You would, really? Speaking only for myself, but I don’t see how the government telling me that I’m allowed to do something would be a compulsion on me. And the government asking me not to do something does, in fact, constitute them telling me that I’m allowed to do it, because if I wasn’t allowed, they wouldn’t ask, they’d tell.
That’s not anything even close to what I said. I said that they were asking me to do something. Not saying that I’m “allowed” to do something. I don’t even know how you came up with anything so absurd. 
Let’s put it this way; let’s say that I’m running a blog and that blog has information about my opinions of a politician. And then I get some official message from someone in a regulatory agency that says that some of the information in my blog is false, and that it would be in my best interest to remove it, I’d probably do so out of fear of this agency. It’s not worth it, and I’d be scared not to.
I’ve just been compelled by the government to remove protected speech, have my rights been violated? It sure feels like they have been. Legally, maybe not, maybe I should have just consulted a lawyer who would tell me to ignore it because they can’t do anything to me.
So this is why I’m not saying offhand that it’s perfectly okay for the government to go after people online to request that they remove things on their platform. Maybe it is fine from a legal perspective, maybe the only thing that’s a violation is an actual regulation, or an enforcement. The federal judge in this case is certainly saying that no, it’s not fine from a legal perspective. Maybe that judge is wrong and a higher court will overrule this. As a lay person in the legal field, I really don’t know.
Independent of the power imbalance (which is certainly an issue), in this case there may well be: The government is asking for action - suppression of free speech - that is specifically forbidden to it.
If I convince a friend to kill a guy I don’t like, should I be allowed to plead “Hey, I didn’t kill anyone.” ?
Were they, though? The companies in question were already committed to blocking harmfully false information. For the government to say, “Hey, this is harmfully false information” isn’t telling them what to do.
What the government is prevented from doing is passing a law or regulation that incurs consequences for free speech. In this case, they did no such thing.
That’s impressive. How did the Biden Administration pull that off?
This is false. The companies that were supposedly pressured didn’t take anything to court. Republican-led states took the Biden administration to court.
For people who think the judge is right, consider the Tide Pod Challenge.
Let’s say the CDC started getting lots of reports of teenagers in ERs needing stomach pumps after watching funny Tiktoks in which influencers ate Tide Pods with no deleterious effects. The CDC calls TikTok and says, hey, kids are risking death, this video that says Tide Pods are safe to eat is a violation of your terms of service, can you take a look at it?
Has the CDC violated the first amendment rights of the influencer who made that claim?
Only if Tide pod challenges were a left/right issue, of course. If conservatives suddenly decided to inject themselves with bleach take horse medication eat Tide pods, then you couldn’t ask TikTok to take it down. At least, that’s my takeaway from this silly ruling.
IIRC, most of the posts that were flagged for “lying about the election” were flagged because they contained indisputable misinformation ( promoting incorrect dates and voting locations) or they were outright scams run by individuals posing as election officials. You think it should be forbidden for the government to move to remove those?
Interesting that people keep talking about what the government did. The government emphatically denied it did what it’s accused of.
The larger issue is also being sidestepped. The government has responsibilities through the executive branch and the regulatory agencies that mean that the government spends all day every day talking with the industries on which it has oversight. All you have to do is read pages 1, 2, and 3 of the decision to find a truly breath-taking list of agencies and individuals injunctioned.
Amazingly, it is specifically NOT prohibited in:
(5) exercising permissible public government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern;
which is pretty much the whole point of the lawsuit. The government’s views on getting accurate information out about Covid and limiting information that could kill people are what the antivaxxers hated.
The argument about doing what the government asks is a non-starter, BTW. Haven’t we had decades of examples of the governments trying to get large polluting corporations to clean up their acts with little or nothing to show for it? Same for carbon emissions. Same for any large number of other activities that make money but have negative social impacts. That billion-dollar corporations listen to the government asking them rather than their stock prices is laughable.
Imposition on free speech is a problem. I wish that Republican governors and legislatures were aware of that. But we have as yet no evidence at all that the government did anything other than its normal daily job, made especially hard by a worldwide crisis.
Does anyone else remember when Grover Norquist said, “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”? Republicans in Congress won’t do it because some people with loud voices will be affected by any cuts. Republicans on the Courts can, have, and will.
So, the federal government aka Biden Administration suppressed posts about Hunter Biden in the run-up to the 2020 election? Really? Don’t you see the problem with that theory?
Well, the Court threw off the class-action. But the rest of it specifically lists the individuals who claimed their had their rights trampled and their fears that it would happen again in the future. That’s what allowed the preliminary injunction.
Of course I don’t think that it should be. I even said so when you were quoting me. Our law says, or is being interpreted to say, that the government should be forbidden from removing those. I have serious issues with the law. I’ve said repeatedly that people are using the law as a bludgeon, it’s a suicide pact.
From the decision: The government is NOT prohibited in:
(6) informing social-media companies of postings intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures;
I assume that “informing” is very different legally from “discussing”. Otherwise, the distinction is laughable.
Were those individuals the social media companies? Because, in the conversation I was responding to, the social media companies are the helpless parties who can’t help but cave to requests by the government.
Good thing the government never removed those.
I know I keep going back to it but asking and demanding/forcing are two very different things. The government did not force removal and I doubt these companies felt overwhelmed by the government leaning on them. Is there evidence of extortion?
The New York Times was heavily leaned on by the government to not publish the Pentagon Papers and the newspaper went ahead and did it anyway and prevailed in a case that went to the Supreme Court. That was in the 70s. This is not new.
I am not an attorney or constitutional expert, and have no idea how this would apply in this instance, but there is a “chilling effect doctrine” that the courts use. This concept has determined that government actions that involve no sanctions whatsoever could still be considered violative of the First Amendment.
Again, not offering an opinion on this particular situation. Just reacting to the notion some have in this thread that the government “merely asking” by definition does not offend the First Amendment. It may.
Sorry if someone already mentioned this.
I was undue influence for an authoritive body just to ask. This is a clear violation of the 1st amendment.
The free press is now the internet, free speech is now the internet. It doesn’t matter what you think about the posts, the comments, the free speech and free press, such as it is, is protected.
This is the sort of thing that I’m talking about, but again, I’m not a lawyer and I’m not sure if or how it applies to this particular situation.
Tell that to the site you’re using to exercise your ‘free speech’ TOS.
(Which, AIUI, it is what was done. ‘Hey FaceTwitter? Doesn’t this post violate your rules? Shouldn’t you do something about it?’)
I have trouble seeing this as any kind of issue. Unless it’s perceived that the government is only targeting specific kinds of posts that are politically sensitive. (Every time someone criticizes Biden by using misinformation, for example.) Not only would that be a biased partisan action, but it could even be harassment, depending on the frequency of these suggestions.
There’s the additional issue if the government hints or explicitly warns of consequences for not complying, whether or not the government actually can do anything in retaliation.
Now, I don’t think this is alleged to have occurred. Rather this was a broader request to do better about policing various kinds of misinformation that have been problematic. But I’m just putting out a hypothetical that might show how this is an issue.
In general, though, I’d personally consider the government working with a social media company to point out policy violations as a situation that might be potentially of mutual benefit to them both, and to those who use the platform. (The only people who lose are the trolls, and when trolls lose, everyone wins.)