Sh-s-s-s-h: the Government censorship of social media

[kazoolaw]

”Arguably the most massive attack on free speech in United States history” and “akin to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.”

US District Judge Terry Doughty, enjoined the White House and others from “encouraging” social media to censor lawful speech, ruling that “Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition.” The censored issues involved COVID, the 2020 election, and others identified by the Judge as “conservative in nature.

https://ago.mo.gov/wp-content/upload...den-ruling.pdf
(162 pages)

Injunction now before the USSC in Murthy vs Missouri.

Lengthy, but enlightening, reading tracking the multiple pronged attacks by an array of government agencies to censor conservative information being shared with the public.

[dneal]

Oral arguments this morning.

[dneal]

The underlying philosophical arguments become present.

So my biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods.

The text of the amendment, emphasis added:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.


Link to AP's YouTube channel with the audio

Transcript from SCOTUS's site

[kazoolaw]

My expectations were lowered when then nominee Jackson couldn’t provide a definition of “woman”

[dneal]

Poster Owen Gregorian on X has a good summary, through an example Elon shared (quoted in full below).

That's the thing some of the justices were dancing around. Direct fidgeting with national discourse, by the government for the benefit of the government, in the furtherance of some government or national interest. To protect us from tide-pod eating videos and whatnot.

Although there's the laptop issue affecting the 2020 election, most of the censorship was around Covid and the national narrative (and it's obvious now what they were lying about and why).

I found Mr. Aguinaga's argument that the government is free to provide its competing opinion to the public square simple and compelling. There's no need to manipulate the national discourse (and apparently try to hide it, which means you kinda knew you weren't supposed to be doing that anyway - like having a FiveEyes country spy on a Presidential campaign for you, which again means you kinda knew you weren't supposed to be doing that...)

Anyway:

Elon Musk reveals Twitter had FBI 'portal that auto-deleted all comms' after 2 weeks

He added that the move struck him "as a FOIA violation, a Freedom of Information Act violation…because you shouldn't be able to delete orderly things after two weeks."

X owner Elon Musk revealed during a recent interview that the FBI had a portal that “auto-deleted all comms with Twitter after 2 weeks,” remarking that it was likely a violation of the Freedom of Information Act.

Musk made the comments on the Texas Lindsay podcast while discussing the censorship of Americans on social media by the US government. “This is coming from multiple parts of the government. From the State Department, the FBI, Homeland Security, from really many, many parts of the government. It wasn't just one arm of the government.”

Musk continued, “There was this FBI portal that auto-deleted all communications after two weeks, so we actually don't know what was said there.”

He added that the move struck him “as a FOIA violation, a Freedom of Information Act violation…because you shouldn't be able to delete orderly things after two weeks.”

Musk also revealed that “there's a little-known agency in the state department called the Global Engagement Center, which most people have never heard of, but they might have been the single worst offender because they demanded the suspension of over 250,000 accounts which I think all Twitter largely complied with.”

“The suspension demands were so broad that they accidentally demanded a suspension of a journalist on CNN and an elected Canadian politician. It was just an incredibly broad swath.”

The Twitter Files, released through late 2022 into 2023 by a number of journalists, revealed the depth to which the FBI and other government agencies were working with Twitter.

In one release, Michael Shellenberger revealed that former FBI agents had been working at Twitter in 2020, and that Twitter executives had been trained on a potential "Hack and Dump" operation relating to Hunter Biden in September of 2020, one month before the New York Post first began reporting on the infamous Hunter Biden laptop.
A recent report revealed that Twitter was not alone in censoring Americans. According to the Media Research Center (MRC), Google has interfered in US elections at least 41 times since 2008.