4 ms·
Whether or not the involvement documented rises to the level of a 1A violation is an interesting legal question but ultimately not the one that I'm primarily co
by zachmu 3y ago
Whether or not the involvement documented rises to the level of a 1A violation is an interesting legal question but ultimately not the one that I'm primarily concerned with.
The question I care about is: is the government taking a direct and active role in censoring online speech? The answer is a clear yes, and nobody is really disputing it. I find the arguments here ("well twitter helped", "it wasn't technically illegal") to be very weak defenses. Paid employees of federal agencies should not be involved in the moderation processes of social media companies.
- zachmu 3y agoAnd as far as the legal question is concerned, so far federal courts have ruled that the government's actions do in fact violate the first amendment: > he court found that some of the communications between the federal government and the social media companies to try to fight alleged COVID-19 misinformation "coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content", which violated the First Amendment.[21] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murthy_v._Missouri https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murthy_v._Missouri
- jcranmer 3y agoSo I do stand corrected there, although I will note that the Fifth Circus is a poor guide to understanding the First Amendment. Indeed, if you take two of its relevant decisions that are currently being appealed before SCOTUS, it believes that it is a First Amendment violation for the US government to talk to you about your moderation policies, but it is not a First Amendment violation for Texas to talk to you about your moderation policies (or we'll sue you if you don't want to listen to us).