the government should have such power - specifically to, without officially commandeering/nationalizing the companies, to direct them to censor disfavored non-criminal speech?
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        I personally believe the government can certainly pass information on to private corporations and then the private corporations can then choose what to do. Whether the situation went past that is what this court case would be about, and nothing has been decided on that topic yet.
elishah 3y ago
> Freedom of speech is literally the first thing in the Bill of Rights. Not necessarily talking about this injunction in particular, but I would like to address this argument. Yes, freedom of speech is very clearly expressed in the Constitution. But there are limits and exceptions to every right in the Constitution, certainly including speech. There are many things that are indisputably "speech" and yet are also illegal: fraud, extortion, libel, slander, perjury, threats, impersonating a doctor or law enforcement officer, etc. I think it would be difficult to make a case that our society would be better off if we defined free speech in so broad and absolutist a sense as to permit all of these. So our evaluation of any particular issue must be more complex than "it's speech, therefore it is always automatically okay."
- robertxlongo 3y ago
  If the government was just trying to police fraud, extortion, etc., then few people would have a problem. However, there is solid evidence that the government worked in secret to censor the speech of a Stanford University professor, physician, and epidemiologist. How is society better off when the government is working is secret to suppress the speech of academics who have opinions that are misaligned with the establishment.
BlakeSimpson 3y ago
The vast majority of people are only headline readers. They see the title and they go on insane tangents on the subject. Facebook is the worst by far.
boringuser2 3y ago
The orange man is bad. What I find of great concern is that the US used to have a strong dissident faction that was against government suppression of basic rights such as free speech. Now, we have two cheerleading factions. I feel the division in the country has stoked authoritarian sentiment on both sides as they desperately grasp for measures to suppress each other.
lasermike026 3y ago
Because the judge was wrong and he actually limiting free speech. The whitehouse should ignore the ruling.
NicoJuicy 3y ago
Freedom of speech shouldn't be freedom of hate speech.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
The government wasn’t found to be suppressing information, it is just an injunction. The government claims to simply be engaging in dialog about areas they find concerning from a variety of angles including salient public health in a declared emergency, what is considered to be dangerous medical advice, participation in conspiracy and sedition, influence of elections, etc. The injunction, as the article describes, doesn’t prevent the agencies from engaging on a lot of these topics and the topic set is somewhat narrow. The government generally has been allowed to constrain speech that’s a clear danger or interferes with either the goals emergency operations or the safe conduct of emergency operations, as well as public health and safety. This has been upheld in case law and by the Supreme Court for over 200 years. I’d note that a Trump appointed judge in Louisiana giving a preliminary injunction on something uniquely ideologically aligned by those dimensions and is noted in the article as out of step with precedent isn’t the end of the line.
emodendroket 3y ago
> The government did a bad thing. Why defend them? Talk about smuggling your conclusion into the premise.
ahallock 3y ago
Usually this happens due to political ideology. People will condone things that benefit their tribe.
stuckinhell 3y ago
Because its okay when their side does it. Human nature at it's worst.
teawrecks 3y ago
Because the world just isn't that simple anymore. 100 years ago, I would totally agree that the govt stopping citizens from spreading false information would be a violation of the first amendment. But we now live in a world where the generation of misinformation is automated. Controlling communication on social media does not necessarily imply stifling the speech of a human. It's very possible that we currently live with an internet where more than half of accounts represent entirely fabricated personas created specifically to generate malicious propaganda. And they know that if they can get a judge to defend their antics as "Free Speech" they will be free to manipulate the general population however they want. I agree that we need to be careful about protecting free speech online, but if we act like every character that goes over a wire is protected speech, we are digging our own grave.
DannyBee 3y ago
"A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens." They literally did not. This is a preliminary injunction, not a decision on the merits. This is why the court is clear they are allegations, etc. There is a ton of issues with this injunction and rationale, and it will almost certainly be overturned (or at the very least,seriously modified) on appeal. In fact, the injunction and reasoning even deliberately misquotes evidence to try to support points. Not like in arguable ways, either. While that sort of thing may be fun and play okay sometimes at the district level, and in the news, 99% of the time that goes very badly at appeals. I strongly doubt when that happens that you will come back and say "i guess the government didn't do a bad thing" (I read the entire decision, FWIW)
- ndr 3y ago
  The injunction is quite harsh and I agree that it's likely to be seriously modified in its final form. As fare as predictions go do you think the gov will come out clean or it'll end with "gov did a bad thing"? And if so will _you_ come back and say "i guess the government did do a bad thing"?
  - DannyBee 3y ago
    First, i always admit when i'm wrong, you can find plenty of examples on HN :) I don't go through life pretending i will always be right, and I try to learn from the times i get it wrong :) As for what will happen - Honestly - it's hard to say. I think it will be that some people in the government asked for things they shouldn't have (let's ignore if they are illegal things or not or whatever for a second). The government is big. My experience with any large company discovery is that somebody somewhere says or does something stupid. It's hard to believe that won't be the case for the government here[1] :) I think some people take the view that's okay (despite imbalance of power), and others think they should only be allowed to ask for things that are affirmatively okay. Historically, the court result has been the former, though usually it's closer to "state/feds pass law saying x, ask you to do x, law gets overturned as not okay". I think it may be decided to be closer to the middle now if it makes it to SCOTUS - but i'm not sure what that looks like. It's hard to come up with bright line standards, but bad facts make bad law - if the there are senior officials ordering censorship, .... I don't think folks will go all the way to saying the government may not ask for things that later may be decided to be illegal to ask for. [1] I would personally be much more concerned if it was senior officials vs random worker bees. Unlike some corporations, the government is actually pretty darn good at retaining evidence,etc. So if senior officials ordered it, the likelihood of a record existing is much much higher than "CEO who verbally tells a junior software engineer to do something bad" or whatever.
jrockway 3y ago
I agree with you. Things like this: > A February 2021 message in which Flaherty asked Twitter to remove a parody account related to Hunter Biden's daughter said, "Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately. Please remove this account immediately." are just self-dealing. If I email Twitter with a request like that, they correctly route it to /dev/null. If the office of the President sends that, they can't do that. It's just too risky. So that's why I think it's an abuse of power. In the absence of some court ruling that prohibits parody, you have the Constitutional right to pretend to be Hunter Biden's daughter on Twitter. Twitter also has the right to do some editorializing, like not giving them a checkmark, or posting a note like "we don't think this is actually Hunter Biden's daughter", or shutting down the account. It's their right, but they have to do it because they want to do it, not because the President of the United States said so. That's not a power that the President has. While I personally agree with the causes the administration is fighting for, they are exercising powers that the government doesn't have. That should always be viewed critically. It sucks that people are getting bad information about vaccines. Increase funding for schools or get a Constitutional amendment passed that removes the freedom of speech. Threatening emails are easy, but an abuse of power. Follow the process you swore an oath to uphold, even if you don't get instant gratification. The 1st Amendment exists for a good reason, and we can't forget that.
crazygringo 3y ago
Because freedom of speech isn't absolute, and whether "the government did a bad thing" is the very question being asked, to which reasonable people may disagree. With over a million COVID deaths in the US, there's a very valid question to be raised as to when emergency public health requirements take precedence over a right to spread misinformation/disinformation. Freedom of speech isn't of much use when you're dead. I'm not arguing which side was right, but I am saying it shouldn't baffle anyone, because it's a complex question with real tradeoffs on both sides. It's not simple black-and-white in the way you're presenting it.
- ironmagma 3y ago
  It’s been well established by this point that Americans do not believe their government should lie to them and that when it does, it damages the long-term effectiveness of the government at leading the people. This was a short-sighted move that ultimately damaged public health.
- aksss 3y ago
  It’s one thing to officially commandeer media outlets during an emergency. That’s in-bounds. That’s not what happened here and therefore not what the debate is about.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    No, that's precisely what the debate is about. Governments spreading information or halting disinformation exists on a spectrum. This is precisely about where it exists on the spectrum and about balancing rights against harms.
    - aksss 3y ago
      Maybe we're talking past each other - the government did not commandeer or nationalize these companies as part of its emergency declaration, and so the government's ability to direct actions at an organization in those circumstances is not what the issue is about. The issue (and apparently we may agree on this(?)) is where the line is for the government to compel action in a private organization short of officially commandeering it. This will inevitably lead us to debating how "voluntary" the actions of a company are when law enforcement is asking it "nicely", and how nicely they were really asking for that cooperation. You seem to be framing this as an interest balancing test. The courts may see it that way. It doesn't seem like the whole story to me though, principally because none of the actions on the part of the government were done through regulatory policy or legislation, but through "conversation", side-channel influence, etc. To me, that's fundamental to this discussion. Interest balancing would make sense if we were debating the legality of regulation saying the government can direct Internet platforms to hide the non-criminal commentary of users that is not in alignment with the official government position. Instead, we're talking about actions of law-enforcement and their NGOs influencing organizations outside of any official regulatory commission to do so. It's hard to see the public accepting regulatory policy that allowed this. It's hard for me to see how this behavior of the federal government is allowable when nobody wants to make it official policy. Now, my biases having interacted with the FBI on behalf of organizations in past lives, I think all interaction with them is highly delicate, and never blind to potential consequences of getting on their bad side. Consider the background of this particular injunction - most of these substantial conversations with law enforcement personnel will be off the record (over coffee), broad statements are being made about criminal liability from public figures in the press. Is it possible for a multibillion-dollar American company to not feel any pressure to "cooperate"? If there's pressure, it's coercive. It may or may not be effective, it may or may not be the deciding factor. But there's also the scale - do we believe all these companies happened to voluntarily go along with the government program of censorship out of friendly cooperation sans subtext of ending up on the "wrong" side of the Justice dept? I think all of us we need to be considering if that's how we want our federal law enforcement to operate. Again, if the gov. feels it has the political capital to commandeer companies in an emergency, go for it. Do it above the board and let the political consequences (if any) work themselves out. Or if it feels it has the support for censorship as a regulatory matter, try it. Just be up front about it. Yes, the specific method certainly is at issue here.
rewmie 3y ago
> A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. I'm not sure you read the article you're quoting, because you're claiming stuff that does not correspond to the facts. The article you're quoting states quite clearly that a judge granted a request for a preliminary injunction imposing limits on how a few state institutions can exercise their rights to fight disinformation. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0_2.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... This is a preliminary injunction. It loosely means "hey we have here a plaintiff that claims a few government institutions are doing something wrong. While we check if the plaintiff's complain holds any water, let's put a pin on these things." The article you're quoting also states quite clearly that the US government has the right to fight disinformation, specially that which directly harms the public. This happens to be exactly the case. This boils down to covid denialists and antivaxers in general trying to push their disinformation, and thus trying to stop state institutions such as the Department of Health from suggesting that, say, letting a pandemic spread freely through a population can get a lot of people killed.
root_axis 3y ago
It's quite ironic that you're castigating commenters for not reading the article as you confidently proclaim false information that reading the article would remedy you of. > A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. False. I think you should edit your comment to remove the false information or acknowledge that you are wrong.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
The Bill of Rights is not ranked by importance. Did you read the article? >The ruling was criticized by Jameel Jaffer, an adjunct professor of law and journalism who is executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. "It can't be that the government violates the First Amendment simply by engaging with the platforms about their content-moderation decisions and policies," Jaffer told The New York Times, calling it "a pretty radical proposition that isn't supported by the case law." > While the government must be careful to avoid coercion in its efforts to combat false information, Jaffer said that "unfortunately, Judge Doughty's order doesn't reflect a serious effort to reconcile the competing principles." > Stanford Law School Assistant Professor Evelyn Douek told The Washington Post that the "injunction is strikingly broad and clearly intended to chill any kind of contact between government actors and social media platforms."
rtkwe 3y ago
Except if you look at the number of complaints that were actually acted on it looks a lot less like they were that intimidating at all. From the Twitter files it seems like way less than 10% of the reported tweets had anything happen to them at all.
jasonlotito 3y ago
[flagged]
- tdehnel 3y ago
  So much writing. So little explanation of your view or specific critique of the person you're responding to. You could have just typed "Wrong. Do your research."
ROTMetro 3y ago
Now do this for everything. Don't allow the government to 'request' the information they have on you. You want information, get a warrant. The two must go together. Either it's coercion by the government to ask a corporation to do XZY or it's not.
dr-detroit 3y ago
[dead]
nektro 3y ago
this was clearly not an abuse of power and the fact that you think so and appear to be the top comment is deeply concerning
footlose_3815 3y ago
Suddenly a Louisiana plant judge cares about the effects of the White House on free speech? If you need to make an announcement about fairness, it's in bad-faith if you ignore how it's 100% politically motivated maneuvers made-up by GOP thinktanks to neuter democrat power. You betcha they'll ignore that law or destroy it once they're back.
lost_tourist 3y ago
It's integral for the executive office to be able to head off garbage information like that spewed by MAGAs and antivax people, no one forced twitter or facebook to censor that garbage, but they chose to. This judgement is garbage and the judge's decision will pretty quickly be vacated by the appellate court because the executive branch has been able to contact newspapers and other media since the beginning of the nation. It seems to me like this judge thinks that the judicial branch is the only "powerful" branch of the government these days, like the Supreme Court seems to think as well.
marcod 3y ago
In the same article see the section "Exceptions include voting misinformation" - does it really baffle you that people think public health is as important as elections?

by efitz 3y ago

freediverx 3y ago

“Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee…”

ceejayoz 3y ago

> A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. This is not how a preliminary injunction works. The court has ordered that the governmment stop doing the in-dispute things until the dispute is resolved - in either direction - in court. The standard for such an injunction is not proof, but "they might prevail in court, and there's potentially enough harm from letting it continue in the meantime".

lordfrito 3y ago
Also, a WSJ article suggested the point is that discovery needs to occur here before a judgment is made. [1] Judge Doughty could have dismissed the case without an opportunity for discovery, as another judge did in another NCLA case, Changizi v. HHS, involving the same sort of censorship. Judge Doughty understood, however, that a largely secret censorship system can’t be evaluated under the First Amendment until after discovery. [1] https://archive.is/GCWCr https://archive.is/GCWCr
- kyrra 3y ago
  While I agree here, I want to add a caveat that the linked article is technically a "commentary" pieces, not a news-side piece (aka: it's published on the opinion pages). But even given that, the opinion pages of the WSJ is just as fact-filled as the news side, but just highlights that the person writing it may not be a disinterested party. The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more conservative, while the news side leans liberal. Though they will happily publish people from the left, such as publishing President Biden: https://www.wsj.com/articles/never-bet-against-the-american-economy-president-inflation-manufacturing-jobs-287a006f https://www.wsj.com/articles/never-bet-against-the-american-...
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more conservative, while the news side leans liberal. As with most News Corp outlets, the news side of the WSJ leans pretty far to the right (it did so even before it was a News Corp outlet, though not as much), it only seems “liberal” by comparison with its own opinion section. That said, unlike, say, Fox News, the WSJ news side at least makes an effort to adhere to traditional journalistic norms, its right wing bias is more evident in agenda-setting (story selection, devotion of space, and placement/promotion), and less in commentary and outright fabrications in “news” content.
    - jp191919 3y ago
      An interesting site if you are concerned about media bias- https://www.allsides.com/media-bias https://www.allsides.com/media-bias
      - kurthr 3y ago
        An excellent example of the Overton Window. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
        mistermann 3y ago
        Very good point...you would think tech folks would be better at identifying relative vs absolute frames of reference, but then the problem space is heavily propagandized and there is only so much time in the day.
judge2020 3y ago
In particular, they need to find if there was any actual coercion or threat made by the gov't agencies to remove the speech they asked to. For example, when the FBI was asking Twitter to take down videos (of content that violated Twitter's own TOS), Twitter could've told them to go pound sand. But it would be a different story if the FBI indicated that Twitter "ought to" do it or face increased scrutiny, perhaps.
- leereeves 3y ago
  I don't see why there needs to be any coercion. The offense here is not against the social networks, it's against the people whose speech was suppressed. Whether that suppression was done with threats, requests, subtle hints, or an automated system, if the government's intent was to suppress speech, the means employed make no difference. Edit: imagine an extreme case in which a social network independently created an automated system for government employees to remove posts. Would it be constitutional for the government to use that system? Clearly not, despite the lack of any coercion.
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    Well, that’s definitely not true. The government can suppress speech when it sends an emergency action alert to commandeer tv and radio stations during an emergency, for one example. The fact is that the means employed make every bit of difference when it comes to whether or not the content based speech restriction is tailored as narrowly as possible to achieve a compelling government interest. On the other hand, maybe it makes not difference to your feelings, which is fair.
    - leereeves 3y ago
      I'm obviously not saying the means never make a difference in any case. I'm talking about this case. I'm saying that using minimal means does not make an unconstitutional action acceptable; you're pointing out that using excessive means can make a constitutional action unacceptable. That's a different situation and not really a reply to my comment or this case. To make it more relevant, can you point to a single case where a court has ruled that a constitutionally limited action was permitted simply because the means were unintrusive? A compelling government interest, as you said, could justify the action, but what is the compelling government interest here?
unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
The standard actually is the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits (not "might"-- it's probable per the judge), and in practice a preliminary injunction hearing in a major case can take the form of a mini-trial. The judge wrote 155 pages that, at first blush, appear to be a very serious and thoughtful effort. The judge summarized on page 154 thus: "The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country." [1] (emphasis mine) [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.293.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  "Likely" means more than "possible" and less than "probable", with a pretty hefty error bar given the trial hasn't happened yet. It's a far cry from the settled state the original headline implied.
  - unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
    An ultimate win must be "likely" to prevail in a PI, and this judge said it was. "Likely" and "probable" are synonyms".[1] Apparently some courts do apply an relaxed standard in First Amendment cases of "reasonably likely"[2], but that's not clearly right and it's also not a quibble over whether "likely" is "probable" (which it is). [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/likely#synonyms https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/likely#synonyms [2] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/publications/litigation-news/top-stories/2017/confusion-over-preliminary-injunction-standard-clarified-but-not-settled/ https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/publications/l...

lordfrito 3y ago

I'm with you on this. Something tells me the people here arguing that Flaherty wasn't coercive or threatening would be arguing just the opposite if this was the Trump administration. Apparently it's about time for our collective citizenry to relearn some generational lessons from history, preferably not the hard way.

ceejayoz 3y ago
> Something tells me the people here arguing that Flaherty wasn't coercive or threatening would be arguing just the opposite if this was the Trump administration. The Trump administration was doing the same thing. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-trump-twitter-files-collusion-biden-censorship-1234675969/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-tru... > When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down. > “It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done [when Donald Trump was in office],” one former top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. “It was normal.”
- zpeti 3y ago
  I think you’ll find, that except for hardcore trumpists not many on the right support trump doin this.
  - Timon3 3y ago
    I haven't seen any outcry from Hardcore trumpists. There is an outcry for anything Biden does. Is it possible you want them not to support Trump doing that, even though they might do?
  - p_j_w 3y ago
    They never raised a stink, so I have to assume they, at the very least, didn't have a problem with it.

commandlinefan 3y ago

> Why defend them? Because a depressingly large percentage of people would actually like to see the first amendment overturned.

causi 3y ago
It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech they don't agree with, and rarer still any speech they find repugnant. It isn't liberty vs authority anymore; it's just team red and team blue. One might be wrong-er than the other but neither think people they hate should be able to open their mouths in anything but agreement.
- ch4s3 3y ago
  I realized a long time ago that if no one was allowed to say thing I find distasteful the world would be a very quiet place. And I must imagine that there exist people who given the opportunity would be far more censorious than I might be at my worst. As such it seems beneficial to in general to mutually disarm with respect to censorship rather than create a world of pressing silence.
- bequanna 3y ago
  Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? If so, they are by far the minority in that camp. Only one side is afraid of open debate and pure freedom of speech. Why could that be?
  - causi 3y ago
    Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? Yes. Restrictions on what teachers are allowed to teach are restrictions on freedom of speech. Restrictions on non-sexual drag performances are restrictions of freedom of speech. Bans on calling for boycotts of Israeli goods and services are restrictions of the freedom of speech.
    - bequanna 3y ago

timcavel 3y ago

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brasic 3y ago

Read the entire injunction. It’s only seven pages. Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0_3.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization” I’m not defending the behavior alleged here but this judge is not the sort of person you want adjudicating serious issues. You don’t fight censorship with blanket bans on speech. A supporter of free speech should be horrified by this ruling. If you’re not, imagine an injunction of similar scope where the political sides were reversed.

engineer_22 3y ago
-> Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. I'm just curious, can you tell us what you take issue with?
- brasic 3y ago
  It’s a blatantly illegal prior restraint on speech, completely at odds with the values the plaintiffs and judge claim to hold. Free speech cuts both ways. If you’re pleased when a judge bans any and all communication among millions of citizens, you don’t actually value the first amendment, you’re just cheering a partisan victory.
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    There's a 5 part test laid out by the 9th circuit in Gibson v. Office of Attorney Gen related to speech rights of government employees. The government has broad latitude to restrict the speech that occurs in the course of a government employee's job, SCOTUS laid this out in Garcetti v. Ceballos. Moreover, this is an injunction related to the pending trial, and while judges can sometimes be a bit too aggressive for my taste there seems to be a compelling reason here.
  - curiousllama 3y ago

throwaway72762 3y ago

[flagged]

Pxtl 3y ago

First off, I think all of us have learned the unfortunate downsides to a libertarian approach to free speech over the past 20 years. Any free speech purist would do well to remember what their legal recourse would be if somebody made elaborate false-allegations about you that harmed your career and marriage - we have many legal tools that protect us from harmful lies. It is not remarkable that there are people who believe in "free speech" but do not consider disinformation about more nebulous bodies that don't have standing for a lawsuit (eg defaming vaccines in general, epidemiology, democracy, ethnicity, climate science, trans people, etc) to be something that should fall under that protection, any more than threats or perjury fall under that protection. Why is it actionable when you make dangerous public lies that hurt somebody's pocketbook, but not public health? Secondly, the US constitution says "shall make no law". What law was made here? What legal action was taken? There wasn't even a threat of legal action. Government workers should be free to contact private organizations and speak to them freely and make requests of them. "The government would like this content taken down for public good" is not making a law, it's making a request. It's making their opinion known, and government functionaries are allowed to have professional opinions. Something like "In my professional opinion as a public health worker, this content is dangerous advice that will get people killed, and in the interest of public safety it would be best if readers were protected from it." That is a reasonable thing for a government-employed professional to do and say. That said, I think they crossed the line here when it became a demand instead of a request. When the government starts ordering people around instead of just making the public interest known, it can easily be argued there's implied threats there. IANAL, but I'm assuming in the end that's where this will land during the appeals - that sweeping injunctions against various government bodies communicating with social media companies will be lifted, but the court will find against the government on this case.

rabite 3y ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  [flagged]

snowwrestler 3y ago

It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. The legal theory at stake here is that all government speech is inherently coercive. But this is not necessarily true, or aligned with free speech as a principle of society. Any time someone says “we must protect free speech by legally enjoining the following people from speaking,” I am suspicious.

ETH_start 3y ago
The government has no First Amendment rights.
GeekyBear 3y ago
> It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. If the speech the government officials are engaging in is a demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then we are looking at a violation of the First Amendment. Nobody is saying that government officials can't engage in other kinds of speech that don't violate the Bill of Rights.
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  Demands are free speech, even if unreasonable. The First Amendment constrains the application of the power of law, like prosecution and imprisonment. Which is not what happened in these cases.
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    > Demands are free speech When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. If you recall, Trump wasn't allowed to block citizens who were critical of him on Twitter for the same reason. > In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-rules-trump-violated-first-amendment-by-blocking-twitter-follo https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...

rhaway84773 3y ago

The court clearly found that wrongly because they do say that there are other non first amendment protected speech that the government can indeed suppress on social media. It’s just these few non first amendment protected items that the court is ideologically opposed to that the government cannot suppress.

curiousllama 3y ago
> there are other non first amendment protected speech that the government can indeed suppress This is a famously narrow category (eg CSAM). The gov often can't even suppress state secrets. I think most people are fine with this category existing, even if there's disagreements on what's in it.

adfhbaidnioni 3y ago

Courts say a whole lot of things. The large majority of what the government is alleged to have done sounds entirely appropriate to me. The CDC, Surgeon General, and NIAID are responsible for publishing health guidance. This means they will say some things are true and some things are false. They have no power to censor third-party sources and I don't see evidence of even informal pressure. Yet third parties believed this information and used it to determine what posts are true, which sounds to me like these agencies did their job by publishing trustworthy guidance. Some of the things this court said were factually incorrect. For instance, >Dr. Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there needed to be a “quick and devastating take down” of the GBD—the result was exactly that Yet in context, you find that the "take down" in question was a published rebuttal, not censorship. This is a lie, plain and simple. > The FBI’s failure to alert social-media companies that the Hunter Biden laptop story was real, and not mere Russian disinformation, is particularly troubling. The "story" is that Hunter Biden owned a laptop. The "Hunter Biden laptop story" was very much fake. None of the supposed evidence of corruption existed.

treeman79 3y ago

Same reason counties fall to communism. Free speech and open debate get in the way of bureaucrats trying to control peoples lives. Example. There is a highly experimental vaccine, which is really gene therapy. People are questioning it. Including Mark Zuckerberg, who told all those people not to take it. But then censored anyone online that wanted to have a discussion about it. People are reporting severe injuries “including my own wife!” let’s block and ban them too. Big Pharmacy’s got millions to make. Oh cheap already available treatments seem to work? Let’s ban discussion about those those too. No one can know that possible alternatives exist.

Timon3 3y ago
> Example. There is a highly experimental vaccine, which is really gene therapy. People are questioning it. Including Mark Zuckerberg, who told all those people not to take it. My good, that sounds horrible! Can you share some information? You should go to the media with this. A hidden gene therapy, wow... Which genes are they trying to change in what way?
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Also working gene therapy holy shit I have a friend with a lifelong condition who would give away limbs for that.

mindslight 3y ago

To me, the problem is that the whole situation is rotten, and focusing on one tiny aspect while leaving out the wider context just makes a convenient scapegoat. Even before centralizing websites entered pop culture, it was blatantly obvious that they are intrinsically subject to censorship, just like TV, radio, and newspapers. cf "The revolution will not be televised". It wasn't a matter of if, and it wasn't even a matter of when. They are defective by design, and most people just straight up didn't seem to care. Just like how they were happy to believe corporate news on other mediums for decades. Furthermore, most of the power in this country resides outside the de facto government. The pattern of "this is bad for us. please take it down. <possible implied escalation>" is routine and banal. Focusing on a government agency doing this (which actually has much less soft power than say a major advertiser or a golf buddy), and blowing it out of proportion just feels like a distraction from the overall dynamic. "Look we found the censorship! This is what we need to fix!" - even though censorship is pervasive for any centralized media.

csomar 3y ago

I was listening to Ray Dalio the other day and the thing that caught my attention was when he talked about the WWII era during the Nazi reign: he said that it's the centrists (people holding center and more reasonable views) are the ones that got hanged. When society polarizes, it seems that people will stick blindly to their side. Maybe the rational behind that, is that a non-polarized side won't get you as many protections. HN seems to be non-immune to that. Many people here would like to think that they are smarter than the rest. It does seem from the many discussions here that it's the same homunculus everywhere.

roflyear 3y ago

It's an interesting discussion: should the government be able to ask private entities to take down content? What if that content puts a family at risk? What if the WH thinks it does, but it isn't obvious to a third party?

mrguyorama 3y ago
What if the party that receives that ask knows that legally they can reject it with a "hah, no" note and the government can't do anything about it? Free speech is thoroughly protected in the US. Are there any carveouts about how even government employees are private citizens when they don't work in government capacity. Can Amy from the DMV ask to have revenge porn taken down? Can Tim from the IRS tell his wife who works at Twitter that he thinks Elon is a liar and grifter?

shadowgovt 3y ago

> The government did a bad thing. The filing is that there is sufficient probability the government did a bad thing to issue an injunction while the court figures out if the government did a bad thing. In general, injunctions protecting freedom of speech are broadly and freely issued. ... But a rational person can ask how we protect free speech by muzzling the government in this context.

aksss 3y ago
But the Court is not muzzling the government in the sense of prohibiting their public message. The court is enjoining their method of influencing public debate - that they were/are preventing what you say from being published based on its content. Prohibiting unlawful orders is not an abridgment of an authority’s “free speech”.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Nothing the government was doing is preventing what I say from being published based on its content because (a) I left Twitter ages ago (on account of it being a hole) and (b) I have no right to post on Twitter in the first place.
  - aksss 3y ago
    I'm not sure why this needs to be said, but "you" in this context is conceptually an abstraction of the private citizen. Maybe @shadowgovt the individual never says a word that the establishment would disapprove of, but don't count on that always being the case, and certainly don't expect others to fall in line in that regard. Is it your opinion that the government should have such power - specifically to, without officially commandeering/nationalizing the companies, to direct them to censor disfavored non-criminal speech?
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      I personally believe the government can certainly pass information on to private corporations and then the private corporations can then choose what to do. Whether the situation went past that is what this court case would be about, and nothing has been decided on that topic yet.

elishah 3y ago

> Freedom of speech is literally the first thing in the Bill of Rights. Not necessarily talking about this injunction in particular, but I would like to address this argument. Yes, freedom of speech is very clearly expressed in the Constitution. But there are limits and exceptions to every right in the Constitution, certainly including speech. There are many things that are indisputably "speech" and yet are also illegal: fraud, extortion, libel, slander, perjury, threats, impersonating a doctor or law enforcement officer, etc. I think it would be difficult to make a case that our society would be better off if we defined free speech in so broad and absolutist a sense as to permit all of these. So our evaluation of any particular issue must be more complex than "it's speech, therefore it is always automatically okay."

robertxlongo 3y ago
If the government was just trying to police fraud, extortion, etc., then few people would have a problem. However, there is solid evidence that the government worked in secret to censor the speech of a Stanford University professor, physician, and epidemiologist. How is society better off when the government is working is secret to suppress the speech of academics who have opinions that are misaligned with the establishment.

BlakeSimpson 3y ago

The vast majority of people are only headline readers. They see the title and they go on insane tangents on the subject. Facebook is the worst by far.

boringuser2 3y ago

The orange man is bad. What I find of great concern is that the US used to have a strong dissident faction that was against government suppression of basic rights such as free speech. Now, we have two cheerleading factions. I feel the division in the country has stoked authoritarian sentiment on both sides as they desperately grasp for measures to suppress each other.

lasermike026 3y ago

Because the judge was wrong and he actually limiting free speech. The whitehouse should ignore the ruling.

NicoJuicy 3y ago

Freedom of speech shouldn't be freedom of hate speech.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

The government wasn’t found to be suppressing information, it is just an injunction. The government claims to simply be engaging in dialog about areas they find concerning from a variety of angles including salient public health in a declared emergency, what is considered to be dangerous medical advice, participation in conspiracy and sedition, influence of elections, etc. The injunction, as the article describes, doesn’t prevent the agencies from engaging on a lot of these topics and the topic set is somewhat narrow. The government generally has been allowed to constrain speech that’s a clear danger or interferes with either the goals emergency operations or the safe conduct of emergency operations, as well as public health and safety. This has been upheld in case law and by the Supreme Court for over 200 years. I’d note that a Trump appointed judge in Louisiana giving a preliminary injunction on something uniquely ideologically aligned by those dimensions and is noted in the article as out of step with precedent isn’t the end of the line.

emodendroket 3y ago

> The government did a bad thing. Why defend them? Talk about smuggling your conclusion into the premise.

ahallock 3y ago

Usually this happens due to political ideology. People will condone things that benefit their tribe.

stuckinhell 3y ago

Because its okay when their side does it. Human nature at it's worst.

teawrecks 3y ago

Because the world just isn't that simple anymore. 100 years ago, I would totally agree that the govt stopping citizens from spreading false information would be a violation of the first amendment. But we now live in a world where the generation of misinformation is automated. Controlling communication on social media does not necessarily imply stifling the speech of a human. It's very possible that we currently live with an internet where more than half of accounts represent entirely fabricated personas created specifically to generate malicious propaganda. And they know that if they can get a judge to defend their antics as "Free Speech" they will be free to manipulate the general population however they want. I agree that we need to be careful about protecting free speech online, but if we act like every character that goes over a wire is protected speech, we are digging our own grave.

DannyBee 3y ago

"A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens." They literally did not. This is a preliminary injunction, not a decision on the merits. This is why the court is clear they are allegations, etc. There is a ton of issues with this injunction and rationale, and it will almost certainly be overturned (or at the very least,seriously modified) on appeal. In fact, the injunction and reasoning even deliberately misquotes evidence to try to support points. Not like in arguable ways, either. While that sort of thing may be fun and play okay sometimes at the district level, and in the news, 99% of the time that goes very badly at appeals. I strongly doubt when that happens that you will come back and say "i guess the government didn't do a bad thing" (I read the entire decision, FWIW)

ndr 3y ago
The injunction is quite harsh and I agree that it's likely to be seriously modified in its final form. As fare as predictions go do you think the gov will come out clean or it'll end with "gov did a bad thing"? And if so will _you_ come back and say "i guess the government did do a bad thing"?
- DannyBee 3y ago
  First, i always admit when i'm wrong, you can find plenty of examples on HN :) I don't go through life pretending i will always be right, and I try to learn from the times i get it wrong :) As for what will happen - Honestly - it's hard to say. I think it will be that some people in the government asked for things they shouldn't have (let's ignore if they are illegal things or not or whatever for a second). The government is big. My experience with any large company discovery is that somebody somewhere says or does something stupid. It's hard to believe that won't be the case for the government here[1] :) I think some people take the view that's okay (despite imbalance of power), and others think they should only be allowed to ask for things that are affirmatively okay. Historically, the court result has been the former, though usually it's closer to "state/feds pass law saying x, ask you to do x, law gets overturned as not okay". I think it may be decided to be closer to the middle now if it makes it to SCOTUS - but i'm not sure what that looks like. It's hard to come up with bright line standards, but bad facts make bad law - if the there are senior officials ordering censorship, .... I don't think folks will go all the way to saying the government may not ask for things that later may be decided to be illegal to ask for. [1] I would personally be much more concerned if it was senior officials vs random worker bees. Unlike some corporations, the government is actually pretty darn good at retaining evidence,etc. So if senior officials ordered it, the likelihood of a record existing is much much higher than "CEO who verbally tells a junior software engineer to do something bad" or whatever.

jrockway 3y ago

I agree with you. Things like this: > A February 2021 message in which Flaherty asked Twitter to remove a parody account related to Hunter Biden's daughter said, "Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately. Please remove this account immediately." are just self-dealing. If I email Twitter with a request like that, they correctly route it to /dev/null. If the office of the President sends that, they can't do that. It's just too risky. So that's why I think it's an abuse of power. In the absence of some court ruling that prohibits parody, you have the Constitutional right to pretend to be Hunter Biden's daughter on Twitter. Twitter also has the right to do some editorializing, like not giving them a checkmark, or posting a note like "we don't think this is actually Hunter Biden's daughter", or shutting down the account. It's their right, but they have to do it because they want to do it, not because the President of the United States said so. That's not a power that the President has. While I personally agree with the causes the administration is fighting for, they are exercising powers that the government doesn't have. That should always be viewed critically. It sucks that people are getting bad information about vaccines. Increase funding for schools or get a Constitutional amendment passed that removes the freedom of speech. Threatening emails are easy, but an abuse of power. Follow the process you swore an oath to uphold, even if you don't get instant gratification. The 1st Amendment exists for a good reason, and we can't forget that.

crazygringo 3y ago

Because freedom of speech isn't absolute, and whether "the government did a bad thing" is the very question being asked, to which reasonable people may disagree. With over a million COVID deaths in the US, there's a very valid question to be raised as to when emergency public health requirements take precedence over a right to spread misinformation/disinformation. Freedom of speech isn't of much use when you're dead. I'm not arguing which side was right, but I am saying it shouldn't baffle anyone, because it's a complex question with real tradeoffs on both sides. It's not simple black-and-white in the way you're presenting it.

ironmagma 3y ago
It’s been well established by this point that Americans do not believe their government should lie to them and that when it does, it damages the long-term effectiveness of the government at leading the people. This was a short-sighted move that ultimately damaged public health.
aksss 3y ago
It’s one thing to officially commandeer media outlets during an emergency. That’s in-bounds. That’s not what happened here and therefore not what the debate is about.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  No, that's precisely what the debate is about. Governments spreading information or halting disinformation exists on a spectrum. This is precisely about where it exists on the spectrum and about balancing rights against harms.
  - aksss 3y ago
    Maybe we're talking past each other - the government did not commandeer or nationalize these companies as part of its emergency declaration, and so the government's ability to direct actions at an organization in those circumstances is not what the issue is about. The issue (and apparently we may agree on this(?)) is where the line is for the government to compel action in a private organization short of officially commandeering it. This will inevitably lead us to debating how "voluntary" the actions of a company are when law enforcement is asking it "nicely", and how nicely they were really asking for that cooperation. You seem to be framing this as an interest balancing test. The courts may see it that way. It doesn't seem like the whole story to me though, principally because none of the actions on the part of the government were done through regulatory policy or legislation, but through "conversation", side-channel influence, etc. To me, that's fundamental to this discussion. Interest balancing would make sense if we were debating the legality of regulation saying the government can direct Internet platforms to hide the non-criminal commentary of users that is not in alignment with the official government position. Instead, we're talking about actions of law-enforcement and their NGOs influencing organizations outside of any official regulatory commission to do so. It's hard to see the public accepting regulatory policy that allowed this. It's hard for me to see how this behavior of the federal government is allowable when nobody wants to make it official policy. Now, my biases having interacted with the FBI on behalf of organizations in past lives, I think all interaction with them is highly delicate, and never blind to potential consequences of getting on their bad side. Consider the background of this particular injunction - most of these substantial conversations with law enforcement personnel will be off the record (over coffee), broad statements are being made about criminal liability from public figures in the press. Is it possible for a multibillion-dollar American company to not feel any pressure to "cooperate"? If there's pressure, it's coercive. It may or may not be effective, it may or may not be the deciding factor. But there's also the scale - do we believe all these companies happened to voluntarily go along with the government program of censorship out of friendly cooperation sans subtext of ending up on the "wrong" side of the Justice dept? I think all of us we need to be considering if that's how we want our federal law enforcement to operate. Again, if the gov. feels it has the political capital to commandeer companies in an emergency, go for it. Do it above the board and let the political consequences (if any) work themselves out. Or if it feels it has the support for censorship as a regulatory matter, try it. Just be up front about it. Yes, the specific method certainly is at issue here.

rewmie 3y ago

> A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. I'm not sure you read the article you're quoting, because you're claiming stuff that does not correspond to the facts. The article you're quoting states quite clearly that a judge granted a request for a preliminary injunction imposing limits on how a few state institutions can exercise their rights to fight disinformation. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0_2.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... This is a preliminary injunction. It loosely means "hey we have here a plaintiff that claims a few government institutions are doing something wrong. While we check if the plaintiff's complain holds any water, let's put a pin on these things." The article you're quoting also states quite clearly that the US government has the right to fight disinformation, specially that which directly harms the public. This happens to be exactly the case. This boils down to covid denialists and antivaxers in general trying to push their disinformation, and thus trying to stop state institutions such as the Department of Health from suggesting that, say, letting a pandemic spread freely through a population can get a lot of people killed.

root_axis 3y ago

It's quite ironic that you're castigating commenters for not reading the article as you confidently proclaim false information that reading the article would remedy you of. > A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. False. I think you should edit your comment to remove the false information or acknowledge that you are wrong.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

The Bill of Rights is not ranked by importance. Did you read the article? >The ruling was criticized by Jameel Jaffer, an adjunct professor of law and journalism who is executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. "It can't be that the government violates the First Amendment simply by engaging with the platforms about their content-moderation decisions and policies," Jaffer told The New York Times, calling it "a pretty radical proposition that isn't supported by the case law." > While the government must be careful to avoid coercion in its efforts to combat false information, Jaffer said that "unfortunately, Judge Doughty's order doesn't reflect a serious effort to reconcile the competing principles." > Stanford Law School Assistant Professor Evelyn Douek told The Washington Post that the "injunction is strikingly broad and clearly intended to chill any kind of contact between government actors and social media platforms."

rtkwe 3y ago

Except if you look at the number of complaints that were actually acted on it looks a lot less like they were that intimidating at all. From the Twitter files it seems like way less than 10% of the reported tweets had anything happen to them at all.

jasonlotito 3y ago

[flagged]

tdehnel 3y ago
So much writing. So little explanation of your view or specific critique of the person you're responding to. You could have just typed "Wrong. Do your research."

ROTMetro 3y ago

Now do this for everything. Don't allow the government to 'request' the information they have on you. You want information, get a warrant. The two must go together. Either it's coercion by the government to ask a corporation to do XZY or it's not.

dr-detroit 3y ago

[dead]

nektro 3y ago

this was clearly not an abuse of power and the fact that you think so and appear to be the top comment is deeply concerning

footlose_3815 3y ago

Suddenly a Louisiana plant judge cares about the effects of the White House on free speech? If you need to make an announcement about fairness, it's in bad-faith if you ignore how it's 100% politically motivated maneuvers made-up by GOP thinktanks to neuter democrat power. You betcha they'll ignore that law or destroy it once they're back.

lost_tourist 3y ago

It's integral for the executive office to be able to head off garbage information like that spewed by MAGAs and antivax people, no one forced twitter or facebook to censor that garbage, but they chose to. This judgement is garbage and the judge's decision will pretty quickly be vacated by the appellate court because the executive branch has been able to contact newspapers and other media since the beginning of the nation. It seems to me like this judge thinks that the judicial branch is the only "powerful" branch of the government these days, like the Supreme Court seems to think as well.

marcod 3y ago

In the same article see the section "Exceptions include voting misinformation" - does it really baffle you that people think public health is as important as elections?