Judge limits Biden administration contact with social media firms {Overturned June 26,2024}

Politics & Elections
141

That is indeed what this thread is about.

However, I have no issue with a letter, as long as it is worded in such as way as to make clear it is not a threat.

But this thread is not about Free Speech or exceptions to it.

It is about whether or not the Government should request that falsehoods that are risky to the public be taken down. Such as injecting bleach.

It is not about if the government can DEMAND such lies be taken down.

So it has nothing to do with "American Exceptionalism " or whether or not some other nation has better rights.

Unless of course that nation has done similar requests to take down falsehoods that are dangerous.

Yep.

Correct, and isnt the CDC a user also?

Right. “Horse dewormer will cure Covid” “The vaccine will kill your child”.

Go to Politifact- they have nearly 2000 posts with outrageous and dangerous lies about Covid.
In England, “COVID-19 vaccinated children are 4,423% more likely to die of any cause and 13,633% more likely to die of COVID-19 than unvaccinated children.”

“COVID cases in India plummet after government promotes ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine use.”

“The second booster has eight strains of HIV.”

The CDC and the Surgeon General, etc have an absolute DUTY to fight those kinds of “pants on fire” lies. They are dangerous to the public health- that mean you and me.

No. It is the DUTY of the CDC and such to fight dangerous health lies.

However, the contacts should be limited to dangerous health issues, etc.

The usual lies about “Donald Trump and Joe Biden both died years ago.” and Police say thousands of people witnessed a “demonic portal opening above White House.”

can be left to Politifact, other fact checkers, and users.

142

Comments like that should contain an advance warning just in case – speaking purely hypothetically – some innocent soul, coming across it suddenly, might come perilously close to horking up a mouthful of spicy Caesar all over his new keyboard! :rofl:

143

First of all, thank you for clarifying your position. I believe you’re quite correct in saying that America is unique in having free speech as one of its founding principles, although that’s not what you originally said – you asked and answered the rhetorical question “What other countries specifically acknowledge free speech? I can’t think of any off hand” which is clearly wrong.

However, being a crucible of democracy has its drawbacks. The deeply rooted American distrust of government goes all the way back to the founders, who – with the tyrannies of their day in mind – sought to mitigate the power of government in at least three ways that I can think of, and as this experiment in democracy evolved over the years and became more successful than even the founders might have imagined, ironically those limits have hobbled the American system while similar democracies thrived under more enlightened models.

Those three ways were (a) crippling Congress, (b) a Second Amendment in lieu of a standing army, and (c) a sacred regard for the Constitution as absolutely inviolable. The idea that a government could override a constitutional guarantee where there was a compelling public interest would have horrified the founders, yet this is understood to be a reasonable principle in all modern democracies. There is a vicious circle here wherein bad information, when widely disseminated, produces bad governments, and bad governments are taken as proof that no government must ever have any say in the dissemination of information. I wish I knew how to break this cycle, but I don’t.

That maxim is equally true in all other advanced democracies. The uniquely American interpretation is that it’s not just speech that you (or the government) “disagrees” with that must be protected, it’s also speech that is directly, egregiously, and objectively harmful.

144

The quote is usually given as “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Voltaire didn’t say it. It was a description of some of his thinking by historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall. Nevertheless it’s been attributed to Voltaire in the popular mind for more than a century.

My point beyond pedantics? A phrase coined by an English author about a French champion of speech may not be the best way to boast about American exceptionalism. Neither is the Constitution, which was totally predicated on English and French thinking.

America gave it a twist. And then backed off from it as soon as possible with eleven zillion legal exceptions. I too remember the 60s. It was a time when the government tried to censor speech every day and succeeded all too often by intimidation, legal or otherwise.

It’s a good sign that the 5th Circuit panel included a Trump judge. Doughty’s utterly outrageous defiance of reality should be equally opposed by every person on every side.

145

How far free speech liberalism goes is a big, big question and it may be hard to find two liberals who exactly agree. But I don’t think we need to decide on that to decide on whether the government should send Facebook letters about legal content.

Doxxing sounds like a violation of laws against identity theft and harassment. At some point, bullying violates harassment laws. Most violations of those laws go unpunished, just like with almost all other laws. But there is a legal process for enforcing those laws. If the problem is weak laws – and I don’t know that – there are ways for state and federal legislatures to redefine the criteria for conviction, or increase the sentencing guidelines.

In some countries, in the days after an insurrection attempt, they shut off cell phone service and/or internet access. Whatever you think about that legally, it seems to offer a real possibility of stopping the organization of further violence.

Pressuring Facebook, to follow their own rules, when it is so easy to go to a different web site is weak, when a Biden administration does it, and quite dangerous if a Trump or DeSantis one is writing the letters. If it has any effect at all, it will be to create a situation in which right and left strictly stay on separate platforms, benefiting no one.

If you really want people to take vaccines, mildly pressuring anti-vaxxers to keep off a few popular web platforms, in years there is a Democratic administration, is an utterly ineffective way to do it. If nurses are going to work without being full vaccinated for all diseases where it is medically indicated, they should, in my opinion, as someone who is in immunocompromised, lose their license and/or be arrested and subject to a fair trial. And if they want to post, on Twitter, medically highly implausible stories about how bad the vaccines made them feel, let them. Because, for so long as we are at all free, if they don’t say it on something like Twitter, they will do it somewhere else.

146

What pressure? What evidence do you have that Facebook felt pressured in anyway by the government?

147

That’s not correct, though. They didn’t take something that the majority of people would think was wrong. They took something that they could exaggerate into something the majority of people would think was wrong.

I am rather sure of this because it was widely known they were doing it at the time. It wasn’t done in secret. And yet the only people I ever saw object were anti-maskers. And, even then, they were often quoting a version created by right wing influencers who exaggerated it.

When you instead describe it as “the government asked the social media companies to enforce their own policies,” the majority of people don’t really seem to have a problem with that.

Even the judge in this case needed to exaggerate it, to represent it as “the Orwellian ministry of Truth”—an organization that directly punished wrongthink. This is a judge, who shouldn’t even be treating the accusations as factual, let alone exaggerating them.

The government has long used its ability to speak to affect change. Consider, for example, the fact that Biden helped the railroad unions. That was speech. Consider when a congressperson writes a letter for a cause they support, specifically pointing out they are Congressperson. Consider the resolutions that Congress passes that have no force of law, but still advise people on what to do.

There is all sorts of speech by government that most people think is okay. Most do not seem to think that asking a website to enact its own policies is wrong, nor was correcting misinformation about COVID-19 or informing companies they have a duty to try and fight election fraud.

And I note that it’s not even the companies themselves who are suing. That’s what I would expect in the scenario you describe with “Trump II.”

148

None, because corporations lack feelings. As for line Facebook employees, it will probably depend on their place in the organization and politics. As for tech executives, they have to think twice before criticizing a national government, whether the U.S. or China, so a statement from them that they don’t feel pressured is immaterial.

The bright line seems to me:

Good - Presidential speeches. News conferences. Voice of America. CDC web site with evidence-based medical advice, and another on medical quackery.

Bad - Sending out letters advising anyone to live up to their own standards by silencing people the CDC regards as quacks.

What the Biden administration is doing is such an early stage of this that fair minded Democrats, and even others, may want to defend it, especially when the judge is a full-bore Republican. But government letters advising the silencing of people acting legally are an early step in a terrible direction.

149

When there’s a pandemic killing people, millions of them Americans, I’m glad the administration pushes back against propaganda- excuse me, I guess we call it misinformation now.
(Edited because probably a little insulting. But Jesus Jumping Christ, this “can’t tell truth from fiction” scourge upon my country is gonna bring us all down. Fuck me.)

150

And that appears to be an entirely arbitrary line. I see no principle that would draw the line there. You’ve mentioned “freedom of speech” as a principle, but there is no clear violation of that in either of those.

I also notice you say “people the CDC regards as quacks.”
I (and I suspect most people) would call it “people spreading deadly misinformation about COVID-19.” The CDC isn’t interested in making opinions about people, just judging the content based on facts.

That’s a line I could understand. I would agree that, regardless of whether it is legal, the CDC should be a fact-based organization, not an opinion based one. But that does not appear to be the line you have drawn.

Facebook et al enacted this policy for a reason. Having the experts from the CDC helping them by reporting violations makes sense to me. Better that than relying on the general public.

I’d expect that, if they actually objected, they’d be the ones suing, and not the president’s political opponents.

151

Why? What would happen to Mark Zuckerberg if he said, “I don’t care what the government says, those covid posts are staying up!”

152

He’d probably have to take some guff at the next annual stockholder meeting. But in the longer run, it would put him in a better position to stand up to pressure next time there is a Republican administration.

What I don’t think would happen to him, or me, is that he would get an additional or worse case of COVID. Because I don’t think suppressing anti-vax sentiment – something inevitable in any immunization campaign – actually gets people vaccinated.

Suppose the next COVID, like the 1918-1919 flu, hits those in the prime of life much harder than the elderly. Are we going to again – this time while a million or more of our children die – give nearly everyone freedom to go around unvaccinated while we use low-pressure means to maybe, just slightly, reduce the inevitable anti-vax sentiment by pushing it onto lesser web sites? It is a fundamentally unserious approach to an epidemic. It’s bad for freedom of speech, and bad for preservation of life.

153

Synecdoche. Love it. Embrace it. It is a thing of beauty and use.

154

Sounds like exactly what we pay the CDC to do, thus “Good”.

Right.
155

How many times now have the big social media companies being called to Washington to be grilled in hearings? How many times have they been threatened with anti-trust?

When the government that’s constantly threatening to break you up or regulate you more strictly tells you to ‘voluntarily’ pull down content, it’s questionable how ‘voluntary’ it really is. The same was true with Reagan when he strongarmed Japan to ‘voluntarily’ reduce its imports. Everyone knew whast the failure to ‘volunteer’ meant: import quotas and higher tariffs. It didn’t need to be said.

They get descended on by some of those new IRS agents? The government starts anti-trust motions to break them up, tanking the stock? They get blamed by the government for every extremist post and activity, which is used to destroy their reputation and regulate them anyway? The government continually hauls them to Washington to explain every time something hateful appears on their platforms?

Or as this well known guy said:

- Chuck Schumer

Any time the government ‘requests’ something, there is implicit force behind the request. The tech giants know this. Crossing the FBI when they send you their weekly demand letter for shutting down private citizens is likely to put you in their crosshairs as well.

156

Seems like a violation of the first amendment if a government official isn’t legally allowed to say “Twitter really ought to label misinformation about vaccines” or whatever. IANAL but this ruling seems in violation of free speech to me.

157

I’m not sure the right of free speech attaches to the government. It was meant to attach to the citizenry in the face of the government.

158

5th circuit stayed the order.

159

I guess the 5th circuit were unimpressed with the anti-vax science illiterate judges ruling to stop the government from suggesting that private companies maybe should follow their own policies and not let fucking idiots spread dangerous lies that kill people.

Good.

160

Yes, how many times?
Be sure to count the times Republicans did it to question the big social media companies about simply enforcing [u]their]/u] ToSs which had results conservatives didn’t like.