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Democrats Government Social Networks The Courts

Judge Rules White House Pressured Social Networks To 'Suppress Free Speech' (arstechnica.com) 246

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
A federal judge yesterday ordered the Biden administration to halt a wide range of communications with social media companies, siding with Missouri and Louisiana in a lawsuit (PDF) that alleges Biden and his administration violated the First Amendment by colluding with social networks "to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content." Ars Technica reports: The Biden administration argued that it communicated with tech companies to counter misinformation related to elections, COVID-19, and vaccines, and that it didn't exert illegal pressure on the companies. The communications to social media companies were not significant enough "to convert private conduct into government conduct," Department of Justice lawyers argued in the case. But Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee at US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, granted the plaintiffs' request (PDF) for a preliminary injunction imposing limits on the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, the US Census Bureau, the State Department, the Homeland Security Department, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and many specific officials at those agencies. The injunction also affects White House officials.

The agencies and officials are prohibited from communicating "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," Doughty ruled. The injunction prohibits "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." Government agencies and officials are further barred from urging, encouraging, or pressuring social media companies "to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech." The ruling also said the government may not coordinate with third-party groups, including the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, and the Stanford Internet Observatory, to pressure social media companies.

Doughty provided several exceptions that allow the government to communicate with social media companies about criminal activity and other speech that the First Amendment doesn't protect. The Biden administration may continue to inform social networks about posts involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies, national security threats, extortion, criminal efforts to suppress voting, illegal campaign contributions, cyberattacks against election infrastructure, foreign attempts to influence elections, threats to public safety and security, and posts intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures. The US can also exercise "permissible public government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern," communicate with social networks "in an effort to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity," and "communicat[e] with social-media companies about deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech by the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."
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Judge Rules White House Pressured Social Networks To 'Suppress Free Speech' More

Judge Rules White House Pressured Social Networks To 'Suppress Free Speech'

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  • From yesterday https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Slashdupe (Score:5, Informative)

      by jbengt ( 874751 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @04:51PM (#63659996)
      Not only a dupe, but a typically misleading headline. This was not a ruling that the government suppressed free speech, only an injunction to prevent the government from talking to the social media companies about their behaviour until the trial.

      • Re:Slashdupe (Score:4, Informative)

        by ravenshrike ( 808508 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @06:40PM (#63660270)

        Less misleading than your sorry ass. The actual injunction, an a priori restriction of speech which is largely frowned upon, was put in place because the plaintiffs had a large amount of evidence indicating that the government had in fact done what they said and that absent any significant evidence to the contrary they are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim. The injunction itself keeps the government and affiliated orgs from repeating the behavior in question, not merely talking to social media companies about their behavior.

      • Re:Slashdupe (Score:5, Informative)

        by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @10:49PM (#63660700)

        the government has infringed on our First Amendment rights

        False. The judge states [courtlistener.com] (pg. 93),
        "The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the meritson their claim that the United States Government, through the White House and numerous federal agencies, pressured and encouraged social-media companies to suppress free speech. Defendants used meetings and communications with social-media companies to pressure those companies to take down, reduce, and suppress the free speech of American citizens.

        You can make the observation that this a preliminary ruling the government has infringed on our First Amendment rights but not that it doesn't rule the government has infringed on our First Amendment rights - which it does.

        only an injunction to prevent the government from talking to the social media companies about their behaviour until the trial.

        Also false. From the decision [courtlistener.com], the government is prohibited from
        "(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;
        3
        (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."

        Tl;dr: the evidence shows the government infringed on free speech and, to avoid further harm, they are ordered to stop doing so. There is more process to go through before issuing the final ruling, but the judge expects to find against the government.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by narcc ( 412956 )

          the evidence shows

          Again, what evidence? Explain what the evidence is and post links from reputable sources that support your claim.

  • Dupe, but still happy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by e065c8515d206cb0e190 ( 1785896 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @04:54PM (#63660004)
    That the government can't tell us what to read or think

    • Re:Dupe, but still happy (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:00PM (#63660010)

      Dupe, but still happy That the government can't tell* us what to read...

      * Void in Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Missouri, and Utah.

    • Facebook can though.

    • That the government can't tell us what to read or think

      Well bad news for you, because that's not what the injunction is for. It's to halt any sharing of information about their (US/Social Media) behavior before trail. Shocking, misleading title is . . . Misleading!!

  • Interesting details of the injunction order (Score:5, Insightful)

    by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:07PM (#63660022)

    The injunction order references interfering with "protected free speech." That's all well and good and something that all parties completely agree with. Where the parties disagree is what constitutes "protected free speech," but the order doesn't elaborate on that.

    Furthermore, the order allows exceptions for "exercising permissible public government speech promoting government policies
    or views on matters of public concern". To a lay person, everything that is purportedly being prohibited could be viewed as falling under "matters of public concern."

    So, without further details and instructions, the order could be viewed as changing nothing.

    • So, without further details and instructions, the order could be viewed as changing nothing.

      But that doesn't make good headlines.

    • Re:Interesting details of the injunction order (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:23PM (#63660070) Journal

      IMHO all speech is protected, with VERY rare exceptions. Protected by the First Amendment and copious amounts of case law.

      The fact that we have Government asking Social Media to look at the speech of its citizens is very problematic at best.

      • || "The fact that we have Government asking Social Media to look at the speech of its citizens is very problematic at best."

        No, it's not. The government is not trying to censor people. It is trying to stop misinformation. Espousing the wrong opinion--like the earth is flat--does not earn one the right to broadcast it. And if the government provides a media outlet with evidence that what it is publishing is part of a misinformation campaign, it is helping that company to avoid the fallout. The company ca

        • Re:Interesting details of the injunction order (Score:5, Funny)

          by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @06:50PM (#63660308)

          The government is not trying to censor people. It is trying to stop misinformation.

          This is literally the definition of censorship, you dumb fuck.

          • No, itâ(TM)s not. W and Nixon threatened the NY Times not to publish numerous times. They published anyway and suffered no consequences. History shows that youâ(TM)re wrong. The government can ask, but companies have the right to demur. You are completely wrong.

            • Nixon was an amateur.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by rpnx ( 8338853 )
              a state may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish. Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. at 465
              Additionally, a public official’s threat to stifle protected speech is actionable under the First Amendment and can be enjoined, even if the threat turns out to be empty. Backpage.com, LLC v. Dart, 807 F. 3d at 230–31.
              • That didn't prevent W and Nixon from trying, you dickhead. The Times and the Post have the legal bills and court transcripts to prove it.

                Nobody in the Biden administration threatened. What you quote specifically refers to a threat to stifle speech. No accusation of a threat has been made against the Biden administration. None is mentioned in the court order. Really, what the hell are you talking about?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )
          Misinformation like the cost of solar vs fossil fuels for example? Be careful what you wish for, the party of science hasn't been very scientific lately.
          • Yes, it has been very scientific lately. It's quite clear that you have no scientific education whatsoever. That much is abundantly manifest in your epigram because you have no clue about the problem of nuclear waste, and the fact that NIMBYism is is what is holding nuclear back, not environmentalists.

            I will happily accept what I wish for. If the government is allowed to suppress the press during the Vietnam and Iraq wars, then it certainly should be allowed to ask politely that broadcasters not broadcas

      • Fraud is often excluded from free-speech protections.

        That said, it can be challenging to ascertain what exactly is "fraud" on a legal level.

        From "False Speech and the First Amendment: Constitutional Limits on Regulating Misinformation" (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12180 [congress.gov]):

        Fraud and False Commercial Speech

        The common law of fraud imposes liability on a person who makes a fraudulent misrepresentation for the purpose of inducing someone else to act, detrimentally and justifiably, in relianc

    • It doesn't seem the parties are disagreeing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @06:04PM (#63660182)
      about protected free speech. From reading TFA the White House had asked Social Media companies to moderate and remove anti-vaxine misinformation. They did not *order* the removal, they were asked to remove it on the ground that it is in objectively false and damaging to public health.

      The judge ruled that the gov't can't say "you should remove dangerous misinformation" because it's too easy for that to turn into coercion. That seems like a stretch, since if that were true the gov't saying "You should tell kids to drink milk for strong bones" would also be coercion.

      And it sounds like legal experts agree:

      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.

      This is another case of a dodgy political appointee ignoring decades if not centuries of legal precedent because reasons. And I'll say the same thing to conservatives on this forum I do ever time: this will bite you in the ass.

      To get what you want (vaccine misinformation on Twitter in this case, but there's plenty more examples) you're tearing down some of the fundamental underpinnings of our legal system.

      Take Roe v Wade. To get to that rather ludicrous ruling Alito had to quote a literal Witchfinder General from the 1600s. Historians and Mathematics experts will realize this is *before* the US Constitution was written much less ratified. Roe was not about abortion, it was about privacy, and if you're a libertarian conservative congrats, you just gave up all your constitutional privacy protections to outlaw abortion.

      There's dozens of other rulings like this coming out of the Trump packed courts. The Student Loan Debt ruling undermines Medicare. The AA ruling was done without proper standing and opens the door to SCOTUS vetoing any law they please. On and on and on and on.

      Conservatives wished for a SCOTUS majority on a monkey paw. Well, you got your wish...

      • Very well said.

      • The judge ruled that the gov't can't say "you should remove dangerous misinformation" because it's too easy for that to turn into coercion. That seems like a stretch, since if that were true the gov't saying "You should tell kids to drink milk for strong bones" would also be coercion.

        False, and difficult to believe you would characterize it that way if you had actually read the ruling. You claim any request to remove information is coercive according to the judge. In reality, he specifically raised and spent considerable amount of time on the question of what would make a request by the government coercive

        "To determine whether Plaintiffs are substantially likely to succeed on the merits of their
        First Amendment free speech claim, Plaintiffs must prove that the Federal Defendants either
        e

    • Re:Interesting details of the injunction order (Score:4, Interesting)

      by BishopBerkeley ( 734647 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @06:35PM (#63660250) Journal
      That's exactly right. It's hard to conceive of any means of enforcing it. The government can couch just about anything as a matter of national security. Plus, the pentagon advises Hollywood on movies and what not all the time. The government advises companies all the time. The companies are free to accept or to ignore the government's advice. The government is not trying to compel any company to publish or to delete any content. The government is simply notifying companies that something is bullshit. The companies exercise the right to publish it or to delete it. No coercion has been demonstrated or even implied. This judge, like so many in the Trump universe, is a moron.

      • No, if you'd read the evidence (much less the Twitter Files), the 'advice' not only included 'suggestions' to ban people who were engaged only in protected speech, but included threat of regulatory and legal coercion by the White House.

        This is what you get when billion dollar corporations control the main means of communication. They are easy to casual pressure by authoritarian politicians with too much power over their bottom line.

    • In the US the only things unprotected are direct and imminent threats, continual harassment well above and beyond normal interactions in the forum in question, and slander/libel.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dusanyu ( 675778 )
      200+ Years of First Admendment Jurisprudence has Defined extremely well what is and is not protected Speech Quoting 9-0 Decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire "There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words – those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite a

      • These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words – those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

        And virtually nothing the speech the WH and the FBI banned fell into those categories.

  • How were they pressured? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:10PM (#63660032)

    Where's the evidence they were threatened with something if they didn't follow requests?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Archangel Michael ( 180766 )

      Don't need evidence of a threat. The government has NO business in the speech control. That's how Free Speech is supposed work.

      • If you want to file a lawsuit, you need evidence. We don't live in Iran.

    • From the court filings:

      Things apparently became tense between the White House and Facebook after that, culminating in Flaherty’s July 15, 2021 email to Facebook, in which Flaherty stated: “Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”

    • Where's the evidence they were threatened with something if they didn't follow requests?

      Does this sound like the administration was just passively letting companies know they might want to take a look at something?

      "Humphrey sent a copy of the email to Rob Flaherty (“Flaherty”), former Deputy
      Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy, on the email and asked if “we can keep
      an eye out for tweets that fall in this same genre.” The email read, “Hey folks-Wanted to flag the
      below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it rem

  • I agree with the judge, their should have been NO communications and this should set a precedence going forward for every administration to stay out of 'free speech'. Doesn't matter if they agree or disagree. The problem here is when the WH calls, and you answer the phones or emails, everything is 'implied' after that no matter how you spin it.
    • Do you really think this judge would muzzle the Trump administration if it attacked the NY Times?

      • If it was a public dispute? No.

        If the Trump White House was calling and threatening the Times editorial board? Yes.

      • Can we apply the same conspiratorial thinking to rulings made by Biden or Obama appointed judges? Any ruling they make is automatically invalid?

        • If they made such a moronic, idiotic, illogical and unenforceable ruling, then, yes, conspiratorial thinking would apply. Can you point us to one such ruling? No, you cannot. They never made one.

  • Private citizens can be held as government agents [llrmi.com] in many cases. That link is a good example of how nuanced it can be, as the woman ultimately was ruled to not be one, but the article shows how close she came to being reasonably declared acting as a government agent. A different set of judges could have just as easily declared her to be sufficiently aligned with the police on all 3 points to be one.

    There is no blanket "they're private companies." The case law is actually quite clear on that point. Social media companies can, in theory, be held as government agents even if there is no coercion depending on how the government approaches them, how they respond and how much the company argue they had legitimate motivations of their own to cooperate.

    I'm not surprised in this case about the coercion argument because it can be very credibly argued that the platforms were forced to interpret their own terms of service in ways that aligned very closely to official government positions. I would say they were coerced by the government effectively doing a "it would be a shame if we told everyone you're a bunch of Russian agents who want to give grandma a fatal case of COVID" during a time when a lot of people were riled up.

    • Its not 1 time gov sent letters to get stuff removed, it happened on many different times removing what people were saying about covid,origin's of covid, hunter laptop which FBI knew was real when they sent the letter, and 2020 election questions after they let 2016 be questioned. Facts are a lot of these requests were always going 1 way and can't say it was a 1 off thing when there is thousands if not 10's of thousands of examples of gov asking for stuff to be removed that broke NO laws.

  • ... threats to public safety and security ...

    Which of "the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, the US Census Bureau, the State Department, the Homeland Security Department, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency" aren't involved in safety or security? Even the Census Bureau is involved by measuring it for other departments. Sure, some departments are notoriously

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