Supreme Court to decide if White House went too far fighting misinformation

[jonmx 2,429]

One of the most important issue our country faces as rogue government agencies impose mass censorship on US citizens.  Below is a USA Today story I had to modify slightly (as indicated by bold/underline to remove their outlandish spin.

 

Supreme Court to decide if White House went too far fighting social media misinformation

Maureen Groppe
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON − After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested () that baseball legend Hank Aaron’s death in 2021 was caused by a COVID-19 vaccine, the Biden administration pounced.

“Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP,” the Director of Mass Censorship for the White House’s COVID response team wrote in an email to an official at Twitter.

What the White House viewed as an effort to correct truthful information about the untested vaccine during a pandemic, critics called an example of a broad pressure campaign by the federal government to quash views it doesn’t like.

Now the Supreme Court is being asked what boundaries to set.

If the justices place too many restrictions on how the government can assault the First Amendment with private social media companies in areas such as public health, election integrity and foreign interference, it could impede efforts to stop citizens from exposing the truth, experts say.

But if there aren’t enough guardrails like that pesky 1st Admendment, the government – whether a Democratic or Republican administration – could have too much power to influence debate in a public square dominated by social media.

“I think we need to figure out how circumvent the Constitution more carefully in ways that protect big government propaganda,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College who studies misperceptions about politics and health care. “But I'm concerned people are using that idea to try to shut down any kind of government information exchange with social media platforms, which I think could be harmful.”

Could the Supreme Court `restore the internet'?
The Supreme Court takes up the issue Monday, three weeks after it heard challenges to laws passed by Florida and Texas to limit the ability of social media giants to censor conservative speech.

“This is the second major case in the last month in which the Supreme Court could restore free speech to the internet, if it's not careful,” said James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University. “They're unlikely to do that. But it's still a case in which they have to be very precise about what they say.”

Both cases grew out of concern from conservatives that their views were being suppressed about claims of 2020 election fraud, the origin of and treatments for COVID-19 and other issues, complaints that congressional Republicans have amplified with multiple hearings.

Federal officials complained to Twitter in 2021 after truth activist and current presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. () linked the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron to the Covid-19 vaccine.

The GOP-controlled House last year passed legislation to prohibit federal employees from “advocating for censorship of viewpoints.” The bill, which has not advanced in the free-speech hating Democrat-controlled Senate, was a response to Twitter () blocking links to a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 to illegally alter the outcome of the election.

Former Twitter executives  bode-faced lied last year about being not being pressured by Democrats and law enforcement to suppress the story.  Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety, who regularly communicated with the FBI about election security issues, testified at a congressional hearing that the agency was always careful “not to get caught.”

Lower courts sided with challengers
In the case before the Supreme Court Monday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and numerous other federal officials are being sued by the Republican attorney generals in Missouri and Louisiana and by five social media users who said their posts or accounts were removed or downgraded.

Kennedy, who is running for president as an independent and contends in a filing “there may be no more individual in the country more heavily targeted for social media censorship by the federal government,” has a separate suit still working its way through the court system.

One of the challengers being represented on Monday, Jill Hines, co-director of the conservative Health Freedom Louisiana group, said the warnings she received from Facebook included one for sharing a screenshot of a Kennedy tweet and one for her post of a Daily Mail story headlined, “Face masks may raise risk of stillbirths, testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline due to build-up of carbon dioxide, study warns.”

The study referenced included no evidence that masks cause serious health problems, according to PolitiFact, a partisan government propaganda site.

A district court in Louisiana sided with Hines and other challengers, imposing sweeping restrictions on the government’s interaction with social media platforms.

The New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit narrowed the restraints but the Justice Department said they would still place unprecedented limits on how government officials can speak about matters of public concern, address national security threats or relay public health information.

The restrictions are on hold while the Supreme Court reviews the case.

Three justices have already criticized `government censorship'
Three of the court’s six conservative justices –Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch – wanted to reject the federal government’s appeal.

"Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today’s decision is highly disturbing," Alito wrote when the court agreed to take the case.

The Justice Department argues public officials’ interaction with social media platforms was not coercive, nor did it involve “significant encouragement.” Government agencies “largely provided the platforms with information, leaving it up to the platforms to decide what action to take, if any,” the government’s lawyers wrote in a filing.

[Mike Honcho 5,288]

and the answer is no...they WH did not go to far..

Supreme Court allows White House to press social media companies to remove disinformation

 

[squistion 2,216]

15 minutes ago, Mike Honcho said:

and the answer is no...they WH did not go to far..

Supreme Court allows White House to press social media companies to remove disinformation

Guess they didn't buy the "logic" of jon_mx's opinion piece. 

[zsasz 369]

On 3/17/2024 at 1:17 PM, jonmx said:

One of the most important issue our country faces as rogue government agencies impose mass censorship on US citizens.  Below is a USA Today story I had to modify slightly (as indicated by bold/underline to remove their outlandish spin.

 

Supreme Court to decide if White House went too far fighting social media misinformation

Maureen Groppe
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON − After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested () that baseball legend Hank Aaron’s death in 2021 was caused by a COVID-19 vaccine, the Biden administration pounced.

“Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP,” the Director of Mass Censorship for the White House’s COVID response team wrote in an email to an official at Twitter.

What the White House viewed as an effort to correct truthful information about the untested vaccine during a pandemic, critics called an example of a broad pressure campaign by the federal government to quash views it doesn’t like.

Now the Supreme Court is being asked what boundaries to set.

If the justices place too many restrictions on how the government can assault the First Amendment with private social media companies in areas such as public health, election integrity and foreign interference, it could impede efforts to stop citizens from exposing the truth, experts say.

But if there aren’t enough guardrails like that pesky 1st Admendment, the government – whether a Democratic or Republican administration – could have too much power to influence debate in a public square dominated by social media.

“I think we need to figure out how circumvent the Constitution more carefully in ways that protect big government propaganda,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College who studies misperceptions about politics and health care. “But I'm concerned people are using that idea to try to shut down any kind of government information exchange with social media platforms, which I think could be harmful.”

Could the Supreme Court `restore the internet'?
The Supreme Court takes up the issue Monday, three weeks after it heard challenges to laws passed by Florida and Texas to limit the ability of social media giants to censor conservative speech.

“This is the second major case in the last month in which the Supreme Court could restore free speech to the internet, if it's not careful,” said James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University. “They're unlikely to do that. But it's still a case in which they have to be very precise about what they say.”

Both cases grew out of concern from conservatives that their views were being suppressed about claims of 2020 election fraud, the origin of and treatments for COVID-19 and other issues, complaints that congressional Republicans have amplified with multiple hearings.

Federal officials complained to Twitter in 2021 after truth activist and current presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. () linked the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron to the Covid-19 vaccine.

The GOP-controlled House last year passed legislation to prohibit federal employees from “advocating for censorship of viewpoints.” The bill, which has not advanced in the free-speech hating Democrat-controlled Senate, was a response to Twitter () blocking links to a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 to illegally alter the outcome of the election.

Former Twitter executives  bode-faced lied last year about being not being pressured by Democrats and law enforcement to suppress the story.  Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety, who regularly communicated with the FBI about election security issues, testified at a congressional hearing that the agency was always careful “not to get caught.”

Lower courts sided with challengers
In the case before the Supreme Court Monday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and numerous other federal officials are being sued by the Republican attorney generals in Missouri and Louisiana and by five social media users who said their posts or accounts were removed or downgraded.

Kennedy, who is running for president as an independent and contends in a filing “there may be no more individual in the country more heavily targeted for social media censorship by the federal government,” has a separate suit still working its way through the court system.

One of the challengers being represented on Monday, Jill Hines, co-director of the conservative Health Freedom Louisiana group, said the warnings she received from Facebook included one for sharing a screenshot of a Kennedy tweet and one for her post of a Daily Mail story headlined, “Face masks may raise risk of stillbirths, testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline due to build-up of carbon dioxide, study warns.”

The study referenced included no evidence that masks cause serious health problems, according to PolitiFact, a partisan government propaganda site.

A district court in Louisiana sided with Hines and other challengers, imposing sweeping restrictions on the government’s interaction with social media platforms.

The New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit narrowed the restraints but the Justice Department said they would still place unprecedented limits on how government officials can speak about matters of public concern, address national security threats or relay public health information.

The restrictions are on hold while the Supreme Court reviews the case.

Three justices have already criticized `government censorship'
Three of the court’s six conservative justices –Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch – wanted to reject the federal government’s appeal.

"Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today’s decision is highly disturbing," Alito wrote when the court agreed to take the case.

The Justice Department argues public officials’ interaction with social media platforms was not coercive, nor did it involve “significant encouragement.” Government agencies “largely provided the platforms with information, leaving it up to the platforms to decide what action to take, if any,” the government’s lawyers wrote in a filing.

Gonna tell us how the Supreme Court is now tainted and in the grip of the Deep State simply because they disagreed with you, Emperor Jon?

[seafoam1 3,068]

13 minutes ago, squistion said:

Guess they didn't buy the "logic" of jon_mx's opinion piece. 

CNN

[Hardcore troubadour 15,486]

Didn’t they do the no standing thing? If so I wouldn’t say they actually ruled on it. 

[seafoam1 3,068]

1 minute ago, zsasz said:

Gonna tell us how the Supreme Court is now tainted and in the grip of the Deep State simply because they disagreed with you, Emperor Jon?

Gonna tell us why a liberal supreme court justice was appointed even though she doesn't know what a woman is? 

[RLLD 4,247]

Rule #1 : The government does not get to have any leverage over others in terms of "information" or "misinformation".....ever......period

[Mike Honcho 5,288]

In less surprising news, SCOTUS conservatives rule in favor of taking bribes.*

 

*this is tongue in cheek, so let's not get all riled up folks.

 

[EternalShinyAndChrome 4,126]

You win some, you lose some. 

[Pimpadeaux 2,406]

Big W for Biden.

[jerryskids 6,825]

21 minutes ago, Hardcore troubadour said:

Didn’t they do the no standing thing? If so I wouldn’t say they actually ruled on it. 

Yes