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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.courtlis

by 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
    I mean, I don't agree with the top level comment here, but this isn't a reverse-free-speech issue. Courts are absolutely free to restrain what public officials can say. E.g., a regulator cannot say "if you don't burn this book, we'll tax you out of existence" while a person could say "if you don't burn this book, I'll vote to have you taxed out of existence"
    - brasic 3y ago
      A narrowly tailored prohibition on specific speech aimed at specific government officials may be permissable in some cases. This injunction is carelessly worded to apply to millions of people and to preclude essentially all communications related to "protected free speech". The breadth and vagueness is specifically what I'm objecting to.
      - shkkmo 3y ago
        Did you read the injunction? it isn't vague at all. The injunction only prohibits actions which should be illegal in the first place. Can you name a specific action that you think this injunction prohibits or potentially prohibits that you think should be allowed?
  - meragrin_ 3y ago
    > 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. What? You seem very misinformed. Here's the ruling: 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...
    - brasic 3y ago
      I linked that in my original comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616058
      - meragrin_ 3y ago
        Perhaps read(or reread) it? There is literally nothing in there which "bans any and all communication among millions of citizens".
        brasic 3y ago
        The targets of the injunction are the following agencies. The wording makes clear that all members of said agencies are in scope of the injunction: HHS: 80,000 NIAID: 18,000 CDC: 11,000 Census Bureau: 5,000 FBI: 40,000 (double counted under DOJ) DOJ: 115,000 CISA: 3000 DHS: 260,000 State Department: 14,000 Among the actions prohibited are communicating with "social media companies", defined in the injunction as including: "Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat,TikTok, Sina Weibo, QQ, Telegram, Snapchat, Kuaishou, Qzone, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Discord, Twitch, Tumblr, Mastodon, and like companies." That list, especially given the "like companies" part, includes easily several million people. Also "Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group". What makes a group "like" those orgs? The prohibited topics and purposes of communication are incredibly vague, basically anything contrary to "protected free speech", which has no definition in the injunction and is famously tricky to define in US law. This amounts to a blanket ban from where I'm sitting. If I were a low level staffer at DHS this would arguably prohibit me from expressing opinions on this matter to a friend or spouse working at a social media company, for fear of, for example, "encouraging reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech". The fact that that example is silly is precisely my point. Injunctions must be narrowly tailored to address the specific conduct at issue. This is so broad as to make a joke of the process and in doing so harms the free speech and rule of law that are at issue in this case.
  - engineer_22 3y ago
    Thanks! Good discussion follows this comment, thank you :)
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    >>Free speech cuts both ways. You have completely miss understood the purpose of the Constitution and the 1st amendment, the Constitution is the States and the People limiting the power and role of the federal government. The 1st amendment DOES NOT bestow or grant the US Government any freedom of speech, in fact it specifically limits the US Governments freedom / power in many ways by baring it from actions and activities that curb the speech of the people of these united states. To proclaim this ruling is "violating the rights of the government" is a complete and utter inversion of the how the constitution works, and the direction of power. We the people...
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      We are all "the people" even when acting in our official capacity as government employees. It also doesn't bestow shit. It says our rights are self evident and forbids the government, which includes the judiciary, from stomping on them.
      - AbrahamParangi 3y ago
        Yeah, no this just ain't so. You may in your personal devotion believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. If you say that in your private life, no problem. That's your freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Now let's say you clock in to your job as Attorney General and you make it known that you think Christianity is the best and other religions are sad and misguided. Then we have a problem. You have rights as an individual and you have official duties acting as the government but the government does not also receive your rights by proxy.
        michaelmrose 3y ago
        You have a right to speak freely, duties you agree to abide by as an employee, laws you must follow, and an obligation to respect the constitution and the rights of citizens. The fact that you can't in your official capacity promote Jeebus means your conduct must not infringe on the rights of others not that you have no rights at all.
  - chipsa 3y ago
    You seem to be under a misapprehension of how free speech works for the government: it doesn't. The government has no rights. It has powers. People have rights, including the right to freedom of speech. If the government is barred from doing something directly, they can't then try to do it indirectly by telling a third party to do it for them.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    > 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. Except, that's not what's happening? The judge ordered the government not to contact a handful of companies, because it was coercing them into censoring speech it didn't like. A restraining order on a harasser is not a violation of the first amendment. This ruling is like putting a restraining order on an executive branch that was harassing companies into censoring speech.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
whoknowswhat11 3y ago
What was the justification for the ban on the hunter Biden stories? Why not just issue a statement- the White House has a press office that could just deny things. They went around their messaging in an unusual way.
- xcrunner529 3y ago
  There was no ban. The links from the “Twitter files” they the WH asked to be removed were all dick pics (you can confirm this via archive.org) which were a violation of the Twitter TOS.
- treeman79 3y ago
  Washington is incredibly corrupt. There is no limits to what they will do to stop someone/anyone from trying to drain up the swamp. Was shocking when my messages To friends on Facebook were being blocked. 1984 was meant to be a warning to the masses not a guide on how to oppress people.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    You said in your other post that the vaccine was gene therapy and that cheap treatments were effective. I'm presuming you either mean Hydroxychloroquine or horse paste. None of those statements are true and because of them countless people died. The statements are worthy of head shaking now. During the pandemic they constituted shouting fire in a crowded theater. They are fundamentally unworthy of protection.
    - kolanos 3y ago
      "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular analogy for speech or actions whose principal purpose is to create panic, and in particular for speech or actions which may for that reason be thought to be outside the scope of free speech protections. It was first used against a man in 1917 for giving an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. It was later popularized to charge people handing out anti-war flyers opposing the WWI draft with sedition. It was later overturned in 1969, in which the Supreme Court held that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." The fact that people still cite this analogy to argue for the abridgment of free speech 100 years later is truly disturbing.
megaman821 3y ago
Do blanket bans on speech usually have a large group of exceptions? Not to mention the government can use their official accounts to communicate whatever they want, they just need to refrain from asking companies to take down things (that aren't a threat to national security, etc) until this case in adjudicated.
lightedman 3y ago
You seem to be mistaken on what an injunction is. This is not a direct ruling, it is an order to cease the current behavior (the gov't telling social media companies to censor speech) until it can be ascertained whether or not this is a harmful thing which is happening. You're acting as if this injunction creates a law or sets some sort of precedent. It truly does not.
- brasic 3y ago
  I know very well what an injunction is and does. You seem to be mistaken on what “law” is. It is by no means limited to statutory text or even final judicial opinions. The fact that contempt of court is the only real penalty available for violating this injunction is exactly why it’s harmful. Making ludicrously broad and unenforceable injunctions like this inevitably corrodes the rule of law and damages the overall system.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - lightedman 3y ago
    "You seem to be mistaken on what “law” is." As the person that whipped Electronic Art's ass in court over the Spore DRM, no, I'm pretty well-aware of what 'law' is. And re-reading your post, again, you're still giving off the impression that this is some bad thing. It isn't. It's literally the gov't telling the gov't to quit being a twerp while the courts actually figure out wtf is going on.
rhaway84773 3y ago
The injunction is ridiculous. It basically says the govt cannot suppress protected free speech but it can suppress unprotected free speech. Without ever explaining why the particular speech argued about by the plaintiffs is protected. Maybe that’s fine for an injunction, but anyone drawing any conclusions about whether the govt suppressed protected free speech from this ruling is highly mistaken.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Speech is similar to our criminal system. When you're accused of a crime, you're innocent until proven guilty. And anything you say is "protected" unless it falls into one of an extremely narrow range of exceptions. And those exceptions are actual crimes, not just 'silently censor and move on' type stuff. So the injunction basically comes down to 'stop doing unconstitutional things' while offering a list of things that are obviously unconstitutional, and a list of things that are obviously fine. So e.g. "urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech" is obviously unconstitutional. By contrast, "informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies" is obviously perfectly constitutional.
halfjoking 3y ago
The government can say whatever they want in press conferences or through their social media. Both the government and their employees have as much free speech as they want - and not only that but they spent billions of dollars for advocacy groups especially during covid. (which we know now was used to promote fraudulent science) The injunction says the government can't urge, pressure or encourage censorship. (yes everyone should read it). You have to be joking you think that is a bad thing.
- adfhbaidnioni 3y ago
  This judge thinks that merely publishing information that other people believe constitutes censorship. >Various social-media platforms changed their content-moderation policies to require suppression of content that was deemed false by CDC and led to vaccine hesitancy. The CDC became the “determiner of truth” for social-media platforms, deciding whether COVID-19 statements made on social media were true or false. And the CDC was aware it had become the “determiner of truth” for social-media platforms. If the CDC said a statement on social media was false, it was suppressed, in spite of alternative views. By telling social-media companies that posted content was false, the CDC Defendants knew the social-media company was going to suppress the posted content. The CDC Defendants thus likely “significantly encouraged” social-media companies to suppress free speech.
  - curiousllama 3y ago
    I post on Twitter "I'm gonna beat up anyone who disagrees with the CDC about vaccines!" CDC views my post Now, the CDC can't say anything about vaccines, because they know it'll be violently enforced. The CDC ceases to exist because of my legal jiu jitsu
  - brasic 3y ago
    Thank you. The real issue here is a small number of companies have become the defacto gatekeepers of a large amount of public discourse. That’s a major problem that this debate is just a symptom of.
    - 3y ago
stcroixx 3y ago
Free speech for citizens is important to me and I'm on no political side. This seems like a great thing to me. I don't want the government doing what they're been doing or doing it again in the future, regardless of who that government is. Ideally, these losers would have enough morals to police themselves or not do this in the first place, but here we are. Might not be a perfect ruling, but in spirit it's against gov. censorship, which I'm also against so I hope it or something like it sticks around.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  If the government says vaccine misinformation is killing thousands of people on air on the evening news and Facebook agrees and starts banning people posting it and those folks have to share their misinformation on their own sites rather than Facebook how has your freedom been infringed? Likewise if the communique takes place via a memo. You have a right to communicate what you please you don't have a right to have your thoughts carried by a particular site any more than you have a right to have them posted in the New York Times or relayed on Fox News.
  - stcroixx 3y ago
    The government has no authority to decide for me whether something is misinformation. They can share their opinions and I'll be the judge of what I trust. If Facebook reaches the same conclusion independently, without being coerced by the government, I'd react according to how I feel about the specific issue. Maybe I'd stop using the platform. I'm not claiming NYT or FB needs to publish my views, I don't expect that at all. What I don't want is the government telling them what they can and can't publish.
  - revelio 3y ago
    Yeah that works great up until the people who distribute memos act like Facebook, and then the people who sell you ink, and then the phone companies, and then .... Really why is this so hard to understand. There's nothing special about tech firms in this story except the naivety of their executives, who have ended up looking like utter tools in this whole sorry charade. These idiots systematically suppressed discussion of the lab leak hypothesis for over a year and then once the Biden admin started taking it seriously decided, whoops, maybe it wasn't misinformation after all and stopped banning it. Twitter was systematically banning stuff even whilst expressing serious reservations internally because they knew the claims were true. Yet these firms are nonetheless still doing better than Google, at least Facebook and Twitter realized they were wrong in the end. This thread seems to be full of FAANG employees desperately trying to come up with some reason why their employers are not in fact easily duped rubes who would sew the mouths of their own mothers shut if a 100% conflicted mid-level nobody at the CDC suggested it.
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government. Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can say and that’s entirely appropriate because the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them. You may disagree with the ruling but if you’re on the side of free speech, you should definitely cheer it.
- roflyear 3y ago
  You can't think of a scenario where the government should be able to express a thought about something? ;)
  - Auracle 3y ago
    They have plenty of ways to do so without using intermediaries at social media companies.
    - roflyear 3y ago
      That's implying compelling speech which is not the discussion.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    The rights apply to people not the govt lol Edit: Amazing, a perfect factual comment is downvoted.
    - roflyear 3y ago
      I'm just saying there are times where you may want the government to be able to express opinions....
      - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
        Yeah, and no one is preventing that. There is a diff between opinion and force/blackmail disguised as opinion. "You have a fine shop here, would be a shame if it burned down". Syntactically, it is an opinion. But it is not just an opinion if comes from a mobster.
lelanthran 3y ago
> 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. Governments don't get free speech. They get all sorts of restrictions on them that citizens don't.
CWuestefeld 3y ago
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” Except that it doesn't say that. It's quite clear that such communication is still perfectly fine when it's for normal gov't operations; I'll quote it below[1]. The folks objecting to this don't make much sense to me. The injunction forbids the gov't from doing the things that the plaintiff complains about. If the gov't isn't currently misbehaving, then the injunction is a No-Op: the government's claimed current state of doing nothing wrong will just continue as is (putatively) already is. What is lost due to the injunction? [1] Here are the exceptions to the injunction: IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction: 1. informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies; 2. contacting and/or notifying social-media companies of national security threats, extortion, or other threats posted on its platform; 3. contacting and/or notifying social-media companies about criminal efforts to suppress voting, to provide illegal campaign contributions, of cyber-attacks against election infrastructure, or foreign attempts to influence elections; 4. informing social-media companies of threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States; 5. exercising permissible public government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern; 6. informing social-media companies of postings intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures; 7. informing or communicating with social-media companies in an effort to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity; communicating with social-media companies about deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech …. [EDIT: fixed formatting]
- firstlink 3y ago
  > The folks objecting to this don't make much sense to me. The injunction forbids the gov't from doing the things that the plaintiff complains about. If the gov't isn't currently misbehaving, then the injunction is a No-Op: the government's claimed current state of doing nothing wrong will just continue as is (putatively) already is. The argument being pushed is "The government didn't do those things and it's a good thing that it did." Makes perfect sense to me, in the correct context about the ideology of those pushing it.
themgt 3y ago
The American elite's novel definition of "free speech" is that the bedrock foundation is the FBI's freedom to instruct social media conglomerates to delete the speech posted by US citizens and ban their accounts. If the government doesn't even have the freedom to tell trillion dollar companies who should be allowed to voice what opinions, the first amendment is dead paper.
Brusco_RF 3y ago
You aren't under the impression that the 1st amendment protects government speech, are you?
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  I mean I've seen gun grabbers try and argue that the second amendment was meant to guarantee the right of the government to field an army, so it's certainly possible.
  - aksss 3y ago
    There are a lot of parallels there - people with a very pro-state bent try to invert what is meant by “the people” in the Constitution. It truly is a phenomenon in the gun rights debate. For decades we’ve heard that “the people” in 2A does not refer to individuals but the collective people, i.e. the government, despite such reasoning contradicting how the term is understood literally in every other amendment that uses it. But here we are watching the same rhetoric being applied to 1A. A misc. poster says this injunction infringes on the “rights” of the federal government because they’re people too. It takes a lot of chutzpah to turn this injunction into an argument that the Judiciary is suppressing the rights of the Executive. The humanity!
TurkishPoptart 3y ago
The list of individuals who work for the government are "hereby enjoined and restrained from taking the following actions a to social-media companies:.... (3)urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech; (4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;" Yes, this is a victory for free speech. The aforementioned government officials don't need free speech; we, the taxpayers, do. The government officials have proven they cannot be trusted due to their maligning interests to collude with Big Tech to shill for Big Pharma products. I'm so grateful for some of these federal judges.
Manuel_D 3y ago
I would be even more be supportive if the political sides were reversed. Imagine a Trump White House was threatening social media companies, and pressuring them to restrict posts on climate change, civil rights, or some other progressive cause. Why wouldn't I support it if the political sides were reversed? The First Amendment doesn't just protect people from being imprisoned by the government for their speech. It also prohibits the government from pressuring or coercing private individuals and companies into censoring content. Otherwise, the government could just pressure private entities into doing whatever censorship they want. This isn't a ban on speech, this is a ban on government coercion.
mc32 3y ago
The 1A grants the right to free speech to the people —people who do not have the force or threat of violence to coerce. It does not speak to the freedom a government has to communicate. Besides, the government has its own organs at its disposal to communicate with the people.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> 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” No, it doesn't. See the exceptions on pp 5-6.
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
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hiidrew 3y ago
I couldn't find the list on my first skim. Then found in the footnotes, in case anyone is curious: "2 “Social-media companies” include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok, Sina Weibo, QQ, Telegram, Snapchat, Kuaishou, Qzone, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Discord, Twitch, Tumblr, Mastodon, and like companies"
jtbayly 3y ago
No way. The government is still entirely free to post its news, including on social media. What it’s not allowed to do (at least temporarily) is tell to those organizations what speech it deems unacceptable from US citizens. This is the entire purpose of the first amendment. This is a huge win for freedom of speech. The government must not be doing this.
ndr 3y ago
> 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” That's plain false. From middle of page 5 there's the list of things explicitly not banned, it starts with "IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction:".
- brasic 3y ago
  Adding a list of carve outs doesn’t make the ban ok.
  - ndr 3y ago
    You wrote a false claim and are now changing the subject. Which ban is not ok, specifically?
    - brasic 3y ago
      I’ve done nothing of the sort. As I said throughout this thread, the injunction prohibits any communications based on a vague and subjective content or motive between a group of approx. 500,000 citizens who are US government employees and several million individuals worldwide who are employed by any of the named social media companies, nonprofits, or similar organizations. This is not ok. If restrictions on speech are ever justified they have to be narrowly tailored in terms of content and substance, neither of which is true here.
      - ndr 3y ago
        Your claim summary is false, the ban is by no mean general. Which of the following do you believe to be vague and subjective content, and which clause specifically are you opposed to? All of them? [...] ARE HEREBY ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from taking the following actions as to social-media companies: (1) meeting with social-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms; (2) specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech; (3) urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech; (4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech; (5) collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech; (6) threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech; (7) taking any action such as urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; (8) following up with social-media companies to determine whether the social-media companies removed, deleted, suppressed, or reduced previous social-media postings containing protected free speech; (9) requesting content reports from social-media companies detailing actions taken to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce content containing protected free speech; and (10) notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (“BOLO”) for postings containing protected free speech. Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...
chr1 3y ago
Government agencies secretly communicating with people is not a free speech, There are many more cases when government employee can't talk about work with other people, so i don't see a reason to be horrified.
lost_tourist 3y ago
It's definitely overreach by an activist MAGA judge. It will be overturned within the next week or two, I'm sure that the judges in this circuit are shocked that one of their own would be guilty of such poor interpretation of the situation and trying to invoke absolute authority over the executive branch.

by brasic 3y ago

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
  I mean, I don't agree with the top level comment here, but this isn't a reverse-free-speech issue. Courts are absolutely free to restrain what public officials can say. E.g., a regulator cannot say "if you don't burn this book, we'll tax you out of existence" while a person could say "if you don't burn this book, I'll vote to have you taxed out of existence"
  - brasic 3y ago
    A narrowly tailored prohibition on specific speech aimed at specific government officials may be permissable in some cases. This injunction is carelessly worded to apply to millions of people and to preclude essentially all communications related to "protected free speech". The breadth and vagueness is specifically what I'm objecting to.
    - shkkmo 3y ago
      Did you read the injunction? it isn't vague at all. The injunction only prohibits actions which should be illegal in the first place. Can you name a specific action that you think this injunction prohibits or potentially prohibits that you think should be allowed?
- meragrin_ 3y ago
  > 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. What? You seem very misinformed. Here's the ruling: 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...
  - brasic 3y ago
    I linked that in my original comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616058
    - meragrin_ 3y ago
      Perhaps read(or reread) it? There is literally nothing in there which "bans any and all communication among millions of citizens".
      - brasic 3y ago
        The targets of the injunction are the following agencies. The wording makes clear that all members of said agencies are in scope of the injunction: HHS: 80,000 NIAID: 18,000 CDC: 11,000 Census Bureau: 5,000 FBI: 40,000 (double counted under DOJ) DOJ: 115,000 CISA: 3000 DHS: 260,000 State Department: 14,000 Among the actions prohibited are communicating with "social media companies", defined in the injunction as including: "Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat,TikTok, Sina Weibo, QQ, Telegram, Snapchat, Kuaishou, Qzone, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Discord, Twitch, Tumblr, Mastodon, and like companies." That list, especially given the "like companies" part, includes easily several million people. Also "Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group". What makes a group "like" those orgs? The prohibited topics and purposes of communication are incredibly vague, basically anything contrary to "protected free speech", which has no definition in the injunction and is famously tricky to define in US law. This amounts to a blanket ban from where I'm sitting. If I were a low level staffer at DHS this would arguably prohibit me from expressing opinions on this matter to a friend or spouse working at a social media company, for fear of, for example, "encouraging reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech". The fact that that example is silly is precisely my point. Injunctions must be narrowly tailored to address the specific conduct at issue. This is so broad as to make a joke of the process and in doing so harms the free speech and rule of law that are at issue in this case.
- engineer_22 3y ago
  Thanks! Good discussion follows this comment, thank you :)
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>Free speech cuts both ways. You have completely miss understood the purpose of the Constitution and the 1st amendment, the Constitution is the States and the People limiting the power and role of the federal government. The 1st amendment DOES NOT bestow or grant the US Government any freedom of speech, in fact it specifically limits the US Governments freedom / power in many ways by baring it from actions and activities that curb the speech of the people of these united states. To proclaim this ruling is "violating the rights of the government" is a complete and utter inversion of the how the constitution works, and the direction of power. We the people...
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    We are all "the people" even when acting in our official capacity as government employees. It also doesn't bestow shit. It says our rights are self evident and forbids the government, which includes the judiciary, from stomping on them.
    - AbrahamParangi 3y ago
      Yeah, no this just ain't so. You may in your personal devotion believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. If you say that in your private life, no problem. That's your freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Now let's say you clock in to your job as Attorney General and you make it known that you think Christianity is the best and other religions are sad and misguided. Then we have a problem. You have rights as an individual and you have official duties acting as the government but the government does not also receive your rights by proxy.
      - michaelmrose 3y ago
        You have a right to speak freely, duties you agree to abide by as an employee, laws you must follow, and an obligation to respect the constitution and the rights of citizens. The fact that you can't in your official capacity promote Jeebus means your conduct must not infringe on the rights of others not that you have no rights at all.
- chipsa 3y ago
  You seem to be under a misapprehension of how free speech works for the government: it doesn't. The government has no rights. It has powers. People have rights, including the right to freedom of speech. If the government is barred from doing something directly, they can't then try to do it indirectly by telling a third party to do it for them.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  > 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. Except, that's not what's happening? The judge ordered the government not to contact a handful of companies, because it was coercing them into censoring speech it didn't like. A restraining order on a harasser is not a violation of the first amendment. This ruling is like putting a restraining order on an executive branch that was harassing companies into censoring speech.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

whoknowswhat11 3y ago

What was the justification for the ban on the hunter Biden stories? Why not just issue a statement- the White House has a press office that could just deny things. They went around their messaging in an unusual way.

xcrunner529 3y ago
There was no ban. The links from the “Twitter files” they the WH asked to be removed were all dick pics (you can confirm this via archive.org) which were a violation of the Twitter TOS.
treeman79 3y ago
Washington is incredibly corrupt. There is no limits to what they will do to stop someone/anyone from trying to drain up the swamp. Was shocking when my messages To friends on Facebook were being blocked. 1984 was meant to be a warning to the masses not a guide on how to oppress people.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  You said in your other post that the vaccine was gene therapy and that cheap treatments were effective. I'm presuming you either mean Hydroxychloroquine or horse paste. None of those statements are true and because of them countless people died. The statements are worthy of head shaking now. During the pandemic they constituted shouting fire in a crowded theater. They are fundamentally unworthy of protection.
  - kolanos 3y ago
    "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular analogy for speech or actions whose principal purpose is to create panic, and in particular for speech or actions which may for that reason be thought to be outside the scope of free speech protections. It was first used against a man in 1917 for giving an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. It was later popularized to charge people handing out anti-war flyers opposing the WWI draft with sedition. It was later overturned in 1969, in which the Supreme Court held that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." The fact that people still cite this analogy to argue for the abridgment of free speech 100 years later is truly disturbing.

megaman821 3y ago

Do blanket bans on speech usually have a large group of exceptions? Not to mention the government can use their official accounts to communicate whatever they want, they just need to refrain from asking companies to take down things (that aren't a threat to national security, etc) until this case in adjudicated.

lightedman 3y ago

You seem to be mistaken on what an injunction is. This is not a direct ruling, it is an order to cease the current behavior (the gov't telling social media companies to censor speech) until it can be ascertained whether or not this is a harmful thing which is happening. You're acting as if this injunction creates a law or sets some sort of precedent. It truly does not.

brasic 3y ago
I know very well what an injunction is and does. You seem to be mistaken on what “law” is. It is by no means limited to statutory text or even final judicial opinions. The fact that contempt of court is the only real penalty available for violating this injunction is exactly why it’s harmful. Making ludicrously broad and unenforceable injunctions like this inevitably corrodes the rule of law and damages the overall system.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lightedman 3y ago
  "You seem to be mistaken on what “law” is." As the person that whipped Electronic Art's ass in court over the Spore DRM, no, I'm pretty well-aware of what 'law' is. And re-reading your post, again, you're still giving off the impression that this is some bad thing. It isn't. It's literally the gov't telling the gov't to quit being a twerp while the courts actually figure out wtf is going on.

rhaway84773 3y ago

The injunction is ridiculous. It basically says the govt cannot suppress protected free speech but it can suppress unprotected free speech. Without ever explaining why the particular speech argued about by the plaintiffs is protected. Maybe that’s fine for an injunction, but anyone drawing any conclusions about whether the govt suppressed protected free speech from this ruling is highly mistaken.

somenameforme 3y ago
Speech is similar to our criminal system. When you're accused of a crime, you're innocent until proven guilty. And anything you say is "protected" unless it falls into one of an extremely narrow range of exceptions. And those exceptions are actual crimes, not just 'silently censor and move on' type stuff. So the injunction basically comes down to 'stop doing unconstitutional things' while offering a list of things that are obviously unconstitutional, and a list of things that are obviously fine. So e.g. "urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech" is obviously unconstitutional. By contrast, "informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies" is obviously perfectly constitutional.

halfjoking 3y ago

The government can say whatever they want in press conferences or through their social media. Both the government and their employees have as much free speech as they want - and not only that but they spent billions of dollars for advocacy groups especially during covid. (which we know now was used to promote fraudulent science) The injunction says the government can't urge, pressure or encourage censorship. (yes everyone should read it). You have to be joking you think that is a bad thing.

adfhbaidnioni 3y ago
This judge thinks that merely publishing information that other people believe constitutes censorship. >Various social-media platforms changed their content-moderation policies to require suppression of content that was deemed false by CDC and led to vaccine hesitancy. The CDC became the “determiner of truth” for social-media platforms, deciding whether COVID-19 statements made on social media were true or false. And the CDC was aware it had become the “determiner of truth” for social-media platforms. If the CDC said a statement on social media was false, it was suppressed, in spite of alternative views. By telling social-media companies that posted content was false, the CDC Defendants knew the social-media company was going to suppress the posted content. The CDC Defendants thus likely “significantly encouraged” social-media companies to suppress free speech.
- curiousllama 3y ago
  I post on Twitter "I'm gonna beat up anyone who disagrees with the CDC about vaccines!" CDC views my post Now, the CDC can't say anything about vaccines, because they know it'll be violently enforced. The CDC ceases to exist because of my legal jiu jitsu
- brasic 3y ago
  Thank you. The real issue here is a small number of companies have become the defacto gatekeepers of a large amount of public discourse. That’s a major problem that this debate is just a symptom of.
  - 3y ago

stcroixx 3y ago

Free speech for citizens is important to me and I'm on no political side. This seems like a great thing to me. I don't want the government doing what they're been doing or doing it again in the future, regardless of who that government is. Ideally, these losers would have enough morals to police themselves or not do this in the first place, but here we are. Might not be a perfect ruling, but in spirit it's against gov. censorship, which I'm also against so I hope it or something like it sticks around.

michaelmrose 3y ago
If the government says vaccine misinformation is killing thousands of people on air on the evening news and Facebook agrees and starts banning people posting it and those folks have to share their misinformation on their own sites rather than Facebook how has your freedom been infringed? Likewise if the communique takes place via a memo. You have a right to communicate what you please you don't have a right to have your thoughts carried by a particular site any more than you have a right to have them posted in the New York Times or relayed on Fox News.
- stcroixx 3y ago
  The government has no authority to decide for me whether something is misinformation. They can share their opinions and I'll be the judge of what I trust. If Facebook reaches the same conclusion independently, without being coerced by the government, I'd react according to how I feel about the specific issue. Maybe I'd stop using the platform. I'm not claiming NYT or FB needs to publish my views, I don't expect that at all. What I don't want is the government telling them what they can and can't publish.
- revelio 3y ago
  Yeah that works great up until the people who distribute memos act like Facebook, and then the people who sell you ink, and then the phone companies, and then .... Really why is this so hard to understand. There's nothing special about tech firms in this story except the naivety of their executives, who have ended up looking like utter tools in this whole sorry charade. These idiots systematically suppressed discussion of the lab leak hypothesis for over a year and then once the Biden admin started taking it seriously decided, whoops, maybe it wasn't misinformation after all and stopped banning it. Twitter was systematically banning stuff even whilst expressing serious reservations internally because they knew the claims were true. Yet these firms are nonetheless still doing better than Google, at least Facebook and Twitter realized they were wrong in the end. This thread seems to be full of FAANG employees desperately trying to come up with some reason why their employers are not in fact easily duped rubes who would sew the mouths of their own mothers shut if a 100% conflicted mid-level nobody at the CDC suggested it.

AbrahamParangi 3y ago

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government. Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can say and that’s entirely appropriate because the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them. You may disagree with the ruling but if you’re on the side of free speech, you should definitely cheer it.

roflyear 3y ago
You can't think of a scenario where the government should be able to express a thought about something? ;)
- Auracle 3y ago
  They have plenty of ways to do so without using intermediaries at social media companies.
  - roflyear 3y ago
    That's implying compelling speech which is not the discussion.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  The rights apply to people not the govt lol Edit: Amazing, a perfect factual comment is downvoted.
  - roflyear 3y ago
    I'm just saying there are times where you may want the government to be able to express opinions....
    - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      Yeah, and no one is preventing that. There is a diff between opinion and force/blackmail disguised as opinion. "You have a fine shop here, would be a shame if it burned down". Syntactically, it is an opinion. But it is not just an opinion if comes from a mobster.

lelanthran 3y ago

> 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. Governments don't get free speech. They get all sorts of restrictions on them that citizens don't.

CWuestefeld 3y ago

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” Except that it doesn't say that. It's quite clear that such communication is still perfectly fine when it's for normal gov't operations; I'll quote it below[1]. The folks objecting to this don't make much sense to me. The injunction forbids the gov't from doing the things that the plaintiff complains about. If the gov't isn't currently misbehaving, then the injunction is a No-Op: the government's claimed current state of doing nothing wrong will just continue as is (putatively) already is. What is lost due to the injunction? [1] Here are the exceptions to the injunction: IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction: 1. informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies; 2. contacting and/or notifying social-media companies of national security threats, extortion, or other threats posted on its platform; 3. contacting and/or notifying social-media companies about criminal efforts to suppress voting, to provide illegal campaign contributions, of cyber-attacks against election infrastructure, or foreign attempts to influence elections; 4. informing social-media companies of threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States; 5. exercising permissible public government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern; 6. informing social-media companies of postings intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures; 7. informing or communicating with social-media companies in an effort to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity; communicating with social-media companies about deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech …. [EDIT: fixed formatting]

firstlink 3y ago
> The folks objecting to this don't make much sense to me. The injunction forbids the gov't from doing the things that the plaintiff complains about. If the gov't isn't currently misbehaving, then the injunction is a No-Op: the government's claimed current state of doing nothing wrong will just continue as is (putatively) already is. The argument being pushed is "The government didn't do those things and it's a good thing that it did." Makes perfect sense to me, in the correct context about the ideology of those pushing it.

themgt 3y ago

The American elite's novel definition of "free speech" is that the bedrock foundation is the FBI's freedom to instruct social media conglomerates to delete the speech posted by US citizens and ban their accounts. If the government doesn't even have the freedom to tell trillion dollar companies who should be allowed to voice what opinions, the first amendment is dead paper.

Brusco_RF 3y ago

You aren't under the impression that the 1st amendment protects government speech, are you?

HideousKojima 3y ago
I mean I've seen gun grabbers try and argue that the second amendment was meant to guarantee the right of the government to field an army, so it's certainly possible.
- aksss 3y ago
  There are a lot of parallels there - people with a very pro-state bent try to invert what is meant by “the people” in the Constitution. It truly is a phenomenon in the gun rights debate. For decades we’ve heard that “the people” in 2A does not refer to individuals but the collective people, i.e. the government, despite such reasoning contradicting how the term is understood literally in every other amendment that uses it. But here we are watching the same rhetoric being applied to 1A. A misc. poster says this injunction infringes on the “rights” of the federal government because they’re people too. It takes a lot of chutzpah to turn this injunction into an argument that the Judiciary is suppressing the rights of the Executive. The humanity!

TurkishPoptart 3y ago

The list of individuals who work for the government are "hereby enjoined and restrained from taking the following actions a to social-media companies:.... (3)urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech; (4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;" Yes, this is a victory for free speech. The aforementioned government officials don't need free speech; we, the taxpayers, do. The government officials have proven they cannot be trusted due to their maligning interests to collude with Big Tech to shill for Big Pharma products. I'm so grateful for some of these federal judges.

Manuel_D 3y ago

I would be even more be supportive if the political sides were reversed. Imagine a Trump White House was threatening social media companies, and pressuring them to restrict posts on climate change, civil rights, or some other progressive cause. Why wouldn't I support it if the political sides were reversed? The First Amendment doesn't just protect people from being imprisoned by the government for their speech. It also prohibits the government from pressuring or coercing private individuals and companies into censoring content. Otherwise, the government could just pressure private entities into doing whatever censorship they want. This isn't a ban on speech, this is a ban on government coercion.

mc32 3y ago

The 1A grants the right to free speech to the people —people who do not have the force or threat of violence to coerce. It does not speak to the freedom a government has to communicate. Besides, the government has its own organs at its disposal to communicate with the people.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> 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” No, it doesn't. See the exceptions on pp 5-6.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

[dead]

hiidrew 3y ago

I couldn't find the list on my first skim. Then found in the footnotes, in case anyone is curious: "2 “Social-media companies” include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok, Sina Weibo, QQ, Telegram, Snapchat, Kuaishou, Qzone, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Discord, Twitch, Tumblr, Mastodon, and like companies"

jtbayly 3y ago

No way. The government is still entirely free to post its news, including on social media. What it’s not allowed to do (at least temporarily) is tell to those organizations what speech it deems unacceptable from US citizens. This is the entire purpose of the first amendment. This is a huge win for freedom of speech. The government must not be doing this.

ndr 3y ago

> 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” That's plain false. From middle of page 5 there's the list of things explicitly not banned, it starts with "IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction:".

brasic 3y ago
Adding a list of carve outs doesn’t make the ban ok.
- ndr 3y ago
  You wrote a false claim and are now changing the subject. Which ban is not ok, specifically?
  - brasic 3y ago
    I’ve done nothing of the sort. As I said throughout this thread, the injunction prohibits any communications based on a vague and subjective content or motive between a group of approx. 500,000 citizens who are US government employees and several million individuals worldwide who are employed by any of the named social media companies, nonprofits, or similar organizations. This is not ok. If restrictions on speech are ever justified they have to be narrowly tailored in terms of content and substance, neither of which is true here.
    - ndr 3y ago
      Your claim summary is false, the ban is by no mean general. Which of the following do you believe to be vague and subjective content, and which clause specifically are you opposed to? All of them? [...] ARE HEREBY ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from taking the following actions as to social-media companies: (1) meeting with social-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms; (2) specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech; (3) urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech; (4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech; (5) collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech; (6) threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech; (7) taking any action such as urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; (8) following up with social-media companies to determine whether the social-media companies removed, deleted, suppressed, or reduced previous social-media postings containing protected free speech; (9) requesting content reports from social-media companies detailing actions taken to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce content containing protected free speech; and (10) notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (“BOLO”) for postings containing protected free speech. Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

chr1 3y ago

Government agencies secretly communicating with people is not a free speech, There are many more cases when government employee can't talk about work with other people, so i don't see a reason to be horrified.

lost_tourist 3y ago

It's definitely overreach by an activist MAGA judge. It will be overturned within the next week or two, I'm sure that the judges in this circuit are shocked that one of their own would be guilty of such poor interpretation of the situation and trying to invoke absolute authority over the executive branch.