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Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

arstechnica.com

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

#271

Post by unethical_ban »

dashundchen wrote: post #190
artificialLimbs wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The porn and drugs were bad, but peddling influence with foreign adversaries is a pretty big deal.

You're right, which is why it's insane Saudi Arabia handed $2 billion in investment funds to Jared Kushner months after he left the White House as a "Senior Advisor", against the advice of the fund's advisors. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/jared-kushner-saudi-in... If you want to be shocked by influence peddling, just review what and Mr. Kushner did business with while actually being employed by the governmen…

I think it's despicable that Hunter Biden had a position on the board of a company heavily involved with a foreign government that US foreign policy affects, while having no qualifications and while his father was vice president. Even though Joe biden's actions as VP toward Ukraine were consistent with foreign policy of the US and its allies, it still smacks of influence peddling. I would love to see a federal law prohibiting federal judges and federal elected officials families from serving on the boards of foreign operated companies.

That said,

It is insanely frustrating that people like the person you responding to come out of the woodwork to complain about aspects of the Biden presidency that pale in comparison to the obvious treason in misbehavior of the Trump presidency and of his family. It shows just how partisan people's mindsets are.

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

#272

Post by brasic »

curiousllama wrote: post #224
brasic wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a blatantly illegal prior restraint on speech, completely at odds with the values the plaintiffs and judge claim to hold. Free speech cuts both ways. If you’re pleased when a judge bans any and all communication among millions of citizens, you don’t actually value the first amendment, you’re just cheering a partisan victory.

I mean, I don't agree with the top level comment here, but this isn't a reverse-free-speech issue. Courts are absolutely free to restrain what public officials can say. E.g., a regulator cannot say "if you don't burn this book, we'll tax you out of existence" while a person could say "if you don't burn this book, I'll vote to have you taxed out of existence"

A narrowly tailored prohibition on specific speech aimed at specific government officials may be permissable in some cases. This injunction is carelessly worded to apply to millions of people and to preclude essentially all communications related to "protected free speech". The breadth and vagueness is specifically what I'm objecting to.

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

#273

Post by somenameforme »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #245
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 injunction is ridiculous. It basically says the govt cannot suppress protected free speech but it can suppress unprotected free speech. Without ever explaining why the particular speech argued about by the plaintiffs is protected. Maybe that’s fine for an injunction, but anyone drawing any conclusions about whether the govt suppressed protected free speech from this ruling is highly mistaken.

Speech is similar to our criminal system. When you're accused of a crime, you're innocent until proven guilty. And anything you say is "protected" unless it falls into one of an extremely narrow range of exceptions. And those exceptions are actual crimes, not just 'silently censor and move on' type stuff. So the injunction basically comes down to 'stop doing unconstitutional things' while offering a list of things that are obviously unconstitutional, and a list of things that are obviously fine.

So e.g. "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" is obviously unconstitutional. By contrast, "informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies" is obviously perfectly constitutional.

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

#274

Post by jjaken »

curiousllama wrote: post #265

I love HN legal threads because engineers have great (logical) legal analysis, but with a terrible (practical) understanding of the law. And every so often a someone with legal training chimes in like "wtf guys" It's like watching a good software engineer try to build a circuit board without google: I see how you got there, but damn, that's... not gonna work great. Idk the law either, though, so I can't judge

[flagged]

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

#275

Post by NotYourLawyer »

afavour wrote: post #126
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Trump complained about “Obama judges” he was rightly ridiculed. Why is ok to cast aspersions on judges nominated by Trump?

Classic case of false equivalence: they both appointed judges therefore their actions must be equivalent, right? Did Obama ever nominate a judge that’s never tried a case in front of a court and failed to disclose his marriage to the White House counsel’s chief of staff? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Talley

I didn’t realize that was the judge who wrote this opinion!

Oh wait, he’s not. So whatever ad homs you have about him are irrelevant here.

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

#276

Post by theossuary »

halfjoking wrote: post #261
kayodelycaon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not illegal to yell "fire", but you can bet you're getting charged for manslaughter if someone dies as a result. This isn't far fetched, many people have gotten crushed or trampled in a panic and died as a result.

The CDC yelled "VACCINATE YOUNG PEOPLE" using fraudulent data. https://twitter.com/kevinnbass/status/1674920880219234304 I agree they should be charged with manslaughter for all the blood clots, heart disease and cancers they caused among young people.

You're going to have to do better than linking to a verified Twitter user if you want most people to take you seriously. Just the fact you get your news from Twitter makes me think you're just spouting what you heard in your echo chamber.

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

#277

Post by stcroixx »

brasic wrote: post #167
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…

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…

Free speech for citizens is important to me and I'm on no political side. This seems like a great thing to me. I don't want the government doing what they're been doing or doing it again in the future, regardless of who that government is. Ideally, these losers would have enough morals to police themselves or not do this in the first place, but here we are. Might not be a perfect ruling, but in spirit it's against gov. censorship, which I'm also against so I hope it or something like it sticks around.

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

#278

Post by GeekyBear »

snowwrestler wrote: post #268
GeekyBear wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Demands are free speech When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. If you recall, Trump wasn't allowed to block citizens who were critical of him on Twitter for the same reason. > 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 violat…

> When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. In other words, you’re happy to censor speech you disagree with, while waving the flag of free speech.

The First Amendment is doing the demanding here.

Not all speech is protected, and Government officials are not allowed to censor political speech.

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

#279

Post by somenameforme »

snowwrestler wrote: post #268
GeekyBear wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Demands are free speech When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. If you recall, Trump wasn't allowed to block citizens who were critical of him on Twitter for the same reason. > 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 violat…

> When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. In other words, you’re happy to censor speech you disagree with, while waving the flag of free speech.

You're speaking of the difference between constitutional literalism, and constitutional intent. The 2nd Amendment, interpreted literally, means I should be able to build a nuke. After all there are no explicit limits. That obviously was not the intent of the amendment by any stretch of the imagination. Such a consideration was never dealt with because this was simply outside any sort of world the Founding Fathers could have imagined.

So too here with the 1st amendment. Interpreted literally, you're absolutely correct. Intimidation isn't passing a law, but obviously the government using threats to censor billions of people (since this would expand even beyond the US) is obviously contrary to every single reasonable interpretation of the 1st Amendment. Again a world where the government even could censor billions of people using intimidation alone is something the Founding Fathers could never have even begun to imagine.

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

#280

Post by brasic »

adfhbaidnioni wrote: post #257
halfjoking wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you. The real issue here is a small number of companies have become the defacto gatekeepers of a large amount of public discourse. That’s a major problem that this debate is just a symptom of.
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