Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government • Hacker News Board

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#251

Post by curiousllama » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:01 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #233

snowwrestler wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. The legal theory at stake here is that all government speech is inherently coercive. But this is not necessarily true, or aligned with free speech as a principle of society. Any time someone says “we must protect free speech by legally enjoining the following people from sp…

> It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. If the speech the government officials are engaging in is a demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then we are looking at a violation of the First Amendment. Nobody is saying that government officials can't engage in other kinds of speech that don't violate th…

> If the speech the government officials are engaging in is a demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then we are looking at a violation of the First Amendment

"Censor" is doing a lot of work here.

It's important for the government to engage in public speech that may lead another person to self-censor. E.g., a press release saying "FYI: publishing your how-to-build-a-nuke guide is gonna help crazy people bomb US cities, please don't do that."

If gov speech is inherently coercive, then the gov is NOT allowed to make that request. (which feels dumb to me) In reality, it's more likely a court would hold they can say that; they just can't imprison the publisher (or audit their taxes more aggressively) as a result.

So the gov can def say things that would lead to self-censorship. They just can't be dicks about it.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#252

Post by adfhbaidnioni » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:01 PM UTC

efitz wrote: post #131

This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech…

Courts say a whole lot of things.

The large majority of what the government is alleged to have done sounds entirely appropriate to me. The CDC, Surgeon General, and NIAID are responsible for publishing health guidance. This means they will say some things are true and some things are false. They have no power to censor third-party sources and I don't see evidence of even informal pressure. Yet third parties believed this information and used it to determine what posts are true, which sounds to me like these agencies did their job by publishing trustworthy guidance.

Some of the things this court said were factually incorrect. For instance,

>Dr. Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there needed to be a “quick and devastating take down” of the GBD—the result was exactly that

Yet in context, you find that the "take down" in question was a published rebuttal, not censorship. This is a lie, plain and simple.

> The FBI’s failure to alert social-media companies that the Hunter Biden laptop story was real, and not mere Russian disinformation, is particularly troubling.

The "story" is that Hunter Biden owned a laptop. The "Hunter Biden laptop story" was very much fake. None of the supposed evidence of corruption existed.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#253

Post by GeekyBear » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:02 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #244

GeekyBear wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when your are a government official demanding that political speech be censored.

"you may want to look into and delete" isn't a demand. Politicians demand censorship all the time, as is their right. They usually don't get what they want, as they don't typically have the right to enforce their desires. For example: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9619449/Rand-Paul-b... > Rand Paul blasted Twitter on Tuesday for not immediately taking down Richard Marx’s tweet from Sunday in which he offer…

> Politicians demand censorship all the time, as is their right.

Sorry, but that just won't fly.

> A federal appeals court in Manhattan says President Trump cannot block critics from his Twitter account, calling it "unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination."

In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...

Trump may have wanted to silence criticism, but he didn't get away with it, even on his own personal account.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#254

Post by engineer_22 » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

engineer_22 wrote: post #199

Pxtl wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, I think all of us have learned the unfortunate downsides to a libertarian approach to free speech over the past 20 years. Any free speech purist would do well to remember what their legal recourse would be if somebody made elaborate false-allegations about you that harmed your career and marriage - we have many legal tools that protect us from harmful lies. It is not remarkable that there are people who be…

-> Government workers should be free to contact private organizations and speak to them freely and make requests of them. "The government would like this content taken down for public good" is not making a law, it's making a request. It's making their opinion known, and government functionaries are allowed to have professional opinions. Something like "In my professional opinion as a public health worker, this conten…

If you're down voting at least be kind enough to tell me what you take issue with. I won't bite

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#255

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #253

ceejayoz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you may want to look into and delete" isn't a demand. Politicians demand censorship all the time, as is their right. They usually don't get what they want, as they don't typically have the right to enforce their desires. For example: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9619449/Rand-Paul-b... > Rand Paul blasted Twitter on Tuesday for not immediately taking down Richard Marx’s tweet from Sunday in which he offer…

> Politicians demand censorship all the time, as is their right. Sorry, but that just won't fly. > A federal appeals court in Manhattan says President Trump cannot block critics from his Twitter account, calling it "unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination." In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump v…

Blocking isn't censorship; it does not prevent you from speaking.

Blocking wasn't permissible because it restricted access by citizens to official announcements; it's like banning someone from coming to a town hall meeting or visiting Congress's website.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#256

Post by hnfong » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

zuminator wrote: post #183

romeros wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gets to decide what information is "disinformation" and what is the right information? Any view that you do not approve of is not disinformation. Also, you are smart enough to recognize disinformation.. but you think everyone else around you is too gullible and would fall prey to "disinformation"

But disinformation isn't just incorrect information. Disinformation is false information seeded with an intent to mislead the population. The person who "gets to decide" what is disinformation is effectively the person who is planting the disinformation. Once the disinformation starts to propagate then the downstream propagandists may believe they are spreading legitimate truths, but ultimately by definition the disi…

Why is ghosts relevant here?

If the concept of ghosts are disinformation, who's the person that intentionally planted this seed? Even if that's the case, you'd have to go back thousands of years at least.

You seem to be convinced that ghosts don't exist. Why is that? Note that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Among the millions of potentially fraudulent claims from people reporting to have seen ghosts, just one legit claim would suffice to contradict your premise. I don't know how good those odds are, but I'm guessing they're probably not as bad as you seem to believe.

On the contrary, the claim that "ghosts don't exist" seems to be a prime candidate for being disinformation. Pretty useful thing for secular institutions to have the population believe (regardless of its truth value) if only to wrestle power away from religious and spiritual institutions.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#257

Post by adfhbaidnioni » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:05 PM UTC

halfjoking wrote: post #250

brasic wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the entire injunction. It’s only seven pages. Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization” I’m not defending the behavior alleged here but…

The government can say whatever they want in press conferences or through their social media. Both the government and their employees have as much free speech as they want - and not only that but they spent billions of dollars for advocacy groups especially during covid. (which we know now was used to promote fraudulent science) The injunction says the government can't urge, pressure or encourage censorship. (yes eve…

This judge thinks that merely publishing information that other people believe constitutes censorship.

>Various social-media platforms changed their content-moderation policies to require suppression of content that was deemed false by CDC and led to vaccine hesitancy. The CDC became the “determiner of truth” for social-media platforms, deciding whether COVID-19 statements made on social media were true or false. And the CDC was aware it had become the “determiner of truth” for social-media platforms. If the CDC said a statement on social media was false, it was suppressed, in spite of alternative views. By telling social-media companies that posted content was false, the CDC Defendants knew the social-media company was going to suppress the posted content. The CDC Defendants thus likely “significantly encouraged” social-media companies to suppress free speech.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#258

Post by curiousllama » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:05 PM UTC

rhaway84773 wrote: post #241

efitz wrote: post #131

This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech…

The court clearly found that wrongly because they do say that there are other non first amendment protected speech that the government can indeed suppress on social media. It’s just these few non first amendment protected items that the court is ideologically opposed to that the government cannot suppress.

> there are other non first amendment protected speech that the government can indeed suppress

This is a famously narrow category (eg CSAM). The gov often can't even suppress state secrets. I think most people are fine with this category existing, even if there's disagreements on what's in it.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#259

Post by LexiMax » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:06 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #219

LexiMax wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nah, ask a historian. I did. They call it "Pax Britanica," and there's loads of things you can read about that outline why historians put this period of history in the same category as Pax Americana and Pax Romana.

You answered the wrong question. I said to ask a historian regarding the unfounded assertion that "Religion has less to do with the underlying morality of the scripture and more to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is, and their interpretation can be...flexible." Prove that. You can name a few examples where there was a widespread spirit in the air (Crusades, Spanish Inquisition [even though the death…

My assertion isn't that the moral justification isn't there, it's that whatever moral justification that is in vogue at the time just so happens to dovetail with personal gain and/or political expediency.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#260

Post by sneak » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #246

sneak wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite incorrect. Defamation is a tort, not a crime. It's legal. Criminal defamation laws in the US have been repeatedly struck down as unconstitutional, not by absolutists but by lots of normal working judges.

I'm quite aware of that, and you'll notice if you read my comment again that I specifically said "are special cases that don't qualify for protection", not that they should be a crime. Civil cases are actually a great way to address defamation.

That's the thing, though - they are still "protected speech" under 1A. That's why laws banning it get struck down.